Post World War II America was supposed to be a return
to the idyllic values of the traditional family. Rosie the Riveter would
willingly give her job back to a man, get out of the factory, put on an apron,
and go back into the kitchen. Men would return from the war unfazed by their
experiences and take up the responsibility of providing for their families
without missing a beat. If the American family was not restored to the pinnacle
of its idealized form, how could we justify all that was sacrificed in fighting
for our freedom and the freedom of our nation's friends?
However, much of America wasn't buying it. We had
been to the gates of Hell and beyond. We were warriors, and supporters of
warriors. We had discovered our dark sides where we were selfish, driven,
ambitious, strategic and most importantly...killers. To go to war—to win a war
on the largest scale imaginable—we had to go dark, black even, become
comfortable with the human wildness within us.
And we did it—we won the war—only to come home and be
expected to return to normal. But what was normal? The American male had
experienced first-hand the devastation, the killing, the hunger—the starvation
even—and the torture. Our hearts knew the darkness and it called to us despite every desire
to want the Father Knows Best, Leave It To Beaver, separate beds for
Lucy and Ricky world being shoved down our throats.
The wounded American psyche was forcibly repressed.
Everywhere we turned TV, Madison Avenue, the stress of keeping up with the
Jones, the responsibility for too many decisions in a world without orders to
follow, all of it added up to create a human pressure cooker. There had to be
an outlet for our wildness, our darkness, our pent up adrenaline, a way to
understand the horror we had been through.
Enter the men’s
adventure magazines…Published from the late ’40s through the early ’70s,
these slick-cover magazines catered to a male audience with lurid true tales of adventure, of true wartime daring, exotic travel,
attacks by wild animals of every ilk (i.e. Weasels
Ripped My Flesh). Many covers, created by some of the most brilliant
artists of the day, featured scenes of scantily clad, tiny-waisted, big
breasted women in jeopardy being rescued by muscular male heroes toting big
guns, spears, knives, and other phallic symbols. There were also covers showing
these same women about to be whipped, burned, fed to alligators, or sold into
sexual slavery by leering Nazi officers, evil Nazi doctors, and horrendous Nazi
torturers.
There was a need to confront such perversions—for men to
know there was still a battle they could fight, still a damsel they could rescue
(as they had rescued their wives,
girlfriends, and families through the hell of battle). They needed a way to be
an unquestioned hero, to forge an explanation for the terrors and revulsions
heaped upon them in war. To feel something—anything—again.
Slightly tawdry, hidden down the sides of dad’s armchair,
stacked in his den or garage, the men’s adventure magazines (often misnomered
as the sweats—a derogatory term not
applied until the ‘80s by a new generation who had no understanding of the
purpose) were a safe way to escape for men craving an existence beyond the world
being forced upon them by societal expectations, disapproval, and repression.
Starting in the early 1960s—before Hunter Thompson’s 1966
book Hell's Angels made a splash and
Grade B biker movies were common at drive-in theaters—men’s adventure magazines
began publishing stories and covers featuring a new breed of home-grown bad
guys: outlaw motorcycle gangs. Men’s adventure magazines continued to feature outlaw
bikers in stories, covers and interior artwork and photos through into the
mid-1970s, when the MAM genre faded away.
The life of the outlaw biker provided two inherent,
exploitable, viewpoints. The vicarious promise of unbridled freedom, of
throwing away the shackles of repression in an orgy of roaring engines, lust,
and brutality—or the chance to empathically take on this new evil and emerge
victorious from a new war on American values. They were also an amazingly
colorful explosion of violence for the men’s adventure magazine cover
artists—tired of Nazi torturers and running out of deadly attack animals (Chewed To Bits By Giant Turtles)—to
exploit.
While the stories within the pages of the men’s adventure
magazines remain highly underrated—many writers who went on to become
bestselling authors got their start in the men’s adventure magazines—the cover
art and interior illustrations have become a collectible commodity.
Recognizing the continuing particular allure of those outlaw
motorcycle gang covers and illustrations, men’s adventure magazine collector
and guru Robert Deis and his publishing partner Wyatt Doyle recently added a
new book, Barbarians on Bikes, to
their Men’s Adventure Library series. Unlike their previous anthologies collecting
men’s adventure magazine stories and the artwork accompanying them (Weasels Ripped My Flesh!, He-Men, Bag Men, and Nymphos, Cryptozoology Anthology, A Handful of Hell), Barbarians on Bikes is all
artwork and photos. It’s a stunning, large format (8.5” x 11”), full-color
visual archive of men’s adventure
magazine covers, interior illustrations and photos featuring outlaw motorcycle
gangs and other biker-related images.
