Dian Hanson’s: The History of Men’s Magazines HC (2023 Taschen) comic books
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$29.00
$29.00
$28.00
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. -
$38.00
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.
