By A Manly Guest Contributor
Editor’s note: This post was a collaboration between AoM and Sam Gambino, a manly artist in his own right. My first exposure to art was in grade school when we had “art time.” My teachers were kind, middle-aged ladies who taught me to trace my hand and add colorful feathers to make a whimsical Thanksgiving turkey to take home to mom and dad. I finger-painted and made colorful Chinese lanterns. There were always big, bold, primary colors. The canvas of choice? Construction paper. While I enjoyed creating this simple, primitive art, I knew that there had to be more to it…that there had to be “real” art out there beyond just my amateur creations. I then saw the Keep On Truckin’ image with those struttin’, free-wheelin’ bald guys, each with a huge left foot. There was a funny, “cool dude” vibe to the image that I liked. 
From that point on, I started looking for cool “man art” in everything from TV Guide to humorous Wacky Packages and MAD magazine. As time passed, my search progressed into a quest for different representations of manly art. I noticed the artwork featured in old Perry Mason episodes. It was back there on the wall behind some guy who was either holding a glass of Scotch or lighting a cigarette with the clank of a Zippo. Sometimes, there was violence and despair in the slashes of paint on those abstract pieces. Ironically, though, the finished piece ended as one of sheer elegance and sophistication. I soon realized that manly art didn’t necessarily have to look like a caveman’s dinosaur sketch on a rock wall. I also liked the dark, moody paintings that were featured at the beginning of Rod Serling’s Night Gallery. I guess the darker subject matter represented the “snakes, snails, and puppy-dog tails” aspect of art for me. I later got my hands on some old Man’s Life, Popular Mechanics, and Field and Stream magazines from the 1950s. The illustrations depicted guys who were fishing, hunting, or in gut-wrenching peril out in the wild. With all of these images burned into my mind, my own interpretation of masculine art began to take shape.
I came to realize that in my case, masculine art could encompass one or more of the following: humor, danger, despair, violence, aggression (in depiction or technique), manly activities, and anything else of interest to a man. There was also sophistication, elegance, and beauty. So, who’s to say what constitutes manly art? Below we’ve shared more than a dozen artists, both classic and modern, famous and less well known, some of which have shaped my own art, and all of which have a special quality that Brett and I feel connects with the masculine spirit. George Bellows (1882 – 1925) Bellows was a member of the “Ashcan School” — a group of artists who sought to realistically portray the working-class neighborhoods of New York City. Bellows most famously applied this gritty realism to boxing matches — showcased with a dark atmosphere into which the fighters had been placed with bright, forceful brushstrokes.  “Dempsey and Firpo” depicts the historic fight between Jack Dempsey and Luis Angel Firpo in 1923. At the end of the first round Firpo knocked Dempsey out of the ring with a right to his chin.  “Club Night” LeRoy Neiman (1921 – 2012) LeRoy Neiman first decided to be an artist while serving as a cook during World War II. When he wasn’t making pots of mashed potatoes, he painted murals on the kitchen walls, as well as on sets for Red Cross shows. After the war, he became one of the most popular artists in America, known for his colorful, impressionistic take on what he called scenes from the “good life” — oftentimes athletic events, but also leisure time and celebrities as well.  “Frank Sinatra”  “Homage to Ali” mingles color and texture with raw power, impact, and strength. Neiman successfully depicted pure masculinity using the most elegant of brush and palette strokes. Jake Weidmann (1984 -)
We featured Jake Weidmann in our So You Want My Job series last fall, and his interview easily became the most popular of all time. Clearly we were not alone in admiring Jake’s disciplined quest to become one of only eleven “Master Penmen” in the world. Jake’s beautiful art combines his exquisite penmanship with evocative imagery — his pieces are truly one of a kind.  A 16th century poem of Eleanor Perry-Smith, rendered in Spencerian script, whispers out an ancient sailor’s tale. 
