Challenging Taboos

Challenging Taboos

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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