'Bad Mags'
Related: men's magazines
Profile
'Bad Mags' is a website dedicated to 1960s and 1970s men's magazines. Their website is http://www.badmags.com. [Feb 2006]Golden State News (GSN)
Eyeful, a GSN publication
Image sourced here.
According to writer, historian and antiquarian bookdealer Stephen J. Gertz, Classic Publications was owned by "Jules Griffon" (a pseudonym of Edward S. Sullivan) and their mags were distributed by Joel Warner's Golden State News (GSN). Classic Publications seems to have started in late 1968 when they picked up all of the sexploitation titles from other publishers who were also distributed by GSN, publishers such as Orbit, Utopia, New Link, Spectrum, Cine-Arts, and others sharing the same addresses at overlapping, and different, times.
Classic Publications was an illustrious and prolific publisher of some truly classic adult slicks, as well as the vast majority of the sexploitation film mags from 1969 on. On occasion they tended to lapse into unbridled sexual psychedelia and just plain layout wackiness and they usually utilized cartoony line artwork on the covers around the photos.
Trippy poetry and stories were also included in a lot of their many titles from 1969 and ‘70 and they seemed to be trying to emulate the underground hippie sex tabloids that sprung up in 1969. Ed Wood had worked for GSN in the late ‘60s with Bernie Bloom and went with him when Bloom started to package mags for Michael Thevis's Pendulum. Some of the short stories in these Classic Publication mags, which for the most part went uncredited or were pseudonymous, could have been Wood. Whether or not they were Wood’s writing though is almost a moot point as they were strange in-and-of themselves no matter who wrote them. --Tom Brinkmann via http://www.badmags.com/bmgsnclassic.html [Jan 2006]
Headpress is scheduled to release the badmags.com website as a book early 2006.
See also: sexploitation - magazine - paperback - The Roth Case (1957) - American erotica - American censorship
From their site
Pagan - v7 #4 June/July/Aug. 1972
image sourced here.
Time - v99 #25 June 19, 1972
image sourced here.
The later ‘60s and early ‘70s saw a rise of interest in the occult, paganism and witchcraft. -- http://www.badmags.com/bmoccultsex.html [May 2005]
Slick (n.)
A slick is an informal word for a magazine, usually of large popular readership, printed on high-quality glossy paper. --AHD
Inspired by http://groovyageofhorror.blogspot.com/
Adult Art Films - v1 #1 July 1963
SEXPLOITATION FILM SLICKS 1963–1973
This genre of mags––the underground adult sexploitation film slicks––acted as the trade magazines for the sexploitation film industry. They were something I had no idea existed until I stumbled upon some on eBay in 1999. At first I thought there were probably only a few titles, and I became increasingly surprised each time I discovered a new title. Now, over five years later, I’m still finding new titles, and there seems to be no end in sight. I never really thought about it, but had always figured that the sex film mags had started in the early ‘70s after the popularization of hardcore porn with Deep Throat et al––that was obviously not the case!
I had seen a few of these softcore sexploitation flicks right at the very end of their era in the early ‘70s when I was 17 or so, but don’t remember anything about them other than it was the first time I had seen full nudity on the screen with simulated sex.
There were a few of these mags coming out as early as 1963 from various adult slick publishers such as Bonanza Publishing, Selbee Associates, Publisher’s Export Company (PEC) and Sari Publishing, but for the most part they focused on foreign films, racy B-movies, and art house flicks. The sexploitation genre of mags didn’t really get swinging until the explosion of sexploitation movies hit the screens in the mid-sixties. --http://www.badmags.com/bmsexploitation.html [May 2005]
see also: sexploitation - magazine - sex film - art film