"Fionna and Cake": Complex adult-oriented sequel to "Adventure Time," with two out gay couples and lot of back story and backsides

 

Link to the n*de photos

The Cartoon Network series Adventure Time (2010-18) sent 12-16 year old human Finn (Jeremy Shada, left) and his magical dog companion Jake on adventures in the medieval-style world of Ooo (occupied by sentient candy, slime, and fire beings, plus a few animals and humanoids).  Eventually we learn that this is a post-apocalyptic world where things went wrong during the Mushroom Wars 1,000 years ago.  It gets more complex and much more sinister, with back story after back story, with Lovecraftian cosmic beings pulling the strings of the world, only to discover that there are darker gods changing reality on a whim. 

  All you really need to know about is the only same-sex romance in the series, between the Bubblegum Princess  --really an Elemental, one of the four substances that created the universe and all life, but presenting as a 16-year old girl -- and Marceline, a 1000 year old teenage vampire whose mentor Simon Petrikov put on a magical crown and became the insane Ice King -- got all that?  They become girlfriends in the last scene of the last episode -- typical, no open gay characters until series fade-out. 

Fionna and Cake were a gender-swapping Finn and Jake in the Ice King's fan fiction. Then an omnipotent being decided to bring them to life, and after some adventures, remove their magical powers and memories and place them in a pocket universe designed to look like a 21st century city.  But things are a little off-- generic names like "City Park", backgrounds a little smudged, everything tastes like cardboard, there is nothing but elevator music on the radio, nothing on tv but reruns of Cheers and Friends.  Cake is non-sentient, and Fionna is so discouraged that she keeps getting fired from dead-end jobs.

Episode 1.6, "The Winter King," features a meeting between the male counterparts of the Bubblegum Princess and Marceline: Gary Prince (Andrew Rannells, left), a baker who has discovered a way to give food taste; and Marshall Lee (Donald Glover, below), an aspiring musician who has discovered how to use a guitar. They kiss in Episode 1.7.

Rannells backside on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends

Both voice actors are gay in real life.

One day Fionna and Cake find their way to Ooo, where they meet Finn from the original series, now middle aged, and the Ice King, now reverted to human form as Simon Petrikov.  After many adventures on a variety of worlds, they decide that they like their original pocket-universe, and return in time to save their city from destruction under a godlike being named Scarab.  End of Season 1.

We hear all of this in the opening sequence of Season 2: it is told in story form to Simon (the former Ice King) and girlfriends Marcelline and the Bubblegum Princess by a little girl whose back story on the fan wiki is too complex to mention. So maybe the Fionna-Cake universe is still a fan fiction?  

 I think we're ready for a review of Episode 2.1.

Scene 1: Fionna awakens, relishing her new human life, and sets out with Cake into the still-recovering City.  She helps out at the places where she was fired previously, except for the tour bus ("on your left you'll see more destruction"), where tour guide Queenie (a gender-reversed, child version of the evil King of Ooo) calls her a "deadbeat."

Scene 2: Next the Candy Supply Store, where the shape-shifting, still-sentient Cake transforms into a buxom woman so she can flirt with the owner.  Fionna grabs the last bag of cocoa powder, but the evil Lady Cutter steals it and calls her a loser. They fight.

Scene 3: On the street, Fionna gets a call from Simon Petrikov, back in Ooo, who is living with the Bubblegum Princess and Marceline.  He'll start teaching magical arts at the university tomorrow. Meanwhile, Cake destroys all of the posters advertising DJ Flame, Fionna's ex (the gender-swapped version of the Flame Princess, Finn's ex).

Scene 4: In a forest on Ooo, a lion steals an orange from a tomb, and the Huntress Wizard, the middle-aged Finn's estranged girlfriend, gives chase.  She finds it in a cave with a cow and a duck, squeezing the juice into the mouth of the  nearly-unconscious Finn.  He is dying.   

More after the break

Robert Rhodes: The visual difference hasn't kept him from playing a dragonrider, a cultist, and a thug. Or from finding a boyfriend (or two).

 

Link to the not fully clothed photos

In House of the Dragon, the Game of Thrones prequel, the crowning of King Aegon II (Tom Glynn-Carney) has led to civil war in the Medieval fantasy world of Westeros, and several dragons left without masters. In Episode 2.7  (2024), a group of Dragonseeds is  ordered to try to claim them.   

