Honey Buns # 24 Presents Taboo Illustrated # 3

6 DEATH IN THE HAREM Graphic Novel by Ferres—Part Three 16 GALLERY: TIM—WAR BOOTY To the Victor Goes the Despoiling 26 PONY LIFE Graphic Novel by Doval—Part Three 36 AGNES — CONFESSIONS OF A VIRTUAL VIXEN Special Feature by Ernest Greene Art by Agnes 44 YAKUZA SLAVES Graphic Novel by Roberts—Part Three 54 SLAVEMART Graphic Novel by Erenisch—Part Three 64 JUNTA HELL Graphic Novel by Templeton—Part Three 74 KINK IN INK Voluptuous Volumes, Perverse Portfolios: Roberts' Bound Babes Russell's Pervy POV Poulton's Pee Girls 79 CAPTIVE IN THE BASEMENT Graphic Novel by Agnes—Part Two EDITORIAL NOTE STRICTLY SPEAKING Cruelty has been a component of popular entertainment, high and low, throughout human history. Culture both mirrors and shapes the consciousness of the societies that consume it. Not only were the classic tragedies of ancient Greece rife with murder, rape, mutilation and cannibalism, so were the hills and fields of the ancient world. Elizabethan England filled the boxes at The Globe for Shakespeare's sophisticated slasher show Titus Andronicus, while bear-baiting provided cruder diversion in pits half a mile away. Grisly public executions competed for audiences with Kabuki theater in feudal Japan. Even today, though we tend to conduct our state murder in relative secrecy, our society still considers it a sport to watch two men from economically disadvantaged classes attempt to inflict maximum TBI on one another while well-heeled punters bet the outcome. We suspect the roots of this durable taste for the suffering of others lies somewhere between the older and more modern components of the human brain, where the most basic urges to feed and procreate clash with more complex desires for sociable pleasure. This observation, which should hardly need defending, given its obviousness, upsets utopians of all stripes who share an odd and dangerous conviction that human beings somehow stand outside of nature. Our own metric for the improvement of the species is the gradual embrace of symbolic over literal acts of cruelty as the primary expression of our woolier impulses. For all the loose talk about violence in media and pornography's supposed links to sexual brutality, the ordinary citizen of an advanced, industrial culture like our own sees less actual mayhem in a lifetime than his or her ancestors saw in a short walk across town. That we seem more easily satisfied with make-believe cruelty conjured by the wizards of cinematic CGI, or the talented artists who contribute to this magazine, strikes us as good news. We feel safer in a world where the part of our DNA that takes pleasure in harm stays home getting its rocks off to ink on paper rather than roaming the countryside in search of more literal satisfactions. Some will surely disagree, but we salute our readers for their civilized tastes in choosing TABOO ILLUSTRATED over plundering the village next door. —Ernest Greene, Executive Editor