‘Men’s Adventure Quarterly’ No. 7: Gang Girls

We are now into the second year of Men’s Adventure Quarterly, this well-done magazine focused on men’s adventure magazines. “Gang Girls!” is the theme of this issue, which refers to the bad girls that hang out with juvenile delinquent gangs, biker gangs, gangsters, and the like.

And as there is usually a segment on an artist or model in the magazine, we get a section showing various covers and movie posters on the subject, as a mini-gallery on Mamie Van Doren.

As before, publisher Bob Deis (Men’s Adventure Library) and graphic designer Bill Cunningham (Pulp 2.0 Press), along with two 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.

The focus here is mainly on the bad girls of JD and biker gangs, with some others tossed in. There are a few non-fiction pieces, and several fiction pieces, including a “book bonus.” Two pieces I enjoyed were ones that touched on a couple of early works by Harlan Ellison, including a JD novel under a pseudonym. The other was a short item on the moral outrage about comics that lead to the Comics Code, egged on by the book Seduction of the Innocent.

Fiction works include “Tomboy Jungle” about girls in JD gangs and “Lust on Our Streets” about JD gangs attacking regular people. The book-length work is “Zip-Gun Girls” about JD gang girls.

Non-fiction includes an article on the girl gangs of Boston, “street queens” taking over JD gangs, and biker girls.

And because the topic of juvenile delinquents was also popular in paperback books, we also get a lot of covers from those works. So if this topic is one you enjoy, and I know many do, check out this volume even if you aren’t into MAM.

Overall, this is a great volume. Like previous volumes, the intro pieces for many of the works are almost as long as the original pieces, providing more information and artwork. The intros can be more interesting than what they introduce. Now, I have to be honest, I never found any appeal to JD or biker culture or the like. I guess when and where I grew up that none of this really existed that it was so foreign as to be unappealing.

But like every MAQ volume, this one is another winner.

Now, I should point out that they have started a new all-fiction series, Men’s Adventure Fiction. This is a series of smaller paperback books that will reprint several fiction pieces from MAM. The volumes will not be themed, so the stories will be a mix. Volume 1 came out in August 2022. Not sure when the next one will appear. But check it out.

The next issue of MAQ, vol. 8, will focus on hitmen and hitwomen. It will be out in the second quarter of 2023.