TITLE    : Oh, Wicked Wanda!
STORYID  : oh-wicked-wanda
SUMMARY  : Review of a renowned Penthouse magazine comic strip.
AUTHOR   : Cal Y. Pygia@lit
DATE     : 2006-07-10
CATEGORY : reviews-and-essays
FLAGS    : 
TAGS     : |wanda|penthouse|comic strip|ron emberton|brian forbes|frederic mullally|book|erotica|naked|lesbian|


The multi-page, full-color, satirical, adult comic strip Oh, Wicked Wanda! by writer Frederic Mullally and artist Ron Embleton regularly appeared in Penthouse magazine from to 1973 to 1980. Embleton painstakingly painted the comic strip's panels in oils. Prior to the illustrated strip format, Wanda appeared as an illustrated story (September 1969 through October 1979) written by Mullally and sketched by Brian Forbes.



The characters appeared naked or partially clothed, and great care was given to the female form, especially the breasts and buttocks. Like the photographs of models in Penthouse itself, the comic strip's female characters' pubic hair, neatly trimmed, was shown. Although male characters occasionally appeared nude, their genitals were not often shown and they were shown mostly in the background, with none of the sometimes gratuitous appearances that often was true with regard to female characters.



A beautiful brunette heiress to a multi-million dollar fortune, Wanda Von Kreesus was a "man-hating" lesbian whose adventurous travels took her to such exotic locales as Arabia, Tibet, Europe, India, New York, Hollywood, Las Vegas, and Disneyland. She also traveled through time, courtesy of a time machine, visiting France during the French Revolution, England during the signing of the Magna Carta, and Germany during World War II, before briefly visiting the future and returning to the present.



Wanda lived in a schloss on Lake Zurich, presumably in Switzerland. Throughout the series, Wanda was accompanied by her admiring lover and apprentice sidekick, the blonde Candyfloss, whom Wanda often called "Pusscake." Candyfloss' nickname for Wanda was "Boo'ful." Wanda drove a Supo Delecto Peniso Flagrante sports car, which, as its name implies, resembled a phallus and was capable of attaining a top speed of 160 miles per hour. The license plate bore the alphanumeric designation "FKU2." Sometimes, her auxiliary automobile, a Rolls Royce station wagon, followed. Throughout her adventures, Wanda was also assisted by her elite army of "butch-dikes," the Puss International Force, or PIF, the commander of which was General Grrr, and "resident egghead" Homer Sapiens and the Neanderthal-like "chief jailer" and master torturer J. Hoover Grud." The preserved cadaver of her degenerate father was seated upon a throne under a green glass dome. On occasion, Wanda sought advice from him after establishing a psychic or spiritual link with the corpse.



The strip was replete with inside jokes and references to popular and classical culture. For example, a member of Wanda's entourage lay naked reading William S. Burroughs' novel Naked Lunch while a second fornicated with a swan, recalling both Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem, Leda and the Swan, and the myth that deals with Zeus' fornication, in the guise of a swan, with Leda. Many politicians and artists were caricatured in the strip, including a drenched and apparently besotted Ted Kennedy, who appeared in several panels throughout the strip's run, wearing an ever-present '76 presidential campaign ribbon. His appearance was a not-so-subtle reference to the incident in which he drove off the Chappaquiddick Bridge, killing his companion, Mary Jo Kopechne. Rival politicians, including Richard Nixon, were treated with the same degree of satirical ridicule. For example, Nixon was frequently shown as a sometimes machine-gun-toting gangster.



The strips frequently included caricatures of famous people, especially politicians. For example, in the debut strip, Wanda and Candyfloss visit Madame Tussaud's "waxworks," passing the likenesses of Richard Nixon, Spiro Agnew, Charles de Gaulle, Lyndon Johnson, Fidel Castro, Henry Kissinger, and Mao Tse-tung, among others, as they make their way toward the museum's "Chamber of Horrors." These satirical portraits were usually given names similar to the names of the people they parodied--Marlon Blondo (a. k. a. Burpo), Henry Kissarun, Norman Mailman, and Howard Huge, for example. Other famous figures that Wanda and Candyfloss encountered include Bob Hope, John Wayne, W. C. Fields, Mae West, Clark Gable, Humphrey Bogart, Marilyn Monroe, Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, Muhammad Ali, ]Salvador Dali, Dr. Benjamin Spock, Charles Bronson, Lee Marvin, Liberace, Gerald Ford, and Howard Hughes.



