Harry Chess gave gay readers something they had never had, a hero who kept coming back every issue. The strip’s long run, from Drum to Queen’s Quarterly to Drummer, followed its creator across the country and across the early gay press, and it set the tone for the comic art that followed. When A. Jay moved to San Francisco in 1977, his condition for becoming founding art director of Drummer was that Jack Fritscher be hired as editor-in-chief, and the partnership shaped the magazine’s look during what many call its Golden Age. Fritscher later interviewed him for Skin in “A. Jay’s Comic Stripping,” and wrote the tribute that ran in Drummer 107 after the artist died in 1987, leaving a body of work that is still the standard for the form.

SKIN Magazine Vol 2 No 6 1981 &
DRUMMER Magazine – Issue 107 August 1987
“Al Shapiro, A. Jay, & Harry Chess“