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Sunday, June 12, 2005
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(List all)
A Sean interview

Category: erotica.
Author(s): Sean.


Jean-Paul Jennequin, a good friend of mine and the author of Les Folles Nuits de Jonathan, did this interview with the recently-deceased erotic gay artist Sean in 1998. It's been unpublished in English until now. We both thought it was too interesting to remain in Jean-Paul's drawer.


A 1991 portrait of the artistYour first illustrated story was done in 1963 and circulated in the gay underground. Yet at the time, there were no photocopies…

It was circulated by people photographing it, developing the photographs in their house, usually in the bathroom. Pictures were printed, in a smaller size, and then sold or given to friends. Sometimes [the photographers] would sell them to cover the photography and developing costs.

Were they sold like dirty photographs, undercover? Artists like Quaintance were selling their prints through mail order, advertising in physique magazines. So was it the same kind of circulation, only with hardcore material?

That would be about it. Tomorrow’s Man [Physique Pictorial] was printing Quaintance art and starting to print Tom of Finland’s stuff, but they had to cover everything, as long as there were genitals showing. If my stuff was reproduced, it would be underground. But it was very casual in our community, we were kind of ready for it. People were eager to have more erotic art. We just knew it had to be kept quiet because even now, in some areas, certain kinds of art are considered taboo and obscene — for example anything with children — and even if you have it in your house, you can be arrested. Just for having it in the house ! So in those days it was similar with gay… what we would call hardcore art. The most you could show [was] classic nudes, even publicly. In Los Angeles, there’s a famous cemetery that had an exact replica of David except for a fig leaf over his genitals. But then we had an earthquake in 1971 and the whole statue fell. When they redid the statue, he didn’t have the fig leaf anymore. So that was a big step right there in showing that men had penises. And that was 1971, so slowly we were starting to get ahead with some of this. So little by little, my stuff would spread, and Tom of Finland’s more erotic art would become available. Neil Bates was drawing in New York. I think he did The Barn, which was excellent. And I continued doing this and people would wanna see it. There wasn’t photocopy but there was a way to print inexpensively on regular paper. And if you knew someone who worked at a printer, and there usually was a gay person at a printer, then they would do it at night. And then you could staple it together…

How old were you in 1963 ?

I’m 63 now. So I don’t know, you figure it out!

At the same time, were you being published in physique magazines like Physique Pictorial or Tomorrow’s Man?

Never was. I didn’t go for drawing muscled figures unless particularly requested, because I didn’t think that was too normal. My characters, I just wanted them having sex. I wanted to go in that direction because there were a lot of good muscle artists but [their characters] weren’t having sex. They were just posing. I wanted to go in the direction where we could show what really goes on.

You were born in 1935, so that made you 28 in 1963. You didn’t start drawing [erotic] stories right away…

Actually, I was doing individual drawings for myself and for friends in Chicago, before I went to California. This would be in the late fifties. There were places you could go where there were glory holes and a lot of action. There was a particular hotel on the south side that the gangster Al Capone owned once, a grand old hotel. At one point I was there for an hour or two, waiting for the next dick. I did a little graffiti illustration of a sailor, on the wall, getting blown by somebody. Someone came in, and he was in the booth where I had done the illustration. So we did our business and we left. And we were talking, waiting for the elevated train to go home. And he said: “There is a drawing in the stall I was in that was really beautiful.” And I said: “Which one?” And he said: “Oh, there’s a sailor being blown by a guy and I’d really like to know who did the drawing.” I said: “I did.” So he asked me to do him an illustration. We figured we’d see each other within a week or so because it was a good place to have sex. And I did see him, and I did have the sketch and I gave it to him. But I realized some people could be interested and did drawings for friends. And then when I came out to California, ‘course you meet a lot of new people and then when they knew I was an an artist… I was doing paintings in an art factory…

What’s an art factory?

