Pollen's Women: The Art of Samson Pollen (Men's Adventure Library)

Bob Deis and Wyatt Doyle – the editors of “The Men’s Adventure Library”, a series of books devoted to the pulpy arts and letters of the joyously lurid men’s magazines that flourished from the early 1950s and through the 1960s and then sadly went the way of all flesh in the mid-1970s – have brought out another fine volume with this compendium devoted to the paintings of the brilliant Samson Pollen. Unlike some other fine artists who were known for the more lurid sub-genre of “bondage and torture adventure”, Pollen specialized in relatively subdued illustrations of derring-do and foul play in war, crime, and lust; as Bob Deis points out in his introduction, Pollen also concentrated more on interior illustrations as opposed to cover art, a factor which might account for his as-yet relative obscurity in the field. Another thing Pollen specialized in was beautiful women, and thus we have the current volume. Pollen’s men are the usual square-jawed hard-guy American males that fans of the genre expect, and he does them very well, but when it comes to women his work reaches a sublimity unique in the world of pulp art. His women of course are sexy and beautiful – in this genre they had to be both – but they are also strong, seductive, powerful, laughing, mocking, and rarely the victim although often the victimizer. Samson Pollen gave Deis and Doyle access to his archives, and so we get page after page of full-color, duotone, and black-and-white original art as it looked before it had magazine text and layout overlaid; it is such a treat to see the original art on full pages of this jumbo-format book, followed by smaller reproductions of the same art as it looked in the original magazines. Some of the story titles will give you a good idea of what you will find here: “The Fraulein Spy Who Seduced Hitler”, “The Hell-Raising Nurses in Russia’s Foul-Up Combat Fleet”, “Summer Cottage Tease”, “Passionate Pickup on Route 101”, “We Were Shipwrecked on an All-Girl Island”, “Executive Suite Tramp”, “You Have 12 Hours to Find Saigon’s Nude Taxi-Dancer”, “Backwater Woman”, and the immortal “Nights of a Nympho Nurse”. Also included are some very amusing reminiscences from Samson Pollen himself, still kicking ass in his late eighties with a great sense of humor. Just a fantastic collection, and a wonderful time-machine back to a fantasy world where the men were tough, but – just as in the so-called real world – the women were tougher.

I am loving this book. I purchased this title along with Mr. Deiss's other excellent volume on Mort Künstler, so I'll copy and paste part of that review here. This book is a feast for the eyes, and a real treat for the lover of mid century pulp art. I was a fan of the Men's Adventure genre in general, but wasn't aware of Pollen as an artist in particular - this book made me a huge fan of his work. The books is packed with so much great art I'd never seen before, and in beautiful color throughout, (though I was surprised the pages were matte instead of glossy photo paper). I was also pleasantly surprised by the great customer support from Mr. Deiss, the author/editor, who offered to sign the book. Great buying experience overall. High production value artbook for a good price and great customer support. What more could you ask for?

To be honest, I was a little hesitant to buy this book sight unseen. While I was vaguely familiar with the artist, I was worried that it would be slap together collection of public domain images with poor reproduction quality. Boy, was I wrong! Everything about this book is top shelf classy. Well...the subject matter might be low brow to some folks, I'm talking about the presentation. As for the art, yeah, its pulp-y in its subject matter, but the quality of the illustrations far surpasses most "pulp" artwork. I'm a HUGE James Bama fan, and I would say that Pollen's work is almost to that level of quality. Then again, I'm guessing if he had the time Bama did to do his paintings, he would have produced work that good. Seriously, this stuff has to be seen to be believed! The attention to detail is outstanding. And the energy on display just jumps off the page. Buy the hardcover (not sure if there is a paperback), you will want to return to the book over the years and you will want it to hold up.

I've been a fan of the great artists who illustrated the men's adventure magazines for quite a few years: John Duillo, Norm Eastman, Norman Saunders, Syd Shores, to name a few. But I had never heard of Samson Pollen until recently, and this book is a wonderful collection of his work. I especially like the way the original art is shown, and then the actual magazine layout, always lettered and sometimes cropped, is displayed as well for comparison and for historical interest. It's always great when an actual fan, and not just some hack hired by a publisher, gets to write the book on an artist. You come away feeling that someone put his heart into the biography and wanted to deliver as much as possible. I wish all art books were done with this spirit.

I own all of the books from The Men's Adventure Library and this one is another winner. Pollen's art is a joy to see. Whether black & white, muted color or vivid full color, his art conveys a lot of story in one well-executed scene. I enjoyed Pollen's words at the beginning of the book about his career. It made me look at his art with new eyes. The landscape layout of this book suits Pollen's art well. I also appreciate the high quality paper and covers used in this series of books. I was too young to enjoy the men's adventure magazines when they were originally published, but having the art and stories reproduced in high quality books like this is wonderful. Here's hoping Robert Deis and Wyatt Doyle publish many more of these books.

"Repro on demand" Paper & Print quality not as per international standard but Non-Glossy & Pirated type...

The print quality and book layout is well done. Fine collection of Pollen's men's magazine work. I will definitely buy other books in the line.

This is such a mediocre, amateurish book and expensive for what it delivers. First off, my copy is produced by inkjet print-on-demand, the bottom of the barrel printing, essentially for text heavy titles and requiring paper just a bit thicker than the photocopy sort. Secondly, no print designer got near this editorial material. There is no design as such, especially evident with the spreads that reproduce the magazine pages with headlines, text and Pollen's illustrations. These are sort of large thumbnails four to a spread but with a ton of empty white space. It would have been better to show these four to a page. I think it was produced like this to pad out the book, there are forty-two pages of these partially empty magazine spreads.. Regarding Pollen's illustrations, they all look like very competent roughs to show to an Editor, get approval and then do the illustration proper. The give away are five paintings on pages ten and eleven that show what he did for other publishers than the down-market men's adventure slicks. These paintings show a very professional, full of detail and style more or less absent from his work in the rest of this book. The poor quality of 'Pollen's women' (and probably his other books from New Texture) was revealed to me when I compared it to Taschen's 'Men's adventure magazines' (ISBN 3822825174) a beautifully designed and printed, on a good matt art, 514 pages title with over a thousand covers and inside page art, all in colour, by the main and lesser known artists, it includes some Pollen. It came out in 2004 but copies can still be found on the net and cheaper than PW!