381: Golden Chestnuts III

Another long-running English joke.
“Heaven” is the gay London nightclub, established in 1979. The name is obviously a bit cheeky, and so provokes jokes. More mark of its success must be that it has crossed over into heterosexual awareness.
How many people would be expected to know the name of a gay nightclub in the early 1980s? Well here’s a demonstration.


From "Not 1983" calendar

And so for about thirty years, there have been, cartoons sketches, and bits and banter of the like:

Obviously gay man (preferable clone-style so no one is oblivious) says to vicar: See you in Heaven.

Or :

First figure: My friend’s gone to Heaven.
Second figure: (condolences) Oh I’m so sorry to hear that.
First figure: No, the club

380: Golden Chestnuts II

Oh please, Dr Freud, I enquire in a faux-naif fashion as a perfectly normal macho man, please tell me what my incessant dreams of phallic objects can mean?


From “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (Aren't You Sorry You Asked?)” by John Boni
in “National Lampoon”, July 1971


from “Not 1983” calendar

The latter one I include merely because over three years since the Jeremy Thorpe case and people are still making Liberal Party = Gay jokes (Clement Freud was a prominent Liberal MP, and need I explain Jeremy T?). This is what life was like before 24 hour constant media bombardment.

379: Golden Chestnuts I

A small selection of jokes which will stand in for all the other occasions when cartoonists and humorists have used the same joke. Not that they’re employing the same joke because they’re necessarily plagiarising each other, or because it’s a simple cliché. But because certain themes and phrases provoke the same reaction, and hence the same joke crops up. So these are intended to be early examples of jokes which are relatively flogged to death over the succeeding decades, since each time the perpetrator thought he was having some ingenious new comic idea. But there is little that is new under the sun.


from “Shel Silverstein in London”
in “Playboy” June 1967

This is the earliest instance of a recurring English joke. And it’s in “Playboy”, an American magazine. Here it has a certain freshness, because it’s contemporary with the subject of the joke, homosexual legalisation in the UK in 1967.

The joke, in its most common form:
A man is emigrating from England. He’s asked why he’s leaving. He replies, “At one time homosexuality was illegal, then it became tolerated, now it’s legal. Blimey, I’m leaving before it becomes compulsory!”

Normally it’s used by slightly bigoted people, and had some frequency in the ‘70s and ‘80s. Trotted out for slightly nostalgic effect nowadays. Here, in just about the earliest instances I can find in print, Silverstein puts it in the mouth of a gay man, which rather heightens the militant effect of the joke.

378: Father Riley's a what?

And what opinion did American humorists who’d grown up Catholic have of the servants of Holy Mother church? Well, once you discount all of the sentimental, acceptable sitcom-style guff, then it was that the Catholic brotherhood was a haven of predatory perverts.


from “The Seven Sacraments: A ‘Milstone’ Pamphlet for Little Catholics” by Bro. “Al” Andrien
In “National Lampoon, December 1974


from “An Irish Market Place” by Ted Mann
in “National Lampoon, January 1976

From a general grab-bag of jokes about Irish culture: the I.R.A, G.B. Shaw’s collected works, the ghost of W.B. Yeats, and alcoholism. And then there’s this. “Alternate Birth Control”, indeed, with altar boys. And this some thirty years before revelations were made public about what was going on when it come to Brotherly Care in Ireland. Although there were scandals in the early ‘80s, too, if I remember correctly.

And of course there’s Frank Zappa’s throwaway line in his 1979 song, “Catholic Girls” that “Father Riley's a fairy / But that don’t bother Mary”.

377: Thoughts on the Announcement of the Pope's Visit to Britain

Ken Pyne in "Punch" 18 April 1979
Having worked in a diocesan office, this is particularly true. A number of the Church of England priests who object to the ordination of women do so, not merely because of outright misogyny, but because of that specific gay misogyny which does not want to see women encroach on their own little gayified world. So by the Pope inviting those objectors to female ordination to cross over to the Catholic side, there's likely to be a significant homosexual contingent. If the Pope wants gay priests he's already got enough in his own without poaching ours.



Manfred Deix


Manfred Deix


Gerhard Haderer

When it comes to being objectionable about the Catholic Church, people who gre up Catholic are so much better at than us. Deix and Haderer deserve to be better known to western cartoon and satire enthusiasts. Not only are they satirically sharp but they have real art chops which add a horrible verisimilitude to their human grotesques.