Thomas Moran (1837 – 1926) Thomas Moran was a member of the Hudson River School, a movement of artists who strove to capture one of the manliest of themes: the sublimity and majesty of nature. Moran’s paintings of the West pulsated with the energy of exploration and discovery, as well as the feeling of man’s smallness besides such awesome natural features. The inspiration that such scenes can impart is palpable.  “Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone” — American landscape painters helped inspire the movement to preserve the most beautiful parts of the country's wilderness and to create a national park system in order to do so. The sketches made by Thomas Moran when he accompanied a geological survey team into the then unknown Yellowstone area were later used to convince Congress to turn Yellowstone into a national park. Roy Lichtenstein (1923 – 1997) Lichtenstein was an American pop artist who became a leading figure of the new art movement of the 60s. He drew inspiration from comics and advertising.  His most famous work, “Whaam” was taken from DC Comics’ “All American Men of War,” published in 1962.  Lichtenstein took one of the simplest of hardware store items and turned it into art for his painting “Electric Cord.” It’s so simple, bold and shameless that no background color is needed. Interestingly, “Electric Cord” was lost for 42 years after its owner sent it out to be cleaned and it never returned. It was just discovered in a warehouse last year.
C.E. Monroe
Monroe’s art appeared on numerous covers of Field and Stream magazine during the 1950s and 1960s. He also created classic ad art for Winchester rifles and Savage Arms during those years. His work respectfully depicts men at work and play during a period of the 20th century when men were unapologetically depicted as not only strong, but as living examples of class and style. 
Frederic Remington (1861 – 1909) The preeminent artist of the Old West, Frederic Remington is most famous for his depictions of cowboys and Native Americans. Unlike his contemporaries, he focused on the men and animals of the West, rather than the landscape. He also painted military scenes; commanders of the Western Army would invite him into the field to do their portraits. He even went along with Theodore Roosevelt, an admirer of his work, as a war correspondent during the Spanish-American War, and captured the Rough Riders charge up San Juan Hill.  “Dash for Timber”  “Ridden Down” Diego Rivera (1886 – 1957) Rivera was a controversial Mexican artist — both praised for his rich, storytelling murals and frescoes, and criticized for his left-leaning politics. He often depicted the heroism and struggle of the worker, and preferred public murals as his medium for their ability to bring art to the masses.  Rivera considered one of his finest works to be “Detroit Industry.” A series of 27 fresco panels, covering 447 square yards, it was completed with the support of Henry Ford between 1932-1933 for the Detroit Institute of Arts. In the epic mural, he expertly captured men of differing skills and ethnicity all toiling together in a cavernous automobile factory to achieve the same end result: putting America on wheels and down the road. One can almost smell the oil, soot, and metal dust when standing in front of this huge, striking snapshot of a day in the life of 1930s industrial America. 
Ernie Barnes (1938 – 2009)
Ernie Barnes was one interesting cat. Not too many men become both an NFL football player and a renowned professional artist. Growing up under Jim Crow laws in North Carolina, Barnes had to study art only in books; his race barred him from museums. Bullied in high school, he got involved in athletics when a masonry teacher and weightlifting coach encouraged him to build his body. By senior year he was the captain of the football team, and went on to play in college and then professionally for the Colts, Titans, Chargers, and Broncos. He would sometimes get in trouble with his coaches for sketching during team meetings and even timeouts during games. After his playing days were through in 1965, his art finally took center stage — the league actually decided to keep him on as a salaried player, but commissioned him to do paintings rather than be on the field. Barnes’ art career took off, and he spent the next decades doing sports-themed pieces, depictions of life in black communities, and even album covers.  Barnes credited his football playing career with greatly influencing his work; during games he was hyper-aware of how his body was moving and took notes on the feelings, attitudes, and expressions these movements created alone and as he collided with others. In “Sunday’s Heroes” he depicts determination, danger, competition, and camaraderie, all with paint and brush. The characters actually appear to be moving on the canvas.  When Barnes was eighteen he visited the recently de-segregated North Carolina Museum of Art. When he asked the docent where he could find “paintings by Negro artists,” she replied, “Your people don't express themselves that way.” Twenty-two years later he was given a solo exhibition at the same museum, hosted by the governor of North Carolina. Nicholas Coleman (1978 – ) Nicholas Coleman is a modern artist I discovered because he follows the Art of Manliness on Twitter. I really dig his work, which aims to preserve the history of the American West and reminds me of my grandfather. Coleman says he works to give his pieces a sense of realism as well as a “certain amount of spontaneity and a slight impressionistic feel…that lets the viewer participate in the work.” He endeavors to create “a connection between his paintings and the observer by invoking a mood that the viewer can walk into.”
