Newsweek No More
It was my hope that Tina Brown could bring some life to Newsweek--and to the genre of the news magazine, in general. If there still is such a thing as a super editor, Brown certainly qualifies. This blow up, coupled with that of the ill-fated Talk magazine, will probably end her career in print. That's a shame, since it leaves the magazine field without any real stars.
Quick. Name a "must read" magazine. I am afraid that's a thing of the past. There are very few magazines which anyone talks of and fewer still which attract attention outside of "stunt" issues. And it's been that way for a while.
Gone are the days when any magazine can claim to be the primary source of information on any genre of human activity. Magazines don't even have muscle cars or muscle fitness locked up anymore. Also gone are magazines driven by singular personalities. A few dinosaurs hang on--the thing that edits Vogue, the thing that owns Playboy, the thing that owns Hustler. And then there's Vanity Fair, which is a sole holdout--if only because every issue is a "stunt" issue. But other than Vanity Fair, not a moment's consideration need be wasted on what these personalities opine. They have all gone the way of National Review: unable to find their way in an era after the founder's death. And Heff and the others aren't even dead yet!
Gone are the days when any magazine can claim to be the primary source of information on any genre of human activity. Magazines don't even have muscle cars or muscle fitness locked up anymore. Also gone are magazines driven by singular personalities. A few dinosaurs hang on--the thing that edits Vogue, the thing that owns Playboy, the thing that owns Hustler. And then there's Vanity Fair, which is a sole holdout--if only because every issue is a "stunt" issue. But other than Vanity Fair, not a moment's consideration need be wasted on what these personalities opine. They have all gone the way of National Review: unable to find their way in an era after the founder's death. And Heff and the others aren't even dead yet!
I thought Brown did a good job with Newsweek--and I am not inclined to think that it was too little, too late. Even in its death throws, Newsweek still has a subscriber base that would be the envy of most magazines. What it could not be, given the resources involved, was another Time Magazine.
Newsweek is now slated to join Life and US News & World Report as a masthead for a website and occasionally trotted out trademark for neo-pulps and other print efforts. I fear that it won't be the last.
I still think there is some room in the news universe--the magazine news universe--for a magazine slightly less trashy than the Enquirer, with a focus on political corruption, true crime and investigative pieces. Day to day war coverage would be nice, too, as long as we still are at war. And Newsweek would not have been a bad name for such a magazine. Instead, Newsweek will spend what is left of its print life playing Monday morning scorecard on the political races and puffing out how God is Alive and Heaven is Real and whatnot. Sad, really.
Sensational Nazi Sex
In previous postings I have broken bad on the pulp magazines' odd preoccupation with the sex lives of Hitler and his national socialist clan. It's not quite as mystifying as the pulps' focus on the fairly fictional White Slavery theme of the pre-WWII era. As pulp themes go, Nazi Sex is no more less grounded in reality than UFO sightings. One can file it as an extension of the Bad Guys Doing Bad Things genre that started with Jesse James in the Dime Novels. As things evolved, such themes became a part of the overall pulp mix. That said, during its apex, the breathtaking degree to which Nazi Sex was done to death cannot be understated.
What I have perhaps failed to mention is that the pulps were not the only medium with an unhealthy fixation on the under the cover lives of fascists. Not that this excuses the pulps, but it would be an oversight on my part not to mention other mediums with a similar bent.
Nazis started showing up in American fiction during the middle 1930s. They were immediately in movies, radio shows, comic strips and pulp magazines. The first wave of comic books were all about Nazis (and Japs) even before we went to war. In reality, the Nazis were kaput by 1945--and weren't an existential threat to the United States for a few years before that. As for real heavies, they were little better than American Confederates: pack nutcase fantasy followers out to create a dreamland for themselves through inflicting a nightmare on others. In real reality, the far less stylish and far more egalitarian Commies killed far more people for seemingly less insane reasons. For some reason real socialists just don't have the hold that racist murderers and racist slave masters do.
The Nazis certainly clung to fictional life in comics for years. Perhaps it was due to the slow churn of art inventory being eaten up, but most superheroes weren't through with the Axis until the end of the 1940s. But the superheroes did move on. (Those few who made it through the 1940s, that is.) Once the movies had dealt with Nazi chaos as a contemporary issue, fictional fascists were gone from the silver screen. They never really came back into comics again. The next spate of fictional fascists started in the 1950s with such B-grade Science Fiction flicks like They Saved Hitler's Brain and off color two reel offerings like what is on the promo card above.
Playing on this oddball new popularity, whack job religious leader Herbert W. Armstrong declared to his followers that Hitler was still alive and living in a South Pole fortress. Where and when this story first appeared, I'm not sure, but Armstrong wasn't the first to claim it as truth. From there it jumped to the Men's Adventure pulps, wherein it was mixed in with a Science Fiction come Penthouse version of WWII.
