 Nobody knows the way, but everyone knows they’re right. 
Last time we posted an Adam we miscounted and said it was our fortieth issue shared. Well, this is our fortieth (impossible to even know at this point—41st—issue shared, we can't count). It’s an earlier one, from this month in 1955. That means it’s more text heavy, giving us plenty to read, which is nice for us, but leaving us fewer pages of visual interest to scan, not so nice for the website. So today you get thirteen images where normally we post about thirty. We could have scanned several more but getting to the pages in the center of the issue was a challenge—just removing it from its sleeve resulted in losing part of the cover. Alas. Inside the issue you get fiction and fact, including Dick Halvorsen’s harrowing story of being shot down near Benghazi during World War II and having to trek for days through the Libyan desert to reach civilization. A few years ago 95% of Americans wouldn’t have been able to pronounce Benghazi, but now it’s a cultural buzzword—meaning to some people “cover-up” or “incompetence” and to others “witch-hunt” or “wingnut.” What a world we live in. Halvorsen’s tale, referencing a time when the Allies were informally partnered with Bedouins in the area, provides interesting historical color. In other news we have twenty-six more issues of Adam to share. Yes, we’ve been busy beavers. Since today’s issue is already fragile as pie crust perhaps somewhere down the line we’ll just pull it completely apart in order to obtain more and better scans. We’ve sacrificed physical issues of magazines before to give them digital permanency, but not of our beloved Adam. In any case, check back for another posting of our favorite men’s magazine in a week or so. And for a quick look at some of those other thirty-nine issues, maybe start here, here, or here.            
 Representative democracy in action. 
Nature-attacks-man covers are commonplace on men’s adventure magazines, and we’ve seen virtually every species in the animal kingdom get their revenge eventually. Today it’s the eagles’ turn thanks to this November 1957 issue of Man’s Adventure with art by Clarence Doore. What would be nice is if there were a piece of fiction to go along with this striking painting but there isn’t. So we’ll make one up: It was a tough call for the eagles. Some pointed out that humans don’t generally hunt or eat eagles, and many agreed that this fact was in man’s favor. Plus they put us on their coins, some noted, which is a nice tribute. But others said it isn’t about only us raptors, but rather all the birds—our brethren the turkeys, the ducks, and especially the chickens, those most hapless of fowl. Though the few of us who’ve had a chance to eat chicken agree they’re incredibly tasty. But we digress. Even if some of us have no love for the other birds, consider the big picture. Man is turning nature into a parking lot. And for what? Money—the very substance they use our images upon. Oh bitter irony. Plus, have you noticed how hot it’s been lately? They definitely have something to do with that, the destructive fuckers, and since we don't have sweat glands elevated heat is a real inconvenience. So, eagle-on-man violence—all those in favor? Nays? Right, let’s go. Aim for the eyes. They really hate that.                    
 Screenland was one of the earliest and biggest cinema magazines.                              
Actress Claire Windsor appears on the front of this October 1923 issue of Screenland magazine, one of the U.S.’s most venerable celeb publications, launched in Los Angeles in 1920 and surviving, under the control of several owners, until finally folding in 1971. The beautiful cover was painted by Rolf Armstrong, and within the magazine’s sprawling 108 pages are Gloria Swanson, Rodolph (aka Rudolph) Valentino, Phyllis Havers, and many other personalities, plus art from John Held, Jr. and writing from Delight Evans and Robert E. Sherwood. You can download your own copy of this here.
 When in Rome kill as the Romans do. 
We’ve shared forty thirty-nine issues of Australia’s Adam magazine, but none since March. That isn’t because we’re running out, but merely because we decided to focus on American men’s magazines for a while. But Adam is the king as far as we’re concerned. For us, it’s the most attractive, most interesting, and—because of its penchant for stories set in the Aussie outback and wilds of South Asia—the most exotic of all the publications from the late mid-century period. Maybe that’s why we have more than 1,200 scans from the magazine tucked inside Pulp Intl. Today’s issue, number forty-one forty we’ve scanned and uploaded, has a typically lurid cover illustrating James McQueen’s story “Blood on the Sand,” which is one of the better pieces we’ve read in Adam. McQueen spins a yarn about a Roman gladiator named Marcellus who faces his best friend Helvius in the Colossuem. Helvius loses, but is spared by a thumbs-ups from the emperor. But the two friends have to fight again, they know Marcellus will win again, and they know the emperor never spares a life twice. The bulk of the story is set in the few days of contemplation and partying between the two battles. It's a very effective little tale. Elsewhere in Adam you get nice spreads from Samson Pollen and Bruce Minney, lots of thrilling fiction, and lots of naked women, including one in a soap foam bikini that reminds us of when Reiko Ike did the same. On a different subject, moving forward you may notice a break in our magazine scanning activities. Could be days or months. We have to replace our reliable old Mac with a new one and we’ll be losing our Adobe programs—i.e. no more Photoshop for cleaning scans, and we aren’t going to buy it for $1,500 because, as much as we like being one of the sites that uploads new, original content to the web, that price tag is just insane. We can still scan individual pieces of art and not need to use Photoshop on them, but magazines require retouching because the way they're bound means the scans come out skewed. If you've ever scanned one you know what we mean. We’ll see what we can do to work around the problem. In the meantime enjoy this Adam. Twenty-six images below. Update: Forty issues, thirty-nine, who can keep count? Well, we actually went back through the website and today's makes forty. Still plenty. Plus we have twenty-one more issues in reserve. Look for those down the line.                          
