"Troy: Fall of a City": Soap opera version of Homer's "Iliad," with the gay characters turned bi

I went into the Netflix tv series Troy: Fall of a City expecting a vast canvass, a lot of spectacular special effects, and nonstop beefcake.  After all, a new take on one of the most familiar stories in the world has to have something to justify the retelling.

The first episode was promising: Paris Prince of Troy  (Louis Hunter, left) meets a mysterious group of beings who might be gods.  Zeus (Hakeem Kae-Kazim) asks him to choose who is superior: Hera (power), Athena (wisdom), or Aphrodite (beauty).  When he chooses beauty, the others in a rage vow to shatter his world. 

Very interesting, very evocative.  It goes downhill from there.

Troy is the story of a battle between the gods, with humans their unwilling pawns.  Paris (remember him?) kidnaps Helen, Princess of Sparta, to the consternation of her husband Menelaus (Jonas Armstrong, top photo).  The Spartans and their allies lay siege to Troy, a siege that lasts for ten long, gruelling years.  

In the Iliad, Homer covers only a few weeks in the story; his Odyssey focuses on the minor character Odysseus (Joseph Mawle, left) trying to get home.  

Other ancient authors have filled in the rest, explored interesting byways and asides, speculated about the lives of the characters before and after the War, given other minor characterstheir own epics.  You couldn't cover all of it in a hundred tv series.

Troy: Fall of a City tries to.

The result is a jumble of people, name upon name splattering across the stag. Some I recognized from literature or mythology: Ajax, Hector, Priam, Hecuba, Cassandra,Troilus, Odysseus, Aeneas.

Some not: Xanthus (David Avery), Diomedes, Thersites, Harmon, Dolan, Iola.

The main stories are minimized or ignored.  The famous are shuffled off to the side.  

Hesion (who?)  gets as much air time as Hector (Tom Weston-Jones).  

More after the break

More Alfie Williams: In the pub, in the pool, on holiday. With gay friends, a disability advocate, some Jimmy d*cks, and Corey's backside

  

Link to the n*de photos

This is a collection of cute/cool photos of  Alfie Williams, star of the zombie apocalypse movies 28 Years Later (2025) and 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (2026),  and the upcoming thriller Banquet, with Corey Mylchreest.  Plus a few photos of some adult co-stars. 

1. Corey tied up.

2. Alfie and Dad on the green hills of home: Gateshead, just across the river from Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

3. Milking a cow (for fun, not for a part).  But it's not a real cow, and I don't think that's milk coming out.

4. The Bone Temple features a post-Apocalyptic cult where everyone is named after and dresses like 2000s English media personality Jimmy Saville.  Here Alfie and his Dad are hanging out with his two favorite Jimmies.

Across from Alfie is Maura Bird (Jimmy Jones), a nonbinary, genderfluid actor who uses she/they pronouns.  

Next to them is Robert Rhodes (Jimmy Jimmy), who is gay in real life.

Alfie is always drawn to LGBTQ people and guys who have played gay characters.  I can't imagine why.

5.Robert Rhodes is also an advocate for people with visual differences.  When he was starring in House of the Dragon, he received some hostile and derogatory comments, and the fans who came to his defense "used very unpleasant language."  Call it a scar or a difference, not a disfigurement or deformity.

6. Sorry, I couldn't find any n*de photos of Robert, so what about Sebastian Rhodes? 

More after the break

"Rock Paper Scissors": Paper meets The Girl, Rock tries to prove that he's a Dave. With 2 gay characters, four Danny d*cks, and Mickey from "Seinfeld"

  

Link to the n*de dudes

"Rock Paper Scissors" is a game where players turn their hands into the objects, hoping that theirs will cover, crush or otherwise defeat their opponents.  Here Kramer and  his gay-subtext boyfriend Mickey (Michael Richards, Danny Woodburn) play on an episode of Seinfeld.

Danny's d*ck and four others are posted to  RG Beefcake and Boyfriends.

When Paramount Plus recommended a tv series called Rock Paper Scissors, I figured it was for preschoolers, like Bananas in Pajamas.  But the fan wiki states that there are two walk-on gay characters, Hipponoid Commander (Episodes 1.1) and Dave (Episode 1.14), and Common Sense Media (the homophobic one) says that it is "completely inappropriate," with "strong LGBT undertones."  Can't let gay kids know that they exist!  So we'll check it out.

