“Walter Kaylin, come back!”
– Mario Puzo, author of THE GODFATHER
“Outrageous and wonderful.”
– Bruce Jay Friedman (STERN, LUCKY BRUCE, SHAMPOO), Kaylin’s editor at MEN and MALE
HE-MEN, BAG MEN, & NYMPHOS collects some of the best men’s adventure magazine stories written by Walter Kaylin (1921-2017), one of the greatest writers who worked for the MAM genre in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. In 2014, men’s pulp culture historian Robert Deis and indie publisher Wyatt Doyle worked with Walter to publish a limited run of a black-and-white paperback edition of his classic stories. Now Deis and Doyle have published a new full-color, expanded edition of the Kaylin collection in paperback and deluxe hardcover editions. This listing is for the deluxe hardcover edition.
Under his own name and the pseudonyms Roland Empey and David Mars, Walter Kaylin wrote everything from war stories, exotic adventure yarns, and Westerns to Cold War spy stories, science fiction and sexed-up noir. Most of his stories appeared in the MAMs published by Martin Goodman’s Magazine Management company (birthplace of Marvel Comics), such as ACTION FOR MEN, FOR MEN ONLY, MEN, MALE, MAN’S WORLD and STAG.
In addition to collecting some of Walter’s best stories, HE-MEN, BAG MEN, & NYMPHOS includes special introductions by Deis, Doyle, and Walter’s daughters, Jennifer Kaylin and Lucy Kaylin, who became successful writers in their own right.
It also includes Walter’s own reminiscence about his days as a men’s adventure story writer and an exclusive article about him written by novelist, playwright and screenwriter Bruce Jay Friedman (1939-2020). Friedman was an editor for Magazine Management before becoming famous. He hired Walter and another then unknown writer, Mario Puzo, to pen action/adventure yarns for the magazines he edited. Both Friedman and Puzo, who later became famous for his novel THE GODFATHER, considered Kaylin to be one of the best of the many writers who wrote stories for MAMs.
In 1987, when writer/musician Josh Alan Friedman (Bruce Jay’s son) interviewed Puzo about his days working for the Goodman MAMs, Puzo singled out Kaylin for praise. “He was great! He was outrageous, he just carried it off,” Puzo exclaimed. “Walter Kaylin, come back!”
Now, Walter is back in a way that’s bigger and better than ever, in the new, expanded full color edition of HE-MEN, BAG MEN, & NYMPHOS. It’s available in both a high quality 6″ x 9″ paperback and a special 330-page, 6 ½” x 9½” deluxe hardcover with a wraparound dust jacket.
Both editions have additional content not included in the now out-of-print 2014 paperback. Both feature full color reproductions of the covers and interior illustrations from the magazines Walter’s stories first appeared in—painted by top pulp adventure artists like Mort Künstler, Earl Norem, James Bama, Gil Cohen, Robert E. Schulz and Samson Pollen.
This listing is for the deluxe hardcover version of the new HE-MEN, BAG MEN, & NYMPHOS collection. The full color paperback edition is available in a separate listing in this bookstore.
You can see an extensive flip-page preview of E-MEN, BAG MEN, & NYMPHOS by clicking this link. You can see an extensive video preview of HE-MEN, BAG MEN, & NYMPHOS by clicking the image below.
