Muriel

Our blogfather has a review on his Pop Culture Gadabout site this week for an infamous low-budget comedy, Bela Lugosi Meets A Brooklyn Gorilla, that is much beloved in these quarters for the co-starring presence of fat comic actress Muriel Landers. A plus-sized sweetie who regularly played The Fat Girl in 50’s/60’s movies and sitcoms, Landers was a talented singer and an attractive BBW to boot. Though too often the butt of unfunny anti-fat jokes (Brooklyn Gorilla abounds in ‘em), she’s still a treat to watch coz she’s one of those performers who openly brings her pleasure at being on film into every role. To my eyes, Landers’ only real rival in the era is Peggy Mondo (Ethel in the movie version of The Music Man). Both actresses, interestingly, played the Fat Girl role in a recurring "Landrews Sisters" sketch on the old Jack Benny Show and had parts in Jerry Lewis’ Who’s Minding the Store? besides.

While I’m assured the short itself is no great shakes, Our Muriel also stars in one of Jules White’s non-Stooges Columbia two-reelers, “Tricky Chicks,” wherein she eats a roast chicken on camera. Sounds like a much more edifying entertainment than Brooklyn Gorilla . . .

What Goes on Between Panels

After putting up single versions of his strips on this yere blog, I’ve finally been able to construct a full-page of Ned Sonntag’s BUF strips on Dimensions On-Line. The results, which include a fresh provocative two-page BUFfer initially scanned by Ned for another site, can be found here. There still remain some unscanned Sonntag BUF submissions in the Barbers Collection, tho some of ‘em were so poorly printed by the magazine that I’m fairly certain the artist wouldn’t appreciate my posting ‘em on the web. The coloring, unfortunately, looks like somp’n viewed through a foggy fishbowl . . .

Steve Trevor Should Be So Lucky!

Derrick Fish, who continues to delight with fresh SSBBW graphics at his web log (man, does that Jabba the Hut & Princess Leia graphic draw on my younger dreams of a weight-battling Carrie Fisher!), drew my attention to another art blog entirely devoted to graphics of a fat Amazonian Princess, Jamar Nicholas’ BBWW: The Fat Wonder Woman Blog. To those geezerly FAs like yours truly who fondly recall the Silver Age Wonder Woman twice getting fat thanx to some alien funhouse mirrors, the thought of a series of comic book and animation artists tackling a plus-sized Diana Prince definitely has its allure. Haven’t gotten too far back into this blog’s archives yet (I will note that Fish’s offering outdoes every other submission on the first page, however), but I really dug superhero artist Bret Blevins’ super-sized submission. The calves may be a bit precarious, but I got a charge out of her full-faced expression – very provocative . . .

Postscript: I should also note that Jamar has a fun web comic which I’m also trying to catch up on: Detective Boogaloo.

Nurse Midsighs

From the July ’95 issue of BUF, here’s a Ned Sonntag one-pager that I suspect might’ve thrown much of its men’s mag readership when first it appeared:


(Once again, the above strip is copyright Ned Sonntag.)

A Face from the Past

How did I not know that artist Ruben Esq (who I remember doin’ a sweet set of BBW comic strips back in the early days of Dimensions as well as a series of graphics for Juggs) had his own Sketch Blog? Haven’t made my way through the full series of pics yet (there's a lot there), but I’m really drawn to the series of “Skin Tights” illos that the artist posted back in November: some very appealing, sexy images . . .

Love That Ice Cream Parlor Pic!

I should note that Derrick Fish has added a host of new images to his splendid new graphics blog, Fish’s Big Girls, including two pics of eating beauties that I’m gonna personally carry with me a lonnnnng time. Very luscious . . .

B & A

Did some cleaning out today of my membership in a buncha Yahoo Groups: it occurred to me that as I was clicking thru the newest batch of pics in one of the Very Fat Women groups, that a certain kinda picture no longer held any interest for me. Most FAs – when they’re young and in search of anything that’ll validate their sense of what’s truly attractive – go through a period where they spend a lotta time looking at weight loss “before” pics. For many of us in those misbegotten days before the Internet and the niche plus-sized model market, it was practically the only place where you could find photos of decent looking fat women. That many of these photos were intentionally poorly focused (good photographs were for that wonderful day when the fat subject actually lost weight!) did little to dissuade us FA seekers: what mattered was the hint of super-sized beauty behind the blurriness.

These days, with so many full and vibrant and self-assured fat women on the web, there’s no real reason for me to linger on such images anymore. For a time, as a writer of fiction that is focused on the physical form of my fat protagonists, I was of the mindset that I needed as many pictures as I could get. If you’re gonna fixate on descriptions of fatness, after all, you want to have a clear image of as many different angles as possible. But so many “before” weight loss pics are so stolid and monotonous, so consistently the same boring pose, that to see one is to see ‘em all.

Too, so many of these women are so clearly unhappy with their present selves, so focused on a person that they futilely hope to some day become, that the cumulative effect of clicking through ‘em is just plain depressing. Give me a photo of someone – no matter what their size – who’s learned to be comfortable with who they are in the present. (Like all of the BBWs in my blogroll.) That’s what I wanna see nowadays . . .

The End o' Joy

Posted the final chapter of Vic Martin’s men’s mag BBBimbo strip, “Joy Gorge,” on the Dimensions website this weekend. The series finale (it was replaced by another Martin strip, “Titanic Tina,”) managed to be simultaneously strange and half-assed. But for lovers of Oddball Comics, the strip’s noteworthy for reviving Otto Binder & C.C. Beck’s “Fatman,” a little-known superhero from the glory days of Oddballs . . .