Mitchell's Fisherman

Mitchell - Fishermen's Tale

 

The mitchmen take on angling hooks has many elements in common with Etienne and Tom's but I can't remember if I was aware of those images when I drew it. It was largely inspired by the pose of the subject which is more overtly homoerotic than the 1950/60's artists. It's based if I remember correctly on imagery from 'Inside The Big Apple' publication or around that 80's era of Phil Flasche etc. 

There's a humiliation ingredient shared with Etienne's take but a different pun in the title I gave it, which indicates a slightly different, more melancholy strand of thought along the lines of 'the one that got away' - or the one didn't even exist in the first place!

For more art by Mitchell at mitchmen click on the mitchpix label below 

or visit the mitchmen club archive at Adonis Male

I previously published this image in 2007 but this is a new, better copy if you are a collector.

Etienne's Fishermen - 1

Etienne - Fishing Is A Dangerous Sport - 2

 

Etienne's dramatic confrontation between two fishermen is one of his most forceful and technically convincing images, but it's rarely seen. 

There's a subtle contrast between the comprehensively equipped 'pro' fisherman on the right  and the intimidated amateur angler on the left whose incompetence has caused the conflict (see next picture below). The first has quite a military look about him but the other is portrayed as a bumpkin, admittedly with stylish hair, but inappropriately dressed in trainers and skimpy cut-offs held up by a knotted rope. 

He seems highly vulnerable as his T-shirt is pulled upwards and in danger of being ripped off altogether. The drooping waders provide a corresponding hint of undress in the aggressor party. Both men sport interesting bulges, but any more suggestive erotic flavouring is limited to a fish tail* dangling from the basket just above the offender's crotch and a solitary bulrush amongst the reeds groping up his legs. We might add perhaps the handle of the fisherman's 'rod' at a stretch. 

(Those reeds look as though they might have been a late addition to disguise an unsuccessful foot).

*Tom of Finland also employed the niche eroticism of fish in a less serious encounter (see Part 2).

Etienne - Fishing Is A Dangerous Sport - 1

This picture is from the same series and shows the cause of the fisherman's anger,
the bumpkin's wild line-casting has hooked his pants and torn them wide open. 

Both these images were published in Mars magazine No 12 (1965),
apparently there are 4 more in the storyette but I don't think I've ever seen them.
The rope 'belt' in the first picture seems ripe for exploitation later on!

One month on, I stumbled across the full version of the picture above including a nice view of the clumsy young fisherman, even this version still looks cropped!

Etienne tended to portray men with cute, diminutive bottoms but the cautious portrayal here probably also owes something to the uncertainty around censorship of sexual imagery in this period when controls were being challenged.

Tom of Finland - Two Fishes (1956)

Tom of Finland can lay claim to having spotted the erotic potential of flying fish-hooks 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 does look 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. It dodges round the eroticism of the ripped swimming trunks by introducing a melodramatic menace. 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. 

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There's also a mitchmen version of this scenario by Mitchell (next post)

More Etienne and Tom in Part 2

Classic Homoerotic Images - 3, When Freedom Dawned

Ralph Kleiner (Muscleboy Magazine, 1966)

The kitsch artistry and baggy pouch which Ralph Kleiner was subjected to on the front of Muscleboy in 1996 seems to epitomise the desperate concealment needed for gay magazines to get onto newsagent's shelves back then. However this image does show a romantic side to the male personality, feminine if you like, which wasn't exactly a commonplace statement in the time when men were still men. 

On top of that, he's nearly naked (implying sex is in the air) and the object of his rapt attention is a freak flower, a blue (for a boy) rose. You sense he's going to kiss it - or even eat it, God forbid! The fake nature all around him and the blue sky just over the horizon seems to invoke the sense of an optimistic, fantastical journey, just like Dorothy's in The Wizard of Oz. 

In it's way it's a very clever, political statement, deserving of it's place in my series of classic, homoerotic images. (click on the label below for others)

Glenn Bishop (Vagabond Magazine, 1966)

Compare that Muscleboy image with this openly erotic display of Glenn Bishop showing pubic hair on the Front Cover, no less, of Vagabond magazine in the same year, 1966. Admittedly, this was the era when liberation from censorship began, but I didn't think it had got quite as far as this! Glenn Bishop was arguably a gay hero, the handsome embodiment of 1950's coy, physique pouch imagery, so the sight of this must have been electric back then, a shock, almost unwelcome, as though someone like Ed Sheeran had suddenly revealed all today to demonstrate that he's just a man after all.