Episode 1.1, "Paper's Big Lie"

Intellectual Paper (Thomas Lennon), trying to invent something, is annoyed by the loud ninja practice of his roommates, athletic Rock (Ron Funches) and hipster Scissors (Carlos Alarazqui).  There's a knock on the door: it's their new neighbor, a female Pencil.

Cliche shot of Pencil walking in slow motion, her long hair blowing in the wind, while Paper gushes in "girl of my dreams" ecstasy.

She works for a high-tech company, so he pretends that he has a high-tech job, too.  His brain objects: "You work at a crappy store that sells technology."  But his nether parts outrank his brain.

Even when Pencil asks for a tour: Paper puts up a poorly drawn sign and claims that she can't go inside because they're working on a top-secret device that will produce unlimited food out of nothing. 

The human boss yells: "I don't pay you to talk to girls, I pay you to unravel the pile of wires in the back room."

Left: Threads says that this is Carlos Alarazqui, best known for "Rocko's Modern Life" and "Reno 911." I don't think so.

This makes Pencil a bit suspicious, but not the President of the United States: she saw the sign and figured that Paper must be super-smart.  The world needs his help. Lady is not too bright, is she?

Problem: The Hipponoids, "the most dangerous species in the galaxy," have the Earth surrounded.  The  Commander (Darin de Paul) explains that their planet is low on food, so Earth must hand over its supply. 

Perfect!  Pencil announces that Paper can make a device that will produce unlimited food, with no raw materials needed.

Paper's brain begs him to admit that he knows nothing about technology, but no, he thinks he can still find a way to fix this and Win the Girl.

In the workshop, Pencil praises Paper's tech expertise while building the device herself.  She seems to be just as invested as Paper in keeping up the Big Lie.  There must be some "Boy of My Dreams" going on.

When they show the device to the Hipponoid Comander, Paper tries to take credit, but accidentally breaks it.  He lies about that, too.

New plan: he'll bring his ninja roommates Rock and Scissors to the ship, and they'll knock out the aliens before they can invade the planet.

That doesn't work.  Finally Paper decides to come clean: "I was just trying to impress someone that I like, and the lie got out of control."

The Commander is sympathetic: back on the home world, he was an office drone, but he lied that he was  a great warrior to impress his crush.   Then he had to join the space force, and somehow he rose up in the ranks to become commander.

"There he is -- handsome, huh?"  He looks rather goofy, but Paper agrees.

"I've had to keep up this lie for 50 years!"  You'd better seal the deal soon, buddy. "And I can't invade Earth because then he'll find out that I lied, and never speak to me again."

Paper and the Commander find a solution that permits them to retain both lies: they pretend to use hand-to-hand combat to decide the fate of the Earth.  Paper wins, but "Your Commander is so tough that he 'accidentally' destroyed the device."

Whoops, Rock just fixed it. 

Gay Representation: The Commander as a muscular being fights stereotypes, and Paper responds nonchalantly to his crush on a male.  The writers could easily given him a crush on a female warrior, so this is a positive step.  But how about a scene where the Commander actually interacts with the crush? B

The next episode after the break

Jason Marsden: Second hottest of the Short Guy Brigade, Steve Smith, Max Goof, and the Pocket Gay. With Marsden d*cks

Link to the d*ck pics

No, I don't mean James Marsden.  I don't care that he has a nice physique and a big d*ck  This profile is about Jason Marsden.

You know, Steve on American Dad, Max Goof on the Disney Channel, that cat on Hocus Pocus,  Chester McBadBat on Fairly Oddparents, Nermal in the Garfield movies, and at 5'3", a bona fide member of the Short Guy Brigade.

Born in 1975,  Jason got his start at age 11, playing A. J. Quartermaine on General Hospital (1986-88) and werewolf Eddie Munster on the remake of the classic 1960s tv series The Munsters (1988-91).

As a teenager and young adult, he occasionally played a girl's boyfriend, but more often, a homoromantic best buddy: his characters bonded with Omri Katz in the paranormal-investigator series Eerie Indiana (1992), Perry King in Almost Home (1993), Brandon Call on Step by Step (1993-98), and Robert Downey Jr. on Allie McBeal (1997).

White Squall, 1996, sends Jeff Bridges and a group of teenagers onto a boat threatened by a mega-storm.  Some of them die.

Jason appears on a 2002 episode of Will and Grace.  Rejected by Will for being too short, the Pocket Gay eventually wins him over, and they head into the bedroom together.  No kissing -- guys didn't kiss on camera in 2002.

