I picked up a copy of Taschen’s Men’s Adventure Magazines at Barnes & Noble for $14.98. Given the heft of this volume of cover artwork from the Fifties, Sixties, and Seventies issues of men’s magazines, this is a steal! Rich Oberg, Steven Heller, Max Allan Collins and George Hagenauer provide essays that illuminate the post-WWII genre of men’s adventure magazines. Hundreds of color covers, inside spreads, and campy titles to the “articles” will dazzle you. Like most of the Taschen books I own, this is a quality product. Grab a copy before they’re gone! GRADE: A
Hard to read the text, though. But I haven’t tried with my copy since before the eye surgery.
True, the text is a bit tiny, Todd. But the cover artwork is the real attraction of this book.
Is a woman in bondage obligatory for the cover? HA!
Bondage sells, Patti. These magazines were everywhere in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. Then, suddenly, they died out.
The bondage was way overdone, I think, editors or publishers gave it more credit for sales than it deserved, and my guess is it turned off as many newsstand buyers as it pulled in. Threat covers, like the guy swimming with the snakes on the cover, were a better bet. But this kind of cover art is a sub-type of it’s own.
And don’t forget the swastikas, Rick. They were obligatory for these kind of stories.
I prefer IT’S A MAN’S WORLD, but this is a hugely entertaining book. Taschen puts out interesting products.
I agree, Drongo. IT’S A MAN’S WORLD is a better book, but MEN’S ADVENTURE MAGAZINES has some charms of its own. Taschen is a quirky publisher, but I like their quality and value.
I can take a little of it in the Spider and Shadow reprints I have, but this book looks to be filled with more than I’d want. Now if it was all air adventure, westerns and trains I’d be first in line.
MEN’S ADVENTURE MAGAZINES has a little of something for everyone, Rick. I think the guys who put this collection together were trying to appeal to the largest audience.
I forget which book it is, but one of the two reproduced a cover where a shirtless and manly adventurer is being attacked by a ferocious and apparently demented horde of…flying squirrels. An amusing image that brings a smile to my heart.
Drongo, the back cover of MEN’S ADVENTURE MAGAZINES features “Weasels Ripped My Flesh! Frank Zappa must have read that issue.
Really? Wow. Is there a story about Suzie Creamcheese also?
Possibly, Rick. Frank Zappa’s son, Dweezil, is playing a concert at SUNY at Buffalo this Fall.
Well, most of the survivors into the ’70s became skin magazines, so a bit more honest about their appeal, and no more twisted. The sales leaders in the field, SAGA and TRUE, just folded eventually. ARGOSY staggered along, as it had been, more a downmarket ESQUIRE than a “men’s sweat” title, not quite into the 1980s, iirc.
It’s interesting that the entire genre seemed to collapse in the late 1960s and 1970s, Todd.