Artist Samson Pollen created hundreds of illustrations for men’s adventure magazines published in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s and while he was one of the top illustrators who worked for the genre, his work has largely been forgotten because those magazines were published for – and collected today – by a niche crowd. His work stood alongside such artists as Gil Cohen, James Bama and Basil Gogos.
Before Pollen passed away in December 2018, Wyatt Doyle and Robert Deis co-edited two books with him featuring his original magazine artwork for a series of Men’s Adventure Library book series. The first, Pollen’s Women: The Art of Samson Pollen, focuses on men’s adventure magazine artwork he did that has scenes featuring sexy or dangerous-looking female characters. The second, Pollen’s Action, showcases Pollen paintings done as illustrations for the typically wild action/adventure stories. Both of those books are available on Amazon and at www.menspulpmags.com.
With the blessing of Sam’s widow, Jacqueline, the authors recently released a third Pollen art book titled Pollen in Print, 1955-1959. They initially offered an edition of it via Indiegogo that sold out quickly. So they releases a deluxe hardcover edition worldwide. This third volume is a big, sexy, action-packed chronological collection of Pollen’s earliest illustrations published in men’s adventure magazines from 1955 to 1959.
I enjoy coffee table books. I find them to be the equivalent of slide show seminars at conventions, heavily illustrated but with loving care to restore and touch up the scans and photographs to ensure the highest quality. On top of which, the captions tell a story and provide a history that would be delivered ala… well… like a slide show presentation. I just received Pollen’s Women: The Art of Samson Pollen and the book showcases full-page reproductions of the original paintings Sam created for various magazines, along with scans of the magazine pages they were used for. While not the usual size expected from coffee table books, this certainly qualifies as one. You can see an extensive flip-page preview of POLLEN’S WOMEN on the website, www.menspulpmags.com.
POLLEN’S WOMEN is a lush visual archive collecting some of artist Samson Pollen’s most memorable pieces, selected from the hundreds of jaw-dropping illustrations Pollen provided for men’s adventure magazines from the 1950s through the 1970s. Sexy women were a regular component of story illustrations published in the more than 160 titles that flourished from the early 1950s through the mid-1970s, and nobody painted beautiful and dangerous femmes like Pollen. Much of the artist’s work—literally, hundreds of pieces—saw print in the Atlas/Diamond group of magazines from Marvel Comics founder Martin Goodman’s Magazine Management Company. Until now, almost none of these illustrations have seen print since their original publication in those latter-day pulps.
The book is recommended and now prompts me to buy the other two to have a complete set.
