 I'd like to thank all my fans—particularly the one I'm holding. 
It's been a while since we shared an issue of Paris Plaisirs, so today we have a nice example for you with Lily Damita, aka Liliane Marie-Madeleine Carré, on the cover. Mid-century paperback art generally features tough guys and femmes fatales, and that aesthetic has become intertwined in most people's minds with the idea of pulp, but during the movement's actual heyday in the early 20th century the visual style most commonly seen in publications was art deco. This art deco styled issue of Paris Plaisirs hit newsstands in Paris in November 1929, which is when U.S. magazines like Life and Vogue were also busily churning out art deco covers, and newspapers were filled with the exploits of gangsters and flappers. At the same time, legendary pulp publications like Argosy, Amazing Stories, and Black Mask were on their way to establishing a different visual style, and that would in turn evolve into the lurid paperback art of tough guys and femmes everyone knows and loves. We're quite fond of Paris Plaisirs and have quite a few more of them which we'll try to share down the line                    
 Wild time leaves man with splitting headache. 
The cover of this September 1970 issue of Australia's Adam magazine illustrates W. A. Harbinson's story “The Swinging Hep-Cat,” in which a man and woman spend most of their brief marriage fighting. He eventually strangles her. Or thinks he does. She actually survives and he only learns of this fact in jail from the cops who arrested him, as they laugh about it and reveal that she's fled for Paris—and the arms of another man. Much of the fiction in men's adventure magazines is disposable, for lack of a kinder term. We love it, of course. Men's magazine fiction would be nothing without hack writing. But Harbinson actually shows some skills in “The Swinging Hep-Cat,” as well as a muscular style. A sample:
We fought considerably during those early days of our marriage, bouts of most regal proportions, plates, knives, hair-brushes and antiques flying across the bedroom on fierce winds of abuse, she raging naked against the French windows in full view of the tourists below, me crouching back toward the door wondering how to tackle this bitch who had eaten my peace—a farce, a pantomime, a lunatic performance on both sides, always dissolving in the bed. Or this little description: Francisco Antonio D'Costa Pegado, a glorious dark beast of a man, rich as sin, tight as a drum, an incredible neurotic lover.
We checked after finishing the story, fully expecting Harbinson to have an extensive bibliography and we were right. He's written several dozen novels, mostly sci-fi, under his own name and that of Shaun Clarke. Not every good wordsmith manages to carve out a strong career—or any career, for that matter—so we were pleased Harbinson did well, because he actually knows how to use language in a way that brings it to three-dimensional life. At least he did in “The Swinging Hep-Cat.” He's still around and was last published in 2012, but we'll probably mine his earlier material, his stuff from the 1970s. We have high hopes. Elsewhere in Adam is fiction from Jack Ritchie, Austrian actress Senta Berger on the table-of-contents page, and plenty of cartoons. We have twenty-eight scans below, including a mega Berger in the final panel for your enjoyment.                           
 You guys keep fighting back there! I'm going to... uh... go for reinforcements!                 
Above, scans from a September 1955 issue of Man's Illustrated, a magazine published by Hanro Corp. of New York City. The cover art is uncredited, although possibly by Rico Tomaso, in any case very interesting, featuring a soldier paying what we consider less than recommended attention to a battle taking place to his rear. Maybe he's using his binoculars to look for a hiding place. Actually, the illustration is for Reuben Kaplan's “Border Clash,” about fighting in Gaza, and nobody runs away. Elsewhere inside the magazine is fiction from Si Podolin and a short photo feature on Bettie Page, which makes this a worthwhile purchase. Not that we paid much. It was part of a group of twenty mags that averaged out to five bucks each, even when international shipping was included. Score.
 Well, at least I got you to take off your hat. Now let's do something about that red suit. 
The uncredited cover artist for this issue of Australia's Man Junior magazine published in August of 1957 probably never noticed he made his cover subject look like she was dressed as Santa Claus. You see that, right? With the white hair and red towel behind her? Totally looks like Santa's hat. In our dirty imaginations, we see her as Mrs. Claus, and she's forced Santa to finally wind down in Jamaica or Seychelles after years without a vacation. She's gotten his hat off, and once he gets a few mai tais in him he'll strip off the red suit and start cavorting around in a Speedo. End up all sweaty and sunburned on YouTube captioned, “Fat guy totally goes off on beach.” And on the video there's Santa screaming about how the north pole is in his swim trunks. Yes, we got all that from a simple cover illustration. Trust us, you wouldn't want to be stuck inside our heads. Anyway, we have nineteen panels from this magazine below, and about forty more Aussie men's magazines, mostly Adam, that we'll start scanning and uploading as soon as we can pull ourselves away from all the summer activities around our town. So probably not until autumn. In the meantime, see more from Man Junior here, here, and here.
                 
 Seeing him so peaceful almost makes me forget how much I'm going to enjoy humiliating and torturing him. 
Above, a July 1966 cover of the Mexico City-based true crime magazine Mundo Policiaco, with a random male about to have his blissful slumber interrupted by a gun toting femme fatale. The text says, “He called for help for seven hours.” The art is by the as yet unidentified A.Z., whose signature you can see cleverly placed on the carpet border. We find this failure to credit the painter annoying, especially since others got their names on the masthead, from director Alberto Ramirez de Aguilar on down. Oh well. Moving on, the insides of these have no illustrations, just unattributed black and white photos and a lot of text, though the rear covers are sometimes painted. Magazines of this type were generally called nota roja. Want one of your own? We've seen them online for about $300.
