Peter Gordon by Spartan - "Spartan #1" part 1

It is no secret that physique studios would flog their photos years after they were taken, most often never giving a timeline to their work, making it very hard to deduce when they were actually taken.

Case in point -- "Spartan" #1 was published in 1962, at a time when classic physique stylings were giving over to a preponderance of skinny twink and rough trade magazines, less than six years before the advent of full-on nudity. The roster of models in the magazine (Gordon, Bob McCune, Gene Eberle, Rex Ravelle and more) though, were almost all shot in the early 50s, nearly ten years before the magazine was published.

The identity of Spartan (Constantine) is one of the great unknowns we face in this hobby. Three people are listed in the indicia of the magazine -- John Willson, J. Melvin Sawyer and Henry Maxwell. Could one of these men by Spartan? They could just as easily be totally phony names in an effort to hide from the pervasive Postal Police doing their best to run all "pornographers" out of business...

Thanks to Tim Wilbur for sharing his scans of this magazine with my v-m-p Yahoogroup a couple years back...