May the gentleman octopus grant you a Happy New Year!
Greetings, pretty cephalopods and cephalopodettes! This is the last Tentacle Tuesday of the year, and as is my custom, I return to a sub-topic close to my heart: women entangled in tentacles. Nothing crass, mind you – we have our standards!
Original art for a cartoon published in Wham! (December 1954, Wolf Books). Art by George Wolfe. I imagine the three guys whose arms are grabbing her colliding with one another in the door frame…
As the signature attests, the artist is George Wolfe (1911 – 1993), who has had an illustrious, though mostly forgotten, career as a magazine cartoonist with published work in Esquire, Saturday Evening Post, New York Herald Tribune, etc. He also had a few syndicated comic strips under his belt, as well as winning several prestigious awards (namely, the Reuben, the highest award of the cartooning profession). Touring Tessie, created by Wolfe for Wolf Books (has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?), was the so-called hostess of this magazine, and its main attraction. Do yourself a favour and head over to The Wolves of Broadway VII: The Alpha Female to peruse more Tessie cartoons and learn more about just what kind of gal she was.
Tessie is one again getting entangled in the clutches of an octopus… this time a more literal interpretation.
The image used for the cover of Wham! (April 1954, Wolf Books). Another trained octopus – working for his own account and calling the shots!
From the cartoony to a more realistic approach –
Detail from the original cover art of Bold Men vol. 5, no 2 (March 1961, Cape Magazine Management). Bold Men is an “interest magazine focusing on pictorials and adventure stories”, explains mycomicshop.com, but with this issue featuring stories like How Nazi Bormann’s Cruel Lust will Betray Him! and The Deadly Blonde Witch of Waikiki! , I’m not sure that “bold” is the right word here.
The following three covers are from Storie Blu, an Italian erotic, science-fiction comics series published by Ediperiodici (also known as ErreGI), Edifumetto’s main competitor in the adult comics sector. Ediperiodici disseminated a huge number of erotic series running the gamut from A all the way to B in terms of genre: erotic… horror, western, spy, jungle, military, fantasy, etc. If you want to get an idea of what the stuff looked like, take a peek at Lucifera, Maghella (in-house favourite) or Messalina.
Storie Blu ran between 1979 and 1990, for a respectable 122 issues and two supplements (click here for a full list in Italian).
Storie Blu no. 28 (1983, Ediperiodici). Psycho-monsters, announces the cover!
Storie Blu no. 39 (1983, Ediperiodici). This cover is a good example of the “what the hell is going on here” approach Italian erotica often prefers – RG commented that the tentacled female must be the guy’s ex-wife, and his current wife is in the fish-tank. Anything’s possible! Cover is by Giovanni Alessandri (not the grammarian from the 16th century, as you may have initially thought!), who went under Aller.
Storie Blu no. 81 (1986, Ediperiodici). The cover story was scripted by Carmelo Gozzo and illustrated by Alberto Giolitti (who, I believe, also drew this cover) – you can read a synopsis and take a look at some art here.
Moving on to another European country… Gespenster Geschichten‘s sister publication Spuk Geschichten already has a Tentacle Tuesday: A Torrent of Teutonic Tentacles.
Gespenster Geschichten no. 948 (1991, Bastei Verlag). Cover by Turkish painter/illustrator Ugurcan Yüce, who moved to Germany in his 30s and contributed quite a lot of covers to publishing house Bastei Verlag, which published (and continues to) many highly successful popular pulp and comic series.
Just one more for the road, what do you say?
Painting by Rowena Morrill (whose name appropriately sounds like something out of some fantasy novel). This has been used as a cover for a German edition of Creepy… but I prefer to provide it sans captions or logos.
Who's Out There? 