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The Men's Adventure Library Journal
Cuba: Sugar, Sex, and Slaughter
“I Saw Havana Go Berserk” … “ Havana ’s Amazing Flesh Market” … “Bayamo’s Night of Terror” … “Terror! Cuban Hell-Cats Scare Castro’s Cutthroats” … “Squirm in Hell, My Lovely Muchacha!” The stories published in men’s adventure magazines (MAMs) from the late 1950s through the late 1970s were notorious for their eye-popping, politically incorrect, often lurid artwork, their tough, unapologetic pulp fiction, and their exposé-style “news” articles designed to shock and titillate. Mixing fact with fiction and supplemented with sexy, violent pulp illustration art and photos, the magazines published hundreds of stories about Cuba and Fidel Castro, chronicling, illuminating, and dramatizing the earth-shaking events in Cuba in those explosive years in ways no other American print or electronic media did at the time—or has dared to since! Men’s Adventure Library Journal editors Robert Deis and Wyatt Doyle follow their acclaimed I Watched Them Eat Me Alive with the second installment of a new kind of anthology. An expertly curated selection of fast-paced, testosterone-boosted fiction and artwork with history and context supplied by the editors, Sugar, Sex, and Slaughter ’s highlights include an exclusive pictorial reminiscence by men’s adventure supermodel Eva Lynd , who reveals details of her time as an American showgirl and model in Havana in the final days before the revolution … a portfolio from pantheon illustration artist Samson Pollen ( Pollen's Women ) ... and a thrilling account of international intrigue, adventure, and escape by Robert F. Dorr ( A Handful of Hell ), the celebrated and controversial author (and retired senior diplomat) to whom the book is dedicated. Sugar, Sex, and Slaughter is available as a 158-page softcover and as a 178-page expanded hardcover with additional content—20 more color pages of hard-hitting fiction and outrageous artwork.
160 pages, Paperback
Published May 1, 2018
1 person is currently reading
18 people want to read
About the author
Robert Deis
59 books37 followersRobert "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.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
June 17, 2018
Those generations younger than the Boomers may well not be aware of one of the stranger and more colorful of pop-cultural phenomena of the years from the 1950s to the early 1970s: the so-called “men’s adventure magazines”, sometimes called “sweats”, although the sweats were actually a, er, sweatier (more violent, more lurid, more “more”) sub-genre of the genre. These were magazines, usually printed on good old-fashioned genuine pulp stock, aimed not at the would-be sophisticates who “read” Playboy or other even classier magazines like Esquire, but meant for the regular Joes of the era – working-class guys, many of whom had seen service in WWII or Korea, who wanted to escape for a while into a world of derring-do and mayhem that was probably a welcome relief after another hard day on the assembly line. It should be noted that the men’s adventure magazines (called MAMs by those in the know) were different from the straight-out girly mags of the era, although there was definitely some bleed-over between what Lenny Bruce called “the stroke books” and the MAMs; but whereas the girly photo-spreads were the main attraction of the girly books, the MAMs often ran a nudie feature, but their main attraction was adventure, usually presented as “true”, although practically always more or less fictional. Another, and to me the most enjoyable feature of the MAMs was the fantastic artwork: full-color cover paintings of battles and tortures, scantily-clad babes killing Nazis and Commies or being tortured by the same, or, on the other hand, scantily-clad Nazi and Commie babes torturing square-jawed Americans (quite often the ubiquitous model Steve Holland of Doc Savage fame); and lots of interior illustrations, usually black-and-white or duotone, with more of the same wonderfully pulpy madness.
