Soft Brides for the Beast of Blood

Men’s adventure magazines were a form of pulp publishing which flourished in 1950s and 1960s America, pandering to the cruelty and lust of young men with luridly illustrated stories of war, sleaze and savagery. They arose partly in response to the inauguration of the Comics Code in 1954, as a way of circumventing censorship by presenting material in a new, “adults-only” format. The prime years of the men’s adventure magazine unleashed a visual and verbal deluge of exposed and tormented flesh, bloody mayhem and sexual delinquency, representing a unique cultural phenomenon in US publishing and art.