Maneaters

Maneaters, edited by Robert Deis and Wyatt Doyle

No month stated, 2021  New Texture

A big thanks to Bob Deis for sending me this copy of Maneaters some years back, and apologies it took me so long to get to it! Compiling a selection of shark-centric tales from the men’s adventure magazines of the 1950s through the 1970s, Maneaters comes highly recommended, and as usual Wyatt Doyle’s presentation of the art is both eye-catching and, more importantly, respectful of its sources. 

 

Unfortunately the same can’t be said about a particular modern interpolation that Maneaters has been saddled with, but more on that anon; I want to focus on the good stuff first. I wasn’t sure what to think about an entire book featuring shark stories, as other than Shark Fighter it’s a genre I’ve never cared much about; indeed, to this day I still haven’t seen (or read) Jaws, but I did see Jaws 3-D in the theater when it came out, when I was 9 years old, and for some unfathomable reason I had Jaws 4 on VHS several years ago…I think I bought it at a resale store for a quarter, and I watched it repeatedly; I came to the conclusion that it was so terrible that it actually achieved a sort of greatness. That said, I have the tie-in novels (by Hank Searls) of Jaws 2 and Jaws 4, and I keep meaning to read them… 

Well anyway, there are a lot of stories in Maneaters, ranging from ones that are only a page or two that ones that run a handful of pages. There are no “Booklength Extra” tales here; as any vintage men’s mag reader will know, the “Diamond Line” in particular would often publish epic-length stories, especially in the 1960s, and I wonder if any such shark stories exist. But I guess Bob wouldn’t want to devote much space to those, as they’d fill up practically the entire book; at least this way there’s more variety. 

Or at least, as much variety as several shark stories can provide. Because really, they all share the same setup: virile yank “skin divers” take on sharks all over the globe. What I found most interesting about the stores here was that the ones from the ‘70s were actually the best; usually the men’s mag stories from the ’50s and ‘60s are superior, before the mags descended into total sleaze and porn, with editors who were more concerned with telling good stories than in just showing bare breasts. Now personally, I like both (as my kid once angrily declared when he was around 3 or so after I kept pressing him on who he thought made the better French fry: Chic Fil A or McDonalds). But what’s interesting here is that these ‘70s tales are just as good as the earlier ones…no doubt because Jaws was such a big hit, and the anonymous authors were trying to compete with Peter Benchley’s big seller. 

Oh and one minor point of contention: Bob refers to these stories as “MAMs,” ie “Men’s Adventure Magazines.” I personally do not like this term; it is much too estrogenic for the virile men’s mags of mid 20th century. But then maybe Bob is just “taking the piss” as the British say, or at least they said in the few British sitcoms I’ve watched. 

For once I won’t focus on every story, because as mentioned some of them are very short, more so punch lines than actual yarns, like for example the story about the shark that “delivered the mail” to a particular ship. Indeed, the earliest stories are pretty short, indicating that shark tales were relegated to the back pages, and doubtless few and far between in the ‘50s. 

“The Shark Who Hated Women” is the first really good one; it’s by S.P. Free (a relative of I.P. Freely, perhaps?) and from the August 1960 Peril. This one’s narrated by a guy who worked as a marine biologist and then one day said to hell with it all, bought a boat, and sailed off to an island, which alone is a story in itself, of the sort collected in the vintage men’s mag anthology Yankee King Of The Islands. But the shark’s the focus, here; our narrator informs us of a “black shark” that has a mysterious fondness for women, and our stubborn narrator doesn’t believe it…leading to a horrific sequence where not only does this guy’s native bride suffer, but he too is wounded woefully in the climactic fight with the shark. 

“The Giant Shark That Guarded Rommel’s Treasure,” by Peter Fall and from the January 1961 Fury, is interesting in that the shark actually gets in the way of the otherwise good story. This third-person tale relates how a WWII frogman, a few years after the war, is hired by a scar-faced Austrian to recover gold from the bottom of the ocean, gold that was dropped there by Rommell when he was retreating from the Allies. Of course, the Austrian will turn out to be an old Nazi, but author Fall skips all that as he focuses on a great white shark that attacks the protagonist as he’s retrieving the gold. 