It’s a place where they would hire qualified artists that would do art in production. We’d have canvases lined up on tables and we would start the painting in sequence. You’d start by putting a horizon on the canvas or the masonite, depending on how expensive the paintings were, then you’d put perspective lines, then you’d take sponges and color in the sky. And you would do six or eight or ten paintings a day.

You mean that those were paintings that were sold to institutions or private persons and that you’d just be painting landscapes in a taylorized fashion?

Yeah. They were hung in motel rooms. I was already in love with Paris and I became pretty good and they allowed me to paint canvases of Parisian night scenes like the Moulin Rouge. First we’d paint the sky in freehand and daub in to get sunset highlights. Once the sky dried down at that end, with the fast-drying caseine paint. And then we’d put stencil number one and sponge in the color which would give us the basic buildings. As it would progress, by the time I got to stencil number nine, stencil number nine would be little holes with highlights of the yellow lights in the windows. And then by hand, youd take a brush and do reflections in the wet pavement. You know, they typically show Pigalle in the rain, with reflections in the pavement. So I did that by day, and I got paid twelve dollars per painting - if I could knock off ten a day, I made pretty good money - and on evenings and on weekends… I realized I wasn’t gonna make it as a painter in Los angeles because I realized I worked in a factory ! And they’re selling these paintings for sixty, seventy dollars each, to hotels and so forth. So I continued playing around with erotic art for my own entertainment.

At the time, you were living in Chicago?

That’s when I moved to Los Angeles. I was living in Hollywood.

What kind of penalties could you have incurred if you had been identified as the man who drew those dirty pictures?

I don’t know. At that time, the Los Angeles Times and other regular newspapers were still calling gay people “deviates”. If the police raided a bar, they said they arrested sixty-four “perverts”. And the laws were written so strongly, for straight porno as well as for gay porno, but we always figured we’d get a higher sentence. It would have been a misdemeanor, it would’ve been a fine, and you probably wouldn’t go to jail, but you’d have to get a lawyer to go through the process. Most artists, unless they were of some reputation, also did some legitimate painting, like Quaintance. if you didn’t have the means, you could be ruined.

What was your output between 1963 and 1967-68?

Not much. I wasn’t doing much illustrating until the mid-sixties. I only did maybe ten to fifteen pages a year because I was only illustrating at night as a little entertainment and there was no market for it.

When did you stop working in the art factory and become a full time erotic artist?

There was a lot in between. The factory closed down and my job stopped. I did a little bit more with a smaller art factory. That didn’t last too long. Then I got a job with a store very similar to Ikea. I was window trimming. I’d done some window decorating in Chicago, so it was natural: a job opened up. My friend Jim had a friend who worked for the store - that was 1965 - and he said “perhaps he’ll give you an interview”. So I got the window decorating job, which was great - 9 to 5, five days a week, and I could continue drawing. Then I started to draw a little more. So these were already under my belt. Then in 1965 I started doing work in The Advocate, the first gay newspaper.

Were you doing single panel cartoons?

That’s right. And the “Gayer than Strange” half-pages, that was for The Advocate. Single panel gag cartoons and editorial cartoons. First I started doing editorials and then we did the cartoons because there was a need for gay cartoons. [In straight cartoons] we were always nelly, always prissy but they weren’t about sex and they weren’t our kind of humor. A straight person seeing the guy with the baguette may not get the joke but our people immediately knew what the gag was. I did over a hundred and twenty five of those. I have the original art of that and there’s one hundred and twenty five gags, plus some “Gayer than Strange”. The editorial cartoons of which there are over two hundred are with the Gay Archives in Los Angeles. We were blasting the police so they were editorially significant, so they’ve got them for the Archives. So by ‘67, ‘68 I was doing that and then I was drawing erotic stuff… about to be published by Larry Townsend. I was getting into it, then.

Was it softcore or hardcore?