Robert Deis and Wyatt Doyle have made it their mission with their “Men’s Adventure Library” to commemorate the glory days of the men’s adventure magazines with a series of anthologies, each with a particular theme: a certain artist (like Samson Pollen) or writer (like the amazingly prolific Robert F. Dorr), or a certain type of story that was popular back in the day: deadly animals (real or imagined), motorcycle gangs, war stories, etc. I think I have all the books, and this new one – CUBA: SUGAR, SEX AND SLAUGHTER – is a good starting point for anyone who wants to check out this wild bizarro world of adventure. Cuba held a weird fascination for Americans in the 1950s and 1960s, and the stories and illustrations in this volume track the changes that Cuba went through in our popular imagination: from a wild, anything-goes den of many iniquities bankrolled by the American mob, to a land where brave freedom-fighters fought to overcome the corrupt Batista régime, and to the complete about-face of the revolutionaries into black-bearded Commies as wicked as the most wicked Asian or Russian Commie. It’s all here, the cheap prostitutes, the brave guerrilla girls, the snarling bearded baddies, and the regular American Joes who inexplicably keep getting mixed up in all these tropical shenanigans. Don’t expect fancy prose in these stories – these are pure pulp, hammered out by pros who who got to the point quick, slammed it home and wrapped it up in the time it would take its reader to eat a cheeseburger on his lunch break. The art, as is usual with the Men’s Adventure Library books, is superb, with work by masters like John Duillo, George Gross, Earl Norem, Mort Künstler, Norm Eastman, Basil Gogos, and Bruce Minney. Read this book and you’ll feel the hair growing on your chest, and immediately feel like taking your power boat down for a run ninety miles below the Florida Keys, ready to do a little smuggling and maybe some snuggling with a hot-blooded rebel babe...
Robert Deis and Wyatt Doyle have made it their mission with their “Men’s Adventure Library” to commemorate the glory days of the men’s adventure magazines with a series of anthologies, each with a particular theme: a certain artist (like Samson Pollen) or writer (like the amazingly prolific Robert F. Dorr), or a certain type of story that was popular back in the day: deadly animals (real or imagined), motorcycle gangs, war stories, etc. I think I have all the books, and this new one – CUBA: SUGAR, SEX AND SLAUGHTER – is a good starting point for anyone who wants to check out this wild bizarro world of adventure. Cuba held a weird fascination for Americans in the 1950s and 1960s, and the stories and illustrations in this volume track the changes that Cuba went through in our popular imagination: from a wild, anything-goes den of many iniquities bankrolled by the American mob, to a land where brave freedom-fighters fought to overcome the corrupt Batista régime, and to the complete about-face of the revolutionaries into black-bearded Commies as wicked as the most wicked Asian or Russian Commie. It’s all here, the cheap prostitutes, the brave guerrilla girls, the snarling bearded baddies, and the regular American Joes who inexplicably keep getting mixed up in all these tropical shenanigans. Don’t expect fancy prose in these stories – these are pure pulp, hammered out by pros who who got to the point quick, slammed it home and wrapped it up in the time it would take its reader to eat a cheeseburger on his lunch break. The art, as is usual with the Men’s Adventure Library books, is superb, with work by masters like John Duillo, George Gross, Earl Norem, Mort Künstler, Norm Eastman, Basil Gogos, and Bruce Minney. Read this book and you’ll feel the hair growing on your chest, and immediately feel like taking your power boat down for a run ninety miles below the Florida Keys, ready to do a little smuggling and maybe some snuggling with a hot-blooded rebel babe...
June 16, 2018
I really dig these Men's Adventure Library Journal collections. Like previous entries, Cuba: Sugar, Sex, and Slaughter takes you beyond the lurid and salacious cult covers and into to the stories from the hardest working , most exciting, writers of the day (some of whom would go on to become household names). This is great stuff too often overlooked by wrongfully dismissive pop culture mavens. Editor Bob Deis is a men's adventure magazine guru, a junkie who can't wait to get you hooked as deeply as he is. His love for the artists and writers of the genre shines through on every page of this beautifully volume designed by co-editor Wyatt Doyle. If you love adventure, danger, uncharted waters, heroes willing to take on vicious dictators and their brutal minions, fast boats, faster guns, and the sexiest dames in fiction, then this is for you...
August 24, 2018
Earlier this year I read Pollen’s Women, a book by Robert Deis and Wyatt Doyle that examined the career of Samson Pollen, an illustrator for some of the roughly 160 men’s pulp magazines that blossomed on American newsstands in the 1950s and 1960s. These magazines combined brilliant, often over the top illustrations, with hard-hitting fiction and lurid ‘non-fiction’ exposes of various mid-century cultural obsessions.
