Most Popular mitchmen article of 2020 is a big surprise!

The big surprise this year is the sudden appearance at No 1 of the 'Index of Etienne Articles at mitchmen'. It scored 9 times as many hits this year as it had in the previous three put together, most of it in the few weeks between early November and 15^th Dec after which visits abruptly plummeted. I've not been able to trace the source of these visitors, it's probably another blogger temporarily displaying a link. The interest seems to be in the medical, headline image not the contents of the index as it doesn't seem to have resulted in a great uplift in visits to any of the articles listed there. I've chosen an image from the Etienne series 'Truckstop' to headline this post.

Below that (and a considerable way behind on hit count) it was business as usual with IFNB and Milking Factories shuffling positions at 2, 3 and 4. There are three other Milking Factories in the top 20 making 5 in all, one more than last year (which I prematurely dubbed as 'The Year of the Milking Factory' !). The phenomenal popularity of this series is not hard to understand, the mixture of sexual excitement, bondage and control is the essence of S&M fetish.

At 5 & 6 come two other articles whose popularity has often baffled me:- 'Homoeros Gallery' (a guide to accessing that artist's work ) and secondly the equivalent of this MPP article from 2018, when IFNB topped the table. Unlike the puzzling Etienne post at No 1, traffic to these two articles has been consistent throughout the year, but all these posts have memorable, headline images

In a way, Homoeros can claim to be the top individual artist overall this year since he had two other articles in the top 20, one featuring crucifixion, the other being the first article in the series reviewing his work, which is the default starting point for new readers. This is one less article than last year but he has captured equally good positions in the table (5, 12 and 15 compared with 2019 when he secured 6, 12, 16 and 20^thplaces).  

To look at other charts for earlier years click on the MPP label at the foot of this post.

The entries this year are evenly spread between Traditional drawing styles, photo-manipulators and Computer aided artists (including renderers). There are no pure photography articles although I continue to post these as part of my 'magazine' format and simply to share sexy images!

Etienne's success seems to indicate that the 'old school' of traditional art drawings are far from losing their appeal but a few more of the 'greats' covered in the 'A-Z of Fetish Artists' series dropped out of the top 20 this year. The ever-popular Cavelo is still hanging on at 9^th position, however, with Jotto at 17 and Mike Carcel at 19. My own 'Christmas Criminal' story which is also traditionally drawn, just clung on at 20. This article effectively carried the flag for spanking again this year and I was delighted when Mark featured one of it's illustrations in his series of classic spanking art re-creations at Jockspank.

The photo-manipulators this year are boosted by the arrival of a pioneer in the genre with 'The Art of Baron' (published in 2014) appearing in this chart for the first time. Another long established artist, Amalaric, also makes his debut at 16. They join Priapus, IFNB and Chirenon.

Computer-aided artists are well represented by Homoeros and by artists in the Milking Factory series but the 'new wave' CG artists that I have been featuring more and more at the blog are championed by BrosFate's impressive arrival, I hope to see more of them making their mark on this table next year.

Overall, visits to the mitchmen blog fell slightly this year with a pronounced dip between February and September. Presumably that was due to the virus draining erotic impulses although I had imagined that boredom would have produced the opposite effect! The drop was partly offset by a surge in the last 3 months of the year which saw the monthly totals in November and December reach new record highs, led by the 'Etienne effect' and great interest in the Amalaric series. Overall, hit scores in the top 20 rose slightly but the entry cut-off at 1722 was a tad less than last year's 1741.

Somewhat surprisingly, most years since the blog started in 2008 are represented in the table with BrosFate bringing in 2020 with his sparkling entrance at 10. His score of 3407 hits was a record for a mitchmen new article but it's still just a fraction of those at the top of the chart. Notice there is also a sizeable gap between 5^thand 6^th places. Even if the No 1 entry is discounted as an anomaly, it's clear that some of the older articles consistently record high levels of visitors, year after year. That's something that I take great pride in.

This effect is partly attributable to the mitchmen 'Index of Artists' feature which recorded 11,948 hits in 2020. This was slightly down from 13,951 hits in 2019, but it still registered enough hits to have taken second place if I included it in the general top 20 table. I'm glad visitors are finding the index useful and hope it will lead many more newcomers to a fantastic heritage of gay art they didn't know about.

Given the dominance of the Milking Factory and Homoeros, multi-part series, with 9 articles between them in the top 20, I'm also showing this year, the next 10 articles in the table which might otherwise have made the higher positions.

There are a couple of ejectees from the 2019 top 20 in this list but most are new entrants, the majority being from 2020 and already discussed in my previous article 'Amalaric and BrosFate battle to be top new post of 2020'. However there are a couple of other interesting quirks in the list with the A-Z article on Facchini popping up at 25, no doubt driven by the transfer of the Exhibition of his work from the now defunct Yahoo! Group to this blog. Last but not least is one of the mitchmen 'War Comics' articles at 30. The hidden and not-so-hidden erotic potential of this imagery has much occupied me in recent years, so I'm glad someone else likes it!

The casualty list from the top 30 also makes interesting reading.