Memories of Fantastic Four Issue No. 137 and My Days as a Friend of Ol' Marvel

Fantastic Four #137 (Aug 1973) 

 

I. 

 

As regular readers will know, 1973 was a crucial year for me: the year that I was initiated into the world of glam rock, buying records by Gary Glitter, Sweet, and Slade. 

 

It was also the year that I bought my first US edition of a Marvel Comic - Fantastic Four #137 ...

 

 

II.

 

Published in May of that year - though cover dated August, as was common practice at the time [1] - 'Rumble on Planet 3' (aka 'Where Walks Warhead!') [2] was written by Roy Thomas and Gerry Conway. John Buscema and Joe Sinnott provided the artwork. 

 

I still remember how excited the cover made me - so glossy and colourful and so unlike the feel of British comics. And Warhead's surreal embodiment of sci-fi horror thrilled my childish imagination [3]. 

 

That said, I still also remember reading it and not understanding anything of what was going on ...

 

 

III. 

 

The story unfolds inside a '50s-themed pop-cultural universe or reality warp, created by a cosmic entity known as the Shaper of Worlds, who, like God, moves in mysterious ways and says things like: I am called the Shaper ... and it is my gift and my curse to make dreams live.

 

It features a Sputnik-headed monster with the body of King Kong battling the Fantastic Four who, at that time, included Medusa, one of the Inhumans, standing in for Sue Richards, the Invisible Girl, who was on family leave caring for her son, Franklin. 

 

Eventually, the Thing dispatches Warhead with a single powerful punch smashing his satellite-skull and causing him to fall back into the drive-in movie screen from which he emerged.  

 

Meanwhile, rival gangs - the Patriots and the Wild Ones - were fighting one another, until a third group - members of the black community (representing the civil rights movement) - comes to bring resolution. At this point, the Shaper of Worlds declares game over and restores '70s normality [4].        

 

 

IV. 

 

To be fair, reading this recap today of a barely-intelligible storyline, I think my confusion as a ten-year-old was perfectly understandable (the fact that I hadn't read part one in issue 136 obviously didn't help) [5].

 

The odd thing is it didn't dissuade me from going on to buy around 1,700 Marvel Comics over the next five or six years and even briefly becoming a member of FOOM [6].   

 

I suppose, looking back, I have a lot to thank the Marvel Comics Group for - they even published one of my earliest pieces of work; a letter complaining about censorship in the British reprints of the original American editions [7]. 

 

This letter received an unusually lengthy (and slightly narked-sounding) reply about the responsibility of publishers to provide material suitable for a UK market in which the average age of readers was lower than the US. 

 

What I didn't receive was a 'No-Prize' for my letter - unlike my friend Andy, who was awarded such for spotting some minor continuity error in an issue of The Incredible Hulk, much to my begrudgement at the time.    

  

Notes

 

[1] Comic book publishers used a future cover date primarily to act as a withdrawal deadline for retailers, instructing them when to remove unsold issues from the shelves. It also meant of course that issues looked newer for longer. 

      Both Marvel and DC maintained a standard two-month gap between the actual on-sale date and the cover date until 1973, when competitive pressures and distribution adjustments sometimes caused the discrepancy to widen to three months. It wasn't until 1989 that the industry stabilised and things reverted to the traditional two-month gap.   

 

[2] Fantastic Four #137 (1973) has two distinct titles because of a common publishing quirk in the world of comics at that time: the eye-catching title printed on the cover serving as a hook for casual readers browsing the magazine stand often differs from the more restrained official title printed on the interior splash page, where formal story credits are listed. 

      Often, this was due to the fact covers and interiors were worked on at different times and by different artists. But an editor might also decide that a title wasn't dramatic enough to drive sales, prompting them to invent a completely different, sexier tagline for the cover. 

      Among critics and comic-book historians, "Rumble on Planet 3!" is universally preferred and recognised as the definitive title for this issue, though, personally, I've always remembered it as 'Where Walks Warhead!' and still like that title as it also makes me think of a song by British punk band the UK Subs: click here. 

 

[3] Warhead is based on the creature in the 1953 film Robot Monster (dir. Phil Tucker). His body is that of a giant gorilla, while his head is patterned after the first satellite launched into space, by the Soviets, in 1957. To watch the original trailer on YouTube, click here. 

 

[4] For a more comprehensive (though not necessarily more intelligible) story synopsis, visit the Marvel Database on marvel.fandom.com 

 

[5] Fantastic Four #137 is still picking up bad reviews: one critic recently writing: 

      "The story makes little sense, and ultimately feels like a silly and pointless exercise in clumsy cultural anthropology. Thomas and Conway compound their simplistic youths-vs-olds of the 50s dynamic by introducing the Civil Rights struggle of the 60s (which actually began in the 40s). No doubt it was well intentioned, but in the absence of a coherent story it feels preachy and naive."

      See the post by Percival Henry on his blog Percival Henry: The Fantastic Four and more (6 July 2024): click here.   

 

[6] FOOM (Friends of Ol' Marvel) was the official Marvel Comics fan club and members magazine, featuring behind-the-scenes news, artwork, and interviews. It ran for 22 quarterly issues between 1973-1978, which was basically when I collected the comics. The first issues were designed, written, and edited by Jim Steranko. 

 

[7] The letter was published in an issue of The Mighty World of Marvel in early 1976 (unfortunately, I don't recall the exact number of the issue, but it was around #176). The response from the editorial team - led at that time by future Pet Shop Boy Neil Tennant - tried to justify their censorship as a necessary measure to avoid upsetting strict British newsagent distribution networks and parental watchdogs. 

      My letter explicitly called out two instances of Marvel UK's modifications: firstly, in the black-and-white UK version of Incredible Hulk #168, someone prudishly covers a naked Betty Ross; secondly, the word 'wank' which appeared in Conan the Barbarian #24, was frantically scrubbed out for the UK reprint.  

 

Tell Everyone - King Kong is Here!

Movie theatre poster advertising the showing of  

King Kong (RKO Radio Pictures, 1933)

  

I.

