Owner/Publisher Hardiman U. Skiddalmoore was simply one of hundreds of publishers who sprang up in the early forties all fighting to the death over the fickle teen market. He struggled for years pushing out cheap imitations of his competitors, often blatantly swiping their material, their tradedress and their creators. Fortunately — or unfortunately — it didn't help.

PEEPHOLE COMICS had poor distribution and poorer sales, and Hardiman was buckling under the stress of his impending financial doom when he succumbed to an untimely death under a fat, German prostitute. This left his only son, Mervin, to run the company, and hopefully pull it from the brink of financial ruin for the sake of his employees, his creditors, his bookie, his mother, and himself.

A self-described 'loser' who had never worked a day in his life, Mervin knew nothing about — and cared not at all for — comics, their production, their marketing, or their distribution. He often claimed Corky Wopplesdown from the Green Valley series was based on him, and that his favorite pastime was wacking off in the men's room to pictures of naked African women in National Geographic. Due to his lack of interest and motivation, Mervin seemed poised for complete and rapid failure.

Instead he became a raging success.

It all started one summer day when Mervin unexpectedly discovered a unique angle that would change everything. He uncovered a niche that needed filling — one that no other publisher would go near. Likely because they were sane.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

- I Love a Girl in Tights #19,

the first appearance of Stingirl, Pink Princess -
and visible nipples .

------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Sex." Mervin said. laughing heartily in one of his final interviews. "It seems obvious now — what with the internets, HBO shows like 'Sexing The City' [sic] and cable porn in everyone's living room, and all — that people would be interested in nooky. But back then it was kind of a revelation. Sex was something you only did in the bedroom with your wife, or in a locked office with a female employee. Not on a newsstand."

Under Hardiman, Spoodgie was just another teen in an endless stream of 'gosh-wow' silliness with a slight sexual edge. Under his daring son Mervin the entire male population of Honey's Hole became horny goats looking for any goatess that might nibble in their bottom grass. The inspiration for this new direction came in one defining moment — the arrival of a cover featuring Spoodgie groping his girlfriend Mickie's ass on the dance floor of some school function.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

- Spoodgie and His Frat House Pals #12,
The ass-grab seen round the world.
The little known surprise is what
Canby Samson slipped into the BG, on the
second dancing couple. It's colored the same
as the dress and has been dismissed as a
'wrinkle', but their expressions and her
reach tell another story.

Likely the first true visible penis
on a PEEPHOLE COMICS cover.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

"He had a real good grip on it," Mervin said, remembering. "It started as just a joke around the office. Can [the artist, Canby Samson], was just trying to make everyone laugh. He was like that. Anything for a gag. He would walk into the office with no pants on, or pull down his drawers in a meeting and fart on you, or whip out his dick and stick it down the back of a girl's dress. Good, clean fun. At least in those days.

"Of course, nowadays people try to make that out as something sick and perverted. But back then, it was funny! No one cared! Not even the women, otherwise, they would have said something, right? So Can was drawing that stuff on the backs of his pages all the time. Spoodgie fucking Micki, or getting a blowjob, or taking it up the ass from an elephant — whatever — just a lot of fucking, and sucking with those sexy-ass girls of his and their huge tits — typical office humor back before it became 'sexual harassment' and ruined things.

"So this one time Can does a finished piece as a fake cover — fully expecting it'll be redrawn more clean. He even had the replacement hand all drawn on an overlay. Anyway, it's got Spoodgie squeezing Micki's ass — something every boy in the country wanted to do, right? [Chuckles] Hell, I did. Can drew great asses. On the girls, I mean. So he turns it in, and we all get a good laugh out of it and it makes its way around the office. Some of the girls — colorists, secretaries, cleaning ladies, whatever — laughed and weren't offended by it. That surprised me — the idea that girls were amused by sex — actually liked it.

"Because Micki seemed to be getting a kick out of it, they did too, I suppose. That put the thought into my head, 'Hey. If girls like sex, I bet they'd buy stuff with sex in it. Boys definitely would.' and I just figured, 'Let's have Can do some of the stuff he does on the backs of the art pages — but on the front. Let's see what happens.' I mean, I din't know you weren't supposed to do that. And we were going under, anyways, right? So what the hell — try something different. Worse comes to worse, I got something new to use in the bathroom during lunch! What's the worst that could happen?"