 The magazine that cried wolf. 
For Men Only was launched in New York City by Canam Publishers Sales Corp., but changed ownership several times over the years, and was even acquired at one point by pulp kingpin Martin Goodman. This particular issue is from September 1956 and contains art from Rudolph Belarski, Frank Cozzarrelli, Elliot Means, Ben Thomas, Victor Olson, and Ken Crook. Actually, it’s a miracle all the art is credited. It doesn’t happen as often as it should in these magazines. The stories accompanying those art pieces range from espionage to wilderness adventure, including non-fiction from Jim Thompson about “America’s first murderer,” a man named John Billington who came to the New World on the Mayflower. After making trouble for years in Plymouth Colony, he was finally hanged for the slaying of John Newcomen. We checked, and Billington did in fact exist. His execution in September 1630 was the first of a colonist—but certainly not the last. And another story caught our eye. It discusses an incident on the set of an Italian movie in which a wolf got loose and tried to attack actress Silvana Mangano. According to For Men Only, co-star Guido Celano rushed the wolf, grabbed it and threw it into the air, whereupon a rifle-toting crew member nailed it like he was skeet shooting. We’re calling bullshit on that one. A while back we wrote an article about guaranteed hunt farms and were able to see some rescued gray wolves up close. They’re big—about three feet high. European wolves are even bigger. No movie production would use one. Also, we don’t picture fifty-two-year-old, five foot three Guido Celano heaving a wolf into the air like a sack of laundry. No, it was just a dog—a German Shepherd, looks like. But it’s a good story, appropriate publicity for a movie—Uomini e lupi, aka Men and Wolves—that was still months from its premiere. We have about twenty scans below and an inexhaustible supply of magazines still to share.                       
 Where the pleasure never seems to end. 
Though they are at a glance aesthetically very different, the pulp era and the art deco era were contemporaneous, both in full bloom during the 1920s. Above you see the dreamy cover of a 1925 issue of the art deco style magazine Paris Plaisirs, i.e. Paris Pleasures, which was published from 12 Rue Georges-Berger in Paris. The cover star is dancer Isabelitta Ruiz, shot by R. Sobol. It looks to us as if Sobol provided the original image, but it was tinted by a second artist in the employ of the magazine. At least that’s our suspicion. We think that because we can see a second signature on the cover at lower left—it looks like, maybe, Cuaillant? No, that sounds wrong even for French. Maybe C. Jaillant? Better, but still quite possibly wrong. Here we go again with these French artists. And the magazines never seem to bother with masthead credits either. Too prosaïque maybe. We can hear our French friends say, “Comment typique! You Americans, always wanting to know exactly who did what. Learn to embrace uncertainty!” Okay, then. Twenty-two scans below, and you can see a lot more Paris Plaisirs art at the excellent webpage aucarrefouretrange.
                     
 We’d hate to be in the same boat as these guys. 
An argosy is a type of boat, and this 1953 Argosy—the self-billed “complete men’s magazine”—has a type of boat on the cover and a boatload of interesting features within. Much of them focus on hunting, which has been in the news Stateside of late due to several rich folks being outed for killing African animals. Argosy glorifies hunting in a way that was typical of the 1950s, when guys like Ernest Hemingway and John Huston mainstreamed knowledge of the practice. The presumption that man has a natural right to kill African animals for sport oozes from these Argosy stories. We made a game of inverting that presumption by mentally adding “because I was trying to shoot him” to the end of sentences. For instance, “He turned and hurled his entire three tons at me…” became, “He turned and hurled his entire three tons at me because I was trying to shoot him.” We liked the stories, though. They are exciting. But hey, times change—it ain’t The Snows of Kilimanjaro out there anymore. These big animals are way too important to be killing for sport. About fifteen years ago we took a road trip across the U.S. and came upon the Petrified Forest National Park. We expected to see countless mineralized trees, and we did see some, but the place is just a plain of scattered rocks. It didn’t used to be that way. A sign explained that millions of artifacts had been removed from the park over the years by tourists. Each one seemed meaningless to the person taking it, but over time the forest disappeared. Today we understand two important things we didn’t during the 1950s. First, humanity has no restraint when it comes to killing animals. There’s no point where the animal is too rare or valuable to be killed. The opposite, in fact—people simply pay more for the glory of doing it, and the number of interested parties is limitless. Second, a species reaches a level of scarcity where collapse is assured unless there are active and expensive human efforts made to prevent it. That collapse point comes long before every animal is killed, yet we don’t know exactly where it is for each species.
