Mexico’s old west mythology is as strong as the U.S.’s, probably owing to the fact that most of the old west actually was Mexico at one point. That love of western stories comes across strongly in these cover paintings made for Mexico’s post-1970s comic book market. Many of them were made for the series Sensacional de Vaquero, or Sensational Cowboy, published by Mexico City-based Editorial EJEA, which was founded by Everardo Flores. The scenes depicted are incredibly chaotic and violent—everybody that can be killed, seemingly, is killed, including horses and innocent bystanders. The backgrounds of some of the scenes are interesting, and are worth taking a close look at. The creators here have names such as Beton, Nique, and Jaime S., while others we cannot identify because their signatures, while stylish, are illegible. The art is perhaps not of the quality seen on pulp novels, but it’s certainly effective. Twenty total scans for your enjoyment, and you can see a few examples here, here, and here.

This photo made today in 1959 shows a woman named Jessie Mae Noah, who Los Angeles police had arrested and were questioning in connection to a crime that had occurred seven weeks earlier. On that December night a Samuel Goldwyn Studios suit named Kenneth Savoy walked into the In Between Café on Melrose Avenue during the time two men—one holding a sawed-off shotgun—were in the process of robbing it. Having collected the money and valuables of eight patrons and the contents of the cash register, they demanded Savoy’s wallet, and perhaps having watched too many of his own movies, he replied that if they wanted it they’d have to shoot him. That hard-boiled response earned him a load of buckshot in the stomach. The robbers scampered to their getaway car—where Jessie Mae Noah was waiting in the rear seat—and fled the scene.

After police published composite sketches of the robbers in the newspapers, Noah contacted police, resulting in the photo op at top. The robbers—George Scott and Curtis Lichtenwalter—were arrested later (for those who wonder whether composite sketches are ever accurate, check the comparison between Scott and his likeness at bottom).

Scott had fled all the way to Texarkana, Arkansas, and gave up only after a shoot-out with police at a motel. Jessie Mae Noah claimed she’d had no idea her two acquaintances were planning a robbery, and that she had simply gone for a ride with them for kicks. She avoided a murder charge, but Scott and Lichenwalter were both found guilty of robbery and first degree homicide. Scott—the triggerman—was gassed to death by the state of California in September 1960. And as for the victim Kenneth Savoy, you have to wonder what he thought in that instant when the shotgun went off. We suspect he thought that maybe calling bluffs was something best left to the stars of action films.

Stories about John F. Kennedy’s assassination have been appearing in the media for several weeks leading up the 50th anniversary of the event, as various outlets try to get ahead of the wave of interest, but we’re purists here, so we’re sharing this poster today, on the actual anniversary of the murder. Let’s get the basics out of the way first. As we’ve mentioned before, a Gallup poll taken days after the killing showed that a majority of Americans believed Oswald was not the only participant. That percentage has gone up since, reaching more than 80%, according to some surveys. That means people who believe Oswald acted with others have always been the majority, and today are the vast majority. That’s something your trusted media outlet always leaves out, doesn’t it? The point is if you think there was a conspiracy, you are the norm, part of an overwhelming norm, rather than some crackpot minority.

It’s an important point because many of the articles published today ask questions like, “Why do people believe in conspiracies?” The problem with that question lies in its framing—it implies that we live in a world that has no or few conspiracies, that it’s silly to believe they exist. That’s very interesting, considering that in the Libor scandal up to 20 major banks conspired to rig interest rates in a $350 trillion derivatives market, that Britain’s spy agency GCHQ conspired to secretly tap into the fiber optic cables that carry the world’s phone calls and internet traffic, that the bank HSBC conspired to launder billions of dollars in South American drug cartel money, that ING conspired to violate sanctions against certain types of business dealings with Cuba and Iran, that News of the World conspired to illegally hack the phones of private citizens, and that Merrill Lynch conspired to deliberately overcharge 95,000 customers $32 million in unwarranted fees. All of these happened in just the last few years. 

To listen to the mainstream media, you’d almost think there weren’t actual criminal proceedings or lawsuits extant in every example we just mentioned. It takes a willful disconnection from reality to deny how prevalent conspiracies are in modern life when hundreds of perpetrators are at this moment sitting as defendants in court because they were caught conspiring. If we want to delve into a few historical examples of conspiracies, then note that the NSA conspired to mislead the U.S. public about the Gulf of Tonkin incident, that American asbestos companies conspired to cover up the truth about the danger of their product, and that in 1962 the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff conspired to kill American citizens. That conspiracy took the form of a proposal called Operation Northwoods. In short, American citizens would have been killed in a series of terrorist bomb attacks that would have been blamed on Cuba. Northwoods was approved for implementation by every one of the sitting Joint Chiefs. Really let that sink in. The only reason the American government did not kill American citizens is because John F. Kennedy said no—he wasn’t interested in committing high treason and murder so he could invade Cuba.

