Eneg, by any other name

It's a five-turtle day!  That being the number of turtles I spotted hanging out in the yard under the morning sprinklers.  Turtles love sprinklers!  They also love art, so in honor of that it's time for

Evil Dolly's Featured Fetish Artist of the Day:  Gene Bilbrew. Or Eneg.

Gene Bilbrew (1923-1974) signed his work with several pseudonyms such as "GB", "Bondy" and "Van Rod".  But the name his probably best known by is "Eneg"... that's Gene spelled backwards, doncha know.  He was quite prolific, doing illustrations and comics (both mainstream and kinky) from the 40s on up until his early death in the 70s.  Becoming an illustrator wasn't his primary interest, however.  He originally wanted to be a singer.  He even went on the road.  Unfortunately, entertaining never panned out for him and he fell back on drawing to pay the bills.

We're not sure what it does, but it definitely does *something*.

He worked for Will Eisner (an early comics guy) for a while, did some comic strips for newspapers, and later went to study under Hogarth (another comics guy and founder of  Manhattan's School of Visual Arts), Bilbrew being among the school's earliest students.  There, Bilbrew became friends with fellow student Eric Stanton, who noticed one of his bondage drawings and got him started doing fetish serials for Klaw, with whom Stanton was already working.  Here's a couple ads from the time:

 
Whether it paid better than the comics strips he had been doing or he simply enjoyed it I can't say, but he withdrew from classes to work on the bondage serials and continued on doing kinky illustrations for the rest of his life, though he also did mainstream stuff, too.  He was also African American, which is noteworthy in that there weren't a great many African Americans in the comics field in the 40s or 50s.  There were some, but not many.  It couldn't have been easy for him, especially with the stigma of doing underground fetish art.

That's a severe HR department!

Usually have to go a spa for this sort of thing.

I knew it! I knew those were real legs in those displays!

While similar in style to that of the other artists working for Klaw, Bilbrew's illustrations are easy to identify chiefly due to the way he drew faces and hairstyles -- the noses are often 'flattish' in profile.  Other distinguishing characteristics were gravity-defying conical breasts with deep cleavage, long legs, and dynamic poses.  I understand he drew quickly, resulting sometimes in anatomical and posing errors, having to make asymmetrical, slapdash corrections to bondage furniture in order match it to the character's pose.  Not to mention the unnatural flexibility of the women.

Everyone knows what goes on in sororities.

"Did you remember to add air holes this time?" 

"Nope."

Friends stick with you through the hardest times.

A number of his stories were very action-adventury and had sci-fi themes, not so different from stuff you'd see in mainstream comics at the time except that nearly every panel included bondage or subjegation of some sort.  He seemed to have an interest in machinery such as over-complicated paddling devices, as well as 'imminent doom' damsel-in-distress situations... situations far more perilous than you'd find in most of his peers' fetish art.  And, of course, there had to be a few ponies.

The rider's having a little too much fun.

The Pokiest Pony in the West

Pony-stacking is usually illegal.

His later work, like Stanton's, would become much more explicit, including torture, nudity, sex and penetration, which are things you simply couldn't show when he started in the early 50s.  He also expanded into femdom and forced-feminization.  After the Klaw period, he did a lot of work for a magazine called Exotique and also did tons of book covers and illustrations for adult paperbacks.  And he would eventually start signing his works with his own name.

The girl tank tread proposal.. just never got any traction.

And girl-mounted guns didn't make it far past prototype stage.

But I believe this is still standard mess hall procedure.

Being both reasonably well-known and prolific, a lot of his works aren't too difficult to find out there.  Just look up Eneg.  The early serials have been reprinted, there's a bound collection of Exotique (which I've never seen so can't really comment upon), and various other art books.