John Willie's Bizarre

One of the influences for the ponygirls story is a short story published in John Willie's Bizarre in the early 1950s. I saw it first in the Taschen edition (The Complete Reprint of John Willie's Bizarre edited by Eric Kroll [Köln: Taschen, 1995] —see the review of this reprint on www.belierpress.com), and later obtained originals of the two issues it appears in. The story was also reprinted in Bondage Photo Treasures ("From Girl to Pony by N.Y.C.", Bondage Photo Treasures, number 6 [May 1984], pp. 12-16).

John Willie's graphic and photographic works are of great interest to me and unfortunately there's not enough space here to go into any detail. A brief biography of John Willie, the pseudonym of John Coutts, can be found online at Wikipedia and an even better one is part of Robert Bienvenu's dissertation, The Development of Sadomasochism as a Cultural Style in the Twentieth-Century United States, available for download at www.americanfetish.net.

Willie began publishing Bizarre with issue number 2 in 1946 and after a couple of years went onto other projects. He returned to his magazine in 1951 and published it fairly regularly through issue 20 (issue 1 came out in 1954). He sold the magazine to a friend who continued it for several more issues.

Bizarre is a combination and culmination of Willie's efforts as a writer (an unfinished series published in Bizarre — "The Magic Island: A Tale from a Bottle" — is also a ponygirl story), artist (illustrator, comic book creator and painter), and photographer. After selling Bizarre he moved to Los Angeles in 1957 and focused on comic book art — The Race for the Gold Cup — and bondage photographs until his death a few years later.

The best book currently in print is The Adventures of Sweet Gwendoline by John Willie edited by J. B. Rund (New York: Belier Press, 1999 — copies available on eBay or from the publisher — www.belierpress.com). The Taschen Bizarre edition is out of print but copies are available from used book dealers and on eBay.

These are the covers for numbers 11 (1952) and 12 (1953) of Bizarre in which "From Girl to Pony" appeared and are examples of Willie's artwork. Minor illustrations are used on the Ponygirl Page.

One of my favorite parts of Bizarre, though it's often hard to choose, is the reader's correspondence and I reproduce an example below:

Bizarre magazine, 1955, number 15/16 (correspondence issue), pages 38-40

IT MAKES SENSE

Dear Editor:

Until I found three copies of Bizarre hidden in one of the drawers of my husband's dresser, I wondered where he had been getting all his fancy ideas. I mean about being "master" and treating me as his "slave". Now I know — although he had a lot of talent along these lines to start with.

In pouring over the three issues, and a couple we have found since then, one thing puzzled me. Why do most of the lovers of the kind of play that involves the willing or unwilling "bondage" of the man or the woman — depending on which likes to be boss and has what it takes to put it over — why do they dissemble so much in writing about their experience? They beat around the bush all the time, as though anyone with a brain cell working wouldn't know what the score is.

(Must you put ALL your food on the same plate — Ed.)

Believe me, there is no mystery about the treatment my lord and master dishes out — the treatment I would have to take whether or not I liked it or not. It is as simple as this: he likes it, and he likes me to like it, and I do!

In particular, I love to be physically helpless to prevent whatever he feels like doing to me — even if I am already committed to obey his commands, as I always am. It gives me a perverse, but exquisite kind of satisfaction to have to submit. And sometimes in the very act of submitting I imagine how I would feel if I did not want to do it. My man is a stern task-master, too!

I love to have my hands and arms tightly bound behind my back. I love to be blindfolded so I can't anticipate my master's next move when he begins to turn on the heat; and if it serves some purpose of his to silence me, I love the sensation that comes over me when he ties a gag in my mouth. I adore black undies — my standard costume as his slavegirl. I am thrilled by his subtle humiliations, also by the "punishments" he prescribes.

We like these things because we like them (period).

— Yes Girl

Read "From Girl to Pony."

Go back to Ponygirls Page.

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