The great but mostly forgotten Japanese Manga artist Goseki Kaneda entered my life some two decades before my birth when he and my father, David Ahlquist, (Sgt., U.S.M.C.) hunted each other on some unknown Pacific island in the final days of WWII. Kaneda was the last wounded member of a small squadron of Japanese infantry wiped out by my father’s unit. As Goseki bandaged his wounds he watched as the 19 U.S. Marines left the island in an amphibious assault vehicle, only to see them destroyed by a floating mine. By a miracle my father was thrown clear and survived the explosion.
My father waded to shore and the hunt was on. All through 1944 and 1945 my father and Kaneda carried on WWII in miniature, even as the war ended and Japan transformed. No one on either side suspected they were alive, and the two island combatants didn’t know that the war was long ended. My father estimates that it was mid 1946 that the deadly game finally concluded, with my father trapping Kaneda in a tiger pit. Instead of killing his opponent, my father befriended him, and, as my father put it, “…teaching him the civilized ways of the western world, training Goseki to be my man servant.”
After that the pair worked together to survive on the island. They learned each others language, and bonded over comics. My father had with him a coverless, water damaged and incomplete Captain Marvel comic, Kaneda had some Japanese newspapers in which some strange and curious comics appeared. One of the comics, Prince Penis, had been done by Kaneda himself. Prince Penis detailed the fantasy adventures of a young prince and his fantastic, magical penis.
After my father and Kaneda were rescued, (see the September, 1948 LIFE Magazine for details) Kaneda applied for and received, with my father’s assistance, U.S. citizenship. His own family having perished in the fires of Nagasaki, he moved to Rhode Island. My father and Kaneda worked as die-cutters in the flourishing jewelry industry, and continued their sporadic work in comics. My father created the somewhat racist comic character of “Spearchucker, the Cannibal Clown,” a sort rip-off of Chuck Jones’ “Inky” character in the Warner Brothers cartoon Inky and the Mynah-Bird.
Kaneda’s attempt to relaunch Prince Penis in the U.S., particularly given the prudish 1950’s atmosphere, was ill conceived, and brought him afoul of both the U.S. and Mexican authorities. Yes, even the famous “Tijuana Bible” producers thought that Prince Penis, “the adventures of a boy and his magic penis,” was too much. Thousands of copies were stopped at the Mexican border, and burned by the FDA, which in 1958 had the sole authority to burn books.
I was born in 1963. Goseki Kaneda died of cancer in 1965. Having no heirs, he left all his worldly possessions, and the copyright to Prince Penis, to me. It was years before my mother allowed me to see my birthright.
In 1985 I attempted to relaunch Prince Penis as Peeny-Boy in several Knight-Ridder newspapers, which ran the strip experimentally in the place of Family Circus. The experiment lasted three days, and the fall-out was spectacular. In addition to several newspaper editors losing their jobs, I was banned for life from King Features Syndicate. There’s an entire paragraph on Peeny-Boy in the Reagan era Meese Commission Report on Pornography.
Here, for the first time are about half of the Peeny-Boy strips I did for Knight-Ridder. In an attempt at simplicity I eliminated much of the back story of Prince Penis and his host of supporting characters. His father King Penis, his mother Queen Vagina and his sidekick, Flaccid-Dog, are all went by the wayside, though Queen Vagina has been re-imagined here as well. (Flaccid-Dog was an unfortunate character who made a wish for a penis as long as his masters, but when his wish was granted, he found that his penis had no magic. The sight of Flaccid-Dog dragging his ten-foot long penis behind him everywhere he goes is priceless comedy.)
So, enjoy this slice of comic history. If there’s enough of a response perhaps Peeny-Boy can return. If enough people ask, maybe I’ll reprint the original Prince Penis from Japan! The only complete set not destroyed by an A-bomb is, as far as I know, in my possession.
