Dian Hanson’s: The History of Men’s Magazines HC (2023 Taschen) comic books
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Volume 1 - 1st printing. "From 1900 to Post-WWII!"
The first commercial camera was introduced in 1839. By 1865 technology enabled ordinary men to create photographic negatives, and they immediately began taking and distributing photos of naked women.
The French led the way, and it was the French who produced the first nude magazines in 1880. Newsstand magazines followed, and the elegant La Vie Parisienne (Paris Life), full of sexy fiction and illustrations, debuted in 1914. It might all have stayed in Paris if not for WWI, when German and American troops carried the magazines home.
American Wilford Fawcett launched Capt. Billy's Whiz Bang (named after a WWI bomb) in 1919, helping launch the first sexual revolution of the 1920s, leading to SEX magazine from birth control pioneer Margaret Sanger. The 1930s economic depression boosted demand for cheap escape, and men's magazines delivered. There were film magazines of sexy starlets; "model study" art magazines; hardcore comics called Tijuana Bibles; "spicy" fiction digests with sexy painted covers; and detective titles of bad dames. When another world war erupted it required pinup magazines for fighting men, and after the war new men's magazines rose from the ashes.
Volume 1 of this series features over 700 covers and photos from France, Germany, the U.S., England, Turkey, Austria, Spain, Argentina and more, plus informative text.
Hardcover, 8-in. x 11-in., 460 pages, PC/PB&W. Mature Readers
Cover price $70.00. -
$36.00
$36.00
Volume 2 - 1st printing. "From Post-Ware to 1959!"
Playboy, launched in December 1953, made a huge impact on publishing, but it was not the only American men's magazine in the 1950s. The quirky burlesque titles Beauty Parade, Wink, Titter and Eyeful, featuring Bettie Page and covers by artist Peter Driben, inspired a spate of competing titles. Much loved WWII pin-ups, often of aspiring starlets, led to "news and nudes" titles with cover girls Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield, and to more lurid titles like Shock, blending burlesque and celebrity scandal.
Argentina, with a strong European influence, produced sophisticated Vea (Watch), while England, suffering paper shortages, produced little magazines with big buxom models, charting a path it would maintain through the 1960s.
Volume 2 in this series contains over 650 magazine covers and photos from the U.S., Mexico, Argentina and England, plus informative essays.
Hardcover, 8-in. x 11-in., 460 pages, PC/PB&W. Mature Readers
Cover price $70.00. -
Issue #3-1ST
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Volume 3 - 1st printing. "1960s at the Newsstand!"
Sexual revolution, civil rights, Flower Power, miniskirt, women's liberation, The Pill, Black Panthers, hippies; all these words and phrases entered our language in the turbulent 1960s. While Playboy's world dominance grew, with France, Germany, England, and Italy producing "men's lifestyle" titles, diversification spread in the U.S.
The first big breast magazines debuted, with Fling, Gem and The Swinger; men's adventure titles-with nudes-provided nostalgia for mid-life veterans; humor magazines hung on-barely-while hippie nudist titles exploited a legal loophole allowing them to show pubic hair. Italy finally joined the party with sexy fumetto photo comics and a hero named Supersex. Latin America clung to the old burlesque format, mired in religious restriction and political unrest. France retained post-war favorite Folies de Paris et de Hollywood for an older audience and launched elegant Playboy clone LUI for its sons. But no one topped Germany, where Ulrike Meinhof edited Konkret in 1969, a magazine of sexual and political revolution, before forming Red Army Fraction with Andreas Baader to bomb, kidnap, and assassinate her way into domestic terror history.
Volume 3 contains over 650 groovy covers and photos from Argentina, England, France, Germany, Italy, and The U.S., plus text.
Hardcover, 8-in. x 11-in., 460 pages, PC/PB&W. Mature Readers
Cover price $70.00. -
$36.00
Volume 4 - 1st printing. "1960s Under the Counter!"
