Etienne's Fishermen - 1

The images below relate Etienne's 'Fishing is a Dangerous Sport' to other contemporary pictures.

 

Tom of Finland - Two Fishes (1956)

Tom of Finland can lay claim to having spotted the erotic potential of flying fishhooks first in this 1956 image. The back-to-back, over-the-shoulder looks here don't exactly reek of sexual excitement, but the fish lying on the ground do seem to allude to a hoped-for conjunction of men's parts (big and little!). The picture looks oddly cropped, so a more indicative bulge may lie just out of sight! 

1956 was not a good time for provocative, gay pictures.

MacLane - Surfer Hooked

This picture by Bill MacLane must date from around the same time as Tom's. Someone has clumsily altered the original image with a square of fabric and the hook may well be an addition too. 

The picture amplifies the eroticism of the ripped (or absent!) swimming trunks, by introducing a melodramatic menace in the back-ground. There's an interesting thought process going on here, relating sexuality to danger and threat. It's similar to the moment when Freddie Kruger decides to chop up a pair of teenagers steaming up a car. 

 

Rick Gross - Careless Fisherman

 This naive version of the scenario captures the element of anger and retribution which is so graphically illustrated in Stephen's comic. The offender here has a child-like meekness which is not nearly so effective as the grown-up bewilderment that Stephen so cleverly employed. 

 

The knee-length style of trousers and straw hat combo shown here reflects contemporary beefcake imagery by Royale Studio (Peter George) and John Platinus

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There's also a mitchmen version of this scenario, by Mitchell.

More Fishy images by Etienne and Tom in Parts 2 and 3