vintage and modern pulp fiction; noir, schlock and exploitation films; scandals, swindles and news
Below, twelve covers of the very racy Italian fumetto Pornostar, with its blonde protagonist Beba (and her dark-haired partner in crime Fiona). Pornostar is another Giovanni Romanini creation, along with Wallestein, Ulula, Lady Domina, et.al, circa mid-1980s, and the covers are by Roberto Molino. See a few more here.
Wallestein was an adult comic originally produced in Italy from 1974 to 1982, but popularized in France by the publisher Elvifrance when they picked up the series in 1977. Jimmy Wallestein is a nobleman and playboy who hides his deformed face behind masks that allow him to assume various identities. He’s on a mission of vengeance against those who killed his father Count Wallestein, but he’s also a crimefighter—though a particularly vicious one. Posted here are twelve beautiful Elvifrance Wallestein covers depicting this curious character. And if the guy on the last cover isn’t Iggy Pop, we must need a new Ritalin prescription.
At 12:01 p.m. a bomb loaded into a horse-drawn wagon explodes in front of the J.P.Morgan building in New York City. 38 people are killed and 400 injured. Italian anarchists are thought to be the perpetrators, but after years of investigation no one is ever brought to justice.
Nikita Khrushchev becomes the first Soviet leader to visit the United States. The two week stay includes talks with U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower, as well as a visit to a farm and a Hollywood movie set, and a tour of a “typical” American neighborhood, upper middle class Granada Hills, California.
The Soviet probe Luna 2 becomes the first man-made object to reach the Moon when it crashes in Mare Serenitatis. The probe was designed to crash, but first it took readings in Earth’s Van Allen Radiation Belt, and also confirmed the existence of solar wind.
Two squatters find a container of radioactive cesium chloride in an abandoned hospital in Goiânia, Brazil. When the shielding window is opened, the bright blue cesium becomes visible, which lures many people to handle the object. In the end forty-six people are contaminated, resulting in illnesses, amputations, and deaths, including that of a 6-year-old girl whose body is so toxic it is buried in a lead coffin sealed in concrete.
