Blue Mary Finale

Welcome back to our Blue Monday celebration of Mary Fleener's work - step right in!

Before we take a look at some of her covers, let's take a quick peek at a few comics.
This one seems right at home with Fleener's visual style-

NOTE: The following 2 pages, and much of Mary's artwork below,

 contains nudity and has been moved to our back room for adult content.
Please follow this link to The Other Voice Of ODD! archive
of the original post to view the artwork.

How's your Lawrence?

Confused?
The Swiss publication, Das Magazin, has a feature entitled Werke der Weltliteratur (Works Of World Literature) in which they ask artists to translate a classic novel into a single comic page. As might be expected with such an endeavor, it helps tremendously if you're familiar with the original material.

Here's a couple more from Mary:

Yes, she does use words! (In case you were starting to wonder)
Of course, she may incorporate said words into the art...

Mary's works are as uniquely personal expressions as her artwork might suggest. The source material is often her own life and surroundings, and the events shaping her world. So, it might help a bit to know a little about her, eh?
Let's let her tell it:

I can relate. Creating my artwork is my best therapy. (I sure hope we get that system fully functional soon so i can resume therapy)

You were promised Covers with you Comics, so let's view some now.
Here are 10 covers from Mary Fleener -

Mary is the kind of Twisted Sister i quite enjoy. We'll look more at some of her longer comics on another day - we've already got a pretty full post with three cubed pics.
So let's wrap with a just few more bits & pieces of Fleener flair -

I'm so feeling the Coppertone.
I may have to use that last piece as a colouring book page and have fun with it.

While i'm doing that, you can learn more about, and see more from, Mary Fleener at her website. Perhaps more importantly, you buy some of her original paintings, too.

all artwork by Mary Fleener for various, mostly shown above (1987-1997)

MFin' Blue Velvet Monday

Before we dive into Ms Fleener's comic book work, let us pause to enjoy some of her oddly delightful black velvet paintings.


Serenade To A Tiki-

NOTE: Most of Mary's artwork here contains nudity
and has been moved to our back room for adult content.
Please follow this link to The Other Voice Of ODD! archive
of the original post to view the artwork.

Open Mic Night At The Bongo Hut-



Apparition On The Road Less Taken-

Voodoo Gidget-



Voodoo Smoke-



Voodoo Swing-

Voodoo Tween-


Next up - Comics and covers!
Join us then.

all paintings by Mary Fleener

MFin' Blue Monday - Opening Salvo

You likely read the subject line, so you already know it's a post for an off-kilter edition of

My head has been in chaos lately, as evidenced by the recent lack of postings. So i'm just going to embrace that today, and turn to someone who routinely pulls beauty out of the chaos -

NOTE: Mary's artwork here contains abstract nudity
and has been moved to our back room for adult content.
Please follow this link to The Other Voice Of ODD! archive
of the original post to view the artwork. 

This may or may not be a self-portrait.

Welcome to the weirdly wonderful artwork of Mary Fleener.
For our first peek, we'll echo last week's posts with a set of seven acrylic paintings that might be called Modern Religion:



Go ahead, take your time and let her work seep into your head.
We'll return later in the day with more MFin' art.

Y'know - this one strikes me as chaotic art for the #metoo movement...

See you then.

all artwork by Mary Fleener

Xmas Covered (part the Blue)

Somebody up there decided Xmas and Blue Monday should be on the same day. So we continue with Xmas Blue Covers -

NOTE: Due to the naked nature of these covers and our site restructuing,

they have been moved to our back room for adult content.

The covers range from comics to playboy to records.
Please follow this link to The Other Voice Of ODD! archive

of the original post to view the images.

Somehow, they managed to combine all things hentai in a single Xmas cover...

covers from a terrible place

It's a Blue Xmas Monday!

We're implementing something new today. It's a concern that those who don't care for more explicit material cannot easily know how far to scroll down so as to skip past the undesired content. So, we'll be adding Jump Breaks to posts with more graphic content. It is a day of giving, after all.

So, with that warning, we offer this X(XX)mas tale-

NOTE: Do to the restructuring of this site, the break has been removed and the

rest of this tale has been moved to our back room for adult content.
Please follow this link to The Other Voice Of ODD! archive

of the original post if you wish to view the story.