Silver Denys (Robert Rhodes) volunteers to go first, but as he reaches out to touch Vermithor the Bronze Fury, it breathes fire on him. Most of the other dragonseeds are likewise demolished. Finally a blacksmith named Hugh managed to trick the dragon into obedience.

Silver Denys was on screen for only about a minute, and had no lines, but he became the subject of extensive fan debate.  Was he brave or foolhardy?  Some fans also criticized his appearance: the stage makeup was amateurish, not realistic, grotesque, an obvious symbol of his parentage, and so on.  Others stepped up to "defend" him: it's his real appearance, he's  "d*formed."

Robert called them out: "Call it a scar or a difference. The word d*formed isn't very pleasant and insinuates I am half formed/incorrectly formed.  I'm not incorrect, just a bit different."

For a long time, Robert responded to the stares with anger, but now, if he's not tired from telling the story 1,000 times a day, he'll say "Is there anything you want to ask about?"  

The story: he was born with a congenital melanocytic nevis -- a birthmark that covered half his face.  Doctors worried that it would become cancerous, so he spent his childhood in and out of hospitals, undergoing tissue expansions and skin grafts.  He had his last surgery at age 17.

When he was in high school, Robert realized that he was gay, and worried that he'd be doubly stigmatized when he tried to make connections.  Would he ever be able to find a partner? Was he going to live as an perpetual outsider among his own people?

Then he auditioned for Hairspray -- and won the part of Link Larkin, the hunky heartthrob  (played by Zac Efron in 2007 and Garrett Clayton in 2016).   That's when he decided to become an actor, to have people look at him for his hotness and acting talent, not for his scar.

After high school Robert attended the Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts in South London, where he received a B.A. in Performance in 2018.  He started filling up a resume with acting roles:

Commercials for Enterprise  and Kandar 

The lead in the music videos Heroist (left)  and God for a Day 

Quasimodo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame 

Bill Sykes in The Invitation 

It was a little harder to break into on-screen acting.  Robert is an ambassador for Changing Faces UK, which combats the stigma around people with visible difference.  Especially in mass media, where they are portrayed as "shy, broken, desperate" outcasts, or more commonly as villains:

Kylo Ren in the Star Wars universe

Tony Montana in Scarface   

Scar in The Lion King

The Joker.

So he tries to find roles where his visual difference is irrelevant to the character.

 His first  professional acting role was in a tv adaption of the Agatha Christie novel Why Didn't They Ask Evans? (2022).  Will Poulter plays as a golfer who stumbles upon an injured man. His last words are "Why didn't they ask Evans?" I don't know what Robert's character does.

More after the break

"Knight of the Seven Kingdoms": Some bare backsides, some d*cks, and queerbaiting in this magic-free prequel to "Game of Thrones"

   

 

Link to the n*de dudes

I turned off Game of Thrones (2011-2019), a fantasy series on MAX, after the first five minutes.  First Peter Dinklage remains fully clothed as he does stuff with a non-fully clothed lady.  He chats with her over a closeup of her stuff before leading her to his bedroom, where three more not-fully clothed women are waiting.

Then Emilia Clarke gets not fully clothed so her brother can feel her stuff in close-up twice.  When he leaves, her backside fills the screen as she steps into the bathtub.

Ugh.  This was impossible!

But I heard that the prequel, The Knight of the Seven Kingdoms (2026), features a gay-subtext buddy bond between a Hedge Knight (Peter Claffey who played the straight guy in the gay-friendly Wrecked) and a character whose name I don't recall (the names all sound alike).  I'll give it a try, but the first bouncing breasts, and I'm outta here.

Episode 1, Scene 1:  A Hedge Knight (not attached to a prince) is digging a grave for his mentor, Ser Arlan of Pennytree (Danny Webb, d*ck on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends).  Isn't Pennytree one of those "everything for a dollar" stores?

It's raining, because even thousands of years ago in a galaxy far, far away, tired cliches rule: it always rains at funerals.  

Hedgie takes the guy's sword, because why bury it with him, and asks his horses what they should do now.  Maybe enter a tournament?  Why can't you keep on being a hedge knight?

He pauses to get not fully clothed, and does bathroom stuff.  Nice backside, but we actually see the results coming out. 

