Gil Cohen: Inside/Out [Archive Collection] hardcover
"Men’s adventure magazines were a lower market. Let's call
them B-movies. Nevertheless, there were exciting things that I did for Stag
and Male and For Men Only and all the rest of them. I was proud
of it. I wasn't ashamed of it at all. I was very proud of it." Gil Cohen, artist
Gil Cohen: Inside/Out is a multi-volume odyssey in print, exploring and celebrating the work of artist Gil Cohen. Years in the making, it is the biggest project in the Men’s Adventure Library’s 13-year history.
Gil Cohen. A true master of the form, an artist who’s spent most of his nine decades behind the easel bringing images of action, adventure, intrigue, and heroism to vivid life—for magazines, book covers, and ultimately on fine art gallery walls.
There is a generation of readers who fiercely admire his work in the commercial arena, specifically his cover paintings for the Mack Bolan/Executioner series created by Don Pendleton. (Paintings that we featured in our previous collaboration with Gil, the book One Man Army.)
One Man Army: The Action Paperback Art of Gil Cohen,
available in hardcover (pictured) and softcover editions.
Ardent fans contend even Gil’s over 200 covers for The Executioner novels and its spinoff series were too few.
But even those fans may have been unaware that by the time Gil was painting Mack’s exploits, he’d already produced hundreds of action and adventure illustrations for print across the three decades men's adventure magazines (aka MAMs) existed. This was frequently astounding work that, incredibly, would go unseen following its initial publication; forgotten by many, unseen by so many more.
Stag, March 1961. Cover by Gil Cohen
These are illustrations that riff on powerful existing tropes in action imagery, sometimes borrowing from them, sometimes stretching them to the limits of plausibility, while other times minting entirely new tropes—innovations that would go on to be reflected in action novels, films, television, and comic books. As we've pointed out more than once, MAMs are something of an invisible hand behind so much modern action adventure in all its forms.
In their era, MAMs' cultural impact ran even deeper. As readers’ daydreams and inner lives took inspiration from the tough and gritty entertainment they enjoyed in MAMs, it is the work of Gil Cohen and his colleagues producing that MAM content who gave readers’ fantasies shape and definition. Their work for MAMs became literally the stuff dreams are made of.
Stag, June 1965; interior spread by Gil Cohen
So how do literally hundreds of illustrations of this caliber and appeal disappear for decades? Blame the shifting cultural sands of the post-MAM era. MAMs, with their unapologetic emphasis on two-fisted action and sex, were eventually seen as outdated and “old guard” by a younger generation who didn’t appreciate what they saw as MAMs’ points of view.
Even as the nostalgia boom of the 1960s and 1970s resurrected a variety of other vintage interests and diversions that had fallen out of step, MAMs were still on newsstands then, and not yet ripe for reappraisal. They had to go away to be missed. It didn’t help that the magazines themselves were popular but not hotly collected in their time. Almost no one held on to them. Like the now-classic comic books that break new auction records every year, MAMs were considered disposable entertainment, to be read and tossed before the next issue hit the stands.
Male, April 1966; interior spread by Gil Cohen
Our mission with the Men’s Adventure Library series is to help increase awareness of the MAM era by reissuing the cream of the many lost stories and illustration artwork of the original magazines. Gil Cohen is precisely the kind of artist whose mid-century work the Men’s Adventure Library was established to celebrate.
In his MAM years (the mid-1950s through the mid-’70s), Cohen proved equally adept at creating both compelling interior illustrations and arresting cover art (which, as veteran illustrators confirm, are two distinct and different skill sets). One of the most prolific artists working in MAMs, Cohen had to be versatile and inventive in his compositions and renderings, as MAM illustrations (particularly covers) pulled dual duty, both serving the stories they were created to accompany, while also catching readers’ attention on shop shelves, where competing MAMs tended to be every bit as big, colorful, and assertive in their salesmanship.
Stag, December 1971; interior spread by Gil Cohen
Unexplored, Unreprinted, Unseen
Cohen’s latter-day aviation art is highly collected and justly acclaimed, putting him into fine art collections all over the world. But his magazine work—an essential aspect of his career—has gone unexplored, as his decades of work in MAMs have gone unreprinted and therefore almost entirely unseen since their original publication, decades ago. If you don’t own the magazines, you’ve almost certainly had no opportunity to explore this profoundly significant aspect of Cohen’s career. And if you didn’t own the magazines then, you can be sure you’ll need a small fortune to assemble a collection now.
Fortunately, the Men’s Adventure Library’s Robert Deis is one of the world’s leading collectors of vintage MAMs. The volumes that comprise the Inside/Out series are unprecedented dives into the career of a master of illustration art. The series goes deep, reproducing covers as well as color, duotone, and monochrome interior magazine spreads, as they appeared in print between 1954 and 1976.
Men, January 1964; cover by Gil Cohen
There can be no doubt the Inside/Out books are the definitive presentation of Gil Cohen’s work in MAMs.
Working closely with the Artist, a wide selection of original art is also included, drawn from Cohen’s personal archives and from the collections of leading illustration art collectors. And, transcribed from hours of candid conversation and interviews, are Cohen’s comments on the work, the magazines, and the era are woven throughout all three of the subsequent volumes. All that is still to come.
But first... the Archive Collection.
A carefully curated introduction to the Gil Cohen era of MAMs, via the archives of a legendary collection: The Robert Deis Archive, bedrock of the Men’s Adventure Library. If there’s another MAM collection in the world like it, its owner isn’t talking! Deis’s collection, known for its tremendous size and sweeping scope, has supplied source material for every book in the Men’s Adventure Library, not to mention years of informative blog posts and articles for magazines and websites.
With that kind of enviable resource at the project’s disposal, we begin our Inside/Out series with the Archive Collection, a preliminary survey spanning the entirety of Cohen’s career in MAMs, reproduced and restored from the Deis Archive’s source copies of the original magazines.
Argosy, May 1963; interior spread by Gil Cohen
In the Archive Collection, you’ll encounter Cohen’s artistry as MAM readers did decades ago: On its own terms. Page after page of Cohen illustrations as they originally appeared in print, complete with the outrageous titles and headlines MAMs are infamous for. There's not much talk—we're saving that for the main installments—but you'll find plenty of action. Explosive, old-school action. There could be no better herald for the subsequent volumes than this initial overview.
We've also elevated our production standards for this once-in-a-lifetime illustration art event. Printed on 70-pound white paper (for comparison, copier paper tends to be 20 pound) and utilizing the highest quality reproduction our printer offers, Gil Cohen: Inside/Out will be the most luxurious volumes the Men’s Adventure Library has yet issued, starting with the Archive Collection.
2026 is shaping up to be Gil Cohen's year.
Gil Cohen: Inside/Outside [Archive Collection]. No one else has attempted it, because no one else could do it.
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