Tumblr favorite #1827: Haunted laboratory

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Original post here. This image was researched by Bacchus at ErosBlog as part of the “Γ commission.” The research was originally published at Hedonix as “Γ 059 – Haunted Laboratory.” Here is what Bacchus found.

This artwork is cropped and cleaned cover art from the cover of the horror comic This Magazine is Haunted Vol. 2 #7 (1951). That link suggests that the identity of the cover artist is unknown to the comics-collecting world. Here’s the original cover:

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A complete scan of the 10-page magazine may be found here.

Tumblr favorite #1824: Marga, the Panther Woman

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Original post here. This image was researched by Bacchus at ErosBlog as part of the “Γ commission.” The research was originally published at Hedonix as Γ 056 – Marga, Panther Woman. Here is what Bacchus found.

This page identifies itself as being from a comic called Marga the Panther Woman by James T. Royal, and it shows Marga’s superhero origin story. According to the Public Domain Superheroes wiki, Marga stories appeared in Science Comics #1-8 and in Wierd Comics #8-20. ComicsVine lists “Origin of Marga the Panther Woman” among the contents of Science Comics #1 (Feb 1940), so we seek out that book at Comic Book Plus. Sure enough, the subject page is the start of an 8-page story beginning on page 38:

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Comic Book Plus speculatively credits (with a question mark) Emil Gershwin as the artist of the first Marga story. For interest, another Marga story can be found online here.

Tumblr favorite #1822: Space dolls

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Original post here. This image was researched by Bacchus at ErosBlog as part of the “Γ commission.” The research was originally published at Hedonix as “Γ 054 – Space Dolls.” Here is what Bacchus found.

The “Stanton” signature tells us this is by fetish cartoonist and illustrator Eric Stanton. It is the third panel of the first page of a story called Space Dolls:

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According to a post on Vintage Sleaze, Space Dolls appeared in a 1962 Orbit magazine, at a time when “Stanton was sharing workspace with Steve Ditko…and had developed a close working relationship and heavy influence on each other [sic].” The covers of all three issues of Orbit magazine are visible here, but do not reveal which issue contained the Space Dolls story.

Tumblr favorite #1816: She’ll explode all the air on the moon!

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Original post here. This image was researched by Bacchus at ErosBlog as part of the “Γ commission.” The research was originally published at Hedonix as “Γ 046 – Lunar Air Exploder.” Here is what Bacchus found.

This comic book art is the top panel in the story A Nation Is Born in Avon’s Strange Worlds #4 (1952) which (according to the Wikipedia entry on Strange Worlds) featured a Wallace “Wally” Wood cover:

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A post on Pulpcovers.com offers a link for downloading a .cbz-format download of the entire comic.

A blog post here features a differently-colored version of the page where this image appeared, along with the information that the story was illustrated by Rafael Astarita and was reprinted in Strange Planets #9 (1959):

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The script for A Nation Is Born was adapted for Volume 1, No. 8 of a black-and-white comic series called Strange Galaxy, where it appeared in 1971 in black and white (supposedly to avoid Hayes Code rules applicable to color comics) as The Moon Is Red:

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Tumblr favorite #1815: Spaceman dildo

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Original post here. This image was researched by Bacchus at ErosBlog as part of the “Γ commission.” The research was originally published at Hedonix as “Γ 045 Spaceman Dildo. Here is what Bacchus found.

This artwork is by Wallace “Wally” Wood, the famous comic artist. It originally appeared on the back cover of an erotica collection called Gangbang 3:

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A blog post here offers some of the history of that publication:

The fact of the matter is that Woody was never afraid to draw a pretty girl, a naked girl or a girl having sex. Toward the end of his life, pornography became his main source of income, first from PURITAN (a pioneering hardcore newsstand mag), Al Goldstein’s SCREW newspaper and its magazine counterpart, NATIONAL SCREW. Wood’s WEIRD SEX FANTASY PORTFOLIO was the only commercial portfolio he ever released. His latter day move to the West Coast was facilitated by Barbara Friedman’s Nuance Publications which published three issues of (supposedly) all-Wood sex comics in magazine form.

The fact that Wally Wood would do a complete hardcore porn comic somehow seemed at the time not so much a comedown as a natural progression. Starting with his gorgeous EC women, then his fifties girlie cartoons, the clothing optional SALLY FORTH comic strip, the portfolio and the mid-seventies adult magazine work…it just made sense for him to do a full-on sex comic book. In fact, in the aftermath of early seventies”porno chic,” it was a pioneering move for a mainstream comic book artist of his caliber!