It was hardcore when I was doing it for myself, some of which is gone, I gave it away or it disappeared. The first illustrations for Larry Townsend were probably softcore. But also, they were S&M! With a lot of the S&M stuff, there wasn’t much sex going on. It was somebody being whipped, or flailed, or hung up. So he could have a hard on, that was okay, and if the guy had a whip in his hand, that was the scene that Larry wanted anyway. So at that point, I wasn’t worrying about showing penetration or screwing.

Those were illustrated novels… So, were you given the novel and then you had to do a certain number of illustrations?

An illustration (I don't have the date)Yeah. He would ask me to catch the highlight scenes or particular scenes he wanted to show. Some of the stories, I would get typewritten, and there would be 10, 12, 15 pages, or, if he had a collection - he called them anthologies - he would choose me to illustrate all the stories in that book. And yes, they are in circulation and I don’t get any reprint!

You were paid a flat rate at the time with no reprint right?

Well, those were the early days. Larry was very kind, we would come to agreement on what the price was per illustration, and you won’t believe it but the first ones were 35 dollars for a full page. Dumb me, I thought that was a good price. What I didn’t do was request retaining rights because as it turned out, I was doing a hundred, a hundred and twenty five, and then I realized that he’d got a lot of artwork. And I’d talked to Joe johnson, God rest his soul, good illustrator. And he said: “Don’t you get your art back?” And I said “I don’t know. larry has the art because it all goes to the printer, it all comes back and then he’s got it on file”. He said “Well, you’d better ask him.” So when I asked Larry about the art I had already done, he said “You didn’t say anything about wanting it back. I consider that mine.” I said “Not from now on.” I said “From now on, I want the art back.” We went back and forth about it and argued a little. My prices were up, by then. But I said I wanted all my original art back.

What year would that have been?

Oh, my gosh, I don’t remember. But since that point, I continued illustrating for Larry and did over two hundred and fifty illustrations plus a bunch of introductory small illustrations, maybe two hundred of those. I couldn’t give it a year, because he would sometimes do five books a year, some years three, and then he wouldn’t. It depended on what sold. I’ve lost track. It was the seventies.

How did you get in touch with Larry Townsend in the first place?

Mutual friends. We joined a… er… club. That was a semi-motorcycle club. You could be int it, you could wear leather and have a motorcycle but it wasn’t a prerequisite to have a motorcycle, ‘cause a lot of people that were into leather didn’t wanna have one. Lots of problems. I couldn’t afford one. I had a car and I was happy with it. But I happened to accumulate leather gear. I liked the idea, and I liked the leather bars and stuff. So someone said “Larry’s in the club too, but he doesn’t come to many meetings” Then we met, we became friends. So when he said he needed an illustrator, I said I could do it.

Did you do any comics for him?

No, he didn’t want to go into that vein. He used some things, Joe Johnson and stuff, but… I think he made a mistake, not going into a continued strip. He could’vez created a character and I told him: “Anything you write, I can draw.” And I told all of the authors that. So that’s how I got into doing some of the kooky stuff I was doing, because Roger Mays (?) was going into heavy S&M and scat and - ugh - other stories that other artists didn’t wanna touch. And I said “If you pay me, I’ll draw it”. I mean, it’s only ink on paper, I wasn’t concerned about the ethics.

You had to pay the rent?

You bet! So he had stories about cannibalism, about head chopping… It wasn’t easy, ‘cause I had to figure how to do some of this like it was part of a story. It wasn’t just a tableau. i had to show action and spurting blood and all that. But it was a challenge and I thought: “Okay, as an artist, I should really take on this challenge.” So I drew it!

Did you ever do color work or didn’t you have the opportunity?

No opportunity. I did a couple of color covers for the French Gay Comics, and a couple of others. And a strip recently in a magazine called Urge. i started first one panel, and then we went to two panels, two pages, then they went to full color. They only photographed it and printed it that way. They didn’t do color separation. I never liked the way the color came out. I did five or six or seven two page chapters and then the editor I was working with left so the strip left too, because the new people weren’t budgeting for “Tony and Trent”, which was the name of the comic.

