A Pristine Collection of Mike Arlen's Guys, Now in Stock
Earlier this year I took in something I didn't expect to find in one go: a near-complete run of Mike Arlen's Guys, the self-published British magazine series that defined a particular kind of unfussy, real-bloke gay erotica through the 1980s and 90s.
About a hundred copies, the majority still in the kind of condition you almost never see on copies that are forty years old. Sharp covers, no foxing, no creased spines, no fading. For anyone who's tried to source these individually you'll know how unusual that is. Most copies that surface have been well-loved over the decades, and pristine examples in this kind of quantity from a single source are virtually unheard of.
This post is a quick tour of what's in the collection, why condition matters on Arlen specifically, and which volumes the more serious collectors tend to hunt for.
The short version of who Mike Arlen was
I've covered his life and work properly in another post on the blog, so I'll keep this part brief. Mike Arlen, born Michael McGrath in 1935, started out as a journalist on titles like She and Woman's Own before drifting into showbiz and fashion photography in the 60s. By the late 70s he'd shifted to photographing men, contributing to Zipper, Inches, Mister and others. In the 80s he began self-publishing his own title, Mike Arlen's Guys, which eventually ran to fifteen volumes.
What set him apart was who he photographed. Not models in the polished sense. Real men, met in London pubs, often servicemen, found through small cards left in newsagents' windows. The shoots happened at his Wetherby Studios in Earl's Court, sometimes on location in flats, on London buses, on the Underground. The Mamiya RB67 he shot on, the deliberate ordinariness of the settings, the working-class look he favoured, all of it added up to something specific to the British scene in that period.
Why pristine condition matters on Arlen specifically
For most vintage gay magazines, condition affects the price but doesn't fundamentally change the object. A well-thumbed copy of Him or Vulcan still reads as itself, just softer at the edges.
Mike Arlen's Guys is a slightly different proposition. The production values were better than most of the competition. Glossy stock, careful printing, full-bleed colour spreads, considered layouts. In mint condition you get them as he intended them: saturated colour, sharp registration, no dog-ears, no fading on the spines. Once they degrade they lose a lot of what made them stand out at the time.
There's also a legal-history detail that matters here. Until UK obscenity law softened in the late 90s, British magazines couldn't legally print an erection. Everything had to be tasteful, downturned, suggestive rather than explicit. Mike was finally able to publish unrestricted images in volumes 14 and 15, which makes those two issues a different photographic proposition from everything that came before them. Both are present in the collection.
Which volumes tend to move first
From what I see across the wider market and from previous Arlen stock I've handled, demand breaks down roughly like this.
The earliest issues, volumes 1 to 3, are the hardest to find in any condition. Smaller original print runs, longer time in circulation, more chances to get damaged or thrown out. When mint copies surface they go quickly. I've seen single copies of Volume 3 in good condition listed at just under £60 at other UK specialists.
Volumes 8 to 13 are the heart of the run. This is where the photography hit its stride: the soldier and uniform sets, the considered location work, the more confident editorial. These are the volumes most collectors are completing a set with, so they move steadily.
Volumes 14 and 15 are the unrestricted late issues, and tend to draw a slightly different buyer. Worth picking up alongside the earlier issues if you want a sense of how the work shifted once the legal handbrake came off.
The collection here covers the run, with multiple copies of some volumes and singles of others. Each magazine is being graded and listed individually rather than offered as a job lot, so you can buy exactly what you want and skip what you've already got.
Every order ships from the UK in plain, unmarked packaging. Card and bank statements show the trading name Cian's Bookshop rather than Gay Vintage UK, so there's nothing on a paper trail that gives anything away.
If you're chasing a specific volume and want to know whether it's already listed or still in the grading queue, drop me a line on the shop contact page! and I'll let you know where it is in the pipeline.