Comic Strip / Sally Forth (Wood)

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Sally Forth is the name of both a comic written by Wallace Wood, and one of the comic's main characters. The comic was published from 1968 until 1974, and intended for US soldiers stationed overseas; as such, it prominently featured Sally spending most of her time out of her clothes, a predicament not necessarily dictated by the scenario. The strip first appeared in the June 1968 Military News tabloid from Armed Forces Diamond Sales, and later moved to Overseas Weekly, a tabloid for US servicemen serving outside North America, until April 1974.

While Sally is the title character, the series stars a unit of five soldiers: Q.P. Dahl (the brain), Wild Bill Yonder (the eyes), Kicky McCann and Hairy James (both muscle), and Sally Forth (archetypal blonde). They were also joined by the martian Snorky for a while.

Note that, aside from the omnipresent nudity of most female characters, Sally Forth was not a pornographic comic—the stories themselves tended towards comedic action-adventure, and there was nothing more sexual than flirting.^note In the original run of the comic that is; Wood did do some X-rated Sally stories in his "Gang Bang" adult comic Sally was silly fluff, good-natured fun.

Not to be confused with Greg Howard's Sally Forth comic.

Sally Forth contains examples of:

• Achievements in Ignorance: At least for some time until Snorky points out the helicopter he is in with Dahl should not be able to fly, causing it to fall at once.
• Amazon Brigade: The Tarzan parody features a tribe of naked, pterodactyl-riding warrior women.
• Amusing Alien: Snorky, the squad's resident Martian.
• Artistic Age: Lt. Dahl looks like a bald prepubescent child.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: The only thing harder than finding a picture of Sally clothed is finding a picture of Sally looking disheveled.
• Bizarre Alien Biology: Mentioned for laughs one time; as Sally prepares to put on a shirt, Snorky wonders how she can see if she covers her eyes.
• Convection, Schmonvection: Played painfully straight in the Flash Gordon parody. Sally uses a rocket pack to fly around while she's completely naked, but doesn't suffer any injuries from doing so.
• Cute Little Fangs: Hairy James has a small pointy fang protruding from his lower lip.
• Damsel in Distress: Sally, fairly frequently.
• Darkest Africa: The Tarzan parody takes place in "Darkest Africa, where men are brutes and women are beastly and beasts are downright animals!"
• Deadpan Snarker: Mostly Wild Bill Yonder.
• Dirty Communists: A regular source for bad guys.
• Distracted by the Sexy: Sally's most frequent role was to distract enemy soldiers, guards, and other folks with her innate charms; the first time she saw action was when she lured a troop of Commies to their death by bathing in a river.
• Dumb Muscle: Hairy James, who is drawn in a decidedly simian manner, complete with extruding jawline and sloped forehead.
• Ecchi: A rare American example (that predates the term), since there's lots of nudity but no actual sexual content.
• Epunymous Title: To "sally forth" means to set out on an adventure.
• Evil Is Petty: Frequently invoked to make it very clear to the reader who the bad guys are. For one example, the Presidente of Rio El Gringo has sexy naked women hanging around his imperial palace to ogle and ride on as desired.
• Excuse Plot: Most of the storylines count as such.
• Eye on a Stalk: Snorky's eyes are suspended from his head on two short stalks.
• Fanservice: The whole point of the comic.
• Fashionable Asymmetry: Boobarella wears a pastie over her left nipple but bares her right.
• "Freaky Friday" Flip: Happens to Sally and the Killer Gorilla during the King Kong parody.
• Full-Frontal Assault: Both Sally and another woman are completely naked when they have to fight to be the true "white goddess" of a tribe in the Tarzan parody.
• Had the Silly Thing in Reverse: One time, when the country of Rottenbad was testing a new robot, a scientist fires a bazooka at it. Unfortunately, the bazooka was aimed backwards and hits the President instead.
• Hand-or-Object Underwear: Sally is seen doing this in the Tarzan parody. When sitting on the "white goddess"'s throne, she puts her hands on her crotch, but doesn't try to cover the rest of her fully nude body.
• Hold Your Hippogriffs: Snorky does this from time to time.
  "There's more than one way to gobl a knog! That's an old martian proverb."
