These covers don't suggest a consumption of commercial products, it's true. But the representations are part of a larger trend of fostering an 'imperial masculinity' which, particularly in the decades previous to these particular magazines, had been promoted as a way of ensuring a masculinized dominance by Western powers on the world stage -- a dominance which involved the consumption of huge amounts of natural and human resources from colonized/subjugated areas of the world.

I'm not sure what I like better - "Cannibal Crabs Crawl to Kill!" or "Mad Monkeys Manned the Lifeboats!"

"Flying Rodents Ripped My Flesh!" is also quite endearing.

They're all white, too. I don't know if this is noteworthy, but all of them have brown hair. Not one blonde or redhead there. Does it mean something?

These have got to be some of the most hilarious things I've ever seen. I'm having a hard time believing some of them are legit.

Didn't "Weasels ripped my flesh" form the basis of some famous album art?

I'm confused/intrigued by the headline "Sex can be fun!" Was this really a novel thought? I mean, most sex should be fun, right? Right? I'd actually love to read the sex-advice articles in these, to see how male sexuality was constructed during this period.

I'm also amused by precisely how many animals I think of as cute, cuddly, or ignorable are apparently DEADLY KILLERS in these. I mean, really. Squirrels? Turtles? Lobsters?

I think there are a hundred thousand really good band names in this post.

I really, really want to read all the sex articles. Why SHOULD I marry a virgin??? I do think it gets a bit into "women to be consumed" in some of these. Or at least women as trophies.

I'm deeply amused by the proportion of these covers that depict critters leaping at/crawling on partially clothed men.

I deeply adore the earnestness of "Sex can be fun!"

Is there some special reason that all of these uber masculine battles between man and nature occur in the water? In 8 of the pictures, water appears to be a significant handicap that hampers the man's ability to defend himself against whatever hoard of animals have been lying in wait for his flesh. Were the artists simply uncreative, or is there some other symbolism that I am missing here?

"I'm Teaching My Kid to Fight Dirty" and "Don't Be a Sucker: Cheat!"

Interesting... fighting dirty and cheating don't seem to fit in with the hypermasculinity of these mags.

Those. Look. Awesome! I mean, I knew People, Cosmo, Maxim, Vogue, Elle, (the list goes on) were snoozefests, but come on! I wish magazines had more stories and actual, less "Buy this!".

1) Killer Turtles!!!

2) "Why Foreign Girls Make Better Wives and Lovers" could be ripped from any MRA handbook today. That's interesting.

I love love "cannibal crabs crawl to kill." Like you have no idea. Apparently, crabs see white adventurous men as part of their species.

Did anyone else see a connection between the "red tide of death" in the first picture and a fear or menstruation?

What's a sex racket?

I'd love to see a fight between those killer turtles and ninja turtles.

I love the angry swarm of monkeys crawling into the lifeboat. Also, "CHEWED TO BITS BY GIANT TURTLES"

Very cool! If any of those mags were around now, I'd buy a couple.

Do these seriously have all those articles in them? The covers look like something a comedy site threw together with Photoshop.

Jesus! Men couldn't do anything without having to fend off crazed wildlife!

Attack of the flying squirrels! I love it.

I believe all these covers come from a time before TV was as common as it is now, and certainly before cable/satellite TV and the internet were as common. People used to read, and in the twentieth century had access to large numbers of books through at least the libraries. But most people probably did not have great reading skills and probably didn't enjoy it much, so covers like these were needed to draw readers in (and I would love to read some of the stories, to see what level they were written at)(plus, you know, the vicious flying squirrels). Boys probably thought they would gain skills reading these, or learn about/experience indirectly something about sex. As Lisa says, the magazine is about nothing more than the consumption of the magazine, and perhaps consuming the products of what ever advertisements there are in the magazine (Lucky Strikes! or Gillette razors!).

Now, with TV and the internet, we have all have a wide sort of knowledge, we have all heard of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and we all recognize a ninja when we see one in a movie or TV episode. But our knowledge of ninjas (for example) is shallow. We vaguely know they have something to do with Asia and martial arts. If pressed, some might admit they know ninjas have something to do with assassination. Just in the last couple of days the NYTimes has been running articles about how information overload is affecting our attention spans. I didn't read the articles, I had too many 30 second tasks to do.

One comment: while lisa is technically correct in saying that these are post-WWI magazine covers, it would be more accurate to point out that they are from the 1950s and 1960s. Things like, "Nuclear Scientists Demand: Stop H-Bomb Testing Now" and "Why Rocky Marciano Didn't Really Retire" points to these covers being from at least the mid-to-late-1950s (H-bombs didn't really start testing in the US until the 1952, and Rocky Marciano retired in 1956).

