You can’t deny the influence Mario Puzo’s The Godfather had on future creators who in turn became our influences here at American Pulps. I read The Godfather when I was in college and I loved it. But it wasn’t until much later that I found out the 1969 novel was also published in the pages of MALE Magazine as a “book bonus.”
Mort Künstler did the cover art while Earl Norem illustrated the interior pages. They’re awesome.
Before he came out with his first book The Fortunate Pilgrim, Puzo worked as a writer/editor for a company that owned a few men’s magazines like Male and True Action. He sometimes even wrote under the pseudonym Mario Cleri.
Another writer who cut his teeth writing for men’s mags was a favorite of ours, Stephen King. If you check out his pre-Carrie collection of short stories Night Shift, most of those stories were written for Cavalier, like Graveyard Shift, The Mangler, and the American Pulps favorite Sometimes They Come Back. Children of the Corn was written for the March 1977 issue of Penthouse. We wrote an article a while back about Night Shift and how much Stephen King’s influenced us. You might want to check out.
If you follow us on Instagram we talk a lot about the art because that’s the medium of Instagram. But it’s writers like Puzo and The King who drew us into men’s adventure magazines in the first place.
Also, I need to point out that we got all these images from menspulpmags.com. You can follow them on Instagram as well at subtropicbob