It did die out, but it took decades. Over time, pulp themes migrated away from the Nazis. One replacement theme was the obnoxious Naked Ladies on Cash, which is pretty easy to describe.
The Nazis certainly clung to fictional life in comics for years. Perhaps it was due to the slow churn of art inventory being eaten up, but most superheroes weren't through with the Axis until the end of the 1940s. But the superheroes did move on. (Those few who made it through the 1940s, that is.) Once the movies had dealt with Nazi chaos as a contemporary issue, fictional fascists were gone from the silver screen. They never really came back into comics again. The next spate of fictional fascists started in the 1950s with such B-grade Science Fiction flicks like They Saved Hitler's Brain and off color two reel offerings like what is on the promo card above.
Playing on this oddball new popularity, whack job religious leader Herbert W. Armstrong declared to his followers that Hitler was still alive and living in a South Pole fortress. Where and when this story first appeared, I'm not sure, but Armstrong wasn't the first to claim it as truth. From there it jumped to the Men's Adventure pulps, wherein it was mixed in with a Science Fiction come Penthouse version of WWII.
It did die out, but it took decades. Over time, pulp themes migrated away from the Nazis. One replacement theme was the obnoxious Naked Ladies on Cash, which is pretty easy to describe.
As rather obvious wish projection as this may be, the theme did not emerge fully formed upon a half shell. Rather, it is the evolution of a previous theme. By the 1950s the WWII being fought in the pages of Men's Adventure pulps in little way reflected the death from a distance, slog through the mud reality of the conflict. Female Nazi bad guys started showing up as well as an assortment of Science Fiction ploys. As opposed to any historical revision of the war or some trend in larger media, it was a reflection of the magazines' own claw back against competition--scandal tabloids and Playboy clones.
Previously, Fictional WWII had been a fairly all male affair. Following on the heels of the Secret Weapons and Female Boss Krauts were packs of randomly placed naked women. These herds were an outgrowth of the occasional nymphomaniac Female Nazi Bad Guy or the very lost captured American nurses who plied pulp pages with abandon.
As entirely ridiculous as the Naked Ladies on Cash theme is, it survived the genre of Fictional WWII itself. In the final permutations of Fictional WWII, hoards of roving nympho female commandos lurked around every corner. Not only had WWII gone co-ed, it was now a non-stop orgy.
Thanks to the success of The Godfather, WWII was dropped and suddenly the pulps were playing gangster again. Or drug dealer. Whatever. Our hero is dangerous and not on the up and up and is nearly always prone to encounter the stray clothing adverse female.
As odd as the Naked Ladies on Cash theme is, it was nowhere near the most off color or counter-cultural of the late pulp era presentations plied.. If anything, it was as mainstream as the remaining pulps could afford to be. Everything said, there are worse wishes.
When in doubt, stick a pretty girl on the cover and call it a day. An illustration of a pretty girl reacting to an unseen menace became the norm for the more unisex versions of the True Crime magazines. (Which is to say most of the True Crime magazines, period.) When it comes to Actual Deective, which we have been featuring for the past few postings, it's a little hard to say what they were going for. The covers and illustrations are all over the board. The "Women in Crime" motif is generally male slanting but the editorial indicates the expectation of both male and female readership.
There's a pretty good chance they didn't know. And they didn't find out. Although it seems to have done fairly well at first, Actual Detective (Cases of Women in Crime) was not very long-lived. It spent only a few years as a stand alone magazine. Most of its existence was a half-life, a thirty year mention on the cover of Official Detective as "Combined with Actual Detective". One wonders how many lifetime subscriptions to Actual Detective there really were.
Official Detective had a fairly long run and always was middle of the road (unisex) in its presentation, at least until the point where it became splatter porn. Actual was different from Official in several ways, but it is not clear if the audience was meant to slant one way or another. Even Actual's ads and departments are fairly typical. Since I have presented some of the features, I thought I would show you some fillers. Maybe you can spot something I missed.
Up To The Minute is Actual Detective's only actual department, which seems to violate the rules of pulp magazine departments as set down by Harold Hersey. Actual's slant on things is that it was a crime magazine written in the first person--often by the victims. So its particular slant on executions is somewhat understandable--although Charles McLachan "bellowing like a bull" is a nice bit of pulp purple prose.
There is no mention of Actual Detective in any of these ads, which leads me to suspect that the ads were sold for the entire line. At the time, this would have meant all of two magazines-unless the rest of the publisher's fine movie magazines were included. Much of this is typical "Match Box Guy" fare. Imagine taking both the chemistry and bird stuffing class at the same time!