Jim Flora (1914 – 1998)
Jim Flora was a children’s book author and illustrator, a commercial illustrator, and a fine artist, but is most well known for inking the covers of cool jazz and classical LPs in the 1940s and ’50s. He infused fun, mischief, music, and movement into his work with playful abandon.  This piece is from his “Dig You Later” series of illustrations created in 1955. Each illustration features a “dude” who’s having a ball while creating the coolest sounds around with the jazzy instrument of his own choosing.  Both pieces used with permission. © The Heirs of James Flora; courtesy JimFlora.com. C.M. Coolidge (1844 – 1934) How could a list of manly art be complete without some dogs playing poker? Commissioned in 1903 by Brown & Bigelow to advertise cigars, the sixteen-part series of oil paintings was done by C.M. Coolidge, an artist with little formal training. The pieces feature anthropomorphized dogs smoking cigars and drinking while playing high-stakes poker. The painting “A Friend in Need” even depicts “cheating for charity.” Should a man compromise his character to help the underdog? Evidently, Coolidge thought so. Either way, this series is timeless and isn’t expected to fade away for at least another one hundred and nine years.  “A Bold Bluff”  “A Friend in Need”
Vincent van Gogh (1853 – 1890)
The famous Van Gogh may not be the first artist that leaps to mind when you think of manly art, but his style had rough beauty that was both eloquent and often rather masculine.  “Skull With Burning Cigarette”  Van Gogh’s subject matter covered all bases, but one of my all-time favorites of his is “The Night Cafe.” There are beautiful brush strokes and colors, but it’s unmistakably masculine. I can almost smell the whiskey and pipe tobacco when I look into this painting with its parlor of tables and billiard balls waiting for the break.
Norm Saunders (1907 – 1989)
Saunders illustrated for pulp magazines, comic books, trading cards, crime novels, and men’s adventure magazines, most notably beginning in the 1930s, and continuing through the 1960s. He was a master at depicting a moment of desperation or distress between shady or campy characters, with his work being marked by a masculine and even risque edge (he was known for illustrating beautiful dames). Saunders could arguably be categorized as the “Mickey Spillane” of the art world. Robert Williams (1943 – ) Williams is classified as an “underground” or lowbrow artist who got his start as an illustrator, oil painter, and cartoonist in the 1960s. Having been kicked out of school in the ninth grade, he headed to California where he would end up rubbing shoulders with other anti-establishment cartoonists like R. Crumb and become immersed in the state’s hot-rod culture. His car-themed pieces tend to tell an irreverent story of speed, danger, and sometimes, revenge. Robert Wood (1889 – 1979)
English-born, when Robert Wood emigrated the United States, he criss-crossed the continent, looking for beautiful landscapes to capture. He was a prolific artist, sometimes finishing a painting every day, and had completed over 5,000 works by the time of his death. His beautiful landscapes were some of the most reproduced of the 20th century. His seascapes can be moody and unsettling at times with waves crashing under a threatening sky. However dramatic, much of Wood’s work has a bold, aggressive beauty that sets it apart from the work of other landscape artists. 
