My original tumblr post was here. This image was researched by Bacchus at ErosBlog as part of the “Δ commission.” The research was originally published at Hedonix as “Δ 037 – His Own Monster. Here is what Bacchus found.
This comic is drawn by Lee Gatlin (hence the visible “LG” signature) and is called “I’m My Own Monster.” It was published at Flagpole.com, which is the online web version of the free weekly print newspaper Flagpole serving Athens Georgia and the University of Georgia campus.
Gatlin has published more than 150 comics in that paper. He also has a tumblr and a daily sketch blog. According to this blog post, Gatlin has recently attained some Tumblr visibility for his cartoons in which he makes fun of superheros.
My original tumblr post was here. This image was researched by Bacchus at ErosBlog as part of the “Δ commission.” The research was originally published at Hedonix as “Δ 031 Bride And Her Cat Gomez. Here is what Bacchus found.
The originating Tumblr post in this image’s chain of Tumblr provenances credits this artwork to El Gato Gomez, and the signature confirms: “Gomez ’14”. El Gato Gomez is an artist from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (according to a blog interview here) whose name comes from the signature cat (Gomez) who appears in many of her works. Her web page is here, and although the gallery there does not include the Bride Of Frankenstein image seen here, there are two clearly-related works in it:
My personal obsession with Mid Century style began very early. As a child I would sit for hours browsing through a small collection of personal treasures my mother had kept from her own childhood. She had a fabulous stash of photo albums, children’s books, and toys that were kept in a closet. I was especially enthralled with a 1960s Disneyland souvenir photo album. The images of Tomorrowland blew my tiny brain into space and the Mary Blair designed Small World dioramas tickled me to pieces. I had never seen anything so enchanting. Visions of the Haunted Mansion and my mother’s recollection of whirling, transparent ghosts and stretching portraits thrilled me completely. My first visit to a Disney park came shortly after Epcot Center opened and I was not disappointed. My most recent trip with my own child only reinforced the awe.
Another great influence was my grandmother whose house lay directly on a graveyard. I visited often on weekends and every Saturday we would watch the classic horror movies on “Creature Feature”. A passion for the macabre in black and white never left me and vintage horror movies and retro TV became part of DNA. Ask my kids — it’s hereditary.
Original post here. This image was researched by Bacchus at ErosBlog as part of the “Δ commission.” The research was originally published at Hedonix as “Δ 021 – Frankenbaby Jesus.” Here is what Bacchus found.
This Frankenstein family nativity scene is cropped from the 2013 Christmas card posted at German artist Rainer F. Engel’s blog, where the post, and perhaps the artwork, is titled “The Holy Family”:
Some additional German-language artist information is available here.
Original post here. This image was researched by Bacchus at ErosBlog as part of the “Δ commission.” The research was originally published at Hedonix as “Δ 012 Monsters Embrace. Here is what Bacchus found.
A larger but heavily-watermarked version of this image can be found at ArtSlant with the caption “Nick Hernandez, Monster’s Embrace, 2007, Acrylic on Canvas. This is consistent with the visible signature on the artwork, which could easily be the artist’s “NH” initials. No further information about this artist could be discovered.
Original post here. Sourced to Steve Niles Tumblr. Image is a theatrical poster containing the text “Love of Frankenstein: A comedy thriller by Steven Otfinoski. Directed by Jack Ross. Actors’ Playhouse. 100 7th Av. South (at Sheridan Squ.) Thur. Fri. 8 PM. Sat 7 and 10 PM. Sun 3 and 7 PM. Mon 9 PM. Adm $5 except Sat. $6.60. Tel/res 741-1215.”
We’ve encountered Frankenstein Created Woman (1967) here at Erotic Mad Science before, but surely if any movie would deserve a second post here, it would be this one. And not just because it has a swell mad-lab setup, though it certainly does.
The deeper reason is that this movie constitutes a fine early example of personal identity porn with an erotic twist. An explanation: Baron Frankenstein in this movie has moved beyond just trying to make creatures and is now trying to defeat death by using a sort of force-field to keep the soul from leaving the body at death. (Okay, it’s a lunatic premise but of course this is mad science we’re talking about here.)
Meanwhile in whatever little burg or dorf in which Frankenstein has set up shop, young man Hans is framed for the murder of a tavern-keeper with connivance of the actual murders, a trio of loathsome young dandies. He’s guillotined at the edge of town — thus providing useful experimental material for Frankenstein.
