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. 

Men’s Mag Roundup: Satanic Sleaze

 

Boy, it’s been several years since I’ve done one of these men’s adventure magazine roundup reviews. Ever since Bob Deis and Bill Cunningham started up Men’s Adventure Quarterly, I’ve rarely dipped into my collection of men’s adventure mags. But recently I hit Bob and Bill up with an idea for a “Satanic sleaze” sort of MAQ Halloween special, focusing on the lurid “killer cult” tales of the latter men’s mags (ie, from the early to mid 1970s), and then I decided that I’d just read some of these stories from my own collection. 

Yes, as documented in Barbarians On Bikes (which Bob put together with his other co-editor, Wyatt Doyle), as the ‘60s progressed the editors of the men’s mags started looking for more than just the typical “Nazi villain” of the earlier pulps. So there was an increasing amount of stories with biker villains, or cults, or Satanists, or hippie killer freaks. 

First up is this Man’s Story from April 1975. This mag was one of the “sweats,” meaning it traded in more lurid and sensationalistic content than the “upmarket” men’s mags (which were pretty lurid themselves, but still). And the cover is the proof in the pudding, illustrating some Nazi terror. I really love the covers on the later men’s mags, and this one’s great. Though I have to admit, the Telly Savalas-lookalike Nazi in the far corner almost looks like a TV game show host, the way he’s grinning and pointing at that poor blonde. “And you just won – a flaming poker enema!” 

This issue serves up the exact sort of story I had in mind for my “Satanic sleaze” Halloween MAQ special: “Blood Rites Of Satan’s Darlings,” by Chuck Graham. It features a great splashpage, which again demonstrates how cool this latter-era men’s mag artwork was: 

Yeah man, this one is short but it serves up the whole thing. Curiously, it’s written in present-tense, which is unusual for a men’s mag. It would appear that the editors were open to experimentation in the later days. But then again, the drugs were just better back then. The story concerns an unfortunate young American girl named Jan who is on vacation in Mexico (apparently a hotbed for Satanic cult, at least so far as the men’s mags were concerned). 

The story opens with Jan enjoying dinner with the female friend who brought her here and the three people who live in this house: two beautiful native women and an older native man. But something seems off and Jan’s thoughts are fuzzy…yes, folks, Jan’s been drugged, but the drug leaves only her body unresponsive but her mind is cogent, because the Satanists want Jan to know every horrid thing that happens to her. 

We go immediately to the “sweats” stuff, with Jan taken into a cult chamber where the man and four women strip her down to her “nylon panties” and start pawing her up…but some of the “depredations” done to poor Jan are too much for even our author to recount. About the most we know is that she is tortured; the author intimates that the four use her sexually, but does not go into detail. At any rate, Jan’s heart is ripped out, and that’s it for her. 

I first read this story probably around 2011, when I bought the magazine, and the finale made me laugh then and it still makes me laugh now: after recounting all this lurid horror, author Chuck Graham finishes off the story in a faux stentorian style in which he soundly condemns the atrocities of Satanists in the western world…as if he hadn’t just exploited such atrocities in his lurid story! But then, it is quite evident that most of these men’s mag authors had their tongues firmly in cheek. 

Overall this one certainly serves up the sleazy Satanism, but otherwise “Blood Rites Of Satan’s Darlings” is really just a torture story, with no actual plot or anything else. But then, that’s what we want from the sweats. 

Much longer and more enjoyable is “I Joined A Cross-Country Sex Circus,” by Don Peters “as told to Steve Lawton.” From Barbarians On Bikes I know that this story also appeared in the April 1972 Man’s Story. The men’s mag editors were not shy about reprinting stories. (And by the way, that is not my finger, or carpet, in the screengrabs above; these images are from an eBay listing for the magazine I came across many years ago!)  As mentioned above, bikers were also prime “villain candidates” for the mags, as demonstrated here. 

In this first-person tale, “Don Peters” (though our narrator never actually refers to himself in the story) is going across the Denver area in search of a particular biker. His girlfriend you see was raped and killed by a biker, an act which Don witnessed, but was too busy being knocked out at the time to stop it from happening. He only saw a brawny biker push his girlfriend up against a tree, rape her, and then gut her with a knife – Don got to her before she died, saw that she was holding the broken half of a Maltese Cross, and now Don is going around looking for a biker with a broken Maltese Cross. In other words, the biker who has the other half of this broken cross is the biker who raped and killed Don’s girlfriend. 

Well, it’s an okay setup, I guess. Doesn’t really live up to the title of the story, though. But then, that’s standard for the men’s mags. Don thinks he’s found his bikers when he latches onto a group near Denver and hitches a ride with one of them to a party in the woods. Oh, and by the way Don himself is not a biker, which sort of robs the appeal of the story. He’s really more of an aimless drifter; “dude” is how everyone refers to him, including the “mama” of the club’s boss, who promptly slips into Don’s sleeping bag that night for some barely-described hot action. 

Our hero’s kind of dumb, though. He sets his sights on one of the bikers, sure it’s the man who killed his woman, and then gets him to go off on a pretext. But our hero has been played for a fool and is knocked out. This leads to the climax, where Don somehow manages to free himself – memorably taking out one of the bikers by stomping him repeatedly in the balls. There’s a bizarre editorial error, though; our narrator is about to be killed, too weak to fight, and then the boss’s mama kills the man who is about to kill our hero – but the editor goofs and writes “I” instead of “she,” ie giving the impression that the narrator has saved himself, though it’s clear he did nothing. 

“Bride Of The Corpse – The Incredible Terror Ordeal of Lucia Alvarez,” by sweats veteran Jim McDonald, is another torture piece that lives only to illustrate its memorable splash page. Essentially our narrator, Lucia, an actress in an undisclosed South American country, is brought in by the despotic regime as a “traitor,” and after being groped and tortured she’s tossed into the fresh grave of one of her compatriots, being made to sleep with the corpse. This one’s pretty lame and at least has a happy ending, with Lucia being rescued. 

