I’ve been looking forward to the 11th issue of Men’s Adventure Quarterly, the excellent magazine series focused on men’s adventure magazines. This time, the focus is on UFOs, or unidentified flying objects.
As with previous issues, MAQ is available in three formats: the full-color printed version, a black-and-white “noir edition,” and a full-color “digital replica edition.”
Full disclosure, I was sent a copy of the full-color edition. And I would encourage people to get this one over the black-and-white due to all the great color artwork.
As noted, this is the “UFO Issue,” focusing on the phenomenon of flying saucers, aliens, and other such unknown objects in the sky that kicked off in the 50s and continued into the 1960s and ’70s. As a child of the 1960s, I remember elements of this, such as TV shows like Project Blue Book, UFO, and more. As well as all the tie-ins to these and similar shows: books, comics, movies, and more. To be honest, this is such a good collection of articles and commentary regarding this area that anyone interested in the UFO phenomenon should get it.
As before, publisher Bob Deis (Men’s Adventure Library) and graphic designer Bill Cunningham (Pulp 2.0 Press) have another great issue. And their excellent intros to each piece are a big reason why this magazine series is so great. These intros get into the author, artist, and sometimes publisher behind that particular work. For me, I sometimes enjoy these more. This time they are joined by guest contributors Jules Burt and Gary Lovisi. We get a trio of articles plus seven pieces from the MAMs organized by the decades, 1950s through ’70s.
And as there is usually a segment on an artist or model in the magazine, and this time we get a gallery of flying saucer sirens from various films: Anne Francis (Forbidden Planet), Mara Corday (Tarantula, Black Scorpion, et al), and Patricia Laffan (Devil Girl from Mars). With Jules Burt’s article on the book and comics tie-in with Gerry and Sylvia Anderson‘s UFO TV series is a mini-gallery of the girls from that series, in their outfits designed by Sylvia Anderson.
We kick things off appropriately with a reprint of one of the main works that started the craze, Donald Keyhoe‘s “The Flying Saucers Are Real” from Fate magazine. Readers here should be familiar with Keyhoe’s pulp work of various aviation heroes like Phil Strange and Richard Knight. With this article, he launched his next career as a UFO researcher. For those unaware, we get a good intro to him with the article.
The next work is “The Saucers are Spies from Mars,” notable more that it’s from a very obscure MAM, Him, from an obscure MAM publisher. The intro goes over them and the editor who is more notable, Evonne Rae, who worked with several magazine and comicbook publishers.
Rounding out the ’50s is “Are They Hiding the Truth About Flying Saucers?” which is from another unusual MAM: True Strange. A continuation of True Weird, it was a cross between a MAM and stuff like Fate and Weekly World News. We get a nice gallery of all the covers for this short-lived MAM.
Moving into the ’60s, we first get “George Adamski: The First Ambassador to Outer Space?” from Real magazine. George Adamski (1891-1965) was another major figure early on in the world of UFOs. He claimed to have been visited by aliens, and the flying saucer he described has even been made into plastic models. It’s also very similar to a chicken breeding warming lamp. The intro article adds to the info on him.
Next from John A. Keel is “UFO ‘Agents of Terror’.” Keel wrote a lot of articles on UFOs for MAMs and is credited with creating the idea of the “Men in Black,” of which this piece is one of the first to use it. Keel is also known, maybe more so, for The Mothman Prophecies. The intro article does a great job of covering Keel’s career, the Men in Black phenomenon, and Mothmen.
Finally, we get into the ’70s, and so a new version of UFOs: USO, or Unidentified Sea Objects or strange objects observed underwater. Some took this to mean that UFOs were landing in the ocean and the like. So for this, we get the article “The New Menace of USOs: Unidentified Sea Objects” written by, believe it or not, a man with a Ph.D., retired Navy, former officer with NOAA.
And lastly, we get our cover article, “Are UFOs Attacking Our Oil Fields?” by Robert F. Dorr. The intro article on this one looks at both Dorr, a noted military aviation history author, and artist Earl Norem, who did work for comic magazines and MAMs.
Rounding things out are the article by Gary Lovisi on several important flying saucer paperbacks, and the one by Bob Deis on EC Comics’ UFO covers and stories.
It’s another winning issue. The next one, which will close out their third year, will focus on private eyes. It should be fun, I can’t wait to see it.
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