61 - Larry

Terrence Parkes in “Private Eye” 1 May 1964


Terrence Parkes in “Private Eye” 4 March 1966


Terrence Parkes in “Private Eye” 17 Jan 1969

“Larry” doesn’t seem to have made many cartoons about homosexuality. All of his though that I can find, are quite specifically about its illegality. No value judgements, just jokes about putting it in some context to highlight the criminality. You could argue that in these cartoons Larry makes the police efforts more ridiculous than the homosexuals, since their ferocity and intentness of purpose seems a little out of proportion to the relative innocence and casualness of the “criminals”. All of Larry’s people look much the same, so he must have gone to a little extra effort to offer us the two specimens in the second and third cartoons. In the second the mouth is more distinct than usual and the hand juts out on the hip, while in the 1969 cartoon (and homosexuality was actually legal by then) Larry’s actually gone to some effort – limp wrist, frou-frou hair, distinct lips and arms around each other.
I like to think that you can rearrange these three cartoons to make a little graphic narrative in miniature. Prisoners of Love, indeed!