All of the examples we’ve cited above—a small percentage of the whole, by the way—are incontrovertible historical facts, easily referenced in reams of unearthed documents and on the internet. And all are conspiracies by definition. People who believe Kennedy was victim of a conspiracy are derided as semi-literate fringe crackpots, but that group includes President Lyndon Johnson, First Lady Jackie Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, French president Charles DeGaulle, and Cuban leader Fidel Castro, all of whom voiced disbelief that Oswald acted alone. So the question we should be asking today isn’t why so many people believe in conspiracies, but why the mainstream media are so far removed from the factual realities of human, corporate, and political existence, why they are so resistant to the simple truth that conspiracies are how powerful actors circumvent regulations, laws, and democratic rights. Or more to the point, exactly what planet do mainstream journalists live on? Not this one, seemingly.

Even though we found no Greek pulp, we do have a related item we want to share with you. The above poster is for the Italian movie Lesbo, which is partially set in Greece. We shared two versions of this promo way back in 2009 and had no idea about the artist. Now we know that the person behind this is Mario De Berardinis. As it happens, we’ve collected other pieces of his and a few appear below. You can see the other two Lesbo posters here, and if you haven’t seen the top notch Italian poster art we’ve already shared, have look at Mafe, Symeoni, Nistri, and Aller.

We mentioned a while back that we had found a stack of Japanese x-rated movie posters, so here’s another one today, a poster for Lasse Braun’s Sensations, starring Brigitte Maier. The art is by William Stok, and if the central figure’s meandering tongue isn’t enough to tell you this is a porn movie, the white substance on her breast and shoulder gives it away. That ain't supposed to be Béchamel sauce, folks. Sensations was made in Germany in 1975, had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival that May, and played in mainstream movie houses in the U.S. throughout the autumn and into the next year. Basically, it’s about an uptight American girl who travels to Amsterdam and gets her groove on. She’s reluctant at first, but as the movie churns along she begins to show more enthusiasm. This kind of sexual awakening plot was a staple of adult film back then, but the exotic setting was something new for American filmgoers, and they made the movie a major hit. Sensations premiered in Japan today in 1976, and you can see more Japanese x-rated posters here and here.

They were known as the Two Tonys—Brancato and Trombino, a pair of wild mobsters out of Kansas City. In May 1951 they robbed the cash room at the mob-controlled Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas. They and their three henchmen had been wearing hats, but Tony Brancato lost his mid-robbery, was caught on camera, and from there ended up on the FBI’s most wanted list. Brancato and Trombino were also identified by a mob subordinate who recognized them because he’d been robbed by them in Beverly Hills. The pair were arrested for the Flamingo robbery, but made bail, then promptly headed to Los Angeles. There they shook down a mob bookmaker’s right hand man, which put them on L.A. crime boss Jack Dragna’s most wanted list. But the difference between his list and the FBI’s was that Dragna’s had nothing to do with capture and trial. He ordered the Two Tonys to be killed, and mob shooter Aladena Fratianno, aka Jimmy the Weasel, took on the task. Brancato and Trombino desperately needed money for their legal defense, and Fratianno told them he’d help them take down a high stakes poker game worth $40,000. The Tonys were thrilled and grateful, but the heist was fiction. Instead, in a car on Hollywood Boulevard, Fratianno had two subordinates murder them. The aftermath appears above and below. Today, 1951.

 

Prime Cut is another one of those movies that falls squarely into the could-not-be-made-today category. Starring Lee Marvin and Gene Hackman, it’s the story of a Chicago mob enforcer sent to Kansas City to make a local meatpacking and prostitution kingpin pay a debt of $500,000. The meat aspect of Hackman’s KC operation is both literal and metaphorical, with his enemies occasionally ending up ground into actual hot dogs, and young girls being sold like cattle. Marvin starts as just a debt collector but soon becomes a white-haired angel of retribution, an avenger intent on righting a few moral wrongs. When Marvin gets that familiar look in his eyes, is there any doubt Hackman and his sleazebag underlings are in seriously deep shit? Prime Cut is an uneven flick with a few jarring 1970s quirks, but we sure enjoyed it. It’s bold, violent, and offensive by today’s standards, but nicely rendered by director Michael Ritchie and cinematographer Gene Polito. Of special note is Sissy Spacek, who makes her first credited film appearance. Prime Cut premiered in New York City today in 1972, but what you see above is the great Japanese promo, with its alternate title Kansas City Prime. If you like 1970s crime thrillers, you’ll certainly appreciate this one.

A couple of times we’ve shown you the distinctive work of French illustrator Jef de Wulf, and today we’re back with four more of his pieces in a slightly different vein. Rather than his usual textured backgrounds, here he works with negative white space while producing three covers for Editions de la pensée moderne’s 1950s-era Collection tropique, and one for Editions Armand Fleury’s Collection Le crépuscule. These, we think, showcase de Wulf at his best. We’ll have more later, and you can see those other covers here and here.