The Hun

Bill Schmeling (April 30, 1938 – September 12, 2019), better known by his pen name The Hun, was an American artist active in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, known for his explicit, homoerotic fetish illustrations and comics.

Recurring characters in his comics include Big Sig (a naïve but sexually adventurous, semi-literate young man) and Gohr (a barbarian living in a brutal, post-apocalyptic world). His art is characterized by hyper-masculine characters with exaggerated muscles, nipples, and genitalia. Using the pen name The Hun, he produced series of comics – Hun Comics and Gohr – featuring fantasy sexual adventures of gay men. Stories by Schmeling became regular features in publications such as Meatmen, Drummer, and Handjobs magazine. Schmeling also produced artwork for gay bars and businesses such as Bunkhouse (Los Angeles), Manhole (Chicago), Mineshaft (New York City), and Studstore (San Francisco), as well as commissions for private collectors. Fey-Way Studios also exhibited his work. In 1986, he was featured in Naked Eyes, an artist showcase organized by Olaf Odegaard that highlighted gay men's visual art for the International Gay and Lesbian Archives.

In 1988, Schmeling collaborated with Jack Fritscher to produce two feature-length films for Palm Drive Video that highlighted hundreds of his drawings: The Hun Video Gallery 1: Rainy Night in Georgia and The Hun Video Gallery 2: Chain Gang Bang. In 1998, the Tom of Finland Company published The Hun Book, a collection of his work.

In 2003, the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art featured Schmeling alongside Michael Kirwan, Howard Cruse, Rob Clarke, and Adam (Jack Bozzi) in its Deliciously Depraved exhibit.

Cultural impact and legacy In 1995, Durk Dehner wrote: In a 2023 online exhibit, the foundation wrote:"His artist name (The Hun) personifies the intense subject matter of his work [...] The Hun’s works occupy a unique place among gay erotic artists. He has spearheaded a more intense style of artwork that captures scenes and fantasies often avoided by other artists as well as emphasizes a uniquely grotesque style involving oversized body parts, excess body fluids, and other features on a hyper-sexual scale." The LA&M periodically sells comic reprints and merchandise featuring his art.

Honors & awards

In 1993, Schmeling received the Business of the Year award as part of the Pantheon of Leather Awards. In 1999, Schmeling and Hardy Haberman received the Steve Maidhof Award for National or International Work from the National Leather Association International. In 2002, Schmeling was inducted into the Tom of Finland Foundation's Erotic Artist Hall of Fame. In 2004, Schmeling received the Northwest Regional Award as part of the Pantheon of Leather Awards.