Customer Reviews

Eternal Temptation 2 - A Gallery Girls Book (Gallery Girls Collection)

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One of the things I love about the Gallery Girls collections from SQ Productions is the endless variety of themes they come up with for these fantastic pin-up collections, not to mention the always considerable talent that works on them. Eternal Temptation 2 is the second volume of pin-up art using the mysterious ancient Egypt as the back drop. Intrepid tomb raiders, sexy mummies, and luscious Egyptian queens can all be found in the book that features a painted cover by fan favorites Fastner & Larson, and features artists like Glas Gallego, Arantza, Pedro Cuevas, San Julian, Palaez, and many more into this 64 page book.

While this theme may be a tad bit limiting in its scope, it's the artists who really take ball and run with it to produce some wonderful illustrations. An elaborate piece by Blas Gallego has a nude blonde slave being dragged before an Egyptian queen by a mummy. Daniel Pascarelli shows off another mummy shambling forward carrying the body of a topless pyramid explorer as her comrades look on helpless in the distance. One of my favorites is a 40's inspired piece by Marashi of good girl art showing a lovely and buxom blonde tomb raider surprised by a mummy who grabs her from behind. I love the vintage style hair and bra in this piece that is so reminiscent of old pulp covers.

I also love the rather gory item by Quintabani showing a woman sitting with her back to the reader as she holds a severed mummy head in her hand. Bondage and S & M fans will love the piece by Boada with a nude slave on her knees, fresh from a whipping as evidenced by the marks on her back as the queen sits amused. Palaez and Arantza are always a highlight of any Gallery Girls collections and they do not disappoint here. Palaez draws a beautiful queen being worshipped by a pair of mummies who are on their knees embracing her. Arantza produces a glorious Egyptian woman in gold head dress standing before an ornate sarcophagus.

Quite a different route for this Gallery Girls collection but certainly no less stunning.

Reviewed by Tim Janson

This book has 64 inner pages of b&w sketches, usually in pencil, plus front and back covers in color and a b&w pencil sketch inside front cover (total: 67 fantasy pics). Many of these sketches are amateurishly done, with their chief flaws being faulty human anatomy, faulty animal anatomy (especially the snakes), boringly blank faces, cliché walking mummies (many of them apparently copied from old movie posters), and topless women who appear to have really bad silicone implants. These pictures are supposedly all set in Egypt--the majority represent ancient times, but a few show modern-day female tomb raiders. For the most part, the "Egyptian" people do not look at all like Egyptians.

For people who admire the skillful, dramatic, and interesting fantasy art of such greats as Frank Frazetta, Boris, Mike Hoffman, and Rowena, this book will be a disappointment. Many of its pictures look like the pencil drawings done by talented but inexperienced and untrained thirteen-year-olds--such as can be seen posted on the "fan art" bulletin boards of many local comic book stores. Many of the artists in this book could improve their draftsmanship by studying anatomy-for-artists books and could improve the liveliness of their pictures by studying some of the how-to-draw books concerning comic book illustrations.

I am giving brief descriptions and judgments of every picture in this book to help start a kind of "reviewer dialogue" about these pieces. I've made no effort to try to cover all the bases for any of these pictures. I'm just trying to get the ball rolling. In many cases, perhaps we can agree, drawings that are "skillful" are also dull; on the other hand, drawings that are technically defective may sometimes be very interesting in other respects.

