Men's Adventure Magazines In Postwar America
(2004 - Taschen)

The rubber really hits the road in covering this book, with its two significantly different editions. Let's start with the original 2004 edition (the one with scorpions on the cover) - it's 7.5-by-10-inches in size and 512 pages thick, so it's just too big a tome to start with, too unwieldy. Of those pages, 287 each sport a full-page cover or illustration reproduction and another 132 gather together multiple images, usually four-to-a-page, so there's a lot of art on display in this too-big volume. 84 of those full pages are used to exhibit 42 double-page spreads (surprisingly, only five completely flunk-out because of the center distortion). The remaining pages are text & photo pages that give the genre's history and the introductions to the seven categories that the covers are divided into. There's also a significant interview with the artist Norm Eastman, as well as a number of artist bios in a healthy reference overview of them, the writers and the publishers - and because this is a Taschen book, almost all the text is repeated in German & French. The captions for each cover includes the magazine's title, publication month & year, and the artist's name, if clear accreditation was available - if an original painting (there's a good number of those to be found here) its medium and metric size is also provided. Now let's look at the subsequent edition that came out in 2008. At 6.5-by-8.5 inches, it is of a bit smaller dimensions, so the image-size is shrunk accordingly, but the book becomes more manageable, *especially* when they then leave out 160 pages ! They excised the Eastman interview, the reference pages and two entire categories (those specifically featuring the Nazi menace and also biker-gangs-&-other-domestic-troublemakers). Ironically, on our own scoreline, which is mostly evaluating artful-perusal-pleasantness, this volume tops the original and both editions of IT'S A MAN'S WORLD, the only other book covering this genre. It scores as the most enjoyable, at the cost of a huge amount of already collected art ! (Let's face it, psychologically, nobody really wants to lose something they already had, even if it was all an ungainly load.) Now, pardon me while I sidetrack here and share a personal aside that might be of value. Having pulled the two competitors together, I first enjoyed IT'S A MAN'S WORLD over a few evenings and then started pouring over this thicker book. I began to realize that I could expect a wave of depression to wash over me after covering a handful of pages. I'd experienced nothing like it, so dependably, before. I think this was the cumulative effect of all this together, image after image of abused individuals (mostly women) in horrible and (here's the key) seemingly helpless situations. Sure, in a portion of these fantastical depictions, there was some potential savior busting in, or cresting the hill, but given the menaces, that person's success was itself far from a foregone conclusion. I concluded that many of us have a brain that's wired to imagine ourselves a hero in the right situation, able to save the day, but that same brain, faced with endless examples of probable, and/or realized, failure, wants to do nothing but shut-down. So, what to say ? - Maybe it's just me, but alternatively, perhaps this kind of 'meal' is best sampled in smaller bites (or at least fully aware of its possible effect). Anyway, the canvassing of the original, heavier, but more comprehensive, volume tallies up the following artists who get a large feature on a dedicated page: Douglas Allen, James Bama**, Tom Beecham (3), Jim Bentley, Stan Borack (4), M.L. Bower, Rob Carboe, Gil Cohen (2), Mel Crair, Rafael DeSoto (10)***, Vic Donahue, Clarence Doore (20), John Duillo (3), Norm Eastman (31), Harry Fisk, Charles Fracé, Basil Gogos (3), Simon Greco, George Gross (4), Carl Hantman (2), Hugh Hirtle, Will Hulsey (15), Mort Künstler (10)(one as Martin Kay), John Leone, Milton Luros (3), Anton Mandolini, Lou Marchetti, George Mayers, Bruce Minney (7)***, Earl Norem (5), Victor Olson, Mel Phillips, Samson Pollen (3), Walter Popp, Vic Prezio (9), Philip Ronfor, Harry Rosenbaum, Tom Ryan, Norman Saunders (24)***, Mark Schneider (2), Syd Shores (3), Shannon Stirnweis, Leo Summers (2), and UNKNOWN (51). (A note about their art credits - I've found a couple of instances where a painter is assocociated with a particular cover, but the original art later comes up for auction identified as being by a different artist.)

** - Note that the 'well-presented' work here by Bama cannot additionally be found so in his own collection on The List.

*** - Note that in regards to the 'well-presented' works here of DeSoto, Minney, and Saunders, some, but not all, can additionally be found so in their own collections on The List.

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