Rating: 
Summary: WHY ARE YOU READING THIS??
Review: -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...
Rating:
Summary: WHY ARE YOU READING THIS??
Review: -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...
Rating:
Summary: Gloria Steinem Beware!!
Review: After exploring the lurid confines of It's a Man's World ,the latest/boldest offering from Feral House on the post war adventure magazines, I immediately flashed an idea for a cover of the next issue of Ms. Gloria Steinem would appear, campily cartooned along with CIA operative Clay Felkner, the Esquire editor that brought her to feminist fame in the early 70's. Picture it if you can: a Bowie knife wielding, Green Beret uniformed Felkner trying to liberate a skimpily dressed Steinem who is entwined to a United Nations flag pole by some giant viper with the face of Henry Kissinger (who she actually dated in the 1980's). Elizabeth Forsling Harris, a CIA-connected PR executive who, by the way, planned John Kennedy's Dallas motorcade route, looks on with smug satisfaction, bull whip in hand, wearing a moth eaten Gestapo uniform. Or maybe Rosie O' Donnell could be garishly depicted on the cover of, let's say, Misandrist Monthly , a potential pulp alternative to her now ailing 'zine, held in similar serpentine bondage by her very own CIA backed publisher,begging for sweet release. (I can't think of anyone who would want to rescue her however....maybe Andrea Dworkin dressed up like a Navy
Seal.) What I'm struggling to say, via these unlikely to be seen in the mainstream images, is that we are currently suffering from a kind of mass polarity reversal. It is now the castrating fantasies, Will to Power drives and other hormonally imbalanced Ãœberfrau desires of today's corporate woman that are beckoning to be scrutinized in comic book fashion. However, these burgeoning fantasies are kept just beyond the margins of acceptable consensuality, veiled behind carefully crafted PC ideologies that will ensure that the heterosexual white male will forever remain the perennial scapegoat. I suggest that these estrogenated day dreams, on the verge of rising above the subconscious horizon, be as graphically and overtly rendered as the images depicted in It's a Man's World. It very well may prevent something truly horrible from happening. The cover illustrations within It's a Man's World seem to beg for us to breathe life into them so the soldiers, hunters, cowboys, criminals and jungle adventurers can animate their way into the very crux of our psyches and conquer whatever needs to be conquered and plunder what needs to be plundered . I can confidently say that buying this book, fetishizing it, whether you are a man or a woman, will be profoundly therapeutic and even cathartic because nothing like the art depicted within It's a Man's World exists on the newstands any longer and probably never will again. The images within this garish but intriguing testament to the American male of a bygone era, some how give a kind of unadulterated power to the very things within ourselves that we try to repress and then project upon one another. With this kind of power in mind, now is the time to try and convince the men's magazine illustrators of the 50's ,60's and 70's to come out of retirement, ignore the PC police and translate these current fantasy modes such as described above to the covers of noxious feminist tabloids, T.V. Guide, Playgirl and maybe even Newsweek. I'm confident that many of the evolution retarding, sexual/political conflicts we now distract ourselves with would instantly be resolved.
Rating: 
Summary: Lots of pictures
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Lots of pictures
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: I Fought Off Nazi She-Wolves and Cannibal Head Hunters
Review: Conventional wisdom says that the pulp era in American publishing reached closure during WWII. This is incorrect. It just stagnated until morphing into something more extreme and sensational: the man's adventure magazine of the '50s and '60s.
This book presents hundreds of the most outrageous covers in full color throughout, as well as perfect reproductions of many of the original canvases by masters like Kunstler, Saunders, and Eastman. The reproduction work on the covers is excellent, but the original canvases are much sharper and more vivid. Anyone remotely interested in pulp or paperback book style illustration from the golden age should pick this up immediately.
Rating:
Summary: One-Of-A-Kind Masterwork
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: One-Of-A-Kind Masterwork
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: great covers
Review: The covers were great...what was not needed is the looney left commentary.
Rating:
Summary: Defines "over the top"
Review: 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!
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