Thursday, November 21, 2019

MORT KÜNSTLER: THE GODFATHER OF PULP FICTION ILLUSTRATORS


"I learned how to compose, how to tell a story. There's no way I could have done what I did later if I hadn't had all that men's adventure magazine work."  Mort Künstler 

Known today as "America's Artist" for his popular and much admired historical paintings, it was in the wild world of men's adventure magazine illustration that Mort Künstler honed his ability to present large-scale action while never losing sight of essential details. It led to a mastery of capturing conflict in paintboth the spectacle, and the human cost.

At long last, The Men's Adventure Library brings an unequaled selection of Künstler's finest pieces from the men's adventure magazine era back into print in this bold, colorful collection, available in both softcover (forthcoming) and expanded, deluxe hardcover editions.

From the explosive intensity of battles on the sea and in the air, to taut, face-to-face showdowns and animal attacks, every page explodes with action, color, and artistry.

Mort Künstler: The Godfather of Pulp Fiction Illustrators
No. 11 in The Men's Adventure Library series
Edited by Robert Deis & Wyatt Doyle
deluxe hardcover $39.95      abridged softcover (forthcoming)

Monday, October 7, 2019

EVA: MEN'S ADVENTURE SUPERMODEL out now

https://amzn.to/31DjZct

Model. Pin-up. Actress. Singer. Writer. Royalty. 

Eva Lynd’s multi-faceted career touches every aspect of 20th century popular culture. A Swedish countess turned model for leading illustration artists and top glamour and pin-up photographers of the era, she also appeared with some of the biggest names in entertainment on both the silver and small screens. So much more than a pretty face, in this lavishly illustrated volume drawn from her personal archives, Eva Lynd shares her story in her own words and pictures, including encounters with Salvador Dali, Sophia Loren, Cary Grant, Sidney Lumet, Elia Kazan, Peter Lawford, to name a few.

The latest installment in the acclaimed Men's Adventure Library series from editors Robert Deis and Wyatt Doyle, Eva: Men's Adventure Supermodel chronicles Eva's remarkable career as a model, pin-up, and actress, with hundreds of photos and artwork includes artwork from pulp masters such as Norm Eastman, Al Rossi, Mike Ludlow, and James Bama. Plus never before seen pin-ups and previously unpublished photos from Eva's personal archive.

A big, deluxe 186-page hardcover, Eva: Men's Adventure Supermodel is also available as an abridged 114-page softcover with alternate cover art that focuses primarily on Eva's work in men's adventure magazines (MAMs).

Preview 40 pages of Eva on Issuu.com here.

Eva: Men's Adventure Supermodel
No. 10 in The Men's Adventure Library series
Edited by Robert Deis & Wyatt Doyle
deluxe hardcover $45.95      abridged softcover $24.95

https://amzn.to/31DjZct

Monday, August 19, 2019

Jimmy Angelina in KMAC Museum's First Triennial


Jimmy Angelina (The Last Coloring Book) will show new work at the KMAC Museum in Louisville as part of their first triennial, and the inaugural Vernissage.

From KMAC:

Vernissage (noun): French for Art Preview  

Announcing Louisville's Newest Tradition! KMAC Museum's Board of Directors is pleased to invite you to our inaugural Vernissage. This year's event is in celebration of KMAC's first Triennial, a showcase of contemporary art of the Commonwealth. Meet the exhibition artists and be the first to view their works, specially created for this show.   

Come dressed in your favorite cocktail attire! Enjoy cocktails and exhibition viewing starting at 6 PM along with dinner at 8 PM featuring the best of the late summer harvest with food curated by Mary Wheatley & Rebecca Johnson of Atlantic No. 5.


 Meet the artist:

Jimmy Angelina's work pulls from an interest in music and film. While his visual style recaptures the mise-en-scène, montage, and storyboard aesthetics associated with classic cinema, it also aligns with the sampled, cut-up, collage appearance of early punk rock flyers. He blends the spindly pale figures of Egon Schiele with the texture of a vintage engraving, recalling illustrations found in American comics and political satire magazines from the 1970s and 80s, composite images that distill the pages of publications like Cahiers du Cinéma and MAD Magazine. Learn more about Jimmy Angelina at www.jimmyangelina.com or at Jimmy Angelina - Drawing & Illustration and be one of the first to see his work at Inaugural Vernissage on August 23rd.

More details and ticket information on the event's page on Facebook, here.

Monday, August 12, 2019

Shameless


It is with great sadness that we announce the death of Ralph E. Whittington (Clinton, Maryland), who passed away on August 6, 2019, at the age of 74. Ralph began his 36-year career at the Library of Congress out of high school and retired in 2000 as a curator of the main reading room. 