In The Days Before Photoshop...

My peripatetic mind won't go where i want it to currently, and refuses to focus to write more than a sentence or two at a time. So we sidestep for today's edition of

Back in 1967, if one wanted to alter photographs it took time, patience, blades, airbrush and skill.
And yet, somehow, this happened anyway...

NOTE: The images for this post contain photo-manipulated nudity

and have been moved to our back room for adult content.

The text remains, along with the censored cover image below,

that you may make a fair guess as to whether or not you wish to look at the pics.
Please follow this link to The Other Voice Of ODD! archive

of the original post to view the artwork.

Those 10 images & limericks actually comprise about 85% of the book. It really did take a lot of effort to create this sort of thing without the wonders of modern photo/art software. No wonder i went all digital in the art almost 25 years ago.

This odd post comes from

words & pics by Mel Norman and Arthur Benwood for Treasure Chests (1967)

Goin' Nagai (Part the First)

Shonen Jump is likely the most famous manga publication on the planet.
In 1968, when Shueisha was preparing to launch the title, they convinced a young Go Nagai to develop his first long form series for them. Harenchi Gakuen (School Scandal) was not only a smashing success, leading the magazine to million copy sales, but it was also a breakthrough in conventions. He was the first to use an erotic undercurrent in manga. It wasn't overt at this point, just opening the door to peek through the crack. But the public loved that peek, and the editors urged him to continue and take things further. Nagai eagerly complied and nudity began to appear as things stepped up to the next level.
Today, this is considered the spawning point of Hentai.

And, today is also

As noted in the subject, this is the big one that got bumped back - and it's too big to fit in one posting. So let's get started...

Over his career, there are two big characters who have spawned many mangas, animes, movies, and tv shows - Kekko Kamen and Cutie Honey.
NOTE: I'm spelling her name Kekko, but you'll see Kekkou just as often. I recommend Kekko simply because searching for Kekko will find Kekkou, but the inverse isn't necessarily so. (With modern search AI, it well could be, but not necessarily)

If you're familiar with these two characters, you probably understand my struggle of how to explain them.
Cutie Honey is a girl who is a prototype android with the ability to Flash! (and she does when she does)
The specifics, hows & whys might vary a bit from telling to telling, as well as the number of those who can Flash!, but the essential bit is this: Flash!ing  causes a recoding - structurally and mentally - rewriting Honey to be what she needs to be in the current situation. A surgeon, a motorcycle stunt-racer, a combat specialist - Honey FLASH! - there she is.
Of course, the process destroys her clothing, leaving her briefly naked in transition - Honey FLASH! indeed.

NOTE: Most of the images for this post contain nudity and have been moved to our back room for adult content. The text remains that you may make a fair guess as to whether or not you wish to look at the pics.
Please follow this link to The Other Voice Of ODD! archive of the original post to view the artwork.

And we're not just talking comics here. (I know, really i do. But i'm gonna do it again)
Cutie Honey has also been cartoons...

...and had a TV series...

...and movies...

...she even got a dark & gritty reboot last year:

Okay - that's the normal one. She'll get her own post, but Cutie Honey hardly really qualifies for Blue Monday.

Then there's Kekko...

Let's see now.
Over at the Big Toenail Of Satan's Spartan Academy, the staff is very concerned about the student's grades. So concerned that there are special punishment rooms and teachers to ensure they keep those grades up:

 (The school's reputation for placing students in prime universities would suffer if the grade performance dropped, you see) 

 The punishment regimes might be considered a tad... Unorthodox?

Extreme?

Reprehensible?

All of the above?

Enter our hero - Kekko Kamen:

Hiding only her face, she bares all to protect the virtue of the students of the Spartan Academy from the depredations of the staff.
That may be the most normal part of the series.

Kekko loves to make an entrance, mocking cartoon/tv/movie conventions by blaring her theme song before she arrives on the scene to make sure everyone is watching her exhibition. In fact, sometimes making an entrance is all she needs to do...



(Okay. Forget what i said in the first panel above. By the time i got to that last page i realized what a mistake trying to keep the Japanese characters unreversed while reversing the page. Beyond the ridiculous amount of work some fixes require, it's just silly since anyone reading the Japanese is going to be annoyed by the inconsistent left/right structure. I'm calling it a bad idea and moving right along.)