Arnold Friberg (1913 – 2010) Friberg studied with Norman Rockwell at the Grand Central School of Art and his paintings have the same kind of idealized richness that the latter was famous for, but with a little more realism and ruggedness. During WWII, he was given the chance to be a captain and stay stateside illustrating recruitment posters, but decided to go to the front instead, though he still employed his artistic skills there in drawing maps. He also spent three years working on the pre-visualization posters for Cecille DeMille’s The Ten Commandments. We didn’t hear back from the Friberg estate with permission to reproduce a couple of his paintings in time for the publication of this article, but you can see a whole bunch of his work on this article we did a few years ago dedicated to him. Sam Gambino As an artist myself, I like to use my love of classic ad art to take a humorous “jab” at men and their weaknesses, egos, insecurities, and/or shortcomings. Frequently using unattractive characters from obscure pop culture sources, I look for humor in depicting them as common men who are dealing with normal issues of the average joe. This condition can be seen in the painting “Insecurity”. I also have a definite appreciation for still life art that centers around classic and vintage objects of the classic male: cigars, vintage ashtrays, playing cards, even vintage matchbooks, to name a few. “The Back Room at the Belmar” is one such example. What are your favorite examples of manly art? Tell us below! 
  
By Brett & Kate McKay
This article is part of a series that studies the life of Jack London, and especially his display of the Ancient Greek concept of thumos. "There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive. This ecstasy, this forgetfulness of living, comes to the artist, caught up and out of himself in a sheet of flame; it comes to the soldier, war-mad on a stricken field and refusing quarter; and it came to Buck, leading the pack, sounding the old wolf-cry, straining after the food that was alive and that fled swiftly before him through the moonlight. He was sounding the deeps of his nature, and of the parts of his nature that were deeper than he, going back into the womb of Time. He was mastered by the sheer surging of life, the tidal wave of being, the perfect joy of each separate muscle, joint, and sinew in that it was everything that was not death, that it was aglow and rampant, expressing itself in movement, flying exultantly under the stars and over the face of dead matter that did not move." –Jack London, The Call of the Wild
Jack London's most popular novel, The Call of the Wild, is a tale of a domesticated dog, Buck, who is thrust into the wilderness. He is forced to learn the brutal rules of a new world and how to mush mightily in front of a dogsled, and eventually breaks away to become the leader of a wild wolf pack. Jack said it was a story of "the dominant primordial beast," and as such it is his story as well. Like Buck, Jack would pass through a crucible of difficulty, learn to thrive and delight in the harness of discipline, and harken to the deep-seated call to become the best of the best. He would outwork everyone else to earn a position at the head of the pack through skill and prowess and fight. Jack's fight began soon after he returned from the Klondike. After months of sitting in the "White Silence" of the Great North, pondering what he wanted out of life, he had returned home committed to either becoming a writer or perishing in the attempt. Forging a Life of Discipline 
London sat down at his desk, pulled out his old typewriter, and resumed the life of iron-clad discipline he had embraced while studying for his collegiate entrance exams, which, if you'll remember, consisted of 5am wake-up calls and 19-hours of daily toil. Though he had been living in the wilderness for the last year, Jack did not chafe at returning to being holed up in a room from sunup to sundown. One of the things London's friends marveled at was this great dichotomy of his character – how he could take his unfettered spirit, his fierce thumos, and channel it at will into a rigidly disciplined, unwavering drive for success. As his friend Anna Strunksy put it: “His standard of life was high. He for one would have the happiness of power, of genius, of love, and the vast comforts and ease of wealth. Napoleon and Nietzsche had a part in him…and it was by the force of his Napoleonic temperament that he conceived the idea of incredible success, and had the will to achieve it. Sensitive and emotional as his nature was, he forbade himself any deviation from the course that would lead him to his goal. He systematized his life. Such colossal energy, and yet…He lived by rule. Law, Order and Restraint was the creed of this vital, passionate youth.”