 

Whether informing the punk aesthetic as conceived by Malcolm McLaren [1] or the radical feminist theory produced by Virginie Despentes to challenge traditional expectations around sex and gender [2], there is no disputing that King Kong is one of the greatest of all cinematic monsters and that the 1933 film directed by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack is forever locked into our cultural imagination. 

 

 

II. 

 

Apparently, Cooper would have been quite happy to have simply made a movie about a giant gorilla struggling against prehistoric lizards on a long-lost island. The screenwriters, however, had other ideas and persuaded him to lean into the classic Beauty and the Beast motif. 

 

Thus it is that the film opens with an Arabian proverb (fabricated by Cooper):

 

And lo! The Beast looked upon the face of Beauty, and it stayed its hand from killing. And from that day, it was as one dead.  

 

And thus it is the film ends with the famous final line spoken by Carl Denham (played by Robert Armstrong) after Kong is mortally wounded by machine gun fire and plummets from atop the Empire State Building to the ground a thousand feet below: 

 

It wasn't the airplanes. It was beauty killed the beast.   

 

 

III. 

 

And that fatal beauty was the struggling actress Ann Darrow, played by 24-year-old Canadian Fay Wray - cast only when Blonde Bombshell Jean Harlow became contractually unavailable for the part. 

 

The iconic role as Kong's human love interest - for which Wray was paid the sum of $10,000 - made her a star. And after she died in 2004, aged 96, the lights of the Empire State Building were dimmed for 15 minutes in her memory.  

 

Before filming, Cooper teased Wray that she would work with the tallest, darkest leading man in Hollywood. She optimistically envisioned Cary Grant or Clark Gable, before discovering it was Kong. This is amusingly echoed in the film when director Carl Denham recruits Ann Darrow to his new project, promising her the thrill of a lifetime. 

 

Initially, Wray regarded her role as just another acting job and felt the movie relied too heavily on her screaming [3]. She wondered why people made such a big deal out of a film that wasn't exactly Shakespeare. However, Wray eventually embraced her role in King Kong and came to appreciate the film's majesty.  

 

Finally, we might note that Wray - a natural brunette - wore a blonde wig for her role as Ann Darrow; the producers insisting that her character needed to be blonde in order to create a stark visual contrast against the dark fur of the giant ape. 

 

The natives of Skull Island refer to her as the golden woman - a detail that directly invites discussion of the movie's complex racial politics ... [4] 

 

 

IV.

 

Many modern critics and scholars interpret King Kong as a tale that reflects the racial politics of the period, playing on anxieties about black masculinity and fears of interracial relationships. 

 

And it is certainly difficult to watch Kong shackled in chains, transported to America, and exploited for profit without seeing reflections of the transatlantic slave trade. Similarly, the film's depiction of the dark-skinned natives of Skull Island as primitive and savage, also aligns with 1930s colonial attitudes and racist tropes that Hollywood was only too happy to tap into. 

 

Yet Cooper always maintained that he didn't consciously conceive of Kong as a racial symbol and simply wanted to make an exciting adventure film about a giant ape. And while an artist's intent doesn't completely erase the subconscious cultural anxieties baked into their work, reducing Kong to a singular metaphor is intellectually lazy. 

 

It may not be Shakespeare, but King Kong is a far cry from the crude exploitation films of the era like Ingagi (1930) [5]. 

  

V. 

 

King Kong premiered in New York City on 2 March, 1933, to rave reviews. 

 

Praise was particularly directed towards Willis H. O'Brien for his groundbreaking special effects [6], and Max Steiner for his impressionistic musical score inspired by Debussy and Ravel, with pioneering use of the Wagnerian leitmotif. 

 

During its initial run, the film earned a profit of $650,000 (around $16.7 million today), but it has continued to rake in the dollars ever since: what we might call cash from King Kong's chaos.  

 

Because the film was made before the strict enforcement of the Hays Code began in 1934, the original cut was able to get away with things that would later be deemed morally unacceptable. 

 

However, censors got to work to ensure that when the film was re-released, several scenes were either edited or cut altogether - including ones in which King Kong carefully undresses Ann Darrow [7] and deliberately kills people who get in his way or annoy him (either by biting them in half or crushing them underfoot).       

 

Interestingly, the censors in Nazi Germany were even more outraged by King Kong, describing the film as a violation of German race feeling. However, they changed their tune once it was discovered that the Führer loved the film and the ban on the film was lifted [8]. 

 

 

VI. 

 

As indicated at the beginning of this post, King Kong quickly achieved the status of cultural icon and modern myth [9]. A figure loved by everyone - including European intellectuals ...

 

The Surrealists in particular were huge fans, regarding Kong as a supreme manifestation of irrational desire disrupting the boring and repetitive nature of civilised modern life. They also favourably viewed Kong's obsessive, doomed devotion to Ann Darrow as a primal expression of l'amour fou.

 

In his seminal essay À propos de King Kong, Surrealist critic Jean Ferry meticulously catalogued the film's many absurdities. But, rather than condemning them as flaws, he argued that these logical glitches enhanced the experience of watching the film by investing it with a violent, oneiric power. 

 

M. Ferry also emphasised the film's monstrous eroticism and the poetic character of Kong's on-screen presence - not to mention his uncanny ability to seemingly change size [10].  

 

 

VII.

 

By the 1960s and '70s, King Kong's public image had shifted from a terrifying monster to a campy cult figure used almost exclusively for comic relief. Satirised, spoofed, and parodied from pillar to post, he even made a cameo appearance in the Beatles' Yellow Submarine (1968). 

 

If that isn't depressing enough, it was during this time that academics also began to take an interest in Kong - subjecting him to endless critical analysis. One Kongophile, Mitchell Prettyplace, even produced a definitive 18-volume study that was referenced by Thomas Pynchon in his 1973 novel Gravity's Rainbow. 

 

Thankfully, in 1978 McLaren and Westwood gave King Kong back something of his old outrageousness by restoring his phallic glory [11].  

 

  

His heart's still pumping, his blood's still running 

King Kong, the king is here! [12]

 

 

Notes 

 

[1] See the post 'Go Ape Crazy' (28 Sept 2026).

 

[2] See the post 'Reflections on King Kong Theory' (29 Sept 2026). 

