Eric Stanton

Eric Stanton
Eric Stanton, circa late 1950s, early 1960s
Born Ernest Stanzoni
(1926-09-30)September 30, 1926
New York City, New York, United States
Died March 17, 1999(1999-03-17) (aged 72)
United States
Nationality American
Area(s) Writer, Penciller, Inker
Notable works
 Sweeter Gwen, Bound in Leather, Pleasure Bound, Tame-Azons, Stantoons, Blunder Broad, Prinkazons.

Eric Stanton (September 30, 1926 – March 17, 1999; born Ernest Stanzoni) was an American fetish illustrator, publisher, and comic artist.

While the majority of his later work depicted subversive gender role reversal and female dominance scenarios, his personal lifelong passion was for drawing Amazon fetish, femme-on-femme fighting scenarios, and wrestling comics. Commissioned by Irving Klaw, starting in the late 1940s, his fetish bondage chapter serials earned him underground fame. Stanton also worked with pioneering underground fetish art publishers, Leonard Burtman, Edward Mishkin, Stanley Malkin, and later George W. Mavety. Past the sexploitation or soft-core era of the 1960s, while mostly self-employed, his art became increasingly more transgressive. Creating the mail-order business, the Stanton Archives in the 1970s, he sold his work directly to fans and, starting in 1982, issued offset staple-bound fan-inspired books known as "Stantoons", producing more than a hundred til the time of his death. Stanton also contributed to countless underground publications, some forgotten like the Fetish Times, and more widely distribed glossy magazines like Leg Show, Juggs, and Leg World. In 1984, Stanton had the only art exhibit in his lifetime at the New York City nightclub, Danceteria.

Biography

Early life and career

An episode from "Bizarre Museum", originally published in 1951–1952

Stanton was born and raised in New York City. In 1948 and 1949, he was an art assistant to Boody Rogers on Sparky Watts, or Babe, supplying background art and plot ideas.[1][2] Though his primary passion was for drawing fighting women, he began specializing in fetish bondage chapter serials, which were issued by Irving Klaw, who sold pin-ups and movie stills from his shop on 212 E. 14th Street.[3] He then attended the Cartoonists and Illustrators School in the early 1950s, studying under comics artist Jerry Robinson and others. One classmate was future Spider-Man and Dr. Strange co-creator Steve Ditko. Another was Gene Bilbrew, whom he introduced to Klaw.

From 1958 to either 1966 or 1968 (accounts differ), Stanton shared a Manhattan studio at 43rd Street and Eighth Avenue with noted comic book artist Steve Ditko. For many years, the two collaborated on fetish comics.[4][5] Ditko biographer Blake Bell, without citing sources, said, "At one time in history, Ditko denied ever touching Stanton's work, even though Stanton himself said they would each dabble in each other's art; mainly spot-inking",[4] and the introduction to one book of Stanton's work says, "Eric Stanton drew his pictures in India ink, and they were then hand-coloured by Ditko".[6] In a 1988 interview with Theakston, Stanton recalled that although his contribution to Spider-Man was "almost nil", he and Ditko had "worked on storyboards together and I added a few ideas.... I think I added the business about the webs coming out of his hands".[7]

Later career

Starting in the late 1960s, Stanton supported himself by self-publishing and distributing his work to a quasi-underground network of subscribers and patrons. His offset printed Stantoons comic-book series, which began in 1982, continued to his death in 1999 and featured many of his best-known "transgressive" concepts, including the superheroine Blunder Broad,[8] and the Amazon-like Princkazons.[8]

Blunder Broad

Stanton created Blunder Broad in the 1970s with writer Andrew J. Offutt (AKA Turk Winter),[9] for use in a great number of pornographic BDSM stories, published over the years in black and white. A parody of Wonder Woman, Blunder Broad is an inept superheroine who continually fails in her missions and is invariably raped and tortured by her enemies, who include a lesbian supervillainess variably called Leopard Lady, Pussycat Galore, or Cheetah, and her male sidekick Count Dastardly. Blunder Broad can be deprived of her super strength when subjected to cunnilingus.

Princkazons

With "Lady Princker", Stanton and Shaltis (as well as Alan Throne and Winter) created the Princkazons storyline in which women around the world grew oversized female penises, or "princks". These women also grew taller and stronger than men and began dominating and humiliating the men in public, including facesitting,[8] urophagia,[10] coprophagia[11] and anal and oral rape.[8]

Legacy

Cover illustration by Eric Stanton for "Running Wild" by Myron Kosloff (a pseudonym of Paul Little)

Beginning in the mid-1970s, Bélier Press, a New York publisher of vintage fetish art, reprinted many of Stanton's comic serials in its 24-volume Bizarre Comix series.[12] Titles, mainly from the 1950s and 1960s, include: Dianna's Ordeal, Perils of Dianna, Priscilla: Queen of Escapes, Poor Pamela, Bound in Leather, Duchess of the Bastille, Bizarre Museum, Pleasure Bound, Rita's School of Discipline, Mrs. Tyrant's Finishing School, Fifi Chastises Her Maids, A Hazardous Journey, Helga's Search for Slaves, Madame Discipline, and Girls' Figure Training Academy.

In addition to books about his work, Stanton's art was reprinted in the 1990s in comic books from Fantagraphics Books' imprint Eros Comix: The Kinky Hook (1991), Sweeter Gwen (1992), Confidential TV (1994), and Tops and Bottoms # 1 – 4 (1997). Individual issues were subtitled "Bound Beauty" (# 1), "Lady in Charge" (# 2), "Broken Engagement" (# 3), "Broken Engagement 2" (# 4).

Further reading

  • Pérez Seves, Richard. Eric Stanton & the History of the Bizarre Underground (Schiffer Publishing, 2018) ISBN 978-0764355424

See also

References

  1. ↑ Kroll, Eric (2012). The Art of Stanton. Cologne: Taschen. p. 8. ISBN 9783836539302.
  2. ↑ Yoe, Craig (2009). Boody. Fantagraphics Books. p. ???. ISBN 978-1560979616.
  3. ↑ Booker, M. Keith, ed. (2010). "Underground and Adult Comics". Encyclopedia of Comic Books and Graphic Novels. Greenwood. p. 648. ISBN 9780313357473.
  4. 1 2 Bell, Blake. "Ditko & Stanton". Ditko Looked Up. Archived from the original on September 24, 2010. Additional .
  5. ↑ Theakston, The Steve Ditko Reader, pp. 13–15 (unnumbered, pp. 14–15 misordered as pp. 16 & 14)
  6. ↑ Riemschneider, Burkhard (1997). Eric Stanton: For the Man Who Knows His Place. Benedikt Taschen Verlag. p. 4 (unnumbered). ISBN 978-3-8228-8169-9.
  7. ↑ Theakston, Steve Ditko Reader, p. 14 (unnumbered, misordered as page 16)
  8. 1 2 3 4 In Stantoons #5, for example
  9. ↑ Eric Stanton, foreword to Blunder Broad, Glittering images, Firenze, 1991
  10. ↑ Stantoons #24, for example
  11. ↑ Stantoons #15, for example
  12. ↑ Retrieved October 22, 2017
  • Paris, Elvis, ed. (September 14, 2002). "Bibliography". Eric Stanton (fan site). Archived from the original on October 12, 2007.
  • Stanton, Amber (2012). "A Tangled Web". An article by Eric Stanton's daughter about his role in the creation of Spider-Man. Mixed Wrestling Forum (originally published in "The Creativity of Steve Ditko", 2012). Retrieved November 6, 2015.
  • Eric Stanton at the Lambiek Comiclopedia
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