Black Inches Magazine, 1997 to 2000: A Late 90s Run Now in Stock
A piece of late 90s American gay publishing has just landed at Gay Vintage UK. Forty issues of Black Inches magazine, all dating from 1997 to 2000, all in great condition.
This is a collection that doesn't surface in the UK very often. Black Inches was a US monthly, never properly distributed in Britain at the time, and the issues that did make it across the Atlantic came in small numbers and tended to disappear into private collections. Picking up forty consecutive issues from a four-year window is genuinely unusual.
This post is a quick look at what Black Inches was, who published it, why this particular four-year stretch matters, and what's now coming up for sale.
What Black Inches actually was
Black Inches was a monthly gay men's magazine launched in 1993 by Mavety Media Group, a New Jersey based publisher that ran most of the influential American gay print titles of the 70s, 80s, and 90s. The Mavety stable included Mandate, Honcho, Playguy, and the magazine that Black Inches grew out of: Inches, launched in 1985.
When Inches proved successful, Mavety added two specialised spin-offs aimed at men who weren't being served by the predominantly white casting of the mainstream titles. Black Inches arrived first, in 1993. Latin Inches followed shortly after. Both ran until Mavety wound up its gay publishing arm in May 2009.
The magazine combined photography of Black men with interviews, film reviews, regular columns, and the kind of editorial mix that defined the Mavety formula: explicit imagery balanced with serious cultural and political reporting. The ISSN, if you keep records that way, was 1084-2462.
Why the 1997 to 2000 window matters
Three reasons this particular four-year stretch is significant.
First, it lines up with the magazine's editorial peak. By the late 90s Black Inches had hit its stride. The roster of featured performers from this period reads like a who's who of late 90s and early 2000s Black gay adult entertainment: Bobby Blake, Tyson Cane, Tiger Tyson, J.C. Carter, T-Malone. Bobby Blake in particular had his own regular column during these years and later described the magazine's relationship to his career in his memoir, saying it "reviewed every film I made, interviewed me, and gave me my own column."
Second, this is the window before the internet started gutting print magazines. Issues from this period were produced when budgets were healthy, print runs were reasonable, and editorial standards were at their highest. By the mid-2000s, declining sales had visibly affected production values across all the Mavety titles.
Third, it's the run-up to a key transition. George Mavety, the founder of the publishing group, died on 19 August 2000. The company carried on for nine more years under different leadership, but the late 90s issues represent the magazine at its peak under the founder's direct stewardship.
Why these matter beyond the photography
Worth pausing on this point. Mainstream gay magazines through most of the 80s and 90s overwhelmingly featured white models, with Black men appearing only as occasional guest features. Black Inches was one of the very few US titles with consistent newsstand distribution that put Black gay men front and centre, with their own dedicated publication rather than as a sidebar in a wider title. For collectors, that's a meaningful piece of LGBTQ+ publishing history, not just a back catalogue.
For the same reason, copies have started attracting interest from academic and archival buyers as well as private collectors. Good-condition late 90s issues are increasingly difficult to track down outside the US, and even harder to find in the UK.
Condition and what's in the run
All forty issues are graded in great condition. Covers intact, no torn pages, no significant fading, minimal wear at the spine and corners. These are not museum-grade pristine copies, but they're well above the average for magazines that are now twenty-five to thirty years old.
The collection covers issues across 1997, 1998, 1999, and 2000, with a mix of months. Some months have multiple copies, others are singles. Every issue is being graded and listed individually rather than as a job lot, so you can pick the dates and covers you actually want and skip the rest.
Every order ships from the UK in plain, unmarked packaging. Statements show the trading name Cian's Bookshop rather than Gay Vintage UK, so there's nothing on a paper trail.