icon_uk (icon_uk) wrote in scans_daily, @ 2009-04-18 02:19:00 |
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Entry tags: | char: the hardy boys, creator: lea hernandez, creator: paulo henrique, creator: scott lobdell, in-joke: bondage |
Two cute guys who get tied up A LOT... and no, not the ones you might be assuming!
I'd say that this was a "Context is for the weak" post...
but for Frank and Joe Hardy, this sort of (literal) manhandling IS the context...
Alas it's not actually a scene from inside, but WOW! what a cover image!
(I also didn't show the guest appearance in this issue of President Obama, as it just wouldn't have seemed right)
I'm tempted to quote Xander in Buffy, when he meets Vamp Willow in Doppelgangland and she hugs him rather forthrightly "This is verging on naughty touching, here." and "Hands! Hands in new places." but something tells me there are very few area's the Freres Hardy HAVEN'T been seized or grabbed by.
Graphic novels are just the latest place that Frank and Joe Hardy have brought their own brand of teen fraternal action adventure (Going strong in multiple media since 1927!), as well as brotherly bondage.
And they wasted no time on that latter point either (playing to your strengths, eh boys?); This next image is the front cover of issue 2 of 2005's "The Ocean of Osyria" by Scott Lobdell and Lea Hernandez, the first of the Papercutz comics featuring the Hardy Boys (which swiftly became a series of graphic novels instead)
These guys clearly have an unhealthily large amount of experience at this sort of thing as, after they eventually manage to purloin a knife from one of their guards, this is their reaction!
Now that just ain't a normal reaction!
In truth though, they are just continuing their long, long history of such things.
Stretching the concept of scans_daily just a tad, and if the Mods want me to remove the next section, please just ask, but since I did include comic scans I'm hoping for leniency...
When I was about 10 I found this sitting on the local bookshop shelves and realised that this was actually pretty damned cool looking... If I knew then, what I know now.... Look at it! there was dude in distress, bondage, tattooing AND being menaced by pirates (It's "MMMMPH! Like a Pirate Day") all on this one KIDS book cover!
Between this and Dick Grayson, my poor little nascent sensibilities didn't stand a chance!
A trip to the library to investigate further showed that this was far from an isolated incident! I've noticed that Joe tended to get the brunt of things on the UK covers... This is from "The Vanishing Thieves"
Dig the high heels there Joe!
And this one has a nice incipient vertiginous feeling to it.
But sometimes it was about the both of them... and no cover has been interpreted in quite so many fairly naughty ways as THIS one! (The finale of the book as the brothers captured, bound, gagged and left to go kaboom thanks to a time bomb, so it IS hard to resist, though some have tried!)
Golly! How did THEY get in there?!?
Heck, it even made it, very briefly and fuzzily, into the opening title sequence of the 1970's TV series (I would KILL to have been at THAT photo shoot)
...with the fluffy haired antics of Parker Stevenson as Frank and Shaun Cassidy as Joe. This was also confusing to my developing awareness that Lynda Carter's Wonder Woman was impressive but just wasn't appealing to me the way it was to the other guys in my class, whereas I though Joe Hardy was CUTE! (It also didn't help that Shaun Cassidy literally WAS prettier than not only Lynda Carter, but most of Charlies Angel's too)
And even in the 1990's when the books were reissued there was plenty of the good stuff.
This is from the new cover to The Whale Tattoo, also seen above.
And here are a couple of alternate takes on the "Melted Coins" cover
And I still cannot believe they got this cover past the publishers I mean LOOK at it! The best, and if I'm honest, probably ONLY painting of a cleavegag I've ever seen, and you can see the waterline is about a foot above Frank's head, and with the tide coming in things don't look good for them.
There's a brilliant interview with one of the artists here where he mentions the problems they had with the models in these pictures, with "Joe" growing a ponytail and a beergut when he went to University! :)
And I adore the lumberjack here, I mean he's just so.... lumberjack-y! And I won't even speculate as to why Joe has been tied to the post THAT way round, it's as if they wanted to leave that cute little ass in the tight jeans in a handily accessible position or something (Though I don't think slicing his big brother in two is Joe's idea of effective foreplay).
And there is further hope for the future too, as this is the cover of their NEXT graphic novel!
The more things change, eh boys? :)