Customer Reviews

It's a Man's World: Men's Adventure Magazines, The Postwar Pulps

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Who would expect to see such a lavish all-color book about this down-market corner of American publishing, not me but I'm interested in visual popular culture and `It's a Man's World' is really quite a fascinating study of these `slicks', produced from 1950 to 1970. They were edited by a small group of men who put out over six thousand issues of about a hundred and thirty titles. The leading publishers, Magazine Management went bust in 1975 and this particular male market slid predictably into soft porn.

The book rightly concentrates on the garish, dazzling covers, fortunately they all retain the logos and unbelievable cover lines and there are hundreds to pore over. Each cover (many shown life size) has a caption with the publishing date and where known, the artist's name. Leading illustrators like Mort Kunstler, Norm Eastman and Norman Saunders have a magnificent showing through all the pages. These covers were the USP of this particular market, a few of the magazines inside pages are shown and it seems clear to me that most of the editorial budgets were spent on the cover art. No matter what the title, it would sell better if some female, who always seemed unable to do up all the buttons on her blouse, was in a distressing situation just about to be rescued by a nearby white hunk.

One chapter, The Sadistic Burlesque, covers the titles that are most sought after today. The paintings show sadistic extremes, mostly by Nazis or Commies, yet they were displayed on newsstands across the nation to be bought by any male. Perhaps for obvious reasons many of these covers have no artist credit. The cover lines are equally suggestive, the February 1963 issue of `Men Today' promised `Brides of agony in the cave of horror', `Soft maidens for the monster devil fish' and `Love captive of Castro's execution squad harlots'. Needless to say all the `true' articles in these magazines were made up.

I found `It's a Man's World' covered the post war pulps in detail and certainly worth getting if you are curious about popular art and culture but also have a look at Men's Adventure Magazines this is a super chunky book with over a thousand covers in color and because of this I think it is much better than 'It's a Man's World'. Now that these titles are (fortunately) gone men can read about themselves in The Von Hoffmann Bros.' Big Damn Book of Sheer Manliness and I doubt that the male authors of this book would be seen dead reading the `armpit slicks', they would be too busy being real men.

***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover.

I've collected old magazines all of my life. I first saw issues of the Post-War Men's magazines depicted in this book when I was a kid in the early sixties. The covers struck me as the ne plus ultra of lurid adventure illustration. Classic paperback and pulp covers were often outrageous, but the Men's mags trumped them by being so far over-the-top as to be impervious to parody. Every mockery of macho adventure literature you've ever seen falls far short of the extremes routinely depicted on these covers.
Today the magazines are insanely hard to find, and often disappointing when finally located. The stories within the wild covers are generally puffed-up true-life stories with little to interest the modern reader. The only real reason to get them is their blindingly vivid covers.
And now you can get hundreds of them, lovingly reproduced in this book. I'm stunned to find the post-war Men's mags, surely the lowest ghetto of over-the-counter magazines, given such a thorough and glossy examination. Images are grouped by topic, often creating an effect of mingled humor and astonishment, as when a two-page spread shows a collection of different covers, each depicting a shirtless, battered he-man being attacked by a different species of vermin. Leeches, bats, rats, lizards, lobsters (!), and finally a full page shot of a wide-eyed, unshaven face covered with ants the size of Twinkies. And the images are arresting not only in their lurid extremes, but in how shockingly well-rendered most of them are.
There is nothing else like the Men's mags of the post-war era. And there is no other book like this one. This is a remarkable document of American publishing's most outrageous period. I never thought I'd see anything like it.

Continuing with the exploration of culture, this is another jewel in the Feral House crown. There are only a few interviews, and they are rather outdated. Nonetheless, if you're a collector, this should be an invaluable reference. Lots and lots of reproductions of covers and some interior illustrations. Also, there is a small guide/checklist at the end to get you started.

Wow what a great book. The artwork of these old pulps is exquisite. I loved paging through this volume and soaking in all the great images. I do wish they had included more excerpts from the text portion of the pulps, but the outrageous cover art was entertaining in itself. I highly recommend this book.

This is an extraordinary, extreme and titillating collection. Nazi sexploitation at it's finest. Not for feminist's or the politically correct. This thick and handsomely printed book will be the crowning glory on any cultured perverts coffee table.

