TITLE    : Modified Covers
STORYID  : modified-covers
SUMMARY  : A transformation devoutly to be desired.
AUTHOR   : Cal Y. Pygia@lit
DATE     : 2010-10-08
CATEGORY : reviews-and-essays
FLAGS    : 
TAGS     : |art|transgender|shemale|transsexual|crossdresser|transvestite|ladyboy|magazine|cover|transformation|


As a hobby, some artists enjoy modifying vintage magazine covers so that their original topics are transformed into transgender themes and shemale models replace the female faces and figures that originally graced the periodicals' covers. In the process, the titles of the magazines are sometimes changed, too. As a bonus, the modified magazines sometimes include stories that reflect the models' transformations.



Boy Becomes Girl shows a blonde in a yellow dress looking at herself in her bedroom mirror. On a bookshelf behind her, her photograph--that of the smiling boy she used to be--is displayed. The caption to the artwork explains the cause of the boy-girl's transformation: "A Sister's Dare Turns Him Into The Prom Princess!" The cover, visitors to the website that features the modified covers learn, "was inspired by the fine graphic artistry of Jenny North."



Undercover Crossdressers is a series in which "the boys infiltrate a wedding party to rescue a friend in danger" ("Bullets and Bouquets"); a "vanity spell" may "spell disaster for the team" ("Vanity, Thy Names is Steve/Stacy"); and "young Simon/Celeste goes on his first solo mission as a bride to bring down a crime syndicate" ("I Was A Teenage Mob Bride").



Fashion Reporter is also a series. In one story, our intrepid journalist, outfitted in a dress and high heels, is shown leaping from a burning building in which, through an open window, a police officer is seen grappling with a crook. The featured story, the redundant caption informs the reader, is about a reporter who is "crossdressed and trapped in a burning building." The journalist is more concerned with being outed than in surviving the leap, thinking, as she jumps, "I have to risk jumping! God, I hope nobody recognizes me!"



The second issue divulges the journalist's secret identity: "A closet transvestite, Mark Preston is the. . . Fashion Reporter." This issue's cover story is "Murder on the Runway," the plot of which has Mark dress "as a model to solve a mystery." (Wait! Is this Fashion Reporter or Undercover Crossdressers?) 



The third issue presents Mark as a damsel in distress. An assassin bursts through the balcony widows, into Mark's room, where he looks frightened, standing in a full-length gown. By clueing readers into his thoughts, the periodical makes it clear that "The killer must think" he is "Yvonne" since "he doesn't realize" that mark is "just trying on her clothes!"



The cover to Sex-Change Doctors shows a buxom nude (unfortunately under a sheet that drapes her from the middle of her breasts to just above her knees). She lies upon an operating table, and a pair of physicians is in attendance. One is ready with an aesthesia mask, while the other holds a pair of scissors in one hand and a scalpel in the other. The one with the surgical implements tells his colleague, "By the time this private dick [i. e, detective] wakes up, he'll be a three-dollar whore in some Thailand brothel." It seems an expensive means of supplying white slaves, even if the motive is not only profit but vengeance, but the storyline permits a sexy cover.



A copy of Man-Made Woman, featuring "The Girling Chamber" shows a pulchritudinous brunette lying supine inside a glass tube surrounded by men (who may be scientists; the setting has a vague laboratory-like look to it). One holds a lit blowtorch. "It's too late," he laments to his fellows. "Even if we can get him out, Mike's going to be a woman forever." Although the title of the story, "The Girling Chamber," suggests a technological transformation may be underway, nothing explicitly explains the cause of Mike's fate-worse-than-death. Presumably, to learn the details of his transformation, one must fork over the 10-cent cover price and read the story promoted by the cover.



Many of the modified covers are those of comic books. On one such magazine, Lana Lang and Lois Lane, assisted by a transsexual Jimmy Olsen surround Superman, presenting him with bouquets of flowers. The cover story, "The Flowers of Tiresias," concerns posies that have the power to transform men into women: "One whiff of their scent turned Jimmy into a woman! Will Lana and Lois change Superman next?" Maybe, if he doesn't have too much testosterone in those super genes! The modified magazine includes the story.



In another issue of the magazine, the Man of Steel is fettered to a chair, tubes running into the helmet that covers his head and into the bands that encircle his abs and forearms. A trio of lovelies (a redhead, a blonde, and a brunette, naturally) stand before him. The redhead informs their captive, "You couldn't defeat the Femizons, Superman, but don't worry. . . . soon you'll be a woman, too." The blonde tells him, "I've set the Gendertron for 'Buxom Brunette.'" The Man of Steel looks appropriately shocked and fearful. The story is called "The Birth of Superwoman!" (I guess now we know the origin of Superman's younger cousin, Supergirl.)



A third issue has Superman switch bodies with Lois Lane. Wearing an apron over his dress, the feminized version of the Man of Steel, looking, for all the world, like Lois Lane, stands (in high-heeled shoes), hands on hips, glaring at the thief who stole his body. "Lois, you thieving cunt! Give me back my body!" he demands. The female reporter, looking very masculine, indeed, in her stolen body, replies, "No chance, Super-tits!"



Superboy is also transformed into a girl in modified versions of Adventure Comics (Lex Luthor turns Clark Kent, Superboy's alter ego, into a transsexual girl, making him "The Laughingstock of Smallville," and Ma and Pa Kent encourage their son-become-a-daughter to accept his new identity in "The End of Superboy." 



In a Transgender Secrets cover story, the narrative's tagline introduces its title: "Sometimes it can be tough on a boy to be the 'New Girl on the Block.'" The modified magazine includes the story.



Other periodicals parodied among the modified covers collection include military themes (Transgender Weapons of the Third Reich);, alien abductions (Alien Abductee Transformations); high school transsexuals (After-School Transvestite); the workaday world (Office Girl); romance (Turnabout Romance); sibling rivalry and college hazing (Boys Will Be Girls); slash fiction involving Nancy Drew (The Curse of the Maiden's Hollow), Flash Gordon (Fantastic Transformations), The X-Files, and others; and magic or witchcraft (Foreign Bodies' "Spellbound" and The Daughters of Circe).



The art is all top-notch, since, many times, the original cover art is retained, the magazines' "transformation" often occurring through an altering of the cover's text (story title, caption, tagline, summary), rather than its artwork. The idea is fun--for a while--but it's ultimately a one-trick pony, so to speak, and, after perusing a dozen titles, the thrill is gone. Maybe a way to breathe new life into the concept is to actually alter more of the art. By using one's artistic talents (and maybe some computer-graphics software), artists could actually alter the original art as well as the text so that women become transwomen, females become shemales, and ladies become ladyboys. Now, that would be a transformation devoutly to be desired! 

