Men's adventure
Encyclopedia
Literary genre
A literary genre is a category of literary composition. Genres may be determined by literary technique, tone, content, or even length. Genre should not be confused with age category, by which literature may be classified as either adult, young-adult, or children's. They also must not be confused...
of magazine
Magazine
Magazines, periodicals, glossies or serials are publications, generally published on a regular schedule, containing a variety of articles. They are generally financed by advertising, by a purchase price, by pre-paid magazine subscriptions, or all three...
s that had its heyday in the 1950s and 1960s. Catering to a male audience, these magazines featured glamour photography
Glamour photography
Glamour photography is a genre of photography whereby the subjects, usually female, are portrayed in a romantic or sexually alluring way. The subjects may be fully clothed or seminude, but glamour photography stops short of deliberately arousing the viewer and being pornographic photography.Glamour...
and lurid tales of adventure
Adventure
An adventure is defined as an exciting or unusual experience; it may also be a bold, usually risky undertaking, with an uncertain outcome. The term is often used to refer to activities with some potential for physical danger, such as skydiving, mountain climbing and or participating in extreme sports...
that typically featured war
War
War is a state of organized, armed, and often prolonged conflict carried on between states, nations, or other parties typified by extreme aggression, social disruption, and usually high mortality. War should be understood as an actual, intentional and widespread armed conflict between political...
time feats of daring, exotic travel or conflict with wild animals.
These magazines are generally considered the last of the true pulp magazine
Pulp magazine
Pulp magazines , also collectively known as pulp fiction, refers to inexpensive fiction magazines published from 1896 through the 1950s. The typical pulp magazine was seven inches wide by ten inches high, half an inch thick, and 128 pages long...
s. They reached their circulation peaks long after the genre-fiction
Genre fiction
Genre fiction, also known as popular fiction, is a term for fictional works written with the intent of fitting into a specific literary genre in order to appeal to readers and fans already familiar with that genre....
pulps had begun to fade. These magazines were also colloquially called "armpit slicks", "men's sweat magazines" or "the sweats", especially by people in the magazine publishing or distribution trades.
Contents
Notable men's adventure magazines included Argosy, the longest-running and best regarded of the genre, as well as AdventureAdventure (magazine)
Adventure magazine was first published in November 1910 as a monthly pulp magazine. Adventure went on become one of the most profitable and critically acclaimed of all the American pulp magazines...
, Real, True
True (magazine)
True, also known as True, The Man's Magazine, was published by Fawcett Publications from 1937 until 1974. Known as True, A Man's Magazine in the 1930s, it was labeled True, #1 Man's Magazine in the 1960s. Petersen Publishing took over with the January 1975, issue...
, Saga, Stag, Swank and For Men Only. During their peak in the late 1950s, approximately 130 men's adventure magazines were being published simultaneously.
The interior tales usually claimed to be true stories. Women in distress
Damsel in distress
The subject of the damsel in distress, or persecuted maiden, is a classic theme in world literature, art, and film. She is usually a beautiful young woman placed in a dire predicament by a villain or monster and who requires a hero to achieve her rescue. She has become a stock character of fiction,...
were commonly featured in the painted covers or interior art, often being menaced or torture
Torture
Torture is the act of inflicting severe pain as a means of punishment, revenge, forcing information or a confession, or simply as an act of cruelty. Throughout history, torture has often been used as a method of political re-education, interrogation, punishment, and coercion...
d by Nazis
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
or, in later years, Communists
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
. Artist Norman Saunders
Norman Saunders
Norman Blaine Saunders was a prolific commercial artist who produced paintings for pulp magazines, paperbacks, men's adventure magazines, comic books and trading cards...
was the dean of illustrators for these magazines, occupying a position similar to that enjoyed by Margaret Brundage
Margaret Brundage
Margaret Brundage, born Margaret Hedda Johnson was an American illustrator and painter who is remembered chiefly for having illustrated the pulp magazine Weird Tales...
for the classic pulps. Many illustrations that were uncredited were done by Bruce Minney
Bruce Minney
Bruce Minney is a prolific American artist who has worked in a variety of media. He was a commercial illustrator for over 40 years producing paintings for men’s adventure magazines, paperbacks, and storyboards. Later he moved to ceramics and won numerous awards for his efforts...
, Norm Eastman, Gil Cohen, Mel Crair, Basil Gogos
Basil Gogos
Basil Gogos is an American illustrator best known for his striking portraits of movie monsters which appeared on the covers of Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine in the 1960s and 70s.-Early life and education:...
, and Vic Prezio among others. Historical artist
History painting
History painting is a genre in painting defined by subject matter rather than an artistic style, depicting a moment in a narrative story, rather than a static subject such as a portrait...