While the idea of a "Red Scare" could possibly be referring to those movements in the 1910s, it is more likely, too, referring to the anti-Soviet sentiment that swept the nation (the "Second Red Scare"), and brought McCarthy into the headlines (late 1940s to late 1950s).

Also, the idea of "dodging the draft" wasn't something that I would have imagined would have been celebrated in a men's magazine of the immediate WWI era, nor would really any of the above stories, what with all the influenza deaths taking place during 1918. (And I didn't know that color magazines were so ubiquitous in the immediate post-WWI period; or that magazines were so relatively expensive.)

Maybe no one else was mislead as to the time period, but -- for me -- a little more precision on the date/period would have been appreciated.

"Consumption has not yet colonized the idea of masculinity" is a pretty sweeping statement based on a dozen men's mag covers (only covers) from the 1950s and 1960s. As early as the 1870s (and probably earlier), adverts in newspapers for were promising hair growth for men, weight loss for men, muscle growth for men, increased "vitality" for men, etc. etc. all based on the masculine ideal that one needed a full head of hair, a flat gut, and muscular torso in order to be a "real" man. And I'd love to see the adverts on the insides of these magazines, which I assume offer essentially the same commercial judgements/promises. That these covers were designed to sell magazines, not other products, is really just another example of "consumption colonizing the idea of masculinity."

No wonder 1950's men had no time for consumerism. They were too busy being consumed by snakes, lobsters, turtles, flying squirrels, etc. not to mention the odd grizzly bear or two.

(Really, a grizzly bear? In the desert?)

The message is very clear: to be a REAL MAN you must single handedly fight off large numbers of mutant versions of some sort of animal traditionally regarded as vermin with a stick, semi-shirtless.

Man, I hate having to fight off vicious turtles to protect my passed out spouse.

Finally, a magazine for me!

Have you noticed the cover art? It appears they used the same model for many of the paintings. Whatever money he made to look...mean, surprised, angry, ...whatever, must have paid for the happy hours.

Some of these covers are hilarious to look at nowadays. I'm pretty sure the "flying rodents ripped my flesh" may have inspired the title and/or cover of a certain Frank Zappa album...

I think my favorite, though, is the one with the "cannibal crabs" (by the way, if the crabs are cannibals, won't they just eat each other?).

I was born in 1954 & I remember my dad having magazines like these in his "library", aka bathroom. He was a blue-collar guy. He & his friends had magazines like this, but none of my friends' fathers seemed to have them around. Those fathers were engineers, teachers, school principals,etc. I really think there was a class issue going on. I just doubt that educated, professional men were reading these kinds of magazines even in the 40's 50's 60's- what ever decade we're talking about here. Just like someone in the future could get a copy of Cosmo & make all kinds of social/cultural conclusions about women of today - not realizing it's only a subset of women reading that magazine.

I see a very unhappy man about to hit a monkey with another monkey, and I can't stop snickering

I wouldn't bet on a pistol to put down a grizzly bear. But I digress.

Your conclusion about today's men's magazines seems spot on. None of today's men on the cover would last 10 seconds in the UFC cage, and fashion model looks don't matter in a man. Being wealthy (aka nest building) IS important. A wealthy man can look like a toad for all it matters.

I think my favorite are the sugargliders/flying squirrels attacking that guy--as an owner of sugar gliders, that just cracks me up!
--Phoenix

Hi, I think you meant "post WWII" up there, though "post WWI" is technically accurate, the style and as someone else has pointed out, the content indicate these are defo post 1945.

What I don't get is that these men don't even look like they're winning their epic monkey/turtle/squirrel battles...

Very interesting indeed. I want to read the articles!

The Blog provides its simple, but one of the best platforms I have used and have seen in a while, I think more will start using more often.

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Has anyone read any old Dan Dare comics? They're very good fun. The whole thing is set in the distant future of 1999 and the futuristic advertising is for robots and jet packs, but is in exactly the same style as these magazine covers. I mean, obviously technology would improve, but why would anything else change? Society was perfect in 1958 anyway, surely?

Also, from the above "Man's Conquest" November: Cheesecake model!!

nice post

Oh, Jesus H. Christ, what a load of bullshit. They were written by starving writers who had to write such hack work to pay the rent and the covers painted by artists doing equally hack work so some sleazly miserly publisher could make a few bucks selling ads for the Rosicrucians and poor slobs with miserable lives had a few minutes of escapist reading from the old ball and chain and bawling kids while downing a couple of beers. Today it's just put on television and made equally ridiculous but with current stylish sensibilities.

Give somebody a Ph.D. and they make up all sorts of stuff and people think it's some kind of wisdom. Feh.

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