Scene 2: Hedgie approaches a inn, and orders a bald boy wearing a dress to take care of his horses.  The boy sneers and insults him.

Mr. Grant: "You got spunk.  I hate spunk!"  

The inn is empty except for a guy who is passed out drunk, because everyone is gone to the tournament at Ashford.

Uh-oh, the drunk guy comes to and says "Stay the f*ck away from me!", brandishing a knife.  Hedgie is shocked, but doesn't engage, and the guy stumbles up to his room.  I assumed that this was the gay-subtext boyfriend, but the guy doesn't appear again.  This scene was just padding. 

Scene 3: Hedgie catches the Bald Boy on his horse, playing at being a knight, and yells at him.  The Boy wants to come along as his squire; Hedgie refuses. 

"Please?  You're poor,  incompetent, and very stupid. You need a squire."

"Nope."

They will eventually get together.  But this isn't the boyfriend -- actor Dexter Soll Ansell is only eleven years old.  And not bald in real life (the character has shaved his head to avoid being identified as the Chosen One, I think.  His biography on wikipedia is endless and exceedingly complex.)  

Scene 4: Off again.  Don't they have roads in this world?   Hedgie reaches the tournament, a lot of tents in the middle of nowhere, with people doing artisan-style work, like at a Renaissance faire.  He meets with the Master of the Tournament, who thinks he doesn't look like a knight. 

"I'm a knight,  Ser Dunk, knighted by Ser Arslan of Pennytree."  Ser Dunk, har har.  Better than Aslan.

"Never heard of him.  Are you sure you were knighted?"

"Um...um...sure...as his life was ending, Ser Arslan performed the ritual."  We don't see it happening in a flashback.  I think Ser Hedgie is bluffing. 

Master notes that knighthood is sacred.  If you lie about your knighting, they hang you by your hands and feet and lower you onto a sharpened stick.  Could we see that?

Then he laughs.  He was just kidding about the sharpened stick, but you need someone to attest to your knight master.  Would anyone here know him?

"Sure, Ser Manfred of the House of Dodarrion."

"If he vouches for you,  I'll let you enter the tournament."

Scene 5: Outside Ser Manfred's tent: Two pleasure ladies tell Hedgie that the Ser is napping.  They think he's come around because the Ser did things with  his wife, and then mock him for being a hedge knight; "He's got to sleep in hedges because no Lord will have him."

This hurts Ser Hedgie's feelings.  "No need to say mean things!" 

"Toughen up!  The Ser will awaken by evenfall (dusk).  Come back then."

Scene 6: At the practice pavilion, the redheaded a-hole Ser Steffon (Edward Ashley) bests the teenage Raymun (Shaun Thomas. right), kicks him, and curses him, then sees Hedgie watching and yells the Medieval equivalent of the "What are you looking at" threat.  I don't like how their names are almost but not quite English. Shows lack of creativity. 

Raymun  tells Hedgie that he is the A-hole's cousin and squire: "You look pretty hot...um, I mean cute...no, strong! Would you like to fight him?"  Hedgie refuses, and Raymun vanishes.  Darn it, I thought he was going to be the boyfriend.

Scene 7:  At evenfall, Ser Manfred is still not awake.  The pleasure girls fling some more insults, but Hedgie fights back, sort of: "Why are you being so mean?"  

"Aww, don't cry.  We insult all men. It's part of the job." Apparently guys really like women who dislike them.

More after the break

Golden Cities, Far: In junior high, we write a heroic fantasy novel with absolutely no connection to "The Lord of the Rings"

I discovered The Hobbit in sixth grade, The Lord of the Rings in junior high, and thought it the best thing ever written. Heroic fantasy!  Elves, dwarfs, and wizards fighting the Dark Lord in an alternate Medieval world!  Infinitely superior to sword and sorcery (about mighty-thewed barbarian heroes in an ancient world), and to those dreary naturalistic novels about high school basketball stars that teachers were always pushing at us.  Even better than science fiction.

Around eighth or ninth grade, my friend Darry and I started working on our own alternate Medieval world -- if we couldn't find a "good place" in our world, why not make one of our own?   