During the seventies, you published gay comic strips in magazines. What were those magazines?

They were Nova publications and they came out with a series of photographic magazines. One series would be like, Levis and Leather, another series would be Boys at the Beach or Swimming Pools and they considered that water scenes.

All the models would be different, then?

Yeah.

And each collection had a theme. Did your comics have to be in keeping with the theme of the collection?

"Hardhat sex" coverThat’s it. They said “Sean, we are doing working men.” They’d hire a bunch of models, a bunch of hard hats, horses, and they’d go into the valley somewhere and do a setup of guys working around a sewer, or cutting down trees, and then they’d all go to a garage somewhere and then they’d shoot some photographs of them taking off their clothes and carrying on. And these could be hardcore. They’d do a movie, which was hardcore and they’d take photographs, which were usually softcore. And then, they had these color pages. So they had black and white pagination in the magazine and they said : “Sean, we need ten pages of working men.” So five pages were in the front of the magazine, because of the pagination, and five pages were in the back. Si I came up with this idea of doing the stories with these cliffhanger sequences on page 5 and then I’d pick it up on page 6.

Did they put your comics in the front so the magazine wouldn’t start right out with the picture of a naked man?

Usually their story started out with pictures of a guy working. One guy would lift up his leg and another guy would see up his shorts. And then near page 21, my story’d begin. And they’d put the first five pages. And then it would say “continued on page fifty-whatever it was”. The centerspread was usually a tableau of all the guys doing it. They were into the story by then, so there was a full-color centerspread. And then you’d go a few more pages and my story would continue. And toward the back was usually advertisements and that was the end of the magazine.

What about the two Biff comics that you did?

The second Biff coverBiff was the first one. This was published by Le Salon, a printing company in San Francisco who’d heard of me. They approached me about doing art. And they told me how many pages they’d like, that it could be hardcore. They were gonna sell it in Europe and Canada, so I did the story without dialogue. This was about 1976, ‘77. So I did sketches, I sent them up and they said fine. So I did all the art, roughly 12” by 15” pages and they bought it. They wanted something big in the center and nobody had done ten people getting it on at the same time before. So I did the first illustration so you could see what everyone was doing, even the fuck in the armpits - cause I used to do that sometimes - and worked out ten people. They said “Oh, that’s good. If we do a sequel, do more!” So the challenge was for the sequel, Biff Bound, to have fifteen. And I was gonna do a third, Back to Biff, meaning laying on your stomach and your back is to Biff, but they ran into difficulties and the owner, blees him, had to leave the country and go back to Canada. And then there were changes, and they went to video and I never did the third Biff.

What years would the Nova magazines have been?

Nova started early seventies and we went… oh, at least to ‘78 because I did Come Wars, the take-off of Star Wars. Since the movie came out in 1977… After that I did Bigfoot and an Half, and I had other plans for Nova, but they broke up in the early eighties. But they were getting into video and I was only doing spot illustrations for them. I did eighteen stories for them, in all. They came out something like quarterly, over a period of years along with spot illustrations work. And if they did films, sometimes I did drop illustrations for the magazines about the films. They did films before video.

Earlier today, you mentioned being an art director on some of the movies…

We had a large garage behind our house, that we later converted into an apartment. Nova did a video there. I had used my toys and leather, ropes and chains, and decorated the garage to look like someplace sinister. I had to work out how to tie the boys up and we’d hang’em from the rafters. We faked some of the slapping and whipping, and then I had to put the streaks on their cheeks with make-up. Because we didn’t want the models really hurt. They were good looking boys. But they weren’t into it at all. But we understood that! The boys who were hung up got 350 $ for one day, because they were going through all the stress and the big butch guy with the paddle, he got like 250-275 because he wasn’t going through as much. Or we’d rent an empty room in a friend’s apartment and they’d put some lockers and posters to make it look like a collegiate room. So, that’s the kind of art direction I did.