The last story I’ll focus on from this April 1975 Man’s Story is the cover story, “The Hideous Evil Of The Nazi Fire Beast,” by Hal Sommers. This one’s crazy because it starts off really good: the narrator, a German reporter, is in the morgue, looking at the corpse of a man in his 60s who was an arsonist. Indeed, the old man accidentally killed himself in a fire he was setting. But our narrator suspects a Nazi, and sure enough finds the SS code number (or whatever it is) tattooed beneath the corpse’s arm. He identifies him as a beast named Breslaur. 

From there our narrator goes to a war records place, where he reads about Breslaur’s background…and here the story becomes just another sweat. Without warning we are thrust into the first-person recollections of one of Breslaur’s many victims, our narrator listening to her tape-recorded statements. So now the story’s in 1944 and we read as this beautiful young woman outside Paris is sent to a prison where Breslaur rules with an iron fist. 

He’s not only a sadist but an arsonist, a man who is sexually aroused by fire, and there follows lots of sweat mag stuff where Breslaur tortures women with fire and flaming pokers – ghoulish stuff, somehow made even more ghoulish given that the author doesn’t go into full-bore exploitation, though letting us know without actually saying it that some of the women are raped by the poker. 

This poor girl who has become our new narrator is “only” raped by Breslaur in the traditional way, ie not with a flaming poker – but she knows her time is coming, and the author does a good job of mounting the suspense. But man, this one comes to a rushed end; the war’s over, and Breslaur escapes before he can kill this particular girl, and then we’re back to the narrator’s POV and he’s sickened by all this stuff he’s read – more laugh out loud stuff, because the “sickening” stuff is exactly why the author wrote the story in the first place, which is another indication of how these authors had their tongues in their cheeks – and then the narrator figures that Breslaur must’ve accidentally killed himself in this fire he set, a fitting end for the sixty year-old sadist. The end! 

Otherwise this issue of Man’s Story is filled with the usual sex articles of the later men’s mags, not to mention a whole plethora of ads for sex toys and sex services and sex books. It’s interesting that none of the ads have nudity in them; the nipples are usually blacked out and the actual penetration is also blacked out, so no doubt the concern was Federal charges for sending out porno in the mail. 

I reviewed this December 1974 Man’s Story before, but at the time my focus was on the WWII pulp action story, “OSS Carter’s Death Doll Platoon,” which later made its way into MAQ #5. That’s a good story, but I’ve read it a few times, now – and reviewed it on here twice – so this time I’ll focus on the other stories in this issue. This time I’ll focus on the Satanic sleaze! 

“Helpless Virgins And The Night Of The Slithering Horror” is by Mark Powers “as told to Ted Harper,” and serves up the sleazy Satanic goods. Indeed, this one would be an even better candidate for my imaginary MAQ Hippie Horror Halloween Special. Our narrator is a writer who is visiting Mexico, where apparently he discovered the corpse of a young woman, who appeared to have been killed by snake bites. But the local cops disbelieve him and tell him he’s imagining things. The narrator is content to bang his native girl; cue some of the slightly-more-risque material of the later men’s mags. 

But as I mentioned above, Mexico was apparently a Satanic Disney World in the ‘70s, and you guessed it – there’s a friggin Satanic snake cult operating out of the area, and our narrator saw too much when he came upon the murdered girl. So now the cult abducts his girl, leading to the splashpage illustration where the robed and cowled cultists are about to kill her with a bunch of snakes. But we’re in the world of the men’s mags, thus our hero’s able to get out his gun and start blasting away – a fairly graphic bit where he blasts out the brains of one of the cult leaders. 

A notable element here is that the narrator goes off to a happily ever after with his native gal; as I noted before, the white heroes of the earlier men’s mags were all well and good with having sex with native gals, but rarely if ever stayed with them. But our narrator assures us that he’s staying with his native Nina. Well, that’s progress! That said, there’s an unintentionally hilarious editing snafu where Nina becomes “Linda” for a paragraph. 

“Rape Rampage Of The Sex Cult Savages” is by Rod Brady, and is the title piece of this issue. The most interesting thing about this short and rough story is how the author strives to cater to the splashpage (and cover) illustration; it seems clear that he either saw the artwork, or he was given thorough description of it. Otherwise this is another story that really hinges on sadism and nothing else – but again, that’s what we expect from the sweats. 

A curious thing about this story is that it goes into second-person later in the tale, an unusual stylistic gimmick that you don’t see very often. Outside of Choose Your Own Adventure books, at least. (And yes, I used this exact same joke in my previous review of this tale, but so what! At least I steal from the best!) This grungy little tale, which could almost be a cheap drive-in flick or something that played on 42nd Street, concerns Herbie, a loser who lives with a trio of other losers in Alphabet City, in New York (not referred to that way in the story, but that’s where they are – off Avenue C). Oh, and one of the group is named “Batman!” 

Well, the group has often “gang-banged” women and done other outrageous things, but so far as Herbie’s concerned, all the women have been in on it, or enjoyed it, or were whores and were probably so strung out they didn’t even care. But this time it’s different! The group has picked up a young woman who was waiting for the bus, and they’ve taken her off in van, and now they’re stripping off her clothes and one of them’s carving her initials on her leg…and basically all the other stuff that is shown on the memorable cover/splashpage art, so again it’s clear the author was trying to cater to that. 

But Herbie doesn’t like it, and after a few pages of describing the girl’s horror as she’s pawed and raped – including that aforementioned strange bit where the narrative goes over to “you thought this,” “you thought that,” and other second-person narration – Herbie decides to do something about it, and steps in to save the day. A short, nasty tale, but commendable for actually trying to live up to the artwork, which is something too few of these men’s mag stories ever do. Yet at the same time, it is another indication of how the plots of the actual stories seldom if ever lived up to the potential of the titles.