He returned to beefcake in Return to the Batcave (2003), an adventure involving the real life Adam West and Burt Ward, Batman and Robin from the 1960s tv series.  As the young Burt Ward, Jason displayed an impressive muscular physique.

Only a few live-action roles after that.  He wrote, directed, and starred in Locker 13, 2014, based on the R. Stine novel, about "making the right choices."   It gets a 13% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Well, back to voice work.  

More after the break. 

Joel Fry: Gay-vague at the Time Hotel, gay subtext in 1950s London, "not gay" in ancient Rome. With lots of backsides, but are there any d*cks?

 

Link to the n*de photos

Last night we watched the Doctor Who 2024 Christmas special, "Joy to the World." 

It started out fine: In the 45th century Time Hotel (with portals leading to different historical periods), the time-and-space jumping Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) flirts with security guard Trev (Joel Fry).  They notice a guest with a briefcase chained to his wrist.  

While the Doctor is off somewhere, we learn that whoever has the briefcase is compelled to pass it on to someone closer to a mysterious goal.  Then they disintegrate!  

You guessed it -- Trev gets the briefcase, passes it on to Joy, and dies.  

The Doctor spends the next year working at a 2024 London hotel (for reasons too complicated to explain) and falling in love with Anita, the manager.  Then he returns to the Time Hotel (where only a few seconds have passed) to solve the mystery with Joy.  Who lives. 

Why on Earth couldn't he have had the adventure with Trev?  Why does it always have to be a woman?  Especially since this version of the Doctor is supposed to be gay -- a gay guy who flirts with someone for five seconds, then spends a year in a heterosexual romance?    

Since Trev seems to respond to the Doctor's flirtations -- during the two minutes before he is disintegrated -- and we have some backsides and d*cks of actor Joel Fry available, I wanted to see if he has played gay characters before, or is gay in real life, or both.

The graduate of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts has 60 acting credits listed on the IMDB.  Searching for "Joel Fry" and "gay character" yields six possibilities:

Our Flag Means Death (2022-23):  Many of the characters in this historical comedy are gay, including "gentleman pirate" Stede and his boyfriend, infamous pirate Blackbeard.  Joel Fry's Frenchie, who describes the pirate adventures in song, has no specified s*xual identity, although he shares a a cabin with Wee John (Kristian Nairn), leading to some shipping from fandom.

Cruella (2021):  In a prequel to 101 Dalmatians, the Disney villain teams up with, then betrays, two "honorable thieves," Jasper (Joel) and Horace (Paul Walker Hauser), who have been "companions" since childhood.  Neither engages in a heterosexual romance: a gay subtext couple.  

Benjamin (2018):   Struggling filmmaker Benjamin (Colin Morgan) is having an off-on relationship with Noah (Phenix Broussard), stymied by his penchant for cheating.  Stephen (Joel) is his best friend.

Stephen tries to spin a stand-up routine out of his childhood trauma, and ends up having a mental breakdown.  Maybe he's gay, too, but probably not, and the film itself is stuck behind paywalls and 7-day free trials. (Backside on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends).

 

Plebs (2013-19): A Britcom about three dude-bro roommates in ancient Rome, like Workaholics with togas and no gay subtexts.  The only gay-themed episode is 2.4, "Patron."

In the public toilets, an older man named Gaius (James Fleet) seems to be picking up the aspiring chariot-racer Stylax (Joel),  sitting too close, complementing his grip.  He offers to become the boy's patron (paying for his training).

Cut to a montage of Gaius dining with Stylax, buying him a gift, training him in charioteering, and making a lot of double entendres.  The roommates think that Gaius is gay, and interested.  Sylax scoffs -- impossible!  Gay people do not exist!  -- but eventually agrees, and decides that if he wants the patronage, he'll have to pretend to be gay.

"Your training is coming along.  In a few weeks, I'm going to enter you...in a race.  But if I'm going to be your patron, you have to go all out.  Do you understand?"

Stylax nods, and tries to kiss Gaius.  He's horrified!  "I have a wife and kids!"

"I'm not gay!" Stylax clarifies.  But Gaius is already running away.

More after the break

Ayden Mekus: Croatian tease, star of quirky shorts and "what happens next will shock you" videos, into Jesus, dudes, girls, and tongues.

