OVERDUE BIL’

Better late than never is our motto around here.


We’re finally getting back to paperback artist Gene Bilbrew, whose odd style, with its scantily clad women and their muscular butts has become collectible in recent years. We didn’t get it at first, but like a lot of art, once you’re exposed to it regularly you begin to appreciate its unique qualities. There’s clear intent in Bilbrew’s work, a deliberate attempt to approach illustration from a different angle, and we’ve grown to understand that his cartoonish, chaotic, often humorous, and often bondage themed aesthetic is purposeful. In fact, his imagery has become so intertwined with the bdsm scene that in 2019 the National Leather Association International established an award named after Bilbrew for creators of animated erotic art. While it’s not exactly a Pulitzer Prize, the point is that Bilbrew’s bizarre visions keep gaining wider acceptance. So for that reason we’ve put together another group of his paperback fronts. You can see more of them here, here, and here, and you can see a few rare oddities here, here, and here.

Well, it was a nice little island while it lasted.

At top you see a cover for Private Island by Dorian Cole, 1966, from After Hours Books, one of the lower rent practitioners of sleaze lit. The cover art is by Eric Stanton, whose decades of illustration work have been immortalized in two big collections by the German art book publisher Taschen. You see one of those covers here as well.

Stanton was apparently known as the “Rembrandt of pulp culture,” at least according to Taschen. Them’s mighty bold words, but of course Taschen is trying to sell $50 coffee table books, so what else would they say?

In reality, Stanton was a unique artist whose simplicity of style translated nicely to low budget sexploitation paperbacks such as Shawna deNelle’s Lady Boss, which we shared a couple of years ago. Or put another way, based on the above example could you see Stanton illustrating Mike Hammer or James Bond books? No, right? But he was a perfect match for sleaze imprints like After Hours. His effort for Private Island is nearly perfect, featuring his trademark elongated figures and bold color usage, and it ranks as a favorite cover for us.

All these jobs are so alike they just start to fade together after a while.

Secretary: “Somehow, I thought working for a woman would be different.” 

Lady Boss: “You’ll get no favors from me, sweetheart. I got where I am because I play the game the same way men do.”

Secretary: “I understand that now. I think I’m missing a button.”

Lady Boss: “You know what else is missing? A cup of coffee in my hand. Now get to brewing—chop chop!

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

1941—DiMaggio Hit Streak Reaches 56

New York Yankees outfielder Joe DiMaggio gets a hit in his fifty-sixth consecutive game. The streak would end the next game, against the Cleveland Indians, but the mark DiMaggio set still stands, and in fact has never been seriously threatened. It is generally thought to be one of the few truly unbreakable baseball records.

1939—Adams Completes Around-the-World Air Journey

American Clara Adams becomes the first woman passenger to complete an around the world air journey. Her voyage began and ended in New York City, with stops in Lisbon, Marseilles, Leipzig, Athens, Basra, Jodhpur, Rangoon, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Wake Island, Honolulu, and San Francisco.

1955—Nobel Prize Winners Unite Against Nukes

Eighteen Nobel laureates sign the Mainau Declaration against nuclear weapons, which reads in part: We think it is a delusion if governments believe that they can avoid war for a long time through the fear of [nuclear] weapons. Fear and tension have often engendered wars. Similarly it seems to us a delusion to believe that small conflicts could in the future always be decided by traditional weapons. In extreme danger no nation will deny itself the use of any weapon that scientific technology can produce.

1921—Sacco & Vanzetti Convicted

Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti are convicted in Dedham, Massachusetts of killing their shoe company’s paymaster. Even at the time there are serious questions about their guilt, and whether they are being railroaded because of their Italian ethnicity and anarchist political beliefs.

1933—Eugenics Becomes Official German Policy

Adolf Hitler signs the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring, and Germany begins sterilizing those they believe carry hereditary illnesses, and those they consider impure. By the end of WWII more than 400,000 are sterilized, including criminals, alcoholics, the mentally ill, Jews, and people of mixed German-African heritage.

1955—Ruth Ellis Executed

Former model Ruth Ellis is hanged at Holloway Prison in London for the murder of her lover, British race car driver David Blakely. She is the last woman executed in the United Kingdom.

1966—Richard Speck Rampage

Richard Speck breaks into a Chicago townhouse where he systematically rapes and kills eight student nurses. The only survivor hides under a bed the entire night.

Rafael DeSoto painted this excellent cover for David Hulburd's 1954 drug scare novel H Is for Heroin. We also have the original art without text.
Argentine publishers Malinca Debora reprinted numerous English language crime thrillers in Spanish. This example uses George Gross art borrowed from U.S. imprint Rainbow Books.
Uncredited cover art for Orrie Hitt's 1954 novel Tawny. Hitt was a master of sleazy literature and published more than one hundred fifty novels.
George Gross art for Joan Sherman’s, aka Peggy Gaddis Dern’s 1950 novel Suzy Needs a Man.

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