Thrilling Adventure

I've been able to find little out about this publication, which ran for six issues during 1970 - 71, but looking at the covers, it seems pretty certain that it was a reprint magazine, repackaging stories from fifties and sixties men's pulps, with more suggestive titles and cover synopses.  This is the last issue of Thrilling Adventure, from August 1971 (in fact, it was the only issue published that year) and, compared to previous editions, its cover is relatively restrained.  The illustrations in two of the panels look as if they are details from recycled from earlier cover paintings from other magazines, (a common cost-cutting practice at this time).  The first panel features what looks as if it could be a film still.  The story it illustrates, 'War and Women' sounds distinctly like a recycled story from a sixties war pulp, possibly slightly rewritten to 'spice it up' for the new decade.  While 'General George B Sutton' is, as far as I know, an entirely fictional character, the styling of the name and the cover synopsis indicate that this was intended to capitalise on the popularity of the popular movie biopic Patton (1970), which had been Oscar nominated and was probably still playing in some cinemas.

The featured stories present the same mix of stories - war, man-against-ferocious-wild-animals and male sexual fantasy - typical of sixties men's magazines.  But, as befitted the new decade, the synopses and titles are all far more frank.  Indeed, the language used on the covers of Thrilling Adventure in the previous five issues was even franker and the story descriptions far more lurid.  The reprint magazine phenomena flourished in the seventies as, against a background of declining sales, publishers sought ways to exploit their existing assets by producing runs of cheap magazines where they didn't have to pay contributors as they already owned the rights to the stories.  When Sol Cohen's Ultimate Publishing bought Amazing Stories in 1965, for instance, he also secured from previous publishers Ziff-Davis the reprint rights of all the old stories from Amazing and all of its companion magazines, both current and defunct.  Not only did he start filling Amazing with reprints (or 'classic stories'), but in the seventies started putting out a plethora of 'new' magazines consisting entirely of these stories, with most lasting only a handful of issues, (some only a single issue).  I'm guessing that something similar happened to create Thrilling Adventure - someone bought out a number of old men's magazines, securing the rights to their libraries of stories and articles and started repackaging them as 'new' magazines.  Quite literally, 'cheap thrills'.

(Thrilling Adventure seems to have no connection with and should not be confused with the earlier magazine Thrilling Adventures, which ran during the thirties and forties).