Vampirella Archives - Volumes 1-3

Taken straight from the scoop newsletter:

Vampirella, a character celebrating her 45th anniversary this year, has a storied publishing history that begins with her creation by horror fandom icon Forrest J. Ackerman and designer Trina Robbin and has continued to the present. Vampi was developed to be a host character for Warren Publishing, akin to their Uncle Creepy and Cousin Eerie for Creepy and Eerie, respectively, or like EC’s Crypt-Keeper, Vault-Keeper, and Old Witch before them.

The cover for Vampirella #1 was by Frank Frazetta, and it had more of the spirit of the character most readers would recognize than any of the stories in the first seven issues. It wasn’t until Archie Goodwin arrived as writer with Vampirella #8 that the character really began to grow.

But it would be a significant mistake to write off those first seven issues, and thank goodness that Dynamite Entertainment has made them so accessible with their New York Times best selling Vampirella Archives – Volume 1.

In addition to Ackerman and Frazetta, the book features the work of Don Glut, Tom Sutton, Neal Adams, Ernie Colon, Billy Graham, Alan Weiss, and Jeff Jones, among others. The stories fit right in with Creepy and Eerie of the period. Even better: the beautiful Vampirella Archives volumes will fit right next to Dark Horse’s excellent Creepy Archives and Eerie Archives editions.

In Vampirella Archives – Volume 2, Archie Goodwin arrives. Remembered as the founding editor of Epic Illustrated and Marvel’s Epic line, a longtime group editor at DC Comics, and for his great stints on the Secret Agent Corrigan and Star Wars newspaper strips, Goodwin’s work on Vampirella Vampirella #8, kicks off the second volume in the series.

crystallized her character and more than a decade of how she was interpreted. His first issue,

Goodwin would most likely have succeeded anyway, but the series found its voice and style with artists such as Jose Gonzales (for many, the definitive Vampi artist), Ken Barr, Wally Wood, Jerry Grandenetti, Barry (Windsor-) Smith, Berni Wrightson, Ralph Reese, Dave Cockrum, Frank Brunner, Sanho Kim, Bill Dubay, Mike Ploog, Sam Glanzman and Estaban Maroto, among others. The lead stories featuring Vampirella began to find their direction and the secondary stories demonstrated the twists, turns and artistry for which Creepy and Eerie were known.

Supporting players Adam Van Helsing and Pendragon the magician are more firmly established in Vampirella Archives – Volume 3, which kicks off with Vampirella #15, an issue that started off with a Richard Corben frontispiece and didn’t stop. It includes work by Goodwin and Gonzales, Doug Moench and Gonzales, Don McGregor and Luis Garcia, and more.

The rest of the volume, anchored by the exquisite matchings of Goodwin and Gonzales, is equally diverse and consistently worthy of the reader’s attention.

Nick Barrucci, Joe Rybandt and the rest of the team at Dynamite Entertainment deserve our thanks for producing these great volumes and the ones that have followed in the series. We’re truly living in a Golden Age of archival collections, but it would have been easy just to concentrate on the Vampirella lead features. If they had, we would be missing out on some truly great stories.

Giovanna Casotto - Playful and Carefree

Giovanna Casotto is next to Ilona Staller(Cicciolina) one of Italy's most popular TV actrices, but she also is an comic art artist, already author of « Expériences Interdites », « Les Désirs de Vénus», «Mauvaises Habitudes » and « Chambre 179 »; is one of the most published artists of the collection «Selen presents ».

She's the first femal erotic Italian illustrator, she's not only an illustrator, but she draws herself in all the "Selen-covers" in the most explicit erotic scenes , she's also an actrice who acts in those stories. Because of her fantastic realistic drawings( of herself and her best friends), the artwork of Miss. Giovanna Casotto is one of the most beautiful you will find in that catagory. The quality of her autoportaits are so beautiful and fantastic realistic that everyone who likes the comic art must see or have this.


Giovanna Casotto got hooked on erotic comics in 1994, after meeting feet-fetish artist Franco Saudelli. With Saudelli she learns to draw and they start collaborating on several stories they write together, Franco pencils and Giovanna inks and models for.

After a short stint on adventure comics for L'Intrepido, Italian publisher Trentini signs her up for his new publication Selen.
Her artwork in Selen leads to major sales in Italy, reprints all over Europe and publication of her stories in the United States in the Bitch In Heat series (Eros Comix). She also becomes a requested guest in many Italian TV shows, and her appearances at comic-cons in Italy and abroad draw huge crowds.

Based on a True Story

Yeah Right.

Anyone knows this artist? Or is his name Friday?

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Eros Graphic Albums 5 and 6 - Ironwood - Bill Willingham

Bill Willingham when asked by Eros Comix: "I thought, “what the hell!” Had often wondered whether I could do an adult comic and have an interesting story as well that held together.  The answer I found was: probably not.
I tried!  Ironwood was 11 issues and some people liked the story, and there are aspects of the story I like, but the formula — the implied contract — that you owe the average reader one arousal, or potential arousal, per issue overshadowed everything else.  “This is a nice story, but get some dirty stuff in there, for God’s sake!”  —  Guess I’m a boring guy, 'cause was running out of ideas on how to get people off.  I didn’t just want to do the same thing over and over again, because that would just be…creepy.  Thinking it was a failed experiment with a few things that I’m still fond of within it.  Yes, that was certainly an interesting time in my career."