The problem, of course, was the circumstances. The times being what they were, GANG BANG could not have existed ten years earlier and yet THAT is when it might well have worked for Wood. By the time of its publication, his health was degenerating quickly and had been affecting his once-pristine art for several years. He was much slower, used more paste-ins and tracings than ever and had no assistants of the high quality he had used for years. As such, the first issue, although clearly Woodwork, is disappointing, the second is without a doubt the worst material he ever had published and the third, posthumous, issue consists of reprints of varying quality from other sources.

GANG BANG publisher Barbara Friedman was, by all accounts, the one to find Wallace Wood’s body after his late 1981 suicide. She had hired him and befriended him but that didn’t keep her from continuing to exploit his name even after his death. A year and a half later, Nuance released GANG BANG # 3, with a cover touting “Wood’s Women and Wit.” The art used on the cover was originally meant for an unrealized Wood project to have been called STRANGE SYMPHONIES.

This issue is actually much better than the previous effort as it deals completely with previously published work. We open with 24 black and white pages of MALICE IN WONDERLAND, the dirty but witty softcore strip the artist had originally published in color in France and in NATIONAL SCREW before his health had gotten too bad . This strip shows Wood at perhaps a peak for his erotic work. Although cut up, repasted and in some cases blown up way too big, the wit and skill show through even though the presentation is hardly the finest this material would see.

This is followed by some reprinted gag pages from SCREW and the SEX FANTASY PORTFOLIO as well as a page of sketches that include everything from SALLY FORTH to THE WIZARD KING! The reappearance of one of the badly drawn Sally pages from the last volume rears its ugly head but then we move on to FLESH FUCKER MEETS WOMEN’S LIB, a second FLASH GORDON parody in this series, this one being done in 1977 in a softcore MAD-style for, I believe, THE NATIONAL SCREW again. It’s not bad.

THE BLIZZARD OF OOZE, again cut up and repasted for some reason, originally appeared in PURITAN and is, as it sounds like, a hardcore WIZARD OF OZ parody. Although not as well-drawn as MALICE, it’s hard to tell just how many of the strip’s shortcomings are attributable to its less than stellar presentation here. Rounding out the issue are a few more extremely well done single panel bits from the Portfolio and SCREW.

For interest, all six of the front and back covers from the three issues of Gangbang can be seen here.

Tumblr favorite #1811: Quinnicide

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Original post here. This image was researched by Bacchus at ErosBlog as part of the “Γ commission.” The research was originally published at Hedonix as “Γ 041 – Quinnicide. Here is what Bacchus found.

This artwork, featuring DC Comics character Harley Quinn in a series of increasingly cartoonish suicide attempts, is called Quinnicide. It was drawn by UK artist Phillip M. Jackson (jollyjack on DeviantArt) to a script provided as part of a DC Comics talent search contest. He writes:

My stab at illustrating the script DC provided for their talent search.

This was done purely for fun. I’m not looking to land a gig working on a big-name comic. I’d much rather focus on my own projects than work on existing IPs.

Besides, there have got to be more talented artists out there whose style would better fit the DCU than mine. I honestly don’t think I could work fast enough for them, anyway! 😀

There has been quite a bit of internet chatter about the script DC chose for this, mainly in regards to the oversexualization of Harley Quinn (which I can’t really argue with) and how the script requires her to be depicted in a bath.

Lots of hysterical people criticising DC for “requesting her being drawn naked”.

I’d planned out my page before I’d read any of these comments. She has to be in a bath, so that she’s naked is pretty much a given, but it had never occurred to me that Harley should be rendered in any kind of pseudo-soft-core pose. That’s just not in key with the character that I know.

If you read the script and thought that was what was required, that says more about you than it does DC.

It reads:

PANEL 4: Harley sitting naked in a bathtub with toasters, blow dryers, blenders, appliances all dangling above the bathtub and she has a cord that will release them all. We are watching the moment before the inevitable death. Her expression is one of “oh well, guess that’s it for me” and she has resigned herself to the moment that is going to happen.