Otherwise in this issue we have “The Nazi War Who Made War On The Maidens Of The Maquis,” which I also reviewed previously, as well as the usual sex-based articles and ads. One of the ads really made me chuckle, though: 

Well, as the cover will attest, we’re now in a totally different men’s mag world. And yes, I did block out the ta-tas in the above screengrab; don’t want the blog to get hit with another random sensitive content warning. But boy, the pulpy thrills of the early days are for the most part gone; this December 1976 issue of Male is printed on slick paper, not the pulpy paper of earlier men’s mags, and it features full-color interior photography. And boy, folks, we’re talking straight-up Penthouse sort of stuff. The models who pose for us are fully nude and, uh, fully spread, so absolutely nothing is left to the imagination. 

In a way it’s a sad end to the men’s mags; the cool “I’m an honest vet who fought for my country and now I just wanna work at my blue-collar job and go home to read about virile yanks banging big-boobed broads during the war while I have a smoke and a drink” vibe of the early days is completely gone; this is porn, and sleazy porn at that. The market had clearly changed, and the men’s mag editors were desperate to cater to a readership that wanted Hustler instead of quality tales of military action. For, believe it or not, Male was one of the “upmarket” men’s mags I referred to above, offering stories and articles that were much better than the grungy stuff in the sweats. But reading this December, 1976 issue of the magazine, you’d never guess that. 

That said, they still managed to get some fairly good fiction into the pages, and “Ex-MP Who Became The Sex-And-Crime King Of Europe” by Jerry Trumbalt is a case in point. In fact I think this story is the reason I picked up this issue many years ago. It’s a heist yarn, about a moral-lacking MP who heists the Army payroll with a team he puts together, and then goes into the slave-trade business outside of Tangier. 

As with many of these stories, it’s framed as a nonfiction piece; Harry Malone is an MP with a mind for an angle and he gets responsibility for all the payrolls in a part of Germany. He puts together a team from the stockade and they pull the heist – but all that is sort of told in summary. The meat of the tale is Malone taking the money and starting up a lucrative sex-trade business, which he runs on a ship in the Tangier area. He also enjoys testing out all the girls he will sell: 

“Anal sex was something she held the patent on.” Now there’s a line that needs to be stolen for a book. More focus is placed on Malone and his run-ins with the abovementioned Arabic criminal, culminating in a firefight by some ancient Roman ruins in the desert. Overall a pretty good story, but not as long as such a story would have been in an earlier men’s mag. 

Earl Norem, my favorite of all the men’s mag artists, handles the nice splashpage for “The Rape Hunt Brothers,” by Anthony Farrar, another short piece that harkens back to the men’s mags of yore. This one’s a fairly short revenge piece about a group of five scumbags in Baja California who drive around in a “high-powered car” and enjoy raping female American tourists. And beating their men to a pulp. 

But the group, which manages to evade arrest, sows its own fate when one of the rape victims goes back home and tells her three brothers to get revenge for her. So now these good ol’ boys head down to Mexico to find the scumbags and make them pay…though, for vague reasons, their sister wants it all to be “legal.” Okay, whatever. This grim setup doesn’t prevent the author from “inserting” a random sex scene: 

As you can see, the sexual material has become more risque in the later years. The revenge angle is given short shrift, with the brothers catching the scumbags in action – as illustrated by Norem in his splashpage – and then shooting at them as they drive away. 

The sexual material is even more risque in “Porno Girls And The Casting Couch,” by Eugene Grant, which purports to be another nonfiction piece, the author interviewing a few porno actresses, but this is really just the framework for a bunch of explicit sex scenes: 

It’s like this throughout; the author will introduce a girl “in action,” then spend some time talking to her about how she got into the porno biz – and even here sex is factored in, as the girls all got into the biz after having sex with a guy (or, in the case of one of them, sex with a gal). This story too suffers from an abrupt finale, as if the author hit his word count without expecting it. 

Then there’s “Secrets Of A Whore House Detective,” by George Harris “as told to” Simon Koch. Note the title: It’s “Whore House Detective” here in the magazine, whereas it’s shown as “Cat House Detective” on the magazine cover. Again, methinks the concern was over what could and could not be shown on the cover, due to these magazines being sent out in the mail. This is another pseudo-nonfiction piece, about a detective who works for a “consortium” of health insurance companies – his job to root out “pockets of infection” in the prostitution world. 

The detective is currently in NYC, where a shipment of fifty whores have been sent in by “the Chicago Syndicate” to entertain the delegation that’s come in town for a Democrat convention(!!!). Word has it that a new strain of syphilis or whatever has broken out, and this detective’s job is to find the infected hooker(s); the consortium isn’t concerned with morality or legality, they’re just sick of paying out for men who contract STDs from infected hookers! So this detective’s job is to find an infected whore and report her to the cops, to keep her off the streets. 

Other than that, this issue of Male features the usual sex exposes, not to mention a lot of full-color photographs of fully-nude women (one of whom sports very unattractive hairy armpits!), in a manner more Hustler sleazy than anything you’d see in Playboy. It’s no surprise that the men’s mags would soon wither away.

Barbarians on Bikes: Bikers and Motorcycle Gangs in Men’s Pulp Adventure Magazines

Barbarians On Bikes, edited by Robert Deis and Wyatt Doyle

No month stated, 2016  New Texture

A big thanks to Bob Deis for hooking me up with a copy of Barbarians On Bikes a few years ago – I seem to recall it was in early 2020, ie right before the world went crazy – and though I read it at the time, I failed to review it. Well, I recently got back on a biker pulp kick, and it was straight to Barbarians On Bikes that I went for my fix. 

This one is a project of Bob Deis and Wyatt Doyle, the fellows who also brought us Cryptozoology, Cuba: Sugar, Sex, and Slaughter, Atomic Werewolves, and so many other deluxe hardcovers devoted to men’s adventure magazines. Unlike those publications, or the Men’s Adventure Quarterly series Bob Deis produces with Bill Cunningham, Barbarians On Bikes is devoid of any reprinted stories and focuses solely on artwork. Thus, the majority of the book is comprised of either full-color reproductions of men’s adventure magazine covers, or black and white splashpages or other interior art from the magazines. 

