On the air with Johnny Jackhammer

It’s an honor and a pleasure to announce that I’m a guest on the most recent edition of Johnny Jackhammer’s Sequential Sex Podcast, which readers of this blog will remember my announcing when it first appeared on the Internet back in August. We talk mostly about The Adventures of Phoebe Zeit-Geist, the first adult comic I ever read and the one which has probably done more to influence me than any other. We also talk about the Tales of Gnosis College and just a bit about our present bilingual serial “In the Kitchen with Dolcetta,” which was provoked by the thought “why aren’t there any X-rated cooking shows?”

So if you’re interested in any of these things, or are curious what I sound like when I’m talking too fast over Skype, or just want to be introduced to a cool new podcast, I urge you to tune in. You can see Johnny’s write-up of the podcast at this page and get a get a direct download of the podcast here. Or just punch “Sequential Sex Podcast” into your favorite podcast catcher. Enjoy!

Tumblr favorite #2658: Why would anybody want to buy me?

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My original tumblr post was here. I posted this image with the explanatory text “A page from The Adventures of Phoebe Zeit-Geist, written by Michael O’Donoghue and illustrated by Frank Springer. Phoebe’s in trouble, as always.”

Wicked Wanda’s Mad Scientist

Some of the older readers might recall that back in the 1970s Penthouse magazine ran a adult comics feature called Oh, Wicked Wanda! Scripted by already-famous novelist Frederic Mullally and rather lovingly drawn by comics artist Ron Embleton, Wanda as the story of the utterly depraved and fabulously wealthy Wanda von Kreesus, who lived in a Schloss on Lake Geneva. Together with her blond nymphet-of-all-work Candyfloss she traveled the world having adventures and collecting..specimens to bring back to her castle (and giving Mullally plenty of opportunities to engage in political and cultural satire along the way).

Should we be surprised to find that Wanda has amidst her servants her own mad scientist? Of course not! His name is Homer Sapiens and he’s depicted below, along with another of Wanda’s staff, the soulful jailer J. Hoover Grud.

Homer is preparing to convert the two victims in the background, “Brigitte Bidet,” and the “self-appointed British pornophobe Cyril Bluestocking,” into some sort of living sculpture at the behest of Wanda. Something more for A.S.F.R. fans! And what’s more, there’s also Wanda’s dead father, preserved under green glass to watch for all time the depravity in what was once his Schloss.

Pretty twisted, but I can’t help but wonder if these weird tropes weren’t originally inspired by that key influence on my inner life, The Adventures of Phoebe Zeit-Geist. The Moon Squad had a thing for preserving the dead in erotic poses:

Well, as it happened, weird reality got there first. Sometime around 1832, as it happens. Jeremy Bentham, who has as good a claim as any to be the founder of my philosophical order, had himself preserved and mounted post-mortem as an inspiration to the future. He called the result an auto-icon.

That’s the mad science spirit, Jeremy! (Thanks to this blog for the image.)

If you’re ever visiting University College, London, be sure to stop in and say hi.

Set upon by a spider

I suppose I should ‘fess up that the whole idea of the giant spider was also inspired at least in part by The Adventures of Phoebe Zeit-Geist.

This panel is from the same “backstory” page that provided the panel in this post, which contributes to my understanding that both are meant as satire.