Above is a cover from Adam magazine published this month in 1963 with an illustration for Damon Mills’ “A Watch-Dog for Venus.” In the story a Brazilian heiress and her Aussie bodyguard only get over their mutual hatred when they suddenly realize the problem all along is they’re in love with each other. In the meantime there’s a kidnap attempt, lots of spear fishing, and turgid prose like this: “She stood staring at him, the water trickling down her body like quicksilver on bronze. She looked like a golden bride of the Sapa Inca.” Doesn’t that just make you smile, the way Mills makes similes of three metals in the same paragraph? If he’d said her hair was like beryllium and her eyes were like bismuth the description would be complete. Elsewhere in the issue you get more fiction, a bit of biography, and some unidentified bikini models. We have thirty-two more issues of Adam inside the website and you can see them by clicking the keywords “Adam Magazine” below.

This cover of Australia’s Adam magazine from October 1963 has a vivid bullfighting illustration for Damon Mills’ short story “Return To Glory,” the tale of a washed up Mexican bullfighter lured back into the ring by the promise of an easy bull, but who instead finds himself trapped with an exceptionally large and dangerous “bragado”. In the story the hero is wounded by the bull but through sheer determination and bravery still wins the fight, and then walks off into the sunset to run a cattle farm with his beautiful girlfriend. Good thing he wasn’t gored like Spanish matador Juan José Padilla, who six days ago didn’t walk off into a sunset, but rather was carted off into a hospital to have his eye removed and his jaw reset (a link here—only for the bravest among you). Regarding the cover art, the girlfriend in “Return To Glory” is brunette, but the artist obviously opted for red hair to echo the color and shape of the matador’s muleta, or cape. Good decision, we think. Eighteen more scans from Adam below.