Messalina (Fumetti per Adulti)

Marisa Mell was regarded in her days as a classical beauty like Sophia Loren and Brigitte Bardot. Thick dark auburn hair, cat like emerald green eyes and a voluptuous sensual mouth with big inviting lips. Every mans wet dream! So when she arrived in Rome in the mid '60's she was quickly spotted by the incrowd and finding a job in the movie business was easy. In a very short time she rose to fame becoming a weekly staple in the yellow press with her movies and especially with her love affaires with very famous men. In short Marisa Mell became a house hold name in Italian society. Everybody knew her name and face! So it isn't strange that her image also found its way in other media outlets than the movies. In the past the Marisa Mell Blog had entries about Marisa Mell being the template for comic book characters like Satanka. or Lucifera. This time her sexy image has been used to grace a cover of an Italian fumetti called "Messalina". The cover is from issue 101 of the series. Messalina is the wife of the Roman emperor Claudius. Because her husband is regarded as a retard and stammerer, not capable to satisfy his wife in bed, she is always on the look out for sexual adventures in ancient Rome with men and women from different races while plotting her way through Roman politics to satisfy her lust for power often using torture and gruesome murders as her wapon. The series was, like many other fumetti heroines, a  big success from 1966 until 1974 running for 185 issues. Today these individual issues fetch top prices at the secondary market and are hard to find in prestine condition. The photo of Marisa Mell is a promotional still used to promote her movie "...dopo di che uccide il maschio e lo divora" starring Stephen Boyd as her counterpart.

Lucifera (Fumetti per Adulti)

In the past I have written on this blog about a known fact that Marisa Mell was used as a model for the Chilian erotic spy comic Satanka. So one day while researching the life and work of Marisa Mell for possible entries for this blog I saw this picture of Marisa Mell in a Catholic nuns habit while smoking a cigarette. The picture is a publicity photo from her 1964 only British movie "French Dressing". I archieved the picture for later reference and possible usage on the blog! Months passed. Untill last summer I was reading the dark Italian erotic fumetti "Lucifera" and saw these next two pictures in the comic book.

In this story the devilish Lucifera is trying to steal as a Catholic nun the Holy Grail as a token of her loyality to her master and lover in hell the Devil. And nothing ever goes as planned with Lucifera so troubles arise on the horizon and Lucifera has to master them in her own special way to achieve her goals, meaning a lot of seduction and sex! But that is another story!

While reading this story it hit me! Before my eyes appeared the Marisa Mell picture in her Catholic nuns habit. And the resemblance of both pictures and the drawn Lucifera was remarkable. The features of Lucifera like the shape of her eye brows, eye lashes and lips of her mouth were very Marisa Mell-like! So the question popped up in my head: Could it be that Marisa Mell had been the template for the dark Italian fumetti heroine "Lucifera"? Although it might seem far fetched in reality it was not in my opinion. Why? 

 During the height of the dark Italian fumetti in the 60's and 70's like Lucifera, Jacula, Maghella, Biancaneve, Sukia, Jolanda and their male counterparts the publishers were always trying to make their comic book heroes appealing by giving them often faces of well known people at that moment in time. The classic examples are French actor Alain Delon as the private detective "Playcolt" or again French actor Jean-Paul Belmondo as again private detective "Goldrake". 

So if the Italian comic book artists took well known populair actors as a role model for their heroes, why shouldn't they have taken the face of Marisa Mell as a template for the face of she-devil Lucifera?

Lucifera was published from 1971 to 1980 by Italian comic publishing house "Ediperiodici" running for 170 issues. A French edition of the comic ran from 1972 to 1980 for 99 issues and was pubished by Elvifrance. Some very famous Italian comic book artists worked on the comic like Edoardo Morricone, Tito Marchioro and the best known of them all, Leone Frollo, who created the heroine and gave her, her distinguised looks like her almond shaped eyes, thick eye lashes, the curved eye brows and above all the thick flowing hair split in the middle above her eyes by a triangular pony. In fact, you can regard the she-devil Lucifera as the male version of the other dark fumetti hero "Diabolik". He also has the same almond shaped eyes, thick eye lashes and the curved eye brows.

Marisa Mell came to Rome, Italy in the year 1965 and was a major star in the movies and the yellow press in 1971, the year that Lucifera was created, just after the much publisized romance with film producer and club owner Pier Luigi Torri and his notorius club "Number One", hangout for everybody rich and famous, stars and starlets in 60's Rome. So Leone Frollo was quite familiar with the face and body of Marisa Mell and probably found in her the perfect model for his next creation: Lucifera. And he was not wrong about that. Lucifera became an instand hit among erotic fumetti lovers untill this day and age. Complete collections of Lucifera comic books in prestine condition fetch top money at the moment around 5000 euros. And thanks to the modern means of communications like Ipad and tablets Lucifera or Marisa Mell will live on for generations to come, even in color.