Good morning everyone,
More than three decades ago Shona Joshua’s two-part illustrated story “Mini: A Girl of Epic Proportions” appeared in Mangazine volume 2 issues 10 and 12. Issue 10 came out in July 1991 and issue 12 came out in November 1991. Shona Joshua drew all the art and wrote the narrative.
Unfortunately, I was not able to find any information about the creator. Online searches did not return much. I did find something on Facebook which might have been the creator’s personal page, but it would be rash to assume so without confirmation. If any readers are familiar with Shona Joshua please drop me a line!
What I found especially interesting was the fact that this early 1990s comic focused on vore before that term was created. San Antonio-based publisher Antarctic Press produced the issues of Mangazine with Mini: A Girl of Epic Proportions in 1991 so about a year and half before the World Wide Web was made public. Thus, this comic was pre-Internet. It was made years before web sites like Big Gulp, DeVoured, and The Woman Eater appeared online in the latter half of the 1990s.
In the interest of full disclosure I must admit to a certain ignorance about precisely when “vore” was created. Vore meaning a fetish in which people are sexually aroused by the idea of sentient beings (either themselves or others) being swallowed. My ignorance acknowledged I take comfort from the fact that no one knows precisely when or how this word was brought into existence.
My best guess, based on reviewing the earliest web sites preserved at the Wayback Machine, is that someone coined vore in the mid-1990s. The oldest recorded usage of “vorarephilia” is a Usenet post from April 6, 1998 in a debate/drama thread entitled “Public retraction and apology” at alt.fan.furry.
(SIDE NOTE: For their part Xydexx replied and said they “… did not invent vore.” Nonetheless, Xydexx’s post is the oldest found so far. Perhaps an older message is out there somewhere patiently waiting to be discovered.)
Some folks on Bluesky and on a forum thread at Eka’s Portal thought April 1998 felt too recent.
Those objections may well be valid. However, there is additional evidence that vore was not widely known or utilized in the early 1990s. Brenda Love wrote The “Encyclopedia of Unusual Sex Practices” and published it in January 1992 without any mention of vorarephilia or vore whatsoever. Although, there was an entry for anthropophagy otherwise known as cannibalism. Of interest this encyclopedia did not discuss other fetishes which are well-known today such as breast expansion, inflation, and macrophilia. (NOTE: Love did mention real-world breast shaping and augmentation, but I do not think that quite captured the breast expansion fantasy of breasts growing rapidly without surgery and to supernatural size.)
Also evidence that vore was unknown in the middle of the 1990s is the fact that people launched several pertinent sites in the early days of the Internet that did not employ the word. Instead they created Big Gulp, DeVoured, and The Woman Eater.
A description written sometime before May 4, 1998 for the Big Gulp site read “… for folks who are sexually turned on by the idea of person being swallowed alive …” There was no mention of “vore” in that description or in the site’s name. Presumably, if the creator was to make Big Gulp today they would say “vore.”
Similarly, Andrew Nellis (also called Poison Pen) wrote at least three stories before December 10, 1997, which could be called “vore,” but they were tagged as “cannibalism.” “Hunger” was about a girl with a mysterious condition who swallowed pets and eventually people. (NOTE: If you seek out Hunger to read for yourself be warned that it deals with heavy topics such as domestic violence, implied if not actual incest, murder, and sexual abuse.)
Earlier uses of “vore” include the names of an Arkansas (Arkansan? Arkansasian?) metal band which formed in 1994 and a monster from the first-person shooter Quake which released in 1996, but those do not appear to be associated with the modern usage. (SIDE NOTE: A few weeks ago I sent an e-mail to metal band Vore asking about their name, but to no avail.)
Turning back to Mini, the word “vore” was absent from the dialogue and descriptions. Yet, if published today this comic would comfortably fit under that category. Let me briefly describe it.
