Ironwood writes about The Spanish Leather

In April 2020, we received correspondence from the author of The Spanish Leather,
a historical femdom comic we admire.

We've made few changes to his text, changing some punctuation and spelling out many of his abbreviations.

He's graciously agreed to disclose the following:

I produced the first installment of [The Spanish Leather] story on spec and submitted it to Eric Stanton – who loved it – and commissioned me to do 'more'. I subsequently did produce the second installment but became sorta disenchanted with Stanton's business practices. His pay was low and he never returned my original art. I expected better from a 'fellow artist' and one that often bemoaned how shabbily he was treated by publishers over the years!

Regardless, the story/art IS out there in the world and, []I have seen it reprinted for free down-loading on a variety of web-sites. I DID read your 'review' of the story and appreciate your appreciation for the artwork & writing.

In my younger days – back in the 1970's – I dabbled in the fetish art scene for a while. But (again), gave it up, primarily because the publishers were so cheap & disreputable.

Some people have wondered if I've done other BDSM oriented work and/or if there were further chapters of TSL. The answer to the first question is 'yes'. I did a bunch of illustrations for the Centurians publishing outfit (again, back in the '70's) but used the pseudonym "RAMM" for that work. The work I did for Centurians included a few other 'strips' and a lot of one page illustrations.

They published a full mag of my work at one point entitled "House of Bondage" – which I never saw a dime for – though they did send me two copies of the magazine. When I hooked up with Stanton, he already had another artist in his 'stable' who used the name 'RAM' (with one "M") and requested I come up with another handle – so I chose "IRONWOOD". [] But, I never did any further chapters of The Spanish Leather because my life took a different path as I carried forward.

Ironically, The Spanish Leather is one of my most lauded works. But I have generally kept my 'association' with it pretty low-key, for reasons I'm sure you can surmise. I did have a 'conclusion' scripted out for the story but could never muster the enthusiasm to complete it – because there just never seemed to be any financial pay-off for all the work.

I can appreciate that you may not have realized much profit off of selling the story yourself – as I note a full page on Google of sites that offer it for free download. It's still a tricky market. Usually I'm OK with seeing it available 'for free'. Maybe it was the fact that you are 'charging' for it that got me going – BUT – go ahead and keep selling it. Good to know that somebody is making a little money
off it.

Peace - [initials]

p.s. – tacked on an old page from one of the Centurians publications – for your viewing pleasure . . .