We developed a gazetteer-full of new countries, wrote historical timelines spanning thousands of years, compiled detailed genealogical charts, and invented a dozen languages of Elves, Dwarves, and Men (well, some words in each). We got ideas from fantasy novels, myths, folklore, the histories of obscure countries, and anything else we could get our hands on:

The country of Runoe after forgetting the name of Runde Island in My Village in Norway.

The forest-dwelling Colemonas of Jotunheimr after the Norse giants and Coleman camping equipment. 

The Dark Lord, Moi, after a book in the junior high library, In Search of Moi (we hadn't studied French yet, so we pronounced it Moh-ye)

We worked every day at lunchtime and after school, on Saturday and Sunday afternoons, during holidays.

Fantasy worlds must be used as the setting for novels, so by eighth grade we were working on a plot about a Midwestern teenager named Jim swept away through a time-space warp to the world of Toulbium, where he gathered companions to fight the Dark Lord Moi.

Everyone we told about the story screamed “You’re plagiarizing The Lord of the Rings!”

 But we patiently pointed out that:

1.  Jim is rescued by Ray when he enters the world of Toulbium.  Frodo and Sam  Frodo and Sam already know each other.

2. Jim and Ray travel west to Montenia, not east to Mordor.

3. There are Eluses instead of Elves.  

4. Jim is black.  There aren't any black characters in Tolkien.

5.  Montenia is surrounded by dark forests, whereas Mordor is bounded by mountains.

6. Instead of throwing the One Ring into Mount Doom, Jim throws a magic sword into Pair Daedeni, the Cauldron of Life.

7. Jim becomes a born-again Christian. (I was Nazarene, remember?)

Every Saturday we took the bus downtown to Readmore Book World to spend our allowance on heroic fantasy novels for research.  They were part of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series, bright, shining paperbacks with evocative titles: The King of Elfland's Daughter, The Broken Sword, The Wood Beyond the World, Beyond the Golden Stair, Golden Cities Far.

But there were some problems:  

More after the break

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

Kalevipoeg: Gay Epic Hero of Estonia

When I was visiting Estonia in the summer of 1998, I couldn't go anywhere without hearing about Kalevipoeg.  There were a dozen public statues of him, a naked, muscular god carrying small people.

There was a Kalevipoeg Sculpture Park in Tallinn.

There was a Kalevipoeg Museum near Kaapa, which became a full Theme Park in 2007.

There was a chain of Kalev Chocolate Shops.

Teenagers were filming adaptions of his adventures for  school projects.

Kalevipoeg Imprisoned, Enn Poldroos

Museums were crowded with sculptures, murals, and paintings, often emphasizing the god's superheroic endowment.

Kalevipoeg at the Gates of Hell, Kristjan Raud

Or muscular backside.

Bookstores were teeming with books that praise Kalevipoeg as "James Bond and Chuck Norris put together."

So who is this guy?

He's the son of the god Kalev in The Kalevipoeg,  the Estonian national epic, culled from ancient myths by Friedrich Kreutzwald and published in 1853.

The youngest of  Kalev's children, but the biggest, strongest, and most resourceful, Kalevipoeg has many adventures.  He:
1. Swims to Finland to rescue his mother from an evil wizard
2. Gets a cursed sword from the Finish god Ilmarin.
3. Wins the throne of Estonia in a stone-throwing contest.

Kalevipoeg, Amandus Adamson

From then on, his companion is Alevipoeg, with whom he:
4. Fights a water demon and a sorcerer.
5. Travels to Porgu (Hell) twice.
6. Seeks out the edge of the world.
7. Fights an apocalyptic battle with the demon Sarvik and his army.

When Alevipoeg is killed, Kalevipoeg is so grief-stricken that he gives up his kingdom and becomes a hermit.  When he dies, he goes to Heaven, but is deemed so valuable that he is tied to the gates of Porgu to keep the world safe.

Kreutzwald was inspired by the Finnish Kalevala, also compiled from ancient myths, and set to verse by Elias Lönnrot in 1849.

But there's a big difference: the Kalevala is all about the quest after the Eternal Feminine, the gods Ilmarin, Väinämöinen, and Lemminkäinen searching for wives.

Kalevipoeg, Drisil Woan

But except for one short maiden-seduction early on (which, admittedly, gets a lot of attention), Kalevipoeg is oblivious to women.  When he rescues three maidens from Porgu, he busily tries to find them husbands, never attempting to seduce them himself.