When they went to video full time, you were offered the job of art director. Why didn’t you go along?

Well, I had art going at that time. And the art direction for video was different in that they would give me a budget of, say, 4000 dollars, and out of that, I would have to get location, costumes, furniture, decorations, rent all that out, and then what was left was mine. But sometimes there was a short span of time to do that and I didn’t think it left me enough time to do it properly and to have any money left over. You can rent props all over the place but videos are more concise than film. Because the film, with a steadycam, you changed angles. But with a roving video, it was a much more complicated way of approaching art direction. And I talked about it with Jim and we just decided it might not pay enough for the schedule I had. And I wouldn’t have had time to draw! It was in 1987 or 88, I’d just finished Boy-boy, I wanted to market that. So I declined the offer. I’m still very close with them, though.

Was that kind of company - publisher, filmmaker, etc - pretty typical of the times?

It was pretty typical because it made sense that if you could do one, you’d automatically take photographs of the same scenes you’re shooting and do a magazine… even save photographs for magazines to come down the line. For example, if you had a big collection of blue-eyed blonds and you knew there was a market, then you could compile those photographs and bring out a special magazine. As far as I know, everybody at that time from Nova to Falcon was doing that. Since then, some of them have specialized and gone strictly video. But it’s surprising that in a lot of the bookstores, there are magazines that feature models from videos. So it’s really the same thing except now they just feature one or two models.

Did you ever act?

Walk-on in the background in mob scenes. And I’m not ashamed to say that when we were shooting because the light man and the cameraman and the director for Nova had to really concentrate with the actors for what they were doing, I was often phantom fluffer in the other room. In case the models that were performing were prentending to be so straight that they didn’t want to work each other up, I would help them up and then they’d walk on on cue when the lights were set and the film was in the camera, ready to go.

Did you ever get credit for that?

No, and understandably. And then when we did group scenes in some of the baths, I’d get into leather just to be in the group, or in the bar scenes. Only because they needed people. We were shooting off hours, when the place wasn’t crowded, just like they do with regular films. So you need extras.

Can you tell us a little about Larry Townsend?

I think Larry Townsend started as a serious writer and discovered that he could make money doing what we all were doing, that is getting into porn. He did write the Leatherman’s Handbook, this little guide to getting into S&M. Though it isn’t my forte, I appreciated that it’s a particular facet of our community so I was happy to work with him to illustrate it. And those were some of the most difficult illustrations there are to do. We argued a lot and discussed interpretations of scenes a lot. But we are good friends.

Were they difficult because of the subject matter?

Larry’s stories were good but coarse. To put his anthologies or treasuries, as he called them, he had stories submitted by other authors. And the other autors, in their haste to type or copy would sometimes forget where their characters were in the process of the act of getting together. And I would have to re-read the story to see if the hat is still on, if the clothes are still on, if he put his boots back on, because sometimes they would not say this. So you got the finale scenes where all the action is going on, which is obviously the scene to illustrate. But I would have to re-read over and over, and it gets very tiresome to read maybe four, five paragraphs over and over to make sure that the people are correct because Larry would get letters about the illustrations being wrong. I’m telling about very complicated sex scenes that would end rather abruptly. I used to say to Jim, my friend, that you could tell where the author shot off.

What did you do between the early eighties and 1987?

I was still doing small episodes for some of the magazines and the people that had Nova were doing other publications. In Touch magazine came along, and I did the original logo for it. I also did gag cartoons for The Advocate, spelled Shawn, spot story illustrations for In Touch and other magazines that came along. And still Larry Townsend, but no heavy concentration.

Were you aware of the existence of Kitchen Sink’s Gay Comix from the early eighties on? Why didn’t you ever contribute to that?

