Friday, March 20, 2009

"Gal" Friday! Druuna


Italian comic book writer and illustrator Paolo Eleuteri Serpieri is noted for his works of highly detailed renderings of the human form, particularly erotic images of women. He is best known for his work on the erotic science fiction series, Druuna [1995: Harvey Award for Best American Edition of Foreign Material]. Serpieri himself appears in many of the stories as the character Doc.

Featured prominently in the French Metal Hurlant and the American Heavy Metal magazines. Druuna has starred in eight published volumes of the Morbus Gravis series between 1985 and 2003: Morbus Gravis, Morbus Gravis 2, Creatura, Carnivora, Mandragora, Aphrodisia, The Forgotten Planet and Clone.

Most of Druuna's adventures revolve around a post-apocalyptic future, and the plot is often a vehicle for varied scenes of soft-core or hard-core pornography & sexual imagery. Serpieri has styled Druuna to be strikingly beautiful, appearing to be of Mediterranean descent, with long black hair, tanned skin, and a body that has grown increasingly voluptuous over the course of the stories. In most cases, Druuna's role is that of a willing sexual object, submitting to sexual advances of all kinds with little or no complaint, though more than once she has been raped in the stories (she's not a completely helpless victim however; in the first volume she is seen kicking a would be rapist in the groin). She is usually depicted as sparsely clothed or nude.

Druuna is also featured in Serpieri's numerous sketchbooks, such as Obsession, Druuna X, Druuna X 2, Croquis, Serpieri Sketchbook, Serpieri Sketchbook 2 and The Sweet Smell of Woman. These books have been very successful, selling more than a million copies in twelve languages.

No comments: