Review: Men's Adventure Quarterly #14: The Bigfoot Issue! - Robert Deis and Bill Cunningham, eds.

I’m no expert on Bigfoot and his cryptid cousins, by any means. I remember reading a comic strip when I was a kid where the characters encountered the Abominable Snowman, and it wasn’t played for laughs like the Bumble in RUDOLPH THE RED-NOSED REINDEER. In fact, it scared the crap out of me. But I don’t remember what the comic strip was. If any of you recall a comic strip featuring an Abominable Snowman storyline in the 1960-65 period, let me know!

Then there’s THE LEGEND OF BOGGY CREEK, the Seventies docu-drama film about Arkansas’s Fouke Monster. One of my best friends had family in that area and visited often, and he swore the monster was real, although he had never seen it.

So I was ready to be educated about Bigfoot, making me part of the prime audience for the 14th issue of MEN’S ADVENTURE QUARTERLY: THE BIGFOOT ISSUE! From the talented editorial due of Robert Deis and Bill Cunningham, this volume leans more on non-fiction than some of the previous issues of this great publication. There are lengthy articles from well-known zoologist Ivan T. Sanderson, current cryptid expert Loren Coleman, and John W. Burns, one of the first authors to investigate the mystery that came to be known as Bigfoot. Also to be found in this issue are articles about Bigfoot’s appearances in movies, including the above-mentioned THE LEGEND OF BOGGY CREEK, and other media. I had no idea there have been so many movies over the years featuring Bigfoot and his assorted cousins! Other articles detail Bigfoot’s several guest-starring turns on THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN and THE BIONIC WOMAN, as well as the series BIGFOOT AND WILDBOY. I remember hearing about those episodes of THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN and THE BIONIC WOMAN, but I don’t recall watching them back when those episodes were new and have never seen them since, so this was all new and very entertaining for me.

And of course, there’s some wild, men’s adventure magazine fiction about discovering and fighting Bigfoot-like creatures, and as always, I had a great time reading those yarns.

As for my own encounters with Bigfoot, I don’t have any. But about forty years ago, Bill Crider and I collaborated on chapters-and-outline for a men’s adventure novel involving a Yeti. Unfortunately, it never sold. Going back farther to 1969, I lived only a few miles from the nature refuge where the Lake Worth Monster, sometimes called the Goatman, had the whole area worked up for the whole summer. You can read about that here. I tend to be skeptical about such things, but you couldn’t have gotten me to go out to Greer Island that summer. No, sir. Since then, people I know have claimed the whole thing was a hoax and they know who was behind it. Could be. But I just don’t know.

To get back to MEN’S ADVENTURE QUARTERLY: THE BIGFOOT ISSUE!, this is another great issue of one of my favorite publications, and I give it a very high recommendation. You can find it on Amazon or buy it directly from the publisher.

(Apologies for rambling around a little more than usual. Seems to be the way my brain works these days.)

Review: Men's Adventure Quarterly #13: Fatal Femmes

The latest issue of MEN’S ADVENTURE QUARTERLY is out, and as usual, it’s a breathtakingly exciting collection of stories and artwork from the men’s adventure magazines, expertly assembled by editors Bob Deis and Bill Cunningham, ably assisted this time by guest editor Eric Compton and guest contributor Terrance Layhew. The theme this time around: Fatal Femmes!

They lead off with “The Gun Moll Who Hated G-Men” from the July 1957 issue of SEE. The author is David Mazroff, whose work I’ve been familiar with for a long time due to his true crime articles and occasional fiction in MIKE SHAYNE MYSTERY MAGAZINE. I didn’t know until I read about it in a previous issue of MEN’S ADVENTURE QUARTERLY, however, that Mazroff was a career criminal himself and was deeply involved with organized crime. That certainly gives his work an air of authenticity. His story in this issue is a non-fiction piece about the notorious Ma Barker and her sons, and he does a great job of capturing their bloody lives and deaths.

Don Honig, a prolific contributor to the men’s adventure magazine whose work has been reprinted several times in this series, also wrote for the mystery digests. His clever crime story “Mrs. Herman and Mrs. Kenmore” is from the May 1958 issue of ALFRED HITCHCOCK’S MYSTERY MAGAZINE. While AHMM isn’t exactly a men’s adventure magazine, I suspect there was a significant crossover with the readership of those magazines. A guy like me, for example.

