The Guys Who Made Harvey Comics Gay-Friendly

When I was a kid, I loved Harvey Comics, especially Casper, Spooky, and Hot Stuff, the residents of the Enchanted Forest.  Their pacifist nonconformity and buddy-bonding gave me some of my first hints of gay potential.

It didn't hurt that I usually read them while spending the night with my Cousin Buster in the trailer in the dark woods.

I also read Harvey Comics set in the real world, about kids with weird obsessions: Richie Rich, Little Lotta, Little Dot.  They were evocative, but didn't provide the magic of the ghosts.

It never occurred to me, by the way, that the stories were supposed to be humor.  Jokes detracted from my deadly serious quest to find a "good place," where boys could live together without being forced to express an interest in girls every five seconds.

The Harvey character style was instantly recognizable. Male or female, ghost or human, they were all drawn the same:

Disproportionately huge heads (especially when compared with real boys)

No necks.

Pear-shaped heads, large oval eyes with black pupils, pug noses, mouths curving downward a little lower than on a real person.

I was confused by some stories with a different character style:  far less attractive: fat, dumpy, with a bigger head and bigger head and bigger eyes.

Eventually I realized that those stories were reprints from the 1950s and early 1960s.  The house style changed abruptly in 1966.

There was a change in the plotlines, too.  In the early stories, Casper and company visit mythological and fairy-tale creatures.  The Milky Way is full of actual milk, and the sun is a sentient being.

Later stories are mostly realistic science fiction, with mad scientists and alien invaders.  In 1972, Casper goes to the moon on the Apollo 16 (he was, in fact, the mission mascot).

The same thing happened to the human Harvey characters.  In 1966, Richie Richie Rich became slimmer, with smaller eyes, and a smaller tie.

By the 1970s, he even had a muscular physique, and he had moved from humor stories to adventure, espionage, and science fiction.

Harvey Comics never divulged the writers or artists, so it wasn't until many years later that I discovered who was responsible for the change: Sid Jacobson  who began working at Harvey in the 1950s, and became story editor in 1964.  He tried to modernize the Harvey stories for the space-oriented 1960s.

Meanwhile Warren Kremer, the art editor, spearheaded a new, attractive, "hip" character style.

Ernie Colon, who joined Harvey in 1967, completed the transformation.  He and Sid Jacobson collaborated on most of stories for the next 15 years, until Harvey stopped publishing comics in 1982.

When Harvey Comics folded, Colon moved to DC Comics, where he worked on such projects as Arak, Son of Thunder, Arion, Prince of Atlantis, and the graphic novel Ax.

  He and Sid Jacobsen collaborated on several graphic novels, including, a history of the African-American experience, the story of Anne Frank, and The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaption.

Kremer moved on to Star Comics, where he created two new characters, Planet Terry and Royal Roy.

I don't know if any of them were gay, but they certainly helped some gay kids find meaning in the homophobic 1970s.


See also: Casper the Friendly Ghost; Spooky the Tuff Little Ghost; Lesbian Subtexts in the Harvey Girls; Richie Rich Joins a Gym.

Koloman Moser: The Male Nudity of "Wayfarers"

When I was growing up in Illinois, teachers and professors kept inundating us in Scandinavian culture,  from  Icelandic sagas to the the bawdy Seven Brothers to the dense psychodramas of August Strindburg.  Norwegian literature was my least favorite: Ibsen's A Doll's House and An Enemy of the People, Undset's Happy Times in Norway, Hamsun's Growth of the Soil.  All dark and dreary and over-realistic.

I was drawn to this cover to Knut Hamsun's Wayfarers (Landstrykere, 1927): a hard-muscled guy, naked, striding across the world.  But the stupid story turned out to be about a guy named Edvard who wanders around, living off the land and getting crushes on unsuspecting women.

Ok, so maybe the artist was gay?

He was Koloman Moser (1868-1918), an Austrian artist who specialized in graphic design.  His work is reminiscent of tBritish Decadents like Aubrey Beardsley, with some Art Deco thrown in.
His repertoire contains a lot of female nudes, but also quite a few male nudes. 

The Battle of the Titans from Greek mythology becomes a lot of naked, swaying men throwing rocks at each other.

You even see male nudity in unexpected places, as in a scene of Wotan and Brunhilde from the Ring of the Nibelungs.  Notice how cleverly the god's cloak has been torn away to reveal his sex organs.

Moser didn't marry until he was 37, and his wife turned out to be the wealthy Editha Mautner-Markhof.

The verdict: Impossible to tell if he was gay in real life or not. But he did produce some nicely homoerotic paintings.

Aldo Ray: The Voice, Chest, and Endowment that Wowed Old Hollywood

Aldo Ray is on my list of gay and gay-friendly people born in 1926, but I didn't know anything else about him until I started looking for photos.

He was a blond, beefy screen hunk with a deep voice and a hairy chest, who took off his shirt at the drop of a script.

Born in Pennsylvania in 1926, he served in World War II, married, and was elected Crockett, California town constable before driving his brother to an audition for Saturday's Hero (1951) and getting cast himself.

Gay director George Cukor took a special interest in Ray, and upon seeing him naked (however that happened), made him a headliner at his legendary Sunday afternoon parties, where well-endowed hunks swam naked for the enjoyment of the guests.

Later Cukor cast Ray in Pat and Mike (1952), starring screen legends Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn.  Scott Bowers, the legendary trotaconventos of old Hollywood, claims that that Spencer Tracy was only one of the stars who made good use of Ray's superheroic endowment.