 

Link to the n*de photos

When Ayden Mekus popped up on the teen idol website, I wanted to do a profile because of his unusual name -- is he Croatian?   

And because a lot of the photos on the site show him with his girlfriend sticking her tongue out.  Either he's way into tongues or he likes to have her insult his fans: "I'm so much better than you, because I have him and you losers don't!" 

I guess the younger generation finds that attractive.  Ayden has over a million followers on TikTok and Instagram, and 14,000 on X.   

There are also a lot of photos of Ayden getting romantic with this blond dude, and earlier with a black guy.  

 It's a clean break, suggesting a change of boyfriends, not making a new friend.

Neither is shown sticking his tongue out, but maybe that's just a girlfriend thing.

Wait -- Ayden is not Croatian.  He was born in Northern California (straight code for San Francisco) and grew up on Coronado Island, where his father is the co-founder of Positive Choice Apparel (the clothes all have slogans like "Spread kindness.").  

Mekus is the Anglicized version of the Southern Slavic Mikuš, "Nicholas."  So maybe his ancestors came from Croatia (see my photo collection of Serbian and Croatian hunks).

Ayden got his start as a child model, dancer, youtube celebrity, and aficionado of tongues sticking out, but  his two older sisters are actors, so it was inevitable that he would start auditioning.  

His on-screen acting began in 2017 with a video game, and in 2018 with a lot of music videos and quirky shorts: 

Chocolate Chip Cookies: A  boy puts laxatives in them to prank his cranky neighbor.

To Smell the Roses: A boy steals his father's cell phone so he will "stop and smell the roses."

Utensils: Everyone at the dinner table is eating soup with a fork.

The Lilac Thief: No plot synopsis available, the film itself is stuck behind a paywall, but the cast list includes SWAT team members and "warrior youth."  So time travel?

Then came a lot of reality shows with internet celebrities: 14 episodes with Piper Rokelle, 16 with Friendzy Friday, 41 with ClaireRockSmith, 2 with Sawyer Sharbino, plus his own Ayden Mekus.

And some fictional series:

13 episodes of P.S. Positive Stories, about people making "positive change." 

One episodes of Sister Rules, about sisters who "finally decide to put family first."

73 of Dhar Mann's "uplifting" clickbait videos: 

 "Dad rejects stepson, then learns shocking truth," 

"This poor kid can't buy school lunch, the end will shock you,"

 "Kid gets humiliated playing ball, what happens next will shock you," 

More after the break.  

"Hollywood Steps Out": Queer Looney Tunes in 1941

 

When I was a kid in Rock Island, Captain Ernie's Cartoon Showboat on weekday afternoons displayed a lot of old Looney Tunes cartoons.  No matter that they were originally for adults, and full of references to 1940s culture that went over our heads -- if it starred Bugs Bunny, we were interested.

Except not all of the Looney Tunes featured Looney Tunes stars.  There were parodies of travelogues, advertising, and short subjects. I found one particularly memorable: "Hollywood Steps Out" (1941), with caricatures of contemporary Hollywood stars dining and dancing at Ciro's Nightclub.  I had never heard of any of them.  I know who many of them are now, of course: Clark Gable, Cary Grant, Oliver Hardy, Mickey Rooney, Henry Fonda, Groucho Marx.  I've even heard of Jerry Colonna and Kay Kyser.  But to give you the idea of what it was like going in cold:

Establishing shot of Ciro's Nightclub in Hollywood, where dinners start at $50.00 ($940 in today's currency).

1. Soulful Eyes exclaims "What a place!"  Elderly Blond Woman sells him a cigarette, and lights the match with her shoe.

2. Guy with Big Lips talks to a Developmentally Challenged Girl, who responds with a series of "oomphs."  Apparently she can't speak.  Disturbing!

3. Johnny Weissmuller takes off his coat, revealing his muscular physique.  I knew who he was -- Tarzan (top photo). Wow, beefcake!

4. Three Gangsters talk about how risky a job is.  But it turns out to be pitching pennies. 

5. Crazy Guy with Frizzy Hair gives the Elderly Blond Woman a hot foot, but she doesn't respond.

6.  Big Ears swerves his head to gaze at a Lady in Red passing, with a fan over her face.

7. Pipe Smoker takes the stage.  As he introduces the first act, he's interrupted by a horse and jockey, who apparently want to have sex with him, but he shooes them away.  

