Classic Funhouse...

Not exactly the cancan, but counted amongst our all-time favorites nonetheless. Once again, we've used deep AI to give these exceptional pieces a new lease of life:

 

If memory serves correct, the last image was actually christened "off-duty cancan" and featured a dancer from the Windmill Theatre.

Jane's Journal

Yes, Norman Pett's Jane returns in this stock edition published by Rylee just two years after the war. The 41-page pamphlet includes photos, articles, sketches and a hand-colored strip rarely seen outside the UK. Oh, and page sixteen features this unexpected little gem:

The rest of the book may be viewed (and downloaded) at Internet Archive (nsfw):

https://archive.org/details/Janes_Journal_by_Pett_Rylee/

Gloire Soit!

Today, we have some old screencaps from the Glory Bee cartoons of the 1940s. According to Mark Donstein's Toonopedia, the animated shorts of the postwar period were collected and restored by Le Cine Achive De Paris and released in a DVD Boxed Set in 2006 (proving that French preservation societies treat animated material with far greater respect than the original American studios do themselves). However, as the Glory Bee Collection is only available in Europe, screencaps from the series are virtually unknown in America.

Title Card

Spicy Tales

 

Pulp magazines (often referred to as "the pulps") were inexpensive magazines that were published from 1896 to the late 1950s. The term "pulp" derives from the cheap wood pulp paper on which the magazines were printed. In contrast, magazines printed on higher-quality paper were called "glossies" or "slicks." The typical pulp magazine had 128 pages; it was 7 inches (18 cm) wide by 10 inches (25 cm) high, and 0.5 inches (1.3 cm) thick, with ragged, untrimmed edges. 

The pulps gave rise to the term pulp fiction in reference to run-of-the-mill, low-quality literature. Pulps were the successors to the penny dreadfuls, dime novels, and short-fiction magazines of the 19th century. Although many respected writers wrote for pulps, the magazines were best known for their lurid, exploitative, and sensational subject matter, especially those of the "spicy" variety. 

While held in low regard at the time of of publication, "spicy pulp" cover paintings are now considered exceptional pieces of American pop culture and are keenly sought after by collectors and enthusiasts alike. 

- freely adapted from the Wikipedia article.

Postwar Cheesecake

Katy Keene in her "undies." Despite its squeaky-clean reputation, Archie Publications could get pretty steamy during the pre-code era. While the character was aimed at a predominately female audience, most stories contained a generous amount of cheesecake, usually in the form of Katy getting changed. Readers often submitted designs for the characters' clothing; evidently the strip had a devoted male following as well.

Eight years before Marilyn Monroe's iconic scene in The Seven Year Itch, Katy Keene found herself fighting the gale for close on six pages. The strip's creator, Bill Woggon, frequently "spiced up" the action with pin up pages and mild innuendo here and there (well, practically every issue TBH). 

"Fanservice" elements were less common in other titles, though they managed to sneak in under the radar from time to time. Billed as "America's Typical Teenaged Girl," Ginger Snapp was a female version of Archie Andrews, complete with bright red hair and oddball supporting cast - although the similarities seem to have ended there. Unlike her better-known counterpart, Ginger occasionally treated her readers to gratuitous lingerie shots, complete with lacy black underwear and thigh-length suspender stockings.

Last (and quite possibly least) we have Owen Fizgerald's Moronica. Published by AGC in the early 50s, Moronica (yes, that was apparently her real name) was portrayed as ditzy, naive and accident-prone, ie a stereotypical "Dumb Dora" played exclusively for laughs. Appearing mainly in the back pages of Dizzy Dames (a more subtle title cannot be conceived), the strip ran for less than a year before its cancellation in June 1953. Strangely enough, the idea of an airhead blonde losing her clothes at the drop of a hat didn't catch on too well at the time. Guess there's just no accounting for taste.

Jane at War

Another thinly-veiled excuse to see Jane in her underwear...

Seeing as we couldn't possibly say it any better ourselves, we thought we might present this extract from Don Markstein's Toonopedia:

"There are certain types of entertainment that never go out of style — funny stories about home life … exciting stories about great heroes … pretty women who repeatedly strip or get stripped down to their underwear or less … The first is represented in comics by such famous features as Blondie and Hi & Lois, and the second by such famous features as Dick Tracy and Prince Valiant. But newspaper comics featuring the third are few and far between.

In America, at least. But Britain has had them since December 5, 1932, when Norman Pett's Jane's Journal: The Diary of a Bright Young Thing debuted in London's Daily Mirror (a leader in British comics, the most famous alumnus of which is Andy Capp). A couple of sources say the character was modeled after Pett's wife, but this may be a pious fiction, as other sources say she was based on model/actress/sexpot Christabel Leighton-Porter, who would have been 19 at the time.

The first episode of Jane (which became the official title of the strip not long after it began, and by the way, no relation) was rather mild, cheesecake-wise — just a one-panel glimpse of Jane (last name Gay, tho this was rarely mentioned) in a petticoat as she prepared to meet Count Fritz von Pumpernikel. But that one did set the stage in at least one way. Fritz, who turned out to be a dachshund, was her constant companion from that moment forward. Jane (with Fritz) continued a few years as a vehicle for daily gags (which often involved her innocently dressing, bathing or catching her skirt on a thorn), but those soon gave way to loose continuity and then, when Don Freeman came aboard as writer in 1938, to full-fledged adventure stories. It was in the middle of a spy adventure that she met Georgie Porgie, who was to be her adversary, ally, and eventually lover (tho from all indications, a chaste one).

