Queer Print Ephemera Recut as Artist Zine: Jim Lucio’s All Male Cast! #4,

Queer: Jim Lucio’s All Male Cast!

Pamphlet

Jim Lucio’s All Male Cast! #4, June 2024, reconstructing the print culture through which gay male content moved from coded midcentury physique imagery into the increasingly explicit adult cinema, paperback, mail order, and sexual consumer markets of the 1970s. Lucio builds the issue from advertisements, magazine pages, theater notices, tabloid journalism, erotic publishing, and male physique imagery rather than retrospective narrative, retaining the sales language and visual codes through which these materials originally addressed their audiences. A Summer 1960 issue of Physique Artistry appears beside promotions for Gay Parisian Press, all male theaters, gay paperbacks, sailor themed films, mail order erotica, and a 1976 Hollywood Star article on Sal Mineo, allowing several generations of gay male commercial representation to occupy the same sequence.
Lucio, Jim. All Male Cast! #4. [Place not stated]: PostNormalMedia, June 2024. Illustrated wrappers, with color covers and predominantly black and white interior reproductions. The spine reads “Jim Lucio’s All Male Cast! #4, June. 2024, PostNormalMedia,” while the interior colophon reads “All Male Cast © 2016. Librocio Books / Jim Lucio 3rd Printing, 2021.” The opening pages parody the graphic density of male mail order advertising with a “Big Close Out Sale,” products including “Natural Brute,” “Hard Wear,” and “Quick Silver,” and a dedication “Dedicated to Jeremy.” Subsequent spreads reproduce advertisements and pages for Gay Parisian Press, Gay Buddies, The Tattooed Lovers, The Sergeant, Shore Leave, “Hollywood Liberty,” the Laurel Theatre at 211 Polk Street in San Francisco, and Physique Artistry, Issue No. 20, Summer 1960. Other pages juxtapose paperback and film promotions including Chris Davidson’s Go Down, Aaron, Death Vengeance, Reflections of an Indian Boy, “Fronter Boys,” and all male cinema advertisements under headlines such as “Homo Sex Flicks,” “Brawn of California,” “Swinger Rubber Goods!,” and “Luxurious Lounges in Both Theatres.” A reproduced Hollywood Star spread dated 1976 carries the headlines “Sal Mineo’s Killer Is Now Known!!” and “Sicilian Death Contract Is Out!,” preserving the sensational language through which Mineo’s murder and sexuality were treated in contemporary tabloid culture. The final pages return to explicit commercial advertising for films, clubs, mail order photographs, sexual products, and “Unusual Books.”
Midcentury physique publishing supplied gay male readers with bodies and social codes that could circulate under the language of bodybuilding, art study, and masculine development at a time when explicitly homosexual material remained vulnerable to obscenity prosecution and postal restriction. By the late 1960s and 1970s, the language visible in the material Lucio reproduces had changed markedly: “all male,” “gay singles,” adult theaters, explicit film advertising, mail order erotica, and sexual commodities addressed male consumers with decreasing dependence on the older physique alibi. The sailor recurs throughout the issue, moving from physique pose and illustrated archetype to theater promotion and pornographic advertising, while the Mineo spread shows another part of the same print economy, in which homosexuality could be marketed through scandal, crime, and insinuation as readily as through erotic appeal. Lucio’s 2024 issue preserves the commercial typography, sensational headlines, pricing, addresses, and contradictory vocabularies of the changing terms of gay male visibility throughout the 20th century. Very light handling to wrappers; interiors clean and well preserved. Overall very good condition. A compact reassembly of the physique magazines, tabloids, adult theaters, paperbacks, advertisements, and mail order markets through which gay male desire moved from coded midcentury circulation to open commercial address.

Item #23933

Price: $225.00