Then I will leave. Yes, your editor needs some vacation. And since I’m the only one running Ilovemags.com, where Destroyer is sold, that means the shop will be down while I’m gone. Which in turn means:

February 5, 2010, is the last day to order any issue of Destroyer!

At least if you want them delivered before my vacation, which might last for a couple of months, but maybe much, much longer.

Downloads will not be affected by my leave, since no physical delivery is involved.

Am I right? Pump up the volume and lean back while waiting for your copy to arrive!

Ladies, it’s time for some news! Good news and bad news if you will:

First of all, this is the brand new issue of Destroyer. The 10th issue! It’s so fresh the paint hasn’t dried yet. In fact, it hasn’t even been applied – as I write this the printing plant’s metal plates are still being engraved. Cyan, magenta, yellow and black plates are filled with the usual Destroyer ingredients: Photos, essays, reviews, interviews – and a couple of surprises!

D10 doesn’t look like anything you’ve seen before – in Destroyer, that is. We’ve redesigned the whole magazine and even increased the font size, which has been a constant demand from you ever since the first issue. Well, see how complaisant we can be!

The biggest surprise is the page run though: We’ve gone up from 52 to 68 pages! The glossy paper is thicker than ever before and the logotype on the cover shines of a special treatment so that you will never forget it … D10 costs 2 euros more than the other Destroyers, but remember this is the double size compared to the premier issue.

As for the content, we’ve dug up a number of “childhood heroes” who we want our readers to (re)discover:

• The most spectacular item is probably a 10 page interview with Pierre Joubert, the French illustrator who created the aesthetics of Boy Scouting. It’s spectacular because monsieur Joubert died in 2002, but we were lucky to meet him before that. The interview in Destroyer has never been published before.
• Will McBride is back! We visited the artist in his studio in Berlin. Together with him we picked out the best photos from his travels through Europe and Asia in the 60s and 70s. Some of these photos have never been published before.
• And we’ve talked to Gisela Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg, the grande old dame of the German gay movement. Mrs Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg became famous through her book on homophobia, Tabu Homosexualität, but she also wrote extensively on homosexual behaviour and pederasty in Melanesian tribes.
• The cover? What can I say but: You gotta have style. And: 10 more pages inside!

So what’s the bad news? Well, as you have probably figured out from the title of this post, or the words on the cover, this is the last issue of Destroyer. Yes, this is the end! To tell you the truth, it’s been my secret plan for quite a while now to end after 10 issues. There are many reasons to quit now, but the two most important are:

• The points have been made, tout simplement. Instead of trying to grow old with dignity, Destroyer chooses the way of an elegant seppuku and hopes that the 10 issues, so loved and so hated, will be enough to make it legendary.
• The second reason is about myself. Destroyer is the first project that I’ve kept running for a whole four years. I’m extremely proud over that, but it’s time to move on now. In the future, my energy will seek other expressions. Which? I don’t know yet, and that feels wonderful.

So there you go! Feel free to comment …

I should add that the print run of D10 is limited to 1000 copies. Buy yours here!

And let the beat rock!

1. Original review by Eric C. Brooks (2008.07.20)
2. Supplemental review by Beert Verstraete (2009.09.61)
3. Response to Mr Verstraete by James Davidson (2009.11.03)
4. Response to Mr Davidson by Kirk Ormand (2009.11.15)
5. A referred review by Thomas K. Hubbard (February 2009)

Destroyer printed a review of Davidson’s book in issue 08 - the reviewer Eva-Carin Gerö was critical. A few quotes:

In his monograph The Greeks and Greek Love, ancient historian James Davidson sets out to do justice to Greek same-sex love the way he sees it, as a complex, multi-faceted phenomenon, polemicizing against the “twisted” theories of Dover, Foucault and followers as marked by “sodomania” – an obsession with issues of sexual dominance and anal penetration. Davidson argues that this is a one-sided, anachronistic view only based on the idiosynchrasies of modern scholars.

Instead, he coins the term “homobesottedness,” defined as a passion and a strong interest between men, in particular for younger men. This permeated Greek culture, though he stresses it was not necessarily sexual, and certainly not necessarily so in the terms of “power penetration” of Dover and Foucault. Davidson wants to show that ancient same-sex love could be both tender, mutual and lasting, even resembling marriage.

[...]

And entertaining as Davidson’s marathons are, his arguments are often highly speculative.

[...]

Davidson sees his research task as as a sort of “archaeology,” but sometimes his interprations get so aery and maverick that one wonders if he’s really serious. Parallels can be drawn to the debate over how to interpret the archaeological findings in Hisarlık/Troy, which raised the question: How freely can you speculate in the fields of history and archaeology, and how do you separate the serious interpretations from Schaumschlägerei designed for controversy?

To all our readers and friends out there: A Brilliant Happy New Year 2010 – non-believers, stand back!

twitter.com/destroyermag

Let’s party!

One step closer to fulfilling this dream, if you have breasts, is a breast binder. T-Kingdom provides plenty of models, and although not all of you will end up looking as good as the model on this picture (but that’s true for all fashion retail), chances are you will feel as good.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Hundreds of members of the gay community are so upset with Adam Lambert’s sexually-charged gay orgy performance on the American Music Awards show that they want him banned from the gay community.

Mr Rodriguez reports that:

A spinoff group of GLAAD known as GLOCK or Gays and Lesbians Opposed to Constant Kissing stated that Lambert’s orgytorial performance set gay marriage back two years.

GLOCK spokesperson Bippy Bouquet said that watching Adam’s performance scared a lot of gay and lesbian couples who were going to tie the knot.

Read the whole story here.

Yes, it’s satire of course. But to be frank I didn’t realize that until the end (I found the article through Google News so I didn’t see the source immediately) – I even googled GLOCK. And that just shows how spot on this satire is.

What do you make of knit graffiti? This statue of a young boy angel can be seen at Mariatorget, Stockholm.

More knit graffiti at Hint.

Yippee! As of today, the latest issue of Destroyer, D9, is available for download as a pdf file, starting at 4.99 euro (7.37 USD) for the standard version or 7.18 euro (10.60 USD) for the high quality version.

Purchase Destroyer 09 as pdf here.

Pdf versions of previous issues of Destroyer are found here.

Enjoy!