Ralph dedicated much of his life to archiving erotic films, magazines, and materials related to the adult entertainment industry. He served as a consultant to the Museum of Sex in New York City, the Erotic History Museum in Las Vegas, and the Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality, which granted him an honorary PhD. Ralph’s work was featured in The Washington Post, Spin magazine, Rolling Stone, and numerous other publications. Ralph also appeared on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart, The Howard Stern Show, and other radio and news programs, and was the subject of two documentary shorts by filmmaker Jeff Krulik, who dubbed him the “King of Porn.” 

Ralph had a wide range of additional interests, from motor sports and automobile history to attending high school football games, following athletic careers, and was always in search of a good barbecue joint. Also a lifelong music fan, he built a prized collection of rare and historically important R&B records, which have been donated to the Library of Congress. 

He was included in 2008-2009’s Dictionary of International Biography and in multiple editions of Who’s Who in America and Who’s Who in the World. Ralph is survived by a daughter, Amanda, her husband, Mike, and a grandson, Spencer. A celebration of Ralph’s remarkable life will be scheduled at a later date.  



"King of Porn" (1996) d. Jeff Krulik

A Farewell to the King

What I’ll miss most about Ralph is his shamelessness.

It's at the very heart of “King of Porn,” Jeff Krulik’s 1996 documentary profile. Over 6 minutes and 40-odd seconds, we’re introduced to Ralph, and Ralph’s world: His love of high-performance automobiles, his prized record collection, his taste for fine, fine tobacco…and a glimpse of his gargantuan, ever-expanding archive of pornography and sex-related materials—all exhaustively, methodically catalogued, inspired by the exacting standards favored by Ralph’s employer, the Library of Congress. (A glimpse of the collection is the most the documentary can manage; even a feature-length study would only scratch the surface of Ralph’s decades of accumulation, to say nothing of Ralph’s thoughts on each item’s relevance, and the reasons for its inclusion.)

“King of Porn” raised all kinds of questions. Who was this odd, unprepossessing middle-aged man in jacket and tie, with his hypnotic yet indefinable, possibly Southern accent? What was any one man possibly doing with so much pornography? And he works at the Library of Congress? And he’s living in his mother’s basement? Has he no shame?

Media interest in Ralph and his collection was duly piqued, and with Ralph’s willingness to accept high-profile public ribbing with good humor, the jokes just about wrote themselves. He made an ideal subject for quirky human interest stories, whether for Spin or Rolling Stone or the hipper urban weeklies. Ralph found himself the subject of media interest from all corners of the globe. He courted this attention, and he embraced it when it arrived. Shamelessly.

And then there’s the jewel of Ralph’s collection, an oft-replayed VHS documenting an occasion when his research crossed the threshold into participation: An explicit sex tape in which Ralph performed with busty industry vet Chessie Moore. (The shoot was a highly unconventional fan club perk.) Ralph took great pride in his participation, and it was a rare houseguest indeed who escaped Ralph’s company without a screening. (An eager Ralph showed it to me with great fanfare, after much advance hype, and his enthusiasm on the day was only slightly undercut by a few minor delays—first, in identifying the correct VHS tape; then, owing to technical difficulties with his ancient combination TV/VCR. In the end, he set me up in an impossibly cluttered guest bedroom, shutters drawn, to view it in solitude. Then, about halfway through the 20-minute-or-so running time, he startled me by suddenly popping his head into the room like a good ol’ boy jack-in-the-box, bellowing, “HOW WE DOIN’?”) Shamelessness on top of shamelessness.

* * *

Despite the wide recognition of the historical value and sociological interest in what was once considered cultural detritus, be it old comic strips, antique signage, or vintage cereal boxes, anything to do with pornography is still going to set tongues clucking. And candor about the stuff we avail ourselves of when the real thing is not an option (or use to supplement it when it is)—well, good luck with that. Serious documentation is not a priority.

Ralph saw this, and determined his role in the scheme would be a practical one. He recognized that there could be no fair hearing without evidence, no informed discussion without access. With no one else stepping up for duty, Ralph set about collecting that evidence himself, in as impartial a manner as he could. The ultimate evaluation of the material and determination of its importance was something he saw as best handled by others, somewhere down the road. Ralph simply assumed the responsibility of ensuring there would be historically relevant, adequately catalogued samples to consider.

