The Time Eater
publication date: 1973
pencil and story: Guido Crepax
Short dream story, where Valentina is born from an egg laid by a blonde giantess.
Guido Crepax's homage to the character of Barbarella, introducing his adventures.
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Barbarella
Original editor (France): Opera Mundi Paris & Milan
publication date: 1962-1967
pencil e story: Jean Claude Forest
Barbarella's first adventure sees our space heroine visit a planet of flower growers.
They live under a giant greenhouse and exploit all the water on the planet, to the detriment of other peoples.
Barbarella falls into a field of rose, tearing her dress to shreds.
She thanks her savior with her amatory arts, of course, but then she gets caught up in the political plots of the planet.
Trying to bring peace, she sets out to reach the nearby people of Oromri.
She manages to escape the stoning, topless, thanks to the Oromri friend of her previous lover, who works hard to warm her up.
In the end, Barbarella restores peace between the two peoples, destroying the machine that absorbs all the water on the planet.
In the second adventure she meets an underwater people, ruled by a queen who, according to legends, petrifies anyone who looks at her face.
Barbarella is brought before him, but discovers that her power consists in assuming the appearance of her victim, who then must kill in order not to create confusion.
Barbarella takes her hostage and manages to escape, without suffering the dramatic fate of those who preceded her.
After escaping, she reaches an underground people, ruled by three men, who are also shipwrecked like her.
One of them lives peacefully, a friend of indigenous peoples.
Another spends time hunting down creatures created in the third castaway's laboratory.
Barbarella frees the creatures exploited for hunting, causing the hunter's death, then leaves the underground forest with the inventor's drill.
The scientist takes her to Antan, a city built in the image of the Earth in the 19th century.
Barbarella becomes the target of two evil twins, who involve her in their perverse games.
Her only hope is escape, with the drill.
The drill takes her to Sogo, the perverse city where the 1968 movie of the same name is set, starring Jean Fonda, directed by Roger Vadim, her husband at the time of the shooting.
The film caused a scandal for Jane Fonda's nudes.
Barbarella first of all sees the prison labyrinth that surrounds the city, discovering the cruelty with which the marginalized are treated.
Her only escape is the angel Pygar, who easily seduces.
Pygar is blind, so it will be Barbarella's eyes to guide him in her escape to Sogo.
Reached the city they separate and Barbarella is approached by a one-eyed prostitute fascinated by her beauty.
They both end up being captured by the queen's troops, to become her slaves.
When Barbarella discovers that the queen is precisely the one-eyed prostitute, she rebels and is sentenced to the bird cage.
However, the small sparrows are too numerous and attack her, reducing her clothes to shreds.
She manages to escape thanks to a taxi driven by a robot, Aiktor.
Aiktor turns out to be a fantastic lover, whom Barbarella enjoys to the fullest.
The robot shows her a way to enter the palace, but here it ends up in the hands of the master door locker, advisor to the queen.
The counselor subjects her to an erotic machine, to awaken her from the weapons used to capture her and her moans of pleasure are heard throughout Sogo.
The master door locker betrays the queen and gives Barbarella the keys to access her bedroom, the only place where she is vulnerable.
Barbarella and the queen both fall into the Councilor's trap and are forced to flee.
The entire city is destroyed by the creature that lives underground and only Barbarella, the queen and Pygar manage to save themselves.
In the following adventure, Barbarella created a traveling space circus, the Delirium Circus.
The shows are mainly erotic and therefore very successful.
When Barbarella admits the underwater man Narval to her circus, things start to go wrong.
Narval seduces Barbarella and convinces her to leave for a planet on the edge of space-time, with the aim of helping him find a way to breathe the air.
They reach the planet Spectra, where time passes much slower than in the rest of the universe.
Barbarella manages to synchronize with their time thanks to Narval's invention and begins her adventure.
As soon as she arrives, she meets Lio, a teenager with suicidal instincts who falls in love with her.
After helping her save her city of metal, Barbarella is captured by a savage and brutal people, whom only her graces can appease.
Helped by a rebellious painter-poet, Barbarella manages to reach the place where her ship landed, now under Narval's control.
Finding what remains of her crew, she confronts Narval and kills him, at least she thinks.
Feeling guilty, she reaches another city where she ends up turning into a prostitute.
However, her amatory skills make her unpopular, since she takes away customers from the others, so she has to flee again.
She find Narval, who survived her assassination attempt.
She lets herself be seduced again and helps him find a solution to his problem.
Narval is able to breathe the air and live on the surface, finally, taking advantage of it to gain power over Spectra.
He uses Barbarella's ship to bring his people to the planet, only to find they are peaceful.
Sentenced to death by his people, Barbarella agrees to take him into custody to save his life.
Eventually Barbarella and Narval manage to leave Spectra thanks to the queen of Sogo, who has become a time traveler.
To understand the chaotic structure of Forest's stories, one must understand that they were published in episodes in a French monthly, V-Magazine.
The structure is therefore that of American comic strips, where each episode had to create the suspense for the next.
There are no sex scenes in Barbarella's stories, but only more or less explicit hints.
Forest's graphic style does not require censorship, given the rather stylized characters.
However, it remains a fundamental work in international erotic comics.
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