When an image was particularly effective at parodying a politician, an entertainment personality, or another public figure, it was repeated. For example, Marlon Brando (sometimes called "Burpo"), who was known for his love of good eating and his enormous weight gain, was often shown attired in a pin-striped suit, nonchalantly eating twirled spaghetti from a fork. In addition, the names of caricatures were chosen with satirical effect in mind. Hence, Jane Fonda was christened "Jane Fondle" and Brando was named "Marlon Blando" during his Last Tango in Paris days but Marlon Burpo after his figure ballooned due to the rich foods he was fond of consuming in his later career.



The strip also included satirical sketches of well-known cartoon and comic strip characters, such as Mad Magazine's Alfred E. Neuman; Playboy's Little Annie Fanny; Walt Disney's Seven Dwarfs, Mickey Mouse, and Donald Duck; Walt Kelly's Pogo, and George Herriman's Krazy Kat.



On their first adventure, Wanda and Candyfloss decide to buy Madame Tussaud's "waxworks" as a way to acquire figures of famous men and women with whom to equip the "museum of living apes" that she plans to establish at the mansion that she has inherited from her father, Walter, the late King Gnome of Zurich. However, they are disappointed at the exhibits, which are not sufficiently carnal for Wanda's tastes; as she tells Candyfloss, "Tussaud's was a real drag." Instead of "wax dummies," Wanda prefers frozen "authentic, living flesh" for her "living tableaux of top personalities." Before leaving on their quest, Wanda inspects her PIF. She meted out punishment by flogging the backside of one of her troops, who afterward walked away with a smile on her face as a fellow soldier observed, "This is your second time around!"



On their second adventure, Wanda and Candyfloss undertook a quest to acquire "tableaux vivants" for Wanda's Museum of Misfits. Arriving at a villa in St. Trollop on the French Rivera, they visited the "pornophobe" adult film critic, Lord Cyril Bluestocking and Brigitte Bidet (Brigitte Bardot), their intended first acquisitions. After Candyfloss knocked Bluestocking unconscious, Wanda and she transported him to their museum, where Homer Sapiens prepared him as the museum's first exhibit.



In the third installment of the first adventure, Wanda and Candyfloss decided to add some politicians to their Museum of Misfits, and they went after California Governor Ronald Reagan.



Other chapters in their first adventure followed this same plot, with Wanda and Candyfloss obtaining such additional famous men and women for their Museum of Misfits as chess champion Bernie Fishfinger (Bobby Fisher), Martin Bormann, Willy Grabham (Billy Graham) and Jane Fondle (Jane Fonda).



Oh, Wicked Wanda! was replaced by Sweet Chastity, another comic illustrated by Ron Embleton.



Mullally was born in London, England. His professional career began with as a journalist for India's Statesman of Calcutta. In 1945, Aneurin Bevan invited Mullally to write for the London Tribune, and, in 1947, Hugh Cudlipp awarded him his own political column in The Sunday Pictorial. Mullally is the co-author, with Fenner Brockway, of Death Pays a Dividend, which was followed by his Fascism in England. His first novel, Danse Macabre, was followed by Man With a Tin Trumpet. Four more novels followed, including the autobiographical Clancy (1971), which was the subject of a five-part British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) dramatization. As a resident of Malta, Mullally scripted Oh, Wicked Wanda!



Also born in London, Emberton (1930-1988) became a member of The Royal Institute of Oil Painters in 1960, and his works were exhibited in Europe, Australia, and the United States, winning many prizes. Beginning his career as a graphic artist and illustrator, he has illustrated many books and magazines, including the comic strip Wulf the Briton, which appeared in the Express Weekly. He began to illustrate Oh, Wicked Wanda! in 1973. Emberton now resides in London. 

