Pollen's Action: The Art of Samson Pollen: 9 (Men's Adventure Library)

This book is incredible as is the other Pollen book produced by the same folks. Great images. High resolution. A very nice tribute to one of the dean's of Men's Pulp art.

POLLEN’S ACTION is the second large-format volume (following POLLEN’S WOMEN) dedicated to the amazing and amazingly prolific late artist Samson Pollen. Robert Deis and Wyatt Doyle, the editors of both books, have made it their mission to keep alive the legacy of that short-lived but glorious (roughly from the early 1950s to the mid-1970s) backwater of popular literature and art known as the men’s adventure magazines, or, in a phrase perhaps truer to the genre’s feel, “sweat mags”. These publications were considered utterly disposable trash in their own time, but are now worth big bucks, so if your granddad has any moldering in cardboard boxes in his basement, grab them up quick before grandmom gets the urge finally to put them out with the recycling. These magazines featured tales of danger, derring-do and depravity, usually presented as “true”, but nearly always created from whole cloth by old-school pound-’em-out scribes like Robert F. Dorr and “Roland Empey” (pen name of Walter Kaylin), and even some well-known authors like Mario Puzo, Evan Hunter (AKA Ed McBain), Richard Wright, Erskine Caldwell, Norman Mailer, and my own favorite writer of crime fiction Donald E. Westlake (AKA Richard Stark and five or six other noms de plume). I’ve read many of these stories in other volumes put out by Deis and Doyle as part of their ongoing “Men’s Adventure Library” series (including volumes dedicated exclusively both to Robert Dorr and Walter Kaylin), and they are, as Johnny Carson used to say, “great stuff”, but what I really love about the genre is the artwork. And it is indeed “art” that we’re talking about here - popular art, but popular art at its best. The covers and interior illustrations of these magazines featured the kind of “hit ‘em hard” impact that reminds me of great Soviet-era and Red Chinese poster art – ironic, as the “Commies” are so often featured as the demonic bad guys in these stories and pictures, along with the Nazis, of course, and the Imperial Japanese Army, various swarthy-skinned tribes from “exotic” regions, as well as homegrown villains like motorcycle gangs, murderous heist crews, and mafiosi. It’s no surprise that the two main ingredients of these illustrations were sex and violence; and Samson Pollen – apparently an extremely nice family man and Coast Guard vet from the Bronx – did both of these subjects extremely well. Judging from the two books of his work that Deis and Doyle have put out, Pollen didn’t seem to work very much in the torture-porn vein (yes, torture was a big attraction in the men’s adventure magazines, always meted out by the aforementioned bad guys – never, of course, by the good-guy “Yanks” – and by a surprising number of their young and beautiful female auxiliaries); but he did draw and paint lots of beautiful women, usually with the bare minimum of clothing, lots of stupendous action scenes, and usually a combination of beautiful women and manly men engaged in explosive action of various sorts. In this volume we still get many beautiful women, but the emphasis here is on that moment of extreme danger – those scenes that, if you were watching them in a movie, you would be watching with eyes a-goggle and mouth agape. There’s just something about Pollen’s knack for picking that split second of action when the brown stuff is really hitting the fan – you’re thrown violently into the action, and you may not be sure what’s going down but you are sure that it’s something deadly exciting. Nothing is still, everything is movement, and hell is about to get paid.There’s a droll and informative interview with Pollen in the book, in which he states that he never read the stories he illustrated. The editor would give him a one-or-two sentence summary of the yarn, and then it was up to Pollen to go home to his studio and make those sentences come alive. And he did just that, over and over again. Pollen talks about the time that Martin Goodman – the boss of the men’s magazine syndicate he worked for – looked at one of his jobs and asked, “But where are the explosions?” Pollen says, “I had explosions. He just wanted more. He wanted loads of explosions all over the place.” So what did Pollen do? “Anyway, he got more explosions.”

What a pro, and what a great artist.

Best of its kind, this one needs tobe lovingly perused then soakedup. Offering up some of thejuciest examples of the genre.Ifthis is a favorite subject of yours,fork over the dough because itain't gonna get no better. Theseguys are doing popular culturehistorians(and the rest of us) agreat favor. Terrific effort andserious labor of love whetheryou remember these magazinesor not.

Clearly a must have for any pulp fans or any illustrations lovers. While the other volume was clearly focused on women, with beautiful illustrations that had gorgeous women but sometimes lacking some story telling, this time we have much more story telling in each illustration, still beautiful women, even if they are less the focus of the scenes. On the other volume, that I also loved, I wanted more story telling illustrations, and on this one, I would have loved more sexy women. The solution: having both volumes! With the two of them the balance is great!I don’t know if there are enough arts left to allow a third volume but I really hope it will be the case. That would be a no brained for me and would complete nicely these first two volumes.

If you went to the effort to look up one of these books on Amazon, then you should buy it! It was made for you. The illustrations are nicely reproduced from original art. A great 'coffee table' book for your Man Cave. You probably already know what his stuff looks like, so I won't waste your time extolling it, except to say that he was amazingly consistent and there's really no dreck. In fact, the images are intense enough, that I have gone through my copies in small bites fearing that sustained viewing would ruin my brain. Enjoy!