 The kids are definitely not alright. 
Back to Mexico today with this cover of the Mexican true crime magazine Mundo Policiaco, which appeared on newsstands this week in 1964. The text, “Mis hijos se estan quemando,” means “My kids are burning.” Mundo Policiaco came at the tail end of an era of true crime magazines that launched during the 1930s and 1940s with Magazine de policia, Policia, and the amazing Detectives, which we've shown you here and here. You can see another Mundo Policiaco here.
 Southeast Asia escape epic features murder, sex and everything between. 
This issue of Male magazine published this month in 1958 features James Bama cover art illustrating Richard Farrington's story “The Incredible 'Blood and Bamboo' Escape,” which is the true tale of Dutchman Klaus van Tronk's flight from a Japanese internment camp in Malaysia during World War II. The story is a book-length special, and one of the more harrowing and interesting details involves one of the prisoners being tied spread-eagled on a bamboo mat elevated six inches above the ground. Beneath the mat were living bamboo shoots. As Farrington tells it (via van Tronk's account), “The shoots are tough, the tips as sharp as honed steel, and they can push through a plank floor [two inches thick]. They grow rapidly in the Pacific sun, about six inches on a good hot day. It had been a hot day.” When van Tronk's work detail came back that evening from a long grind of slave labor in the jungle the bound man already had bamboo shoots growing through his chest, and was still alive, screaming.
We did a verification check on this arcane torture and found that no cases confirmed to scholarly standards exist, but that it is well known in Asia, and experiments on substances approximating the density of human flesh have shown that it would work. As little as forty-eight hours would be needed to penetrate an entire body. Fascinating stuff, but what you really want to know in terms of veracity is whether scantily clad women helped the escapees paddle to freedom like in Bama's cover art, right? Well, this depiction is actually a completely accurate representation of what van Tronk described, or at least what biographer Farrington claims van Tronk described. The women were the daughters of a sympathetic Malay farmer, and indeed they wore virtually nothing, and were considered quite beautiful by the prisoners, save for the minor detail of having red teeth from the local tradition of chewing betel nuts.
The risk taken by these women was extraordinary. Other women who had helped van Tronk and his companions during their months-long odyssey were tortured and raped, and at one point a village was machine-gunned. Why would these Malays take up the foreigners' cause if the risks were so high? Van Tronk attributes it to a cultural requirement to help strangers in need, but we'd note that people have taken these sorts of risks everywhere, cultural norms or no. Often the suffering of others simply brings out the best in people. A historical check on Klaus van Tronk turned up nothing, though, so maybe the entire true story is a piece of fiction. If so, it's a very good one. We have some scans below with art by John Kuller, Joe Little, Al Rossi, Mort Kunstler, and Bruce Minney, and more issues of Male magazine at the keywords.                        
|
 |
The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1974—Police Raid SLA Headquarters
In the U.S., Los Angeles police raid the headquarters of the revolutionary group the Symbionese Liberation Army, resulting in the deaths of six members. The SLA had gained international notoriety by kidnapping nineteen-year old media heiress Patty Hearst from her Berkeley, California apartment, an act which precipitated her participation in an armed bank robbery. 1978—Charlie Chaplin's Missing Body Is Found
Eleven weeks after it was disinterred and stolen from a grave in Corsier near Lausanne, Switzerland, Charlie Chaplin's corpse is found by police. Two men—Roman Wardas, a 24-year-old Pole, and Gantscho Ganev, a 38-year-old Bulgarian—are convicted in December of stealing the coffin and trying to extort £400,000 from the Chaplin family. 1918—U.S. Congress Passes the Sedition Act
In the U.S., Congress passes a set of amendments to the Espionage Act called the Sedition Act, which makes "disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language" about the United States government, its flag, or its armed forces, as well as language that causes foreigners to view the American government or its institutions with contempt, an imprisonable offense. The Act specifically applies only during times of war, but later is pushed by politicians as a possible peacetime law, specifically to prevent political uprisings in African-American communities. But the Act is never extended and is repealed entirely in 1920. 1905—Las Vegas Is Founded
Las Vegas, Nevada is founded when 110 acres of barren desert land in what had once been part of Mexico are auctioned off to various buyers. The area sold is located in what later would become the downtown section of the city. From these humble beginnings Vegas becomes the most populous city in Nevada, an internationally renowned resort for gambling, shopping, fine dining and sporting events, as well as a symbol of American excess. Today Las Vegas remains one of the fastest growing municipalities in the United States. 1928—Mickey Mouse Premieres
The animated character Mickey Mouse, along with the female mouse Minnie, premiere in the cartoon Plane Crazy, a short co-directed by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks. This first cartoon was poorly received, however Mickey would eventually go on to become a smash success, as well as the most recognized symbol of the Disney empire.
|
|
|
It's easy. We have an uploader that makes it a snap. Use it to submit your art, text, header, and subhead. Your post can be funny, serious, or anything in between, as long as it's vintage pulp. You'll get a byline and experience the fleeting pride of free authorship. We'll edit your post for typos, but the rest is up to you. Click here to give us your best shot.
|
|
