"Harry Chess: I'm Number One." 1980. Pen and ink and mixed media on paper. Signed and dated on the center left.

17 5/8 x 12 7/8".

Notes:

Al Schapiro, known professionally as A. Jay, was a Jewish American artist active from the 1960s until his untimely death from AIDS-related complications in 1987. Schapiro’s long-running comic series, Harry Chess: The Man from A.U.N.T.I.E., is regarded as one of the earliest, if not the "world's first gay comic strip."[1]

A parody of the popular Man from U.N.C.L.E. spy franchise, the strip follows secret agent #0068 7/8 Harry Chess through a series of sexual adventures with men that subvert the popular heterosexual James Bond formula. The comic featured a recurring cast including Harry’s partner Dick Kriegmont, Biff Ripples, his sidekick Mickey Muscle, and Pecs O’Toole, alongside villains with humorous names such as Brownfinger, Groping Hand, Belowjob, and the Deadly Dildo Death Squad. Schapiro’s style emphasized hypermasculine physiques (broad chests, pronounced musculature, and exaggerated sexual members) which became hallmarks of his visual repertoire.

Harry Chess, Schapiro’s alter ego, first appeared in The New York Times and was later picked up by Clark Polak’s homophile Drum magazine for the Janus Society. After Drum ceased publication, the strip continued in Queen’s Quarterly in New York and was later reprinted in the Meatmen anthology of gay comics during the 1980s. Harry Chess: The Man from A.U.N.T.I.E. reached international audiences with translations published in both German and Swedish. 

Helping to shape one of the most influential publications in gay leather culture, Schapiro served as the inaugural art director of Drummer magazine after it relocated to San Francisco. In the words of the editor-in-chief of Drummer and his close friend Jack Fritscher: "If there is a gay Mount Rushmore of four great pioneer pop artists, the faces would be Chuck Arnett, Etienne, A. Jay and Tom of Finland." [2]

[1] Michael Murphy, "The Lives and Times of Harry Chess", G&L Review (March-April 2014), p. 22.

[2] Jack Fritscher, "The Leather Mural Movement: Gay Bars as Gay Art Galleries", Gay San Francisco: Eyewitness Drummer: A Memoir of the Sex, Art, Salon, Pop Culture War, and Gay History of Drummer Magazine from the Titanic 1970s to 1999 (San Francisco: Palm Drive Publications, 2008), p. 435.
 

In good condition.

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