I recall that when I first read this book, like a total geek I wrote down a list of stories I was hoping Bob would feature in an upcoming book – and ended up listing out pretty much every story in the book! But friends, as usual the titles of the stories are so promising that one can’t help but want to read them…but then again, I’ve read so many of these men’s adventure magazines over the years that I now know that the stories themselves generally do not live up to the promise of the titles. 

Thus, focusing on the art alone isn’t really a bad idea, as the reader is free to use his own fevered imagination to come up with the plot for, say, “Sex Life Of A Motorcycle Mama” or “You Can’t Split From Hell, Chick!” That said, I still hope that someday Bob and Bill do a special “biker” issue of Men’s Adventure Quarterly, or that Bob and Wyatt do a Barbarians On Bikes followup that includes stories in addition to art.  Though to be fair, we did get a few such stories in MAQ #7. 

The appeal of this book is just flipping through the pages and admiring the incredible artwork of the gifted artists who worked on the men’s magazines. Pretty much all of them are represented here, and as usual our editors have done a swell job of reproducing the art – with, as I’ve said before, a lot more care and love than the original men’s mag editors ever displayed for their product. 

For me the biggest effect of Barbarians On Bikes is that it’s made me decide to read more of the old biker pulp paperbacks I bought years ago and never got around to reading. And also it’s made me decide to do another “men’s mag roundup” of reviews, this time focusing on some of the “hippie killer cult” stories that the latter-day men’s mags specialized in – and there was certainly a carryover between bikers and cults, at least in the world of the men’s mags. 

I highly recommend you pick up a copy of Barbarians On Bikes. Looking through it takes you to a long-gone world of virile men, easy women, and leering biker brutes…oh, and I’ve failed to mention the terrific afterword Paul Bishop provides for the book; an exceptional read in which he talks about the time in the late ‘70s when, as a rookie LAPD officer, he pulled over a Hell’s Angel. 

Here are some random pages from the book! 

Yankee King Of The Islands

Yankee King Of The Islands, edited by Noah Sarlat

No month stated, 1963  Lancer Books

Another vintage Men’s Adventure Magazine anthology I picked up many years ago, Yankee King Of The Islands is credited to editor Noah Sarlat, whose name appeared on many such books at the time. Sarlatt was an editor at the Atlas Magazine line, and thus the stories collected here are taken from those magazines – with the caveat that we are not given the names of the magazines themselves, just the date of their original copyright. Another thing to note is that the cover – which I believe originally appeared on an issue of For Men Only – is misleading. The majority of the tales collected here occur in the 1800s; only two of them take place in WWII, and one other takes place in the 1950s. 

Another thing to note is that, unlike anthologies like Our Secret War Against Red China or Women With Guns, the stories here are more pseudo-factual, like actual news articles, than the narrative-driven fiction that was typical of the men’s mags. 

This unfortunately means that the stories are not as fun as the average men’s adventure yarn; at least they weren’t as fun for me. I like the escapist stories, and the ones here are too mired in history. There’s also much less of the female exploitation one generally encounters in the average men’s mag story; zero in the way of the sleaze that would eventually take over the mags, too. About the most we get is that a busty island native gal will “please” one of our heroes, and that’s it. 

The title story is up first: “David Whippey: Yankee King Of The Islands,” by Robert J. Levin and copyright 1958. This is one of the stories where we only learn rather late that the action is occuring in the early 1800s. It’s about a young American who ventures to the South Seas to get away from “the white man” and learn about the native culture first-hand. 

The story is also Avatar a few decades early. Whippey even undergoes a “test of the heart” where he has to endure various stages of a trial – walking over coals, chasing after the unmarried women as a sort of tribal mating right, and finally engaging a rival tribe in warfare. Here though we learn that this collection will lack the escapist vibe of the typical men’s adventure magazine story, as it’s all relayed in a dry tone – there’s zero in the way of the customary female exploitation, and Whippey’s native bride receives a scant few lines of text, none of it exploitative. 

Rather, the focus is on telling who Whippey was and how he became one with the natives on this South Seas island; it’s essentially a history story, with little in the way of the action and escapism the reader might expect. 

Next up is “32 Wives For The Captain,” credited to Robert J. Fuller and copyright 1958. This one at least takes place in contemporary times, but the story is so strangely written…essentially it’s the summary of a trial a woman named Charlotte Lemieux endured in France in 1951. So the tale is focused on what was said in the courtroom, again as if the story is a recounting of true events – something you’d read in a standard magazine, not something with a Nazi strapping a busty blonde to a torture device on the cover. 

Again, the narrative thrust is nonexistent as we are told, not shown, of the horrors poor Charlotte endured – she and her husband discovered a lost island in the South Seas, and were prompty taken captive by the inhabitants…her husband locked in a cage and forced to have sex (off-page) with all the women on the island. The women however were French, and long story short, Charlotte deduces that they were the in-bred descendants of a crashed ship of French whores that was lost at sea in the late 1800s – indeed, the titular captain refers to the man who sired all the ensuing generations, taken captive by the 1800s whores and impregnating 30-some of them. 

The wonderfully-titled “The Adventures of a Yankee Beach-Comber on Many-Bride Island” is next, credited to Leon Lazarus and copyrigth 1960. We’re back in historical times, the 1850s to be exact, and Captain Josiah Flagg is shocked one day when a nude young island woman washes up onto his ship. This one is more of a survival at sea tale, as the horny men onboard want the girl, but Flagg insists on keeping her in a room and nursing her to health; there’s even a part where they endure a long storm at sea. 

Then eventually they crash and Flagg is washed up on a deserted island where he lives for two years, eating seal meat and such, untill one day some natives from another island come by and take him away. Eventually Flagg hooks up with the chief’s daughter or somesuch, but again the girl is barely a presence in the story, and at the end she helps Flagg fake his death so he can be put on a boat and set out to sea and return to his own people. 