Meanwhile...
Kekko's main weapon might seem to be her nunchaku, but her real weapon is her body, as you saw in that last sequence. And she has a signature move to take advantage of that power - the Pubic Hair Jump (which is really kind of odd since she doesn't have any)...

...often followed by the Muffocation Wring:

 

Most Westerners familiar with Kekko Kamen know her from the rather tamer anime series. Tamer, but still keeping her signature move:

Kekko hasn't had a live action TV series like Cutie Honey has. But she's had 11 films to date, released between 1991 and 2012:

Kekko Kamen

Kekko Kamen 2

Kekko Kamen 3 

Kekko Kamen: Mask Of Kekkou

Kekko Kamen: The MGF Strikes Back

Kekko Kamen Returns 

Kekko Kamen  Surprise

Kekko Kamen Royale

Kekko Kamen Premium

Kekko Kamen Forever

Kekko Kamen Reborn

As one might suspect, the adaptations vary considerably when dealing with this source material. But, yes, again - her signature move carries through all versions:

 

In fact, in one movie we've got a full-on "I Am Spartacus!" moment...

...followed by a mass flying wedge PHJ:

Of course, if this is our hero, one has to wonder what our villains are like, no?
We'll find out more next time as we look closer at Kekko Kamen, in all 3 formats-

Kekko Kamen created by Go Nagai (bless his hentai heart)

Yeah, that should keep 'em staring for a week!

Oh, frell - the mic's still liv-   

*Ahem*
That's our show for today. Take care, everyone, drive careful, and we'll see you next time on

Blue Monday - Cafe Redux

Nope. This isn't the feature that got bumped last week. (But the last reference resource has been stalked and trapped, so - next week?) This week we have another feature that we said we'd get back to, prompted by recently finding an old favorite print by the late, great Dave Stevens, the star of today's

We'll get to that print mentioned above in just a bit. First, let's take a look at some pose sheets, from which you might recognize the beginnings of works you've seen previously. Here's a half dozen pages for a peek behind the Master's work:


NOTE: Most of the images for this post contain nudity and have been moved to our back room for adult content. The text remains that you may make a fair guess as to whether or not you wish to look at the pics.
Please follow this link to The Other Voice Of ODD! archive of the original post to view the artwork.


*sigh*
That Priscilla, she's one clever lady.
With preliminary sketch work like that, one hardly needs fully rendered works. But, we got those.
We've got black & white images, both lovingly textured pencils and finely delineated inks...

 

...and colour works, from outre comic book stylings...

...to more painterly styled images of lovely ladies...

 

...to even his rarely seen cartoony side in this poster for the 1984 movie Up The Creek...

And, then, of course, there's the immortal Bettie Page, with whom Dave gives us all of the above. Black & white...

...colour...

...cartoony...

...and the preliminary sketch...

...for that favorite old print i found last week:

I had to remove the lid from the scanner to capture this beauty in sections and stitch it together in Photoshop, so this image is larger than is typical here. Enjoy a close look at this lovely print, and then scroll back up and delight at the more subtly erotic look on Bettie's face in the preliminary sketch.
Dave Stevens is another one of those cases where i wonder just how much we lost with him. At only 52 when he died, he was just reaching the age at which many artists are entering a peak period, with decades of learning and practice to draw upon. That print above, for example, was painted when he was not yet 30.

It's probably best not to dwell on what we lost with him. Better to scroll back up and appreciate all he left us.

everything but the logo by Dave Stevens. Thanks, mate.

Blue Monday - Climax

 Welcome back.
How'd you like that lovely Beauty & The Beast piece at the top of Maroto's blog page?
You did go look, right?

Okay, you were promised another story, so let's start there. This tale, like the previous trio, comes from Vampirella, because - Blue Monday. Previously we had a tale in the "tradition of Scheherazade" by Bill Dubay & Esteban Maroto. I believe the same team brings us this tale, but the writer goes uncredited, so it's hard to be certain. The other big question: Is this Maroto's colours?


NOTE: Most of the images for this post contain nudity and have been moved to our back room for adult content. The text remains that you may make a fair guess as to whether or not you wish to look at the pics.
Please follow this link to The Other Voice Of ODD! archive of the original post to view the artwork.


