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.

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

Grizzly Bear Escape From Savage Island Stalked By Sex-Starved Voodoo Girls!

One thing that my Comics Archeology expeditions can frequently generate is odd looks. When i start pulling out old fanzines, APAs and garage press publications, hand printed and stapled together, the looks start. Especially when the title is something like Man's Guts.

Friends, acquaintances, and strangers alike respond in the same way - "Dude! WTF?" (Yes, i spent a lot of time frequenting conventions and shops in California) "Why are you even looking at that crap? And, seriously - that title? What kind of pervo are you?"

Well, skipping past trying to categorize or classify, i'll merely acknowledge without labels and move on to the primary question. My answer is typically along the lines of "I've never seen it before, don't know what it is. It's got drawings and it's cheap."

Seriously, that's more than reason enough. Sure, plenty of it turns out to be crap - that's to be expected as per Sturgeon's Revelation. But then you mine those little gems that so vastly tip the balance and make it very worthwhile. By this point, you've probably figured that this is one of those occasions. Let's look at the table of contents and see what we've got here:

Kamikaze Nudes of the Secret Pacific Empire?  
Lesbian Mudwrestlers Behind Bars?  
Bayou Kingdom of Undead Cuties?!?
Okay, maybe the titles are a bit misleading for the intent of the zine, hm? Let's listen to what the Editor has to say for the introduction to this new publication:

 I included the North Carolina address as a point of reference, in case you were inclined to debate how heartfelt the editorial might or might not be.

As for overall quality, in these pre-computer days of xerox or mimeograph printing, options were quite limited for an amateur press. Mimeographs allows no photographs, and any images were typically hand drawn - backwards. So it's no surprise that the book's text is strictly two column type-written pages...

 So - what the frell are we doing here?

I don't know if you clicked for the bigger view of that cover above, but let's take a closer look now...

That's Bruce By God Timm's signature hiding there.
I've been a big fan of his work since a few years before this, when he and Neal Hansen (Spyder) were working together on Whisper. But you're far more likely to be familiar with him from his style setting design work on the Batman cartoons...

...sorry. I meant the Batman Animated shows...

...and the follow-up Superman animated series...

Oops. Pardon us, Lois.
Obviously, there's a Blue Monday feature on Timm down the road a piece, as likely implied on our previous peeks at his Naughty And Nice side. But today, we not only get a Bruce Timm cover, we also get a full page illustration for each story!

Kamikaze Nudes of the Secret Pacific Empire

Lesbian Mudwrestlers Behind Bars

Bayou Kingdom of Undead Cuties

Menace of the Mail Order Brides

Change from Your Dollar

And that, fellowbabies, is why i dig through those unknown piles so eagerly while others are trying to find what they already know is there.

all art by Bruce Timm, pages from Man's Guts #1 (1989)

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:

*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.