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Intent on seeing Willie's true legacy remembered, Rund spent years trying to get his work published. Eventually he decided to do it himself and founded Belier Press in the mid-'70s. "The Adventures of Sweet Gwendoline" sold 26,000 copies. Belier Press later published the first books about voluptuous 1950s pinup queen Bettie Page, as well as books by underground cartoonists such as R. Crumb and Art Spiegelman, creator of the "Maus" series.

Portfolio The Rembrandt of pulp A portfolio of illustrations by John Willie (Click to display images in a new browser window. Best viewed with browsers higher than 3.0) The Adventures of Sweet Gwendoline By John Willie Bélier Press 368 pages Buy Sweet Gwendoline

While the content may have been risqué at the time, Willie colored within the lines in order to blend into mainstream publications. "He works within the cliché; he's naughty in content yet so sweet in his representation," observes California painter Whitney Cowing. "He doesn't push the boundaries artistically; Willie wants to seduce good ol' boys with an artistic style they are familiar with and a subject they have only dreamt of."

Still, Cowing maintains that Willie had a strong influence on several modern cartoonists, including John Howard, who illustrates "Horny Biker Sluts," a bimonthly comic that bookstore owners hide in the back room, away from the kiddies, because of its graphic depictions of sex ("every orifice," groans one store owner).

Willie was known for his use of conventional crosshatching and other rustic pen marks to characterize the villains and a smoother, more idealized form for the heroines. Instead of explicit depictions of sex, Willie would bob and weave with an innuendo punch, unlike certain contemporaries who depicted "some despicable acts," as Rund puts it. Willie's two-step may have been a bow to censors (some of his private drawings were far more prurient), yet Rund believes that Willie was indeed bound by morals. "Willie grew up watching silent films," Rund notes. "When he saw a woman tied up, he wanted to rescue the damsel, not rape her. In the context of Victorian melodrama, you can't defile the heroine."

Even Willie's harnesses and masks have a feathery delicacy. One illustration depicts a bird untying the laces of a high heel, and the reader almost expects Snow White to skip into the series. Willie had married Holly Anna Faram, who became his model and muse. When acquaintances first visited his apartment, a black-and-white photo of a naked woman tied to a tree greeted them. "Oh," Willie would shrug, "that's the missus."

Faram stayed in Australia when Willie decided to live in the States, but the couple remained married and Willie maintained a platonic understanding with his other models.

In the early '90s, Rund's friends encouraged him to do a second edition of "The Adventures of Sweet Gwendoline" after they observed how fetishism had infiltrated the mainstream, with Madonna's book "Sex," Manolo Blahnik stilettos and dominatrix shades in the clothing designed by Jean-Paul Gaultier. Yesteryear erotica is fashionable in the swinger/cocktail lounge set, and places like the Viper Room in Los Angeles feature a weekly burlesque routine. "Time does lend enchantment," says James Maclean of the Erotic Print Review. "The pornography of yesterday probably is the erotica of tomorrow."

Willie diluted sadomasochism's sting by drawing the Sweet Gwendoline series' villain, Sir Dystic D'Arcy, in his own likeness. Willie broke porn taboos, for the bad boy did not get the girl. "Making himself the villain and making the villain a loser was Willie's way of acknowledging his own [career] failures," Rund speculates. "Willie had certain self-esteem issues; if a woman is tied up, she can't reject you."

Rund contends Willie was the first fetish artist who illustrated only from models or from photographs he took himself. American fetish artist Eric Stanton, who specialized in illustrations of "fighting femmes" in the late 1940s and early '50s, was a contemporary illustrator also noted for his realism, but "Stanton would create a fantasy and pretend it's real," Rund says. "Willie took reality and made it fantasy. But his realism made it unique; you could imagine these things happening because the poses were real." But Rund distinguishes between proclivity and pathology. "For Willie, tying a woman up was a preference, not a necessity," he writes in the book's introduction.

"Some guys get excited by white panties but can't get excited without them. You have to control the urge instead of letting the urge control your life," Rund says. He was careful to package the book with a bow rather than a whip. "I try to present this [genre] as history," he explains. "But I don't feel a need to apologize for it. I don't pretend this stuff is about love."

It's not about hate and misogyny, either. Rund is quick to add that Willie genuinely liked women and portrayed his female characters as the brains and his males as empty brawn. "You look at bondage and domination Web sites and they're nailing tits to a table," the 57-year-old growls. "Today you tie 'em up and fuck 'em, but with John Willie you only imagined that part. If Sweet Gwendoline is alone with the villain Sir Dystic D'Arcy, another character enters the picture before anything can happen."

"What set John Willie apart was his humanity," Rund says. "There was a part of him that was still that little boy reading a fairy book and fantasizing about rescuing a damsel in distress." It was better that Willie's readers had to wonder whether the boy got the girl. "If you have everything you want," Rund says, "there's nothing to look forward to."
salon.com | March 11, 2000

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