...or until the next writer decided otherwise.
Finally, for today, we have another half-dozen images by our esteemed subject. We'll start with a bit of black & white line work, and climb up the ladder to full paintings:

If i wasn't already an Edgar Rice Burroughs fan, this might get me to buy Tarzan's books:

We've seen Maroto drawing other famous characters, but he also is prone to creating tributes to other artists, such as this piece honoring/homaging Milo Manara:

...and these two paintings in tribute to Jose Segrelles:

This last piece is a little special for a sad reason. The original has been damaged; the canvas scraped and flecked to white in places. Here is a semi-restored version. (No reference of the undamaged version available for full restoration)

*sigh*
A fitting end to this piece.

all art by Maroto. Pages from Vampirella #72 (1978)

Welcome to part 2 of our Blue Monday celebration of Esteban Maroto.

It was mentioned last time that he designed Red Sonja's metal bikini. Here's a couple of model sheets for reference:

One thing to note here - most of today's images, like those above, are photographs rather than scans of the originals. As you can see quite easily if you look at the red border lines, things can get a little distorted that way. But, moving right along...
Not surprisingly, Maroto also drew a bit of Conan while passing through at Marvel. This Conan drawing came a bit later-

NOTE: Most of the images for this post contain nudity and have been moved to our back room for adult content. The text remains that you may make a fair guess as to whether or not you wish to look at the pics.
Please follow this link to The Other Voice Of ODD! archive of the original post to view the artwork.

If you prefer your fantasy a bit more up-to-date, you can follow the evolution of everybody's favorite Khaleesi through some of his artworks...

...or perhaps more classic fantasy, such as Alice...

...or Dracula...

...or even simply nameless faeries...

You can also find him rendering characters from other comics and media, such as Barbarella...

...Drunna...

...and Valentina...

...and, all sorts of beautiful renderings...

Oh! But, i haven't told you the best part.
Señor Maroto maintains an online contact point where you can not only see all of the above images, at larger size, and Many more - but you can also request custom commissioned artwork from the man! It doesn't update too frequently, but it is still active, and just up the digital street from here:

Esteban Maroto's Blog

We'll be back once more today with another story or two, and more artwork (that isn't from his blog, so go ahead a peruse the lovely works there while you're waiting)

all art by Esteban Maroto

Odd how things work. I decided to push my planned subject back a week due to the amount of work required to try to cover things a tad more than her costume. So i pulled some pages that were in the pile and decided this would be good. And then things started spiraling...
In the end, i suspect it would have been less effort to go with my original plan. The only way this is going to work is if we make this a multi-part

You see, my plan was just to run a few ... sort of fairy tale interpretations, illustrated by Esteban Maroto. But then there was that fourth colour tale. And when digging for a few biographical notes, all these damn beautiful pictures kept getting in the way. So, forget it. I'm not going to agonize over what to not use, i'm just going to spread things out into 3 posts over the day.

Anybody who was a fan of Warren's main magazines back in the 70s and 80s knows who Esteban Maroto is. But, while he produced a goodly amount of work in this country (over 100 stories for Warren alone), he only worked with DC and Marvel briefly, usually on a mini-series here and there. So many fans may not be familiar with his beautifully rendered work. Which isn't to say he didn't leave lasting marks while briefly passing through. For example, he designed her iconic outfit-

NOTE: Most of the images for this post contain nudity and have been moved to our back room for adult content. The text remains that you may make a fair guess as to whether or not you wish to look at the pics.
Please follow this link to The Other Voice Of ODD! archive of the original post to view the artwork.

Like it or love it, it's hard to deny the impact her chainmail bikini had on designs in the decades to follow.

But we'll talk more extensively about Señor Maroto later in the day. For now, let's start with those first three tales to which i referred previously. Two tales written by Bill Dubay, and a third by Timothy Moriarity.

First up, a tale in the tradition of Scheherazade, of a bold adventurer by the name of Ali Addan...



From Arabian tales, we travel to the classic Greek myths, and Perseus-



 Continuing on, we travel to the Danish coast and the story of a Little Mermaid-



All three of these tales appeared in Her magazine-

Here are the covers for those who enjoy them, or want a visual reference for hunting down the issues:

Join us later today for a colour tale, and more about the man and his lovely artwork. After all, you wouldn't want to bypass a man who still remembers Rima, The Jungle Girl, would you?