Somehow Ray also found the time to hang out at Henry Willson's pool parties with a stable of gay, bi, gay-for-pay, and allied beefcake stars like Farley Granger, Robert Stack, Tony Curtis, John Bromfield, and Rock Hudson.

Ray starred in many movies of the 1950s and 1960s as an assortment of gruff, taciturn bad guys, soldiers, cops, and rednecks.  Among his most famous movies:

God's Little Acre (1958), as a taciturn farmer who has an affair with future Gilligan's Island star Tina Louise.

The Naked and the Dead (1958), as a soldier killed in action after bullying Cliff Robertson.

Four Desperate Men (1959), as a police officer dealing with a hostage situation in Sydney.

Johnny Nobody (1960), as an amnesiac murderer.

Dead Heat on a Merry-Go Round (1966).  Great title, whatever it's about.

What Did You Do In The War, Daddy? (1966), an anti-Vietnam farce.

The Green Berets (1968), a pro-Vietnam farce

Typecast as gruff and gravelly-voiced, Ray faced a career decline in the 1970s.  He appeared mostly in horror movies (Death Dimension, Human Experiments, Don't Go Near the Park, Terror in the Night) and on tv as the recognizable has-been guest star (Police Story, SWAT, Marcus Welby MD, CHIPS).















Aldo Ray died of throat cancer on March 27, 1991, survived by his third wife and four children, including actor Eric DaRe (Twin Peaks).

See also: Jerry Lewis Falls in Love; Henry Willson and Gay Hollywood.

Captain Underpants and the Perpetual Problem of Presenting Prepubescent Protagonists Who Are Probably Gay

I had no interest in The Epic Tales of Captain Underpants, with an icon of an oval-shaped being in his underwear, until I discovered that one of the main characters is gay.

The tv series is based on a series of illustrated children's books (1997-2015) staring two fourth grade best friends, Harold Hutchins (blond) and George Beard (black), who can make their sadistic, fun-hating principal transform into the titular superhero to fight grade-school supervillains.  Most of the villains have some connection to farting, belching, or pooping: Professor Poopypants, the Wedgie Woman, the Bionic Booger Boy, Tippy Tinkletrousers, Sir Stinks-a-Lot.  

In the last book in the series, the boys travel forward in time to meet their future selves and their families: George has a wife, and Harold has a husband.  They both have kids. This is no big reveal -- "Wow, you mean Harold was gay all along?"  The partners are presented matter-of-factly, without surprise or commentary.

I suspect that author Dav Pilkey didn't plan on Harold being gay from the start;it was just what made sense as he was bringing the series to a close.  But to see if there are glimpses into Harold's sexual identity early on, I checked out Season 2, Episode 8 of the tv series (the only episode that mentions a girl).  

Scene 1: The narrator (Sean Astin) identifies the two boys: George (Ramone Hamilton, below) with a flat top, and Harold (Jay Gragnani) with wavy blond hair.  They're showing Erica their ideas for a new comic book character, Plungerina.  She disapproves, which makes them recoil in self-doubt: "I'm a hack!  I'm no good!  I should give up comics!"  Finally she likes one of the ideas.

Scene 2: We see the comic book. At a sports stadium, the toilets are all clogged.  A clog-monster climbs out of a toilet and attacks.  Captain Underpants (Nat Faxon, top photo) fights him, and is defeated.  Superhero Plungerina saves the day.

Scene 3:  At school, everyone is reading the new comic book.  Erica claims that Plungerina is even better than Captain Underpants, which causes the boys to screech to a halt.  "How can you say that?"  To prove that Captain Underpants is superior, they clog all the toilets at school (thankfully not with poop) so a real-life clog monster will emerge and Principal Krupp will morph into Captain Underpants and save them.

But Principal Krupp and Melvinborg (a future cyborg version of their enemy Melvin) are attending a principal's convention far away.  The school is helpless!

Scene 4: Teacher Mr. Rected (all teacher names are puns) uses the bathroom, flushes the toilet, and is inundated by water, transforming into Cloggernaut.  And Captain Underpants isn't around to save them.   Fortunately, a real-life Plungerina arrives to clobber Cloggernaut.  Erica was right -- Plungerina is superior!  If their comic book stories always come to life, could they conjure up some high grades, or pizzas, or cute boys/girls?

Scene 5: Who is Plungerina?  An adult, so not Erica.  The boys interrogate their  teachers: Miss Anthrope, Miss Heard, the Lunch Lady -- but find no suspects.

Mr. Rected returns to the bathroom.  The toilet is still clogged, so he morphs into Cloggernaut again!

I'll stop the scene-by-scene there.

Beefcake: No.  The characters are all stylized.

Heterosexism:  None.  No one expresses any romantic or erotic interest of any sort.  Erica is a big sister/antagonist, not an object of desire.

Gay Characters:  No one expresses any same sex interest. The only boys shown are antagonists as well.

What about Harold and George?  Usually inseparable best friends have a strong gay subtext, but here I didn't notice anything.  The boys are not differentiated in any way; they have no distinctive personality traits, no disagreements about strategy, nothing that would provide conflict.  Maybe a gay subtext requires conflict?

Gay Actors:  Nat Flaxon is straight.  

Jay Gragnani retired from acting.  As of this writing, he is attending Georgetown University and interning for the Democratic National Convention.  No information on who he is dating.

Ramone Hamilton lives in West Hollywood and appeared on two episodes of Will and Grace,so maybe. 

Toilet Humor: Incessant.

My Suggestion:  Wait for the boys to grow up.