 

[3] A real trooper, not only did Wray spend an uncomfortably extended period of time sitting in a tree while filming King Kong, but she provided all of her character's screams in a single recording session - resulting in her being unable to speak for several days afterwards. 

 

[4] The political (and sexual) politics of King Kong have undergone extensive analysis, so I'll only touch briefly on these aspects here. However, readers who wish to know more are encouraged to see the essay by Stefanie Affeldt titled 'Exterminating the Brute: Sexism and Racism in King Kong', in Simianization: Apes, Gender, Class, and Race, ed. Wulf D. Hund, Charles W. Mills, and Silvia Sebastiani (Lit Verlag, 2015), pp. 139-169.

 

[5] Directed by William S. Campbell, Ingagi (1930) was a highly successful exploitation film masquerading as a documentary about gorilla-worshipping women in the Belgian Congo. It established the highly lucrative Hollywood formula of putting pretty girls in peril alongside gorillas. RKO likely greenlit King Kong to capitalize on the film's massive box-office success. 

 

[6] Roger Ebert hits the nail on the head when he writes that "in the very artificiality of some of the special effects, there is a creepiness that isn't there in today's slick, flawless, computer-aided images" and that these ensure King Kong has something ageless and primeval about it. See the four-star review of King Kong (3 Feb 2002) on rogerebert.com 

 

[7] Interestingly, one scholar argues that when Kong partially undresses Ann, touching her body and sniffing her clothes, it initiates her into the natural world and should not be seen as a sexual act. See Cynthia Marie Erb, Tracking King Kong: A Hollywood Icon in World Culture (Wayne State University Press, 2009), p. 112. 

 

[8] Although it is a widely reported claim that Hitler was spellbound by King Kong, historians debate whether this is more popular myth than verifiable fact. 

      For while several contemporary accounts from people within his inner circle confirm the Führer was a Hollywood film fan who enjoyed watching movies nearly every night - and while the Nazi newspaper Der Angriff published a very positive review of King Kong (in predictably racialised terms), the historian Bill Niven points out that there is no official record definitively proving Hitler ever saw it. See his book, Hitler and Film: The Führer's Hidden Passion (Yale University Press, 2018). 

 

[9] This needs to be qualified somewhat: Kong's transformation from a famous movie monster into a true cultural phenomenon accelerated after the film's 1952 theatrical re-release. Following its final cinema outing in 1956, RKO sold the television rights, introducing Kong to a massive new generation of small-screen viewers. 

 

[10] Ferry published the review under his real name, Jean Lévy, in Minotaure No. 5 (May 1934). An English translation can be found in The Shadow and Its Shadow, ed. and trans by Paul Hammond (City Lights Books, 2000), pp. 161-165.

 

[11] Again, see the post 'Go Ape Crazy' (28 Sept 2026).       

 

[12] Lyrics by Malcolm McLaren for the Bow Wow Wow track 'King Kong', on the album See Jungle! See Jungle! Go Join Your Gang Yeah, City All Over! Go Ape Crazy! (RCA Records, 1981).  

 

 

Bonus: click here to watch the original trailer to King Kong (1933) on YouTube. 

 

 

Reflections on Virginie Despentes's King Kong Theory in Relation to Valerie Solanas's SCUM Manifesto and Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts

 

Virginie Despentes: King Kong Theory 

Cover of the FSG Originals edition (2021) 

 

I write from the realms of the ugly, for the ugly, the frigid, the unfucked 

and the unfuckables, all those excluded from the great meat market of female flesh, 

and for all those guys who don't want to be protectors, for those who 

are not ambitious, competitive, or well-endowed. [1]

 

 

I. 

 

I have to confess, I don't know a great deal about the French writer and filmmaker Virginie Despentes, other than that she likes to explore themes of gender, sexuality, and marginalisation and that her work is often labelled transgressive (i.e., that those marketing her books and movies want you to believe they have a certain edgy vibe). 

 

Probably her most famous fictional work is the 1993 novel Baise-moi, which she adapted for film in 2000. Because of its graphic mix of violence and explicit sex scenes, the movie received extensive media coverage - but not great reviews. It is sometimes considered an example of what critics like to refer to as the New French Extremity [2]. 

 

I'm afraid that when I come across any writing which seems to thrill with graphic depictions of rape and murder, I can't help recalling Lawrence's letter to Aldous Huxley in which he warned how this ultimately results in a feeling of profound boredom [3]. 

 

Still, that's just me - and I doubt very much I'm the target audience for this enfant terrible of French cinema and the literary world. 

 

 

II. 

  

When not writing fiction or directing films, Despentes produces cultural theory and feminist philosophy from a radical pro-sex and post-punk perspective. 

 

Her most famous contribution to such is the wonderfully titled 2006 book King Kong Theory - a work which, like Baise-moi, was shaped by her (not particularly pleasant) experiences as a teenaged hitchhiker and groupie and then, later, as a prostitute working in peep shows and massage parlours and walking the streets in low-cut tops and high-heeled shoes, not giving a shit about what people thought of her [4]. 

 

For Despentes, being gang-raped was the price she had to pay for living with total freedom: or living like a man, as she put it [5]. 

 

Or a giant gorilla ...   

 

 

III.  

 

In King Kong Theory, Despentes explicitly informs her readers early on that she is more King Kong than Kate Moss, by which she means "too aggressive, too loud, too fat, too brutish, too hairy, always too mannish" [6] to pass as a waifish and fashionable model of womanhood. 

 

Later, she expands on what it is to be a King Kong Girl: essentially, it's to be transgender and to trouble all binary distinctions; not just male and female, but also human and animal, primitive and civilised, good and evil. 

 

To become King Kong is not just to have an enormous appetite for bananas and destruction, but to realise one's potential for ultra-powerful, polymorphic sexuality and escape the confines of femininity (which she equates with bootlicking and the art of servility). 

 

Arguably, King Kong Theory owes a good deal to a number of earlier works, including Valerie Solanas's SCUM Manifesto (1968). But it reminds me also of a more recent book, namely, Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts (2015) and I thought it might be interesting to briefly compare and contrast these three texts ...

