Best Friends Forever!

Eric Stanton (1926-1999) was born Ernest Stanzoni Jr. in Brooklyn, New York on September 30, 1926. By age twelve he was tracing comic-book heroines such as Wonder Woman and Sheena, and at fifteen he was already syndicating his own military gag strip, Tin Hats. After Navy service in World War II he apprenticed with cartoonist Gordon "Boody" Rogers and later shared a studio with Steve Ditko. In the late 1940s Irving Klaw hired him to illustrate mail-order fetish serials; Stanton quickly moved from "fighting femmes" to the sophisticated, high-heeled, corseted world of theatrical bondage and female dominance that became his signature. His landmark 1961 trilogy Bondage Enthusiasts Bound in Leather remains a high point of mid-century fetish art. Later he self-published the long-running Stantoons series, selling directly to collectors. His steely-eyed dominatrixes influenced Madonna's early look, earned praise from painter Allen Jones, and appeared on hundreds of paperback covers. Stanton died on March 17, 1999, at age 72, recognized today as the father of modern fetish illustration.