Eric Stanton (September 30 1926–March 17 1999; born Ernest Stanzoni) was an American bondage and fetish illustrator, cartoonist, and comic-book artist. Although the majority of his work depicted female dominance scenarios, he also produced work showing the inverse. Stanton also incorporated bisexual, homosexual, and transgender imagery into some of his later work.
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Biography
Early life and career
Stanton began his career in 1947 at Irving Klaw's Movie Star News company in New York City, gaining employment by boasting he could draw better than any of the artists then working for Klaw. He afterward attended the Cartoonists and Illustrators School, under Batman inker Jerry Robinson and others. One classmate was future Spider-Man co-creator Steve Ditko. Stanton shared a Manhattan studio at 43rd Street and Eighth Avenue with Ditko from 1958 to 1966 or 1968 (accounts differ). Some of Stanton's work during this period shows heavy Ditko influence (see below), although Ditko has denied contributing to Stanton's art.[1] Stanton, in a 1988 interview with comics historian Greg Theakston, recalled that though his contribution to Spider-Man was "almost nil", he and Ditko had "worked on storyboards together [and] I added a few ideas. But the whole thing was created by Steve on his own. ... I think I added the business about the webs coming out of his hands".[2]
Later career
After Klaw died in 1966, Stanton supported himself via self-publishing and distributing his work to a quasi-underground network of subscribers and patrons. His mimeographed/photocopied "Stantoons" series continued to his death in 1999 and featured many of his most well-known post-Klaw concepts such as Blunder Broad and the Princkazons.
Blunder Broad
Stanton created Blunder Broad in the 1970s with writer Turk Winter, for use in a great number of pornographic BDSM stories, published over the years in black and white. An obvious parody of Wonder Woman, Blunder Broad is an inept superheroine who continually fails in her missions and is invariably raped and tortured by her enemies, who include a lesbian supervillainess variably called Leopard Lady, Pussycat Galore, or Cheetah, and her male sidekick Count Dastardly. Blunder Broad can be deprived of her superstrength when subjected to cunnilingus.
Legacy
In addition to books about his work, Stanton's art was reprinted in the 1990s in Fantagraphics Books' Eros Comix comic book Tops and Bottoms, issues subtitled "Bound Beauty" (#1), "Lady in Charge" (#2), "Broken Engagement" (#3), "Broken Engagement 2" (#4), as well as in that publisher's Bizarre Comix #3 and Confidential TV. Taschen published several collections.
See also
Footnotes
- ^ Ditko Looked Up: "Ditko & Stanton"
- ^ Theakston, Greg. The Steve Ditko Reader (Pure Imagination, Brooklyn, NY, 2002; ISBN 1-56685-011-8), p. 14 (unnumbered, misordered as page 16)
References
- Eric Kroll, The Art of Eric Stanton: For the Man Who Knows His Place (Taschen, 1997) ISBN 3-8228-8499-5
- Eric Kroll, Eric Stanton: She Dominates All and Other Stories Taschen, 2001) ISBN 3-8228-5565-0
- Burckhard Riemschneider, Eric Stanton, Reunion in Ropes. Taschen, 2001) ISBN 3-8228-5529-4
- Eric Stanton bibiliography