I recently had the opportunity to chat with Deis and Doyle
about the new collection (to which I was honored to add an afterword)...
After four successful
Men’s Adventure Library books collecting some of the best short stories from
the genre, what made you decide to do a collection featuring strictly covers
and other artwork?
Wyatt Doyle: We pack our anthologies with supplemental
artwork, but the focus there is on the writing. A second format, emphasizing
the artwork, was a logical next step. Barbarians does include a brief introduction, providing
a bit of history and context, and your afterword is a potent reality check at
the finish. But for the most part, we simply wanted to unleash the wealth of
killer art and wild headlines.
Like all our Men’s Adventure Library releases, we
hope it also serves as a lure, encouraging further expeditions into all
facets of the magazines’ world—the
artwork, the stories, the history, and the mags’ unacknowledged impact on
popular culture.
Bob Deis: And, of
course, the cover and interior artwork is terrific! It was done by some of the
best illustrators of the era: artists like Mort Künstler, Charles Copeland,
Norm Eastman, Bruce Minney, Basil Gogos, Samson Pollen, Gil Cohen, Al Rossi,
John Duillo, Norman Saunders, and Earl Norem.
What drew you to the
theme of outlaw bikers and other motorcycle-related images?
Bob: Wyatt and I
are both fans of biker movies from the ‘60s and ‘70s. The biker stories and
artwork in men’s adventure magazines are as wild and crazy-cool as those
movies. We realized that, along with biker movies, men’s adventure magazines
had been important in creating and spreading the popular image of bikers and
motorcycle gangs in the ’60s and ’70s. As we dug deeper, we realized they had actually
played a key role, just as they did in expanding awareness of Bigfoot,
Sasquatch, and other creatures from the realm of cryptozoology.
Wyatt: I can credit my dad (who rides) for early and
prolonged exposure to biker movies, and I’ve found men’s adventure magazine fiction
to be the one place where the presentation of outlaw biker culture mirrors the
way it’s presented in biker B-movies. Neither is all that accurate when stacked
against the real thing, but both the mags and the movies distort reality in
similar ways. The ping-pong of concepts and iconography between the two serves
as a rough chart to the growth and expansion of outlaw biker mythology in
popular culture. It was a mutually beneficial exploitation; they regularly
ripped—and riffed—off each other. I believe our book is the first to point this
out; it’s certainly the first to provide such a wealth of supporting evidence!
Why do you feel it is
important to preserve the images and stories from the men’s adventure
magazines?
Bob: Well, it may
sound odd, but in part, it’s related to what I studied in college at Ohio State
University . My degree was
in cultural anthropology, which involves the study of the mythologies, customs,
and worldviews of people in different cultures. When I first started collecting
and reading vintage men’s adventure magazines, I realized they were a huge and
mostly overlooked source of information about mid-20th century American
culture. That’s the wonky part of me. The geeky part is that I just totally
love men’s adventure magazine stories and artwork. Many of the fiction stories
are as good as or better and grittier than those in the earlier pre-World War
II pulp magazines. The non-fiction, news-style articles and exposés are also
interesting to read. They provide a whole different perspective on American
history and culture and world events than you find in mainstream magazines from
the ‘60s and ‘70s.
Wyatt: A big part of our mission with the Men’s
Adventure Library is to restore a wider awareness of the magazines and their
place in pop culture history. They were an everyday part of the landscape for
three decades, then vanished entirely. Yet despite their long absence and
relative obscurity today, their impact is recognizable and continues to be
felt, decades after the last men’s adventure magazines left newsstands. We see
men’s adventure magazines as an invisible hand that has shaped many enduring
trends and fascinations, in entertainment of all stripes, and culturally, too.
Easy access to back issues and detailed histories of the mags’
upwardly mobile contemporaries – glossy slicks with big advertisers, like Playboy
and Esquire–are readily available to any interested reader, and those
periodicals are recognized as essential resources in understanding the era and the
culture. Fair enough. But what about the working stiffs on the other side of
the American Dream? The folks who gravitated to the slicks’ rougher cousins,
embracing the mags’ unpretentious fists-and-cleavage escapism? The popularity
of these magazines marked one of the last gasps of the American working class
as a reading class. So what were we reading, and how was it
shaping (or reinforcing) our attitudes and ambitions?
Esquire’s slogan is Man at His Best. Documenting
our culture at its best is important. But that’s a very narrow slice of America , in any
era! The fantasies and diversions of working men in those years tell us much that
our best do not.
What was your
criteria in choosing the images and covers to include in Barbarians on Bikes?
