Archeology of Stanton
Five expert illustrations by Eric Stanton appear within The Profumo Cold War Sex Scandal essay that opens the 1963 Selbee magazine Focus on London. We've seen these drawings repeated in other Selbee magazines and in titles such as Bizarre Life, Corporal, Unique World and elsewhere. But we're guessing that the first time they appeared anywhere was in Focus on London, and, as art director of that magazine, Mr. Stanton drew them to illuminate the spy scandal narrative for which he designed the pages.
The style of this art shows Mr. Stanton's progression from the comic serial work he did for Mr. Klaw in the 1950s. The Maestro here uses pencil shading to show contour. His early slender feminine matrix has morphed into voluptuous female forms. The two Escape into Bondage volumes and the Stormy, Case of the Lost Legs and Satana comic serials also reflect this paint-and-pencil technique and set the date for it as middle 1960s.
Before we saw the article in Focus on London, we didn't know why he created these precise, narrative-laden illustrations. Continuity between pictures and prose is demonstrated by this alignment, beginning on page 12 of the magazine:
"Mariella was frequently seen in her peculiar leather costume — her waist squeezed until she had a perfect figure 8. Part of the corporal punishment fetish also requires that one partner (or both, quite frequently) be subjected to a bondage symbolism of very tight clothing.
"Mariella also wore sleek hosiery, the leather garments — the spiked heels or rubber boots similar to those worn by fishermen. These boots were erotic symbols that signified power and strength. The masochistic customers gloried in grovelling beneath Mariella's boots as she frequently trampled them, whipped them, humiliated them — which was pleasurable to their deviated urges."
The four other Stanton pictures in the article have comparable correlation to its descriptions of kinky spy scandal escapades. Public shame and courtroom drama led directly to Dr. Ward taking his own life.
