Meatmen: An Anthology of Gay Male Comics (Volume 1) [Paperback]

Winston Leyland (Editor), Jerry Mills (Designer)

Book Description

Series: Meatmen | Publication Date: December 1989

Loaded with lots of erotic cartoons, take off of star wars and the tom of finland

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Leyland Publications; 2nd edition (December 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0917342232
• ISBN-13: 978-0917342233
• Product Dimensions: 9.8 x 6.9 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,401,678 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Whole World of Gay Comics!, July 29, 2005

By 

Henry R. Kujawa ("The Forbidden Zone" (Camden, NJ)) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Meatmen: An Anthology of Gay Male Comics (Volume 1) (Paperback)

The debut volume of MEATMEN from 1986 is an amazing collection containing a wide variety of styles from no less than 29 different cartoonists! Nico, Brad Parker, "Blade", "Tom Of Finland", Joe Johnson, "Sean", "A.Jay", "Stephen", "Dandy", Jerry Mills, Howard Cruse, Bruce Billings, Jeffrey A. Krell, Tom Hachtman, Burton Clarke, Bing, Rick Campbell, Gerald Donelan, The Hun, Vaughn, Kurt Erichsen, Michael Goldberg & Richard Cornwell, Robert Triptow, David Young, Joe Sinardi, Gregoire, Bill Ward, and Tim Barela. (Whew!) Most of the material had appeared earlier, in The Barn 1948 (1980), Miss Thing (1973), Nova, Harry Chess In 3 Hot Vintage Episodes Vol.1 (1980), Firsthand, Manscape, In Touch, Gay Comix, Stroke, Male Review, Soho Weekly News, The Advocate, Torso, Drummer, and at least 23 different newspapers. Quite an achievement, putting all this together in one book!

As usual, not everything will appeal to everyone, but I do have my own favorites...

NICO -- wonderfully photo-realistic style, both covers and 2 short stories inside (The Biker, 2 Blondes) for a total of 10 pages altogether.

"COME WARS", a 16-page "tribute" to STAR WARS, x-rated of course. The first of many appearances by "SEAN"; I'd love to see all his stories collected in a single book one of these days.

"HARRY CHESS: The Curse Of Kahlua Blewa" by "A.JAY" -- A really funny serial that mixes spies, adventure & sex. My one problem with this is the art is shrunk down to fit the vertical format of the book, when it should have been MUCH bigger. There's just too much detail here that gets lost, and I'm sure I'd have had an easier time enjoying it if I didn't feel I needed a magnifying glass to do so.

"MEATMAN Meets The Monstrous Milking Machine" by "STEPHEN" -- from 1975-76, an early gay superhero parody, almost non-stop sex for 15 pages.

"POPPERS" by JERRY MILLS -- funny, cartoony short stories.

"BILLY GOES OUT" by HOWARD CRUSE -- more drama than sex, but Cruse shows everyone else how to do "real" comics!

Other highlights include "JAYSON" by Jeffrey A. Krell, "MURPHY'S MANOR" by Kurt Erichsen, "LEONARD AND LARRY" by Tim Barella, 2 photo-realistic illustrations accompanying a pair of text pieces by "Blade", 4 cartoons by Gerald Donelan (consistently one of the best parts of any MEATMEN collection) and 2 very "Disney"-style cartoons by Gregoire-- I'd LOVE to see a lot more from this guy!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars misleading, April 5, 2006

By 

Furio (Genova - Italy) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Meatmen: An Anthology of Gay Male Comics (Volume 1) (Paperback)

A word of caution to this anthology of gay themed comics:

the content is only in part explicitly sexual so it will disappoint the ones who were looking for this kind of fun; the same thing, reversed, means that people looking just for funny gay themed comics might be disturbed by the porn strips.

I happen to like both good porn and funny strips but I was disappointed nonetheless: most comics inside are just average, with the obvious exception of Tom of Finland and the possible exception of "Meatman". There is a lot of bad or indifferent drawing as well as bad or indifferent storylines.

One could say that an anthology anthologizes the extant and that if gay comics of the past (most from the '70sand '80s) are average then the anthology must perforce be average. Fine, but then I would have appreciated a thicker volume, giving more material for the rather outrageous price.