Front cover: Fastner & Larson (color): possibly the best picture of the book; it is something of a rip-off of Frank Frazetta but more cartoony and without his legendary sense of dramatic movement; both the human and leopard anatomy are okay, but the spots on the leopard are unrealistically regular.
Inside front cover. Pelaez: this teasing picture of a woman adjusting her clothing is flawed by poor draftsmanship for the woman's body; her face is pretty but is definitely un-Egyptian; the crown on the woman's head is top-heavy.
1. Arantza: a good sketch of a topless pretty woman chained beside Anubis, the jackal-headed god.
2. Pedro Cuevas: a nude woman, with bandages on both feet and one forearm, has set a mummy afire; judged by her unmatched pair of bolt-on breasts, generally a poor job.
3. Daniel Horne: a good sketch of a mummy hugging a nude beauty in the moonlight while two other mummies watch; fairly amusing.
4. Jose Torres: a boring sketch of a topless woman standing near a kind of sofa; poor.
5. Blas Gallego: this picture has an okay leopard, but the three women have preposterous bolt-on breasts; the mummy that restrains one of them seems to have some problem with his spine.
6. Alonso: this drawing tries to use humor with a troll; thanks to faulty draftsmanship, the woman's right hand is in an impossible location relative to her loincloth.
7. Pelaez: somewhat poor draftsmanship for the woman's left arm and body; so-so cobra.
8. Josep Gual: the woman on the right is poorly done; the cobra is very faulty.
9. Tomas Giorello: an excellent and interesting sketch, except for an impossible twist to the woman's hips.
10. Boada: fairly good, but the topless woman on the right does not have a well-matched pair.
11. Daniel Pascarelli: interesting--a muscular mummy carries off a large-busted tomb raider--but the representation of distance is faulty--as are the woman's boots.
12. Garcia: a skillful and amusing picture of a nude woman gathering lilies from a stream; one of the best, although the drawing of the woman's hips is somewhat faulty.
13. Maraschi: skillful, but the mummy grabbing the tomb raider is trite, and the shadows of the lamp are faulty.
14. Pedro Cuevas: an Escher-like impossible landscape and faulty draftsmanship; both the woman and the mummy she punches are pin-heads, courtesy of poor perspective drawing.
15. Ruben Meriggi: an Egyptian nobleman, a surly mummy, and a woman wearing a brass bra are sketched in an interesting style, but the woman's face and head shape seem faulty.
16. J. L. Marin: this sketch shows quite a bit of skill at representing a running figure--except for the bolt-on breasts--and clearly she does not know the proper way to hold on to a large snake when running.
17. Sanjulian: a stoned-looking woman kneels on fallen rocks, holding a knife and a torch--marred by faulty draftsmanship.
18. Parrillo: a large cast of women, some with demon lovers, is an interesting idea--but this picture is flawed by quality-control problems in draftsmanship and by its unbalanced composition.
19. Quintabani: seriously faulty draftsmanship: a woman in a modern bikini panty, holding a mummy's skull, clearly has some serious problems with her back and the position of her right arm.
20. Carrasco: a woman with a brass bra--well done, with two amusingly goofy mummies.
21. Tomas Giorello: a very skillful and somewhat disturbing portrayal of a woman attacked by a Giger-type mummy.
22. Isaac Del Rivero: a skillful but oddly disturbing portrayal of a mummy (who looks like a female bodybuilder) stripping off her bandages.
23. Juan Cano: an interesting composition of an unbandaged female mummy but with some faulty draftsmanship and an unfunny goofy little male mummy goose-stepping in the background.
24. Enric: a fairly good reclining woman with two black panthers.
25. Daniel Pascarelli: three topless women, with a pharaoh-headed snake coiling around the one who is kneeling in the foreground--alas, both the snake-thing and the woman he is wrapped around are poorly drawn.
26. Arantza: a woman carries an implausibly huge clay vessel near the Sphinx; flawed by poor draftsmanship, especially for the woman's excessively lengthened thighs and excessively shortened upper body and lower legs.
27. Pelaez: two mummies grope a nude woman whose mind is elsewhere; fairly skillful.
28. Capdevila: a trite old-movie-still mummy approaches a chained woman whose legs are abnormally long and whose calf muscles are nearly nonexistent.
29. Maraschi: a skillful--and rather humorous--picture about an erotic interlude between a pair of women.
30. Garcia: a weak picture with an interesting style; the draftsmanship of the lion's head and body is totally flawed.
31. Isaac Del Rivero: a competent picture of a mummy carrying a nude blonde through ground fog under a full moon; seems to be a rip-off of a Swamp Thing movie poster featuring Adrienne Barbeau--or about fifty monster films of the 1950s.
32. Ruben Meriggi: a muscular mummy has captured a topless beauty; skillful art with an interesting, dramatic style.
33. Sanjulian: a topless woman ponders while a priest confers with Anubis; alas, this has somewhat faulty draftsmanship for the woman's arms, breasts, and off-center head.
34. Parrillo: as another grouping of women and demons, this sketch is somewhat better than picture 18 by the same artist.
35. Tomas Giorello: an interestingly weird attack by a mummy's floating head, this is skillful for the most part--except for the woman's left hand and fingers.
