The Lincoln Lover

I was reading a forum about wrestling and saw a comment someone wrote describing a comic book he owned as a child which first turned him on to wrestling.  He said:

“I was 5 y.o. when I saw the cover of a comic book about Abraham Lincoln, and the cover had two barechested men in jeans and boots facing each other in a field ready to rassle. I remember getting turned on imagining them locking barechest to barechest, stomach to stomach in a bearhug. Pro wrasslin and gladiator movies just fueled the fire over the years!”

I found this interesting because he reminded me that I had the exact same comic book  — and I too found it very exciting.  It was a “Classics Illustrated” — a series of educational comics about historical figures and famous literary characters.  For all these years, I believed I was the only freak in the world that could get hot and bothered by a comic book about an old dead president!  So it’s nice to hear there is someone else who loved the same Abe Lincoln wrasslin’ comic…

So I searched on E-Bay and sure enough, I found the comic book for sale and bought it. (The Internet kills me — everything under the sun can be found within minutes and shipped to you in a few days — instant gratification!  Even old obsessions from several decades ago, available after a brief search and an instant bank transfer.)

Do you see the erotic appeal of the cover image??  The man-on-man violence is about to erupt, Abe and the other stud all shirtless and flexing, their fingers eager to grip, their tight britches clinging to their hard bodies all over, their sexy tall leather boots like a motorcycle cop would wear.

Images like this that can have a powerful effect on the brain of a young viewer.  (It did a number on me, and apparently, on the guy who wrote into the forum.)  While most comic books are drawn in a silly, surreal manner like a caricature, this image appears realistic (and therefore more powerful).  Their flesh and sinew and bare skin look lifelike enough to touch (or bite or hug against).

If you zoom in close to Abe’s britches, you may see a random bulge in the front of those tight pants — right under Abe’s belt buckle.  Did the cartoonist draw this subtle fold of cloth to depict how rough they’re struggling — so rough that it wrinkled their clothing?  Or is this a subliminal prompt to the viewer? Is this a suggestion that Abe is pitching a tent?

According to historians, Abe Lincoln loved to Wrassle and really did fight a local bully named “Jack Armstrong” in 1831 when he was 22.  This painting which appeared in Esquire magazine in 1949 shows Abe getting it on with Armstrong and violently body-slamming him.  Again we see the combatants shirtless and hard-bodied in their tight trousers and boots, getting all rough with one another while the crowd of male viewers is whipped into a frenzy…

Check it out — I used my photo editing skills (such as they are) to put Lincoln and Armstrong in the ring as modern-day pro wrestlers.

So anyway, this comic book about Lincoln goes on to tell his life story, from his birth in a log cabin in Kentucky, to his assassination.  The most exciting part of this 46 page book (and, of course, the scene they chose to feature on the front cover) appears on page 7, where the wrestling match with Armstrong is depicted in six panels.  Here is a closer look at those panels…

In the first panel, we see an older man — Jack Armstrong — looking cocky while chewing on a sprig of grass.  He gets in Abe’s face for a stare-down and challenges the youth to some wrestling.  Why is Armstrong so angry just because Abe’s boss was bragging about him??  Is he just looking for an excuse to get physical with Abe?

He poses his challenge in the form of a question: “How about wrestling with me?”   It’s like a proposition.  Abe eagerly agrees.

Their shirts torn off, the two men get ready to rumble in the next panel.  In the foreground, a man bets his knife that Lincoln will win.  Why is this odd wager included in the story — and why are the man and his knife featured so prominently in the foreground?  And why wouldn’t he hold the knife by the blade, the safer way to hand it off?

We see that the knife rises erect from the bottom of the frame.  It points stiffly between Lincoln’s spread legs, as if penetrating or splitting his legs.  I believe the pointy knife is a phallic reference, meant to further sexualize the scene.

Notice how the bearded man refers to the knife as his “skinning” knife — an odd term to describe a tool which has many diverse uses.  The word “skinning” draws the reader’s attention to the bare skin of the combatants in the background.  With that open blade just inches away from the wrestlers’ naked torsos, it almost seems as though that “Skinning Knife” will be used to harm the men in the fight.  Does the presence of a sharp weapon indicate that Lincoln is in danger of being tortured (or raped)?

Here is another sexy comic book cover meant to titillate and arouse the viewer.  We again see our studliest president, Abe Lincoln, this time locking hands and battling for manly domination with an Injun whose shirt is wide open to expose his chest. Their faces are contorted in ecstasy as they lean in and strive against one another.

Again we see a knife laid on the table, at the Injun’s waist level and pointing stiffly at Lincoln’s groin area.  Isn’t it unsafe to arm wrestle with a knife on the same table? I suppose if Lincoln loses to this “Scalphunter,” we are led to believe that the savage is going to penetrate Lincoln’s flesh with his weapon (or otherwise punish and degrade our poor, defeated president…)

In Panel #3, Abe applies the Schoolboy Pin, we’re told that the two men wrestled “hard” — which is another odd term.  Is the word “hard” really the correct adjective to describe a fight — or is the implication that the men have become hard?

Lincoln subdues the bitch, holding him down and forcing himself on submissive Jack Armstrong.  The beaten man’s chest and arms are drawn with sprouting hair, indicating his manliness, his high level of testosterone.  Lincoln just can’t keep his hands off that man-flesh!

From this close-up position, we can’t see their bodies, so we don’t know what exactly Abe is doing to his victim.  We just see Abe on top, looking down into the eyes and parted lips of the submissive male.  We know from another man’s comment that Abe is trying to “get away” with something inappropriate.   They’re still just wrestling, right?  In any case, the other men interrupt the heated battle and further body contact, an escalation of the situation, is averted…

When I first read this comic book as a youngster, I didn’t understand exactly what I was looking at — all the sexual imagery meant to titillate the viewer — but I sure felt a charge of energy from the drawings.  I felt an undeniable (but hard to explain) raw, primal attraction to the bare-chested struggling between the men.  I had an instinctual understanding that there is more going on here than just wrestling.  I both loved and hated cocky Jack Armstrong.  I knew I that I wanted to look at page 7 of the magazine (the wrestling match) far more than I enjoyed, for example, page 21 about the Lincoln-Douglas Debates, or page 42 when the Civil War ended, even though those events seemed more important historically.

Seeing  what Abe has done with their friend has all the other men eager for a piece of him.  While Jack catches his breath in the background, the other men trap Abe against a brick wall to have their way with him.

Abe offers to either spend some time with each man individually, or to allow them all to go at him at once.  He really IS a toughie!

But Jack Armstrong is greedy and jealous.  He refuses to share pretty-boy Abe with the other men, instead forming a monogamous friendship with the young man who bested him.  Apparently, they’ve become friends for life.  The reader learns from this scene that the bond that forms after wrestling a man is powerful and permanent.

This message is inspirational to the young reader, who will now crave another man to wrestle with in order to experience the admiration, closeness, and intimacy that Abe is experiencing with Jack Armstrong.

So now you know why I love wrestling — I can’t help it. Someone gave me this comic book and the rest is history.