That’s really an essential part of the story that was easy to miss in media accounts of Ralph and his collection, as on The Howard Stern Show, where Ralph was pitted against a Stern staffer in an ill-advised trivia quiz. But trivia-on-demand wasn’t Ralph’s strong suit; he was a big picture guy. Among the 4-hour DVD compilations, XXX-video ad slicks, and glossy beaver mags in Ralph’s carefully organized archives, one also finds vintage news clippings, like a snip about the introduction of the first swim trunks for men, a scandalously permissive development in its time. And obscure antique bawdy house coins, minted and distributed by whorehouses more than a century ago as in-house currency. (“House poke-her chips,” I can hear Ralph punning.) And so on. So while who did what to whom in scene three of a dirty babysitter DVD from 2003 was unquestionably of interest to Ralph, his larger mission was charting the evolution and development of sexual mores and attitudes, via a wide variety of sources.

Consider for a moment just how daunting a prospect that is. Understand that the costs of such a venture are coming out of the volunteer’s own pocket. Then ask yourself, who but a true blue, card-carrying horndog would even consider such an endeavor? Who else would be equal to the task? Who but a relentless, utterly shameless horndog like Ralph could even maintain the pace?

He couldn’t collect everything, of course. He followed current events, monitored the adult entertainment industry, and coordinated his efforts with video wholesalers sympathetic to his mission. He collected, indexed, and archived material he felt was historically important, which could be broadly broken into items relevant to the history of the adult entertainment industry, and items that uniquely reflect their era.

Accordingly, in conversations about his work, he was quick to separate provable, quantifiable facts from opinions or even reasonable assumptions. Even his “King of Porn” sobriquet required an asterisk in his view, since the title was initially conferred upon porn icon/casualty John Holmes, and has more recently been associated with porn survivor Ron Jeremy—both of whom, Ralph insisted, were infinitely more deserving of the honorific.

There was an unusual clarity to Ralph’s conversation when talk turned to sex, and talk always turned to sex. His attitudes were frank and remarkably unencumbered by prevailing social and societal norms. Library of Congress co-workers remember Ralph casually—shamelessly!—reading Hustler like the morning paper while carpooling to work. But his candid, unapologetic positions on matters considered controversial or inappropriate seemed honest reactions based on his own inclinations and experience. No political agenda. No social agenda. Ralph just really liked sex, porn, and just about anything to do with either, and he wasn’t shy about it. It was an interest—an obsession—that led him to his life’s work—work he approached with care, and took on at considerable personal expense. Box after impeccably catalogued box of old Seka tapes, swing magazines, Monica Lewinski novelties.… Dismiss it as a big waste of time if you like, plenty have. 

Not that how anybody else might feel about any of it appeared to factor prominently in Ralph's thinking. I liked to believe this was not so much him not giving a damn what other people thought, so much as his attention was occupied by what he saw as other, more pressing matters—like sex, dirty movies, fast cars, and old records.

It's too soon to know if history will smile on Ralph's efforts, if he will emerge in the final analysis as some kind of ahead-of-his time gonzo sociologist, X-rated free-speech champion, or latter-day hero of the sexual revolution. These are determinations better left to others. But I do know that Ralph was, by his own proud accounting, a cradle-to-grave horndog, that he truly loved sex and porn and sexy porny things, without apology. And that he put his time, his money, and his love of porn into his small, mostly unloved, not-yet/maybe-not-ever appreciated contribution to the sum total of human knowledge. Lofty talk for a lot of porn, but that is the truth of it.

He didn't do it because he thought it was brilliant stuff (though obviously, he liked a lot of it, a lot). He did it because, whatever your feelings about it, it's part of who we are in this time and place, and if he didn't document it, probably no one else would.

He saw an opening, and he filled it.


© 2019 Wyatt Doyle, all rights reserved.

Saturday, April 20, 2019

Kate Smith, etc.


 I'm not sure who was the first to shout "Kate Smith!" in a crowded hockey stadium, but it's a question worth asking. Certainly there are many who consider themselves left of the dial who are also petty people, but most of the people I know or know about who are working for change now don't have a lot of spare energy to research, let alone campaign against, offenses of a singer popular decades ago, as they are too busy fighting for things like housing, employment, and access to health care. Let's call that point A.

Point B: As any hack stand-up will tell you, hockey is a sport widely understood to be predominantly played by and enjoyed by white males, and it has a reputation for indulging physical violence more than most sports do. Now, who would be most interested in establishing a hot-button issue that might unify or even mobilize a group they perceive as being white males who might be receptive to violent behavior? I'm not sure what a left-leaning agenda gains from poking this particular bear. So as usual, it seems to me that it's the scumbags with power who have the most to gain from pursuing new ways to drive wedges and foment discord among groups of working people -- particularly at a time when a lot of working people are pushing back against the moneyed and powerful.