 

 

IV.  

 

With its use of aggressive, non-academic, and visceral language to critique patriarchal structures, sexual violence, and societal hierarchies, Virginie Despentes's King Kong Theory is most comparable to Valerie Solanas's SCUM Manifesto. 

 

Both writers position themselves in the margins and address those excluded from conventional definitions of womanhood, respectability, or desirability. And both authors wilfully court controversy and reject mainstream feminist assimilation, opting instead to shock the reader into a new awareness of gender power dynamics. 

 

However, in terms of their political ideology, they diverge significantly: whereas SCUM girls seek the destruction of society and the elimination of men, King Kong Girls don't subscribe to such a separatist (and androcidal) revolutionary model. 

 

They seek only their own survival and autonomy whilst holding to the hope of building new relationships in a trans-future which liberates both men and women from the current forced masquerade of gender. For Despentes, feminism is ultimately a collective adventure. 

 

I think Despentes is a little less crazy than Solanas - she isn't going to shoot anyone (even if she promises to provide a gun for every girl) and King Kong Theory is rooted more in sincere personal memoir (with its mix of trauma and vulnerability) than razor sharp political satire. 

 

Ultimately, this makes it much less fun to read than SCUM, although, for those who like the kind of confessional writing (or autotheory) peddled by Despentes, King Kong Theory is more moving on a human level. 

 

And it is precisely this shift toward the deeply personal, structurally fluid world of autotheory that brings me to Maggie Nelson ...        

 

 

V.

 

By Nelson's own account, King Kong Theory was a direct inspiration on her book The Argonauts [7]. 

 

Both books are a very skilful blend of deeply personal memoir and critical theory used to dissolve traditional ideas - including mainstream feminist ideas - about gender, sex, and societal expectations and both writers refuse to separate the ideological from the biological. 

 

Thus, it is that their philosophical thinking is rooted in the messy reality of their own bodies, sex lives, and personal histories (interestingly, both authors identified as lesbians, but both became romantically involved with women who then transitioned to men) [8]. 

 

Despite sharing certain foundational similarities, there are contrasting structural differences between King Kong Theory and The Argonauts and their tone and style are very different. I wouldn't necessarily say that Nelson is the more gifted writer, but she's definitely the more lyrical and coolly analytic; less punk, perhaps, but more poetic and intellectual. 

 

Personally, as much as I like Despentes's use of a monstrous metaphor - King Kong - to describe polymorphic sexuality and a non-heteronormative way of being in the world, I think Nelson's mythological metaphor (borrowed from Roland Barthes) - the Argonauts' ship - is not only more subtle and sophisticated, but more useful for thinking about the continually changing nature of queer identity. 

 

In sum: Despentes's King Kong Theory is probably closer in anger and attitude to Solanas's Scum Manifesto than to Nelson's The Argonauts. But in as much as King Kong Theory blends personal memoir with gender theory and addresses queer marginalized lived experience, you'd have to say that it anticipates the latter work more than it recalls the former.  

 

 

VI.

 

A friend of mine asked which of the three books I would recommend for her fourteen-year-old daughter - which is a tricky question to answer. 

 

Liberal-minded people doubtless wouldn't hesitate to suggest The Argonauts as the most age-appropriate work and there is a lot to argue in favour of this. 

 

Maggie Nelson's book is a thoughtful, beautifully written piece of autotheory and for a teenager growing up in today's world, it offers a nuanced, empathetic, and highly relevant look at how we construct our identities and relationships. Whilst rich in fairly complex ideas, The Argonauts remains grounded in a real-world domestic situation and is written (for want of another word) with love [9]. 

 

However, I'm not particularly liberal-minded and always feel instinctively drawn to that which is inappropriate ... 

 

And so I think I'd probably go with the SCUM Manifesto - even at the risk that this might be misinterpreted by a young mind and taken all-too-literally. King Kong Theory loses out simply on the grounds that I think it offers far fewer laughs and, ultimately, as Lawrence warned about obscenely graphic writing, it can become boring and a bit depressing after a while. 

 

And - to be perfectly honest - I'd rather my friend's daughter dreamed of becoming a thrill-seeking female intent on overthrowing governments, destroying the male sex, cracking jokes, and building a magical world rather than thinking about the grim reality of pornography, prostitution, and gang-rape.  

Ultimately, with its cynicism, nihilism, and dark humour I still think the SCUM Manifesto is more punk than King Kong Theory [10] - despite the gritty authenticity of the latter and its liberal use of expletives. 

  

Notes

 

[1] This is a composite quote from the opening section ('Bad Lieutenants') to Virginie Despentes's King Kong Theory, translated by Frank Wynne (Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2020). The original French edition, King Kong théorie, was published by Grasset in 2006. 

      Previous English-language editions, trans. Stéphanie Benson, were published by Serpent's Tail (2009) and The Feminist Press (2010). 

 

[2] As a noun, un baiser simply means a kiss. But as a verb, baiser means to fuck. And so Baise-moi is best translated in English as Fuck Me. In some markets, however, Despentes's film is known as Rape Me - a mistranslation with which she has expressed her displeasure in interviews.

      As for the term New French Extremity, this was first coined by critic James Quandt in 2004 in a piece complaining about the violent turn that French filmmaking appeared to have taken in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

 

[3] In a letter to Huxley written in October 1929, Lawrence writes: "If you can only palpitate to murder, suicide, and rape [...] however are we going to live [...] it becomes a phantasmal boredom and produces ultimately inertia [...] and final atrophy of the feelings." See The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. VI, ed. James T. Boulton and Margaret H. Boulton with Gerald M. Lacy (Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 600. 

 

[4] See the section 'Sleeping With the Enemy' in King Kong Theory where Despentes discusses her time as a sex worker. She claims one of the things she found most difficult about the job was dealing with the loneliness and vulnerability of the men who were her clients. She positively contrasts sex work with heterosexual relationships in which, as she puts it, women are fucked for free.

 

[5] That's maybe an unfair (reductive) characterisation of Despentes's position. 

      In the section of her book titled 'You Can't Rape a Woman Who's a Total Slut', Despentes recounts her experience of being gang-raped in 1986 at the age of seventeen, and explains how she has processed the experience since. 

