Though labeled "Volume One" inside, I've never seen a trace of a "Volume Two” and that surprises me, since covers by the mononymous artist Adam for the gay-adult publisher Surrey House’s HIS 69 line — then only a year old — appear to have been hugely popular. So what reader wouldn't have wanted a 32-page, oversized (8"x11") collection of Adam nudes, many of them variations on those cover images? The San Diego-based Surrey House must have thought so by setting the price at $3 when a paperback novel cost $1.95.
So why there wasn’t a follow-up beats the hell out of me. Poor sales is the only reason I can imagine, and I find it hard to wrap my mind around that unless Adam — who alludes to an upcoming second volume in his one-page intro — had some kind of quarrel with Surrey House. And that seems unlikely, given that he continued illustrating for them throughout the '70s.
In that intro, Adam claims to live in Greenwich Village (of course, because that's where artists live) and says that if he weren't so serious about his work, his studio "could easily turn into nothing more than another New York City action playhouse.” He's "built up a really fantastic photo and sketch collection of some of the greatest studs on the East coast," and okay, he isn't so serious that his studio doesn't turn into a New York City sex pad some of the time, because, yes, "[I]t isn't unusual for yours truly to get a bit carried away and join the fun." He also purportedly thinks that "one of the best phrases of his day is, ‘let it all hang out!’” To be fair, there was a lot of that on going on in New York in those days. But still.
I've always been curious about Adam's identity, and haven't been able to find out a thing. The aforementioned intro sounds roughly as plausible as most HIS 69 plotlines. To give Adam his due, he's a terrific artist and that was not a given in the world of gay-adult covers. In some cases his pencils here are actually more appealing than the versions that made it onto the books. That doesn’t seem his fault: The standard style favored by adult houses was black-and-white illustrations (both unadorned pencil art and fully inked art) and single-color background treatments, sometimes with the image and title copy superimposed directly, and sometimes isolated within an oval or rectangle with a single-color frame. That alone tended to overwhelm and detract from the artwork, and on top of this the cover colors tended to the bold: purple, blue, bright green, red and pink. Sometimes the art was better served on back covers, which many times covers featured the same image, reversed and rendered in the cover color against a plain white background.
Unlike many of the artists hired by adults-only publishers, Adam's anatomical rendering is excellent and he can actually draw faces, which is more than can be said of many adult-novel cover artists. I don’t share his fondness for pug noses and prominent jaws, but that’s just a matter of taste. In all, The HIS 69 Artist's Sketch-Book is an attractive adjunct to any collection of '70s gay adult ephemera… would that you could still buy it for $3 — the last time I looked online, one had sold on Etsy for $199. Over the years I’ve asked readers of various websites devoted to gay-adult novels to let me know whether they have any idea about the elusive Adam’s full name, whether he worked for other publishers or exhibited his work or, really, anything about him. To date, crickets.
I did find, however, a 1973 Surrey house novel — one featuring what looks like an a unsigned Adam cover — whose introduction promotes not only The HIS 69 Sketch-Book but the company's MANHARD imprint, touted as HIS 69's "little brother" who "comes on strong and hard in leather and chains." But wait, there's more: "If your reading tastes take you occasionally to heterosexual reading," there are the HIS imprint's "companion" lines: "Rated X" and "Surrey Collectors' Series" Whew! But wait, there's even more: "We urge you to write to us with exact details of what kind of gay books you would like to read and any other sexual matters you are concerned about. IN ABSOLUTE, STRICT CONFIDENCE... We here at Surrey House, Inc. only exist to serve you in these matters of great concern." That's some canny cross promotion, market research and good-will currying for the publisher to pack into a note I doubt most buyers read.
Finally, here is a detail from the back cover. I’d love to know the reasoning behind the particular two geographic locations mentioned: an island state of Australia and the northernmost cluster of islands in Canada's Arctic Archipelago.
You had me at "mononymous artist Adam." Great post!