I know i wouldn't.

all art by Esteban Maroto, story pages for Vampirella #s 60, 68, & 102 (1977, 1978, 1982)

It Was The 70s...

Our Halloween Blue Monday continues with, as alluded, The Sexorcist-

Yes, eagle-eyed readers, that is Ernie Colon's artwork gracing the cover of this book. In fact, though it is a text novel, Colon's art is on pretty much every page. It is a short book, however. Less than 50 pages of text.

If you're too young to be familiar with Ernie Colon's work as an artist and editor, he began his career back in the 60s, working at Harvey, Gold Key and Warren before moving to DC to work as both artist & editor. That didn't stop him from working with Marvel, too. The man's work was everywhere, and he introduced characters like Amethyst and edited titles like Flash, Green Lantern, & Wonder Woman.
In more recent times he's drawn the 9/11 Commission Report graphic novel and other more politically important work.

As you can tell looking at the cover, this was the 1970s.
Ernie was approached to illustrate the book for Bleep, but didn't really want to do that sort of thing and turned them down. But, they wanted him and kept pushing more money at him until he felt it would be just stupid to refuse it. It was the 70s - sex was on the upswing, The Exorcist was huge. And Jaws gave us that cello Da-Dum echoing in our heads...



NOTE: Most of the images for this post contain nudity and have been moved to our back room for adult content. The text remains that you may make a fair guess as to whether or not you wish to look at the pics.
Please follow this link to The Other Voice Of ODD! archive of the original post to view the artwork.


Hey, look! Jack Kirby wasn't the only one experimenting with collage work in his comics back in 1974:



Unfortunately, the printing on this page is terribly muddy. I'd love to see this artwork clean:



It's not a great book, but it's certainly unique and a look at a side of Ernie Colon's work we don't often see.
The author goes uncredited on the book. In fact, the only credit is Ernie's signature on his work.
Even the publisher's name gets BLEEPed.

illustrations for The Sexorcist by Ernie Colon for Bleep Publications (1974)

Monday Cafe

It's time to face a new week, and we always try to help with our regular Monday feature -

...um, no....  That's not it. But that is our featured artist this outing - Dave Stevens, an artist fairly well known for his loving renditions of the female form, as well as for triggering a renaissance of interest in the immortal Bettie Page. Both are easily great features we'll focus on in the future, let's narrow things down a bit to vaguely Halloween/Spooky/Supernatural themed images from Mr. Stevens for this edition of

Meanwhile, back in the pumpkin patch...

NOTE: Most of the images for this post contain nudity and have been moved to our back room for adult content. The text remains that you may make a fair guess as to whether or not you wish to look at the pics.
Please follow this link to The Other Voice Of ODD! archive of the original post to view the artwork.

That comic sure has changed since i was a kid.
Something we get to see less often is Dave's paintings, such as this lovely witch-

Dave's Delicious Daughters of Darkness:



She may be "dressed," but his rendition of Vampirella looks all the more naked for it

Ever wonder who's in charge of dirty movies down below?

Let's end it with a another look at the bewitching Jill-

That's enough for now. We wouldn't want to have to call a sexorcist...

all art by Dave Stevens (various)

If You Insist...

Wasn't going to emerge from the cave today ... just didn't feel like i should. Hermit me gets that way.
But apparently a bunch of you showed up looking for it, so here's

If You Insist, our post title, actually sounds like it could be the title of one of today's creator's collections:


NOTE: The images for this post contain nudity and have been moved to our back room for adult content. The text remains that you may make a fair guess as to whether or not you wish to look at the pics.
For text reference, the titles of the book covers presented here are: Where Do You Want To Go?, We're Going Farther?, Have You No Shame?, and Are You Interested?
Please follow this link to The Other Voice Of ODD! archive of the original post to view the artwork.


Much of these volumes are collections of Dany's comic Grin & Bare It!, with new work as well, as near as i can tell. Both style and material range widely from cartoons to paintings, from light teasing to interspecies romance, from social commentary to pure indulgence.

This late in the day, let's just take a quick peek for now.
Here's some cartoons to open up:



Those last two segue rather well into somewhat more painterly works, though we'll see more realism of style later...




Act 3 brings us a short strip...

(the poor translation is mine. I'm sure he said it better)

Dany done it

Underground Monday

Presuming you have one...   Who's your favorite underground comics creator?

That's a pretty tough question for some folks, for others, it's an instant answer. This is one of the rare categories where i can narrow out a single favorite, despite how much i may enjoy many others. Decades after his death, you can still find oblique references in my artwork, such as in this painting:

That should narrow it down to one of two people, and given that the other one is still alive in the wilds of Ohio, the answer becomes obvious.
Hm, what?
Yeah, 'obvious' is subject to definition. First off - the pertinent aspect of the above image is the name of her truck, painted on the door - the Overland Vegetable Stagecoach.
NOW it's obvious, right?

Overland Vegetable Stagecoach was the team name used by Dave Sheridan and Fred Schrier for a few issues worth of work they created way back in the day for Mother's Oats. No slight to Fred Schrier here (I built the Time Machine according to his schematics, and it worked magnificently), but Dave Sheridan was touched in the head in a way i've been touched, so his work just felt closer to home at times.

Many of those who recognize his name will do so from Sheridan's work with Gilbert Shelton on Those Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, and/or from his most famous creation - Dealer McDope. But today let's look at how Dave Sheridan can appear in a book with classic underground creators like Robert Crumb, Jaxon, and Spain - and still be the Star of the book. Besides, today is the first day of the week, which means this has all been a circumlocutory approach to...

Our subject today?
The Oh-So-70s nunsploitation undergound book from Last Gasp Eco-Funnies starring The Leather Nun, and Tales thereof.

Allow us to elaborate:

NOTE: This advert and the following pages contain nudity and have been moved to our back room for adult content. The text remains that you may make a fair guess as to whether or not you wish to look at the pics.
Please follow this link to The Other Voice Of ODD! archive of the original post to view the artwork.

Dave Sheridan provided the cover for the book:


And while there is very definitely a singular Leather Nun character, as depicted above, the individual stories are not all bound to her (Her?).  At most, She provides the thematic (and moral?) core of the title, but that's loosely applied.

Another underground creator who's very high up on my list is Jaxon, who here decided to go historical again with the story of a 'mad' Arab monk named Alhazared and 


This is unbelievable to Alhazared, who knows her "pussy is as dainty and delicate as it was before <her> luscious mons sprouted its first silky hairs, centuries ago." However, closer inspection reveals...

After studying a necromiconic tomb, Alhazared realizes his own magicks have caused the problem, having "warped time upon itself, in the process juxtaposing our dimension with another - beyond finite comprehension"
As we all know (right?) "the minions of the Great Old Ones inhabit this dark abyss, lurking, waiting for some mortal blunder to provide them a gateway" through which the banished Elder Gods might return to regain their ascendancy...



With minimal foreplay, the pair proceed to couple within the confines of the protective magic circle before it's too late...



Jaxon probably pairs best with Sheridan, but the two should maybe not be read in combination on heavy drugs, especially psychedelic hallucinogens.

Spain, on the other hand, goes for the cold hard digs into society & religion with his 3 page tale:



R. Crumb, Himself, has his own brief encounter with Religion and A Nun, if not THE Nun, (and finds he's having nun of that) in the middle of short examination of his inner drives:


Meanwhile, Pat Ryan sticks with the religion theme, but switches to Father Justin Thyme and the Confessions Of A Teen Confessioner...


...and Roger Brand's tale, Br'er Dragon's Dream (or The Meat Will Please Come To Order) just tossed that memo in the trash and went off into strange scifi territory:


But the core of the book is Dave Sheridan's tale. It's reminiscent of his implicitly drug fueled mindwarped journeys/tales as a part of the Overland Vegetable Stagecoach, shifting between levels of reality quite casually. It's a fair example of what i enjoy about his work. Note that pages 2-5 are smaller than the others. That's because they were originally formatted 2 to a page - sideways - on pages 2 & 3 of the original comic.


One of those aches i get inside is when i think he died before 40, and all that we lost with him.

Keep Hanging In There, Fred!

pages by indicated artists from Tales Of The Leather Nun (1973)