Editor’s Note: This is an updated version of my first post on this blog.
A few years ago, I was listening to a CD reissue of Frank Zappa’s WEASELS RIPPED MY FLESH album, the last one he did with the original members of the Mothers of Invention band.
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. It’s a retro-style cartoon image painted by artist Neon Park, who was best known for covers he did for albums by the Mothers, Little Feat, and other rock bands.
It shows a vacantly smiling square-looking guy who is wearing a suit and tie and shaving with an, er, electric weasel. The weasel’s teeth are making a bloody gouge in his cheek. Trippy!
As I listened to the CD, I decided to search the Web to find some background on the album.
What I found caused a domino effect that sucked me into the realm of men’s adventure magazines published in the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s, called MAMS for short. Some people call them “men’s sweat mags.” They’re also sometimes referred to as the “men’s post war pulp magazines,” reflecting their connections to the pre-World War Two pulp magazines, or just “men’s pulp mags.”
From various websites, I learned that Zappa got his album title from a story in 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 as or even more bizarre than the album artwork.
The MAN’S LIFE cover painting (which I later learned was done by one of the great illustration artists who worked for the genre, Wil Hulsey) shows a bare-chested, 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 headline for the cover story inside: “WEASELS RIPPED MY FLESH!”
I tracked down a copy of the magazine and read the “Weasels” story. It was not what I expected.
It’s a dark, noirish tale that’s as amazingly wild and cool as Wil Hulsey’s cover painting. And, the other stories, artwork and vintages ads in that issue were fascinating to me.
I was hooked. I started buying more and more men’s adventure magazines through eBay and other sources.
To learn more about MAMs, I read what were the two most authoritative books about the genre at the time: IT’S A MAN’S WORLD: MEN’S ADVENTURE MAGAZINES, THE POSTWAR PULPS by Adam Parfrey; and the original MEN’S ADVENTURE MAGAZINES: IN POSTWAR AMERICA by Max Allan Collins and George Hagenauer (which features the awesome collection of magazines and original artwork owned by Rich Oberg).
I also started searching for blogs or websites dedicated to discussions of MAMs. I did find scattered posts about them on a number of blogs and websites. I found quite a few men’s adventure magazine cover scans on various types of sites.
I also found blogs that focus on the history of related but different genres, like the earlier pulp fiction magazines that ran from the 1920s to the early 1950s 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 site that focuses on the post-WWII 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 tend to severely bend the meaning of the word “true”), the vintage ads, and the other interesting and amusing things those magazines tell us about the men, women, history and culture of the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s.
I couldn’t find any site like that. So, in 2009, I decided to create one myself. You’re reading it now: MensPulpMags.com. Stay tuned for more posts describing what I learn about MAMs.
* * * * * * * * * *
Comments? Corrections? You can email them to me or join the Men’s Adventure Magazines & Books Facebook Group and post them there.
AN UPDATE: In the years since I wrote this first blog post, I have done many more posts on this blog and have co-edited or published more than 30 books and digest style magazines that feature men’s adventure stories and artwork. You can see them all in the MensPulpMags.com bookstore. As of 2024, one of the newest books is a full color MAM story and art anthology titled WEASELS RIPPED MY FLESH! It’s an expanded edition of a version I co-edited with Wyatt Doyle and Josh Alan Friedman in 2013. As Wyatt recently put it, the 2024 edition is “Bigger. Tougher. More Weaselly.” And, yes, it includes the killer weasels story and artwork that got me hooked on MAMs.
