 Once she learned to stop using her hands she graduated from masturbation to PhDbation. 
Alain Gourdon, aka Aslan, was very good at quasi-sexual cover illustrations, which is no surprise considering he was one of France's top nude pin-up artists and made a point of flaunting a hedonistic lifestyle. The last front we shared from him featured a girl seeming to fondle her own breasts, and on this one for Henry Cerda's Les tourments de la volupté we have a woman who—we don't know what she's doing, but it probably involves a lot of clenching and unclenching. This cover is a winner. The colors are nice, the pose is extremely suggestive, and the rapturous facial expression is perfect. In addition to all that the title translates to, “the tortures of pleasure,” so there's zero doubt you're dealing with an erotic novel here. Maybe if we read it carefully we too can achieve hands-free ecstasy. Oh, the multi-tasking we could do.
 Venus shows her dark and light sides.  
Above are two versions of a piece of Alain Gourdon art first used on Yann R. Patrick’s Vénus des neiges by Éditions de l’Arabesque in 1955, then repurposed by Antwerp based Uitgeverij Eros for Mickey Spencer's Geen tijd voor Kusjes. Everyone's an aka here. Gourdon painted under the moniker Aslan, Patrick was really Jacques-Henri Juillet, and Spencer is an obvious pseudonym, though we don't for whom. Whether dark or light, this is lovely work.
 Finally some privacy. Now I can really play with these things. 
It's time we circled back to Alain Gourdon, aka Aslan, whose wonderful work you see here on an amazing cover for Folco Romano's Quand la chair š'éveillé, a title that translates as “when the flesh awoke.” This is a coming-of-age erotic novel from Éditions Le Styx for its Collection Les Fruits Verts, and even in a country as dedicated to l'art de l'amour as France there are limits. It was published in 1958, and banned in 1959, along with numerous other books from Le Styx. How many? At least eleven in two years. Quand la chair š'éveillé is so rare we can't find info on what specifically got it cancelled, but we'll keep looking into it. Meanwhile, see more Aslan by clicking his keywords.
 What do you get the pulp fan who has everything?  
We were poking around online and came across these two nude figurines by the French artist Alain Gourdon, aka Aslan. He's well known today as an advertising illustrator, paperback and magazine illustrator, and pin-up artist. He also modeled a hedonistic lifestyle, a sort of mini-Hefner existence (example here, and below)—which like Hugh Hefner's may have been partially staged for publicity purposes. But what is less known about Aslan, outside France, anyway, is his sculpture. However he was a heavy hitter in this area too, and had been since before he became famous as a pin-up artist. Way back in 1952, when he was only twenty-two, he won a prize for his sculpture. Later he sculpted a famous bronze bust of Brigitte Bardot as Marianne, the symbol of the French Republic, and he also sculpted a funerary statue for famed actress Dalida's tomb, as well as a bronze bust of her that was erected on the Place Dalida in 1997. So these figurines come as no surprise to us. We'd let these live on our desks, keeping our stray papers under control, but the prices are too rich for our blood. On the other hand, since it's Christmas, maybe we can receive them as gifts. Hmm... Okay, gotta run. We're going to talk to our girlfriends about these. 
 Say it! Say it louder, you swine! With onion soup you should drink only a basic vin blanc or possibly an aligoté! 
It's a cliché, but one we've noticed to be true, that the French tend to be polemical in their opinions about artistic matters. Movies, literature, painting, architecture, all of these things are either magnificent or total shit. Which leads to some interesting discussions. The big chasm between us and one of our French friends happens to do with food and drink—typically Champagne versus cava, or rillettes versus paté. So for us, this cover for Coup de main reminded us of those discussions. Just for the record, E.E., here on our website where you can't argue—we think cava and paté are just dandy no matter what you say.
Coup de main is number fifty-five in Éditions du Grand Damier's Espionnage series, published in 1958, and written by Jacques Dubessy under the pseudonym Slim Harrisson. That's a name you see a lot in vintage French fiction because it was credited with nearly one hundred novels, and we assume few if any of them are total shit. In this particular book Harrisson's franchise hero Sam Morgan's adventures carry him from FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C. to Tangier, Lisbon, and beyond. The cover art here is by Alain Gourdon, aka Aslan, the towering figure of French paperback and pin-up illustration.
 Look! Smooth as two baby peaches. Anywhere else you want me to shave? 