Well, it’s an awful thing to say but if you’re working very hard with what you’re doing… I didn’t have the opportunity just to simply go out and see what was out there. I didn’t go out and buy magazines just to look at them because the magazines I was working for, I would always get copies for my archives. I knew that other magazines were coming up and that some other artists were starting strips, but then I was kind of stuck in doing erotic strips and illustrations and I was still one of the few doing it.

I would’ve thought Gay Comix an opportunity for you to do some humorous strips. When they did the collection Best of Gay Comix, you were included, so when that came out (1989), you couldn’t help being aware of the magazine’s existence…

Robert Triptow asked me and I sent him a whole bunch of stuff. i like it very much, it’s a good book. I had a strip going called Up the Block and one of the newspapers in Los Angeles, Frontiers. I was happy because I wanted to do a mainstream cartoon of gay life but not political. I lived on a block in West Hollywood where we had similar apartment buildings across the street. It was full of gay people and a few straights. I knew neighbors and we’d talk about somebody interesting walking down the street or the firemen from the neighboring fire station doing exercise in their shorts… And I thought “Wait a minute! We’ve got a neighborhood here!” So I started a strip that ran seventeen or so chapters. But then they changed editors. And the new sister editor decided to drop the strip. Apparently, later she replaced it with Tim Barela’s Leonard and Larry. Which is fine, and I love his style, but it’s got awfully talky and political. In Up the Block, one strip was the whole gag. It finished off each chapter. I didn’t want to have it being talky, I just wanted it to be like the regular comics where you get a little chuckle at the end. I guess people didn’t want chuckles, they wanted political correctness. I’ve submitted gag and story ideas ever since and they say: “Well, it’s a little controversial ‘cause you get too sexy with it.” One group I submitted to in Utah said the men’s buns were too tight and they were too bulgy. So they started running a strip called Dykes to Watch Out For, and they’re showing tits and rear ends and I couldn’t help telling my contact : “Wait a minute! If they’re concerned about bulges on guys and rear ends in Levis, how come they’re showing tits and rear ends on women? I don’t understand it!” I guess because the editor of that magazine in Utah was a lesbian. I wasn’t showing anything bad, not even baskets, just bulges, mind you! So that was the end of that!

Up the Block was in the late eighties?

I think it was ‘86, ‘87, maybe ‘88, because it was dropped and I thought, “Fine”. Jim and I were preparing to leave West Hollywood and relocate - big mistake!

At that time, you were still illustrating Larry Townsend publications?

And other quickies that came along, an illustration here and there. A few got into Mandate and stuff. Every time there was a new leather magazines being put out, they thought that since I had illustrated for Larry Townsend, I could do S&M. So, yeah, I could do it, but it wasn’t my actual preference or forte. I just did what I hadda do to make money. I just took on any kind of work and a lot of it was S&M because of that.

At the end of the eighties you relocated to…

Phoenix, Arizona. I thought I could continue doing work by mail and I did. I had the fortune to contact Jean Carton who reproduced a lot of my old stuff. He also commissioned some original cover work. I tried to work with Larry but then he was getting into recreating a novel which didn’t call for new illustrations. He was also doing some kind of video, I guess. So that kind of dwindled down. Then I also contacted Bound & Gagged, and First Hand Limited in New Jersey, who are soft core romantic stuff. And there hasn’t been a heck of a lot since!

Have there been strips we haven’t mentioned yet?

A Jake panelYes: “Jake”, “Dick Darling, Hollywood Cover Boy” and a small one that didn’t get off the ground too far called “Johnny Guitar”. “Jake” appeared originally in Jock. They needed a four-page strip that would give the idea of jocks. And they were shooting men in jock-straps and shorts, running around the track and that kind of thing. So I created Jake and did twenty-seven four-page chapters. That was in the eighties. “Dick Darling”, the same publisher came out with a magazine featuring twinkies, pretty model types around the pool and go-go dancing. They wanted a strip to kind of reflect that. And the editor liked the name “Dick Darling”.

Sounds fruity!