Yet while London was an ardent "disciple of regular work,” this did not mean that such self-mastery came naturally to him. "Temperamentally," Jack said, "I am not only careless and irregular, but melancholy." "Still," he added, "I have fought both down." One way he mastered his penchant for irregularity was establishing a fixed goal of writing at least a thousand words every day, six days a week (sometimes on Sundays and holidays too). He wrote to a friend: "I am sure a man can turn out more and much better in the long run, working this way, than if he works by fits and starts." London would keep this habit of writing 1,000 words a day for the rest of his life, no matter his physical or mental conditions – whether he was tired, sick, hung-over, traveling aboard a ship rocking violently in a storm, vacationing in Hawaii, or covering a war in Japan. It especially did not matter whether he was feeling "inspired" on a given day; London thought the idea of creative inspiration was bunkum – the complaint of its absence an excuse of the lazy and cowardly. Success in writing, or any other vocation, London argued, was all about effort and willpower – "digging" as he liked to put it: “A strong will can accomplish anything…There is no such thing as inspiration and very little genius. Dig, blooming under opportunity, results in what appears to be the former, and certainly makes possible the development of what original modicum of the latter one may possess. Dig is a wonderful thing, and will move more mountains than faith ever dreamed of. In fact, Dig should be the legitimate father of all self-faith.”
A large part of Jack's own digging and refinement process involved studying the work of other great writers (Rudyard Kipling in particular) with an eye towards improving his own. Besides developing one's philosophy of life, Jack considered this kind of study of one's "mentors" the second great key to success in life. He described his own process through his fictional alter ego, Martin Eden: "Reading the works of men who had arrived, he noted every result achieved by them, and worked out the tricks by which they had been achieved — the tricks of narrative, of exposition, of style, the points of view, the contrasts, the epigrams; and of all these he made lists for study. He did not ape. He sought principles. He drew up lists of effective and fetching mannerisms, till out of many such, culled from many writers, he was able to induce the general principle of mannerism, and, thus equipped, to cast about for new and original ones of his own, and to weigh and measure and appraise them properly. In similar manner he collected lists of strong phrases, the phrases of living language, phrases that bit like acid and scorched like flame, or that glowed and were mellow and luscious in the midst of the arid desert of common speech. He sought always for the principle that lay behind and beneath. He wanted to know how the thing was done; after that he could do it for himself. He was not content with the fair face of beauty. He dissected beauty in his crowded little bedroom laboratory…and, having dissected, and learned the anatomy of beauty, he was nearer being able to create beauty itself."
After London had soaked his brain with the elements of great writing he admired, he set about trying to create his own. Jack sought to develop a different style from the popular fiction of the time — work that was full of the "the fancies and beauties of imagination…an impassioned realism, shot through with human aspiration and faith." He endeavored to capture "life as it was, with all its spirit-groping and soul-reaching left in." Day after day London refined his style and dug through his brain, pulling out memories of the raging waves of the Pacific and the harsh cold of the Klondike. He feverishly banged out essays, articles, poems, short stories, and serialized fiction on his rickety typewriter. Except for "breaks" to visit the library, “he wrote prolifically, intensely, from morning till night, and late at night." Just as Buck learned to pull sleds in the Klondike, Jack "worked faithfully in the harness, for the toil had become a delight to him." "Life was pitched high" he wrote in Martin Eden. "The joy of creation that is supposed to belong to the gods was his." The Sting of Rejection Unfortunately, the joy he sent out into the world was not reciprocated. Each time he placed a new piece inside an envelope and sent it off to newspapers, magazines, and journals around the country, his heart would swell with hopes that it would be accepted. And each day as he opened his mailbox to see yet another round of rejection notices, his heart would sink. One editor even took the time to write that the quality of his work was such that he really ought to find a different profession. Jack would try to shake off the constant rebuffs, place the rejection notices in a file and the returned manuscripts in a pile of "retired" work, and then begin pounding at his typewriter once more. Yet, months of rejections coupled with his merciless work schedule slowly began to take their toll – exhausting him both mentally and physically. His skin grew pallid from a lack of fresh air and sunlight. He had to pawn many of his possessions to buy food, and still found himself in debt with the grocer. His cheekbones became more pronounced and his muscles withered as he tried to get by eating as little as possible. His energy and optimism dropped along with his weight, and at times he felt he should give up altogether — not just writing, but life itself. What depressed him most was how lonely he felt – he had no one to help him with his writing or even to simply offer encouragement. As he wrote in a letter to a friend: “Nor has anybody ever understood. The whole thing has been by itself. Duty said ‘Do not go on; go to work.’ So said others, though they would not say it to my face. Everybody looked askance; though they did not speak, I knew what they thought. Not a word of approval, but much of disapproval. If only some one had said, ‘I understand.’ From the hunger of my childhood, cold eyes have looked upon me, or questioned, or snickered and sneered. What hurt above all was that they were some of my friends—not professed but real friends. I have calloused my exterior and receive the strokes as though they were not; as to how they hurt, no one knows but my own soul and me… for good or ill, it shall be as it has been—alone."
