True Adventures for Men
Men's Adventure magazines are kin to the true crime genre. The Macfadden company led the way in true crime with its genre-defining title TRUE DETECTIVE. Macfadden is also important in the men's-adventure lineage for its loose interpretation of the word "true," though that apparently applied more to its human-interest magazine TRUE STORY than to True Detective. SAGA was Macfadden's venture into men's adventure, launching in 1950. SAGA modeled itself on ARGOSY, from its vacuous but tasteful close-up headshot covers in its first year to its inclusion of fiction, as opposed to TRUE. Macfadden was coy about fiction, however, not using the f-word in its tables of contents. They realized that the rise of men's adventure was, to an extent, a repudiation of pulp fiction. Its readership wanted many of the same thrills but wanted to be told that it was all -- to borrow from another mag we'll look at later -- real. Argosy could get away with fiction because of its heritage, and many other titles included a token short story or novella, but when Macfadden launched CLIMAX as a companion title to SAGA in 1953, and clearly labeled its fiction content (including regular sci-fi), it bombed. I can't help but suspect that this first version of CLIMAX had too much fake stuff for the target market's taste. When Macfadden relaunched CLIMAX later in the decade, they adopted the SAGA policy of fiction on the down low.
Compared to Atlas or others further down the ladder, Macfadden was a major publisher. You can tell by looking at back covers. SAGA usually had a cigarette ad or at least something more respectable than rupture easers or Charles Atlas peddling his bodybuilding methods. Beyond that, however, SAGA never sold enough advertising to reach the top echelon of True and Argosy. Macfadden never really had those two's ambition or budgets, but SAGA and, on the second try, CLIMAX, found their own niche as purveyors of pulp history.
The Macfadden mags always included some contemporary stuff (celebrity profiles, the occasional expose) and some modest cheesecake, but their covers told the story. Historical adventure stories were the main attraction, with SAGA and CLIMAX ranging further afield than competitors preoccupied with World War II -- or with that war as a pretext for softcore fantasies of guerilla harems and Nazi bondage. For those who dig men's adventure for the fetishistic content that came to predominate in the 1960s, SAGA may only just register as part of the genre. But I enjoy it, just as I prefer the Fifties mags in general before they turned to formulaic sleaze in the Sixties. SAGA never went that way, and actually outlasted its bigger competition. Like True and Argosy, it went down the "In Search Of" trail in the Seventies, but unlike the other two, SAGA managed to stagger into the 1980s before folding. It had become very generic by then with the same sexy celebrities on its covers that you could see everywhere. But back when it had its own identity it was often a fun read with nice illustrations. It's not hard to find complete vintage issues scanned for download in the usual places, and if pulp history sounds like your thing they're definitely worth a look.