In 1958 Milton Luros left his New York job designing and illustrating detective pulp magazines for North Hollywood, California. A year later, with a loan from an underworld figure, he founded a publishing empire that revolutionized men's magazines in the 1960s.
His so-called "California slicks" borrowed bad-girl themes from pre-Playboy burlesque titles, featuring big hair, heavy make-up, cigarettes, and cocktails, but in west coast mid-century settings with better photography, paper, and printing. With no redeeming articles, they were too strong for newsstands, but outsold Playboy in tobacco shops and specialty bookstores. Californian Elmer Batters invented leg art photography the same year, with titles Black Silk Stockings, Leg-O-Rama, Tip Top, Elmer's Naked Jungle and more. Back in New York, Irving Klaw introduced fetish digests in the same specialty bookstores, leading to a '60s fetish boom, with Lenny Burtman's High Heels, Satana, Striparama, and Leg Show. Sixties freedom spread to England too, where George Harrison Marks launched Kamera and Solo magazines with totally naked models posed to barely hide the banned bits, inventing "top shelf" titles: those not on public display.
Volume 4 in this series contains over 650 ground-breaking covers and photos from the U.S., England, and Sweden with descriptive text.
Hardcover, 8-in. x 11-in., 460 pages, PC/PB&W. Mature Readers
Cover price $70.00. -
Issue #5-1ST
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Volume 5 - 1st printing. "1970s at the Newsstand!"
Pubic hair appeared on the American newsstand in 1970 compliments of Penthouse magazine. Within a year it was everywhere, and in 1975 Midwest redneck Larry Flynt parted the hair and made the pink beyond the centerpiece of Hustler. In Northern Europe censorship laws fell like dominos after Berth Milton confronted Swedish parliament with hardcore photos in 1967, asking what it would do if he published them in Private magazine.
The answer was nothing. Denmark followed, producing magazines for France as well. England, always lagging, finally got the knickers off, but kept its censorship laws. Japan, long suppressed, found release in bondage magazines like New Roman Porno and SM Select, though pubic hair stayed forbidden. The Pill removed pregnancy fear and couples embraced swinging, the suburban sexual revolution, with swing magazines in the U.S. and Europe helping to hook them up. Al Goldstein challenged American censorship with Screw, while a Texas ad exec tried to keep tasteless hillbilly humor alive with Sex to Sexty.
History of Men's Magazines Volume 5 includes over 600 hair-raising covers and photos from Denmark, England, France, Germany, Japan, the U.S. and more, with the usual inspired text.
Hardcover, 8-in. x 11-in., 460 pages, PC/PB&W. Mature Readers
Cover price $70.00. -
Issue #6-1ST
This item is not in stock at MyComicShop. If you use the "Add to want list" tab to add this issue to your want list, we will email you when it becomes available.
Volume 6 - 1st printing. "1970s Under the Counter!"
In the late 1960s specialty bookstores selling magazines under the counter were replaced by sex shops, or "adult bookstores" in the U.S., at which point every subject, with few exceptions, was freely available.
It started with Swedish Private and its shockingly explicit covers. Denmark's Theander brothers countered with Rodox and Color Climax, with equally explicit content. Soon they were supplying most of Northern Europe, with the Netherlands pitching in.
In the U.S. Reuben Sturman was hailed King of Porn, with affiliates churning out hardcore of every kind to fill his 800 bookstores. Suddenly men used to taking what was offered could be picky. Lesbian dominance? Hot housewives? Black and Asian women? Hippie nudists espousing free love and drug use? Hairy women? Shaved women? Shaved women giving hairy women enemas? It was all there. Are you familiar with the name Edw. Wood, Jr., called the world's worst film director? Then you'll enjoy his little-known porn magazines, including Balling, Skin & Bones and Party Time.
What a decade.
Volume 6 features over 600 covers and photos from Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, and the U.S. with the usual, amusing text.
Hardcover, 8-in. x 11-in., 460 pages, PC/PB&W. Mature Readers
Cover price $70.00.