In spite of all this failure, and as we have seen, true to his character, London would poke at the embers of his determination and find the will to continue striving. He concluded the letter above by saying: "So be it. The end is not yet. If I die I shall die hard, fighting to the last, and hell shall receive no fitter inmate than myself."
Success Begins to Make Itself Known Still, as a hedge against the potential of failure, and to please the family and friends who told him to quit this fruitless writing business and get a "real" job, he took the civil service exams and passed with flying colors. The manager of the post office called to offer Jack a position as a mail carrier. London was conflicted. He had just turned 23 and his friends were settling down, getting married, and starting good professions. Being a mailman would bring decent, steady pay, and his family needed money. He considered continuing to write, but doing so just as a hobby instead. Most sobering of all, he had to face the fact that in his five months of trying, and in sending out almost 50 manuscripts, he had only succeeded in having one piece published, and that in a magazine for children. But his mother, surprisingly, encouraged him to turn the job down – to finally take a chance on his own dreams after years of dutifully supporting the family. They would get by, she told him. So he rejected the offer. London would have no plan B, no back-up day job if success was not soon forthcoming. He would put all of his chips into becoming a writer. At last, six months after returning from the Klondike, Jack received news that his gamble might just pay off. The Overland Monthly agreed to publish London's "To the Man on Trail," and then also accepted “The White Silence." Jack's fresh, virile style began to attract notice. "I would rather have written 'The White Silence,'" the literary critic of The San Francisco Chronicle confessed, "than anything that has appeared in fiction in the last ten years." The Overland Monthly requested six more of Jack's articles. They'd paid just $7.50 per piece for them, but as the premier literary journal of the West – one that was read by many movers and shakers in the publishing industry – the deal promised beneficial exposure. London's real break came in November 1899, when the Atlantic Monthly decided to publish "An Odyssey of the North." This piece broke the dam, and at last the publishers came calling. London signed a deal with Houghton Mifflin to put together a collection of his short stories: The Son of the Wolf. After facing so many rejections, the positive reviews brought the sweet music of vindication to Jack's ears: "These stories are realism, without the usual falsity of realism," praised The New York Times. "You cannot get away from the fascination of these tales," The San Francisco Chronicle effused. The public loved Jack's punchy, muscular prose, and felt as though his stories stirred something long dormant within them. As they read of his protagonists pitting their mettle against the elements of nature, they felt their own call to the wild – a keen desire to have an adventure themselves. Finally, A Dream Realized In three years of "studying immensely and intensely," Jack had made himself into a full-time writer, and more opportunities came his way. A month after The Son of the Wolf was released, Cosmopolitan (which at this time was a well-regarded magazine for the whole family) offered him a plumb position as editor and staff writer. London turned it down without hesitation. Like Buck, after gathering strength in the discipline of the harness, he desired to exercise that strength with minimal restraint and full independence. As he wrote to a friend, "Of course I shall not accept it. I do not wish to be bound…I want to be free, to write of what delights me, whensoever and wheresoever it delights me. No office work for me; no routine; no doing this set task and that set task. No man over me." 