W.J. Saber was really Warren Shanahan, and under his real name he wrote one of the novels featuring the comic strip hero The Phantom that were published originally by Avon back in the Seventies. I was an avid reader of those novels and read and enjoyed Shanahan’s entry back then. Under the Saber pseudonym, he wrote extensively for the men’s adventure magazines, including “Rich Lovers Wanted—Apply Mme. Crielle, Champs Elysées” from the January 1960 issue of STAG. It’s a great, lurid yarn set in Paris in the 1920s about young men being murdered and their blood being drained from them, with a dogged police detective determined to get to the bottom of the crimes.

“Kiss Me and Die” by Hiram J. Herbert (TRUE ADVENTURES, December 1960) is another true-crime yarn about the killing spree of a couple of prostitutes and their henchman/fall guy, an AWOL GI. Honestly, I’m not a big fan of true crime stories, but this one works very well and I enjoyed it.

Buz Rowan, like the author of the previous story, is an unknown quantity, likely a pseudonym. His noir crime yarn “Blood for a Nympho’s Flesh”, from the November 1962 issue of ALL MAN, is about crop-dusting, not a subject that comes up very often in such stories, I suspect. But Rowan, whoever he really was, uses it to craft a gut-punch of a story that could have been a Gold Medal novel in miniature.

I’ve read several stories and a novel by Dean W. Ballenger, and his work never fails to entertain. “The Incredible Norwegian Ice Nymphs” (NEW MAN, September 1963) is a World War II yarn about Norwegian women who fight back against the Nazis and prove to be just as deadly as their men. It’s a punchy, very entertaining tale, as you’d expect from Ballenger.

None other than the great pulp author Paul Chadwick, creator of Secret Agent X and Wade Hammond, shows up with “The Ever-Lovin’ Nude Who Watched Her Boyfriends Die” from the May 1969 issue of REAL MEN. This is the only story Chadwick wrote for the men’s adventure magazines, but it appeared three times under three different titles, in three different magazines, to boot! It’s a good story about a serial murderess who uses poison to dispose of her victims, set in France like one of the earlier stories in this volume. You can always count on Chadwick to spin a good yarn, and this one is no exception.

“Vendetta on the Street of Lonely Frauleins” wraps up the fiction in this issue. It appeared originally in the March 1966 issue of MEN and is by Mario Cleri, a prolific contributor to the men’s adventure magazines who just happens to be better known by his real name: Mario Puzo, author of THE GODFATHER and many other bestselling novels. Taking its cue from the contemporary boom in espionage and secret agent fiction, this story features freelance American operative Scarlet Tracy and her partner Charlie Hunt. Scarlet and Charlie are in Berlin to hunt down a British defector with a briefcase full of top secret documents to sell to the Russians. There seems to me to be a definite Modesty Blaise influence in this one, along with echoes of The Girl From U.N.C.L.E., The Lady From L.U.S.T., and the other books, movies, and TV shows from that era that featured beautiful female protagonists. I am definitely the target audience for stories like this, and I loved it. If Puzo had turned this into a paperback series, I would have been right there at the spinner rack to pick up each new book as it came out. As far as I know, this is Scarlet Tracy’s only appearance, but it’s a good one.

Eric Compton contributes a fine article about fatal femmes in novels, and Terrance Layhew has assembled a wonderful photo gallery of some of the beautiful women from the James Bond films. Both are very worthy additions to one of the best issues of MEN’S ADVENTURE QUARTERLY so far. But let’s face it, all the issues have been great. If you’re a fan of great art and hard-hitting stories, this volume and all the previous ones get my highest recommendation. You can find the Fatal Femmes issue on Amazon.

Review: Men's Adventure Quarterly #12: The Private Eyes Issue - Bob Deis and Bill Cunningham, eds.

I’ve been a fan of MEN’S ADVENTURE QUARTERLY since it began, and it’s a real pleasure and honor to have an article in the latest issue, #12, The Private Eyes Issue. My contribution is about detectives in Western fiction, and I hope it’s both entertaining and informative, but I’m here today to talk about the rest of the contents. Which, of course, are absolutely top-notch, as I’ve come to expect from editors Bob Deis and Bill Cunningham.

For starters, there are stories from two of my favorite authors featuring two of my favorite fictional private eyes: Michael Avallone and his iconic character Ed Noon, and Frank Kane and his equally legendary private eye Johnny Liddell. The Avallone story is “Make Out Mob Girl”, a Book Bonus condensation of the first Ed Noon novel THE TALL DOLORES, from the October 1962 issue of MAN'S WORLD. David Spencer, author of THE NOVELIZERS, provides a fine introduction to Avallone and his career, and Mike's son David Avallone contributes a touching essay about his dad. As a long time fan of Mike Avallone and his work, I'm really glad I got be his friend-by-correspondence for many years. 

