While his name may forever be associated with one of the most infamous images in DC Comics history, depicting Catwoman and Batman having masks-on sex on a rooftop on the final page of Catwoman #1 (2011), it would be unjust to deny artist Guillem March the credit he plainly deserves for his excellent pinup art. Indeed, before he began work on American superhero books like Gotham City Sirens and Catwoman, March worked for years in his native Spain as a producer of variously exquisite and erotic illustrations for publications like Playboy Spain and Eros Magazine, among others. Many of those pieces and some never-before-published works have been collected for English-speaking readers in Cover Girls, an Image Comics hardback whose cover was actually selected by CA's Andrew Wheeler as one of the best of February (it was meant to come out then; it didn't).

The following images contain no full nudity but may be considered NSFW, so advance at your own risk.

While many of the artists whom we spotlighted in our month-long Sexy Comics series in February dealt in images that invoked a sense of the past, or the future, or the more fantastical altogether, March's pinup work seems thoroughly modern. His figures and environments are heightened in both attitude and color saturation, to be sure, but even the most X-rated of the book's contents remain grounded in a world that seems only just a few extra degrees warmer and, depending upon your point of view, perhaps a little more fun than ours.

However, Cover Girls shows off more than March's talents for titillation; the book contains a good amount of dramatic and even melancholy scenes that showcase March's abilities for storytelling, although they are of course no less lovely.

Guillem March's Cover Girls is on sale this week in finer comics shops, bookstores and digitally from comiXology.