      Her account and response is more nuanced than I imply. She notes, for example, how women who have been raped are socially encouraged to blame themselves and harbour feelings of guilt and shame for not resisting (this is, in fact, one of her central arguments). Despentes also suggests that female rape fantasies do not indicate an inherent desire for subjugation, but are the result of a patriarchal system that conflates female sexuality with powerlessness and oppression.  

      At the same time, however, it should be noted that Despentes famously rejects the status of dignified victim and this rejection is crucial to her punk-feminist philosophy in King Kong Theory. She will not feel shame and she will not be silent and prefers to assert angry agency rather than ask for pity (or even demand justice in the traditional legal sense). She explicitly claims that rape did not destroy or defeat her, even if it did permanently change her and lead to her wider political awakening.

 

[6] Virginie Despentes, King Kong Theory, trans. Frank Wynne (Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2020), p. 14. 

 

[7] Maggie Nelson generously provides a blurb for the Fitzcarraldo edition of King Kong Theory in which she writes: "I can think of almost no book I've enjoyed in recent years as much as King Kong Theory - in part for its content, in part for the ferocity of its style. [...] This book is a classic, and I'm grateful for it."

 

[8] Despentes dated Spanish philosopher Paul B. Preciado from 2005 to 2014; Maggie Nelson is married to the artist and writer Harry Dodge. The Argonauts largely chronicles their relationship and experiences with queer domesticity and family life. 

 

[9] I published a two-part post on Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts back in April 2025. To access part one of this post (on pp. 1-74 of the book), click here. There is a link to the second part of the post (pp. 75-180) at the end of part one. 

 

[10] For a recent post on Valerie Solanas's place in the punk imagination - with particular reference to the history of the Sex Pistols, click here.    

 

 

Bonus: Frank Wynne reads from Virginie Despentes's King Kong Theory (Fitzcarraldo, 2020 / FSG, 2021).

 

 

Go Ape Crazy: On the Role of King Kong in Malcolm McLaren's Imagination

Malcolm Mclaren and Vivienne Westwood: 

'Exposé: Punk Rock Sex' T-shirt (Seditionaries 1978)

Image via: metmuseum.org 

 

King Kong, King Kong, I don't think clear  

King Kong king, the king is here 

 His heart's still pumping, his blood's still running  

King Kong king, the king is here [1]

 

 

I.

 

Everybody loves King Kong (1933) - the tragic story of a giant gorilla transported to a world not of his own making, who falls for a beautiful young white woman originally offered to him as a sacrifice.

 

And when I say everyone, I mean everyone - from Adolf Hitler to Malcolm McLaren ... 

 

 

II. 

 

Actually, although it is a widely reported claim that Hitler was spellbound by King Kong, historians debate whether this is more popular myth than verifiable fact. 

      

For while several contemporary accounts from people within his inner circle confirm the Führer was a Hollywood film fan who enjoyed watching movies nearly every night - and while the Nazi newspaper Der Angriff published a very positive review of King Kong (in predictably racialised terms) - Bill Niven points out that there is no official record definitively proving Hitler ever saw it [2].  

 

McLaren, however, was definitely a fan of King Kong and repurposed this powerful piece of cinematic mythology on at least two occasions: firstly, weaving it into his own aesthetic as a provocative fashion designer and, secondly, as a lyricist with Bow Wow Wow, the band he conceived and managed after his Sex Pistols project terminated. 

 

 

III.

 

Returning to the UK in early 1978 after the Sex Pistols' fateful US tour resulted in the dissolution of the band as a regular four-piece, McLaren and his partner Vivienne Westwood set about printing a series of obscene novelty designs that he had come across in America on a range of plain T-shirts and muslin tops sold at Seditionaries.

 

Among these was a cartoon-style image of King Kong atop the Empire State Building masturbating over a female figure (presumably Ann Darrow - the struggling actress and Kong's love interest in the 1933 film as played by Fay Wray). 

 

The cultural significance of the shirt titled 'Exposé' (and subtitled 'Punk Rock Sex') is debatable. It's crudely provocative and mildly amusing, but I wouldn't say it's one of the great pieces designed by McLaren and Westwood. Sid liked wearing it, so that's something, I suppose - but I wouldn't personally describe it as representing the raw, anti-establishment aesthetic that defined early punk fashion [3]. 

 

 

IV. 

 

Three years later, and Malcolm still had the great ape in mind when he wrote lyrics for a Bow Wow Wow track called 'King Kong' which incorporates a slogan from the advertising material used to promote the film in 1933: King Kong is here!     

 

Other lyrics have a certain ambiguity or complexity. Kong is not merely seen as a symbol of primal chaos and untamed animality, he is also viewed by McLaren as a product of American mass media designed to entertain cinemagoers around the world and generate huge profits for the film industry - a monster who eats and shits money and who eventually bores us by repeating his antics over and over on screen. 

 

King Kong, in other words, is part of the Spectacle and McLaren's aim is to subvert, weaponise, and repurpose his image and his story in order not merely to offend polite society, but challenge consumer capitalism - to liberate him, if you like, and give Kong back his outrageousness. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Bow Wow Wow, 'King Kong', a hugely underrated track with lyrics by Malcolm McLaren and music by Matthew Ashman, David Barbarossa, and Leigh Gorman, on the album See Jungle! See Jungle! Go Join Your Gang Yeah, City All Over! Go Ape Crazy! (RCA Records, 1981).  

 

[2] See Bill Niven, Hitler and Film: The Führer's Hidden Passion (Yale University Press, 2018).  

 

[3] In fact, I tend to agree with Paul Gorman that the new shirts produced for Seditionaries in the autumn of '78 had a tone of peevishness "rather than triumphant disruption". If they worked as (slightly juvenile) provocations, "in the absence of a coherent clothing collection providing a framework, they lacked panache and indicated that the McLaren/Westwood design relationship was marking time". 

      See The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p. 403. 

