Vintage Pulp

April 7 2018

0008 IS ENOUGH

Who you gonna call when 007 can't get the job done?

We said we’d get to Clyde Allison’s, aka William Knoles’ Agent 0008 and here we are, sooner than you thought. Above and below are covers for all twenty entries in the series. The idea here, of course, is a sleaze riff on James Bond, or possibly even a riff on the many imitators of Bond. The dominant literary motif is satire, but as a wise man once said, just because it’s satirical doesn’t mean it’s smart or good. The cover art on most of these is by Robert Bonfils, doing some of his better work, with Darrel Millsap handling the chores on Platypussy, and an unknown tapped for The Sin Funnel.

So we read a couple of these and they involve the spy agency SADISTO (Security and Administration Division of the Institute for Special Tactical Operations), which is located in a sprawling bunker beneath the Maryland countryside. There the agents, about sixty of them, male and female, attend briefings in a pillow covered den while lounging mostly nude, and take on assignments too difficult for MI5, the FBI, SPECTRE, the CIA, etc. Their main weapon is sex, and their main advantage is that they’re utterly ruthless. They even use kidnapped college co-eds for live fire training sessions. Because they’re sadistic like that.

In The Desdamona Affair SADISTO’s budget has been cut, their fleet of Jaguars exchanged for Volkswagens, and their banks of IBM computers swapped out for calculators and an abacus. 0008 goes after a villainess named Desdamona Eva de Struxion (D. Eva de Struxion) in order to steal a secret formula that could eliminate world hunger. Along the way he fights trained panthers, is captured by Indian maidens, and imprisoned in an oil tanker, but ends up with all the money de Struxion has accumulated selling the formula, which means SADISTO can once again afford fancy cars and big computers. The whole narrative is absurd the same way Sharknado is absurd.

In Gamefinger 0008 is sent by SADISTO to the island of a madman named Cantwell Undershaft, aka Gamefinger, who wants to end war by broadcasting to the world via satellite lethal gladiatorial spectacles. The unwilling deaths of hundreds of kidnapped naked men and women, he reasons, will prevent the deaths of billions in World War III by slaking humanity’s bloodlust. This book differs from the previous one due to the extreme violence, but the formula is the same. In a text with so many jokes, a few will hit the target, but the percentage is depressingly low and the glib approach generally wears thin.

At this point you must be wondering how we got through these. All we can say is they’re curiostities—stupid, poorly written curiosities. We can’t imagine anyone reading more than two—one to get the general dumb idea, and the second to confirm that the idea remains dumb. Most of the content is sex, but written entirely without making a single explicit reference to penises, vaginas, oral sex, or bodily fluids. Doesn’t that sound stimulating? If you should happen to want your own copies of these they usually go for around $100, which we consider wishful thinking on the part of the vendors, but with online buying, if you bide your time, someone will always sell at a more reasonable price.

Maryland, Greenleaf Classics, Clyde Allison, William Knoles, Darrel Millsap, cover art, literature, cover collection

Vintage Pulp

September 22 2017

LEDGY SITUATION

I felt so lonely and unappreciated I was going to jump. But then people started screaming, “Take it off! Take it off!”

It’s been a while, so here’s a cover from sleaze icon Darrel Millsap for Hoke Jackson’s 1968 Candid Reader sleaze novel Along the Ledge to Lust. Jackson also wrote The Lecherous Age, Swappers in Heat, and Marriage for Four. He was not a person, though, but rather a pseudonym inhabited by various writers, so we don’t know who really authored this, and we have a funny feeling they prefer it that way. More from Millsap here and here.

Greenleaf Classics, Hoke Jackson, Darrel Millsap, cover art, literature

Vintage Pulp

March 22 2016

BOB’S BIG BUOY

It floats? How weird. I would have thought something that size drags you down like an anchor.

Swap Circuit was written by Thomas P. Ramirez in the guise of Tony Calvano, with cover work by Darrel Millsap, and published in 1968. A couple set up swapping sessions for profit only to see their scheme go awry when they attend an orgy that’s out of their league. This piece of art caught our eye because it fits perfectly into our large collection of swapping covers, which you can see here. Don’t trade it for anything.

Greenleaf Classics, Swap Circuit, Thomas P. Ramirez, Tony Calvano, Darrel Millsap, cover art, literature

Vintage Pulp

February 12 2016

FASHION VICTIM

Okay! You win! I'll find a jacket and boots ensemble of my own!

