‘Men’s Adventure Quarterly’ No. 8: Heavy Hitters

With the release of the eighth issue of Men’s Adventure Quarterly, we close out the second year of this well-done magazine focused on men’s adventure magazines. This is an excellent achievement is that they have been able to get out two years of a quarterly magazine, especially with all the other work they’ve been putting out at the same time.

In this issue the theme is “Heavy Hitters,” which focuses on hitmen and women, both in MAMs but also paperback originals. Hitmen have long been popular in film. Keep in mind the whole John Wick series is about a hitman.

And as there is usually a segment on an artist or model in the magazine, we get a section of photos of model Bettie Bosmer along with an interview with her as well as a short highlight on her husband’s Joe Weider magazine career.

As before, publisher Bob Deis (Men’s Adventure Library) and graphic designer Bill Cunningham (Pulp 2.0 Press), along with Michael Stradford and Gary Lovisi, have put out an excellent issue. And their excellent intros to each piece is a big reason why this magazine is so great. These intros get into the author, artist, and sometime publisher behind that particular work. For me, I sometimes enjoy these more. Stradford looks at the hitman covers using Steve Holland, and Lovisi gives an overview of hitman paperbacks and movies.

As always, this is another well-designed issue, with both color and black-&-white artwork, articles, and reprints that include fiction, non-fiction, cartoons, ads, and pictorials. It comes in at over 160 pages, and is 8.5- x 11-inches in size, like all the rest. With this issue, they made this issue available in two different print versions: a full-color version and a lower-price “noir” version, so you have choices.

Full disclosure: I was sent a copy of the full-color version to review.

So, again, for those new, let’s make a few things clear on men’s adventure magazines (or MAMs): These were one 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 paper, with much better interior artwork, sometimes in duotone, rarely color. 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.

“Setup for the Kid” is a short story from Stag. I was interested in it as its setting is Florida. The intro gave us some interesting info on Stag publisher Martin Goodman as well as the cover artist of the issue.

I found the background of author Dave Mazroff more interesting than his ”article” from Man’s Odyssey. Mazroff was a former criminal turned author, who wrote a lot of crime fiction. How much truth there is in his article is hard to tell, what with many articles in MAMs being largely fictional. And this is true of the next article, “Killer With 100 Faces,” which is probably entirely fictional. The accompanying article on this one about the cover artist, whose wife was also an artist of romance covers was great.

“The Specialist” is by a former lawyer from New Zealand (!?!) turned author, and appeared in one of Joe Weidner’s MAMs. It’s a fun little story.

Another article from Stag is on Bugsy Siegel, with artwork by two top MAM artists: Mort Künstler and Samson Pollen, both of whom have collections of their art from Robert Deis.

Another “true” story that probably isn’t is “I Hit the Hitmen” from an issue of Male. Some of the other issues noted from the issue also sound interesting. And I didn’t know about the model for the Ivory Snow soap boxes.

Female assassins are the subject of several movies and other media. So it makes sense that the MAMs would have something like “The Hitman Turned Out to Be a Woman.” The piece’s artwork used Steve Holland as one of the models.

Being from Florida, I am well aware of Fidel Castro and heard of rumors of attempts on his life. There was also the Bay of Pigs debacle, and around here there were groups that seemed to want to try again. So we have to have a MAM article on “The Day Castro Beat the CIA’s Mafia.” It’s fiction, but there were real plots being hatched.

The next issue is themed “Croc Attack,” which should be an interesting one. Maybe they can do ones about exotic cats, sharks, and weasels at some point. Based on something in one of the intros, maybe an issue devoted to UFOs might be an idea. Bring in the sf fans.

I look forward to what they have for their third year and hope it will be another successful one.