Sleaze Paperbacks of the 1960s (or, "I Gulped, Looking at All That Womanhood!")

So far I've covered disasters, true crime and comic books so the next logical step would be... adult novels! Here are some 1960s vintage sleaze/cheese paperbacks from various publishers. Alas, I'm thinking the text in these isn't much more risque than your typical Fabio-covered romance novel of the past twenty years. As always, click the scan for a larger image (I'll stop noting that soon).

The Frat Studs by Charles Fay
Hi-Hat/Tuxedo Books, 1963
"Tainted Sex... Sin's Cravings!" "They lusted for the depraved, evil lessons from... The Frat Studs"

The Yearning Flesh by Fletcher Bennett
Playtime Books, 1962
"He was a lonely young man, shy, sexually inhibited -- then he met Trixie and all hell broke loose!"

Seagoing Sexpot by Joe Martin
Pillow Books, 1963
"Ocean orgies! Once the land was left behind, the only law that prevailed aboard Blake Austin's luxurious charter fishing boats was LAW OF LECHERY!"

Corrida of Sin by Lyn Warlick
Nighstand Books, 1961
"Matador by day -- lust fiend by night!"

The Timber Tramps by Kevin North
Playtime Books, 1963
"The dives and brothels of 'the basin' offered everything from sex orgy to sadism. It was no place for the college kids."

No Limit Girl by David Key
Bee-Line Books, 1967
"Lisa's wild romp among California's unabashed nudists turned into a nightmare when two merciless killers and a wicked, sex-starved woman joined the fray."

Nude Ranch Nymphs by Gary Bolin
Jade Book, 1963
"When Western star Bud Kubek, and his sidekick, the Remuda Kid left Hollywood to take a job at the fabulous Hard-Way-8 DUDE Ranch, they didn't know it was a NUDE ranch!" "If you like sex, and if you like Westerns, you'll LOVE Nude Ranch Nymphs" "I gulped, looking at all that womanhood!"

Will Eisner's The Spirit

The Spirit is one of my all-time favorite comic books (along with Jack Cole's Plastic Man, Dave Sim's Cerebus and the non-superhero work of Steve Ditko). There is now the definitive version of The Spirit in hardcover (which I can't afford) but before those came out, readers had the Warren magazine reprints (later taken over by Kitchen Sink). They reprinted largely in black and white and threw in enough extra stuff to still warrant attention beside the fancy hardcovers. Here are scans of the first ten covers, dating from 1974-75. As with most images on this blog, click them to see a larger version.

#1 (April 1974) cover by Basil Gogos

#2 (June 1974) cover by Will Eisner

#3 (Aug 1974) cover by Will Eisner

#4 (Oct 1974) cover by Will Eisner

#5 (Dec 1974) cover by Will Eisner and Ken Kelly

#6 (Feb 1975) cover by Will Eisner and Ken Kelly

#7 (April 1975) cover by Will Eisner and Ken Kelly

#8 (June 1975) cover by Will Eisner and Ken Kelly

#9 (Aug 1975) cover by Will Eisner and Ken Kelly

#10 (Oct 1975) cover by Will Eisner and Ken Kelly

These are eating up a bit of webspace in their enlarged state, so I might not keep the clickable enlargements up for ages. Save them if you want them. I might later post additional issues if anybody cares to see them.

Note: I scanned these at a very low resolution for another purpose. I hope the scans look decent enough here.

Edward J. Jordan, Burglar

Here's a genuine one of a kind item, a 1912 mug shot card from the Chicago police. The subject is one Edward J. Jordan, burglar, who was 34-years old at the time of the photo. (His rugged looks would fit well in an early Hollywood crime melodrama.) The back of the card notes that he has already served time in the Mansfield, Ohio Reformatory; the Jackson, Michigan penitentiary; and the Columbus, Ohio pen.

At the top of the card (shown below) is an elaborate system of measurements now known as The Bertillon system which was something of a pre-cursor to organized fingerprint collection. Devised by Alphonse Bertillon, the measurements of the head, finger and foot would allow police departments to more easily match potential suspects and prisoners to past offenders. As it was common practice for prisoners to give false names, this would prove to be a wonderful new tool for police departments.

This is a nice item, and the only example I have. There must be thousands of such cards still floating around and if I get more, I'll likely post them here.

DISASTER

And so it begins... I'd been waiting for something extraordinary to start things off with and during this wait, and excessive twiddling of thumb, I realized it's better to just start with whatever presents itself. So I grab a paperback off a shelf and here we go.

Troy Allen, Disaster. Barclay House. 1974 Paperback Original.

This is my favorite disaster book ever, and I've never actually finished it. What makes this book stand out is the beautifully overdone prose that graces the covers. As a lover of the comically awful, this leaves me speechless. Whatever defect I possess that makes me love such things as the films of Coleman Francis as much as I do is also to blame for my love of the back cover of Disaster. Scanning this just now, I laughed out loud again, even though I've read this countless times. It's as if it was written for me. I would quote my favorite passages here, but that would pretty much be the entire text of the back cover. So, to avoid further typing, here is the back cover which I will let speak for itself.



Sadly, the prose within is much more tame. I've read small portions of it now and again, scanned through it more often, looking for something that might jump out at me with its awfulness but it just sits there in its mediocrity. My guess is an overzealous copywriter composed the cover text. And I applaud him with a retyping of the first stanza of his now-poem, "Disaster".

DISASTER

killer winds that swoop down without warning

into crowded streets,

tearing heads and arms from twisting bodies

and leaving torn human trunks

streaming blood...

winds strong enough to dash a man

against a brick wall and

leave nothing but a bloody blob

of pressed flesh

and crumbled

bones!

The publisher Barclay House evidently published some interesting titles back in the day: Orality by the science fiction publisher Richard E. Geis; Oral Sex and the Teenager by H. Hadley Williams; and Black Sex by Aaron J. Abelard. Other titles are Savvy Secrets of a Teen Sex Swinger, Teen Sex '69, Cycle Sex, The Mattress Girls, and, of course, Scatology by Harvey J. Leathem, M.D. with Hugh Jones. And no, I don't have any of those (yet).

Nothing to see here...

...not yet anyway. There are a few things I need to figure out before I begin this thing properly and I type this only for those who might somehow stumble upon this work-in-progress. I say I do this blog for my own amusement, and I do... but as with any sort of publishing, doing so merely for one's self quickly becomes tiresome. I welcome any reader, even he/she who may stumble upon this by accident. Real posts will begin very soon. [Since I can't find a way to put captions beneath photos, I'll note here that the artwork above is a detail of William Hogarth's engraving Credulity, Superstition and Fanaticism circa 1762.]