This listing is for a brand new copy of the book POLLEN’S ACTION: THE ART OF SAMSON POLLEN, co-edited by Robert Deis and Wyatt Doyle with Sam. Samson Pollen (1931–2018), was one of the great men’s adventure magazine and paperback artists, along with artists like Mort Künstler, James Bama, Gil Cohen, Bruce Minney, Vic Prezio, Mel Crair, and Basil Gogos.
He was one of the grandmasters of interiors illustrations for stories that appeared in men’s adventure magazines published by Martin Goodman’s Magazine Management Company in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.
Magazine Management (which also launched the Marvel comics empire) published some of the best and longest-lasting MAMs, such as ACTION FOR MEN, FOR MEN ONLY, MALE, MAN’S WORLD, MEN, STAG, and TRUE ACTION.
Unlike most other top artists who did artwork for those periodicals, Pollen preferred to do interior illustrations rather than cover art. He liked the greater room for expression provided by the 2-page spreads most MAM interior artwork was used for. Thus, most of the paintings are a horizontal format, designed to be printed across two pages in a magazine. Some were printed across two pages vertically, like a centerfold.
Only a small percentage of the interior spreads in the Magazine Management men’s magazines were published in full color. Most were either black-and-white illustrations or “duotones”— paintings created with and printed in shades of a single color and black.
Pollen was a grandmaster of both black-and-white and duotone art. Indeed, many of his duotones look like they are full color. POLLEN’S ACTION reproduces scores of classic MAM original paintings by Pollen along with scans of the 2-page magazine spreads they were used. It’s a follow-up to POLLEN’S WOMEN: THE ART OF SAMSON POLLEN, which focuses on MAM artwork Sam did that feature alluring femmes fatales and exotic “native” girls.
To do justice Pollen’s artwork, both of those volumes are printed in a horizontal 8.5″ x 11″ format. Thus, the paintings he created for 2-page spreads in the magazines are shown on single pages in the book. Both books are deluxe hardcovers printed on high quality paper.
The majority of the photos of the original paintings included POLLEN’S ACTION and POLLEN’S WOMEN were taken by Pollen himself. Almost none of these original paintings have been shown in any other art books before.
A third book in the series, POLLEN IN PRINT: 1955-1959, is a chronological presentation of Pollen’s work as it was first seen by MAM readers in the pages of men’s adventure magazines published between 1955 and 1959.
All three Pollen books were co-edited by Robert Deis and Wyatt Doyle and include commentary by Sam Pollen taken from interviews Deis and Doyle recorded with him before he passed. All are published via Doyle’s New Texture imprint and are available from Amazon worldwide, BudsArtBooks.com and other independent booksellers, or directly from co-editor Bob Deis via his MensPulpMags.com website.
You can see an extensive flip-page preview of POLLEN’S ACTION by clicking this link.