He is all about masculine buddy-bonding, first with his brothers, and then with Alevipoeg.


A gay epic hero?

Kalevipoeg Mural, Tallinn

In addition to the many literary and artistic adaptations of The Kalevipoeg, there's been a ballet featuring the Kalevipoeg Suite, by Eugen Kapp, and a stage play, a "Cool Epic" starring Tanel Saar, that has toured Europe and the U.S.

See also: Kristjan Raud: Mesmerized by Male Beauty and Yuri and I Cruise in Estonia.

Andre Norton: Gay Subtext Science Fiction in My Junior High Library

I found The Hobbit during fifth grade, in the Folklore section of the Denkmann Elementary School Library, and thought it the best book ever written.  There were rumors of a sequel, something about "rings," so I checked out Moon of Three Rings, by Andre Norton.

That wasn't it.

Thereafter, through junior high and high school, I hated Andre Norton, and refused to read any of her works.

But when I was in college, the bookstore gang loved Andre Norton, so I gave her another try.  

And found a homoerotic paradise, where men forged intense, passionate, loving bonds with men, mostly with covers that were beefcake-heavy masterpieces.

The Time Traders: crosstime adventures of crook-turned-adventurer Ross Murdock and his far-future companion Ashe.

Galactic Derelict: Ross and Ashe are accompanied by muscular Apache Travis Fox to investigate a space ship from another galaxy.

Storm Over Warlock: A Terran survey expedition is attacked, leaving only two survivors: elite Scout Ragnar Thorvald and servant Shan Lantee.  They must travel together across the hostile planet to safety.

Voodoo Planet: Same plot, Voodoo Planet.

 Star Man's Son: Two muscular barbarians bond in a post-apocalyptic world.

Operation Time Search: Photographer Ray Osborne is accidentally transported back to ancient Atlantis, where he befriends the muscular young Cho and gets involved in royal intrigue.  And the most explicit gay romance I had ever seen in science fiction.

And on and on -- she wrote hundreds, and is still publishing, though she died in 2005.

There are also a lot of novels about women forming strong same-sex bonds, and a few with heterosexual romances.

I don't know why the gay subtexts predominate.  Maybe Norton was writing for an audience of juvenile boys, and assumed that they wouldn't be interested in hetero-romance "yet."?  Or maybe she thought that the world of intergalactic exploration would exclude women, just as her contemporary society excluded women from the sciences and technology.

I just wish I had read them in junior high.

Harold Monro: Lost Gay Poet

The 1960s was all about heroic fantasy; hippies were all agog over The Lord of the Rings and its precursors and imitators, especially those published in Lin Carter's Adult Fantasy Series: The King of Elfland's Daughter, The Boats of the Glen Carrig, The Wood Beyond the World.  Beyond the Fields We Know.

 But by the disco era, we preferred stories about big, bright spaceships hurling through the galaxy.  So when Elsewhere: Tales of Fantasy appeared in Adam's Bookstore in September 1981, the start of my senior year in college, I bought it for nostalgia only.

The illustrations by Terri Windling involved ample nudity, mostly female, but sometimes you could see the curve of a male backside or the hint of a penis.

The stories were usually heterosexist, but I found something evocative in "Overheard on a Salt Marsh."  It's about a goblin who begs a nymph for her beads.  She refuses.

Then I will howl all night in the reeds,
Lie in the mud and howl for them.

I kept thinking that there was something gay about it, but what?  It's a male goblin encountering a female nymph, complaining that the beads are "better than any man's fair daughter."

Is it his gender-atypical desire for the beads, green glass, stolen out of the moon?

Maybe it's the desire itself, desire with all of the trappings of civilization removed, raw, savage, and terrifying.

I could find out very little about the author, Harold Monro, in those days before the internet.  He was born in 1879, opened the Poetry Bookshop in London in 1912, and managed it for the rest of his life, except for a few years of service in World War I.  He married twice, was plagued by alcoholism and depression, and died in 1932.

But as I read his other poems, I found more hints of an openness to male beauty:

Man Carrying Bale:
And the same watchful sun glowed through his body feeding it with light.
The muscles will relax and tremble.
Earth, you designed your man beautiful both in labour and repose

And same sex desire:

 Children of Love, about Cupid and Jesus meeting:
And now they stand
Watching one another with timid gaze;
Youth has met youth in the wood,
Are you afraid of his arrows, O beautiful dreaming boy?