Chief among these obsessions was, as these magazines depicted it, the nefarious and barbaric activities of the various domestic and international communist minions the United States was then locked in global struggle with. A variant of this particular men’s pulp magazine enthusiasm is the subject of Deis and Doyle’s latest book, Cuba: Sugar, Sex, and Slaughter, which examines the way these magazines depicted pre and post revolutionary Cuba.
I recall, while working as journalist in Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia in the 1990s, many locals fondly remembering the assistance provided to them by Cuba, particular the medical doctors who were sent to these and other fraternal socialist allies in large numbers. Of course, I also realise that many Cubans do not look upon their country’s post-war history so fondly. The repressive nature of aspects of Castro’s rule can also be attested to by any number of intellectuals and the many openly gay Cubans who have been incarcerated by the regime. That said, you can’t really go into this history without also examining the role played by Washington, which attempted to destabalise Castro from the get go, a strategy which along with the embargo forced Castro to move into the Soviet Bloc more deeply and quicker than perhaps might otherwise have been the case.
Whatever, you can watch The Godfather: Part II if you want a deeper insight into America’s political involvement in Cuba. The main point I want to make is Deis and Doyle’s latest effort is their best yet. It is another lavishly illustrated celebration of the – by the standards of contemporary sensibilities – outrageous phenomena that was men’s adventure magazines. But in addition to the usual mixture of nightlife exposes, sexually available local woman, and white male hypermasculinity, this book provides a fascinating keyhole through which to view America’s obsession with Cuba and how it shifted over time.
As Deis points out in his introduction to the book, these magazines were initially quite supportive of Castro’s efforts to topple the corrupt Batista regime in the 1950s. But their coverage began to change from the early 1960s onwards, no doubt spurred on by Washington’s hostility to Havana, and it became pretty much open season on the new regime after the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1961. Cuba: Sugar, Sex, and Slaughter captures this shift beautifully via a swathe of reproduced artwork, including some stunning full colour magazine covers, and the full text of numerous articles from these publications.
While the ability of men’s pulp magazine editors, writers and illustrators to project their various outre fascinations onto any subject is astounding, Cuba must have also provided the kind of material that these people could only dream of: a mixture of sun, surf, vice and attractive local women who were prepared to defy then gender expectations, throw a bandolier around their ample bosoms and wield a machine gun, whether it be against Batista’s goons or Fidel’s Red fiends, while looking fabulously stylish doing so.
As the pulp magazines turned against Castro and his revolution, various Cuban thugs took their place alongside savage Nazis and various other evil Reds in dishing out all kinds of depraved tortures to American service men and innocent white women, in articles such as the wonderfully titled piece in a 1964 edition of Man’s World, ‘Squirm in Hell, My Lovely Muchacha!’ The piece and the amazing front cover that went with, which depicts a communist thug menacing a squirming lingerie clad Western woman, are among the many Cuban variants of Nazisploitation included in this volume.
Lastly, this review would be remiss if it did not give a special shout out to Doyle’s fascinating interview with Eva Lynd, who posed as a model for a number of men’s pulp magazine illustrators and spent time in Cuba as a showgirl. We need more work done on uncovering the history of the countless unknown but essential players, like Lynd, who worked behind the scenes on these magazines and other forms of pulp culture. This is exactly the kind of painstaking work Deis and Doyle are delivering with books like Cuba: Sugar, Sex, and Slaughter and, once again, they are to be congratulated on their efforts.
Chief among these obsessions was, as these magazines depicted it, the nefarious and barbaric activities of the various domestic and international communist minions the United States was then locked in global struggle with. A variant of this particular men’s pulp magazine enthusiasm is the subject of Deis and Doyle’s latest book, Cuba: Sugar, Sex, and Slaughter, which examines the way these magazines depicted pre and post revolutionary Cuba.
I recall, while working as journalist in Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia in the 1990s, many locals fondly remembering the assistance provided to them by Cuba, particular the medical doctors who were sent to these and other fraternal socialist allies in large numbers. Of course, I also realise that many Cubans do not look upon their country’s post-war history so fondly. The repressive nature of aspects of Castro’s rule can also be attested to by any number of intellectuals and the many openly gay Cubans who have been incarcerated by the regime. That said, you can’t really go into this history without also examining the role played by Washington, which attempted to destabalise Castro from the get go, a strategy which along with the embargo forced Castro to move into the Soviet Bloc more deeply and quicker than perhaps might otherwise have been the case.
