In the S.Clay Wilson cartoons, though not malicious, gays are largely there as part of a rambunctious spectrum of “perverse” sexuality. The Osborne comic is more about the thrill of depicting famous film stars roughly buggering each other with a few sissy comments. There’s no condemnation or real mockery in them, but this strip by Holmes is the first which is unabashedly positive. It is also quite contemporary. “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask)” had aroused much ire in the emergent gay communities and the new Gay Lib movements, and there were efforts in quite a few countries to have the 1969 book taken off shelves because of its obviously bigoted and ignorant attitude towards homosexuals. Gore Vidal wrote a magisterial demolition of the book. Then it’s the rest of the strip, with a sympathetic but explicit gay sex sequence, which contradicts Reuben, and would produce so many subsequent problems with the censors. Finally, you have Holmes’s final exhortation to his readers.
This strip had a checkered history throughout the 1970s. It originally appeared as just one more instalment in "The Continuing Adventures of Harold Hedd," published in the underground newspaper “Georgia Straight”, 19-22 October 1971. It was published in a censored form then, with the sex scenes removed because the printer refused to publish them. It was then reprinted in the May-June 1975 issue of “Body Politic”, a Canadian gay magazine. That issue was ordered off the newsstands by the Toronto Morality Squad. The next issue, #19 July-August 1975, had an article about the previous issue’s censorship and ran a partially censored panel from the strip of two men giving each other head on the cover. The blowjob depicted in the original was covered by a black lightning bolt labelled "Toronto Morality Squad." But this censoring zap, overprinted on the illustration, could be seen through. The collective had to order a second print run.
It was reprinted in the 1973 Canadian sex comix anthology “All Canadian Beaver Comix”. Then the cover came with this banner in the corner, which is a bit more disheartening, employing more familiar clichés. However, it may be a bluff to entice readers expecting a laugh and then confront them with this strip.
Holmes would also produce the cover for the first issue of “Gay Comix” in 1980.
