Frontier Partisans reader and patron Bob Deis is doing noble work in keeping alive the spirit of the glorious pulpy goodness of Men’s Adventure magazines and paperback novels — and preserving the legacy of the outstanding artists who brought virile men and sexy women in dire danger to life in the 20th Century. MENSPULPMAGS.ORG — The Men’s Adventure Magazines & Books Blog, which Deis edits, is an absolute hoot to explore — and a tribute to a zeitgeist that some of us will never abandon…
The latest from Deis and his compatriots is a corker — a volume collecting the Western art of Ron Lesser.
OUT NOW! — THE ART OF RON LESSER, VOL. 3: WILD, WILD, WESTERNS
Bob writes:
Ron Lesser is one of America’s greatest living illustration artists. From 1959 to the late 1990s, he created artwork for hundreds of paperback book covers, iconic movie posters, and magazines.
In more recent decades he has done paintings for galleries, prints, and calendars. This book is the third volume in the Art of Ron Lesser series.
Deis knows this latest tome is going to blow out the FP x-ring (thanks Bob!). A few years back, we showcased Lesser’s Western-themed collection of paintings of women smoking cigars. Which, as we all know, is sexy as hell.
Anyways…
The book is a feast. It features an introduction by James Reasoner, both a contributor to and a scholar of the Western and Men’s Adventure genres. He has visited this campfire from time to time, and his words add the context that only a close student with an in-the-blood love for pulp could bring. The beautiful layout rewards slow perusal. If, like me, your youthful reading syllabus was crammed with reams of pulpy frontier yarns (sorry mom), you will remember some of the covers that Lesser produced.
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The spirit of Men’s Adventure is far from dead. I would argue that Jack Carr’s thrillers are heirs to that pulp tradition, filtered through Magnum, PI and the thrillers of David Morrell. Hence my crossed-tomahawk Jack Jug in the vignette above…
I haven’t pulled the trigger on this yet, but I am pleased to see L.S. Goozdich actively seeking to revive Men’s Adventure fiction. I mean, this is a young guy (30s) proselytizing the works of everyone from Hemingway to Louis L’Amour to a generation that supposedly doesn’t read. Gotta love that.
For fans of Indiana Jones, Uncharted, The Mummy, and 1923, Fire in the Tall Grass delivers pulse-pounding action, high-stakes adventure, and relentless danger! Under the guise of helping a woman find her husband and a son reunite with his father, Redford plunges into the darkest part of the Congo… soon he realizes that there is more to the story. Guerrilla warfare and a deadly race to an ancient relic find the former ace in this thrilling Noah Redford Adventure!
With fists flying, bullets whizzing, and enemies lurking in every shadow, Redford must rely on his wits, grit, and two-fisted resolve to survive. But in the jungle, the greatest danger isn’t always what’s hunting you-it’s what you’re hunting.
A nonstop, edge-of-your-seat adventure packed with brutal fights, breathtaking chases, and a masculine hero cut from the cloth of legends. If you crave action, treasure hunts, and old-school adventure, this book is for you!
And I would argue that the entire Taylor Sheridan universe is a throwback to the genre — which is why it is so popular and why it pisses all the right people off. Exhibit A must be, of course, Spencer Dutton of 1923. If Sheridan wasn’t exploiting Brandon Sklenar to evoke a shirtless Steve Holland, I’ll eat my own sweat-stained hat…
Then there is Ali Larter. As Angela Norris in Landman, she looks like she stepped right out of the pages of a 1960s-70s Men’s Adventure mag, ready to give Eva Lynd a run for her money…
Anyways…
Sweat-stained hats off to Robert Deis and his partners who keep the spirit of adventure alive. To quote Kris Kristofferson — I think what they’ve done is well worth doin’ and they’re doin’ it the best way that they can.
Wyatt Doyle says
Hi, Jim! Wyatt Doyle here. Thank you for your support of our work. A necessary clarification: The Men’s Adventure Library series is a partnership between Bob and me, which I publish under my imprint, New Texture. Not a posse, but partners, pulling equal weight on every book we produce. Has been so from the beginning, over a decade ago. If it’s not a New Texture book and my name isn’t on the cover, it’s not a Men’s Adventure Library release, full stop. Thanks for understanding.
JimC says
Got it. Thanks. I’ve edited the post to reflect your clarification.
Matthew Ilseman says
I remember a few years ago when the discontinued the Mack Bolan series of Men’s Adventure and remember thinking that was not good. Now the Mack Bolan series was NOT High Literature (at best they were something you read when you needed mindless entertainment) but they were one of the longest lasting men’s adventure series and such got men to read. I think men need stories of adventure and tough guys. Even the Jack Reacher series which I thought as highly overrated served as this. So for all the problems this genre can have I don’t think it was good for society.
Quixotic Mainer says
That looks like great fun and inspiration. I’ll tune in to both the men’s adventure site and Fire in the Grass. After I get the hay in on my parent’s place anyway, speaking of sweatstained hats.
Bob Deis says
Many thanks, Jim! I know Ron and my co-editors will greatly appreciate your post, too. Cheers!
Ugly Hombre says
Thanks for the lead ! looks great will check it out! When I was a kid my dad subscribed to “Argosy” and “True” magazine great reading and art full of stuff men and boys loved to peruse. Wish I had a stack of them today all went in the round file after a while back in the day.
Its funny that youngsters today are never exposed to that type of pulp fiction its sort of cloaked- and has to be looked for and that goes for movies too. Powers that be must be scart that they will go “Fargo” or full metal “Robert E. Howard” or something. lol
Printed page is the best compuker reading is not the same but it will have to do I guess.
Thanks again-!
Greg Marshall says
I loved those mags. They weren’t all pulp. There were some pretty good articles in them, and there was a lot of digestible history in them.
The 1950s were very conservative times and if my dad hadn’t subscribed there were a lot of things I’d never have learned about, including The Holocaust, which was neither written about nor spoken about in the circles a teenager had access to.
Sometimes adults don’t get how mature teenager minds can be.
These magazines got me interested in hunting and shooting, a pastime I’ve come back to on and off my whole life. It was a gentler time, when hunting and shooting sports were something almost everyone enjoyed, and there were no politics attached to a good day of upland game hunting.
I still have a corned-beef recipe from TRUE. We’ve updated to avoid some of the more heart-unfriendly ingredients and we make it every year for Christmas.
David Wrolson says
I was a little youg and probably too sheltered to really get the pulp-type stuff at the time. Any such books that I ran across would have been read as a straight story and I would have likely been confused.
However, I do remember a book from the paperback stand at the drugstore in the late 1970’s called “The Trap.” All I remember was that it had something to do with the Cheyenne but it had to be pulp.. I dithered a couple of times there and didn’t buy it and then it was gone.
I have tried a few times online-but there are so many variations of that title that a search is fruitless.
I would also place a lot of Wilbur Smith as pulp.
JimC says
I absolutely consider Wilbur Smith as a Men’s Adventure icon. His Ballantyne series (along with Frederick Russell Burnham) lit my fire re: Rhodesia. I read the covers off Men of Men, which brought the Kimberly diamond strike to life and followed Zouga Ballantyne’s obsession with the land to the North — Beyond the Limpopo River.
David Wrolson says
I ordered “Fire in the Tall Grass” which looks like it came straight out of Wilbur Smith.
JimC says
Let us know what you think.
Bill Cunningham says
Thanks for the kudos, Jim! We’ve had a great time with the ART OF RON LESSER series with more books to come!