On the Sexual Objectification of the Black Male Body à la McLaren and Westwood

Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood: 

'Naked Footballer' T-shirt (SEX, 1975) 

Image via: bonhams.com 

 

By the end of the seventies the feared yet desired black male body 

had become as objectified as it was during slavery, only a seemingly positive 

twist had been added to the racist sexist objectification ... [1]  

 

 

I. 

  

The argument against the objectification of black masculinity is fairly straightforward: to reduce men to racialised sexual stereotypes and physical attributes rather than recognising them as individuals is dehumanising and degrading - stripping them of both agency and dignity (as well as their clothes). 

 

Frantz Fanon made this case over seventy years ago, pointing out how the idea of a black man as hypersexual, aggressive, and animalistic is one that originated during the colonial era and was used to justify slavery and violent oppression.

 

In his seminal 1952 study, Black Skin, White Masks, Fanon writes about the way the white world works its diabolical magic, transforming the black male subject into nothing but a BBC: "no longer do we see the black man; we see a penis: the black man has been occulted. He has been turned into a penis. He is a penis" [2]. 

 

 

II. 

 

Not that this particularly troubles those working in the arts who happily borrow from the world of pornography in order to appear transgressive, often relying on stereotypes while claiming to challenge social taboos. 

 

Famed photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, for example, loved to fetishise the black male body and produce homoerotic imagery for elite consumption [3].    

 

And punk fashion designers Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood were also not above jumping on this particular bandwagon in the early-mid 1970s, producing a T-shirt featuring a naked image of the NFL player Maurice (Mo) Spencer [4] with a semi-erect penis (see above).  

 

Commonly referred to as the 'Naked Footballer' (1974), this shirt was one of the very earliest designs created for SEX, their notorious boutique at 430 King's Road and is now discussed not only in the context of punk fashion, but also racial and sexual politics.   

 

Interviewed in 2008, McLaren was still defending the design and insisting that his intent was to confront the deep-rooted racial fears and sexual stereotypes clung to by the British public in the '70s - and of course garner publicity for the store [5]. 

 

Yet, as with other ideas and images intended to be radical and subversive, McLaren and Westwood's commodification of a racialised and sexualised body just to shock and perhaps terrify white onlookers is questionable to say the least. 

 

It could be argued - and argued quite convincingly - that they were simply reproducing tired historical tropes. That in this case the punk context ultimately changes very little and any positive twist had no lasting liberatory impact. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] bell hooks, We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity (Routledge, 2004).

 

[2] Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, trans. Richard Philcox (Grove Press, 2008), p. 147. Fanon's original French text - Peau noire, masques blancs - was published in 1952 (Éditions du Seuil). 

 

[3] To be fair, that's a debatable statement - at least in part. On the one hand, Mapplethorpe did take explicit photographs of black men and his prints were mostly intended for wealthy white collectors and museums. But, on the other hand, defenders of his work - including some of his models - argue that his 1986 Black Book - featuring 96 nude images - was a celebration of black male beauty and classical form and didn't merely reduce black men to nameless (and often faceless) sexual objects.  

      As a queer artist working during a time of sexual liberation, Mapplethorpe's work arguably operates under different parameters, leaving the definitive judgment of his intent to the viewer. Readers who wish to make their own mind up on this subject can purchase the most recent edition of The Black Book (Schirmer/Mosel, 2010) on Amazon UK.

 

[4] Spencer played in the NFL during the years 1974-78. In late 1969, when still a teenager, he modelled for an adult physique magazine called Bob Anthony's Beefcake. When McLaren came across the image in a gay bookshop on a visit to New York in 1973, he determined that it had to be appropriated and become part of his own conceptual art project - a project that would eventually produce the Sex Pistols; at least two of whom, Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious, were photographed wearing the shirt.    

 

[5] "Satisfyingly for McLaren", writes Paul Gorman, "local residents complained when these T-shirts were displayed in the shop window." Later, during a police raid on SEX, the 'Naked Footballer' shirts were removed along with the (still more controversial) 'Two Cowboys' shirts. However, the authorities decided against including them in the charges of indecency that were brought against McLaren and Westwood. 

      See Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), pp. 220 and 268. 

 

 

On Valerie Solanas's Place in the Punk Imagination

Valerie Solanas (1936-1988): photo by Fred W. McDarrah (1966) 

'You're Gonna Wake Up ...' (Scum version) 

Sleeveless shirt design by McLaren-Westwood for SEX (1974) 

  

Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore 

and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, 

there remains to ... thrill-seeking females only to 

overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, 

institute complete automation and destroy the male sex.

 

 

I.

 

A bit like Alexander Trocchi, Valerie Solanas is one of those countercultural figures who left a real impression on Malcolm McLaren's imagination and thus on the aesthetics and politics of punk in the UK.

 

Listed as sleeping on the correct side of the bed on one of the first of the new shirts designed by Mclaren and Vivienne Westwood for SEX in 1974, Solanas had the additional honour of having lines from her SCUM Manifesto (1968) spray-painted on the interior walls of 430 King's Road. 

 

These appeared alongside various Situationist slogans from May '68 and a paragraph taken from Trocchi's erotic novel Helen and Desire (1954) that for some reason haunted McLaren for decades afterwards, beginning: I groaned with pain ... [1] 

 

I was amused to recently discover (thanks to Paul Gorman) that when once asked by an interviewer how she would spend a perfect day if she could go anywhere, do anything, meet anyone, Westwood replied she would visit Solanas in her jail cell after her conviction for shooting Andy Warhol with an automatic pistol [2] [3].  

 

 

II. 

 

Looking at the opening paragraph from the SCUM Manifesto printed above, I suppose it's easy to see why Solanas was attractive to McLaren and Westwood: you can't get much more of an aggressively anti-establishment attitude than that - it's pure punk masquerading as feminist theory; a violent rejection of mainstream society that calls for total revolution (or, failing that, complete destruction). 

 

And Solanas herself, of course, might be seen as the ultimate outsider: angry, uncompromising, free-wheeling, thrill-seeking, etc. A little unhinged, certainly, but also, in her own way, groovy. 

 

For McLaren, heavily influenced by Situationism - an avant-garde political movement that advocated using shock tactics and "anti-art" to wake up passive consumers - Solanas's literal assault on the pop-art elite (Warhol) and her wildly confrontational text perfectly suited his project of weaponised cultural chaos.