Here's a nice cover for a Dutch paperback titled Nachtkatje, which translates as “night kitten,” written by Mike Splane, and published by Antwerp based Uitgeverij A.B.C. for its Collection Vamp in 1957. This publisher is not the same as Uitgeversmij, based in Rotterdam, Netherlands, and whose output we've shown you here and here. The cover on this is uncredited, but A.B.C.'s Vamp series often had Alain Gourdon art that had been modified from a previous form, and this piece has that look.
Everything we just wrote, we learned with minimal research. Now comes the part where our research falls short. You might guess that this is a translated Mickey Spillane novel, but we can't confirm that. If it's a translated Spillane it's mighty short—just sixty-plus pages. Which presents a problem. Spillane's short stories weren't published in book form until after 1957, at least not in the U.S. So finding out if this is a Spillane short—which we actually doubt—will have to wait for more knowledgable people than us. See more covers in the same vein here.
 There's nothing like the Aslan touch. 
Here's something a bit different—a poster advertising an exhibition of work by the great French illustrator Aslan, also known as Alain Gourdon. It began today in 1977 in Paris at Art Concorde, a gallery of the era. There are probably still occasional exhibits of Aslan's work in France, but it's cheaper to see it on Pulp Intl. The better examples are here, here, here, and here, plus we wrote a little post when he died, which you can see here.
 Cheapie tabloid shows the way to enriched health. 
Above is the cover and below are some interior scans from National Informer Reader, an offshoot of the tabloid National Informer. It hit newsstands today in 1971. Generally the publication featured photographed models on its cover, but we've run across a few like this one with illustrations. There's another one in the same vein inside the paper, and of course both are uncredited, though they look like the work of Alain Gourdon, aka Aslan. Needless to say, if these drawings are the work of the famed French illustrator, the editors of Informer Reader are unlikely to have paid for them.
The centerpiece of this issue is the spread on Swami Sarasvati, a famous yoga teacher who was born in India but moved to Australia and in 1969 became the host of a yoga television show that aired five mornings a week. Informer Reader shares her “sexercises,” but this turns out to be the editors' salacious take on things—the Swami is merely offering relaxation and better health. It's interesting, though, that she posed in a bikini. Clearly she wasn't so zen a little self promotional skin was out of the question. You'll notice her Siamese cat makes an appearance. There's a video online of the Swami being interviewed, which you can see here, and amusingly, the cat makes an appearance there too.
Elsewhere in the issue readers get another installment of “I Predict” by seer Mark Travis. Never timid, this time around he warns that the U.S. and Soviet Union will develop lightning weapons to blast each other, that a member of the British parliament will be revealed as a modern Jack the Ripper, and that a famous Hollywood producer will be exposed as a drug kingpin. As a prognosticator you only have to be right one in ten times to impress people, but Travis isn't even giving himself a chance with these crackpot predictions. We have more Readers to upload, so we'll see if his anemic percentage improves. Scans below.                 
 Even half covered and drained of color the art is easy to recognize.  
The famed French illustrator Alain Gourdon, aka Aslan, saw his work reused in the unlikeliest places, including unlicensed on bootleg vinyl sleeves for The Cure and Joy Division. Today we thought we'd show you his art recycled in his native industry—publishing. The top cover for Ludwig Krauss's Les nuits bavaroises is from Éditions Les Presses de la Nuit and appeared in 1958, and the simplified second cover for Michel de Kerguen's Concerto pour un ange is from Les Éditions Gamma and appeared a year later. You can be sure the reworked Aslan was licensed, but none of the sites we visited seemed to realize it originated with him. So we're giving him official credit. Both covers are nice, but the first is truly brilliant.
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1965—UFO Reported by Thousands of Witnesses
A large, brilliant fireball is seen by thousands in at least six U.S. states and Ontario, Canada as it streaks across the sky, reportedly dropping hot metal debris, starting grass fires, and causing sonic booms. It is generally assumed and reported by the press to be a meteor, however some witnesses claim to have approached the fallen object and seen an alien craft. 1980—John Lennon Killed
Ex-Beatle John Lennon is shot four times in the back and killed by Mark David Chapman in front of The Dakota apartment building in New York City. Chapman had been stalking Lennon since October, and earlier that evening Lennon had autographed a copy of his album Double Fantasy for him. 1941—Japanese Attack Pearl Harbor
The Imperial Japanese Navy sends aircraft to attack the U.S. Pacific Fleet and its defending air forces at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. While the U.S. lost battleships and other vessels, its aircraft carriers were not at Pearl Harbor and survived intact, robbing the Japanese of the total destruction of the Pacific Fleet they had hoped to achieve.
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