By far my favorite story in the collection is the next one: “The Amazing G.I. Who Took Three Head-Hunting Brides,” by Bill Wharton and copyright 1961 (it’s also the latest story in the collection). It concerns Geoffrey Hunter, a British soldier in the Sarawak Islands who leads a guerrilla band of native headhunters in attacks on “the Japs.” The titular brides, native beauties with “small, firm breasts” once again are incidental to the story; much more focus is placed on Hunter training the headhunters how to fight the Japanese. 

Curiously the story too approaches the vibe of a “real” piece of journalism, with a long climax in which we’re told of Hunter’s escapades post-war…how he decided to stay on the island, living with the headhunters, how he sent a detachment of them to handle the troubles in Malaysia some years later, and then ultimately how he died there in the early ‘50s. 

Perhaps one of the more unlikable protagonists in men’s adventure mag history follows, in “Pacific Girl Trader,” credited to George V. Jones and coyright 1960. Another “real history” piece (though I had to look the guy up to learn he did in fact exist), this one focuses on Nels Sorensen, a guy from Denmark who became a US citizen and is now the “lone white man with a native crew” in the South Seas. With the detail on how Sorensen was a deep sea diver with the US navy, I thought this was another contemporary yarn, but once again we have a late-in-the-story revelation that it’s actually in the 1880s. 

Sorensen makes his sleazy living in the South Seas, sailing to and fro and selling stuff to the natives…that is, when he isn’t kidnapping them and selling them into slavery. I knew I was in for an unusual sort of yarn when the story opened with Sorensen gamely watching a friendly tribe kill off some captured enemy and then eat them, and Sorensen helps himself to a chunk of thigh. From there he figures he could buy the captured women for a pittance, and he takes them onto his ship…where they “please” him, the book as ever not getting full-on sleaze, and then he sells them off. 

The crux of the story is more focused on Sorensen’s scheme to trick people into signing on for an expedition into the South Seas and then leading them into captivity while there, but the plan backfires and he’s sent to prison. But he escapes, and the rest of the story is about him trying to concoct various schemes to get back to the South Seas, including even setting himself up as a notable in early 1900s America. But all told the story is again delivered in that dry, journalistic tone, robbing it of the escapism of the average men’s adventure story. 

“Marooned In Paradise” is another one by Robert J. Fuller and copyright 1958. It’s another dry, pseudo-factual yarn, this one with the novel conceit that it features a Japanese protagonist: Akio, a Japanese navy man who is marooned in ’42 and washed up on a deserted island of Arabic people, and fell in love with a girl there, but managed to get off the island and now is consumed with finding it. 

The last tale is another historical yarn: “Jacky-Jacky: King Of Convict Women Island,” by Robert Irwin and copyright 1958. It’s the 1800s and the titular Jacky-Jacky is a notorious convict on the penal colony of Australia. This one has an opening that’s actually like the average men’s adventure mag story, with Jacky-Jacky making the moves on a busty waitress before discovering it’s an ambush. But from there we are back into the pseudo-reportage that sinks all the other stories here. 

Unusually, this one also has a bit of a social justice undertone, as Jacky-Jacky – another real person – rose to fame posthumously for his statements on the horrible life of the penal colony. Also, the “women island” of the title is such a non-event in the story that it made me chuckle: there’s a part late in the story where Jacky-Jacky is on an island prison where women are also kept, and we’re told that some of the other men make use of them, but Jacky-Jacky himself is too busy plotting escape. Mel Gibson could’ve done this one instead of Braveheart; at least his Australian accent would’ve made sense. 

And that’s it for Yankee King Of The Islands. Not the best introduction to men’s adventure magazine stories, but interesting in how it shows what paperback publishers of the day thought readers would be interested in.

Men’s Adventure Quarterly #10

Men's Adventure Quarterly #10, Edited by Robert Deis and Bill Cunningham

February, 2024  Subtropic Productions

This volume of MAQ focuses on the Vietnam War, and editors Robert Deis abd Bill Cunningham have done a great job, as usual, of selecting stories that run the gamut of the men’s adventure magazine field. There’s everything from factual reportage on the war to the escapist pulp one most thinks of when thinking of men’s adventure magazines, and you get even more of it in The Vietnam Issue, which is longer than the previous volumes of this series. 

I wasn’t sure I’d be as much interested in this one, as I thought Vietnam was a little too “real” for the pulpy stuff I prefer in men’s mags. Also, I’m not as much into military fiction, or war fiction in general. At one point in time I ranked Gustav Hasford’s The Short-Timers as the greatest novel I’d ever read, and Michael Herr’s Dispatches as the greatest “nonfiction” book I’d ever read, but that was like over 20 years ago. In fact, I reviewed both books on Amazon way back then; I even liked Hasford’s followup, The Phantom Blooper. But really, that Vietnam is not the Vietnam of the men’s mags; the surreal, drug-fueled vibe of Apocalypse Now has been replaced with something more akin to Robin Moore’s The Green Berets, or even the film version, only without the patriotic vibe of the film. The writers in the stories collected here never judge the merits of the war, or dwell on how ‘Nam was “the first rock and roll war,” but instead focus on the hellzones the soldiers had to battle through, on land, air, and under the ground. 

Bob Deis provides one of his typically-informative intros, in which he relates his own personal thoughts on Vietnam. Bob as well does not provide his views on the justness of the war, focusing more on how the growing public distaste with it gradually led to fewer and fewer ‘Nam stories in the men’s mags. That said, even the early stories here aren’t gung-ho in support of the war; it’s clear that even at the time the editors were putting a different spin on Vietnam stories than on the typical WWII combat stories. One thing I was curious about was whether soldiers in ‘Nam – or ones who served early in the war and then returned home – were readers of the men’s adventure mags. Or was the readership mostly limited to WWII vets and Korea vets? It would be interesting to see what insights the publishing companies had on their readers back in the day, but that’s just the marketing professional in me, I guess. 

