Lumber Jack! · No. 1

Lumber Jack! sells a fantasy that runs straight through gay erotica of the 1970s: the woodsman in flannel and denim, a working man far from town. The whole cover is a hand-drawn plaid shirt with a photo dropped into it like a pocket, and on the back the shirt turns into a pair of blue jeans with the action peeking out of the fly. It is a cheeky, clever bit of print design for a magazine that does not even bother to name its publisher.

That anonymity was typical of small-run adult pictorials, which often came and went in a single issue. Inside, the shoot moves from the woods to the bedroom, with men in the trees and men in bed. Copies like this survive by accident, and a first number with this much graphic personality is the kind of thing that makes a collector stop flipping.