 

 

III.

 

Of course, the relationship between Solanas and punk was strictly one-way: she never publicly commented on her co-option by McLaren and Westwood into their imaginary universe and commercial aesthetic. 

 

When SEX and Seditionaries were operating in the golden punk period between 1974 and 1980, Solanas was completely removed from pop culture. Following her 1968 shooting of Andy Warhol, she moved between prison and the madhouse, or was otherwise homeless. 

 

Living in extreme poverty and struggling with paranoid schizophrenia and drug dependency, Solanas became a deeply reclusive figure, still highly paranoid about people stealing her work (as, in fact, they were). If she was aware of McLaren and Westwood printing her words on shirts, she never spoke about it to the few people who interviewed her before her death in 1988. 

 

To McLaren and Westwood, Solanas was a quasi-mythical icon of anti-establishment rebellion - someone whose manifesto could, quite literally, be used to decorate the interior of their Chelsea boutique. I don't suppose they gave two shits about Solanas as a woman desperately trying to make ends meet. 

 

But then, to be fair, they were cultural provocateurs running a business and promoting a band, not social workers and there's surely nothing more bourgeois than the idea of 'intellectual property rights'.   

  

 

Notes

 

[1] See the post 'I Groaned With Pain ... On Malcolm McLaren's Obsession with Alexander Trocchi's Erotic Fiction' (22 Sept 2026).   

 

[2] The interview appeared in a feature titled 'London Belles' from a short-lived, free magazine called West One and took place shortly before the shop at 430 King's Road was renamed SEX (i.e., when it was still operating as Too Fast to Live, Too Young to Die). At the time of the interview, Solanas was incarcerated following her 1968 shooting of Andy Warhol (see note 3 below). 

      See the Paul Gorman post of 16 October 2017 which can be found on the historic pop culture site Flashbak: click here. 

 

[3] On 3 June 1968 the radical feminist writer Valerie Solanas fired at Warhol three times with a .32 calibre automatic pistol. The first two shots missed, but the third hit its target and penetrated multiple organs. Warhol survived the incident - after undergoing five hours of surgery - but was never quite the same again, the shooting having a profound effect on his later life and work. 

      For some reason, even though Malcolm loved Andy, Warhol was listed on the wrong side of the 'You're Gonna Wake Up One Morning and Know What Side of the Bed You've Been Lying On!' shirt (1974). Presumably, this was because the artist was viewed having sold out and become part of the establishment culture. David Hockney and Salvador Dalí were also named on the wrong side of the bed.   

  

I Groaned With Pain ... On Malcolm McLaren's Obsession with Alexander Trocchi's Erotic Fiction

 

Alexander Trocchi (1925-1984): Photo by Marvin Lichtner (1967) 

'I Groaned with Pain' shirt design by McLaren-Westwood for SEX (1974)

I groaned with pain as he eased the pressure in removing the thing 

which had split me and then his huge hands grasping me at the hips 

my blonde hair forming a pool on the dark wood between his feet 

he raised me to doting love soothing the bleeding lips and 

causing the tearing commotion at my loins to subside 

in a soft corrosion

 

  

I. 

 

Malcolm McLaren's obsession with the above lines extracted from Helen and Desire (1954) - an erotic novel by the writer Alexander Trocchi - was one that can be traced across at least a twenty-year period: you can find them printed on a shirt sold at SEX in 1975 and you can hear them still echoing on McLaren's concept album Paris in 1994.  

 

 

II. 

 

Born in Glasgow in 1925, Trocchi was the son of a music-hall performer of Italian heritage. 

 

After working as a young merchant seaman aboard ships transporting food, fuel, and vital military supplies from the UK and US to the Soviet port of Murmansk during WWII, Trocchi studied English literature and moral philosophy at university. 

 

In the early 1950s, he moved to the Continent, living in Paris and editing an avant-garde literary magazine - Merlin (1952-55) - which featured work by writers including Henry Miller, Samuel Beckett, and Jean-Paul Sartre. 

 

Later, in collaboration with the satirical author Terry Southern and publisher Richard Seaver, Trocchi co-edited the 366-page countercultural anthology Writers in Revolt (1962) - which featured work by the above trio alongside contemporaries such as Genet and Ginsberg and ghosts from the past such as Sade and Baudelaire (i.e., all the usual suspects). 

 

 

III.   

 

When not occupied with his editorial work - or shooting up with heroin - Trocchi was busy with his own writing and many of his novels were published by the Olympia Press, i.e., the publishing house that specialised in literary fiction likely to be described as pornography by the old guard and pornography hailed as literary fiction by the vanguard.   

 

Under the pseudonym Frances Lengel, Trocchi churned out numerous erotic works, including McLaren's favourite, Helen and Desire (1954).   

 

IV. 

An interesting character - to say the least - Trocchi was not only pally with members of the American Beat scene, but involved with both the Lettrists and the Situationists. 

 

And, after moving to London in 1962 - where he stayed for the rest of his life - he then became a formative influence on the UK underground scene, working for an invisible insurrection that would promote sodomy as crucial to creativity. 

 

Less than impressed with the direction he was taking, in 1966 the Situationists announced their disapproval and expelled him from the movement. Trocchi continued writing, but, sadly, published little new work.        

 

It was in 1969 that a young art student named Malcolm McLaren was introduced to "the heavily addicted Trocchi, who by then was reduced to selling second-hand books and manuscripts and living in a shabby flat on the Kensington and Chelsea borders" [1].  

 

As Paul Gorman explains, the invitation to McLaren was extended "because Trocchi was  eager to meet radical students to help him work on his utopian Project Sigma texts" [2] - but Malcolm was more interested in Trocchi's past work and connections rather than his future plans for a network of intellectuals interested in non-traditional ways of living and expanding their consciousness with drugs.      

 

 

V. 

 

Skip forward a few years to 1974, and McLaren is now installed at his shop on the King's Road, with his partner Vivienne Westwood (and sometimes collaborator Bernie Rhodes). It has been decided to produce a new range of screen-printed T-shirts to sell at the shop that will soon be rebranded as SEX. 