Bob: One was to
try to show that many were done by the great artists I mentioned. My own
secondary criteria was to include images from all three decades when the men’s
adventure magazines were being published, to show that men’s adventure
magazines were doing stories about bikers even before the biker movies became
popular and show how the images of bikers evolved over time.
Wyatt: Additionally, we recognized stills from
numerous biker movies (both classic and obscure) had been repurposed as bogus news
photos in the mags. We included a generous sampling of those, so cult film fans
will enjoy playing Name
That Movie.
Other photo illustrations show evidence of occasionally comical doctoring in
order to suit the over-the-top true story they accompany. Take Male’s
bogus Cycle Girl profile from 1968. Its biker babe photo illustration is
actually a publicity shot from a Brigitte Bardot television special – it was
even a popular pin-up poster at the time! Someone in the Male art
department simply painted on a pair of racing goggles in a half-hearted attempt
to disguise the still very recognizable image. That kind of gonzo
resourcefulness is a big part of the magazines’ appeal.
Tell us about the
history of the outlaw biker covers and the artists who painted them?
Bob: From their very
start back in the 1950s, men’s adventure magazines included stories, artwork,
and photos featuring motorcycle riders. But there weren’t many, and they
featured adventurers and soldiers, not Hells-Angels-style outlaw bikers.
However, there is an interesting early story about the Hells Angels in the
December 1957 issue of the men’s adventure magazine Ace, about a bloody
melee involving over a thousand outlaw bikers at the place called Angel’s Camp
in Calaveras County , California . That story is illustrated with a
photo. The first outlaw biker covers and interior illustrations started showing
up in the early 1960s, and the bikers often looked more like Teddy Boys on
Hondas rather than Angels on Harley Hogs. By 1963, the artwork began to tilt to
what would become the iconic image of outlaw bikers. Look no further than Men,
July 1963, and America 's
Frightening New Cycle and Sex Clubs. The illustration was done by Gil
Cohen, who did hundreds of men’s adventure mag illustrations and many paperback
covers, including classic covers for the Mack Bolan/Executioner
series. Cohen’s illustration shows outlaw bikers, with scantily clad Mamas on
their bikes behind them, terrorizing a town. That was two years before
the release of the famous 1965 report on biker gangs by California Attorney
General Thomas C. Lynch, which grabbed headlines nationwide and led to the
biker hysteria of the mid-1960s (and subsequent rise of the biker genre in exploitation
movies).
From that point to the mid-1970s, outlaw biker stories,
covers, and interior artwork were a common feature of men’s adventure
magazines. That artwork was being done by almost all of the best illustrators
who worked for them, including Cohen, Künstler, Copeland, Eastman, Minney,
Gogos, Pollen, Duillo, Norem, Saunders, and most of the other top professionals
who created the bulk of the artwork for men’s pulp adventure magazines as well
as for thousands of mid-20th century adventure, crime, and Western paperbacks. In
general, most of the biker artwork they did depicted the vicious, violent
outlaw bikers partying and pillaging their way through the world (though some
involved good guys on motorcycles battling Nazis, Commies or outlaw bikers).
Anyway, in the ‘60s and ‘70s, hundreds of issues of men’s
adventure magazines featured biker stories and illustrations. So many, that
bikers actually eclipsed Nazis as the most common bad guys featured in men’s
adventure magazines.
From about 1970 to 1976, the final years of the MAM
genre, cover paintings and interior artwork were increasingly replaced by
photos. But, as we show, there was still some outstanding biker artwork in
men’s adventure mags published in the mid-1970s. By then, biker covers were
more common than even Nazi covers on the low-budget sweat mags, and some of the
mid-tier Magazine Management mags still had very cool biker art by their old
stalwarts, like Samson Pollen and Bruce Minney.
Do you have a
favorite cover in the collection or one cover you would say is representative
of the genre?
Bob: Actually, I think
the interior illustrations shown in our book are often even cooler than the
covers, even though most were either black and white or two-color duotone
paintings. But among the covers, I’d have to say the Earl Norem painting we
used for the paperback edition of our book is probably my fave, followed
closely by the Norem painting we used on the hardcover edition. And, the scenes
of bikers running amok are pretty representative of what many of the biker
stories and artwork are like.