8. Feminine Old Guy swishes as he conducts the music.  Swishy -- gay hint!

9. Jimmy gets cruised by a woman, who wants to dance with him.  He refuses, and finally runs away, leaving a sign "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington."  Not interested in girls -- gay hint!

10. Big Ears from #6 dances across the floor, following the Lady in Red. Some other people are dancing, including an ice skater and Frankenstein.  The Three Stooges slap each other.  Fat Man dances with two women at once. A man with big feet dances.  

11. Andy and his date are getting milkshakes.  He's shocked that they cost $50, and asks his father at the next table for a loan. But Dad doesn't have any money, either, so they both end up washing dishes.

12. Big Ears is still following the Lady in Red, while Pipe Smoker from #7 takes the stage again.  The horse and jockey flirt with him again.  Then a woman dances, naked except for a giant bubble held in front of her (gross!).  A Guy in a Cap and Gown gazes in lust, and yells "Students!"  A table full of men wolf-whistle (Gross!  This isn't fun anymore!).

13. She dances for a long time, while a man comments: "I haven't seen such a beautiful bubble since I was a child." Henry drools, but is called away by his mother. Googly-Eyes says obsessively "Gee!  Gee! Gee!"   A man looks through binoculars and says "Guess who?"  Crazy Guy hits the bubble with a sling shot, and it pops, revealing that she is wearing a barrel.

14. Big Ears finally catches the Lady in Red, and turns her around.  

She turns out to be a guy in drag! 

During my childhood, before I was aware that gay people (or drag queens) existed, I was confused by the revelation.  Why was this man dressed as a lady?  Why had he been flirting with Big Ears all night?  Did he want to hug and kiss? But...boys didn't hug and kiss boys. Did they?

A glimmer of gay potential on Captain Ernie's Cartoon Showboat

See also: Mickey Rooney: Gay-Vague Teen Hunk of the 1940s

Cary Grant: Hints and Closets in the 1930s

Who is Bradley Cooper, and why is he "ultra-famous"? With his gay/sort of bi characters , backside, and d*ck

The Marx Brothers: Bisexual Groucho and hunky Chico

Mason Cook: The "Speechless" kid grows up, turns bohemian-hipster, builds biceps, and bares it all

  

Link to the n ude photos

You're probably most familiar with Mason Cook as Ray DiMeo, sarcastic younger brother of focus character JJ (Micah Fowler) on Speechless (2015-18).  JJ has cerebral palsy and is nonverbal, "speechless."

Ray gets a lot of gay subtext plotlines, at least in Season 1.  In Season 2, he becomes annoyingly hetero-horny, and eventually gets a serious girlfriend. 

Ray's sudden movement into hetero-horniness was disturbing not only because the gay teases were overturned, but because of the "discovering girls" rhetoric. Mason is over 18 at the time, but his character is 15.  When I was 15, all I ever heard was "You'll discover girls any moment now, and everything you love will become meaningless. You'll join clubs, take classes, choose your college solely in order to see or meet girls. Your buddies will become mere strategists, helping you find, impress, and win girls. You..."

Sorry for the rant, but I really felt betrayed by Ray DiMeo in the second season.  

So you may wonder why I'm posting a profile on Mason Cook

Not because of his gay or gay-subtext performances.

Born in 2000

Guest star in teencoms like Zeke and Luther

Son of the focus charater in the crime drama Legends

Classmate of the focus character on The Middle

 An "eccentric, devout Christian" who has sex with the focus girl, sending her rushing for a "morning after pill," in Plan B.  This was nominated for a GLAAD award because a major character is trans, but Mason is straight.

Not because of his physique.  

The few shirtless photos on Mason's social media suggest that he doesn't spend a lot of time at the gym.

Although he has developed some biceps recently.

More after the break

Fin Burke: A little shop of horrors, a certain school of magic, and a grave in the clouds. With his boyfriend, some artistic d*cks, and Cole Sprouse

 

Link to the n*de dudes

I spend over an hour looking for beefcake photos of cast members of Welcome to Derry, and all I found was a potential Chad Root and two of Fin Burke, in his underwear and hugging his boyfriend. He's definitely getting a profile.

Fin, aka Finley, was born in Toronto around 2006.  His mum Dawn worked in the script and continuity department for 125 episodes of Murdoch Mysteries (2008-25), about a 19th century detective (Yannick Bisson).  She has also worked on Goosebumps, American Psycho, Wind at My Back, The Listener, and Children Ruin Everything.