Oh and Bill Cunningham’s art direction is as usual perfect throughout; one story is even graced with an original duotone that was not featured with the original men’s mag publication. The artwork is reproduced with meticulous care throughout, with even the usual “cover gallery” we’ve gotten with previous issues. That said, the “eye candy” of earlier books isn’t as prevalent this time; what with the focus on combat stories, there is little in the way of the female presence typically expected of escapist men’s mag yarns. But as with Cuba: Sugar, Sex, And Slaughter, I’m sure there had to be a few men’s magazine stories that focused on sexpot girl guerrillas waging lusty war in the jungles of Vietnam. Maybe we’ll read a few of them if there’s ever a ‘Nam MAQ followup. That said, there’s a great pictorial piece on Raquel Welch. 

First up is “The First Gis To Die In Vietnam,” by Jack Ryan and from the January 1963 Man’s Magazine. This long piece is factual in its approach, telling the grim story of the first two American soldiers to die in combat in ‘Nam. Sent there as “advisors,” the soldiers engage in combat with the VC and are injured; the story mainly focuses on the plight of the two surviving soldiers, who are taken prisoner by the VC. This is an affecting story, with the extra impact that it is not the pulpy sort of yarn expected from the men’s mags, again indicating that even very, very early in the war the men’s magazine editors were treating Vietnam differently than other wars. 

But the next tale is pulpy, and it’s not only for that reason that it’s my favorite in the collection – it’s also great because it marks the first appearance of Mario Puzo, under his men’s mag pseudonym “Mario Cleri,” in Men’s Adventure Quarterly. Hopefully someday we’ll have an entire issue devoted to his yarns, as Cleri/Puzo is definitely my favorite men’s mag writer…and I’m not just saying that due to some prejudice over Puzo later becoming a bestselling author. In fact, I’ve only read one Puzo novel, The Godfather of course, and I’ve read it twice…once in high school and then again a few years ago. On this second reading I couldn’t believe how much of a Harold Robbins-type novel it was. 

No, Puzo was just a talented writer, bringing a great touch to his men’s mag stories…and also he was the only men’s mag writer who realized he could expand one of his stories into a feature-length novel, with Six Graves To Munich. The tale collected here, “Saigon Nymph Who Led The Green Berets To The Cong’s Terror Tunnels,” is just as pulpy and fun as the other Cleri stories I’ve had the pleasure to read; it originally appeared in the August, 1966 issue of Male. As ever Puzo packs a lot of story into this one, keeping it fast-moving: we meet a 19 year-old new recruit in ‘Nam as he goes home with a local beauty he just met in a bar, but it’s a trap and wily General Fonh wants the kid, Johnny Blake, to tell all he knows about his older brother, Korea vet Colonel Victor Blake, who serves now as head of counter-intelligence. The kid says no and pays the ultimate price. 

Thus ensues a revenge yarn, but it’s atypical from the format in that Victor Blake, who arrives in ‘Nam shortly thereafter to set up counter-terrorism methods, goes about his vengeance a little more coldly than one might expect. There’s little emotional depth, and he’s more about using his combat-trained intelligence – not to mention his penchant for remembering the odd fact – to gradually set the trap for General Fonh. Hell, the dude even sleeps with the chick who set up his brother for death, the lovely Lilly (with her “dusky nipples,” Cleri as ever serving up the goods expected of men’s mag writers), but we’re told this in an off-hand manner…also, that Blake has to “get drunk” to screw her. The climax sees Blake staging a Green Beret raid on Fonh’s secret village hideout, but the finale itself brings the emotional impact Puzo denied us earlier in the story, featuring as it does a firing line execution that leaves Blake cold, despite his vengeance having been gained. 

“Ambush By The Bridge At Nam Nang,” by Jackson Boeling and from the October 1966 Man’s Life, answers the unasked question: “What if Joseph Conrad had written for the men’s mags?” This 6 and a half-page “Book-length novel” is quite tonally different from the average men’s mag story, featuring Vietnamese natives as the protagonist. The author gives us a glimpse of how war can not only rip a country apart but a family as well, telling the story through the perspective of an older Vietnamese who attended a Catholic school and who sees the war through the prism of the old ways, while his son has joined the Viet Cong. 

“The Million-Dollar Ballad Of A Green Beret” is by Garth Roberts and from the October 1966 Man’s World, telling the tale of how Green Beret Barry Sadler wrote the famous “Ballad Of The Green Berets” and had a hit from it. More interesting by far however is Bob Deis’s intro; decades removed from the original men’s mag story, Bob is able to tell the full story of Barry Sadler’s life, and it all seems to have come out of a John Steinbeck novel, complete with Sadler gaining and losing wealth and fame, even murdering someone later in life and getting away with it. Bob also mentions Sadler’s Casca series, and like most guys my age that’s how I came to know of him; man I used to always see those paperbacks at the local WaldenBooks, but I never read any of them because there were so many of them that I was daunted by the prospect. And also, so far as I can recall, I never came across the first volume, so that further made it all seem like a too-daunting prospect. 

We’re back to the pulpy escapism with “Saga Of ‘Mad Mike’ Kovacs and His Battling Lepers of Vietnam,” by Glenn Infield and from the January 1967 Male. I’ve read and reviewed some other Infield men’s mag stories here on the blog, and also I know his name from various military paperbacks he published, so I appreciated Bob’s intro piece on the author. Otherwise this is an entertaining story of Kovacs, who is dropped into a leper colony to figure out how the VC are smuggling weapons across the Cambodian border, and he uses the lepers as his commando squad. Not much as done with this setup as you might expect, and indeed more detail is placed on the “blunderbuss,” a sled made out of the bed of a helicopter with two .50-caliber machine guns and a grenade launcher mounted on it. Kovacs places this on a path in the jungle and blasts the VC to oblivion in a memorable finale that brings to mind the climax of the 2008 Rambo. 

