Men's Adventure Magazines compiled by Max Allan Collins, George Hagenauer, and Steven HellerThis is coffee table book of covers from US men's adventure magazines of the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. These magazines all had titles like True Man, Rugged Man, True Male, Rugged True Male, and so on, and are collectively known as 'sweats' because of the sweaty blue collar heroes their covers often feature. The covers are deranged, typically featuring a sweaty man and a bikini clad woman being menaced by rabid weasels, or maybe some attractive women popping out of their tops, as Nazi sadists get ready to brand them or flog them or bury them alive. Said attractive women often have a "here we go again" facial expression, and no wonder - Nazis torturing attractive women seems to be a staple of these titles. Sometimes, though, the magazines deal with rugged American men unfortunate enough to fall into the hands of Nazi women.
These magazines also played heavily on male inadequacy, boasting many articles with titles like "America's Virility Crisis", "Why American Women Want Foreign Lovers", and "Your Wife Hates You". It seems like the post-war generation was faced with a worrying new 
cohort of uppity women, and maybe the magazines' world of male fantasy was an environment where an ordinary joe could kick back and get away from all the yap he was getting in everyday life.If you want to check out some of the cover paintings (and maybe even buy some originals), there is a fabulous online gallery of work by sweats supremo Norm Eastman. They lose something without the text, so maybe check out this gallery of covers, including text: Norman Saunders Men's Magazine Covers. Be warned, though, your boss might have to don a Nazi uniform and flog you if you view those images at work.
So yes, Taschen at its best, and a lovely Christmas present from my beloved.
The printing process must have only allowed blocks of colour, so you get lots of GREEN, RED and YELLOW. A load of the damsels in distress seem to be wearing green.
ReplyDeleteHang on, dos one of the covers show a bowie-knife armed man doing battle with turtles? That's not very threatening. Scorpions eating your face - genuinely scary. Nazis in hot pants with blow torches - kinky or scary depending on personal taste. Turtles....not so much.
ReplyDeleteI think the website where I got that set of pictures from focussed on some of the less outré covers that appeared on the sweats, so you get people being menaced by turtles rather than toppy women having their flesh boiled off by one-armed Nazis. That said, the book does feature a surprising number of covers in which rugged men (or their vulnerable ladies) are being menaced by wild animals gone bad. I also hear that snapping turtles are in fact very fierce animals indeed.
ReplyDelete