Gay Men in Underground Comix

Well I’ve ploughed my way through all manner of magazines in the course of all this. But I’ve not got around to the underground comix of the late ‘60s and ‘1970s before. Supposedly breaking new ground in humour for the counterculture, the underground comix proved to be a hotbed of jokes about fucking. Not least this is because they are produced independent of the Comics Code Authority Standards, which monitored all the product of the mainstream comics companies. Just like the Hayes Code which censored American films during the mid-part of the 20th century, the Comics Code Authority Standards forbade representations of “sexual abnormality” and “sex perversion”. So the underground cartoonists run riot, thumbing their noses at ideas of accepted good taste and subject matter, drawing all manner of fucking, taboo-breaking, and the occasional descent into actual depravity. It was this that would ultimately hobble the movement when a 1973 judgement made the headshops which sold them liable to local standards of decency.

So, underground commix are rightly remembered for featuring in different forms, deliberately cartoonish or grotesque, staggering amounts of cartoon sex. But there’s precious little about gay men or gay sex. Is it a matter of politeness, discomfort, political sensitivity, or were they just too wrapped up in all the fun of getting their own heterosexual fantasies down on paper? These are comix drawn by people who are supposedly raising their consciousness, overturning the old social order, engaging with all sorts of different “lib” movements. These cartoons are supposed to reflect the new society they’re making for themselves. We’re not like the older generation, we can laugh at all manner of things, and not feel ashamed, even as we betray our assorted neuroses and hang-ups. But are there any homosexuals in sight? Nope. But then the underground comix community is probably at least 90% male. They have enough difficulties trying to depict women as rounded characters or taking female points of view or feelings into consideration.

Even for all the deliberate grossness and enjoyment of depicting the weirdest sexual acts imaginable, homosexuality barely rates at all. How much aren’t homosexuals in underground comix? I’ve read between 150-200 issues. Each issue usually has between 8-20 stories by different artists. At a low estimate that comes out at 2000 stories. I’ve found 20 instances over the better part of a decade that in some way or other touch on homosexuality. That’s 1%. Right up to the end of my search, representations of homosexuality were running neck and neck with depictions of bestiality, paedophilia, incest, or stuffing a fat penis into an empty eye socket (really, it’s not uncommon). In the end, homosexuality wins out, but only just. Whether it’s pure gross-out or comic inappropriateness homosexuality homosexuality never seems to occur – which may be a good thing. Of course from this you could argue that either a) homosexuality is not transgressive enough, or b) that it’s just a little too realistic and therefore artists don’t quite want to wave it about for fear of what others might think. If there’s sexual exploration, it’s not in any bisexual direction. The only really trangressive depictions of homosexuality with aggressive sodomy are from the 60s, still pre-Stonewall, just as the underground comix scene is starting out, and when homosexuality is still something rather alien. And as it happens, S. Clay Wilson’s “Captain Pissgums” is instrumental in initiating that taboo-fouling tendency of the underground comix. I will give pretty much everyone here credit. There are more cocks, and men lavishing attention on other men’s cocks, on show here than in the entirety of this website put together.

Once you dismiss the transgressive aspect of homosexuality, how does homosexuality fare in the comix when it does infrequently appear? As homosexuality is very slowly making some social acceptance, how are a younger cadre of cartoonists incorporating it as a subject matter? Well, not with any great degree of enlightenment has to be the final judgement. A few of them do address oppression and Gay Lib. And a few present something that is historically recognisable as bearing relation to the homosexual scene of the time. But most lack any real topical quality which might validate them as satire. Most of them have homosexuals as being asked to fit into the artist’s pre-existing comic strip style. And so most of them are just silly comedy homos, clichés embraced and confirmed. (And comix contemporary Terry Gilliam’s work throughout the sixties and up to his “Monty Python” animations is also dotted with cliché gays). Because of the omnipresent heterosexual horniness and other locker room attitudes which these cartoons comically embody and occasionally undermine, quite a few of these strips would not look out of place in “Playboy” - which by the by the 70s is not denigratory towards gays but neither does it suggest cutting edge content.

And this is why “Gay Heart Throbs” comics in the late ‘70s, and then “Gay Comix” in the 80s proved so necessary.

Thanks to Howard Cruse for hints and feedback.

