What will strike the reader immediately about the Gwendoline comics is just how good-natured they are. Gwendoline does however have an ally - a beautiful glamorous lady secret agent code-named U-89. Poor Gwendoline finds herself the victim of sinister plots by dissolute aristocrat Sir Dystic d’Arcy and d’Arcy’s henchwoman the Countess. John Willie was a writer, artist and photographer and was the editor and publisher of Bizarre magazine but he is probably best known for his comic strips featuring his heroine Sweet Gwendoline. Willie was himself inspired by early movie serials such as The Perils of Pauline. Just Jaeckin’s wonderful and delightful 1984 movie Gwendoline was inspired by Willie’s comics. John Willie became something of a cult figure in the 70s and he has had a considerable influence on pop culture. You might be wondering what on earth I’m doing reviewing his work here but if you read on you’ll see that he is not an entirely inappropriate subject for this blog. John Alexander Scott Coutts (1902-1962), who used the pseudonym John Willie, is perhaps the most famous figure in the history of fetish art and literature of the 20th century. The Adventures of Sweet Gwendoline is a hardcover volume published in 1974 which collects most of John Willie’s comics and many of his drawings.