-JUST ORDER THIS BOOK NOW! For anyone who doesn't know, this book is the first ever to cover the "lurid men's adventure magazine" genre. These are what the classic Pulp magazines of the 30's and 40's "evolved" into in the postwar/communist paranoia driven 50's and 60's.

The covers generally depicted some twisted variation on Nazis torturing lingerie models, lingerie models getting revenge on the Nazis, he-man battles to the death or deadly animal attacks (a personal favorite of mine is the "weasels ripped my flesh" cover that would inspire the title and cover art for the Frank Zappa album of the same name 20 years later).

This full-color book is CRAMMED to the gills with cover repros, with quite a few photographed from THE ORIGINAL ART! But the thing that really impressed me about this book was that it goes beyond mere cover images and explores the behind-the-scenes history of these magazines with interviews with some of the editors, writers and cover illustrators who actually created these kitsch masterpieces! There's even an art tutorial by Norm Saunders (the guy who painted the original Mars Attacks trading cards)!!

Trust me, if you like bizarre art or are interested in the dark underbelly of Americana, you can't go wrong with this book. I can absolutely say it is the coolest thing I own! I only wish there were more stars to give it...

These magazines were considered the absolute bottom of the barrel when they were published. To be truthful, they're still offensive today. But now they can be examined in terms of sociology and popular culture. If you don't pass judgemnt on their content, you can marvel at the sheer audacity of these publishers! Nothing was too outrageous to be published in these mags - they define the term "raw." Included is the magazine from which Frank Zappa cribbed his famous "weasels ripped my flesh" line.

This book has extemely high production values and fascinating commentary, whether you agree with it or not. Wholesome entertainment? No. Fascinating? Yes!

The book is more than I was expecting. It is a bit disappointing in that I was expecting more men's adventure magazine covers than there actually were. I am a serious collector of Men's Adventure magazines in Australia and I now have a reference guide to magazines with covers and dates so I can order the Mags I require. These mags are hard to find here in Australia, but with this book as a guide collecting should become easier. The book is of good quality and is quite informative.

It makes me want to go out and create a parody of one of these magazines. And these things were so over the top sometimes that this wouldn't be very hard...

An excellent treatment of this genre.

Well-printed, hardbound, handsome collection of eye-popping cover art and illustrations from men's adventure mags of the 50s through the early 70s. Every kind of trashy, sleazy, paranoid Whitebread-American fantasy is presented here. Hunky guys in torn shirts being attacked by everything the editors could think of: giant ants, rabid weasels, Nazis, Japs, native savages, Leopard Women of the Congo, Commie dominatrixes, you name it. Then there are semi-nude damsels popping out of their tops while being threatened by a similar list of aggressors. Possibly the best one in terms of ridiculousness shows a chuckling Fidel Castro about to burn a tied-up blonde with his cigar. These pictures are so outrageous they go beyond offensive into a strange realm of ironic hilariousness. The only thing more amazing than the subject matter is the fine execution of these paintings. Every page took my breath away as I marveled at the masterful compositions, the deft use of color and lighting, the absolute mastery of anatomy and proportion. I doubt there are any illustrators working today who would be capable of producing work of this calibre, regardless of subject matter.
My one complaint is that the editor, Adam Parfrey, in his introductions to each section, seems to be defending these covers as a sociological document to be examined from a contemporary Politically-Correct feminist cosmopolitan perspective. (One reviewer here called it "Looney-Left commentary," and I feel that needs clarification.) Sorry Mr. Parfrey, but there is no defense for this material. It is what it is, it's horribly Bad and Offensive and Wrong, but it's _SO_ bad it can't be taken seriously. It's so bad it has become good and can only be enjoyed in the way one enjoys B-movies - by laughing at them, because Now We Know Better.
Most of the introductory material in the front of the book was interesting and informative: a few interviews and reminescences of what it was like to work on the magazines in their heyday. But Parfrey's article was mostly the kind of art critic / social critic mumbo-jumbo which hides a lack of ideas behind a fog of contemporary academic jargon. As I read it, I suspected I was actually reading nothing ... and in the final paragraph, when he used "traction" as a verb, my suspicions were confirmed. Mr. Parfrey has nothing of value to say, but he did put together a really great collection of jaw-dropping cover art, and I thank him for that. This book is worth getting.