-----------------------

(Is there a relevant Robert Crumb piece? Other than a few domineering feminist lesbians I couldn’t find a gay man in his works from this period)

1 S.Clay Wilson – early works 1967-1969

2 S. Clay Wilson – Captain Pissgums and His Pervert Pirates, 1968

3 Jim Osborne – Paul & Marlon in Bottoms Up, 1969

4 Skip Williamson - The Voice of Doom, 1970

5 Rand Holmes - The Continuing Adventures of Harold Hedd, 1971

6 Vaughn Bodé and Berni Wrightson – Purple Pictography, 1971 - 1972

7 Ted Richards - Dopin Dan, 1972

8 Bobby London - Merton meets Yiddie Yippie, 1972

9 Bobby London - Artie Schnopp the Friendly Cop, 1972

10 Bill Griffiths – Real Live Dolls, 1973

11 Gilbert Shelton – I Led Nine Lives, 1973

12 Gary King – Boys will be Boys, 1973

13 Art Spiegelman – Real Dream, 1974

14 Trina Robbins – I was a Fag Hag, 1974

15 Willy Murphy – Once More, With or Without Feeling, 1975

16 Maurice Escutchier – Dungsbury, 1975?

17 Gary Hallgren - Tom Comes Out, 76

18 John Pound - Macho Motors , 1976

19 Sharry Flenniken - “Child of Divorce” in 'National Lampoon', May 1980
Flenniken found a home at “National Lampoon” in the early/mid 70s at about the moment that the underground comix scene hit the distribution wall

20 Alan Moore, “The Hot Slot”, in “American Flagg” #21, June 1985
Moore revisits the satirical sexual ethos of underground comix

376: John Pound - Macho Motors

"Macho Motors" by John Pound
in "Comix Book" #5, July 1976

These are the first pages of a longer story. Flip the Bird is a crass, sleazy con artist and usually gets his comeuppance later in strip. Ho-hum, it’s those deceptive trannies again, making for comic “Playboy” fodder. Although the coarse gay slur is further than “Playboy” lets its jokes by this time go. Both this story and the Hallgren had both hanging around for a year due to publisher problems. The underground commix scene was pretty comatose by this point, so this is the last instance I find. But in April 1976 there is the first issue of “Gay Heart Throbs”, gay commix content for gay readers. Which in one way or another will eventually point us to the upland fields of “Dykes to Watch Out For” and Howard Cruse’s properly gay cartoons.

375: Gary Hallgren - Tom Comes Out

"Tom Comes Out" by Gary Hallgren - "Comix Book" #5, July 76

Tom’s a farly pathetic and unsympathetic character but then why should everyone have to be. As far as the gay character goes, the leather jacket and bandana look bears some relation to reality, and as always there’s the lisping, pursed lips and fluttery eyes. Actually on average I would have to say that there are more lisping stereotypes in the underground commix than pretty much anywhere else. So not a success on that front. Then the rest of the strip is a series of failed heterosexual attempts, constantly reinforced with gay slurs on his masculinity, mistakenly leading to the horrified punchline that Tom to think he’s gay. Although at least, unlike in the original film of MASH, that’s not cause for suicide.

374: Maurice Escutchier - Dungsbury

Dungsbury (1975? Guessing from the Trudeau style being parodied)
by Maurice Escutchier
Reprinted in “Illustrated Checklist To Underground Comix”, 1979

Escutchier was important enough to be interviewed in the “Illustrated Checklist” but that would now seem to be the only record remaining that he had a career.
“It’s worse when you’re queer” – what, it’s harder to find men, or it’s just worse being queer? Since it’s delivered in the slightly oblique Trudeau manner, it’s deliberately ambivalent.

373: Willy Murphy - Once More, With or Without Feeling

"Once More, With or Without Feeling" by Willy Murphy
in "Arcade" #1 spring 75

Murphy regularly employed broad stereotypes for his humour. In his Arnold Peck the Human Wreck strips, Arnold was usually just an observer to some scene of fashionable hysteria. And so we get these extreme over-dramatic queens. If it had been drawn around 1969-1971 I’d give this a pass ,that no one would be expected to know much better. But since it dates from 1974-1975 and was drawn by someone living in San Francisco at the time, Murphy is fairly wilful about what he wants a funny homosexual to be. Which surprisingly, don’t approach the usual comic fag clichés either, but may actually be worse. There’s much comic mileage to be got out of the high drama of the emergent gay scene in San Francisco. This isn’t it.