John Willie Art

BIZARRE, No. 15/16
Correspondence Issue
a “double” issue !
Bizarre Publishing Company
Montreal, Canada
1955

digital replica

and

two optimized ebooks

In the beginning (1946), there was John (née John A. Coutts) Willie's Bizarre, "a fashion fantasia," the first digest-sized, fetish periodical. Mr. Coutt’s was the editor, illustrator, photographer and primary writer of the magazine he conceived and brought to life. Around 1957, Mr. Coutt's sold Bizarre Publishing Company to a good friend, who produced issues 21 through 26.

While the typical issue of BIZARRE consisted of content created by Mr. Willie and co., 15/16 is mostly letters from readers and snapshots of girlfriends and wives in high-heeled shoes, boots, corsets, assorted restraints, rubber apparel, blindfolds, and masks. Two bits of non-epistolary content are Footwear Fantasia by Sylvia Soulier and The Magic Island, tales from the bottle no. 6.

Letter-writers express enthusiasm for things they like: the female shape developed by tight corsets, the gait and profile of legs in high-heeled shoes, the sound and texture of rubber, the power of boots, the value of corporal punishment in schools.

One correspondent praises wife-dominant households, in which submissive husbands dress in snug skirts, foundation garments and heels. She advises hairbrush chastisement when the man of the house misbehaves. Many praise the magazine.

digital replica
Every word and picture of the 128-page original is included in the digital replica ebook. Brightness and contrast were adjusted and many specks retouched. Amateurs made the photographs and some have some undesirable textures. Despite shortcomings, all images look better in the ebook than on the old paper.

Some page layouts were revised to present pictures without reduction on ebook pages. All original scans.

optimized part one
As this is a digest-sized magazine that was produced when publishers were charged by the inch for printed pictures, many of the photographs are small. To show pictures as large as possible on monitor screens, pages are shorter than in the typical optimized ebook, although the same proportions have been retained. The optimized version positions each photograph and illustration on a separate page.

optimized part two
Mr. Willie used illustrations less than two inches in height as filler clip art. Some photographs from correspondents are also short on the page. To make the most of these images, a second optimized ebook is included. The second part has pages that are 1.7 inches in height. This sizing forces your computer's video adapter card to fill the monitor screen with page content.

These presentation techniques facilitate careful inspection of fetish details in even the smallest pictures in the magazine. If you had owned the publication for 50 years and looked at it a hundred times, you would not have seen all these three ebooks show with clarity and convenience. There has never been a better mechanism for seeing this antique fetish art and photography.

Three e-books, a digital replica and two optimized versions, delivered by download from your 30th Street Graphics account.