The Gay & Lesbian Review

a diversity of gay male sexual styles. The strip’s megalomania- cal villains and their nefarious plots reflected actual threats to a vulnerable gay male community, while the agents of A.U.N.T.I.E. embodied a sex affirming, muscular, and always humorous resistance to their would-be oppressors. Every detail of the strip—the names of spy organizations, the agents, the plots and locales—was saturated with sexual innuendo and gay double entendres. Polak and Shapiro took special delight in winking at the well-known homoerotic valences of hetero-mas- culine rituals, such as men’s wrestling, physique photography, military academies, Hollywood westerns, and bodybuilding contests. Described as a “stripped comic,” everyone in Harry’s world seemed to have an aversion to clothing, which conve- niently facilitated his many humorous sex-capades. Like James Bond, Harry’s adventures always involved plenty of sex, and the sex was always plenty adventurous. The strip’s theme was established in the very first storyline when the “very mean and terribly oversexed” Lewd Leather and his motorcycle gang from the Maniacal Underworld Control Korp (M.U.C.K.) “trick-nap” the hunky but virginal Biff Rip- ples, who has just been crowned “The World’s Most Succulently Beautiful Male” at the Mr. Planetarium Physique Contest, tak- ing place in the Grand Ballroom of the Slumhouse YMCA. After Lewd cuts the power, the all-male audience devolves into a riot—or is it an orgy?—in the resulting darkness. Agent FU2, head of the secret A.U.N.T.I.E. organization, alerts “top agent” Harry Chess, who’s busy “working out” Mickey Muscle at his NewYork brownstone. The pair heads for the Bloody Basket, a seedy gay bar, to consult with stubbly-chinned informant, bouncer, and “Girl Bartender” Big Bennie. They learn that Biff’s abduction was ordered by the wealthy, monocle-wearing æsthete Gaylord Dragoff, who wants to add Biff to his private “piece corps.” Big Bennie directs Harry and Mickey to a gay bathhouse, where they find Lewd and his boys have absconded with Dragoff’s $5,000,000 reward—but not before having their way with a not too unwilling Biff Ripples, left hogtied and moaning contentedly in the steam room. Dragoff consoles him- self with the fact that Biff is alive and a natural for “The Steve Reeves Story,” a future film currently casting in Hollywood. In subsequent “undercover operations,” Harry and Mickey encounter villains such as the Scarlet Scumbag, the Groping Hand, Brownfinger and his sidekick Belowjob, and Mung the Mean and his Deadly Dildo Death Squad. They foil a plot by the Pornography Intern Solely for Soviet Hotrocks (or P.I.S.S.H.) to corner the world’s gay porn market. Next they recover the FBI’s official “homo-file” and the kidnapped astronaut Hunky Dorie. Another time they successfully prevent ground glass from being dumped into the vats of the “Cay-Why” factory. Following the Bond formula, Harry and Mickey are subjected to wildly in- ventive and heavily sexualized tortures and enjoy plot-inciden- tal sex with a variety of gorgeous guys, with names like Tooshie Supreme and Gary R. Pigeon. H ARRY P RO AND C ON : S IGNS OF THE T IMES The strip’s explicit sexual references and raunchy humor were a magnet for criticism, reflecting larger factional divisions in- side the era’s homophile organizations and the wider gay com- munity. Clearly favoring a politics of conformity and respectability of the kind that Polak detested, Richard Inman,

then president of the nascent Mattachine Society of Florida, wrote to Janus Society member Barbara Horowitz in April 1965: “Look at your champ Harry Chess. Frankly I think the whole idea is SICK. ... What is the sense of trying to see how MUCH you can get away with? What is the sense of such un- necessary defiance? ... Does it reflect what the homophile movement stands for? ... H ELL NO IT DOESN ’ T and the only result could be one of damage to the movement.” At the time, printed matter that depicted or discussed ho- mosexuality was a favorite target of censorship campaigns by crusading politicians using anti-obscenity laws. Physique mag- azines and homophile publications were regularly seized by local police, the FBI, and the Postmaster General’s office. Polak and Shapiro anticipated the threat of censorship when writing Harry Chess . As Polak put it, “our greatest single problem is attempting to predict which of our quips we can use without ending in jail on an obscenity rap.” Understandably, full-frontal nudity was not depicted in Harry Chess while the strip appeared in Drum , even after the 1962 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in MANual Enterprises v. Day , which held that physique maga- zines with nude models were not inherently obscene. Despite these precautions, Harry Chess appears to have sharply polarized Drum readers. A letter from Toronto in the September 1965 issue begged that Harry not be dropped, while a reader from Santa Monica cautioned: “Harry Chess is your Henry Miller. Squeamish souls had better look elsewhere. Of course you may be banned eventually (by jealous witches).” In the November 1965 issue editor Polak reported, in answer to a reader’s query about the popularity of the previous issue, that Extraordinary Hearts Reclaiming Gay Sensibility's Central Role in the Progress of Civilization. By Nicholas F. Benton Gay Pioneer Benton's Explosive, Cutting Edge 100 'Gay Science' Essays Collected in a Single Volume

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