Some people are just bad at sharing, a fact amply illustrated by the cover of Marcus Miller’s Boy Meets Boy, written for Greenleaf Classics’ subsidiary Nightstand Books, 1968. Miller, who was really Samuel Dodson, wrote more than a dozen gay-themed sleaze novels in a four year span between 1966 and 1970. Some of the juicier entries include The Mother Truckers and Copsucker, the latter of which is an especially noteworthy title even in the fertile genre of sleaze. The Miller pseudonym was used for hetero sleaze too, all of which was written by Milo Perichitch. The art for Boy Meets Boy is by the always amusing Darrel Millsap, whose best work you can find here and here.

Greenleaf Classics, Marcus Miller, Samuel Dodson, Milo Perichitch, Darrel Millsap, cover art, literature, lgbt

Vintage Pulp

October 25 2015

APT PUPIL

Well, okay—since you say it worked for Tom Brady, I guess I can take some of the pressure out of your balls.

The original painting at top, which we ran across on an auction site, was made for the cover of John Dexter’s (Harvey Hornwood’s) 1969 sleaze novel Passion’s Pupil, just above. Like most covers from the genre, it has several raunchy elements. Not only is the femme fatale threatening to go down on her knees, and not only has the football star found the world’s smallest towel (which we guess will make her next manuver even easier), but the jersey peeking out of his locker seems to bear the number 69. Standard stuff.

But what isn’t standard is there may be some question about who painted this. According to the vendor selling it—for $800.00, in case you’re looking for something to go above your mantel—the piece is by Robert Bonfils, however, the quite authoritative Greenleaf Classics Books website has this attributed to Darrel Millsap. The two had nearly identical styles during the time they worked for Greenleaf, so there’s no way to look at the painting and discern whose it is, and there’s no signature on the front or rear. We’re sure the mystery will be solved at some point, though, probably by whoever eventually shells out eight bills for the art.

We like the painting not only on its own sleazy merits, but because it reminds us of another original painting we posted way back that was used for the front of Amy Harris’s schoolhouse sleaze novel Prize Pupil. In fact, if you click back there you’ll see that the male figures in both scenes are weirdly similar. And of course so are the titles of the books. Did Bonfils/Millsap use that earlier cover as inspiration? It sure looks like it.

Greenleaf Classics, John Dexter, Robert Bonfils, Darrel Millsap, Harvey Hornwood, cover art, literature

Vintage Pulp

September 11 2014

ALPHA BEST

Faced with this position surrender is the only option.

Here you see a pose that appears over and over in vintage paperback art—one figure looming menacingly in the foreground as a second cowers in the triangular negative space created by the first’s spread legs. This pose is so common it should have a name. We’re thinking “the alpha,” because it signifies male dominance and because of the A shape the pose makes. True, on occasion the dominator isn’t male, sometimes the unfortunate sprawled figure is depicted outside the A shaped space, and sometimes the art expresses something other than dominance, but basically the alpha (see, that just sounds right, doesn’t it?) has been used scores of times with only minor variation. You’ll notice several of these come from subsidiaries of the sleaze publisher Greenleaf Classics. It was a go-to cover style for them. We have twenty examples in all, with art by Bob Abbett, Robert Bonfils, Michel Gourdon, and others.

Vintage Pulp

March 21 2014

CRACK OF DOOM

Sleaze painter Darrel Millsap goes where the sun don’t shine.

Illustrator Darrel Millsap really had fun with the sleaze covers he painted for Greenleaf Classics’ Candid Reader line. The one you see here for Gage Carlin’s (Thomas P. Ramirez’s) swapping novel Switching Hour is a prime example of the overtly sexual material he produced. And what a treat. In addition to a restrained woman having her… really we have no idea… her hedge trimmed maybe, we also get a bonus shot right up a male character’s crevasse. If you look closely you can see a mountain goat in there. No, really. Go ahead. Um, 1969 on this.

Greenleaf Classics, Switching Hour, Gage Carlin, Darrel Millsap, Thomas P. Ramirez, cover art, literature

Vintage Pulp

February 5 2014

FINAL STRETCH

Oh, stop whining. I said you’d have to go to great lengths to please me.

