Acquired Tastes XLIII Gay Pulp Fiction, Part 116: The HIS69 Artist's Sketchbook

Acquired Tastes XLIII

Gay Pulp Fiction, Part 116:

The HIS69 Artist's Sketchbook

This comes courtesy of our good friend over at Hommi Publishing. We were emailing back and forth the other day, and I was bemoaning the current state of the market for vintage gay pulp fiction paperbacks, sharing how I had been bidding on this particular offering and had committed all the way up to $151.51, only to get scooped at the last minute by one of those auction bots. 

Days later, I happen to reviewing documents on my laptop and, lo and behold, there it was... in pdf form, but the entire sketchbook was there, thanks to Timon.

He told me he's not sure what he wants to do with it. He may offer pdf/e-book copies of it on his sight or as a premium giveaway for his Patreon subscribers. I'm very grateful he shared it with me.

Given that, I've decided to only share the pages and drawings unique to the collection. The sketches for the first 31 HIS69 titles (6901-6931) are included in the book. Below, you'll find the cover, cover page, a note from the artist, an advertisement for HIS69 Books, and six illustrations unique to the collection.

According to the note from the artist placed at the beginning of the collection and Maitland McDonagh, founder of 120 Days Books:

"This is the first of two planned collections of art by 'Adam', who created an enormous number of covers for Surrey Books' HIS69 line during the 1970's. It's an 81/2" X 11", 32-page softcover published in 1972 and the cover declares it to be volume one. If there were any subsequent volumes, I've never run across them and at this point, I doubt I could afford one if I did. In addition to original sketches for covers, it includes an introduction by 'Adam' himself. While he doesn't share his full name, he does reveal that his studio -which may or may not have been his home as well - was in Greenwich Village and that he worked with models, which accounts for the fact that the final images had a sense of individuality both in the faces and the figures. Yes, they're attractive and have good bodies, but they don't all look the same and 'Adam' also writes that while most are professional models, some are what he calls "raw recruit(s) - the young kid on the street, a couple of the guys at the gym, the delivery boy." Or the fellow (pictured at the end of the book), who looks to be in his early 30's and a bit thicker around the middle than the average professional model physique model."

What we don't know, of course, is: what became of volume two? Was the collection too expensive to produce and, therefore, the imprint decided to discontinue the idea? Or did they have a falling out with the artist? While the remainder of the books do appear to be similar in style, we have no way of knowing if they are the product of the artist known as 'Adam.' And, since no company records appear to exist, that story will remain untold. 

I apologize for the reduction in quality. Timon actually uses some kind of super scanner when creating these documents and his are full-sized. However, I'm more comfortable working with .jpg formatted images, so there is a bit of a reduction in quality during the conversion process. No worries.. you'll get the idea. Click on any of the images to view them in a larger size. 

And, with this, after 45 posts, we bid farewell to HIS69 Books. I hope you enjoy this peek at this very special volume - something that's become a bit of a 'white whale' for me personally. Oh, I don't know when I will get my hands on an actual copy or how much it may cost me... but I will one day own a copy of this collection! 

Cover

Title Page

Forward By The Artist

Advertisement

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And that's all for now.

As always... thanks for reading!

Drawn - De La Soul feat. Little Dragon