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!