Interview with Osvaldo A. Greco

Queospera: When did you start doing bondage artwork?

Osvaldo A. Greco: Well, since I have memory! I have piles of notebooks with drawings of damsels tied and gagged of when I was ten years old… at twelve I did my first comic strip of bondage, with girls in underclothes who tied themselves up without  reason. Or a kidnapping or something that I saw on the TV influenced me… One movie was called “El reino de la bombacha” (The kingdom of the Baggy trousers!) in which the heroine is kidnapped and taken to a subterranean place where there are plenty of handsome girls in lingerie and they  “recruit"  the new members by kidnapping them  And I still did not knew (John) Willie, nor (Irving) Klaw nor nothing… Pure spontaneous combustion!

Be more careful or you won t sit for a year! -  From My Aunt Carmen (1990)

That answer is similar to my experience and others, we see something in the TV or in the cinema and something does click in the brain and from then on there is no cure.  I could say that I got my first impressions from the Avengers British television series, Fantomas (mexican comic book series) and a movie magazine called Prevue that sold Klaw’s reprints.

It is strange, I know Prevue and Steranko, its publisher and a great artist of comic books. A shame that he has left it… but little did he know that he did left an impression like a fire mark in more than one, I assure you.  I have spoken with many people who are  fond of  bondage and fetish  and always I have asked them the same: how that passion started and all have similar answers… Can it be genetics?   It must be!

Who are your influences?

Lots. Classic artists of comic books to illustrators and painters too… of bondage, Willie, (Eric) Stanton, Jim, (Gene Bilbrew) Eneg and (Guido) Crepax… I am the result of a very ample mixture.

I also see in your style the influence of (Robert) Bishop as well. Of Crepax, he had a very peculiar style to count its histories, most of them seem to be dreams or nightmares  Your style is much more linear in the narration.

Faye Valentine from the Japanese animation series Cowboy Bebop

And how did you started to work in Harmony?

Well, in 1993-4, after more than a year of research in which I got the addresses  of most of the (bondage) publishing houses in the world, I started to send copies of my work with my curriculum by mail.  It was hard work and it required a lot of patience, the answers took weeks, months, the mail was lost, etc. Harmony was the first to respond.  My dream became a reality! I started  publishing comics and cartoons.  

One day, the new publisher, Chelsea Pfeiffer, wrote me  a letter asking for more realistic drawings of damsels in distress. I prepared a few and. the rest is history. I am very sorry that they have left the magazine business; I loved participating in their magazines.

You remember the magazines in which your art was published?

Easy!  Bondage Life, Bondage Gallery, Fetishette, etc  For the numbers and other data you must let me look for it  in the house…

Perhaps our readers can help with that.   I also lament the lack of magazines, but I must admit that the main reason I don’t buy much is because of the Internet.  What do you think of this situation that it can be argued has both helped and hurt the bondage companies?

I think that bondage material has become more restricted to the general public. With magazines you could check it out at the store and decide if it was worth it or not.  There was a direct contact with the paper, the photos, and the printed material.

I do not know how it is in Argentina, but in Puerto Rico that type of material is not easily obtained. Some book and comics stores offer graphic novels and art books such as the recent Paul Alazar book or the reprints of Bizarre Comix. The problem is that they are sealed and if you want to open them to check them out they won’t allow it, so it is difficult. The other days I bought a book of Stanton who had a tied woman in the cover, but inside it was very different, to say the least.

The point I want to make is that, although certainly that the experience of comics in paper is unique, the Internet on the other hand has allowed an access to material that otherwise would be limited to very few people.

Gag talk from the story Bondage Hospital.

Now you enter a webpage  and if it do not give you a credit card number and at least 10 dollars a month, you do not see absolutely anything  Previews? Pure trash with the reminders of the price of the subscription everywhere.  It really does not give you the desire to spend your money completely without information.   There is in general, one philosophy of pay and then I give you what I want that is very annoying, but I am only a living dinosaur, ha,ha,ha!