Eric Stanton (1926-1999) was an American fetish artist. His early work was heavily influenced by John Willie. His later work became seriously weird and disturbing, much much too much so for my tastes. But The Return of Gwendoline is still in the John Willie mould and in fact it’s a tale featuring WiIlie’s most famous creation, Sweet Gwendoline.
What made John Willie’s The Adventures of Sweet Gwendoline so great is that it’s so good-natured. Poor Gwendoline gets herself into all kinds of scrapes (which invariably involve her being tied up) but nothing really bad ever happens to her. The chief villain Sir Dystic d’Arcy is more of a bungler than anything else, a figure out of melodrama or even farce, than a truly menacing figure. The emphasis is on cheerfully naughty fun.
Stanton captures at least some of that innocent feel in The Return of Gwendoline but it doesn’t quite have the same charm. And Stanton lacks Willie’s ability to come up with goofy outrageous storylines. There isn’t really much of a story here at all, whereas with Willie there was always an actual story.
There’s nothing wrong with Stanton’s drawings but again they don’t quite have the charm of Willie’s work. They’re more overtly erotic, but they lack just a little of the necessary spark.
This is fairly innocuous stuff. Unless you’re really sensitive to this kind of material you’re more likely to be amused than offended. It is supposed to be fun, and it is.
While I don’t think Stanton is as good an artist as John Willie I don’t want to sound like I’m judging him harshly. On the whole I like his artwork here.
This publisher has issued a lot of this sort of fairly mild S&M-tinged erotica (including other work by Eric Stanton) in very nicely presented editions.
Richard Pérez Seves has also written an excellent an exhaustively detailed biography of John Willie which I recommend very highly.
The work of people such as John Willie and Eric Stanton has had a considerable influence on pop culture in fields such as comics and especially underground comics. They’ve also has a certain influence on movies, notably Just Jaeckin’s delightful kinky adventure romp Gwendoline. And they’ve had a definite influence within the world of fashion.
The Return of Gwendoline is reasonably good fun. Recommended.
I’ve reviewed John Willie’s The Adventures of Sweet Gwendoline which I recommend very highly even if you don’t share his erotic interests.
