The Manhandlers · No. 3 / 1979
John Gamble shot it, designed it and put his name on the cover: The Manhandlers No. 3, 1979 Times Square muscle with the shop’s 3-for-$6 sticker still attached.
1 in stock
Ships in plain outer packaging. $6 U.S. shipping, free over $100.
Vintage is final sale. Every mark we mention is in the photos.
Condition report
Good. The adult-store markdown sticker is still on the cover and I left it there, because that's where this copy lived. Every mark is in the photos.
Flaws notedCover wear, Writing, stamps, or labels
PagesNot fully verified
The story
This is a one-man show. John Gamble produced, shot and designed The Manhandlers for MV Publications' Stud Series, working out of a Times Square address on West 42nd Street in 1979, when that strip was the beating heart of New York's adult trade. The cover price was eight dollars, and somewhere along the way a shop slapped on a sticker selling three of them for six.
Number Three belongs to the men Gamble liked: mustached, thick-armed, workwear-and-tank-top types, including the trucker billed only as Big Zeke and his partner Kevin Delany. It's the late-seventies masculine ideal before the big video studios swallowed the market, made by one photographer with his own name across the top.
Catalog facts
Cataloged under · Keep digging
Why it matters
A small-press, single-photographer title straight out of 1979 Times Square, with the store's markdown sticker still on it to prove where it was sold.
The copy in hand
What we checked before listing it.
Good. The adult-store markdown sticker is still on the cover and I left it there, because that's where this copy lived. Every mark is in the photos.
Visible in the photos.
Noted in the listing.
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