TITLE    : Sex to Sexty
STORYID  : sex-to-sexty
SUMMARY  : It's still sexy!
AUTHOR   : Cal Y. Pygia@lit
DATE     : 2012-02-16
CATEGORY : reviews-and-essays
FLAGS    : 
TAGS     : |nude|nudity|humor|cartoon|joke|art|painting|drawing|illustration|


Under the assumed name of Richard Rodman, John Newbern published his 64-page, 8.5- x 11-inch magazine of adult humor, Sex To Sexty from 1965 to 1983--a run of 170 monthly issues. In addition, he also published 38 special, 10- x 14-inch issues of the magazine, under the title of Super Sex To Sexty.



The magazine was replete with cartoons and jokes of a sexual nature. The periodical included regular contributions from such artists as Bill Ward, Bill Wenzel, Lynn Harrison, and Pete Wyma. Most of the covers were painted by Lowell Davis, under the pseudonym of Pierre Davis, who also contributed his fair share of cartoons.



The publication featured the risqué adventures of such recurring characters as the Fudpucker family, Lord and Lady Fartingale, Pat McGroin, and others, and subscribers and occasional readers could contribute ideas for gags, receiving, in exchange, if their ideas were published as cartoon captions or jokes, an illustrated "Jokes Americans Love Society" certificate.



Sex To Sexty's main competitors were Good Humor, Popular Jokes, and Joker, which sold well but were never big threats to Newbern's publication.



The adult humor was often puerile, centering upon unlikely sexual situations. More than a few of the illustrations involved lusty bulls, stallions, or other male animals rutting with the females of their species, sometimes thereby hindering the work of their human owners. However, the cartoon's jokes were not always immediately obvious. Although pointed, the punch lines were, nevertheless, at times sly, if not subtle.



However, a few illustrations did depend upon what might be regarded as specialized knowledge, born of unusual experience. For example, the caption for a Wenzel cartoon, involving a young man, on his knees, about to have sex with a young woman seated, nude from the waist down, with her back against the bole of a tree in a pasture, who is being visited by a black sheep from a nearby herd, suggests that the humor is apt to be lost upon anyone who lacks experience with sheep.



In one of Ward's cartoons, a husband, standing behind his wife at the kitchen sink, clutches her breasts in his hands as he has intercourse with her from behind, her dress lifted above her waist and his trousers around his knees. As she washes a plate, she looks over her shoulder at her orgasmic spouse, telling him, "I hope you don't think you're screwing me out of that automatic dishwasher you promised me."



In one of Wenzel's contributions, a buxom young blonde straddles a man lying supine upon a living room couch. He looks a bit dazed and dismayed, but the young woman reassures her: "Don' worry, Uncle Albert. According to my analyst, I'm just going through a phase." Although the cartoon's theme is obviously one of incest, the situation seems more comical than shocking, partly because it is the niece who comes on to her uncle (she is the victimizer, rather than the victim), partly because the uncle looks clean cut rather than perverted, partly because the uncle is close to his niece's age, and partly because of the style of Wenzel's art--spare and modern, with a contemporary, but somehow sanitized feel.



In a Harrison contribution, a wife, reviewing her husband's checkbook register as he, with pen in hand, reads papers he's taken from his briefcase, remarks, "The kite of Junior's is getting expensive. . . . you've written two more checks for pieces of tail." This one is amusing not only for its punch line but also because of what the joke implies about the characters. Who stupider, the wife, who does not understand the implication of the check's memoranda, or the husband, who seeks to disguise his payments for the services of prostitutes with a reference to his son's kite tail?



A nude couple, sharing an armchair, the woman seated backward and mounted upon the man, her thighs lying atop the armrests and her lower legs dangling beside the chair, a television set, behind her, showing a couple making love--that's the setup for a Wyma cartoon in which the young woman observes, "Just think, Joe. . . if we get married, we could go to bed and do this." The illustration is amusing on several levels. Its caption points up both the absurdity of their having sex in an armchair, while Joe watches pornography, when there is a bed available in the apartment or house (and a live woman in Joe's lap, which begs the question as to why he seems to deem it necessary to have the image of a woman on a television screen when the image's actual, living, breathing, flesh-and-blood counterpart is present) and it highlights the young woman's preference for comfort--a bed--to the more unusual (and uncomfortable) setting--an armchair in the living room. It also suggests that the techniques associated with lovemaking may be less important than comfort--to her, at least--after she has landed her man than they are--or than she pretends they are--during courtship.



In one of Davis' cartoons, a biker responds to his bikini-clad passenger's question: "Whadda you hold onto? Throw both arms around my waist and grab the handle." As she reaches about his middle, the wind in her hair, she seems to roll her eyes at the corniness of the biker's crude remark--as might amused Sex To Sexty readers (or, for that matter, as Davis himself might have done in drawing the gag). More than a few of the magazine's "adult" cartoons and jokes were groaners.



What sold sex To Sexty, however--and what set it apart from its competitors--were the garish, full-color paintings, almost all of which were the work of the publisher and editor, artist Lowell Davis, who worked under the pseudonym of Pierre Davis.



The covers were not always about sex. Sometimes, nudity was sufficient. The cover of number six, for example, shows a naked Indian chief confronting a troop of cavalry. The chief holds up his hand, palm outward, greeting the soldiers. The military leader isn't any too happy to be greeted by a nude Indian, chief or not, and the officer, looking glum, returns the Indian leader's salutation with a one-fingered salute of his own--the middle finger, of course.



In the artwork for another cover (number 21), a rancher heats a branding iron over an open fire as a mounted cowboy and two of his companions, seated atop the top rail of the corral fence, looks on. On her hands and knees, her jeans heaped about her knees, a young woman waits to receive the heated iron, looking resigned--but none too happy--about being branded as her owner's property.



The cover for issue 24 involves a more sylvan scene. A young blonde in a tight-fitting dress, the right strap of which falls from her shoulder as she prances down a path through the forest, comes upon a barefoot hillbilly wearing a conical hat and patched overalls, seated beneath a tree, his trusty hound by his side--and a gigantic, phallic-shaped mushroom thrusting up between his thighs. She looks more perplexed than pleased to see such a sight, despite the hillbilly's knowing gaze in her direction.



Issue 29 purports to be "educational." It shows a shirtless hayseed in overalls drawing a naked woman on the side of a brick house. The boy's father, carrying pails of milk from the barn, has chanced upon his offspring, and the elder seems astonished--but only mildly (the youngster appears fairly stupid, after all)--as he considers his son's handiwork: an attractive woman whose breasts, based upon his son's farmyard experience, no doubt, are festooned with extra teats, looking half like a woman's breasts and half like a cow's udders. The animals in the barnyard--cow, pig, chickens, and dog--seem as surprised by the artist's artwork as his father, their attentive gazes accentuating the painting's humor.



Several covers deal with sex between anthropomorphic animals. Some examples indicate the direction of the humor: A bull has turned a cow onto her back so that he may suckle her teats (issue 34); a stallion takes a break from drawing a plow with his partner, the mare with whom he has sex while the farmer waits, elbow resting on the plow's handle, looking both impatient and bored (issue 36); a ram, ogling a ewe, imagines her fleeced, which is to say, naked) (issue 38); much to a matador's consternation, his bovine opponent takes time out during a bullfight, to mate with a cow (issue 39); a goat eats the seat out of a farmer's jeans as the farmer kneels, crouched over a young woman who lies in a haystack, receiving his attentions without enthusiasm (issue 40); a mounted Arab waits, impatient and bored, for his mount to finish mating with a female camel (issue 47).



Today, Davis paints nature scenes, which he sells on Ebay.