“E Mao Ariki” is by Robert Edmond Alter and from the July 1968 Argosy. Alter was a crime author of the day and as expected his yarn is of a different caliber than the men’s mag average, with a lot of word-painting and characterization. That said, Argosy was unlike the average men’s mag in that it was up front that many of its stories were fiction, and not fiction gussied up as nonfiction. (Back in 2000 I met a girl named Gussie at a wedding in Tampa, Florida, a beautiful blonde-haired girl who for some inexplicable reason seemed to be interested in me, and to this day I think of her when I write the word “gussied;” isn’t that strange and sad?) This third-person narrative focuses on a scuba diver who’s been hired by a wanna be director who wants to get footage of a massive shark (the titular E Mao Ariki) that reportedly attacks the natives during a weird “get pearls from the ocean” test of manhood. The modern reader will easily detect that Alter implies the director is gay, but that aside, this is a good story, with the protagonist becoming a hero despite himself as he goes after the huge shark with his spear gun. Yet at the same time the yarn is inferior to many of the others here because Alter is too focused on word-painting and introspection, thus his narrative misses the weird fire typically found in men’s mag stories. 

“A Man-Eating Shark Pack Against Scuba Divers,” by Walther Sturm and from the January 1975 Action For Men, is my favorite story in Maneaters. As mentioned above, these later stores are superior to the earlier ones, as post-Jaws the authors were more focused on exploiting the sharks. This one’s cool because a shark is randomly attacking people along the New Jersey coast and the president of a scuba club puts all the various “scuba teams” together into a sort of shark attack squad, and they wage war on the sharks along the coast. Then a marine biologist comes along to get in the way, but really he just wants the killer shark alive to study its brain. I liked this one, particularly the off-hand revelation that the protagonist was a plumber by day; even the heroes of men’s mag stories were blue collar, same as the readers. 

“The Headhunting Shark That Destroyed A Texas Family,” by Bob Trotter and from the January 1976 For Men Only, was my second favorite story. It’s another fast-moving third-person narrative that could easily have been expanded into novel length, featuring a trio of Texas brothers who take on the same shark: the surfer, the ‘Nam vet, and finally the “cattle rassler.” Trotter writes the yarn with a style uncommon for the men’s mags, focusing on the unusual Texan diction in his narrative. But otherwise it’s a cool story, however the character I thought would be the main hero, the ‘Nam vet, is dispensed with quickly – even though he has the most typical men’s mag story setup, jumping into the drink with nothing more than a knife and the will for vengeance. 

“The Madman Who Ruled A Killer-Shark Pack” by Brett Harper and from the January 1976 Man’s World is the last story here, and another good one. It’s also the only one in Maneaters that follows the traditional men’s mag setup: an opening incident (usually depicted by the splash page art), then a flashback to how the opening incident came to pass, and then a harried resolution. In this case the third-person yarn opens with a guy and a girl (“one lovely breast” exposed due to her torn shirt) being towed by a boat through shark-filled waters, the girl’s insane husband laughing madly at the prow. The backstory doesn’t really meet the craziness, but then they rarely do: the girl’s husband is a nutjob marine biologist obsessed with sharks, and insists on catching sight of some great whites. Unfortunately his wife likes to come on to the various men the biologist employs; she sleeps with one of the men, who later “accidentally” falls off the boat and is eaten by sharks. Then our hero is merely suspected of having an affair with the girl, and next thing you know they’re both bound and being dragged in the water…a harried climax in which some other guy saves them and the nutjob villain receives the exact fate you expected he would. 

Now, the one thing I don’t like about Maneaters is that each story is given a “Biting Back” postscript in which modern marine biologists, scuba divers, and other assorted pearl-clutchers have been invited to point out all the errors in the stories. The concept alone is baffling; men’s mag stories are fiction, and should be treated as such. But what’s worse is the insufferable condescending tone of many of these postscripts; I kid you not, one of them literally begins with the comment, “The racism and sexism aside…” One can almost imagine the snowflake crying softly in his soy latte. But after each story the vintage fun is buzzkilled by modern virtue-signallers who tell us what the men’s mag authors got wrong about sharks in their stories. Well, who cares? Even worse, many of them try to mock or poke fun at the stories. I mean, if I wanted smarmy attempts at comedy from an unfunny pearl-clutcher, I’d watch Jimmy Kimmel. 

Fortunately, you can do what I did, and just skip the “Biting Back” stuff entirely. I do want to note that one or two of them are written by Bob Deis himself, and these as expected are worlds better than the others, showing a true appreciation for the genre and being respectful to the authors. 

But honestly, that’s my only criticism. Overall Maneaters is another excellent publication in the Men’s Adventure Library, and I highly recommend it. With summer coming up it’s the perfect beach read, though like James Reasoner said, you might want to read it far away from the water.