Frank Kane’s “Party Girl” (KEN FOR MEN, May 1957) is a retitled reprint of the story “Frame” from the August 1954 issue of MANHUNT, the great crime fiction digest. This story was also reprinted in the paperback collection JOHNNY LIDDELL’S MORGUE from Dell. Both are really strong stories, and if you’ve never read any Ed Noon or Johnny Liddell stories or novels, this would be a fine place to start.

But of course there’s more. Honey West is probably the most famous fictional female private eye, and this issue includes the only Honey West short story, “The Red Hairing” by G.G. Fickling, actually the husband and wife writing team Forrest (“Skip”) and Gloria Fickling. This one appeared originally in the June 1965 issue of MIKE SHAYNE MYSTERY MAGAZINE. In addition, there’s an article about the TV series HONEY WEST featuring numerous photos of its beautiful star, Anne Francis. I was a fan of the show when it aired originally in the Sixties and am always happy to revisit it.

Walter Kaylin, one of the best authors who wrote for the men’s adventure magazine, contributes “I Had to Amputate My Leg to Save My Life!”, the tale of a private detective trapped by a mad killer, and it’s every bit as harrowing and gruesome as the title makes it sound. It’s also lightning-fast, compelling reading. Kaylin was a master, and this story is a good example of his work.

A story from a short-lived men’s adventure magazine actually called PRIVATE EYE features detective Adam Baxter in “Sing a Song of Sex-Mail”. It’s an entertaining yarn written in a fast-moving, breezy style. The story was published anonymously and I have no idea who wrote it, but I had fun reading it.

There’s also a non-fiction reprint from Alan Hynd called “The Case of the Murdering Detective” (CAVALIER, September 1956) about a real-life murder case from 1910 and the clever detective who solves it. I’ve mentioned before that I’m not much of a fan of true crime stories, but Hynd does a fine job with this one and kept me flipping the pages to find out what was going to happen.

New articles in this issue include the one by me on Western detectives that I mentioned above, a look at some of the latest Sherlock Holmes pastiches, both literary and TV, from Holmes scholar and fan Paul Bishop, and film critic John Harrison on detectives in science fiction films. Plus a feature on early Sixties TV series 77 SUNSET STRIP and HAWAIAN EYE, both of which were favorites of mine, especially 77 SUNSET STRIP. I never missed an episode back in those days. If you're the right age, you can hear the show's theme song in your head right now, can't you? I miss the Sixties just thinking about all this stuff!

I know I’ve said it before, but this is the best issue yet of MEN’S ADVENTURE QUARTERLY. You can find it on Amazon, and I give it my highest recommendation.

Review: Men's Adventure Quarterly #11: Invasion: UFO - Robert Deis and Bob Cunningham, eds.

When I was a kid, I happened to read Donald E. Keyhoe’s book THE FLYING SAUCERS ARE REAL, and that sparked a huge interest in UFOs. I quickly went on to read other books about the subject by authors such as Frank Edwards and George Adamski, and my fifth grade buddies probably got tired of me yammering about flying saucers. But I was always yammering about something or other, so it might not have made any difference.

Keyhoe, Edwards, and Adamski are all to be found in the latest issue of the always excellent MEN’S ADVENTURE QUARTERLY, the INVASION: UFO issue. As you might expect, this volume is right up my alley. Keyhoe, who I’ve really come to admire and enjoy as an author of aviation pulp fiction in the past few years, is on hand with the lengthy article “The Flying Saucers Are Real”, from the January 1950 issue of TRUE, which he expanded into the book I read almost 60 years ago and have never forgotten. Edwards, whose book FLYING SAUCERS—SERIOUS BUSINESS was another favorite of mine, is mentioned. There’s an enjoyable article about Adamski, who I took as a serious researcher and author at the time when I read his book INSIDE THE FLYING SAUCERS. Turns out he was a bit of a charlatan and/or nutjob, but hey, I had a good time reading his book back then and a good time reading about him now, so it's a win as far as I’m concerned.

Gary Lovisi contributes a fine article about vintage paperbacks that exploited the flying saucer craze, and when you have photo galleries that spotlight Anne Francis and Mara Corday, you’ve got to love that, or at least I do. The final article in this issue, “Are UFOs Attacking Our Oil Fields?”, from the May 1975 issue of STAG, combines two of my interests, flying saucers and oil fields, and was written by the great Robert F. Dorr, so I’d say it’s tied for my favorite with Keyhoe’s iconic article. Bob Dorr was just such a fine writer it’s always a pleasure to read anything he wrote, and the same is true of Keyhoe.