Throughout these adventures, Freeman and Pett retained the comedy element. That way, Jane could remain innocent while they brought every manner of contrivance to bear in getting her clothes off. In fact, she stayed innocent even when she "gave her all," as newspaper reports described the event — that memorable day in 1943, when, in a hilarious scene, Freeman and Pett brought circumstances together that forced Jane to run through a cafe crowded with military men, naked as a jaybird.

A week later, the American newspaper Round-up reported on the event, and added, "The British 36th Division immediately gained six miles." Coincidence? Perhaps. 

By that time, Jane had already become something of an icon in British popular culture, so it isn't surprising her doings were so closely followed by British soldiers. Even in America, she'd inspired a few imitators in the "Spicy" line of pulp magazines (the best remembered of which is Sally the Sleuth from Spicy Detective). Her first comic book, which combined reprints with new material, came out in 1944, and new ones appeared regularly for the rest of the '40s. In 1948, Pett moved to a rival paper, The Dispatch, and launched a rival clothes-shedding character, Susie. Pett's assistant, Michael Hubbard, took over the art on Jane. Hubbard used a more realistic style, and the strip had less humor as well. By then it had become practically an institution on the Mirror's comics page, but it lost steam over the next decade. On October 10, 1959, Jane accepted Georgie's proposal of marriage, they sailed off together into the sunset, and the now-legendary series was over..."

Read the original article on Don Markstein's Toonopedia.

Spicy Detectives

The majority of comic aficionados are familiar with Bill Ward's Torchy and Matt Baker's Phantom Lady, but "racy" female characters have been around at least since the pulp era; Spicy Detective's Sally the Sleuth being the prime example). Taking her bow in November 1934, Sally was probably the first 'lingerie detective' on the American comics scene, and had a considerable number of literary descendants during the later 40s. Her main legacy to the artform seems to have been an impressive talent for fighting crime in her underwear (a trick she appears to have learned from Norman Pett's Jane).

Created by cartoonist Adolphe Barreaux, Sally the Sleuth started off in Spicy's back pages several years before comic books became an established format. Drawn in a "primitive" but surprisingly effective style, Sally's adventures usually ran for two pages, telling an entire story in less than 15 panels. A typical plot-line consisted of Sally working undercover to solve some local gangland mystery, resulting in her being stripped down to her bra and panties when the stock villain of the month caught her snooping about.



In most cases, she was rescued by her boss, Chief Brady (occasionally her kid sidekick, Peanuts), although she was capable of holding her own when the odds weren't overwhelming. Recurring themes included abduction, white slavery, extortion etc - standard pulp scenarios providing Sally ample opportunity to have her clothes torn off by the latest lowlife racketeer. As time went on, the action (for lack of a better word) became more risque, as Sally was stripped, bound, gagged, spanked, and whipped with ever-increasing regularity.

During the war, Sally started fighting the Axis and the feature was handed over to more sophisticated illustrators. While the artwork improved, it lacked the raw sexual energy of the Barreaux years. Part of the strip's innate charm had been the bold, naive approach to the subject matter; despite the inclusion of the popular 'homefront' subtext, the stories just didn't pack the same punch anymore. Still, the sado-masochistic elements continued to multiply, and Sally was one of the very few characters you could count on to lose her clothing within two or three panels.



FURTHER READING

Sally the Sleuth Google Reader

Racy Heroines

As most of my regular visitors are already aware, I have a tendency to get on my high horse over the issue of censorship. In previous articles, I've railed furiously against the likes of Will Hays and his ludicrously puritanical Motion Picture Production Code (see the Wikipedia article for more info, I can't discuss the matter without suffering a major conniption).

Being opposed to all forms of censorship, I've also harbored a life-long loathing for the Comics Code Authority, the "self-regulatory" body that effectively drove free speech from the American newsstand between 1955 and 1972.

For those of you whose lives don't revolve around suspenders, stockings and Bettie Page, a brief synopsis will probably be in order. Stating the case as simply as possible, comics were more-or-less entirely uncensored throughout the so-called Golden Age. Publishers followed their own judgment regarding what was considered acceptable content - a decision based mainly on whatever their target demographic happened to be.

While most titles were obviously aimed at kids (funny animals had always been the biggest seller), there was also a burgeoning market for teens and young adults (ie single males with waaaaay too much time on their hands). Naturally, some publishers catered to the demand for "risque" funny books (no, not that kind) featuring scantily dressed heroines in mildly compromising situations.

While Companies such as Fiction House and Fox had always specialized in "good girl" imagery, by the end of the 1940s, practically everybody was leaping onto the band wagon, especially after the romance, crime and horror genres began take off. Oddly enough, the best-remembered character of the time belonged to neither genre. As various comic historians have observed, Bill Ward's Torchy occupies a niche all of her own.

Created by Ward while he was still in the Armed Services, Torchy was a ditzy blond who spent most of her time looking for work in post-war America (a process which generally involved falling out of her clothes for some inexplicable reason). Despite her haphazard employment prospects, Torchy seemed to possess an exceptional sense of fashion - particularly in regards to her lingerie, which she displayed at least once every story. Wandering obliviously from one unlikely escapade to the next, Torchy found herself stripped to bra, panties and stockings on the flimsiest pretexts imaginable.