Not:

PANEL 4: Harley sitting naked in a bathtub with toasters, blow dryers, blenders, appliances all dangling above the bathtub and she has a cord that will release them all. We are watching the moment before the inevitable death. Her expression is one of “oh well, guess that’s it for me” and she has resigned herself to the moment that is going to happen. We are witnessing all this from a birds eye view. Suds and steam obscure the nipples but not the full rack. Her free arm is curled just under her boobs, raising them slightly out of the water and at the same time squeezing them together gently.

A rubber duck floats over her snatch. It looks happy.

If each panel of a comic tells a story, this one is meant to relay that the apparently suicidal Quinn is about to fry herself…and she’s going to be thorough about it. There’s no reason for nudity to be any kind of hang-up or focus at all, hence its complete absence from my interpretation.

It turns out there was indeed a major ruckus about the competition, and DC Comics was forced to apologize.

Tumblr favorite #1790: Attack on Synth

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Original post here. This image was researched by Bacchus at ErosBlog as part of the “Γ commission.” The research was originally published at Hedonix as “Γ 020 – An Attack On Synth.” Here is what Bacchus found:

According to this web page, the image is part of a comic page from the Marvel series Doctor Strange II. The character shown is Synth, who appeared in Dr Strange II Nos. 69, 71,72, and 73. This artwork appeared on page 8 of #69 (February 1985). There’s a different crop available showing slightly more of the action, and making it clear that Synth is under a mental attack in the panel shown:

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Tumblr favorite #1777: Becoming Tigra

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Original post here. This image was researched by Bacchus at ErosBlog as part of the “Γ commission.” It was originally published at Hedonix as “Γ 007 – Becoming Tigra.” Here is Bacchus’s research:

All instances of this comic book artwork on the web appear to trace back to this blog post, where it appears in concert with several panels featuring the tiger-woman Tigra, panels that probably first appeared in Marvel Comic’s Giant Sized Creatures #1 (July 1, 1974). Although that book does not appear to be freely available online, a summary here describes a flashback scene that tells Tigra’s origin story:

In an underground lab, the caged Tigra watches as Hydra agents dismantle the place looking for something called the “Final Secret”. She recalls the events leading to this point. As Greer Nelson, under the aegis of scientist Dr. Joanne Tumolo, she became the crimefighter known as the Cat. A day earlier, she foiled a kidnap attempt of Tumolo by Hydra, but was shot with a radiation pistol. To save Greer’s life, Tumolo revealed herself to be from a race of cat people, and that Greer would live if she became one of them. In the Cat People’s lair in a cave in Mexico, Greer underwent the ritual that transformed her into Tigra.

It seems likely that the “You’re going to die of alpha radiation! There’s only one way we can save you!” dialog would have followed immediately upon her having been shot with a radiation pistol, and that “there’s only one way” refers to the subsequent ritual.

Tumblr favorite #1757: Introduction to the Sorceress of Zoom

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Original post here. Original poster superdames provided context:

The Sorceress of Zoom was awesome, and her stories were awesomely weird. She’s the ruler of the floating cloud city of Zoom, which is populated by her loyal subjects — the monster-zombies of humans she kills! She basically flies around Earth and terrorizes other cities and kingdoms in search of power and slaves.

What’s so weird is that the Sorceress is the main character in all these stories, but she’s clearly a murderous, tyrannical supervillain. So everywhere she goes, a different kind of heroic figure generally rises to ward her off — or she runs into a worse threat than herself, and ends up seemingly “saving” people from her rival.

It’s a pretty great template for a villain-led book. Plus, her headgear was fabulous, and in later stories it became her actual hair.

Sorceress of Zoom stories were signed by “Sandra Swift,” which is almost certainly a pseudonym used by different writer/artists. Don Rico is credited with creating her.

Weird Comics #2 (1940)

Sourced via notpulpcovers.

Tumblr favorite #1739: Why We Love Comics

I find it an especially nice touch that the ape refers to the case he (?) is carrying as a “valise.” Original post here.

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Sourced to Comic Book Covers via turner-d-century. Original text:

gerrycanavan:

true story 

comicbookcovers:

Strange Adventures #75, December 1956, cover by Gil Kane and Bernard Sachs

Sometimes, people ask me why I like comics books.

This is a cover

of a gorilla,

robbing a librarian,

at gunpoint,

for Moby Dick, Robinson Crusoe, and Treasure Island,

for the purposes of conquering the world.

What’s not to love?