Surprisingly little, other than a huge increase in sales.

"I don't know why we didn't get into trouble sooner, looking back on it." Mervin continued, "Maybe because we had such poor distribution compared to everyone else. It was all such a scam, back in those days. Mob run. You had to pay for rack space, or buy them hookers or booze, or some shit, and we didn't have the money for that, so we struggled. But with that one cover we got something like eighty percent sell-through. Eighty fucking percent. Suddenly we were flush with cash. Or, I was. And that was just from a guy with his hand on a girl's ass. Imagine if we actually showed something — like tits, or bush, or some shit like that?"

------------------------------------------------------------------------

- The first time we see 'forbidden skin' on a
PEEPHOLE cover. And what good skin it was.
Micki's bare behind is showcased for the first —
and certainly not the last — time on
'Spoodgie and His Frat House Pals #21.'

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Skiddalmoore tested the waters more and more, first with the now infamous 'Bare-Ass Mickie' cover which was the first time naughty skin was ever shown on a PEEPHOLE cover. Increased sales guaranteed it would not be the last.

"The shit just sold better and better, and incredibly, no one complained." Mervin continues. "So we introduced STINGIRL and PINK PRINCESS in Girl in Tights, gave them skimpy costumes, I got one of the girls to color me up some nipples, and — boom — another near sell-out. That opened the floodgates because — to be honest — we were all ready. Everyone who worked at Peephole. At least me and the guys I liked."

"I mean, I hated funnybooks. They smelled funky, the ink came off on your hands, people thought they were for kids, and you had to fucking read 'em! I preferred movies. Funnybooks were like movies after the Hayes code. Stupid and boring and sugary. Like those little marshmallow duck-things you get on Easter that are always stale. Comics were like that. So unrealistic. I just didn't buy the idea that the boys and girls in our comics only wanted to neck, or have sodas, or play footsie, or whatever. Maybe the girls would. Not the boys. Boys don't want you to hold their hands. They want you to hold their dicks! (LAUGHS) With your lips! (LAUGHS)

"I was bored out of my gourd with the goofiness. I needed something to get me interested, and what's more interesting than sex? I had sex. I liked sex. Teenagers probably had sex, or at least wanted to real bad. I certainly did when I was their age. People write songs about that shit. Under The Boardwalk. Under the grandstand. Fuck, I did it once in a monkey cage at the zoo! Not with a monkey, or anything, with a girl, but...

"So, anyway, I imagined that — like me — kids wanted to fuck, and fuck as often as they could! Or at least get blowjobs! The boys, I mean. So it just made sense to me that the kids would also want to read about that — not about all this goddam cuddling, moony-eyed bullshit. And if they didn't — hell, we were dead in the water, anyway, right? And I would have been glad to be rid of the damn business. So that was the direction I decided to go. Being an idiot, basically, I had no idea you weren't supposed to make that kind of material — let alone sell it to kids."

------------------------------------------------------------------------

- I Love a Girl in Tights #19,

Naked breasts appear for the first time —
along with barely obscured pubic hair and penis.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

The entire line of PEEPHOLE COMICS became increasingly more sexual, right up until the summer of 1972. Then it exploded beyond all belief. That was the year Spoodgie visited neighboring Green Valley — a nudist village where everyone was beautiful and horny — and history was made.

"We sold every copy." Mervin says, with a massive grin. "Every copy. That's unheard of in this industry. You're lucky to sell — maybe — forty percent. Forty. We sold a hundred percent. We had zero returns."

More surprisingly, they had zero complaints.

"That stunned me, honestly. We had been pushing the limits as far as I thought they could go, and no one complained — probably because of our piss-poor distribution. Even through the Kefauver hearings and that whole 'Seduction of the Indecent' bullshit. We just put fake Comics Codes on the covers. Ours said 'Comical Code.' So we fooled 'em. They sold out so fast no one looking to score political points ever got to see one. And we just kept pushing it. Then the direct sales thing starts. But it's only a couple stores, and only one guy figures us out, run by this guy in San Jose. But he didn't care, as long as the damn things made him money. And they did.