Well the editor was! I had wanted to make Dick Darling blond, like him but he said to make him dark. I started the strip with Dick Darling dark, and he was supposed to be Tom Cruise, but I can’t draw anybody looking like anybody. You’d need pictures of Tom Cruise doing all the things the character was supposed to be doing. Although I’d love to have ‘em! But apart from a profile and a smile, what can you get? So I just made DD a dark, good looking kid. And then maybe after the fourth episode, the editor said “You know, maybe he should be blond.” I thought “Great”, ‘cause it’s easier to draw blond hair than it is dark hair! The idea was that Dick Darling wanted to break into video and show business and he was always so horny and so easy to talk into things that he never quite achieves stardom. But he has a lot of sex! The stories started as two-pagers and went to four. That was every other month for… twenty-something chapters… a couple of years.

You mentioned a third strip, “Johnny Guitar”…

One of the editors from Jock left and went with another publisher to start another magazine. And he came up with an idea. He liked the name Johnny Guitar, so he wanted a character created with that name, so I did seven chapters of the strip. I didn’t get paid for the last two, so I stopped the strip, chased my money for a while and that was that.

Are all the gay publishers in America on the West Coast?

Los Angeles would be where the printing and where the money is. There are well-established publishers in the Frisco area that have been there for a long time and don’t want to leave, simply because they’re well-established. But by far, it’d be Los Angeles and New York, with a sprinkling in Chicago and local stuff. But it’s not unusual if they’d shoot even in other parts of America but the printing would be in Los Angeles or New York simply because the facilities are state of the art.

Are there so many gay publishers in Los Angeles because the film and video industries are there, because it’s easier to find models?

I think it’s a combination of all of it. Business is business and I know, even with Nova, I was sometimes dropping off film at the end of the day, because it was near where I worked, where they would do the rolls of film for the color and black and white magazines overnight and they were also doing it for magazines related to the film industry and they didn’t care what was on the films. It’s just that they had a turnover, so fast, with the overnight crew. You bring your film in, you pay for it : fine, we don’t care what’s on it. And kind of the whole industry is like that. It’s a matter of lights, it’s a matter of cameras, it’s a matter of whatever they’re selling, and if you’re buying it correctly, they don’t care what you’re doing. Los Angeles is so big that the San Fernando valley is the porn capital of the country because there’s so many large buildings where they shoot mostly straight but gay porn also. Huge sound stages that you rent, you build your set, and you do it. It’s a business.

Do you masturbate to your own work?

No but when I used to illustrate a lot of stories for Larry Townsend, if I started to get aroused by drawing the picture, or if a scene aroused me in the story that I was gonna illustrate, then I knew that the drawing was gonna work. But otherwise, I just went to a drawing board and started creating. But a lot of scenes I illustrated, even in the line of duty, there’s vignettes in the stories that I experienced in real life. In Los Angeles, there was a lot of cruising in Griffith Park, in gas stations, and I based a lot of my early stuff on actual experiences. It might’ve been post-ejaculation rather than pre-ejaculation that prompted illustrations.

You’ve also been in almost every issue of Meatmen since the beginning…

Yes but it’s the end of it. That’s because Winston thinks I’ve run out of stories. He ran all eighteen sex adventure stories. He doesn’t care to run “Jake” and things like that, and frankly he wants to use new stuff, but he doesn’t wanna pay for it. He pays 25 dollars a page, which is okay for reprints but is too little for new stuff.


You can visit an official site for Sean's art right here.


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Saturday, June 11, 2005
Blog review
If you don't see the images of a review, it means that I've transferred it to the new site. - Feature

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Tina's reviews: Revenge is Sweet

Category: slash.
Author(s): Tricia, Mia V.


Our guest reviewer is back with another slash comic. You've got the floor, Tina.


Medieval Man Sex… Oh yes!

