Many men’s magazines had a niche, and Man’s Story’s area of specialization was covers depicting Nazis torturing women. Take a quick scan around the internet and you’ll see what we mean. This uncredited effort from September 1963 illustrates Chuck McCarthy’s, “Soft Bodies for the Nazis’ Hall of the Living Dead,” and as a bonus the two torturers are a stray from a toga party wearing the latest Nazi bling, and a one-eyed Quasimodo type whose mop of hair must be the envy of the Reichstag. Looking in the background, we can see what fate awaits the beleaguered woman—she’ll be sealed in a glass coffin, drugged, but alive and conveniently accessible when her turn comes for future indignities. As the immortal James Brown sang, “This is a man’s, a man’s, a man’s world, but torture would mean nothing without a woman or a girl.” Or at least that’s what the editors of Man’s Story thought. Scans below, and another example of Nazi torture here.

In fashion they say it takes a confident woman to wear a red dress. In pulp, it takes a woman with a death wish. Below are fourteen pulp, adventure, and detective magazine covers illustrating that point, with art by Bud Parke, George Gross, Barye Phillips and others, as well as a couple of photo-illustrations.