Robert F. Dorr provies the realistic war fiction he would become known for with “MIG Bait Over North Vietnam,” from the February 1968 Man’s Magazine. This one features Major Paul Gilmore getting in an aerial dogfight with a MIG over ‘Nam in 1966, and is very much in a “military fiction” style – and, per Bob’s insightful intro, is based on a real event, as typical of Dorr’s men’s mag work. 

“Mission Imperative: Smash The Cong’s Terror Tunnels” is by Eric Breske and from the November 1968 True Action; despite the sly callout to a famous TV show of the time in the title, this one’s not a spy yarn, but instead focused on the famous “Tunnel Rats” of the war. Here we read the claustrophobic tale of Captain Horten and his 3-man Tunnel Rat squad as they chase Charlie beneath the Earth, encountering incredible heat and fire ants and booby traps. A tale that again brings to light the plight of the average soldier in ‘Nam, and what was expected of them, and also one that concludes on an unexpected emotional touch with the note that Horten’s squad – as well as others – often adopted children who had been orphaned by the war, making them the “official mascots” of their squads and such. 

Likely the most gripping piece in Michael Herr’s Dispatches is the long, surreal piece on Khe Sahn, which I believe was originally published in Life or something, years before Dispatches came out. The next story here, “Ambush! The Horror At Khe Sahn,” provides the men’s mag take on this nightmarish siege. It’s by Dave Graham and from the June 1969 Bluebook. While not capturing the psychedelic soul-horror of Herr’s piece, Graham’s nonetheless documents the “hell in a very small place” that was Khe Sahn, where American soldiers at the titular base endured a four-month siege. 

This MAQ ends on a downbeat note with “Uncle Sam’s Universal Shafting Of Viet Vets,” by Ed Hymoff and from the November 1972 Saga. The author tells us of the dispirited post-war lives of vets who gave so much in the war, “shafted” by the very government they gave so much to. But again it’s Bob’s intro that has the most impact, telling from his own observations how vets were ignored back in the day – compared to how they are given their due today. 

In addition to all the above there are some great pieces throughout, like one on Army comics of the war by Bill Cunningham, and also Paul Bishop serves up a great piece on the Vietnam-focused men’s adventure paperbacks that were ubiquitous in the ‘80s. As mentioned before, I quite remember this as well, and indeed had a few volumes of The Black Eagles (if for nothing other than the covers!), and also I had several volumes of Eric Helm’s Vietnam: Ground Zero, which I got every other month in a package from Gold Eagle, but I never, ever read a single one of them. 

So, once again this volume of Men’s Adventure Quarterly is a winner, so I highly recommend you pick up a copy of MAQ #10 yourself! 

Cuba: Sugar, Sex, And Slaughter

Cuba: Sugar, Sex, And Slaughter, edited by Robert Deis and Wyatt Doyle

No month stated, 2018  New Texture

I’ve been meaning to read this installment of the Men’s Adventure Library Journal for a few years now. Bob Deis and his co-editor Wyatt Doyle consistently turn out high-quality hardcover volumes with excellent production standards, and Cuba: Sugar, Sex, And Slaughter is no exception. And as usual with these two, the theme of the book is very original: men’s mag stories dealing with Cuba, from the days of the Batista dictaroship to the days of the Castro dictatorship. 

In some ways the book is similar to a vintage men’s adventure anthology: Our Secret War Against Red China, but as ever Deis and Doyle are not limited to one “line” of men’s adventure magazines. The stories collected here run the gamut from “straight reporting” to the “sweats.” One thing I was surprised that was not featured was the story featured on the cover of the book, or at least a story with a similar setup: namely, a sadistic Cuban torture-babe, ie the jackbooted Cuban equivalent of a Nazi She-Devil. Rather, the female characters who appear in Cuba: Sugar, Sex, and Slaughter are either hapless hotstuffs who have somehow gotten caught up in the various revolutions of Cuba, or are hotstuff revolutioniaries who fight against Castro. So, there is no story here with a, uh, Commie She-Devil. But then maybe Deis and Doyle will do a Volume 2 someday. 

As I was reading the book I chuckled at the lofty treatment these stories and art were given by Bob and Wyatt. Not that I’m complaining, or “taking the piss” as the British would say (or once said). It’s just that…these old men’s adventure magazines were the epitome of disposable entertainment. They were read and thrown away, which no doubt is one of the reasons copies are so pricey today; more were destroyed than stored. Ruggedly virile vets of the mid 20th century weren’t concerned with plastic archival bags to store pristine-quality copies of their magazines in; they read the mags while enjoying a few drinks and smokes and then threw them in the garbage like real men. But here those once-disposable stories are, printed on high-quality paper and bound in hardcover and given a deluxe presentation that is well beyond their grubby roots. 

In the Men’s Adventure Library Journal books, Bob Deis gives a sole intro at the start of the book, rather than an intro before each story. Once again his intro is informative and gives succinct detail on the origins of the men’s mags and how these particular yarns were concerned with, first, the Batista regime and its sadism, and then later the Castro regime and its sadism. Bob astutely notes how Castro and his men were the “good guys” in some of the earliest stories, until he began his own progroms upon attaining power, after which he and his jackbooted minions were essentially the Nazis of the ‘60s in the men’s mags. 

First up we have “Havana’s Amazing Flesh Market,” by JL Pimsleur and from the June 1958 Sir. This one is an informative, “straight” reporting piece on…the various hookers of Batista-era Cuba! We get a thorough rundown, complete with costs and where to find them, of the lowly street whores on up to the deluxe “hotel” girls who cost a bunch. The author names names and places and one wonders if they are fictional or real; regardless, this one is written like a standard report with none of the pulp conceits more typical of men’s adventure mag stories. 

The story that gave this collection its title is next: “Sugar, Sex, and Slaughter,” by Joseph Hazlett and from the September 1959 Male. Despite being from one of the Diamond line men’s magazines, this one too is a mostly-factual piece done in a straight reporting style, and details the five centuries of revolution and dictatorship that has plagued Cuba since it was “discovered” by Spaniards. 