Fin attended Greenwood College High School in Toronto, where he took classes in acting and musical theater and starred in a lot of plays:

Troy Bolton in High School Musical

Wayne Hopkins in Puffs: an orphan boy who is invited to attend a certain school of magic (not that one).

Seymor in Little Shop of Horrors. Wait, why is he dancing with a dude?

Tyler in Public Enemy, about a family dinner "with a surreal twist."  If I'm reading the French correctly, playwright Olivier Choinière is queer, so I imagine there is some gay content.  

He also starred (as a voice on the telephone) in the 2023 short Clara is Awake: A teenage girl gets texts from someone who claims to have met her last summer; "I really miss you.  I know you better than you think."  Ulp.

She texts back: "Leave me alone. I don't know you, and you're being weird."  He doesn't leave her alone.  

He graduated in 2024, and enrolled in the National Theatre School of Canada in Montreal as an acting major.

Two on-screen acting credits since:

The first episode of Welcome to Derry (2025): the snarly, critical older brother of "bury your gays" Teddy.

The short Grave in the Clouds (2025): a Jewish man (Steven Hobé) discovers that his teenage son (Fin) has written an essay denying the Holocaust, and introduces him to a survivor. 

More after the break. 

A flurry of fabulous Finns, with their fine frames, built backsides, and devastating d*cks

Link to the n*de dudes

Last year I was overloaded with Gavins.  It appears that this year I'm having a run on Finns: Finn Carr, Finn Burke, Finn Hudson (Cory Monteith) from Glee, Finn the Human (Jeremy Shada) from Adventure Time.  So I thought it would be fun to gather up the actors named Finn who have shown their stuff, on-screen or off.

 

1. Probably the most famous Finn of this generation is Finn Wolfhard, who played Mike Wheeler, central character in Stranger Things (2016-22).  The 1980s Indiana boy investigates his buddy's disapperance into a demon-haunted dimension and falls in love with an ESP girl.  Finn has also appeared in Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, It, King of the Hill, and the new Paranorman.  

Straight and femme in real life, he has no d*ck pics, but there's a basket shot on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends.  I'm not an expert, but is that lady's underwear?

Next, the backsides:

2. Second most famous is probably Finn Witrock, who played many characters in different seasons of the anthology American Horror Story (2014-21), including serial killer Dandy, vampire's boy toy Tristan , feral child Jether, and vampire bait Harry.  Some of them were gay-vague or gay-for-pay, but Finn is straight in real life.

3. Brandon Finn grew up in Hawaii, and has appeared in several series set or filmed in his home state, including Magnum PI, Fantasy Island, and Chief of War (where he played the gay Prince Kūpule). I can't tell from his Instagram if he's gay in real life.

4. Nonbinary genderqueer Fin  Argus has played gay characters in Queer as Folk, The Other Two, and The Commute.  They have given us a  lot of backside pics but no frontsl; maybe they want to keep what they have in front private.

5. British actor Finn Cole is known for Animal Planet, Peaky Blinders, and Slaughterhouse Rulez.  I can't tell if his partner here is male, female, or nonbinary, but in real life he likes girls.

The d*cks after the break (on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends). 

J. Allen St. John: The Beefcake and Phallic Images of Tarzan

In spite of his aristocratic name, J. Allen St. John was born in Chicago in 1872, when it was still a small town, and lived there throughout his life, except for studying in New York and Paris.


But his imagination went far afield beginning in 1916, when he was offered the cover and interior illustrations for Edgar Rice Burroughs' Beasts of Tarzan

An opportunity to draw muscular, half-naked men?  He had found his dream job!

One that lasted for the next thirty years, through dozens of Tarzan books, plus some of the Venus and Mars series.

St. John's extremely-muscular, mostly-naked men and blatant phallic imagery also enlivened the covers of Weird Tales, The Blue Book, and Amazing Stories.

He influenced a generation of beefcake science fiction and fantasy artists, such as Frank Franzetta.

He only wrote one novel of his own, The Face in the Pool: A Faerie Tale (1905).  It's a standard Medieval "boy meets girl" fantasy: "He came to the tower where the Princess Astrella's golden head at the window served as a gleaming beacon to those who would rescue here."

So her head revolves, or what?

Better stick to illustrations.











St. John always tried to get his male figures as naked as possible, negotiating as many phallic images as possible.  Is this a giant snake or a penis come to life?

More after the break