Pollen's Action

A lifelong New Yorker, artist SAMSON POLLEN (1931-2018) established his career in the 1950s, creating lush, oil-painted covers for paperback potboilers by authors like Erskine Caldwell and Orrie Hitt. He concurrently worked as a pulp illustrator for men's adventure magazines (MAMs), contributing hundreds of illustrations over three decades and becoming one of the genre's most prolific contributors until the mags' eventual demise in the mid-1970s. He subsequently returned to paperback covers for the third stage of a long and varied career at the easel. A few key elements have defined the illustration art of Samson Pollen: He created tremendously effective presentations of action and movement, paired with an equally inventive approach to perspective that gives many of his images an immersive, 3-D effect. As a visual storyteller, he was adept as any author his paintings illustrated. And he had a particular gift for depicting all manner of memorable, physically appealing women. Robert Deis has worked as a teacher, an artist, a musician, a logger in the Maine woods, a magazine writer and a state government bureaucrat.Eventually he fell into a long-lasting career as a political consultant. Nowadays, he blogs and writes about things that interest him, such as famous quotations and men's adventure magazines. He created MensPulpMags.com, and co-founded The Men's Adventure Library. His books include WEASELS RIPPED MY FLESH!, HE-MEN, BAG MEN, & NYMPHOS, CRYPTOZOOLOGY ANTHOLOGY, BARBARIANS ON BIKES, and A HANDFUL OF HELL. Wyatt Doyle is co-founder of New Texture, and launched their publishing imprint in 2006. He assisted Georgina Spelvin in the publication of her memoir, THE DEVIL MADE ME DO IT, and served as editor and publisher of BLACK CRACKER by Josh Alan Friedman for his own imprint, Wyatt Doyle Books. He is co-editor and designer of The Men's Adventure Library series of pulp fiction anthologies. A collection of his stories illustrated by Stanley J. Zappa, STOP REQUESTED, is available from New Texture, as are his photography collections, DOLLAR HALLOWEEN, I NEED REAL TUXEDO AND A TOP HAT!, BUTY-WAVE IS NOW CLOSED FOREVER, and JORGE AMAYA DOESN'T LIVE HERE ANYMORE. A collaboration with Jimmy Angelina, THE LAST COLORING BOOK, was followed by THE LAST COLORING BOOK ON THE LEFT in 2017. He edits and designs most New Texture releases.