The cartoons of Dwaine Tinsley are looking for a good home – preferably one owned by someone who can enjoy the twisted and controversial style of humor he drew for Hustler for nearly 25 years.
Ellen Tinsley, his widow, is auctioning off 20 original pieces that graced the covers of Hustler Humor, and is seeking to find homes for well over 4,000 pieces that spanned a career of twenty-five years of drawing and editing cartoons for Hustler and Hustler Humor.
While Dwaine loved dark, twisted humor, his work was no laughing matter. Well, it wasn’t just about the laughs. It was intend to provoke thought, true to the discordiant politics that Hustler preached.
“Larry Flynt decided early on that the cartoons in Hustler were either going to make you laugh, make you mad, or make you think. And we weren’t going to be subtle about it,” he wrote in the introduction to an anthology of Hustler comics.
“He wanted his work to be seen. It was his dream to have what he called a ‘coffee table book’, a thick book to placed on the coffee table, that had all of his cartoons in it.” Ellen Tinsley told AVN.com.
Ellen has already scanned over 1,400 color images, digitally preserved for that coffee table book that Dwaine wanted. Until recently, she had an agent for the anthology, but he recently reported that he couldn’t make any headway.
“I’ve pretty much given up on a book, because mainstream publishers are really gun shy on Hustler and Chester [the Molestor]. They get as far as those two words, and then the door pretty much shuts. The editors love it, but the suits hate it,” Ellen said.
Before becoming one of the first employees of Hustler, Dwaine had worked a number of jobs including selling vacuums, selling cars and a stretch in Maryland penitentiary for stealing cars. Then in 1975, he developed Chester the Molester as a counter to a Playboy cartoon character – a little old lady who chased men. While she’s not sure about the timeline, Ellen believes that it was Chester the Molester that landed Dwaine his contract with Hustler.
Chester the Molester was a middle-aged overweight degenerate who chased young girls. Dwaine named the character Chester as a bow towards Chester Gould, the creator of Dick Tracey. According to Ellen, “the Molester” was added simply because it rhymed.
It was to prove an unfortunate choice of names. In 1990, he was convicted of child molestation based on charges brought by his eldest daughter, who had been raised primarily by his first wife. Dwaine was married three times, Ellen being his third wife.
While his daughter had a troubled past, having previously falsely accused an ex-boyfriend of rape, and was said to have been a drug addict, Chester the Molester was damning evidence. Over 3000 cartoons of Dwaine’s cartoons were introduced as evidence against him. The prosecutor argued that Chester the Molester was proof that Dwaine was capable of such an act, and he was convicted.
“That’s like saying that Stephen King was a murderer because he wrote about it,” Ellen said. The California State Supreme Court agreed with her, overturning the conviction and reprimanding the prosecutor for a failure to provide a fair trial.
Dwaine served 23 months in jail before his conviction was overturned. He ran up legal bills of $180,000 dollars in that time – a large portion of which was given to Dwaine and Ellen as their wedding present by Larry Flynt.
During his time in jail, Dwaine continued to draw cartoons for Hustler and Hustler Humor, using the pseudonym J. Proctor, a named he borrowed from a character in The Crucible, who was also unjustly imprisoned. Some of those works are in the auction.
All of the works in the current auction are original artwork, culled from Tinsley's collection of approximately 100 Hustler Humor covers, with production notes for the color of the lettering handwritten on some of them. They are tame representations of his work, as Hustler Humor wasn’t a banded magazine, the covers had to lean towards PG.
The works on auction are being sold in lots of 4, and Heritage will take bids until November 20, and then the next day bidders will compete with the winning Internet bid in person at an auction house in Arlington, Texas.
However, collectors can also contact Ellen via email, to purchase some of Dwaine’s adult oriented work, [email protected]. “Demon dogs” was the term Dwaine used to refer to the Hustler cartoonists. “He referred to them as the demon dogs of cartooning,” Ellen said.
“Dwaine would be happy knowing that someone who enjoyed them had them, that they weren't locked up in cabinets,” Ellen added.
To see the works being auctioned, click here. For nore adult material, or other PG, or PG-13 type material, email Ellen at [email protected].