Wyatt: Bob makes a good point about not overlooking
the interiors. A cover painting needs to have immediate impact and appeal,
something the viewer can process in an instant. That’s cover artwork’s job, to make
you pick up the magazine. But once inside, the editors felt freer to get wilder
and expand their horizons—literally! There’s just something about the widescreen
frame of a two-page spread that lent itself particularly well to this subject, and
inspired artists to go all-out. It’s impossible to pick a favorite, but I really
go for the inventive compositions of Earl Norem (to whom we dedicated the book),
and the comin’-at-ya action of Samson Pollen. Those artists in particular brought
something fresh and exciting to every piece. They had a real facility for
scenes of biker mayhem that put the reader square in the middle of every fight,
race, and escape. So if I have to choose favorites, they’d be Norem’s Cycle
Loners Who Beat Tennessee ’s
Outlaw Angels (probably the most action-packed piece in the book—you can
practically hear the crunch of destruction) and Pollen’s Cycle Nymph
(luxurious cheesecake and cycle action). Pollen’s mastery of the
widescreen frame is really something.
Are you considering a
future collection of the outlaw biker stories that accompanied the covers
displayed in Barbarians on Bikes?
Bob: Yes, it’s
already in the planning stages. It will probably be among the first examples of
another new type of book we’re adding to the Men’s Adventure Library series: a
journal format that will serve as a sort of hybrid of our story anthologies and
our art-focused books. We’ll debut the first books in that format next year.
What are the extras
included in the deluxe hardcover edition of Barbarians
on Bikes?
Wyatt: It was important that we deliver quality
reproduction to satisfy the high standards of serious collectors, but
connecting with new fans is a priority, too. So for the merely curious, there’s
an affordable softcover; for the serious collector, there’s an expanded, deluxe
hardcover edition. The deluxe hardcover uses archival paper and employs more
expensive printing and binding. It includes 20 extra pages of additional images,
and uses an alternate layout, spotlighting instances where artwork and stories
were subsequently repurposed or reprinted, whether in a later issue, or in a
different magazine from the same publisher. The softcover is a great
introduction and an ideal overview for the casual fan. But pulp scholars,
collectors, and those who already know how great this stuff is will find more
to sink their teeth into with the deluxe hardcover.
The Men’s Adventure Magazines Blog CLICK HERE
is becoming more and more comprehensive. How did you come to start the blog and
website, and how much effort does it take to maintain it?
Bob: Well, in my
own mind, it’s still far from comprehensive, but I plan to keep pecking away at
it and making it more so in the years ahead. I started the blog back in 2009,
about a year after I became an obsessive collector of men’s adventure
magazines. I looked around the internet and discovered that there weren’t any
sites specifically dedicated to men’s adventure mags at the time. Earlier in my
life, I had done quite a bit of writing for magazines and in 2009, blogging was
starting to become bigger and easier to do, so I decided to start the
MensPulpMags.com blog. In the beginning, I did a post or two every week, but
over the years, I began to focus more on our book projects and on posting in
the Men’s Adventure Magazines Facebook group I created. So, the frequency of my
posts on MensPulpMags.com has declined. And from July to mid-November, almost
all of my free time was eaten up by an intense day-job project I agreed to take
on to make some extra bucks. So, it wasn’t until recently that I started
posting there again. Anyway, nowadays, the era of the sequential-post style
blog seems to be waning. I am starting to rethink how to reorganize the site
and add to it to make it fit the idea of something that is more comprehensive.
For example, I’d like to create a series of anchor pages providing overviews of
various men’s adventure magazines and artists. So, I’m not sure how much time
that will take in the months ahead. I think doing frequent posts in my MAM
Facebook group has kind of taken the place of frequent posting on
MensPulpMags.com. I do posts there daily. And, there are now over 1,700 members
in the group from all over the world who post things and comment. It has become
a great place to share images and information with men’s adventure mag fans,
and it’s quicker and easier to do Facebook posts.
What can we expect
next from New Texture both in the field of men’s adventure magazines and in
other areas?
Bob: We’re not
quite ready to announce all the details yet, but next year will be our biggest
year yet in terms of the number of books we’ll be adding to the Men’s Adventure
Library. We plan to launch the journal series I mentioned, as well as a
collection of men’s adventure magazine stories written by the great Robert Silverberg.
We plan to do some more themed, large-format visual archive art books along the
lines of Barbarians on Bikes. Two we’re working on involve
major celebrities in the realm of men’s adventure magazines, who recently gave
us permission to do books that feature them.
Wyatt: The emphasis at New Texture is on sideways autobiography
and secret history, and working with Bob on Men’s Adventure Library releases always
means plenty of both. Keep up with New Texture’s book and music releases at www.NewTexture.com/
Thanks to both Bob and Wyatt for taking the time to share
their intimate knowledge and passion for men’s adventure magazines. And a
special thanks for letting me be part of the final product…
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