Stanton, Eric

Eric Stanton (born Ernest Stanzoni Jr.; September 30, 1926 – March 17, 1999) was an American underground cartoonist and fetish art pioneer. While Stanton began his career as a bondage fantasy artist for Irving Klaw, the majority of his later work depicted gender role reversal and proto-feminist female dominance scenarios. Commissioned by Klaw starting in the late 1940s, his bondage fantasy chapter serials earned him underground fame. Stanton also worked with pioneering underground fetish art publishers, Leonard Burtman (publisher of Exotique and Selbee magazines), the notorious Times Square publisher Edward Mishkin, paperback publisher Stanley Malkin, and later magazine publisher George W. Mavety. For a decade, Stanton also shared a working studio with Marvel Comics legend Steve Ditko. Past the soft-core era of the 1960s, his art became more transgressive. Creating a mail-order business in the 1970s named the "Stanton Archives," Stanton sold his work directly to fans and, starting in 1982, issued offset staple-bound fan-inspired books known as "Stantoons," producing more than a hundred by the time of his death. In his lifetime, Stanton also contributed to countless underground publications and later adult magazines like Leg Show and Leg World. In 1984, Stanton had the only art exhibit in his lifetime at the New York City nightclub Danceteria. Artists Banksy, Allen Jones, and Madonna among others took inspiration from Stanton's work.