THE MEN'S ADVENTURE QUARTERLY #10: FULL COLOR EDITION

by Robert Deis, Bill Cunningham (editor), Paul Bishop (contributor)

171 pages, Paperback

Published February 27, 2024

About the author

Robert "Bob" Deis is a pulp and pop culture historian who collects and writes about vintage men's adventure magazines (MAMs) and paperbacks published in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. He co-edits, with indie book publisher Wyatt Doyle, the MEN'S AVENTURE LIBRARY book series. That series now includes over 20 illustrated story anthologies and art books. Bob also co-edits the MEN'S ADVENTURE QUARTERLY magazine with graphic designer and pop culture maven Bill Cunningham. The MAQ reprints MAM stories and artwork and discusses paperback, movie and TV shows related to each issue's theme. Bob and Bill also co-edit THE ART OF RON LESSER book series, which showcases Lesser's famed paperback cover art, historical artwork, and more recent paintings. Bob's main website is www.MensPulpMags.com. He also writes a blog about famous quotations, www.ThisDayinQuotes.com. Bob lives near Key West, Florida with his beautiful wife (who graciously tolerates his piles of old magazines and books), their three dogs and four cats.

Reviews

[Phillip Fuller · Rating 5 out of 5]

This magazine really blew my mind because the editors chose some awesome material from the men's adventure magazines that featured the Vietnam War. The men's adventure magazine articles selected showcased the heroism of the military men with some other material about Barry Sadler and Raquel Welch's USO tour. The last article was about how Vietnam veterans suffered from a sense their country let them down. Soldiers were vilified as baby killers by civilians as one writer of 1980's Vietnam war paperbacks by a publisher and shafted by a government that was supposed to take care of them. Employers refused to hire Vietnam veterans who later got government jobs sweeping streets many ended up on. One brave African American soldier Dwight Johnson went from receiving a Medal of Honor to being shot in an attempted robbery. This magazine went from the glorification of the war in adventure tales to the tragedy that few people remember today. Overall it was an interesting read about the Vietnam War era because the editors made great choices.

[John Peel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another collection of action, this time all stories in or about Vietnam. There are some true stories, and a bunch of inventions, but all are very readable and beautifully illustrated. This series seems to somehow keep getting better and better - I can't wait for the next issue - UFO abductions and alien sex!

[Dan Leo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anyone familiar with the wonderfully bizarre world of the men's adventure magazines that became a popular phenomenon in the mid-1950s until finally petering out in the 1970s will know that World War II provided much of their material, with a heavy emphasis on the evil and tortuous predilections of Nazis and fanatical Japanese. The much more recent conflict in Korea also provided plenty of derring-do for brave Americans against the villainous Communist North Koreans and Chinese. But then came the early 1960s and a whole new and contemporaneous war: Vietnam, one that was being fought not in the recent past but in the present. As enormous as World War II was, our own involvement in it lasted less than four years, from December 1941 to August 1945; the Korean war was shorter still, from 1950 to 1953. Vietnam was a different matter, our longest war up to that time, from the early 60s to the early 70s, with our last personnel not leaving the country until the fall of Saigon in 1975. It was the war that was always there through most of the 1960s into the early 70s, a war with few major battles, but constant, and so the men's magazines reflected this new ongoing reality. Unlike with World War II, the stories could not look back on a war that had ended, because this war had not ended, but just went on year after year, and for a whole generation of American men, it was a war that could not be entirely ignored, because we had this reality called "the draft": in other words, when you turned 18, you could be called up to serve in the army (or, eventually, the marines), unless you were lucky (depending on your definition of luck), or had a deferment for college, medical reasons, or some other special consideration. This great new edition of the Men's Adventure Quarterly gives us a vivid look at this new war occurring right during the heyday of the men's adventure magazine. As was customary in this strange subset of the publishing world, the stories range from non-fiction to outright fiction, but the stories are mostly presented as "true" – it was a given in the genre that the readership wanted material, no matter how outrageous and improbable, that at least "appeared" to be true – and the stories in this issue go from the the early days of the war and our first casualties, on to various battles in the jungles, in Viet Cong tunnels, the actual and horrific siege at Khe Sanh, and aerial dogfights with North Korean MIGS. As fans have come to expect with the Quarterly, we get some great pictorial features, such as coverage of the Hollywood bombshell Raquel Welch's trips to Nam to entertain the troops, and a terrific collection of covers featuring the amazingly ubiquitous rugged model Steve Holland fighting the war as a GI, marine, or fighter pilot. One unusual special feature is the work the brilliant cartoonist Will Eisner did as editor and illustrator for a military magazine called PS - The Preventive Maintenance Monthly, in which you could learn how to keep your M-16 shipshape even in the most adverse conditions.

As always with the Men's Adventure Quarterly, the best part is the amazing full-color reproductions of cover paintings, as well as interior illustrations, by masters like Norman Saunders, Mort Künstler, and Vic Prezio, with what seems to be an especially large amount of work from the brilliant Mel Crair. If you are a fan of mid-20th century illustration art, this magazine is worth every penny and will take a permanent place on your bookshelf.

As always with the Men's Adventure Quarterly, the best part is the amazing full-color reproductions of cover paintings, as well as interior illustrations, by masters like Norman Saunders, Mort Künstler, and Vic Prezio, with what seems to be an especially large amount of work from the brilliant Mel Crair. If you are a fan of mid-20th century illustration art, this magazine is worth every penny and will take a permanent place on your bookshelf.