Then in 2001, a biography of Harold Monro appeared, and I discovered that my impressions were correct. Monro was gay, but closeted, and his earlier biographers either didn't know or didn't want to tell.  Like most gay lives of the past, his was hidden, requiring you to read between the lines.

The DC Comics Jungle

When I was a kid in the 1960s and 1970s, DC Comics were not known for their beefcake -- Batman, Superman, and their superhero coworkers were fully clothed all the time.  You had to go to Gold Key to get your quota of loincloth-clad jungle hunks.  But suddenly in the 1970s DC got on the bandwagon, and a dozen jungle, prehistoric, far-future, and sword-and-sorcery musclemen appeared all at once.

A precursor, Congo Bill, who wore a Jungle Jim style pith helmet, appeared in various DC Comics in the 1940s and 1950s, until he was transformed into a giant gorilla in 1959.  He got his own 7-issue series in 1954-55.  His sidekick was the loincloth clad Janu the Jungle Boy, a pint-sized Bomba who spoke in "Him no friend" patois. Here he worries about the competition.

B'wana Beast appeared in two issues of DC Showcase in 1967.  He drank a special magic elixer in a cave on Mount Kilimanjaro that allowed him to talk to animals, including his gorilla sidekick. A special magic helmet allowed him to control them.

DC took over the Tarzan title from Gold Key in 1972, and printed adaptions of the original Edgar Rice Burroughs stories: Tarzan of the Apes, The Return of Tarzan, Jungle Tales of Tarzan, Tarzan the Untamed, Tarzan and the Lion Man and Tarzan and the Castaways.  It lasted until 1977.

Korak, Son of Tarzan also migrated from Gold Key from 1972 to 1976.

The anthology series Weird Worlds  adapted some other Edgar Rice Burroughs books, including the John Carter of Mars series (shown here with the Conan-style woman supine at his feet),  plus the far-future sword-and-sorcery hero Ironwolf.   It lasted for 10 issues (1972-1974).

Kamandi, the Last Boy on Earth, inhabited a post-Planet of the Apes world of sentient animals from 1972 to 1978.

Tor, a warrior from "The World of a Million Years Ago!", with his monkey companion Chee-Chee, bounced around several comics companies after his debut in 1953.  DC had him for 6 issues beginning in 1975.  Those are sentient apes fighting him.

Claw the Unconquered, a Conan the Barbarian clone all the way down to the woman lying supine at his feet, also began in 1975, and lasted for 12 issues from 1975 to 1978.  His deformed hand, a "claw," wasn't caused by an accident or birth defect: his father was punished for consorting with demons.












Another sword-and-sorcery hero, The Warlord (seen here in cosplay), debuted in an anthology series called 1st Issue Special in 1975 before going on to a successful run in his own title (1976-1988).  He was an American pilot who accidentally flew into a hole at the North Pole and ended up in Pellucidar...um, I mean Skartaris, where he rescued the scantily clad Princess Deja Thoris...um, I mean Princess Tara.

Kong the Untamed, a blond prettyboy caveman (top photo), ran for 5 issues in 1975.













Two backup sword and sorcery hero in The Warlord eventually spun off into their own titles: Arak Son of Thunder, left (who changed from Conan clone to Mohawk Indian) from 1981 to 1985, and Arion, Lord of Atlantis,  from 1982 to 1985.

Pop quiz: how many of the 14 Lords of the Jungle have a "k" sound in their names?

Answer: 7.  I guess something about "k" spells "jungle."

See also: The Comic Book Jungle; Kamandi

Fafhrd and Grey Mouser

When I was in college, the Bookstore Gang was all wild over Fafhrd and Grey Mouser, a sword-and-sorcery duo that Fritz Leiber had been writing about since the 1930s.  Their adventures were being collected in a series of anthologies:

Swords against Wizardry
Swords in the Mist
Swords and Ice Magic
Swords and Deviltry
Swords against Death

Fafhrd is a 7'0 Conan-style barbarian, and the Grey Mouser is a 5'0 sneaky thief.  They wander the barbarian world of Nehwon (i.e., "Nowhen"), stealing cursed jewels, fighting evil sorcerers and renegade gods, exploring strange new lands, brawling, drinking, and wenching.