On many sleaze covers you see men going through pain and discomfort to get laid, but this scenario painted by Darrel Millsap might finally encourage single guys to just stay home playing Bioshock on their Xboxes. In the woman’s favor, she chose a man who could really fill out a pair of tightie-whities, but working against her is the distinct possibility he’ll fill them with something else in a minute. We haven’t talked about J.X. Williams in a while, and really, his identity is no clearer than before. Let’s just call him an oft inhabited pseudonym borrowed by many but owned by none. Well Hung-Up was written by him (or someone) in 1969.

Greenleaf Classics, J.X. Williams, Darrel Millsap, cover art, literature

Vintage Pulp

April 5 2013

HIGH ART

Considering I’m utterly tripping balls this actually came out okay.

Above is the cover of the sleaze novel LSD Lusters, published by Greenleaf Classics for their Nightstand Books line in 1967. Author John Dexter was a pseudonym inhabited by a number of writers, including Robert Silverberg. Because of that, we don’t know who actually wrote the book. But they must have been high when they agreed to do it. Art is by Darrel Millsap.

Greenleaf Classics, John Dexter, Robert Silverberg, Darrel Millsap, cover art, literature

Vintage Pulp

December 13 2011

SHARON AND SHARON ALIKE

Sharon Tate was the unknowing model for at least two more paperback covers.

A long while ago we showed you a paperback cover that featured a painting of Sharon Tate. That book specifically used Tate both as cover art and interior subject matter. In contrast, the two figures above aren’t explicitly supposed to be Tate, but it just so happens that both unknown artists modeled their work from an on set photograph from her 1966 Dracula spoof The Fearless Vampire Killers. The photo was shot by Roman Polanski, who also directed the film. As you can see, it was used on John Dexter’s sleaze pulp Chuck-a-Lust, painted by Darrel Millsap, and on Paul Collins’s, aka Renato Carocci’s giallo Ordine di uccidere, painted by Bendetto Caroselli. The former was published in 1967, and the latter in 1968. One year later, Tate was gone.

Italy, The Fearless Vampire Killers, Sharon Tate, Paul Collins, Renato Carocci, Darrel Millsap, Benedetto Caroselli, John Dexter, Roman Polanski, cover art, cinema, giallo, literature

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

December 14

1911—Team Reaches South Pole

Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, along with his team Olav Bjaaland, Helmer Hanssen, Sverre Hassel, and Oscar Wisting, becomes the first person to reach the South Pole. After a celebrated career, Amundsen eventually disappears in 1928 while returning from a search and rescue flight at the North Pole. His body is never found.

December 13

1944—Velez Commits Suicide

Mexican actress Lupe Velez, who was considered one of the great beauties of her day, commits suicide by taking an overdose of sleeping pills. In her note, Velez says she did it to avoid bringing shame on her unborn child by giving birth to him out of wedlock, but many Hollywood historians believe bipolar disorder was the actual cause. The event inspired a 1965 Andy Warhol film entitled Lupe.

December 13

1958—Gordo the Monkey Lost After Space Flight

After a fifteen minute flight into space on a Jupiter AM-13 rocket, a monkey named Gordo splashes down in the South Pacific but is lost after his capsule sinks. The incident sparks angry protests from the American Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, but NASA says animals are needed for such tests.

December 12

1968—Tallulah Bankhead Dies

American actress, talk show host, and party girl Tallulah Bankhead, who was fond of turning cartwheels in a dress without underwear and once made an entrance to a party without a stitch of clothing on, dies in St. Luke’s Hospital in New York City of double pneumonia complicated by emphysema.

December 11

1962—Canada Has Last Execution

The last executions in Canada occur when Arthur Lucas and Ronald Turpin, both of whom are Americans who had been extradited north after committing separate murders in Canada, are hanged at Don Jail in Toronto. When Turpin is told that he and Lucas will probably be the last people hanged in Canada, he replies, â€œSome consolation.â€

December 11

1964—Guevara Speaks at U.N.

Ernesto “Che” Guevara, representing the nation of Cuba, speaks at the 19th General Assembly of the United Nations in New York City. His speech calls for wholesale changes in policies between rich nations and poor ones, as well as five demands of the United States, none of which are met.

December 11

2008—Legendary Pin-Up Bettie Page Dies

After suffering a heart attack several days before, erotic model Bettie Page, who in the 1950s became known as the Queen of Pin-ups, dies when she is removed from life support machinery. Thanks to the unique style she displayed in thousands of photos and film loops, Page is considered one of the most influential beauties who ever lived.