"We had the superhero stuff — everyone did — you know the Girl in Tights, The Mighty Powerful Friends, Clownie, Invincigirl, Horsefly, and all that shit, and we started making the costumes smaller and smaller — I mean, they were all basically naked, anyway in those fucking skin-tight things — and finally, we did that cover with Clownie where his wife is naked and you can see his dick through his tights. We got that in, and I just thought 'There's no way this will get past people. I'm going to jail.'

"And nothing. We just sold more. So the lid came off. We started Green Valley as a comic of its own, and every cover had someone naked on it. Sales were unbelievable — at least for us. I bought a huge house, new cars — although I kept telling people we were broke. I didn't want them getting greedy on me, and shit. I was paying them enough already. So of course, that's when the shit hits the fan — while I'm wearin' a white suit.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

- Spoodgie and His Frat House Pals #135

another of many returns to Green Valley
and the first fully exposed penis to appear
on a PEEPHOLE COMICS cover.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

"It turned out none of the parents were actually looking at the goddam books before they bought 'em. They'd just grab a stack and toss 'em in the back of the car to keep the kids quiet — and the kids weren't saying anything. Below a certain age, kids didn't like the stuff, and gave it away or dumped it. They more or less policed themselves. Above hormonal age, they couldn't get enough of the shit and went nuts for it. Any extras were selling to grown-ups who knew it was wrong, and were keeping it on the down-low. This was in the days before all those internets and everyone went immediately on the line and knew everything about everything in — like — an hour.

"PEEPHOLE COMICS had quietly built an intense, loyal following of people with a dirty little secret, and I thought it would go on forever. It had already gone on for years, so why not? Eventually, though, some fucking grown-ups with too much time on their hands starting paying attention to what their kids were reading, and actually did more than pick his teeth with one of the goddam things. Then it gets on the news, there's the fucking riots in the South ... oh, Jesus. That was a bad week to be me.

"They started burnin' our frickin' books." Mervin continued, still clearly annoyed. "They didn't even call, or ask us if we wanted them back. They just fucking burned them. Which actually turned out to be good, because then they had to pay for 'em. So we sold out, technically. That went on for a couple months. But eventually they caught on that they were really helping us, and they stopped burning the shit, killed the orders and sent everything back. We started getting collections in the mail that parents had found under their kid's mattresses, hidden in closets and in clubhouses and shit. And they expected us to buy 'em back. Jesus. What a goddam nightmare. I got out of it, though, relatively easy. I just didn't pay the writers or artists, or anybody, at the end, and it all worked out okay. For me, anyway. Thank God I'd made all that money I didn't tell anybody about! "

Within three months, PEEPHOLE COMICS was out of business.

"It was fun while it lasted, though." Mervin said, smiling. "All those books. And I still have most of the original art. The artists thought they should get it back, but, hey — It's mine. The characters were mine, the company was mine, and I paid for most of it. They want to give me what it's worth, I'll be happy to sell it back to 'em. That'll be my retirement."

Mervin died a week later.

Since Mervin's death, interest has resurged in all PEEPHOLE COMICS properties, largely because they're fantastically hard to find, highly prized and exceedingly valuable — especially those later issues whose runs were almost completely destroyed.

So now, GreenValleyCityCenter.com has purchased all the old artwork and surviving printed copies from Mervin's illegitimate children and legal heirs for a bulk fee, and will be re-presenting these impossible to find comics and stories here — on this site — digitally colored, re-touched, and re-worked for a modern audience.

So come back often to check them out. If you ever 'looked through the PEEPHOLE' in the past, it will be a nostalgic treat to look again. If you've never heard of them, you're in for a delightful surprise. In the meantime, we're proud to be able — at long last — to say:

PEEPHOLE COMICS LIVES AGAIN!

MORE ABOUT PEEPHOLE COMICS
LIST OF PEEPHOLE TITLES