Boy Whore (70's Gay Pulp Novel Art Poster/Artwork by Gene Bilbrew)

Boy Whore — Cover Poster Reprint (1970s)

Published in the 1970s by Spade Classics and credited to Ted Willard, Boy Whore belongs to the later wave of gay pulp fiction that emerged after Stonewall—bolder, more explicit, and less interested in apology. By this point, pulp no longer needed to hide entirely behind moral caution or psychological framing. Desire could be named more directly, even if it still lived on the margins of mainstream publishing.

Gene Bilbrew

Gene Bilbrew was a pivotal but long-overlooked figure in mid-20th-century queer visual culture. Working primarily from the 1950s through the 1970s, he was best known as an illustrator and photographer for physique magazines, pulp paperbacks, and early gay publications—often under pseudonyms and behind the scenes, due to the legal and social risks of the time.

Bilbrew’s artwork and photography helped define a visual language of queer masculinity before liberation. His men were muscular, confident, and erotic, but rarely caricatured—presented instead as subjects of admiration and desire. Whether drawing for pulp novel covers, illustrating magazines, or photographing physique models, he created images that circulated quietly but widely, offering representation when almost none existed.

As a Black gay artist working in a deeply segregated and homophobic era, Bilbrew’s contribution is especially significant. His work crossed racial and cultural boundaries in ways that were rare for the time, and his influence can be traced through later gay illustration, leather aesthetics, and underground publishing. Today, Gene Bilbrew is recognized as a foundational visual historian of pre-liberation gay culture—an artist who helped queer people see themselves long before it was safe to be seen.