As a lonely teenager in a log cabin, he’d invented the premise: a barbarian culture crossed with the highly advanced science of Atlantis. Aging was medically quickened to bypass childhood. Breasts were enlarged with special serums and could lactate and grow upon command. Subcutaneous skin dye replaced clothing. The healing process was hastened, with no infection or scars. The dead could be resurrected. Hymens were restored. The only permanent disfigurement came from branding and amputation.
The protagonist, Valkyria, was a barbarian princess secretly raised as a boy, later trained as a warrior. She was kidnapped by desert raiders, sold to slavers, purchased by a wealthy merchant, and kidnapped again by pirates. At age nineteen, she became queen of Veltria. Nearly all the characters were female, with the exception of an occasional hermaphrodite. According to Dad’s notes, the pictorial domination of women by women was a practical decision—he preferred to draw them.
The concept of a universe was too limiting for his imagination, and he created a complex multiverse in which all the comics took place. The multiple worlds of Valkyria were staggeringly complicated, with Dad’s trademark maps, glossary, and religions. The entire series was a never-ending narrative set on many planets, spanning thousands of years. It blended fairy tales, ancient legends, science fiction, and space opera into one sprawling story.
The books had no audience, but the first and last pages were composed as if a preexisting readership eagerly awaited the next installment. Every comic ended with the phrase “to be continued.” The first page featured a single-panel illustration and a quick synopsis:
This is the fabulous myth-history of the pre-recorded history heroine, Valkyria. A girl with a face and figure envied by temptresses . . . The cunning, the speed, the agility of a jungle cat . . . The muscles, the stamina, the fighting prowess of a professional soldier.
Val’s wounds heal themselves, scarlessly, even monstrously serious ones. Unfortunately this form of indestructible immortality makes her the perfect victim!
In order to combine all the worlds and time frames into a single overlapping narrative, Dad gave Valkyria several daughters, each born of rape. The infants received serums from Atlantean science that sped their growth. Within three months they reached puberty and were again injected. Their final growth spurt enhanced their sexual characteristics and halted their aging at eighteen. By age twenty-two, Valkyria had become a grandmother. “Real time” was thus collapsed, enabling each of these women to travel across the multiverse until captured, tortured, and rescued.
The plot is similar from book to book: a highborn woman is brought down through systematic psychological humiliation and physical degradation. The motivation for torture is always vengeance—the victim deserves her fate. Melodramatic dialogue offsets the grim imagery. Each comic ends with a cliff-hanger of inescapable bondage in a secret dungeon. The next book prolongs the torture until the victim is rescued or escapes, whereupon she often turns the tables on the captor. Of necessity, the punishment must surpass the one endured by the previous victim. In this fashion the techniques of sexual suffering steadily increase in intensity and horror. The bondage becomes more complex—victims are fully immobilized, with every orifice plugged, while enduring elaborate sexual torture. At times Valkyria is compelled to watch her daughters undergo vicious assault.
The relentless narrative has a grotesque quality, a chilling insight into the mind of a man with an unsavory attitude toward women. They undergo brain transplants and watch their former bodies die in an acid bath. Hermaphrodites fight warrior women wearing strap-on dildos with metal claws. Zombies, androids, and clones enter the narrative. A snake crawls into a woman’s vagina, swelling her stomach with pregnancy. She gives birth to a demon who promptly rapes her.
In a book from the mid-1960s, Valkyria travels through time to the year 2931. Her clone becomes a media star when a TV network shows her torment on a live feed. Viewers respond to a contest with ideas. The lucky winner visits the studio and is allowed to personally torture Valkyria’s clone to death. In an off-camera dungeon, the true Valkyria experiences every sensation. The reader is thus able to observe the suffering of both clone and human.
One volume of Valkyria centers around an alien scientist who performs gruesome medical experiments on humans, often depicting surgeries in process. The result is a planet populated by failed procedures: women with a single large breast centered on their chests. A mustached man has a woman’s backside, large breasts, and an enormous permanent erection. Women have two or three sets of breasts linked by metal rings. A green-skinned transsexual has three breasts and a large clitoris shaped like a penis. The scientist is presented as: “The most brilliant man on this planet. He has a short attention span and more ideas than he can handle; is essentially amoral (he is nigh a god!) and does believe in giving in to his whims. He looks upon the world as his.”