I think freedom came more quickly in the US than the UK and it's possible that the Vagabond issue illustrated above was for postal distribution rather than book shops. In fact I've never heard of Vagabond magazine before so maybe it never made it in into the quivering hands of sex-starved, 1966 gays at all! Not in the UK anyway.

Vagabond Magazine No 7 carried ads for gay singles

Vagabond Magazine also has an interesting link to what might be the first 'openly' gay record album, 'Love is a Drag', issued by Lace records in 1962, which featured a (straight) man singing standards, but re-gendered to be about loving other men. Vagabond No 7 in 1965 carried ads for gay singles from a different label 'Camp', including 'I'd Rather Fight Than Swish', 'Rough Trade' and 'The Ballad of the Camping Woodcutter'. The whole story is told in Subversive Sounds.

The cover of No 7 (above) featured 'respectable', men's, fashion graphics, but they are arranged in such a way as to be looking at each other, the back cover man invisibly reaching out towards another's ass while an onlooker fiddles in his pockets. Such was the meagre, but subtly exciting, fare for gays back then. Little did they know that Glenn Bishop's pubes were about to be thrust in their faces!

The cover for Vagabond No8 openly ditches the ambiguity that men's magazines are about muscle development and physique (an idea that persists in the Muscleboy, Ralph Kleiner image above). Instead it depicts a fairly ordinary young man looking up hopefully in another naturalistic setting, an image which clearly is about him as a person, not his gym programme. 

 So Vagabond too has a honourable place in gay history.

My Fetish Tea Party

The Terror of the Tongs!

For other captions at mitchmen, click on the mitchmods label below

A further Update to David Reid post

David Reid and Wagon Wheel

I don't know quite how I forgot to include this image in my original feature on Royale Studio model, David Reid since it's easily the best picture I have of him. I suppose it's because it's not part of a storyette although the wagon wheel he's attached to is featured in his 'Unapproved' story (see orig article for link).

 

I have also updated the recent post on Royale Studio model, David Reid with this additional picture which I stumbled across recently (29th June) in an e-bay listing. I have updated the Royale Studio, Open Archive entry as well for both changes

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Tacitus abducts a swimming team

Tacitus - Swimming Team Abducted 1

A selection of extracts from a recent series by Tacitus who last featured at mitchmen in 2015.

It features some sexy Speedos as well as comprehensive mass bondage.

It's a shame it's not colourised.

These extracts focus on what happens to Kevin and Brian.

Tacitus - Swimming Team Abducted 2

It's clear that these kidnappers have a more than passing interest in the art of ropework.

They must have spent quite a bit of time tying up these two, depending on how compliant they were.

And they are just part of their total catch.

It looks as if the men are sitting in a pool of water here, to add to their discomfort!

Tacitus - Swimming Team Abducted 3 (detail)

Tacitus' art seems to recall the innocent style of days gone but with a sexy flourish.

Like Kevin's bottom here (foreground).

However, as ever, there's a darker side here.

Brian's Shibari (right) includes a short noose-like, neck-to-knee tether. 

It forces him to sit in an unnatural bent-forward position.

Kevin's ultra-tight hog-tie stresses his back the reverse way. 

Both these guys are going to suffer if they stay like this for long.

(This is detail of a bigger image.)

Tacitus - Swimming Team Abducted 8 

A spectacular result. All that burgeoning testosterone crammed into one space.

I'm reminded here of the mass kidnap of the Raytown Softball Team by Amalaric.

The kneeling figure of forlorn Kevin on the left is excellent.

Tacitus - Swimming Team Abducted 8 (detail of Kevin)

 See the full set at Tacitus (@DeviantArt)

Se also my original mitchmen article on this artist

The Look of Sudden Alarm

It had been a lovely date, Chris was the perfect lover, strong and passionate.

 But now Bobby realised - too late - that the strange smell in his host's bedroom

did not come from his back ointment after all.

photo: Chris Rockway & Reese Ridout , clip at Randy Blue

~

   This No 30 in 'The Look' series at mitchmen blog,

click on the label at the foot of this post to view the others

or use the mitchmen search function (top right in sidebar)