We get a bit of factual reporting mixed with the lurid escapism the men’s mags were known for next, with, “Bayamo’s Night Of Terror,” by Don Hogan and from the May 1958 Man’s Magazine. This is one of those stories where Castro is the good guy. We’re told he’s in the Sierra Maestra Mountains with his army, two thousand strong, and the story concerns the titular town of Bayamo which is wholly aligned with Castro. A sadistic Batista officer named Lt. Cowley wages a war on the town after he loses a few soldiers to the rabble – soldiers who were killed for murdering one of the townspeople. This one is also mostly factual-style reporting, but brings the plight of the characters to life by putting the reader there in the action. 

The next story in particular is very good, if overly grim. “Brotherhood of the Scar,” by Jim Greaves as told to Jack Barrows, is from the July 1959 Adventures For Men and is a long tale that is more brutal survival epic than escapist pulp fun. “Greaves” takes us through his harrowing tale of torture and eventual freedom; he’s an expat carpenter, a WWII vet per men’s mag tradition, and he falls in with a local gal who agrees to go in-country with him, despite the government’s stipulation that foreigners are not allowed to venture outside of Havana. For reasons not properly explored, Greaves goes anyway, and of course is captured and thrown in a prison by the sadistic Batista enforcers. But man this one is indeed grueling and just keeps going and going. It takes up pages 64-96 in Cuba: Sugar, Sex, and Slaughter, and the majority of those pages are dedicated to the various depredations Greaves endures in his imprisonment, up to and including losing some fingers and even getting the US flag branded on his back. But it’s no Russian epic or anything; it’s still the expected macho stylings of the men’s mag genre, to the extent that Greaves endures his torture with a grim fatality. That said, author Jack Barrows seems to know a bit too much about what it’s like to be tortured in captivity, to the extent that you hope the guy isn’t talking from direct experience. 

We’re back to the more factual vibe with “Castro’s Commie Blueprint To Take Over Latin America,” from the October 1961 Cavalcade and by George Vedder Jones. This one’s an interesting “What if?” sort of scenario about Castro taking over the Dominican Republic – and then the rest of South America, uniting the various countries into a Latin America USSR. 

My favorite yarn is next: “Terror! Cuban Hell-Cats Scare Castro’s Cutthroats,” by Miguel Gonzales and from the September 1964 Man’s Peril. This was one of the “sweats,” so the concern here isn’t so much relaying “fact” as it is delivering a fast-moving tale filled with t&a and sadism. Told in third person, this one’s unique though in that the titular hell-cats are the heroines of the piece; the short, fast-moving story is essentially devoted to the rebel women hitting a ship filled with Castro men and blasting the shit out of them. There’s no sex, but we are informed that the gals are “magnificently proportioned” and that they are led by a former high-class hooker who calls herself The Avenger. Also I got a kick out of the term “glamazon” being used to describe these gun-toting beauties. Gonzales also delivers some nice gore: “[The Castro soldier’s] brains spilled out in a jelly-like glob on the sand.” 

More sweat-mag sadism continues in the next story, “Squirm In Hell, My Lovely Muchacha,” by sweat vet Jim McDonald and from the June 1964 Man’s Story. Like the previous yarn, this one’s also in third-person perspective, and comes off like a hardboiled private eye story for the first half. It concerns lovely Roberta Trent, with her “high, impudent breasts,” who comes into fellow American Carmody’s place and begs him to escort her out of Cuba in his boat. McDonald really lays on the hardboiled stylistic touches, with Carmody immediately knowing the beauty is nothing but trouble, but ultimately deciding to help her – after a little off-page sex, of course. But then the story detours into sweat mag territory when Roberta is captured by a Castro sadist and is tortured with a cigar to her naked limbs, captured due to the preposterous premise that she managed to take a photo of herself and some Castro flunky with top-secret jets behind them, and she wants to get this photo to the American government. Who took this photo is curiously left unstated, unless that is Roberta was taking a selfie in 1964…which is about as believable as the premise of the story itself, what with how bulky those cameras were back then. 

Jim McDonald returns with “Kiss The Skull Of Death, My Beautiful Muchacha,” from the September 1965 New Man. Wait, technically it’s by “Linda Rogers,” this being another of those bullshit “as told to” yarns. Well, “Linda” tells us about her hot affair with some Castro supporter during the Batista years (“Our hips ground together in an expression of mutual need”), but upon Castro attaining power she finds herself on the wrong side, and is captured by a sadist called El Toro. This one has the most baffling WTF copout ending I’ve yet read in one of these stories; while torturing Linda and about to rape her, El Toro conveniently collapses from a drug overdose, dies, and Linda escapes in his car! 

“Castro’s Bacterial Warfare Chief Wants To Defect – My Job: Get Him” is by Robert F. Dorr and from the April 1971 Man’s Illustrated. It’s another “as told to” yarn, the person supposedly telling this fictional tale being a marine biologist named Hal Gorby. He’s heading to Cuba for some marine bioligy symposium, when he’s stopped by a CIA agent who tells him the top marine scientist there – who also happens to be Castro’s chief bacterial warfare expert – wants to defect, and Gorby’s to help if possible. This one’s more of a Cold War yarn and just as easily could’ve been set in East Germany. Gorby is unusual for a men’s mag protagonist in that he’s married, and indeed turns down the advances of the sexy native babe he’s set up with by the Cuban government – there to keep tabs on him, of course. The finale is also on the suspense angle, with Gorby being set up as a propaganda scapegoat by the Cubans and eventually making his escape on a hydrofoil. 

Overall I really enjoyed Cuba: Sugar, Sex, And Slaughter, and it left me wanting more; as ever Wyatt Doyle fills the pages with related men’s mag covers and interior art, and a lot of the stories sound really good – in particular, of course, the ones with the Commie She-Devils. So maybe one of these days we’ll have a volume 2. Otherwise, I’m happy with this one, and heartily recommend it, as I do everything else Bob Deis and his co-editors Wyatt Doyle and Bill Cunningham publish.