I was recently sent a new collection of works from men’s adventure magazines from the folks at Men’s Adventure Library, this time focused on the weird fiction (science fiction, supernatural, etc.) that occasionally appeared in MAMs: Atomic Werewolves and Man-Eating Plants.
Edited by Robert Deis and Wyatt Doyle, the book includes a trio of introductory articles, 19 stories in the paperback edition, and artwork. Like all their works, this is another well-done volume. It’s available in both paperback and hardback, however, the hardback is 328 pages and the paperback is 310, so would I recommend getting the hardback as it has more stories (not sure how many though).
Full disclosure, I was sent a copy of the paperback.
For those not aware, men’s adventure magazines (or, MAMs) existed from the 1940s to the ’70s, and were one of the replacements of the pulps, but they are not pulps. Several of the major pulp magazines became MAMs, including Argosy, Adventure, Blue Book, and Short Stories. But there were over 150 MAMs. The target audience was working-class men, and the magazines combined fiction and non-fiction (including fiction claiming to be non-fiction), lurid covers, and high-quality interior artwork and photos/pictorials, all on slick paper. Later on, they went all non-fiction.
This volume kicks off with several good introductory pieces. There is a one-page overview of MAMs. From pulp dealer and researcher Mike Chomko, we get a good overview of Weird Tales with lots of covers. I think it’s great we get samples of most of the artists who worked for them. Next is an intro by Stefan Dziemianowicz, who gives us a good overview of both MAMs and the stories here. Then we get Wyatt Doyle and Robert Deis’s intro, where we get their take on the stories and are informed of where they came from. We also get a few good sidebar items as well.
As noted, we get 19 stories in the paperback, and they run the gamut. Some stories I expected from MAMs, as we get dangerous animals (and plants) in far-off places. But as during this time we were contending with things such as UFOs, fear of nuclear war, as well as bizarre ideas such as the Bermuda Triangle, I guess we shouldn’t be surprised at what does appear. Beginning each story, we get the cover art from the issue it appeared in as well as any accompanying artwork. We also get a few covers from other MAMs with weird stories, so clearly there are more out there. I was particularly interested in the True Weird magazine, which I found only lasted three issues of “true” weird stories.
I’m not going to go over each story, but I wanted to touch on several.
We early on get stories by some well-known authors. But most were reprinted from elsewhere. But we get pieces by Manly Wade Wellman, H.P. Lovecraft, Gardner Fox, and Theodore Sturgeon. I was very surprised that an HPL story was reprinted in MAMs.
“Island of Doom” is your typical lost-world-style story. “Trapped by a Man-Eating Plant” is presented as a true story, but the author, given as “Robert Moore” is actually Robert Moore Williams, who wrote many sf novels. This is one of the stories alluded to in the title. Rick Rubin‘s “The Hunted” is a different take on people being hunted by sentient robots. I could see this done as a Twilight Zone episode.
The “Mad Doctor of No-Name Key” by Peter Eldridge is all the more bizarre as its based on a true story about a man obsessed with a girl. The story of Count Von Cosel and Elena Hoyos is something that happened in Key West decades ago and covering in many places. I learned of it via a newspaper article sometime in the ’70s or ’80s and it always stuck with me.
“Their Bodies Glowed With Fire” is a different take on the UFO abduction tale with a rare Native American protagonist. “Killer of the Cave” is one of those surviving after an atomic-war-type story, mixing in a werewolf. This is the other story alluded to in the title. This is similar to several B-movies of the times
This is a pretty good collection of stories from MAMs. Another I would like to get is their Cryptozoology Anthology. I hope they do another volume along these lines. Be sure to check out this volume and others in the Men’s Adventure Library.