  • This is also a Shout-Out to the EC Comics story "A Gobl is a Knog's Best Friend."
• Identical Stranger: After being captured by savage tribesmen, the squad escapes when Hairy disguises himself as one of them... just by taking his shirt off.
• Innocent Fanservice Girl/Reluctant Fanservice Girl: Sally, who's almost always naked and doesn't find anything unusual about it.
  • Lampshaded in one exchange:
    Lt. Dahl: Get these civilian clothes on...
    Sally: Aren't they a little out of style?
    Lt. Dahl: If your luck runs true to form, they won't stay on long enough for anyone to notice!
• Jungle Princess: Jane in the Tarzan parody has this aesthetic - a beautiful, scantily-clad white woman who lives in a treehouse in the jungle with her partner Starzan. Though she bares even more skin than most examples, wearing only the bottom half of a Fur Bikini, with her breasts on display.
• Killer Gorilla: Appears in a King Kong parody, complete with "King Kong" Climb.
• Latin Land: Several stories take place in fictional Central American countries, such as Rio de Gringo and the Republic of San Forizo.
• Literal Ass-Kicking: Sally does this to her opponent in their fight to be their tribe's "white goddess."
• Literal-Minded: Sally, whenever it's funny.
  Dahl: Battle stations! Strip for action!
  (Sally quickly undresses)
• Living Crashpad: In the Flash Gordon parody, Sally defeats Mung the Merciless when she loses control of her jetpack and crashes into him.
• Loincloth: The only clothing worn by both Starzan and Jane in the Tarzan parody. And Jane wears hers without a top.
• Loophole Abuse: In one story, Snorky gets out of filling out a pile of government forms by exploiting the fact that he's a martian and technically doesn't exist in the government bureaucracy. The bureaucrats instantly forget he was there.
• Lysistrata Gambit: In one story, a duplicate of Sally leads a Women's Lib rally on the Pentagon, proposing to end the Vietnam War this way.
• Marshmallow Hell: Multiple times, Sally sandwiches Snorky in between her bare breasts. At one point, he complains that she's "crushing" his "little body."
• Ms. Fanservice: Sally, in essence. But just about any girl in the comic as well.
• The Napoleon: Lt. Q.P. Dahl is half the height of everyone else.
  • Often depicted with the leaders of foreign countries.
• National Stereotypes: Invoked frequently and shamelessly.
• New Powers as the Plot Demands: Snorky will "rediscover" innate abilities on an as-needed basis, such as invisibility.
• The Nudifier: Sally is subject to this twice in the Flash Gordon parody. First microbats eat her clothes, then a Mungoolian cannibal plant rips them off.
• Only One Female Mold: Pretty much every woman in the comic is just Sally with different hair.
• Parody: In addition to general-purpose military and espionage adventures, Sally Forth frequently parodied popular works such as Tarzan and Flash Gordon.
• Protagonist Title
• Punny Name: Most of the characters' names.
• Robot Me: The President of Rottenbad plans to substitute world leaders with robot duplicates.
• Rule 34: In 1980, Wood published two pornographic Sally Forth stories for the adult comic book series Gang Bang.
• Scenery Censor: Plenty, as the comic was not X-rated and never went beyond nudity, with critical parts hidden behind just about every conceivable prop (including other characters, possibly also nude).
• Shrink Ray: Becomes an important plot element in the Flash Gordon parody adventure.
• Skinny Dipping: Sally takes off all clothes to freshen up in a stream in the Tarzan parody.
• Spider-Sense: Snorky sometimes invoked his "martian sixth sense" that informed him of plot-relevant information.
• The Squadette: Technically, Sally is this, as she began as a recruit in Dahl's commando unit.
• Walking Shirtless Scene: Frequently played with.
  • Starzan's only clothing is a loincloth and Pyggo wears short shorts and nothing else, but they're the only men who fit the trope.
  • On the other hand, women provide the lion's share of this trope - in fact the only women who wear any kind of tops at all are Sally when she's not nude and Boobarella, who has a cloak and one nipple pastie - everyone else is topless for literally their entire screentime. And then there are some women who go even further than this and are always naked - the Flash Gordon parody has Queen Fertilda and the Tarzan parody has the Amazons and the unnamed "white goddess" who fights Sally.