Along with artists George Quaintance and Touko Laaksonen ("Tom of Finland")—with whom he became friends—Orejudos' leather-themed art promoted an image of gay men as strong and masculine, as an alternative to the then-dominant stereotype as weak and effeminate.

[2] With his first lover and business partner Chuck Renslow, Orejudos established many landmarks of late-20th-century gay male culture, including the Gold Coast bar, Man's Country bathhouse,[3] the International Mr. Leather competition, Chicago's August White Party,[4] and the magazines Triumph, Rawhide, and Mars.

[6] He signed pen-and-ink drawings done in a slightly different style with Stephen, the English equivalent of his middle name, to imply that the studio employed multiple artists.

[15] He also painted murals for the Gold Coast bar (with help from Chuck Arnett[16]), Man's Country bathhouse, Zolar's, Mineshaft, and Club Baths Kansas City.

[4] In addition to his relationship with Chuck Renslow, in 1969 Orejudos met Robert (Bob) Yuhnke at a leather party in New York.

[1][4] Orejudos contracted pneumonia during travel with Bob in China before joining other members of a Sister City delegation from Boulder for a planned visit to Lhasa, Tibet in 1987.

His typical formats have one or more characters as the brunt of the joke, many times under severe physical torment, all for the sexual gratification of another of his ruffians.

His relaxed mastery of figurative cartoon illustration, along with a superb ability for gutter dialogue, produced the kind of stories that we were always wishing for when reading Flash Gordon and Spider Man, but never got until Etienne/Stephen entered our lives.

[5]In 2006, historian Jack Fritscher wrote:[33]"If there is a gay Mount Rushmore of four great pioneer pop artists, the faces would be Chuck Arnett, Etienne, A. Jay, and Tom of Finland.

[34] That same year, Dazed magazine reported:[34]The reason Orejudos’ sexed-up leather boys are still being celebrated today is that they flipped the assumption that heterosexuality and masculinity are always linked.

The men in his illustrations are hyper-muscular, their arms inflated to gigantic proportions and their dicks big enough to destroy even the most experienced sexual partner.