36. Alonso: the topless woman in this sketch has a pretty face--and a very modern bikini panty--but some faulty distortion to her body; the camel standing on a little cliff behind her has very faulty toes.
37. Blas Gallego: a so-so picture of three mummies and two nude women; one mummy is getting amorous with the standing woman, who has 21st-century bolt-on breasts.
38. Boada: a topless Egyptian queen, who has ordered a nude woman to be flogged, has some faulty draftsmanship marring her upper body; the right foot of the man with the whip is also faulty, and the bleeding back of the victim is disturbing.
39. Pelaez: a skillfully done pretty woman, kneeling toplessly--much better than the same artist's picture printed inside the front cover.
40. Pedro Cuevas: a topless woman battles a giant snake; she is fairly well drawn, but the snake is seriously faulty where its body passes behind her buttock and crosses in front of her belly.
41. Daniel Pascarelli: a muscular mummy embraces a receptive nude woman; some problems with draftsmanship, especially with her upper body and neck.
42. Josep Gual: a fairly skillful sketch of two women, although the left arm of the seated woman seems faulty.
43. Isaac Del Rivero: an amusing cartoon representing a horny tomb-raiding woman getting more erotic attention than she had expected.
44. Enric: a fairly skillful depiction of a woman's see-through clothing, with a lustful mummy caressing her hip.
45. Quintabani: a skillfully drawn picture of a topless woman whipping an oddly passive muscular nude man; I personally find the bleeding wounds on his back and forearm disturbing.
46. Gracia: an amusing sketch of a topless slavegirl winking at an unseen young man; fairly skillfully done, with the young man's shadow visible beside her.
47. Arantza: a skillfully drawn woman enjoying herself in a tomb.
48. Capdevila: a topless falcon-headed goddess (an unknown sister of Horus?) with really bad silicone implants, a badly proportioned right arm, and a faulty left leg walks past a topless woman who is standing against a pillar with her eyes shut; this picture is funny, but probably unintentionally.
49. Tomas Giorello: a skillful drawing of a topless bald woman being blown into the air when she opens a steaming container.
50. Parrillo: a huge array of mummies (plus a few octopus tentacles) attack a nude woman; interesting composition, but the twisting of her waist is quite impossible in real life.
51. Sanjulian: a topless Egyptian stoner girl watches a cobra approach her; fairly skillful.
52. J. L. Marin: a short, chunky topless woman pretends to dance--or engage in kung-fu--with a mummy; he is grimacing, while she is expressionless; both are posed motionless, like people having their photo taken; Frazetta and Hoffman would have given this idea some great sense of movement.
53. Boada: a rather skillful picture of a nude woman with two amiable snakes; her python is draped across her shoulders like a stole, while her little cobra looks at its basket.
54. Maraschi: a skillful and semi-humorous portrayal of a semi-clad pretty woman being approached by four skeletons who are rising up from the desert sands.
55. Tomas Giorello: a skillful drawing of a nude beauty riding a lion-mummy up a cliff.
56. Parillo: a woman wearing a brass bra sits on an octopus tentacle (?) while visions of scary men hover over her head; interesting, but the basic balance of the composition is faulty, as is the draftsmanship of her left breast.
57. Isaac Del Rivero: a woman--Cleopatra?--stares at an asp she is bringing to her poorly installed 21st-century silicone implants; a somewhat faultily drawn slave woman kneels beside her, with two more asps coiling around and climbing up her left wrist and left ankle--something they could not do in real life.
58. Jose Torres: a skillful sketch of a pretty topless woman kneeling ecstatically in front of a grotesque idol that is clearly not Egyptian--perhaps it is Hittite or just bogus.
59. Ruben Meriggi: this picture has an interesting and effective artistic style--a muscular warrior defeats another warrior while a topless pretty woman gazes to the left at some unknown thing; one of the better pictures in this book.
60. Pedro Cuevas: a good looking topless woman with an axe points to some unknown thing to the right, while her faithful mummy companion stares fixedly in that direction; skillfully drawn.
61. Pelaez: in the moonlight, a topless woman stands, holding hands with a female mummy whose form-fitting bandages conceal almost nothing; skillfully done.
62. Arantza: a very skillful drawing of a topless beauty seated with a cheetah.
63. Quintabani: a fairly skillful drawing of a topless woman squatting next to a statue of Bastet (a cat goddess); while accepting the very modern bikini panty she wears, I have just one quibble: the way her left breast is drawn makes it seem a poor match for her right one.
64. Daniel Pascarelli: a well endowed woman pleasures herself with a willing mummy; one slight objection: the curvature of her backside seems faulty to my eyes.
Rear cover. Lucio Parrillo (color): a muscular zombie, perhaps coated in blood, gropes the buttock of a nude Egyptian woman; that buttock and her right thigh seem to become the victims of a zombie skin infection--as well as suffering from faulty draftsmanship.

By the way, for this review I have numbered the pages in my copy by hand--the printed book does not have any page numbers.