Whatever, you can watch The Godfather: Part II if you want a deeper insight into America’s political involvement in Cuba. The main point I want to make is Deis and Doyle’s latest effort is their best yet. It is another lavishly illustrated celebration of the – by the standards of contemporary sensibilities – outrageous phenomena that was men’s adventure magazines. But in addition to the usual mixture of nightlife exposes, sexually available local woman, and white male hypermasculinity, this book provides a fascinating keyhole through which to view America’s obsession with Cuba and how it shifted over time.
As Deis points out in his introduction to the book, these magazines were initially quite supportive of Castro’s efforts to topple the corrupt Batista regime in the 1950s. But their coverage began to change from the early 1960s onwards, no doubt spurred on by Washington’s hostility to Havana, and it became pretty much open season on the new regime after the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1961. Cuba: Sugar, Sex, and Slaughter captures this shift beautifully via a swathe of reproduced artwork, including some stunning full colour magazine covers, and the full text of numerous articles from these publications.
While the ability of men’s pulp magazine editors, writers and illustrators to project their various outre fascinations onto any subject is astounding, Cuba must have also provided the kind of material that these people could only dream of: a mixture of sun, surf, vice and attractive local women who were prepared to defy then gender expectations, throw a bandolier around their ample bosoms and wield a machine gun, whether it be against Batista’s goons or Fidel’s Red fiends, while looking fabulously stylish doing so.
As the pulp magazines turned against Castro and his revolution, various Cuban thugs took their place alongside savage Nazis and various other evil Reds in dishing out all kinds of depraved tortures to American service men and innocent white women, in articles such as the wonderfully titled piece in a 1964 edition of Man’s World, ‘Squirm in Hell, My Lovely Muchacha!’ The piece and the amazing front cover that went with, which depicts a communist thug menacing a squirming lingerie clad Western woman, are among the many Cuban variants of Nazisploitation included in this volume.
Lastly, this review would be remiss if it did not give a special shout out to Doyle’s fascinating interview with Eva Lynd, who posed as a model for a number of men’s pulp magazine illustrators and spent time in Cuba as a showgirl. We need more work done on uncovering the history of the countless unknown but essential players, like Lynd, who worked behind the scenes on these magazines and other forms of pulp culture. This is exactly the kind of painstaking work Deis and Doyle are delivering with books like Cuba: Sugar, Sex, and Slaughter and, once again, they are to be congratulated on their efforts.
July 9, 2018
Cuba: Sugar, Sex, and Slaughter
By Robert Deis and Wyatt Doyle
After the pulp magazines disappeared, they were largely replaced by a more gritty and realistic magazine genre collectively known as Men’s Adventure Magazines (MAMs). These glossy, color publications featured stories and artwork by the same people servicing the men’s paperback original market in the 1950s and 1960s. Magazines like “Adventure” and “Real Men” were filled with colorful illustrations and stories designed to appeal to working class men returning home from the wars of the Mid-20th Century.
The Men’s Adventure Library Journal is a labor of love for Robert Deis and Wyatt Doyle with a mission of preserving the salacious stories and art from the MAMs in beautiful-themed compilations that both entertain and put the stories in some historical context. Their latest release is “Cuba: Sugar, Sex, and Slaughter,” and it’s a total pleasure to read and own.
One of the conceits in MAMs is the fictional story presented as non-fiction, and several of the Cuba stories in this volume fall into that category. “Brotherhood of the Scar” is a fictional story from a 1959 issue of “Adventures for Men” by Jack Barrows that falsely claims to be “an eye-witness story of an ex-GI who was brutally tortured by Batista’s savage Gestapo and lived to join the secret underground army that swore vengeance at any price.” The story itself is a 33-page torturous bloodbath that will make fans of the men’s adventure series paperbacks of the 1970s and 1980s feel right at home.