Previously, Fictional WWII had been a fairly all male affair. Following on the heels of the Secret Weapons and Female Boss Krauts were packs of randomly placed naked women. These herds were an outgrowth of the occasional nymphomaniac Female Nazi Bad Guy or the very lost captured American nurses who plied pulp pages with abandon.
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| Imagine trying to come up with a story for this. Because you know the cover illustration came first. |
Thanks to the success of The Godfather, WWII was dropped and suddenly the pulps were playing gangster again. Or drug dealer. Whatever. Our hero is dangerous and not on the up and up and is nearly always prone to encounter the stray clothing adverse female.
As odd as the Naked Ladies on Cash theme is, it was nowhere near the most off color or counter-cultural of the late pulp era presentations plied.. If anything, it was as mainstream as the remaining pulps could afford to be. Everything said, there are worse wishes.
Actual Detective Cases of Women in Crime
In a previous post I indicated that one could tell what a publisher thinks a magazine's audience is by the types of advertising he goes after. I stand behind my little rule of thumb, but it doesn't always work. When it comes to True Crime magazines, the general view is that, like Horror, the appeal is fairly equal to both sexes. That is not to say that all types of these magazines appeal equally to both sexes, but rather the genre as a whole has an equal appeal.When in doubt, stick a pretty girl on the cover and call it a day. An illustration of a pretty girl reacting to an unseen menace became the norm for the more unisex versions of the True Crime magazines. (Which is to say most of the True Crime magazines, period.) When it comes to Actual Deective, which we have been featuring for the past few postings, it's a little hard to say what they were going for. The covers and illustrations are all over the board. The "Women in Crime" motif is generally male slanting but the editorial indicates the expectation of both male and female readership.
There's a pretty good chance they didn't know. And they didn't find out. Although it seems to have done fairly well at first, Actual Detective (Cases of Women in Crime) was not very long-lived. It spent only a few years as a stand alone magazine. Most of its existence was a half-life, a thirty year mention on the cover of Official Detective as "Combined with Actual Detective". One wonders how many lifetime subscriptions to Actual Detective there really were.
Official Detective had a fairly long run and always was middle of the road (unisex) in its presentation, at least until the point where it became splatter porn. Actual was different from Official in several ways, but it is not clear if the audience was meant to slant one way or another. Even Actual's ads and departments are fairly typical. Since I have presented some of the features, I thought I would show you some fillers. Maybe you can spot something I missed.
Up To The Minute is Actual Detective's only actual department, which seems to violate the rules of pulp magazine departments as set down by Harold Hersey. Actual's slant on things is that it was a crime magazine written in the first person--often by the victims. So its particular slant on executions is somewhat understandable--although Charles McLachan "bellowing like a bull" is a nice bit of pulp purple prose.
There is no mention of Actual Detective in any of these ads, which leads me to suspect that the ads were sold for the entire line. At the time, this would have meant all of two magazines-unless the rest of the publisher's fine movie magazines were included. Much of this is typical "Match Box Guy" fare. Imagine taking both the chemistry and bird stuffing class at the same time!
Beyond what I am showing you, there were two advertisements for health insurance, an ad for retread tires and three ads headlined by the word 'RUPTURED'. Health Insurance wasn't quite the commodity it is today. Actual's back page featured an ad from United Insurance, which at the time was located in the Elgin Tower in my old home town of Elgin, Illinois. United Insurance eventually became UNITRIN. By that time it had moved to Chicago and taken up residence in a skyscraper. It was in business up until a few years ago. (Now part of Kemper.)
Although this seems to be a bit of editorial, it actually is an ad. You and I may find it unusual, but there is a good chance that readers of the time had seen it before. Cult leader Dr. Frank B. Robinson was the Scientology of his time and had been running ads like this since the late 1920s. By 1939, when this ad ran, he was fairly well known and fairly well dismissed as a con artist. By the time he died in 1942, Robinson's mail order "New Thought" movement had enough followers (subscribers, he called them) to qualify as the eighth largest religion in the world. Today it is largely forgotten. Like most cults, it did not long survive the death of its founder.
Although this seems to be a bit of editorial, it actually is an ad. You and I may find it unusual, but there is a good chance that readers of the time had seen it before. Cult leader Dr. Frank B. Robinson was the Scientology of his time and had been running ads like this since the late 1920s. By 1939, when this ad ran, he was fairly well known and fairly well dismissed as a con artist. By the time he died in 1942, Robinson's mail order "New Thought" movement had enough followers (subscribers, he called them) to qualify as the eighth largest religion in the world. Today it is largely forgotten. Like most cults, it did not long survive the death of its founder.
Take heed, my fellow potential duck stuffing, chemical spilling, railway traffic inspecting masseuses, free suit dude means not what he says. Read closely and you wll find that for your card all he'll send is an equal portion of his mind.
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