Several years ago, I was listening to the CD version of Frank Zappa's Weasels Ripped My Flesh album. It sparked a flashback to the day in 1970 when I bought the album on vinyl.
I remembered thinking the LP’s gonzo title was a hoot. And, I loved the bizarre cover art – a retro-style cartoon, painted by artist Neon Park.
It showed a vacantly smiling square guy shaving with an, um, electric weasel. The weasel’s teeth were making a bloody gouge in his cheek. Wild!
As I listened to the CD, I decided to search the Web to read some background on the album. What I found caused a personal domino effect that sucked me into the even wilder realm of men's adventure magazines of the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s – sometimes called men’s pulp magazines, the “men’s sweats” or just “the sweats.”
From various websites, I learned that Zappa got his Weasels Ripped My Flesh title from a headline on the cover of one of those magazines – the September 1956 issue of Man's Life.
I found a picture of that issue’s cover online. It features an incredible painted illustration that’s more bizarre than the album’s artwork.
The Man’s Life cover painting (which I later learned was done by one of the great illustrators of the genre, Wil Hulsey) shows a barechested, bleeding, manly man waist deep in churning water, desperately fighting off a horde of attacking weasels!
And, there, in the lower right hand corner is the classic teaser headline for the related cover story inside: WEASELS RIPPED MY FLESH!
I was hooked.
I started buying men's adventure magazines through eBay and other sources.
I read the two most authoritative books about the genre:
- It’s a Man’s World: Men’s Adventure Magazines, The Postwar Pulps by Adam Parfrey; and
- Men’s Adventure Magazines: In Postwar America by Max Allan Collins and George Hagenauer (which features the awesome collection of magazines and original artwork collected by Rich Oberg).
Then I started looking for blogs dedicated to discussions of the men’s postwar pulp magazines. I found posts about them on some blogs. I found blogs that focus on related but different genres, like the great pre-war pulp magazines of the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s and the men's "girlie” or bachelor magazines of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.
What I didn't find was what I really wanted – a blog that focuses on the postwar men’s adventure magazines and the various aspects of the genre: the covers, the artists and writers, the pulp-fiction style stories and “true” non-fiction articles (which often severely bend the meaning of the word “true”), the vintage ads, and the other interesting and amusing things “the sweats” tell us about the men, women, history and culture of the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s.
I didn't find a blog like that. So, I decided to create one myself. This is it. I hope you enjoy it.
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