GRAFICO DESIGN

Spanish magazine Monografico fuses art, criticism, politics—and sometimes pulp.

One of our friends from Spain sent in a few scans from an issue of the freezine Monografico, an art magazine founded in Burgos in 1987 by Luan Mart and which today is a forum not just for art, but criticism and political commentary. What caught our friend’s eye was the usage inside of the adventure magazine Man’s True Danger from August 1963. The art on that is by Charles Frace, and the boxed text has been changed (see original at right) to describe the action on the cover, but ironically. It says, “While the city sleeps, rat-haired chavalotes, gallant and generous, teach fragile butterflies to defend against evil men using simple house keys.” Chavalotes means something like “lads” or “big boys,” and it also has a sexual connotation we won’t bother with here. The idea of the image is simply to point out the prevalence of using doublespeak to mask misdeeds—i.e., how the state proclaims it wishes to protect you from external threats, but uses that as an excuse to increase its own power by destroying your rights. This is obviously a big issue in Spain, but it’s a problem everywhere. Our friend sent us a few other scans, and though they aren’t pulp we decided to share them anyway because they’re very interesting. We’ve uploaded those below. And thanks for sending this in—we love it when we check our inbox and find that the day’s pulp work has been done for us. 

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

1978—Giorgi Markov Assassinated

Bulgarian dissident Giorgi Markov is assassinated in a scene right out of a spy novel. As he’s waiting at a bus stop near Waterloo Bridge in London, he’s jabbed in the calf with an umbrella. The man holding the umbrella apologizes and walks away, but he is in reality a Bulgarian hired killer who has just injected a ricin pellet into Markov, who develops a high fever and dies three days later.

1901—McKinley Fatally Shot

Polish-born anarchist Leon Czolgosz shoots and fatally wounds U.S. President William McKinley at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. McKinley dies September 12, and Czolgosz is later executed.

1939—U.S. Declares Neutrality in WW II

The Neutrality Acts, which had been passed in the 1930s when the United States considered foreign conflicts undesirable, prompts the nation to declare neutrality in World War II. The policy ended with the Lend-Lease Act of March 1941, which allowed the U.S. to sell, lend or give war materials to allied nations.

1972—Munich Massacre

During the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, West Germany, a paramilitary group calling itself Black September takes members of the Israeli olympic team hostage. Eventually the group, which represents the first glimpse of terrorists for most people in the Western world, kill eleven of the hostages along with one West German police officer during a rescue attempt by West German police that devolves into a firefight. Five of the eight members of Black September are also killed.

1957—U.S. National Guard Used Against Students

The governor of Arkansas, Orval Faubus, mobilizes the National Guard to prevent nine African-American students known as the Little Rock Nine from enrolling in high school in Little Rock, Arkansas.

This awesome cover art is by Tommy Shoemaker, a new talent to us, but not to more experienced paperback illustration aficionados.
Ten covers from the popular French thriller series Les aventures de Zodiaque.
Sam Peffer cover art for Jonathan Latimer's Solomon's Vineyard, originally published in 1941.

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