#401427 - Pressure Sale Book One and Two Eric Stanton

Pressure Sale, Books One and Two
Eric Stanton
no publisher shown
ca. 1962

optimized

Some people are gonna wanna say that Ditko contributed to the art of Pressure Sale. To us, it appears to be pure Eric Stanton, working diligently on a project he liked. The ink style reminds us of contemporaneous The Return of Gwendoline, but even more skillful, confident and adroit. As in The Return of Gwendoline, black hatching shows contour and white hatching shows the gleam in hair, but here the work seems iconic, almost like clip art. Faces express layers of emotion.

“When ambitious Ed’s business superiors learned that, goaded by his fiancee, Marie, he was seeking a new and larger territory for the sale of brushes, they decided he was a threat to their positions in the company. They assigned him to territory regarded by experienced salesmen as an impenetrable no man’s land. This was the town in which resided the powerful, beautiful, man-hating woman known as Mad Madge. She lived with her two beautiful daughters, both of whom had been taught to share her delight in capturing and tormenting any hapless salesmen who came calling on them.”

When Ed and Marie arrive at Madge's rural home, they soon find themselves in painful bondage. Of the three assailants, Billie has the most ambivalence. In a flashback, we learn of her attachment to a high school classmate she remembers fondly. When Pearl tells Madge about her sister's innocent liaison with a boy, Mom whips her errant daughter with a birch branch.

Bondage implements include ropes, cloth gags, poles and bed frames. In a futile escape attempt, Marie falls in mud and Pearl sits on her and later rips her dress. Madge then tells Pearl to bind their pretty captive.

It was obvious that Madge and Pearl were going to enjoy strapping up the salesman's girlfriend. Pearl, kneeling behind the sobbing girl, was about to use the rope to tie Marie's slender hands behind her back when she had a clever idea. Why not use that long blonde hair? Ignoring her pleas, Pearl began to painfully pull Marie's tresses and wind them about her wrists.

"Gee, that's nice hair,” Honey, Pearl teased. "But you should wash it more often; it's sort of muddy."

Marie's dress had been torn in several places during the fight, and the expensive, delicate under-garments she liked to wear were now partially exposed. Her lacy black bra and panties caught Madge's eye, and she yelled, "I see you're one of those fools who likes to have men notice you. I'll teach you not to be so man-conscious." With those words Madge wound a rope around Marie's right ankle to use as a leash.

Having wound several clumps of Marie's hair around her wrists, Pearl now tied them together in knots so that the slightest effort on Marie's part to slip her wrists free gave a painful yank to her hair. It was an ingenious, effective handcuff that Pearl had devised. Madge had to smile at her daughter's handiwork.

"I see you're learning some tricks of your own. That's good. You can always find new ways."
The two women ordered Marie to her feet, with hate in their eyes. Marie sobbed uncontrollably from fear but Madge had no pity. "If you don't stop that bawling, I'll give you a spanking that will really make you cry."

The three of them started toward the house, Pearl holding the end of the rope tied around Marie's ankle. Pearl had disliked her from the start, and as Marie hobbled along she took pleasure in tugging at the rope to trip her. After a couple of falls, Marie was unable to get up by herself, so Madge helped her up. Marie fell again, and Madge, annoyed at the delay, warned her that if she fell again she was in for a spanking.

The text was re-set for the ebook. Few changes were made to the competent prose. About 9000 words.

Both prose and pictures tell a single story. In the two booklets, some illustrations have borderless dialog balloons. Some panels contain more than one tableau.

In the ebook, each image is placed near the text that describes it. Many wide, optimized pages contain text on the left side and a drawing on the right side. Some pages contain only text, others a picture. Placed images include complete panel borders, partial panel borders or no borders. The ebook contains all content of the originals, including front and back covers, with pictures on more than 60 pages.

Levels, brightness and contrast were adjusted. Images transposed to ebook format with smooth edges and deep blacks. The ebook presentation of this illuminated narrative improves on the graphics of the original.

All new scans of the two booklets.

On the day Eric Stanton's Pressure Sale is added to the Fetish Nostalgia ebook catalog, a comic book resale website offers Book Two for more than $100.

One optimized ebook, delivered by download from your 30th Street Graphics account.