John Alexander Scott Coutts (1902-1962), who used the pseudonym John Willie, is perhaps the most famous figure in the history of fetish art and literature of the 20th century. You might be wondering what on earth I’m doing reviewing his work here but if you read on you’ll see that he is not an entirely inappropriate subject for this blog.
John Willie became something of a cult figure in the 70s and he has had a considerable influence on pop culture. Just Jaeckin’s wonderful and delightful 1984 movie Gwendoline was inspired by Willie’s comics. Willie was himself inspired by early movie serials such as The Perils of Pauline.
John Willie was a writer, artist and photographer and was the editor and publisher of Bizarre magazine but he is probably best known for his comic strips featuring his heroine Sweet Gwendoline.
Poor Gwendoline finds herself the victim of sinister plots by dissolute aristocrat Sir Dystic d’Arcy and d’Arcy’s henchwoman the Countess. Gwendoline does however have an ally - a beautiful glamorous lady secret agent code-named U-89.
What will strike the reader immediately about the Gwendoline comics is just how good-natured they are. Gwendoline is continually falling into the hands of the villains and invariably finds herself being tied up, in varied and elaborate ways. But she never actually gets hurt. Her adventures are lighthearted, goofy, outrageously melodramatic and amusing. Sir Dystic D’Arcy is a stock melodrama villain, but really he’s more of a spoof of a stock melodrama villain.
The Countess is unscrupulous and scheming but again she’s more of a melodrama villainess than a genuinely threatening figure.
Gwendoline is sweet and naïve but while there was the danger that such a heroine would end up being a bit saccharine she is in fact likeable and has her occasional feisty moments. Agent U-89 is basically one of the good guys, although sometimes she’s a tad morally ambiguous.
Sir Dystic d’Arcy is such a bungling villain that we never feel that Gwendoline is in any serious danger.
The mood always remains playful and lighthearted and tongue-in-cheek.
Her first comic, simply titled The Adventures of Sweet Gwendoline, is a racetrack mystery melodrama with Sir Dystic D’Arcy plotting to get his hands on Gwendoline’s home.
The second comic, The Wasp Women, concerns (among other things) a sinister plot to steal blackberries.
In the third adventure The Escape Artiste Gwendoline decides that since she’s always getting tied up she should learn how to escape. She has a bet with Agent U-89. If U-89 ties her up and she escapes U-89 will have to cook dinner. If Gwendoline fails to escape after a couple of hours then she will have to prepare dinner. U-89 ties Gwendoline up repeatedly and poor Gwendoline proves to be something of a failure as escape artiste. So it’s always Gwendoline who ends up cooking dinner. It’s all silly playful stuff.
I suspect that the fourth comic, Gwendoline and the Missing Princess, was written some years later. Willie’s style has changed slightly - it’s become more lush. This adventure is also much more explicitly erotic, in fact it’s quite risqué for its time. In this comic there is, for the first time, nudity. There’s still an amusing and complicated adventure plot.
The book also includes some of Willie’s water colours and these make it obvious just how much the style of the 1984 Gwendoline movie was directly drawn from John Willie.
This book provides a fascinating glimpse of one of the odder corners of 20th century pop culture. It might not appeal to all tastes but the erotic content really is quite tame (very tame indeed by the standards of the 1970s when the first edition of the book was published). It has a certain offbeat cheerfully naughty but at the same time rather innocent charm. Recommended.
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