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Sex parodies

Thursday, 15 October 2009

In the early eighties of the previous century the Dutch (and especially the Amsterdam) comic scene there was a short period of unusual commotion. Somebody came up with the brilliant idea to produce sex parodies on some of the most popular comic book series. It started with a sex parody on Suske & Wiske, but next came the sex adventures of many other comic characters, including Tintin, Lucky Luke and even The Smurfs.
This was completely illegal, of course, but these books sold like crazy. Not only in comic book stores, but also on market places and in tourists shops.
Because I was deeply involved with the comic scene back then, I recognised the hands of the artists who made these comics. And I didn’t have to work hard to find out who published them, and how they were distributed. Some people must have made quite a lot of money during a short period in a branch where hardly any money was made. But after a while the news wore off, and the sales drooped. Most of these sex parodies had pretty lousy artwork and the stories were hopeless. And another reason why this genre died out rather quick, was that several bootlegs of the sex parodies showed up: some people printed their own stuff!
I guess that these books will be still be sold here and there, but it is no longer an issue. Back then it was headline news in the newspapaers. The publishers of the original comic books hired detectives to find out who was behind all this, and the police did several raids. For a while these comic books were hotter than drugs.
Last night I told (a longer and more detailed version of) this story to a friend who loved to read comic books but had never heard of these sex parodies. Unfortunately I have done all my sex parodies away long time ago. All I could show him was this Suske&Wiske parodie, which I have kept because I was befriended with the artists who drew it:

One of the artists is Ben Jansen, who died long time ago. He did half of this book:

There have been many sex parodies on pop songs too. I remember for example that there was one on the winning song in a Eurovision Song Festival. A German girl named Nicole won the 1982’s contest with a song titled “Een beetje vrede”. Somebody made a record called ”Een beetje geld voor een beetje liefde”, sung by a woman named Angelique. It had the same melody, but very different lyrics. That sex parody was a hit, so others cashed in on it too. There were answer songs, parodies on the parodies, follow ups, etcetera. I collected enough material to fill a complete cassette with sex songs a that were all inspired on that Euro Song Festival hit. I just tried to find these records and cassettes, but I could not find all of it. But here are some sleeves of 45’s:

Here is a YouTube video with the original parody:

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Comments:

Milan

2009-10-15 14:12:36

Ha ha, that Suske en Wiske parody brings back memories, damn. I think De Keizerkraker looked quite decent, no?

And for some reason I suddenly have to thing of Red Rat.

Arjen

2009-10-24 21:50:03

You can download 10 issues of Red Rat here: comicsworld – redrat