All of this means no large animal exists in true abundance. It doesn’t matter if a person shoots one of 50,000 of a species or one of the last 50. If a market exists for killing even one of them, the species is ultimately doomed, because stoppage is not structured into market systems—only higher pricing. There’s no doubt about this at all. The jury’s in. Anybody who doesn’t recognize it is lying to himself or herself. And extinction or near-extinction is too high a price for the ecology to pay in service to human ego. Scans below.                     
 A new woman for a new era. 
This issue of Paris Magazine features a beautiful Louis-Charles Royer cover of Ziegfeld star Claire Luce, one of the most popular celebrities of her time. Her heyday was the 1920s and ’30s, a period during which—though this is little remarked upon today—substantially more women began to have sex before marriage. By the time the first surveys took place in the 1940s about 50% of women admitted to having pre-marital sex. Anecdotally, during the 1920s probably at least one in four women had sex as singles. Claire Luce was a pioneer of the female right to choose. A mere eight-year span of her diary describes sixty lovers. Luce very much personifies a seismic shift in the values of Western women. Many scholars say it happened because they moved into the university and the workplace around that time, and that was indeed an important factor because it brought women and men into mutual contact outside of family and church situations. But it’s clear the prime mover was the trauma of World War I and the loss of 37 million lives in a conflict that taught those who came of age around then that life could be short and joy could be fleeting. This factor is nearly always downplayed in studies of that time, though we have never understood why. It is too obvious? Even with their numbers increasing, relatively few women were in the university and workplace. But virtually no Western family went untouched by the war. Those 37 million deaths reached deep into every town, every enclave, every social class. Nearly everyone had lost a father, a brother, an uncle, or at least a family friend. And if a loved one actually survived battle, they often returned to preach the futility of war to the generation below them—or by their mere broken presence serve as a warning. Ernest Hemingway captured this in The Sun Also Rises, which focuses on Jake, prevented by a war wound from having sex, and Lady Brett, who loves Jake but must constantly seek lovers elsewhere.
Of course, there are many factors behind any social shift, but rapid change typically derives from chaos. Ask any neo-con or disaster capitalist. The primary effect of war or warlike events upon society is to alter how it views life, death, and personal freedom. In the past, the spectre of death made people want more freedom to live as they saw fit; in our present era, traumatic events have resulted in people agreeing to sacrifice their personal freedom (thanks to powerful suggestions and hard work by opportunistic governments).
Anyway, just an interesting digression concerning Paris Magazine’s cover star. Like predecessors such as Dorothy Parker, and peers like Tallulah Bankhead, she was a sexual trendsetter, a new type of woman for a radically reordered Western world. She’s also about as pulp as it gets. We may get back to Claire Luce a bit later, but in the meantime we have a bunch of interior scans from Paris Magazine below, and more issues available at the click of a mouse. This edition, number 34, appeared in 1934.             
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1949—Rainier Becomes Prince of Monaco
In Monaco, upon upon the death of Prince Louis II, twenty-six year old Rainier Louis Henri Maxence Bertrand Grimaldi, aka Rainier III, is crowned Prince of Monaco. Rainier later becomes an international household name by marrying American cinema sweetheart Grace Kelly in 1956. 1950—Dianetics is Published
After having told a gathering of science fiction writers two years earlier that the best way to become a millionaire was to start a new religion, American author L. Ron Hubbard publishes Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health. The book is today one of the canonical texts of Scientology, referred to as "Book One", and its publication date serves as the first day of the Scientology calendar, making today the beginning of year 52 AD (After Dianetics). 1985—Theodore Sturgeon Dies
American science fiction and pulp writer Theodore Sturgeon, who pioneered a technique known as rhythmic prose, in which his text would drop into a standard poetic meter, dies from lung fibrosis, which may have been caused by his smoking, but also might have been caused by his exposure to asbestos during his years as a Merchant Marine. 1945—World War II Ends
At Reims, France, German General Alfred Jodl signs unconditional surrender terms, thus ending Germany's participation in World War II. Jodl is then arrested and transferred to the German POW camp Flensburg, and later he is made to stand before the International Military Tribunal at the Nuremberg Trials. At the conclusion of the trial, Jodl is sentenced to death and hanged as a war criminal. 1954—French Are Defeated at Dien Bien Phu
In Vietnam, the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, which had begun two months earlier, ends in a French defeat. The United States, as per the Mutual Defense Assistance Act, gave material aid to the French, but were only minimally involved in the actual battle. By 1961, however, American troops would begin arriving in droves, and within several years the U.S. would be fully embroiled in war.
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