Over the next few years, Jack continued to sleep but five hours a night ("There was so much to learn, so much to be done… I blessed the man who invented alarm clocks") and his profile continued to rise as he successfully published numerous articles and several short story collections and novels. His books sold decently, but were not blockbusters. Stratospheric success would arrive with the 1903 publication of The Call of the Wild. Jack had intended it to be another of his short stories, "but it got away from me, and instead of 4,000 words it ran 32,000 before I could call a halt." The novel became an instant classic. Its story reverberated through a society anxious that it had become too refined, too civilized, too domesticated and had lost its rugged, pioneering spirit. Such a theme has pricked the hearts of each succeeding modern generation, and the book has been in print continuously for over a century, sold millions of copies, and become the most widely read of the American classics. Now 27 years old, Jack London had reached the pinnacle of the literary world. By venturing more and fearing less, by working longer and harder than anyone else, he had overcome his humble past and risen head and shoulders above his peers. By harnessing his thumos, and embracing his identity as the lone wolf, he had made himself stronger and more powerful than the average man. The same thrill of dominance that enlivened Buck coursed through him as well: "When the long winter nights come on and the wolves follow their meat into the lower valleys, he may be seen running at the head of the pack through the pale moonlight or glimmering borealis, leaping gigantic above his fellows, his great throat a-bellow as he sings a song of the younger world, which is the song of the pack."
_________________________________ Sources: Wolf: The Lives of Jack London by James L. Haley Jack London: A Life by Alex Kershaw The Book of Jack London, Volumes 1 & 2 by Charmian London (free in the public domain) Complete Works of Jack London (all of London's works are available free in the public domain, or you can download his hundreds of writings all in one place for $3, which is just plain awesome) 
  
By Brett & Kate McKay
Welcome to the first day of the Art of Manliness Month of Sandwiches! A few weeks ago I published my suggestions on upgrading the humble bologna sandwich. At the end of the post I asked readers to leave a comment with their favorite sandwich recipe. 483 of you deliciously delivered. Jeremy (AoM’s newish editor and community manager) and I then combed through all of the sandwich submissions and picked 20 that we’re going to highlight during April. Each weekday this month you’ll find a new delicious sandwich recipe complete with photo instructions on how to construct it. I’m really looking forward to this. I’ve already made a few of these user-submitted sandwiches and all of them have been fantastic. Hopefully you’ll glean some new ideas to add to your sammich repertoire. At the end of the series we plan to compile all the sandwich submissions into an epic man-sandwich recipe book. A note to all those who shared a sandwich I’m going to be highlighting: I know I won’t make it as well as you, with all your exact signature touches. This is just one guy’s first-time go at it. Today’s Sandwich: The Breakfast Reuben by Dan W. I love breakfast and I love Reubens, so I had high hopes for this sandwich. Did Dan W. let me down? Let’s find out. The Ingredients  - Rye bread. Marbled is Dan’s preferred rye of choice, but he says dark or light rye work great, too. I couldn’t find any marbled rye, so I just went with dark.
- Swiss cheese or emmentaler (I used Swiss)
- 1 egg
- Pastrami, corn beef, and roast beef (I just used a bit of pastrami and corn beef)
- Horseradish sauce
- Ketchup
- Sauerkraut
Step 1: Fry Your Egg  This is what makes the Breakfast Reuben a Breakfast Reuben. Fry up an over-medium egg. Dan suggests keeping the yolk a little runny. Don’t know how to cook an over-medium egg? Check out our comprehensive guide on how to cook eggs. Step 2: Place Cheese and Egg on Piece of Rye Bread  I over-cooked the egg a little. Oh well. Step 3: Layer Meats and Kraut  Add your pastrami, corn beef, and roast beef. Be as generous as you want. Top it off with a big heap of sauerkraut. Step 4: Add Ketchup and Horseradish Sauce  Add your “Russian Sauce” by squirting some ketchup and horseradish sauce on top of your glorious pile of cheese, egg, meat, and kraut. I could have taken the extra step of mixing the ketchup and horseradish sauce together, but I was hungry. Step 5: Top with Bread Ain’t she a beaut? Step 6: Eat! 
Taster’s Thoughts This is a solid sandwich. Savory and filling. The addition of a fried egg to a traditional Reuben sandwich is a deft touch. Despite being called the “Breakfast Reuben,” I probably wouldn’t eat this sandwich for breakfast. It’s too salty for my tastes to start my day off with. It’s a great sammy for a lazy Saturday lunch, though. Two thumbs up! 
  
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