I WATCHED THEM EAT ME ALIVE
The Men’s Adventure Library Journal
Edited by Robert Deis & Wyatt Doyle
# new texture
124 pages
Ever since launching their Men’s Adventure Library, Robert Deis and Wyatt Doyle have taken on the wonderful task of educating pulp fans on the history of Men’s Adventure Magazines. These over-the-top magazines with their garishly painted covers were by their very nature the true heirs to the classic adventure pulps of the 1930s and 1940s. War weary veterans, having survived the horrors of World War II, were ready for periodicals that unabashedly celebrated their courage and sacrifices. It was a time when being macho was norm, and the ideal of the American male. There was none of the angst and politically correct idiocacy that so pervades every facet of our society today.
These magazines were intended for men and were filled with tales of rugged heroism whether taking place on the battlefields of Europe and the South Pacific or pitting the protagonists against the still existing wildernesses of the world. They certainly were not for the squeamish and under that MAM’s umbrella there were many distinct sub-genres; none more gruesome than those featuring animal attacks. Be they rats, weasels, giant sea crabs or slithering, slimy snakes, the Man vs Critters yarns were some of the most violent ever concocted and often stretched the boundries of the truth. Sure it was unlikely that Australia’s flying squirrels would enmass attack and kill humans, but the idea itself was enough to sell a MAM’s editor and soon inspire a startling cover depicting that very scene.
With “I Watched Them Eat Me Alive,” Deis and Doyle have given us a new, slimmer tome with this very theme as its central core. The book is filled with five of the most memorable such tales by veteran scribes Stan Smith, Robert Silverberg, Lylod Parker, Lester Hutton and the amazing Walter Kaylin. Kaylin’s snake-fest is a fitting finale to the book’s fiction and will surely be the source of our nightmares to come.
Peppered between these stories are seven pictorial reproducing some of the most beautiful MAM’s covers and interior art ever produced by classic artists such as Rafael De Soto, Norm Saunders, Clarence Doore and many others who got their start in the pulps. Again reminding us of that evolution.
The MAM’s died out in the early 70s, soon to be forgotten and those issues that survived were relegated to attic boxes. It is a true testimony to Bob Deis and Wyatt Doyle that they have managed to rekindle a genuine historical interest in those titles and together they insure that they will maintain their place in America’s literary history. We soundly applaud them…and this terrific book. If you love pulps, you need to pick this up along with all their previous titles. Believe us, you will not be disappointed.