Point C: Before getting all riled up about how nothing is safe and no one is sacred, maybe the thing to be thinking about is not how hyper-sensitive some people are, but rather, just how many of our nation's sacred cows were involved in some very problematic shit. Some were steeped in it, while some simply walked in with a bit on their shoe; but it all got shit on the carpet, and it all helped us grow accustomed to the smell to the point of near passivity about it. So instead of freaking out over the uppity-ness of those calling such offenses out, consider another perspective. Namely, "Goddamn, look how racism, sexism, bias, and ugly thinking has been woven into damn near every move we've ever made as a nation!" If that doesn't give you real pause, you might not actually be as American as you think.

Point D: All people are flawed, and all people are problematic. This is the truth of us, despite decades of A&E Biography et al simplifying the lives of the influential for easier public consumption. The best way to honor someone we perceive as "great" on some level is to recognize that their life, like everyone's, is/was a balancing act between their flaws and limitations and their capacity for greatness. That the best lesson a life lived well can offer us is how they got past all the bullshit -- internal and external -- that threatened to capsize them and pull them under. These are the real lessons best taken from those we admire -- seeing them as they were as clearly as we're able. I like statues. I especially like that birds shit on them. I think of it as nature's way of reminding us of that balance I'm talking about.

Point E: Fuck hockey, fuck all pro sports (that corrupt, murderous, soul-taking industry), fuck meaningless, compulsory patriotism, fuck blind, two-fisted, uncritical allegiance to any person, place, or idea, and most of all, fuck any and all who would divide us by introducing arguments for the sole purpose of playing into and shoring up our fears and prejudices. In situations like this, "Who called the tune?" is just about always more interesting -- and relevant -- than whatever gets everyone so steamed in the first place.

Finally, Happy Borgnine Saturday! Because despite everything, it is Borgnine Saturday, and that's something worth celebrating.



© 2019 Wyatt Doyle, all rights reserved.

Monday, April 15, 2019

CONTINENTAL/INTERNATIONAL by Jon E. Edwards OUT NOW


NYC soul punk legend Jon E. Edwards' career-spanning collection Continental/International is here at last!

 File Under: Party Soul. The cream of legendary performer Jon E. Edwards' hard-to-find studio recordings and unheard music. Includes the title song from the award-winning documentary Jon E. Edwards Is in Love and collaborations with Tony-winning artist Stew (Passing Strange, The Negro Problem). Soul grooves, punk energy. Funky bubblegum and heartbreak. Swagger and class. Continental/International. CD and download available everywhere from New Texture. Get it here.

Kicking it off right, here's the video for the album's first single, "Business Card," co-written with Stew:


Director: Will Vaultz / willvaultzphotography.com
Producer: Nicky Vegas / @nickvegasnewyork
Jon E on Instagram: @echelonltd

Album producer: Wyatt Doyle

Wednesday, January 9, 2019

POLLEN'S ACTION Unleashed!

https://amzn.to/2CZ8t1e

Available NOW: The Men's Adventure Library proudly presents Pollen's Action, the big, new, hard-hitting collection of vintage pulp fiction illustrations by the late grandmaster Samson Pollen, edited by Robert Deis and Wyatt Doyle.

One of the greatest illustration artists whose work appeared in vintage men's adventure magazines (MAMs) from the 1950s to the 1970s, Pollen's specialty was action—dynamic, outrageous, larger-than-life action. His inventive compositions, experiments in perspective, and passion for visual storytelling made for a combustible mix, and Pollen embraced MAMs' freewheeling, over-the-top approach to entertainment, painting hundreds of jaw-dropping, explosive scenes captured at the moment of detonation.

Illustrating work from authors like Mario Puzo, Richard Stark, Norman Mailer, Ed McBain, Richard Wright, Don Pendleton, Erskine Caldwell, Walter Kaylin, Robert F. Dorr, and countless others, Pollen's immersive illustrations transported adventure-hungry readers from jungles to battlefields to raging seas to mean city streets. Samson Pollen painted it all—spectacularly.

The Men's Adventure Library follows the first-ever collection of the artist's illustrations, Pollen's Women, with Pollen's Action, a deluxe new volume collecting the cream of the artist's high-octane action paintings. Includes background and commentary by the editors and an introductory essay by the artist.

Created in collaboration with the artist, Pollen's Action is available as a 138-page deluxe hardcover from New Texture; buy it via Amazon HERE.

Preview 46 pages of the book: