GENE BILBREW REVEALED: The Unsung Legacy of a Fetish Art Pioneer: 1 (African American Artists)

Product Information

Ditko’s material showed a total unawareness of sex while Stanton’s material conveyed a kooky preoccupation with it. Yet both shared the same ambition of make it as artists; and both, one might say, were earnest and obsessed.” This can be read in a single afternoon. Most of it is taken up by pictures, which is no complaint at all, given the fantastic quality of the art (this would be five stars if this book were bigger and in color), and the fact that almost nothing is known about Gene. His text is accompanied throughout by lots and lots of illustrations, many in color, and Seves gives the histories of several of Stanton’s serials and tells their stories. The book is virtually an extensively annotated bibliography of Stanton’s life work. But it’s more than that. It’s also a detailed biography, a sketchy history of “the bizarre,” and an exhibition of Stanton’s ladies. Reproduction throughout is high quality.

While Stanton wanted to honor Ditko’s work by not claiming any part of it for himself, he had another reason for avoiding the subject: he wanted to protect his family by keeping a low profile: GENE BILBREW REVEALED: The Unsung Legacy of a Fetish Art Pioneer by Richard Pérez Seves. New York, Fethistory, 2019. ISBN 978-1072487548 According to Pérez Seves, later that year, at age 19, Bilbrew would evade the draft due to psychiatric reasons [1] :8 and become a founding member of his first vocal group, The Mellow Tones. [1] :9 Career [ edit ] A forced feminization drawing from Women Bind and Dominate Male Maid by Bilbrewreport information) Script Riccardo Morrocchi Pencils ? (photography) Inks ? (photography) Letters typeset

Says Seves: “One could only imagine how gratifying Ditko’s presence must have been to Stanton after his time with Grace; from being around someone who was repulsed by art to being around someone whose very waking moment was consumed by it. ‘There were times Steve would spend twenty hours straight doing a comic,’ Stanton remembered. Note that Bilbrew still is true to his fetish roots. The boys wear exotic clothing including corsets, high heels, garter belts and tight panty girdles under their panties to ‘keep them modest'. The sorority girls in contrast look rather normal, almost plain compared to the cross-dressed boys.He began his fetish comic work in the late '40s and early '50s, producing strips for Irving Klaw's Movie Star News, after working for the Will Eisner Comic Book Studio. Eric Stanton -- whom he'd met while attending Burne Hogarth's School of Visual Arts -- may have first introduced him to Irving Klaw. He largely set the standard that other fetish comics illustrators followed. As with many of the Movie Star News artists, the strips from the period he is best known for are few and far between, scattered among the hidden collections of his fans, as few of the originals have survived. He also drew for Fantasia, Exotique and Nutrix, and did forced-feminization art for the latter, although his bondage work is best remembered. Their friendship,” she added, “was centered around creating art. Each of them contributed to the other's art as part of the friendship between two artists. While each was the driving force behind his own work, there was significant overlap. Steve contributed to the erotic stories my father worked on and my father contributed to Spider-Man and probably other stories. Neither one of them ever expected any recognition or money from the other.”

The Sorority plans a party for the ‘Delta Delta' girls, and the boys are mortified to find that they must serve. The boys were quite concerned. "But won't the Delta Delta girls spread the word around the campus about our being your . . . your maids?"

It was, in short, just the kind of setup that encouraged the two artists to kibbitz each other’s work. And also to lend each other a hand when deadlines loomed. Almost at once Stanton recognized that art provided a unique satisfaction he did not experience in real life: not only access to a special fantasy world, but a sense of personal power: ‘I had control ... I could have the people I drew do anything I wanted’ he reflected in later years. ‘I was king of my world.’ Control and powerlessness—as mirrored in the secret subculture of the sexual fantasist–would become a major theme in his art. [...]

Over the years, Stanton would produce work for several merchants of fetish art: Edward Mishkin, who ran a store near Times Square (in those days, the neighborhood of sexploitation with dozens of stores selling girlie magazines, photographs, movies, and smut); Leonard Burtman, publisher and merchandiser; Max Stone, publisher of fighting female serials; and Stanley Malkin, also a Times Square entrepreneur, who would hire Stanton, putting him on salary, to do covers for his magazines—Stanton’s longest salaried situation as a fetish artist, 1963-68. Malkin also furnished and paid all the expenses for a small apartment for Stanton. Seves quotes Ditko about the full-face mask: “I did it because it hid [Peter Parker’s] obviously boyish face. It would also add mystery to the character and allow the reader/viewer the opportunity to visualize, to ‘draw,’ his own preferred expression Peter Parker’s face and, perhaps, become the personality behind the mask.”While Stanton began his career as a bondage fantasy artist for Irving Klaw, the majority of his later work depicted gender role reversal and proto-feminist female dominance scenarios. Commissioned by Klaw starting in the late 1940s, his bondage fantasy chapter serials earned him underground fame. Stanton also worked with pioneering underground fetish art publishers, Leonard Burtman, the notorious Times Square publisher.