SUCK, the First European Sexpaper. No. 2

Item Details

Amsterdam: Joy Publications, Joy Publications, 1969/70, wrappers, staple-bound

Near Fine

Single issue of the short-lived, highly controversial, underground pornographic magazine that featured free love & queer sexuality. From the International Institute of Social History (IISH) in Amsterdam: “In the summer of 1969, in London, William “Bill” Levy (editor-in-chief of International Times), Heathcote Williams (playwright), Jean Shrimpton (supermodel and muse), Jim Haynes (founder of the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh and the Arts Laboratory in London), and Germaine Greer (feminist writer) decided to create a new radical sex publication…Bill and Heathcote jump on a plane to Amsterdam and in ten crazed days the debut issue is made of SUCK, the first European Sexpaper. The first issue is a sensation, especially in England. Scotland Yard immediately closes the English postbox address & raids the Arts Lab [another avante garde publisher] looking for secret printing presses…they [then] fly to Amsterdam where a SUCK-team, on a tip, removes some 9000 copies stored at the printer an hour before the arrival of the British police. While Scotland Yard has tea and cake at our designer's studio, Bill arranges for 1000 SUCKs to be smuggled into England, to be given out free at a Living Theatre benefit at The Roundhouse…” The magazine survived for only 8 issues, but had become more widely available across Europe as the 1970s dawned, offered by “quality booksellers & sex energy centers.” During its lifetime, it featured contributions from international authors such as William Burroughs, W.H. Auden, Guillaume Apollinaire, & Otto Muehl. SUCK also issued two books (“The Virgin Sperm Dancer” & “Wet Dreams)’’ & hosted two “Wet Dream Film Festivals” before ceasing publication in 1974..

The masthead on this Issue No. 2 (nd, c. 1969/70) lists: Editor William Cooney Lapides (pseudonym of Bill Levy); Art Director Willem Rielder (Willem De Ridder); Assoc Editors Jesper James (Jim Haynes), Billy Sugar (Heathcote Williams), Dr. Gee (Germaine Greer); Advertising: Cynthia Balls (Bill Balls); Editorial Assistants: Dinah Armstrong (Lynne Tillman), Purple Susan (Susan Janssen).

 In the promotional front matter, this issue boasts of “8 more pages, a new address, more color, a second printer, many fucks behind us, more to cum, suck aims to deprave and corrupt, to get your juices flowing, to give you new outrageous practical sexual ideas. It is not a journal for the coffee table…”

Unbound, 12” x 18” newspaper-style periodical folded in center, with 24 unnumbered pages including covers, graphic, sexually explicit photos & drawings & cartoons throughout in both color & black-and-white. Virtually flawless save for modest, age-appropriate page tanning. Aside from a complete collection in Amsterdam at the IISH, WorldCat shows scattered & incomplete international library & institutional holdings.