But what to do with Hans’s soul when he’s trapped it? In a human tragedy that works out well for mad science, when Hans’s lover Chritina sees his execution she promptly drowns herself. More material for Frankenstein.
What he creates is a composite creature, Hans’s soul somehow transferred into Christina’s repaired (and improved) body. Quite an advance on the old poetic conceit of two lovers united in death! Her first sentence on revival is that most philosophical of questions: “Please…who am I?”
And indeed, who is she? She’s not a composite like Jireen, the owner of the memories of both her progenitors. But at the same time, she seems in some ways continuous with both of them, as her subsequent actions will show.
The resulting being is quite the seductress, and proceeds to use this ability to execute a program of revenge on the young dandies, giving us in the audience something to ogle.
Definitely not a movie to miss for the thaumatophile.
Thematically this falls into a line with one of the very first posts done here.
The hat tip goes to PZ Myers at Pharyngula, whose personal favorite coincides with mine. If you look at the Wicked Halo post I’ll bet you can guess which one that is (but no extra points if you peek at PZ’s post first).
I’ve done a lot of posts here at Erotic Mad Science about what I call the “tube girl meme,” the visual depiction of a pretty woman, often nude or scantily clad, sealed in some sort of transparent tube (often suspended in fluid) for the purpose of preservation, experiment, or some perverted purpose — let your imagination run free there. It’s clearly a pretty prominent visual motif in the mad science genre and really takes off with pulp covers after the Second World War. But where did it come from?
I’ll offer a conjecture, and kindly keep in mind that it’s only a conjecture so if any of you who read this blog know of an earlier or better one by all means please comment. It goes back to a locus classicus of cinematic mad science, The Bride of Frankenstein (1935).
In this film, Dr. Septimus Pretorius, one of Frankenstein’s former teachers, demonstrates to Frankenstein a set of experiments in creating life, in this case Pretorius’s creation of a set of homunculi that live in cylindrical glass jars. It’s a pretty good effect, given that it’s 1935.
Among these are a dancer, (who, Pretorius laments, will only dance to Mendelssohn’s “Spring Song”)…
..and, perhaps more on visual point, a mermaid.
Origin of the concept? Maybe. I’m willing to bet that all those pulp artists and the public that patronized their work both watched Bride of Frankenstein a lot.
Bonus erotic trivia: The mermaid in the jar is played by Josephine McKim, a swimmer who won a gold medal in 1932 Olympics and who was the body double for Maureen O’Sullivan during her famous pre-code “nude swim” sequence in Tarzan and His Mate (1934).
Is there video? You betcha!
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Of course we have also visited the contributions of Olympic swimmers to erotica on this blog before.
The thought of people turning into flies means that now I just have to post this disturbing comix advertisement, to which my attention was directed by Bacchus and which appears on the tumblr blog Comically Vintage.
“She’ll turn into a fly, heh heh.” Well, that’s at least thematically apropos this week. My initial reaction to the ad was a lighthearted “it’s Poser for the pre-computer era!” But there are naturally some darker strains here.
There’s a wealth of weird in this ad, beginning with the strange cast of characters: Vampirella, Frankenstein’s Monster (misidentified as “Frankenstein” in the ad) and an obscure mad scientist called “Dr. Deadly.” (Guess his experiments don’t work so well.) I wonder how disturbed we should be that there’s a specific action figure designated as “Girl Victim,” or that these are apparently action figures meant as children’s toys.
The line “Don’t Worry, this is New York, no one will help her” marks a special (and, to my mind, ugly) cultural moment, perhaps an indication of the long shadow cast by the 1964 Kitty Genovese incident, which of course has its own deep comics resonance — awful real life intersecting with popular culture.
In a children’s toy, a reflection of the “New York = hell” meme that would be so common in the popular culture of the 1970s. (One manifestation of which would be the 1974 movie Death Wish, which would mark — you guessed it — the first screen appearance of Jeff Goldblum, so it all comes full circle, yes?)
On a side note: isn’t Vampirella supposed to be a heroine? If not entirely benign, then at least certainly not the sort who would help kidnap innocent young women into horrible mad-science experiments. Am I misssing something here? Perhaps someone more familiar with the history of the character can set me straight in the comments.
