I have posted on some other fanzines produced by Justin Marriott, and this time I take a look at Men of Violence: The Fanzine of Men’s Adventure Paperbacks.
While not pulp, I’ve long felt that the numbered men’s adventure paperback series were another successor to the pulps. Started by Don Pendleton’s The Executioner, these works had their heyday in the 1960s and 1970s, only to peter out in the 1980s and 1990s.
I was aware of them while looking for Doc Savage paperbacks, but wasn’t too interested in most. I did notice Nick Carter, the former dime-novel and pulp hero turned “Killmaster.” And I did get into The Destroyer series, more so for the more science-fictional elements in many of the stories.
I believe Men of Violence has run about a dozen issues. Issue No. 4 on is available from Amazon via print-on-demand (POD), but earlier issues are not. At least the first several issues appear to have been converted into POD, for those who care. I do have issues No. 4–9, and all are 6- by 9-inches and run from 40 to 70 pages. Sadly, unlike The Paperback Fanatic, up until No. 9, all are black-and-white issues. With No. 9, they are full color, and I think originally done via POD.
As this blog is devoted to pulp, I’ll focus more on the pulp-related items, or items I find most interesting.
No. 4 (reprint, October 2017) has an article on a short-lived (six volumes) series called The Revenger. I found it interesting that all the covers have the main character with some kind of handgun, but having a silencer on a revolver on No. 5 was silly. We get a couple of articles on Nick Carter stories. It was surprising to see that some of the novels got two or three different covers. One article is a review of a trio written by Martin Cruz Smith. Another looks at the two Nick Carters written by Linda Stewart and includes correspondence with the author.
Nos. 5 & 6 (reprint, August 2017) has several articles in this large “double issue” reprint. These include articles on Renegade, an attempt at a Western men’s adventure series, the Liquidator series, and the short-lived Dennison’s War series. But the one I found most interesting was the last on the court case involving Michigan General Corp., which had bought out Pinnacle Books on the assumption that Pinnacle owned The Executioner and not Don Pendleton. We are promised this would continue in the next issue, but it doesn’t.
No. 7 (reprint, August 2017) has several articles. One is a long article on the Sharpshooter series; another is on a modern Western by U.K. author J.T. Edson. I’ve long wanted to learn more about Edson’s work, as he apparently tied in his “Floating Outfit” Westerns to Philip José Farmer’s Wold Newton work, I’m just not sure how.
No. 8 (reprint, October 2017) has several articles that look at various Western series. One looks at two similar series: Claw and Klaw. Another looks at four series by John Benteen (Ben Haas), including Fargo, Sundance, and Cutler.
We get an obituary of men’s adventure magazine author Walter Kaylin from Bob Deis of Men’s Adventure Library, which has reprinted his works.
And my favorite articles are the trio of pieces on book packager Lyle Kenyon Engle, who was responsible for the revival of Nick Carter as Killmaster and the attempted Shadow revival at Belmont Books. We get an article on him, a reprint of an article on him from The Washington Post from 1979, and a listing of the series he produced. I see a few science-fictional ones I’ve been thinking of getting.
No. 9 (November 2017) has several articles, but almost none are pulp-related. I did enjoy the article on the last of the Modesty Blaise novels. Blaise was a U.K. comic strip character who got a movie, and the author did a dozen or so novels. Another one I found interesting was the one on the long-running Battle Cry war-oriented men’s adventure magazine, which had been preceded by a comic book of the same name by its publisher.
It’s an interesting set of fanzines. Take a look at these, as well as Marriott’s other fanzines that are available on Amazon.