Juxtapose Fantasy is a website featuring stories and art for fans of sexy, romantic slash. It boasts one the highest count of paid subscribers on the net who support all three of its separate slash fandom’s written by Tricia Owens: The Realm of Juxtan [a medieval style slash series], Juxtapose City [futuristic action-slash], and Angel Reverse [gothic slash].

a pageRevenge is Sweet is a 28 page mini-comic featuring the two sexually combatant characters from popular net series The Realm of Juxtan. This title is loaded with crisp beautifully explicit artwork displayed in clean layouts with easy to read letters. The story is a well written example of some hot grudge-sex between two men who at this point in their lives truly dislike one another. Now that’s something we all can enjoy. This book is #5 in a series of one-shot mini-comics based on The Realm of Juxtan series, and it is certainly one worthy of reading. The comic itself is followed by the actual short story printed neatly for those fans who like to read short stories rather than the text balloons. Yes, there are such fans out there who like their man on man action in prose! 

My overall impression of this comic is that it’s a truly steamy short with richly drawn art that leaves nothing to the imagination.  My one problem with it is that it’s trying to be ‘yaoi’ when it’s really just damn good slash, and there’s nothing wrong with being damn good slash!

*Facts - Slam Style*

Revenge Is Sweet
A Juxtapose Fantasy mini-comic
Written By Tricia / Art by Mia V
Glossy cover-saddle-stitch binding
28 pages – Adults Only!

You can acquire this title and others in this series for a mere $9.00 plus shipping via mail order by visiting http://juxtaposefantasy.net/newbookstore.htm 

Tina Kolesnik

Owner, Gynocrat Studios
http://gynocrat.org


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Wednesday, June 08, 2005
Blog review
If you don't see the images of a review, it means that I've transferred it to the new site. - Feature

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Tina's reviews: Kit Fancy: Nemesis

Category: adventure, slash.
Author(s): Mink, Pluto.


Today, we're having a guest reviewer. Everybody says hi to Tina.
Come back whenever you feel like it, Tina.


A Fun Poke for fans of 007.

Kit Fancy: Nemesis is a slash action-comedy, pure and simple. There is no complexity, beauty or storytelling prowess, it is utterly dedicated to the amusement of the reader. It pokes fun at the 007 theme while keeping its tongue firmly in cheek with a gay secret agent who looks good in anything and never misses his target.

Before you open the book, put yourself into Captain Picard-mode. That's right old chap; pretend you're British or the discourse will get to you if you aren't into the spirit of all. Pip-Pip, here we go love: Kit goes up against Nemesis, and from start to finish there's never a pink hair out of place even while enduring a rather sexy scrape with the tantalizing tentacles of Nemesis's latest sexual weapon. There is much promise in this series and I truly hope its creators stick with it and see through additional volumes.

A pageThe book itself is typical comic book size but with perfect binding. The design is appealing and the cover is sexy but safe, as in you can store in a clear-plastic-wrap safe. Inside the sequential art is clean and there isn't an overuse of screen tone because this isn't yaoi manga.  It is, in a nutshell, a prime example of a good western slash-comic. Self-published original western slash comics are looming on the horizon and I think books like Kit Fancy will make even the most hardcore of those aesthetic doujinshi collectors turn their heads and take notice. At a reasonable $5.00 a copy this book is a steal and definitely worth collecting.

To learn more about this title and purchase your own copy please visit:

http://kitfancy.com

-Tina Kolesnik

Owner Gynocrat Studios

http://gynocrat.org


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Saturday, June 04, 2005
Various news
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It's Queer Month at Sequential Tart



The excellent all-women comics webzine Sequential Tart is celebrating Pride month with a slew of queer-related articles. You'll find interviews with Kris Dresen (who's also done one of the covers of the zine), Leanne Franson and Bevis Musson (author of the gay superhero The Queen of Diamonds), as well as Paige Braddock writing on butch women in comics, Lesbian-in-residence Denise Sudell about her current disappointment regarding queer characters in mainstream comics (but not only) and an article about non-traditional families in comics.
It's all well-written and informative, as everything the Tarts do.


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