Bizarre
Fetish magazine (1945–1956) founded and edited by John Willie, filled with his bondage drawings and photographs, and an influence on many later fetish publications.
Bizarre was a fetish magazine created by the British artist and photographer John Willie, the pen name of John Alexander Scott Coutts. The first issue came out in Montreal in December 1945, oddly labeled “Volume 2”, and the magazine then appeared at irregular intervals until 1956. Coutts published and edited the first 20 issues before selling it to a friend known as R.E.B., who brought out six more.
Its pages combined Coutts’s own drawings and photographs, often of his wife Holly Anna Faram, with costume designs and letters from readers about high heels, corsets, bondage and other fetishes. Coutts steered clear of nudity, homosexuality and overt violence to stay ahead of the censors. His comic-strip heroine Sweet Gwendoline and the villain Sir Dystic d’Arcy also appeared in the magazine, and English Wikipedia credits Bizarre with a far-reaching effect on later fetish publications.
The magazine has a direct link to Japanese rope: the English Wikipedia article on Kitan Club notes that the Osaka magazine also printed John Willie’s art, and his own article counts him among the few Western artists to appear there. A complete reprint of all 26 issues, edited by Eric Kroll, was later published by Taschen.