Men's Adventure Quarterly #5: The Dirty Mission Issue - Robert Deis and Bill Cunningham, eds.

MEN’S ADVENTURE QUARTERLY moves into its second year of publication with issue #5, the Dirty Mission Issue. And I’m happy to report that this latest offering more than lives up to the very high standards set by the previous issues. The men’s adventure magazines probably published more stories about World War II than any other subject, and as you can tell from that great cover by Bruce Minney, this issue concentrates on stories about daring raids carried out by commando forces made up of criminals, prostitutes, and rugged American G.I.s.

The prototype for that plot, of course, is THE DIRTY DOZEN, the bestselling novel by E.M. Nathanson and the famous movie made from it. Or is it? Turns out the inspiration for that novel was a real-life group of commandos known as the Filthy Thirteen, and old pulpster Arch Whitehouse contributes an article about them from the October 1944 issue of the men’s magazine TRUE. That tale kicks off the line-up of stories reprinted in this issue of MAQ, the rest of which are completely fictional, by the way.

The only other author in this bunch whose by-line can be identified as his real name and not a pseudonym is Donald Honig, who has the longest story in the book with “Savage Comrades”, from the September 1969 issue of MALE. There’s been a Honig story in every issue of MAQ so far, because he was a fine writer, and he doesn’t disappoint here. In “Savage Comrades”, he comes up with a neat twist on the criminals-turned-commandos plot by making them German POWs who, because of their criminal history before the war, don’t want the Nazis to win. Along with a couple of American GIs to run the mission, they’re sent in to blow up a vital jet fuel refinery.

The term “Lace Panty Commandos” has become sort of a running joke among men’s adventure magazine fans. The story that coined the term, “The Wild Raid of Gibbon’s Lace Panty Commandos” (MAN’S BOOK, June 1963) is included here, are are “The Desperate Raid of Wilson’s Lace Panty Guerrillas” (WORLD OF MEN, March 1963), “Free the Girls of Love Captive Stalag” (MEN, December 1967), “Death Doll Platoon” (MAN’S STORY, February 1972), “The 5 Wild Missions of O’Brien’s Submarine Commandos” (STAG, November 1973), and “G.I. River Rats Who Blasted the Nazis’ Sex Circus Villa” (STAG, November 1973). That last story has a great bit of copy on its first page: “The guests were top Nazi officers—perhaps even Rommel—and the wild assassination scheme included a mute wrestler, a bear, and a team of underwater daredevils . . .” If you can read that and not want to read the story that goes with it, well, you have more will power than I do. I found all these stories to be very entertaining.

The great fanzine publisher Justin Marriott contributes an article about Dirty Missions in British comics, featuring a couple of my favorite series, the Rat Pack and the Convict Commandos, both written by Alan Hebden, along with covering a number of other series that sound intriguing. Blogger/author Joe Kenney provides an essay about his introduction to the men’s adventure magazines, and like everything he writes, it’s enjoyable and informative. I mentioned Bruce Minney, but there are also dozens of reproductions of great covers and interior art by Minney, Norm Eastman, Gil Cohen, Frank McCarthy, Al Rossi, Walter Popp, and Franklin Wittmack, as well as others I’ve probably overlooked or forgotten. And that doesn’t even include the features on beautiful models Eva Lynd and Mala Mastroberte. For great art and production, you just can’t beat MEN’S ADVENTURE QUARTERLY.

The Dirty Mission Issue gets the same very high recommendation from me that the previous issues have. You can buy it directly from the publisher via his eBay page. And coming up next time around, as previewed in this one: the Heist Issue! Something tells me it’ll be a good one.

Now Available in Trade Paperback: Bruce Minney: The Man Who Painted Everything

Some of you expressed an interest in the print edition of Tom Ziegler's book about the great cover artist Bruce Minney. It's now available from Amazon with hundreds of beautiful cover reproductions from paperbacks and men's adventure magazines, plus lots of interior illustrations from the magazines as well.

Bruce Minney: The Man Who Painted Everything - Thomas Ziegler

As some of you know, I've developed an interest lately in the men's adventure magazines of the Fifties and Sixties, even joining the Facebook group devoted to them. There's also an excellent blog about them run by Bob Deis, the founder of the Facebook group. (The scans that accompany this post come from Bob's blog.) These publications, with titles like FOR MEN ONLY, MALE, and STAG, always fascinated me as a kid when I saw them on the magazine racks while I was buying my comic books, probably because they were forbidden fruit. My mother already had enough of a dislike for me reading comics. If she'd caught me with my nose in an issue of FOR MEN ONLY with a racy cover, she would have pitched a conniption fit and that magazine would have been in the garbage faster than you can say, "Smut".

Now, of course, I can read whatever I want to, but the magazines that would have cost me a couple of quarters back in 1968 now fetch considerably more than that on eBay. Even so, I've picked up a few of them and will probably buy more once I've read the ones I have.

In the meantime, that Facebook group I mentioned above has been an education, as well as being highly entertaining. For example, I'd never heard of Bruce Minney, although I was familiar with his work without really being aware of it. (I'll get to that.) From the mid-Fifties through the early Seventies, Minney was a prolific artist for the men's adventure magazines, providing scores of cover paintings and interior illustrations. He painted rampaging elephants, runaway trains, aerial dogfights, gun battles, explosions, evil villains (many of them Nazis), stalwart heroes, and lots and lots of beautiful girls. If there was a way to work it into a cover painting that would catch a newsstand browser's eye and induce him to part with his quarters, Bruce Minney painted it.

Hence the title of this excellent new biography and appreciation of Bruce Minney's work by Thomas Ziegler, BRUCE MINNEY: THE MAN WHO PAINTED EVERYTHING.

Ziegler is in a good position to produce such a book, since he's Bruce Minney's son-in-law, but this volume doesn't whitewash the inevitable hills and valleys of a freelancer's career. It's a fascinating, well-written look behind the scenes of the men's adventure magazine industry, a large neglected sub-genre of popular fiction. (And despite the preponderance of magazines with "True" or "Real" in their titles, most of what was published in them actually was fiction.)

Ziegler doesn't stop with those magazines, however. He explores Minney's career as a fine artist and, of most interest to me, as a paperback cover artist. Until I saw all the cover reproductions in this book, I didn't realize he had painted the covers for so many books that I've read or at least owned during my life.

I bought the e-book edition of this one, read the text on my Kindle, and used the Kindle app on my computer to appreciate the hundreds of excellent color cover reproductions. A trade paperback edition will also be available soon. If you have an interest in the men's adventure magazines, paperback covers, cover art in general, or the life of a freelance artist, BRUCE MINNEY: THE MAN WHO PAINTED EVERYTHING gets the highest recommendation from me. It's one of the best books I've read this year.