Mort Künstler
Mort Künstler
Mort Künstler is a historical artist in the United States of America whose work now focuses mainly on the American Civil War. Before he turned to the Civil War in the early 1980s, he had built a body of work that dealt with America's national story: from portraits of prehistoric American life to...
painted many covers and illustrations for these magazines, and Playboy
Playboy
Playboy is an American men's magazine that features photographs of nude women as well as journalism and fiction. It was founded in Chicago in 1953 by Hugh Hefner and his associates, and funded in part by a $1,000 loan from Hefner's mother. The magazine has grown into Playboy Enterprises, Inc., with...
photographer Mario Casilli
Mario Casilli
Mario A. Casilli was a photographer for Playboy magazine.From 1962 until 1981 he photographed 57 Playmate pictorials, including Playmates of the Year Linda Gamble, Christa Speck, Jo Collins, Connie Kreski, Claudia Jennings and Dorothy Stratten...
started out shooting pinups for this market. At publisher Martin Goodman
Martin Goodman (publisher)
Martin Goodman born on was an American publisher of pulp magazines, paperback books, men's adventure magazines, and comic books, launching the company that would become Marvel Comics....
's Magazine Management Company, future best-selling humorist and author Bruce Jay Friedman
Bruce Jay Friedman
Bruce Jay Friedman is an American novelist, screenwriter, playwright, and actor.Raised in the Bronx by Irving and Mollie Friedman, Bruce Jay Friedman graduated from DeWitt Clinton High School. He then attended the University of Missouri as a journalism major, then served as a First Lieutenant in...
was a men's sweat writer-editor, and Mario Puzo
Mario Puzo
Mario Gianluigi Puzo was an American author and screenwriter, known for his novels about the Mafia, including The Godfather , which he later co-adapted into a film by Francis Ford Coppola...
was a contributor before he became a well-known novelist.
Many of the stories were actual historical accounts of battles and the biographies and exploits of highly decorated soldiers. Several of the stories were combined and issued under various titles in paperback editions by Pyramid Books
Pyramid Books
Jove Books, formerly Pyramid Books, is a paperback publishing company, founded in 1949 by Almat Magazine Publishers . The company was sold to the Walter Reade Organization in the late 1960s. It was acquired in 1974 by Harcourt Brace which renamed it to Jove in 1977 and continued the line as an...
with the credit "edited by Phil Hirsch". Phil Hirsch was vice president of Pyramid Books from 1955-1975.
Legacy
The title of the Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention album Weasels Ripped My FleshWeasels Ripped My Flesh
Weasels Ripped My Flesh is an album by Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, released in 1970.Given Zappa's already stated penchant for expressing his music in "phases"—We're Only in It for the Money was written up as "phase one of Lumpy Gravy"—conceptually, Zappa fans occasionally label this...
was borrowed from a man-against-beast cover story in the September 1956 issue of Man's Life, and the title went through another permutation when filmmaker Nathan Schiff
Nathan Schiff
Nathan Schiff is a Long Island, New York filmmaker best known for receiving a major DVD release of low-budget features he shot in Super 8mm while in his teens...
made the horror feature Weasels Rip My Flesh (1979).
These magazines' circulation dropped precipitously in the mid-1960s. Their tales of wartime adventure appealed to American men of the World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
and Korean War
Korean War
The Korean War was a conventional war between South Korea, supported by the United Nations, and North Korea, supported by the People's Republic of China , with military material aid from the Soviet Union...
generations, and these established readers were reaching an age at which these magazines' girlie pictures were less of a draw. For those who wanted pornography
Pornography
Pornography or porn is the explicit portrayal of sexual subject matter for the purposes of sexual arousal and erotic satisfaction.Pornography may use any of a variety of media, ranging from books, magazines, postcards, photos, sculpture, drawing, painting, animation, sound recording, film, video,...
, more explicit and less old-fashioned publications were available by this period. The Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
and its attendant social controversies did nothing to create an appetite for similar entertainments that would have involved rescuing damsels from the Viet Cong. The magazine vision of adventurous, fighting masculinity
Masculinity
Masculinity is possessing qualities or characteristics considered typical of or appropriate to a man. The term can be used to describe any human, animal or object that has the quality of being masculine...
also became unfashionable. Some publications, such as Swank, survived by turning into explicitly pornographic magazines; others simply ceased publication.
There have been attempts to revive the Argosy title, once in the 1990s, and again in 2004. Soldier of Fortune seems to have carried on the tradition of true war stories for a male audience. A few contemporary "lad mag" periodicals such as FHM
FHM
FHM, originally published as For Him Magazine, is an international monthly men's lifestyle magazine.- History :The magazine began publication in 1985 in the United Kingdom under the name For Him and changed its title to FHM in 1994 when Emap Consumer Media bought the magazine, although the full For...
and Maxim
Maxim (magazine)
Maxim is an international men's magazine based in the United Kingdom and known for its pictorials featuring popular actresses, singers, and female models, sometimes pictured dressed, often pictured scantily dressed but not fully nude....
are somewhat similar to the earlier adventure magazines, featuring a combination of cheesecake pictorials and occasional true adventure/horror stories.
External Links
- "Oh, Those Pulpy Days of 'Weasels Ripped My Flesh'" from The New York TimesThe New York TimesThe New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...