So much of traditional gay culture was destroyed by the internet, and nothing more so than the gay press. Of course, magazines in general have been imperiled, with those that are still published often struggling and competing for dwindling advertising revenue.

After the 1990s heyday of gay news and feature magazines—The Advocate, Instinct, Outweek, Genre and a lot of more local titles—not only did content move to the internet, but much of gay life became less niche and was available in more general titles.

Perhaps the true loss was so-called “gay porn,” which has a brief but remarkable history in gay life. There were early publications like Physique Pictorial masquerading as fitness magazines, but by the 1970s, once the Supreme Court put an end to persecution of publishers for using the mail to distribute their work, there was a boom in soft- and hardcore titles: Blueboy, Playguy, Mandate, Honcho, Torso, Jocks, Drummer, Inches, Rump, Freshmen, In Touch, Men (originally Advocate Men), Indulge.

And let’s not forget those magazines that were officially marketed to women but clearly widely read by gay men: Playgirl, Viva and the short-lived Foxy Lady and Ultra. Playgirl's rotating lineup of publishers and editors (many female) apparently vacillated about everything from erections to target audience. Viva, edited by the girlfriend of Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione, was always more pretentiously artsy in its presentation of naked men along with fashion and pop culture, eventually dropped the naked pictures, and soon folded. All of the “women’s” magazines featured a number of present and future gay porn stars; most of Playgirl’s 1990s models seemed to be strippers and often turned up in solo videos, naked, sometimes hard, and occasionally stroking their cocks.

While all of these are remembered for showing increasingly explicit images of male models, some began with greater ambitions. In particular, Mandate, Blueboy and Torso were notable for featuring high-quality photography (much of it now seems fairly tame, though full-frontal) as well as arts and entertainment features and reviews, fiction, interviews and the first coverage of a new health crisis appearing in the gay community in the early 1980s.

As more mainstream gay publications appeared, they usurped most of this content at the same time as the erotic photography became more explicit, with hard cocks and open holes now expected and welcomed by readers. The fiction also was more targeted. While most of it had always been sexual in nature, in the beginning there was a place for gay-themed stories that need not have included sex scenes. And consequently, the illustrations also featured a range of content.

When both Blueboy and Torso changed hands, any ambition was discarded and both titles became, in content and design, indistinguishable from other newsstand gay porn, with Blueboy particularly cheap looking.

At one point, the publisher of Mandate, Honcho and Playguy purged the creative leadership, replacing the editor and art director who had developed the magazines and given them specific identities: Mandate featuring handsome, GQ-style models, news and features; Playguy filled with twinks; and Honcho focused on leather men and trucker types. The lesbian assistant art director was promoted to her boss’s job; one could argue that she had no personal agenda in terms of selecting photos that appealed to her, but the three magazines became indistinguishable. This problem was compounded by the practice of video companies providing free model photos in exchange for ads, and the almost monopolistic pervasion of photos by Kristen Bjorn. Those who know his work will realize that Bjorn had a specific type personally, and almost all his photos were of a group of glossy South American models. While they would have been ideal for Mandate, they now also filled the pages of Playguy and Honcho, as well as Torso when the publisher acquired that title.

Most of the magazines were owned and published by a handful of companies: In Touch and Specialty Publications in California (the latter published The Advocate), Blueboy, Jock and Numbers migrating from company to company, and a huge number of titles published by Mavety Media in New York. Owned by a heterosexual man, Mavety published at least a dozen gay porn magazines, as well as straight porn (mainly fetish titles) and… teen magazines, often using the same editors, art directors and photographers. When one thinks about it, this makes sense—attractive young men in flattering photos marketed as objects of desire and hired to populate entertainment (whether aural or oral) that viewed them more as commodities than as performing artists.

Mavety eventually stopped publication of its titles (Mandate, Honcho, Playguy, Torso, Inches and more), though it would occasionally regurgitate previously published material (having coerced its contributors into signing away any claim for second-rights payments). In Touch and Indulge replaced their experienced art directors with novices, whose primary qualification seemed to be basic computer skills, though they then expected their illustrators to provide digital version of work; having always paid less than competitors, they now expected more work. They folded not long after. And Specialty (Men, Freshmen, Unzipped) abruptly notified their full-time employees that they were ceasing publication immediately. Playgirl held on in some form, distributing solo and straight porn online and hiring gay club promoter Daniel Nardicio as director of marketing; Nardicio dropped Playgirl’s pretext of heterosexuality.

The gay titles offered aspiring and established writers an outlet—and an income—for erotica, and similarly for illustrators who created the accompanying images. As the "Golden Age of Illustration" from the beginning of the 20th Century through the '60s gave way to photos, the porn mags, while they were viable, still featured illustrations.

Artists including Mel Odom, George Stavrinos and Robert W. Richards, who had notable careers creating illustrations for fashion, literature and entertainment, could also be seen in the pages of the porno mags, particularly Blueboy and Torso, the latter of which in its heyday provided Richards with at least six pages monthly to illustrate and write about whatever struck his fancy, from Jeff Stryker to Gary Cooper to Anita O’Day.

While occasionally it seems the magazines, especially in their earlier days, accepted illustration work from horny amateurs, typically they were the work of polished professionals, trained artists who often worked in other genres, though occasionally there were illustrators who focused entirely on erotica, some of it outrageous.

Or course, many people find the sexual illustrations worthy of admiration. Witness the boom in erotic art exhibits in the 1990s, as well as the rage for Tom of Finland books. Tom became the focus of his own foundation, which also collected, curated and displayed artwork by numerous illustrators. The Leslie-Lohmann Foundation in New York, originally a high-end hobby founded by two men who had made a fortune buying up real estate in the run-down neighborhood that became Soho, eventually developed into a state-designated museum. Some might find it unfortunate that this has led to far fewer exhibits of the best in erotic art and more and more shows of mediocre non-sexual work.

All of this is a rather lengthy preamble to the accompanying section of this website, a gallery of some of our favorite work by creators of gay erotic art.

If you have images you would like to add to the collection, please use the “CONTACT” link above. We also welcome information about the artists, some of whom remain obscure.

And to take a peek at this gallery of homoerotic illustrations originally published in these and other gay porn magazines....