In the dark forest of Ironwood, somewhere between the Goblin Kingdoms and the Human Lands, the villainous Sulimon Canto has hired Fantasia Faust, a killer who uses sex as a weapon, to steal something called the Lazarus Knife from errant ship captain Pandora Breedlswight. But the beautiful Pandora has some allies in the form of adventurer Dave Dragavon, the hero for hire: brave, powerful and above all ... horny, and the polite but deadly demon Hugo Wormfire. Sword and sorcery exploits mix with tantalizing and bizarre sexploits, but the overall effect is that of a fairly coherent narrative, and not just an excuse to show drawings of naked people (or, in this case, naked monsters and centaurs, too).

The protagonist of the 11 issue series seems to have been the source of inspiration for one of Willingham's later more successful creations, Jack Horner (star of Jack of Fables).

He has done two Ironwood short stories which were not sexually graphic. Both stories were published in issues of Mythography. One was a three-page comics story and the other was a short text story with a couple of illustrations.

Bill Willingham Website

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SEX IN THE COMIX - documentary

Documentary directed by Joëlle Oosterlinck with Molly Crabapple.

First movie dedicated to erotic comics. Milo Manara, Robert Crumb, Aline Kominsky, ZEP, Ralf König, Bastien Vivès, Aude Picault, Tim Pilcher and Bernard Joubert tell us what they think about this art, and how they came into it.
A history told by Molly Crabapple with an interesting graphic work around erotic art.

© ARTE France - Les Bons Clients - 2011

SECRET IDENTITY: The Fetish Art of Superman`s Co-creator Joe Shuster

Title: SECRET IDENTITY:
The Fetish Art of Superman`s Co-creator Joe Shuster
Author: Craig Yoe, with an introduction by Stan Lee
Artwork: Joe Shuster
Published: Abrams Comic Arts, New York (2009)

It is a well-known fact in the comic world that the original artist and co-creator of Superman died having earned only pennies on the dollar for his contribution to the world`s most famous superhero—the rights to the character were won by D.C. Comics in the 1940s.

So what to make of this work in later years? He never signed his name to it, but the Nights of Horror illustrations that depicted lusty ladies, titillating torture, and all manner of mild S&M scenarios were in fact Shuster. What`s more?! The characters of these filthy booklets all look, at great deal, like one Clark Kent and Lois Lane… Find out more in this curious twist in the history of comics and erotic art.

from SEX: A Graphic History by Nicole Marie Guiniling (AD ASTRA COMIX)

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A Memorial to Art Wetherell

I'm handing over Father's Day(column on comicsworld website) to my old friend Tim Perkins this month, so that he might share some memories of British comic book artist Art Wetherell. Back in the dim and distant days when I was an editor at Marvel UK, Art sent me samples of his work and I hired him to pencil strips for THE REAL GHOSTBUSTERS, DEATH'S HEAD and DOCTOR WHO. He was talented, always cheerful and willing to learn (and teach) and never missed a deadline. When I left Marvel UK for the states he sent me a wonderful illustration with the legend "Starkings Quits, Will Things Fall Apart?" I remember how happy I was to see his work in JABBA THE HUTT a few years ago but had not spoken to him in fifteen years when I learned he had passed away suddenly before this past New Year's. It came as quite a shock, as I always imagined that I would run into him at a convention one day and we would catch up with one another. Art was about my age, still working hard and, of course, he was a father too...

— Richard Starkings

 Thanks once again Richard for affording me the opportunity to say a few words about British Comic Artist, Art Wetherell, who sadly passed away on Christmas day last year.

I first heard of Art back in the early-mid-eighties back on Martin Lock's Harrier Comics. At the time most of the Harrier Gang (creatives such as Kev Hopgood, Steve Yeowell, Jeff Anderson, Mike Collins, Mark Farmer, James Hill, Art Wetherell and myself) little suspected that we would soon become a big part of Marvel UK's next big push into publishing its own titles. This, following the success of Alan Davis' lovely work on Captain Britain and John Ridgway's classical renderings of Doctor Who, the guys that paved the way for us to enter mainstream comics. 

Eros Graphic Album no. 4 - 2 Hot Girls on a Hot Summer Night - Hooper and Wetherell

                                     

This graphic novel is the work of two Englishmen, Art Wetherell and Terry Hooper. The late Art Wetherell was assigned by Dark Horse in the USA to illustrate 'Jabba the Hutt' and other 'Star Wars' titles, which was followed by work for Caliber (a.o. 'Negative Burn', 'The Searchers'). He was also one of the first artists published by Fantagraphics as part of its 'Eros Comix' line, creating such titles as '2 Hot Girls on a Hot Summer Night' and 'Treasure Chests'.
Art Wetherell began his career drawing for Harrier Comics in the early 1980s. He then moved over to Marvel UK to pencil titles like 'The Real Ghostbusters', 'Death's Head', 'Transformers', 'Thundercats' and 'Doctor Who'. In the 1990s he started producing work for 2000 AD. Wetherell has worked on licensed comics 'Power Rangers', as well as fairytale stories such as 'Sleeping Beauty' for the children's comic Blue Moon. He passed away on Christmas Day 2003.

Hooper is a distinguished figure on the UK comics scene, working as a writer, artist, editor & publisher since the 80's and currently behind the ComicBitsOnline site.

In the early nineties, Eros Comix brought them together to create this, volume four in the illustrious and lengthy Eros Graphic Novel series. This volume collects the entire delightful time-hopping series chronicling the naughty rompings of two monumentally stacked English girls, horny honeys M and JC, as they satisfy one another in a Sapphic frenzy through the ages! United by a lascivious love of female flesh, they put their fingers and tongues, a cucumber, ice cubes, a night stick, a religious icon and more to good and gooey uses! "What sort of uses?" you might ask. Seeing is believing!