Now, I have to make a confession: I’ve seen something strange in the sky myself, a number of years ago, and someone else was with me who saw the same thing. We’ve never been able to figure out exactly what it was, but it was sure puzzling. I’m not going to go into any more details, or you’d think that I’m a nutjob. (Well, some of you no doubt think that anyway, but why confirm it?) You can take my word for it, though, that the latest issue of MEN’S ADVENTURE QUARTERLY is another beautiful piece of work from editors Robert Deis and Bill Cunningham, and I give it my highest recommendation. You can order it on Amazon or directly from the publisher here or here.

Men's Adventure Quarterly #10: The Vietnam Issue -- Robert Deis and Bill Cunningham, eds.

The tenth issue of MEN’S ADVENTURE QUARTERLY is out, this time around focusing on the best stories and artwork from the men’s adventure magazines dealing with the Vietnam war. Those of you who have been following MAQ from the beginning know that it’s one of the best publications out there, and this new issue more than maintains that very high standard. You’d expect nothing less from editors Robert Deis and Bill Cunningham, ably assisted on this issue by Paul Bishop and Rob Morris.

As before, the stories reprinted in this issue are split between true tales (or mostly true) and those that are entirely or almost entirely fictional. For me, the high point of the non-fiction pieces is “MIG Bait” by the prolific MAM writer and military historian Robert F. Dorr, from the February 1968 issue of MAN’S MAGAZINE. It was my pleasure and honor to get to know Bob Dorr a little before he passed away several years ago, and I’ve become a big fan of his work. His story about the first supersonic dogfight in the air over Vietnam is exciting and well-written. I also enjoyed the profile of Barry Sadler by Garth Roberts that appeared in the October 1966 issue of MAN’S WORLD. I remember quite well when Sadler’s song “The Ballad of the Green Berets” was a huge hit and played on the radio all the time. That article also mentions author Robin Moore and his bestselling novel THE GREEN BERETS, which I remember buying off the spinner rack at Lester’s Pharmacy when it was brand-new, so that just adds to the nostalgic appeal of that piece for me. Also in the non-fiction realm, but fiction-related, Paul Bishop contributes a terrific article about the various series of paperback novels centering around the war in Vietnam.

As for the fiction, one of my favorites is “Saigon Nymph Who Led the Green Berets to the Cong’s Terror Headquarters” (MALE, August 1966) by Mario Cleri, who, as all of you already know, was really Mario Puzo, the author of THE GODFATHER and numerous other novels. Puzo was a prolific contributor to the MAMs as both a writer and an editor. I think this story is the first thing I’ve read by him other than THE GODFATHER, all those years ago, and it’s an excellent yarn about a colonel in Army Intelligence going after the VC terrorists responsible for his younger brother’s death.

The other top fictional tale for me is “Saga of Mad Mike Kovacs and His Battling Lepers of Vietnam”, from the January 1967 issue of MALE, by Glenn Infield. This is the first thing I’ve read by Infield, and it’s great, every bit as over-the-top as you might imagine from the title. Fast-paced and very well-written, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Rob Morris contributes informative introductions to both this story and to Robert F. Dorr’s “MIG Pilot”.

On the visual front, this issue is as beautifully produced as all the other issues of MAQ, featuring dozens of covers and interior illustrations along with two lengthy galleries, one spotlighting many of the Vietnam-related covers on which the legendary Steve Holland appeared, and the other featuring Raquel Welch accompanying Bob Hope to Vietnam on one of his famous USO tours. Back in those days I never missed the TV specials drawn from footage of those UFO shows, and I remember quite well the one on which Raquel appeared. It was nice revisiting those days.

So this is another great job all around, and I give a big old recommendation to the Vietnam Issue of MEN’S ADVENTURE QUARTERLY. It’s available in two different formats on Amazon: a full-color paperback edition and a black-and-whitepaperback edition, or you can buy the full-color edition directly from editor and publisher Robert Deis on eBay.

Men's Adventure Quarterly #9: Croc Attack! - Robert Deis and Bill Cunningham, eds.

Editors Robert Deis and Bill Cunningham deliver another winner in CROC ATTACK!, the ninth issue of MEN’S ADVENTURE QUARTERLY, the beautifully illustrated journal that reprints the best of the Men’s Adventure Magazines from the Fifties, Sixties, and Seventies. Authors included in this collection of stories about humans battling with crocodiles and alligators are paperbacker Robert Edmond Alter (one of my favorites), pulpster Brian O’Brien, and MAM veteran Leon Lazarus, along with a number of pseudonyms concealing unknown authors. And plenty of wonderful artwork, of course. A gorgeous package and great fun to read, as always. Highly recommended, available in paperback and e-book editions at Amazon.