It began in a medieval fantasy setting after the titular giantess startled human villagers celebrating a manure festival (as one does). After swallowing the burgermeister she scooped up members of the crowd into her sack. Then Mini captured a thief called Ferrette between her toes and added him to the collection. Ferrette was a fast talker and suggested a deal with Mini (like Androcles and the lion) to save his own skin in return for helping her hoodwink the gentry and the rabble.
Of note this was filled to the brim, if not overfilled, with jokes referencing popular movies, music, and TV shows. Shona Joshua made pop culture references to the song “War” as well as Shakespearean plays and British comedy sketch team Monty Python. Furthermore, the creator crafted a pun about David Bowie and they employed a fair amount of fourth wall breaking (such as one character commenting on their first 3/4 face shot in a comic book). This was not a serious tale and the author presumably included such frivolity to blunt the horror of a big woman eating smaller people.
Eventually, villagers decided that enough was enough and took action by building a mech or mecha to combat the villager-eating giantess. Unfortunately, there was no fight scene. Instead, the adventure ended with a cop-out and a full page of fourth-wall breaking panels which asserted that Mini ripped off an older comic published in 1959.
Did I mention this was not a serious comic?
Overall, I recommend Mini: A Girl of Epic Proportions. This was a fun comic released before its time. Some readers may find the constant referential humor to be too much or dated, but in my opinion the references did not overstay their welcome. As of this writing there is at least one copy on eBay for a decent price. My plan is to donate the two Mangazine issues to Taedis’s Size Library and Museum later this year.
That’s it for today folks. Stay tuned to There She Grows for more editorials and reviews coming soon. Until then, keep growing!
This review was written by SolomonG and is protected under Fair Use copyright law.
All Rights Reserved.
There She Grows 
I remember reading this, but not in Mangazine. Probably a scan/upload.
I agree that this comic pre-dates the use of “vore” as we know it today. However, one could argue that eating people is a traditional pastime of giants and is therefore implicit within the basic premise of the comic.
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I agree that giants eating people is an old tradition. Furthermore stories of a sentient being swallowing other sentient beings were told in ancient times.
My first thought of such an old story concerns Cronus (also spelled Cronos or Kronos), father of the Greek pantheon, swallowing his children until his wife feed him a stone in swaddling clothes so that Zeus would be spared. Grown-up Zeus killed Cronus and freed his siblings. Cronus was a Titan and occasionally, like in the God of War video games, was portrayed as a giant.
I am less familiar with the Epic of Gilgamesh, but know that it is older than and inspired Greek mythology. If memory serves stories about Gilgamesh also had giants, but I do not recall if those giants ate anyone.
I think this is a topic for a long lengthy discussion. Which is good because there is always another Vore day! In particular much ink could be spilled finding the dividing line separating straight horror from vore. Maybe I write a story about a giant woman that swallows people solely to scare readers, but you appreciate the story for other reasons.
Mini’s comic did not explicitly state that the reader will feel a sexual charge in watching Mini eat people, but she is portrayed as an attractive female and there was even an undressing scene in the comic (nothing was shown in the art but the implication was clear).
I could believe that Shona Joshua secretly liked the concept of Vore and made this comic to satisfy that as yet unnamed fetish, but just as likely Shona merely thought it would be funny to have a giant woman eat people and did not find it sexually thrilling at all.
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To be clear, my argument is only that this comic predated the word “Vore.”
Presumably, there were generations of vore fans who lived and died in times when the idea was not yet named.
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In the same vein I would not be surprised if someone else put a thin cut of roast beef between two slices of bread before the Earl of Sandwich did so. This admission does not diminish the significance of a word coming into widespread usage. Once the word sandwich spread then others heard it and tried the concept. The word changed eating habits.
Regarding the word “vore,” it could be illuminating to discuss the specific limits. I used a broad overreaching definition, but at least one person at Eka’s Portal did not consider preparing people like food to be vore. So, when Mini made a person sandwich that individual would not consider it vore. Additionally, my sense is that “vore” typically involves swallowing someone whole as opposed to consuming someone piece by piece, ergo one bite at a time.
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