>Hugz<

This is Mr.  Pontaro 's cover art for Samson March, 2003. Since he stopped contributing his mastery in any gay scene, at least I believe so, all I can do is to search anyting left. (C) Pontaro Luckily, I had a chance to read through some pages of his comics, Urisen , which were not included in the version found in the web. The web version indicates that some episodes are missing, for the characters seem to know each other in the first scene. Still, I have not found whole part of the comics. Hope to have a chance to read the whole comics soon.

Dopey is a Korean Bara artist, who is regularly posting his works via Twitter (ID: DoPq). (c) Dopey I am using the word, " Bara artist" to refer Asian artists who draw gay erotic art. However, I have come to know that some artists, including Mr. Gengoroh Tagame , the King of Japanese gay erotic art, prefer to be called "gay erotic artist." Using the word does not mean that I am not aware of the ambivalent meaning of " Bara ". Still, using the word can save time, considering this blog is written in English. Back to the artist Dopey , I found that he has provided his artworks for iSHAP , Korean AIDS prevention center for LGBTs, so that the center can make various goods to promote awareness of AIDS. Talented and serving for the community, how nice of him!👍

The following is the cover art of Samson , a Japanese gay magazine, which Mr. Pontaro drew more than two decades ago. (c) Pontaro Mr. Pontaro  does not seem to be active anywhere in the Japanese gay scene, therefore I cannot find any new work of his, or hear any news about him. Could I come across other fans who can share their knowledge on this talented artist, if I keep on posting articles about him? Maybe. Who would know? At least I can make more people get to know about this master of daddy illustrations. If you know any news of the artist, leave a reply here, please.

Though beloved by Bara fans, Mr. Pontaro does not have any Wikipedia page. Even the information on his contributions to the Japanese gay magazines such as Samson (サムソン) or Sabu (さぶ) is very limited. I tried to dig up any info from the DB files from now-closed Doujinsh and Manga Lexicon , but the better result could be found at the "Back Issues" pages of Samson . You can search the infos in the following link and you can search infos on the back issues from different years. http://www.kaimeikan.co.jp/samson/samson_bk2004.html   Following is the list of his works, the best that I can offer right now. 1. Cover arts for Samson Mr. Pontaro drew covers for Samson from 2003 to 2004. His first cover for Samson is as follows. (c) Pontaro The man in the cover wears a Santa Claus hat, for Japanese publishers tend to issue magazines months earlier. The January issue featuring the cover must have been out in the stores in November or December of 2002. 2. Comics Though incomplete, these

Recently I found a fascinationg drawing by Mr. Daisuke Takakura . *Beware that there is another Daisuke Takakura , who is a renowned photographer. I had the chance to look through his works before. But those works did not fascinate me much like the following drawing, even though all his works are very skillfully drawn. Some of his works are very realistic, almost like he drew or traced from real pictures. (c) 高蔵大介(Takakura, Daisuke) But other works are drawn like comics, which makes it hard to realize that all those works are from the same artist. He did not have any Japanese Wikipedia page, so I don't have much information about him. He is just introduced as an artist who from time to time contributed illustrations to the Japanese gay magazines such as  Samson and Sabu . Some of his works can be found in the Gengoroh Tagame 's erotic art compilation book, Gay Erotic Art in Japan Vol. 3 . (c) 田亀源五郎(Tagame Gengoroh) et al I hope to have more chance to see vintage illustrations