‘Men’s Adventure Quarterly’ No. 5: The Dirty Mission Issue

We are now into the second year of Men’s Adventure Quarterly, this well-done magazine focused on men’s adventure magazines. “The Dirty Mission” is the theme of this issue, as in works that inspired and were inspired by the movie The Dirty Dozen (1967). I’ve seen this movie several times, and even watch the short-lived TV show that came out in 1988.

And as there is usually a segment on an artist or model in the magazine, we get a section on Eva Lynd as well.

As before, publisher Bob Deis (Men’s Adventure Library) and graphic designer Bill Cunningham (Pulp 2.0 Press), along with some guest editors, have put out an excellent issue.

This is another well-designed issue, with both color and black-&-white artwork, articles, and reprints that include fiction, non-fiction, cartoons, ads, and pictorals. It comes in at over 150 pages, and is 8.5- x 11-inches in size, like all the rest. I hope they can keep this up through their second year.

Full disclosure, I was sent a copy to review.

So, again, for those new, let’s make a few things clear on men’s adventure magazines (or MAMs): These were an outgrowth of the pulps, with many of the first ones being former pulp magazines that changed their focus and format. The paper changed from pulp to slick. So MAMs are not pulps, but a replacement of them in popular literature. Or, you could call them a successor. Others were paperback books and digest magazines.

Focus was on what interested men: pinups of girls and stories of lurid adventure, as well as non-fiction. Many claimed to be “true life” adventures, but probably most were not, or were heavily exaggerated. These magazines ran from the 1940s until the ’70s, and I view the numbered men’s adventure paperback series, such as Mack Bolan and The Destroyer, as one of the replacements of them, though they existed side-by-side for awhile.

This time we get two big sections on Eva Lynd and “Dirty Missions.” First, we get a couple of editorials from Bob and Bill, then guest editor Justin Marriot gives us a look into dirty missions in U.K. comics. Now, as a comicbook fan, I have some familiarity with U.K. comics but I am no expert. Justin here looks at the U.K. war comics, often written by men who had actually seen service and were pretty gritty. Some of these are actually being reprinted if folks want to check them out.

The first section is on actress and model Eva Lynd, who is from Latvia and is a countess. Her real name is Eva Inga Margareta von Fielitz. Men’s Adventure Library put out a book on her: Eva: Men’s Adventure Supermodel. She modeled for a lot of MAM covers, and an interesting thing is that Steve Holland was often a model with her. We get a lot of artwork, including photo references and covers based on them. There is an article on one of the main artists that used her, Norm Eastman. She was even featured on LP covers. So this is a great overview of her life and work.

The second section, on the dirty missions, takes its inspiration on the movie The Dirty Dozen. So for those who haven’t seen the movie, it’s about a group of convicts given a second chance to form a commando unit. During training they refused to wash, hence their name. A lot of big-name actors at the time were in the movie, including Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, Charles Bronson, Jim Brown, Richard Jaeckel, George Kennedy, Telly Savalas, Donald Sutherland, and Clint Walker, among others.

But I don’t think most people knew that it was based, if very loosely, on a real commando group called the “Filthy Thirteen.” We get an article by Arch Whitehouse on this group that may have led to the writing of the book that the movie is based on. Now Whitehouse was a former pulp writer, mainly for aviation and war stories, some of which have been reprinted, such as The Griffon stories. This article ran in True back in 1944, so it may have been the first time the group was written about. The lead officer of the group would later write a book about them.

Rounding out the section are works of fiction and non-fiction. And all have great intros with lots of artwork to go with them. We get stories about “lace panty commandos,” or is that “lace panty guerillas”? But also “death dolls,” “Nazi sex circuses,” and “lace captive stalags.” There is a non-fiction work on submarine commandos during WWII.

As always, there’s a lot of great stuff. There are even some strange pieces, like one that looks at the mystery of an alternate — or is it an altered — piece of artwork of a topless Nazi love captive. I have had a lot of fun reading through this issue.

The next volume will be a heist issue. I think many are aware of the various heist movies. So this should be interesting as it will also get into crime, the mafia, and the like. As always, if you’re not getting these issues, you are missing out. Every issue is a winner and expect future issues to continue the level of quality.