Tijuana Bibles: Your Grandfather's Gay Porn

Back before internet  fan art boards allowed you to invoke Rule 34 and see Fred Flintstone topping Homer Simpson, or Finn the Human from Adventure Time in a three-way encounter with Spiderman and Huckleberry Hound, you could buy Tijuana Bibles.

They were not from Tijuana, and there was nothing Biblical about them.  They were 8-page, wallet-sized comic books about people having sex, often poorly drawn and badly printed, sold under the counter at newsstands and railroad stations from the 1920s through the 1960s.

A few original characters, a few film stars like Cary Grant, but mostly comic strip and cartoon characters: Popeye, Betty Boop, the Katzenjammar Kids, Barney Google, Jiggs and Maggie, Happy Hooligan.  Here we see a very well hung Wimpy thinking of hamburgers in the midst of a sexual act.

And Flash Gordon, the futuristic space adventurer, shows off his light saber.

Tijuana Bibles were, of course, illegal, under both obscenity and copyright laws, so we know next to nothing about the artists and publishers.

But many men who grew up in the era fondly recall reading and collecting them as their first glimpse of sexual freedom.

Some gay, lesbian, and transvestite themes appeared occasionally.  Some swishy stereotypes, some male-on-male rape, even some positive gay sex:

Donald Duck makes it with a "well-hung Lady Duck."

Joe the Janitor makes it with men and women both.

Happy the Dwarf steals the Prince from Snow White.

But the overwhelming majority were heterosexual, men with gigantic penises meeting and having sex with naked women.

So what was the attraction for gay men?

Gigantic penises.

Li'l Abner, Snuffy Smith, and Superboy naked.

Male nudity was heavily censored at the time.  You couldn't find it in movies or in magazines, not even in pornographic magazines, until the 1960s.

This was the only place to see artistic depictions of frontal nudity, outside of statues in a museum.

And the men were well-hung and fully aroused.

Gay men could easily ignore the women and concentrate on the men.

See also: Gay Comix; Gay Fan Art