Another highlight was “Kiss the Skull of Death My Beautiful Muchacha” allegedly by Linda Rogers as told to Jim McDonald (actually a work of complete fiction by McDonald). The story originally appeared in the September 1965 issue of “New Man” with graphic cheesecake art by the great Norman Saunders lovingly reproduced in this anthology. The soft-core sex opening grabs the reader as the American female nightclub singer is ravished by her Cuban lover during Fidel’s revolution. One thing leads to another and our heroine is captured and turned over to “El Toro” for torture and interrogation. This is exciting and lurid stuff for men of any era.
The stories collected and preserved here were an important part of America’s literary history and the Men’s Adventure Library Journal guys are doing important work keeping this stuff available. Arguably, the violent and sexy art of this genre was just as historically significant as the stories themselves. Fortunately, the editors of “Cuba” have reproduced scads of cover art and interior illustrations to further give the stories further context and provide a feast for the reader’s eyes.
More information about the MAMs can be found at the website menspulpmags.com, and all of the themed reprint books compiled thus far can be bought on Amazon. In the meantime, “Cuba: Sugar, Sex, and Slaughter” is an essential anthology for fans of sexy, blood-on-the-knuckles fiction and illustration art. Highly recommended.
By Robert Deis and Wyatt Doyle
After the pulp magazines disappeared, they were largely replaced by a more gritty and realistic magazine genre collectively known as Men’s Adventure Magazines (MAMs). These glossy, color publications featured stories and artwork by the same people servicing the men’s paperback original market in the 1950s and 1960s. Magazines like “Adventure” and “Real Men” were filled with colorful illustrations and stories designed to appeal to working class men returning home from the wars of the Mid-20th Century.
The Men’s Adventure Library Journal is a labor of love for Robert Deis and Wyatt Doyle with a mission of preserving the salacious stories and art from the MAMs in beautiful-themed compilations that both entertain and put the stories in some historical context. Their latest release is “Cuba: Sugar, Sex, and Slaughter,” and it’s a total pleasure to read and own.
One of the conceits in MAMs is the fictional story presented as non-fiction, and several of the Cuba stories in this volume fall into that category. “Brotherhood of the Scar” is a fictional story from a 1959 issue of “Adventures for Men” by Jack Barrows that falsely claims to be “an eye-witness story of an ex-GI who was brutally tortured by Batista’s savage Gestapo and lived to join the secret underground army that swore vengeance at any price.” The story itself is a 33-page torturous bloodbath that will make fans of the men’s adventure series paperbacks of the 1970s and 1980s feel right at home.
Another highlight was “Kiss the Skull of Death My Beautiful Muchacha” allegedly by Linda Rogers as told to Jim McDonald (actually a work of complete fiction by McDonald). The story originally appeared in the September 1965 issue of “New Man” with graphic cheesecake art by the great Norman Saunders lovingly reproduced in this anthology. The soft-core sex opening grabs the reader as the American female nightclub singer is ravished by her Cuban lover during Fidel’s revolution. One thing leads to another and our heroine is captured and turned over to “El Toro” for torture and interrogation. This is exciting and lurid stuff for men of any era.
The stories collected and preserved here were an important part of America’s literary history and the Men’s Adventure Library Journal guys are doing important work keeping this stuff available. Arguably, the violent and sexy art of this genre was just as historically significant as the stories themselves. Fortunately, the editors of “Cuba” have reproduced scads of cover art and interior illustrations to further give the stories further context and provide a feast for the reader’s eyes.
More information about the MAMs can be found at the website menspulpmags.com, and all of the themed reprint books compiled thus far can be bought on Amazon. In the meantime, “Cuba: Sugar, Sex, and Slaughter” is an essential anthology for fans of sexy, blood-on-the-knuckles fiction and illustration art. Highly recommended.
January 4, 2022
Bob Deis and Wyatt Doyle strike again. Time and again, Men's Adventure Library editors have resurrected some fascinating stories from the long-forgotten Men's Adventure Magazines that flourished from the '50s to the '70s. Aside from the obviously fictional tales in "Cuba," some stories are factual but read like fiction. And, as a bonus, unlike many men's adventure tales, the reader finishes "Cuba" with a better understanding of the complexity of Cuba's history.
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