This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Please keep in mind that any moral rights the artist has remain intact under this license.
BDA #1: Auranella
We’re going to shift for mid-day content to a new genre, one that I think echoes many of the themes of American pulp art and may have in some cases been inspired by it. This the trashy Euro semi-porn comic, and specifically the French bande dessinée adulte, of which a vast number were produced in the 1970s and 80s. The art is seldom as good as American pulp at its best, but the level of inspired weirdness is just as high and often higher. I’m hoping to do a long run of these here at Erotic Mad Science, a run so long that it will be from time to time interrupted by various original second-feature material.
Our first offering is a little comic called Auranella, which an information page on is publisher indicates was meant to be about a “fantastic or legendary” main character and which was also released in an Italian edition, where its main character was named “Uranella.” It is identified as the work of the Italian comics artist Floriano Bossi (1926-1995). Here we have a beauty trapped in a web and menaced by a giant spider, which is very pulp.
By a later edition we would get the same character imprisoned in a sphere, which is almost tube girl of her.
By a giant ape, no less. That’s very pulp.
The Eidolon Initiative: Chapter Six, Page Sixteen
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Please keep in mind that any moral rights the artist has remain intact under this license.
Black Mask bonus pulp: Dirge in Bolero Time
Another Norman Saunders cover painting, this time for January 1950 It might not have quite the Innsmouth vibe that some earlier and rougher pulp covers did, but still, a frogman abducting a dame in a slinky dress is about as pulp as it gets.
The painting in cover context:
And that about covers it for pulp for a while. But fear not, because starting tomorrow we’ll be turning to American pulp’s weird and sexy continental offspring. Stay tuned!
The Eidolon Initiative: Chapter Six, Page Fifteen
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Please keep in mind that any moral rights the artist has remain intact under this license.
Black Mask Bonus pulp: Hell Is What You Make It
The great Norman Saunders did a cover painting for November 1950 which really combines dynamism and storytelling.
The painting in cover context:
It’s almost like you don’t even need the text.
The Eidolon Initiative: Chapter Six, Page Fourteen
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Please keep in mind that any moral rights the artist has remain intact under this license.
Black Mask Bonus Pulp: Man’s Best Fiend
There’s something about the weirdness of this illustration that makes the September 1949 cover especially appealing. Who is this woman? How did someone manage to find his (her?) way deep into what is presumably a police station and hurl a kris-like knife at her? And is this raven-haired beauty really almost six feet tall? (Growwr!)
Pulp. An unending source of mysteries.
The Eidolon Initiative: Chapter Six, Page Thirteen
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Please keep in mind that any moral rights the artist has remain intact under this license.
Black Mask Bonus Pulp: And A Little Child Shall Bleed Them
This Black Mask cover for February 1942 isn’t very mad science, but it surely deserves to be reproduced here because holy crap does this angry woman have a lot of guns…
…and also because as the curators at Pulp Covers note “That is one of the best story titles ever. If they ever make a Hit-Girl movie, that’s what they should call it.”