 

And the first of these designs is the 'I Groaned with Pain' square sleeveless top (shown above) with a text taken from Helen and Desire, hand-written by McLaren: 

 

"The Trocchi shirt represented the first formal annexation of text in the sphere of fashion [...] McLaren transformed the T-shirt from humble undergarment into a powerful means of communicating social and political commentary." [3]

 

Later, McLaren would enlist the support of Saturday boy (and future Sex Pistol) Glen Matlock to assist him in decorating the interior walls of SEX with various spray-painted slogans taken from May '68 and Valerie Solanas's SCUM Manifesto (1968). 

 

Trocchi's 'I groaned with pain ...' paragraph was also added and while McLaren often says punk is all about sex, style, and subversion, it could also be characterised as a mix of porn, politics, and provocation. 

 

 

VI. 

 

The story, however, does not end at 430 King's Road. To fully appreciate the depth of McLaren's obsession with Alexander Trocchi, one has to fast-forward to McLaren's 1994 Paris project, in which he composes a love letter to the French capital and traces out a musical map of feeling.

 

On the opening track, titled 'Mon Dié Sénié', McLaren doesn't just vocalise lyrics based on his favourite lines from Helen and Desire  - "Your blonde hair formed a pool on the dark wood between my feet", etc. - he seamlessly weaves them together with excerpts from another of Trocchi's Olympia Press novels, School for Wives (1955): "She felt the seed stir at the pit of her belly in response to my strong tonguing movements."

 

Years after selling shirts at SEX and Seditionaries, McLaren was still obsessing over Trocchi's words and looping back to his own past in an attempt to live yesterday tomorrow and perhaps breathe new life into the literary pornography that had so inspired him and influenced the look of punk [4].

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable Books, 2020), p. 103.

 

[2] Ibid.

 

[3] Ibid., p. 219. 

 

[4] Readers might like to note that by 1994 there was the beginning of a resurgence of interest in Trocchi and his role in the avant-garde movements of the mid-20th century. A biography written by Andrew Murray Scott titled Alexander Trocchi: The Making of the Monster was published alongside Invisible Insurrection of a Million Minds: A Trocchi Reader, edited by Scott. Both books were published by Polygon (1991).      

   

 

Musical bonus: another track from McLaren's Paris (1994): 'Rue Dauphine'. It's perhaps my favourite track on the album, bringing together as it does Serge Gainsbourg and Sid Vicious, as well as containing the 'I groaned with pain' line from Trocchi's novel (though somewhat amusingly this is used in relation to licking a postage stamp).  

 

For a sister post to this one on Valerie Solanas and her place in the punk imagination, click here. 

 

 

A Brief Note on Political Neutrality With Reference to the Case of Ed Sheeran

Ed - Kiss me under the light of a thousand stars, 

but don't force me to think out loud - Sheeran

 

 

I. 

 

As far as I'm aware, I've never heard a song by Ed Sheeran and, quite frankly, couldn't care less about his musical career. But I am interested in the political predicament he has now found himself in while on a tour in the US.

 

In brief: one of Sheeran's opening acts - Macklemore - was dropped for making pro-Palestinian statements on stage and performing a song which condemned the Israeli military for their actions in Gaza, triggering a mass walkout by the rest of the tour's support acts. 

 

Ironically, it's framed as a free speech issue - i.e., not the kind of issue that those on the left usually care about. 

 

It should be pointed out that it wasn't Sheeran's idea to remove Macklemore from the tour - this was a decision taken by the promoters under pressure from venue owners and Jewish advocacy groups.

 

Sheeran, in fact, has kept schtum and, so far, refuses to be drawn on the controversy, releasing a statement only to say that he believes politics should be kept out of showbiz (particularly when audience members are likely to be young and impressionable) and that he likes to create a safe space for all at his concerts.

 

But this attempt at apolitical neutrality has not gone down well with his critics - of whom Zoe Williams is one ...

 

 

II. 

 

Writing in an opinion piece in The Guardian, Ms Williams - whom I quite admire as a journalist - argues that by seeking to stay out of politics, Sheeran has paradoxically made himself "the most political artist in the world", and that by trying to create a neutral space in which to manoeuvre, "he has backed himself into a corner" [1]. 

 

Williams rightly reminds her readers that Sheeran has, in the past, only been too happy to share his politics: standing with the Ukrainians, supporting Jeremy Corbyn, and  advocating for LGBTQI+ rights "on stage and off, throughout his career". 

 

However, I think she's wrong to insist that, ultimately, Sheeran must declare his position on the Israeli-Palestinian question and cannot be allowed to maintain a code of silence. 

 

It's not enough that he says he is appalled by the conflict and regards all human suffering as a tragedy. He must get off the fence and come down on one side or the other - and ideally that should be the one that leftists like to call the right side of history (and by which they mean their side).  

 

The notion that politics can be kept out of "entertainment, music, or art", is, says Williams, so last century.

 

Well, call me a 20th century boy, but I'm not sure about that.    

 

But what I am sure of is that obliging Sheeran to make his position clear - to confess and, if need be, apologise - is deeply sinister. 

 

One is reminded of the devastating argument made by Barthes in his Inaugural Lecture at the Collège de France (1977) on how language - and the performance of language - "is neither reactionary nor progressive; it is quite simply fascist; for fascism does not prevent speech, it compels speech" [2].

 

Thus, once an opinion is uttered and shared via the media, it enters the service of power and becomes entangled in politics.   

    

In sum: enforced silence and censorship is terrible - but enforced speech is worse.  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Zoe Williams, 'Dear Ed Sheeran, fence-sitting is so last century: musicians can no longer opt out of politics', The Guardian (17 Sept 2026). All other quotes in this section of the post are from this article by Williams, unless otherwise indicated. 

 

[2] Roland Barthes, lecture in inauguration of the Chair of Literary Semiology, Collège de France (7 Jan 1977). It was originally published as Leçon (Editions du Seuil, 1978). The English translation, by Richard Howard (1979), can be found in Barthes: Selected Writings, ed. Susan Sontag (Fontana Press, 1989), pp. 457-478. The Lines quoted here are on p. 461.