Yes, they go "wenching."

It wasn't Tolkien.  There was no Dark Overlord to conquer, they didn't spend a lot of time singing mournful songs, and there was sex.  Or whatever stood in for sex in those days.

Eventually they both settle down with wives and kids, become domesticated, and their adventures end.

But in some of the stories, at least, they were a homoromantic pair.

At least, that's how I read it.

Fritz Leiber also wrote Conjure Wife (1943), about men in a small college town who discover that their wives are all witches, and out to do them in.  Nuff said.

Xanth: Heterosexual Centaurs, Demons, and Ogres

I have been reading Piers Anthony's Xanth novels, on and off, ever since the first, A Spell for Chameleon in 1979.  They are set in a fantasy land that bears a striking resemblance to the mundane Florida. Magic works, but not in the expected way.  Every human has just one power, and some of them are silly or useless. There are also unicorns, centaurs, ogres, fairies, demons, dragons, gargoyles, and golems -- the fanciful list goes on and on.

Anthony draws you in with his cleverly convoluted plots and endlessly creative puns.  Even the titles are punny: Centaur Aisle, Roc and a Hard Place, Currant Events, Stork Naked.

And the covers often involve beautifully realized beefcake (drawn by Darrell K. Sweet): utterly naked young men, beefy knights, muscular centaurs and demons.  You expect lots of homoerotic buddy-bonding inside.

But you'll be wrong.  All significant relationships are heterosexual.  Same-sex friends always betray you in the end.  And there are no gay people, anywhere.

Stork Naked proposes that in Xanth, the old tale of babies coming from storks is true; prospective parents simply send the proper forms to the stork headquarters, and wait nine months for delivery. Since no straight intercourse is required, one would expect same-sex partners to apply for babies quite often; but only male-female couples are mentioned.

Every reference to desire, love, or romantic relationships in the book, and in all Xanth books, carefully specifies that it is straight.

When a fairy tells the adventurers about a strange lake filled with “love water,” they ask: “Standard love elixir? Male loves nearest female, and vice versa?”

“Yes. I have seen creatures there. I couldn’t make out exactly what they were doing, but always male and female.”

Piers Anthony could easily let his “standard love elixirs” target the nearest person, and have the fairy say “they were usually male and female.” But he is doggedly deter-mined to keep Xanth gay-free.

In his newsletter, Piers Anthony offered three responses to a fan’s criticism of the ongoing erasure.

First, as someone who is “110% straight,” whatever that means, he could never create believable gay characters (yet he is easily able to create ogres, demons, centaurs, mermaids, and talking storks).

Second, he is afraid that his publisher will not permit such a “controversial” move (but Avon Books has published many books with gay characters).

Third, he is afraid that including a gay character will ruin sales.


Straight science fiction and fantasy fans do seem to be more homophobic than usual. On an online forum, a fan asked why so many gay men like the genre, and was told that it gives them hope: “since sf has new inventions and discoveries, there would be a great possibility for a cure for it.”

A guide to Science Fiction Conventions advised straights who are subject to a same-sex advance to “refuse politely and clearly” instead of physically attacking their “assailant.”

Since the “new wave” of sociological speculation in the 1970s, many science fiction stories have depicted some form of “alternative sexuality.” There are species with three or more sexes or none at all, species whose sex organs change every season or at random, societies where technology makes changing one’s sex as easy as changing one’s shoes. Nevertheless, every sexual encounter, every romance involves a being who is male (right now) and one who is female (right now). The message is clear: one can be attracted only to beings with complementary sex organs; same-sex desire does not exist.

Some stories are set in future or magical societies in which bisexuality is “accepted,” but not people drawn exclusively to the same sex, not gay people, especially not gay men, and any characters who happen to mention in passing that they are bisexual experience only straight passion during the course of this particular story.

The vast majority of science fiction and fantasy stories  do't  bother with "alternative” sexualities at all, or even with offhand references to bisexuality being “accepted”: there are straight men and women, period.

So why do I keep reading it?

Because occasionally I will find an Earthfasts, a Something Wicked This Way Comes, or a Lord of the Rings.

See also: Michael Moorcock.