In the days before Lara Croft and Angelina Jolie, there was Valentina, a character from the fantasy of Guido Crepax that has since entered the erotic imagination of Italian culture and adult comic books.
Valentina was a sexy photographer who generally found herself involved in all sorts of adventures, generally dealing with espionage and in a surreal or erotic style.
Guido Crepax himself started creating comics in 1963 and the last episode of Valentina (inspired by silent film actress Louise Brooks) was written and drawn in 1995.
Crepax also created the character Anita, inspired by Anita Ekberg from Fellini’s famous La dolce vita film.
He died in 2003 after creating a huge body of work that even included his own version of Gulliver’s Travels.
The character of Valentina was adapted for a 70’s film called Baba Yaga, which is a kind of lesbian horror flick with soul funk music by Piero Umiliani, together with Armando Trovajoli, Piero Piccioni and Luis Bacalov.
Below are some of the drawings from famous Italian comic writer Crepax, and after the jump a scene from the Baba Yaga film.