A Follow-Up / Snap 1941-04 & Jest 1942-07

A Merry Christmas to everyone! Santa brought me mostly books this year, but what more can a guy want? I spent a nice afternoon yesterday thumbing some great new books on J.C. Leyendecker, Norman Saunders, and Robert Maguire, along with the second volume of Bad Mags. For a scanner/collector like me, that means writing down many a scan target, so I'd guess we'll see some blogging on some of these subjects in the year to come.

I promised sports pulp, and indeed I will deliver next time, but for now a quick follow-up to Spot. Sorting my incoming scans folder last night, I came across a couple of scans from my friend McCoy that fill out my ramblings from last time on Spot. So today, I figured I'll post some covers and samples for two other four-lettered magazines from the approximate time period of Spot with a similar format. Trends come and go in the magazine industry, and any successful magazine is bound to have imitators. And that's not to say all the imitators of a trend are of lesser quality or don't bring in fresh approaches within the theme. Or that originators don't in turn incorporate facets of an imitator's magazine. Or that oft-times separate magazines are feeding from same trends in culture and printing technology.

In any case, here's two magazines very much in the vein of Spot, oversized, thin, and jam-packed with photos, all less risque than their predecessors in the girlie pulp and risque humor publications. Maybe the big pages were more in-step with the idea of the pin-up, more suitable for the soldiers headed off to war. Maybe the paper rationing equated to using a format to create the illusion of bigness for a smaller amount of paper. Giant pages but very thin magazines. McCoy tels me he has a couple more magazines that might fall into this genre is his stack, so there are yet more titles of this magazine to explore. But today, for your perusal, the April 1941 issue of Snap and the July 1942 issue of Jest!

Snap v01n05 (1941-04).Get the scan here.

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A pictorial on censored kisses.

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And I'll post in full the pictorial on the dangers of tourist cabins. I got a kick out of this one, where were all the tourist cabins when I was in high school, dammit?!


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and onto...

Jest v01n06 (1942-07). Get the scan here.

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This cover is really something else. I'm not sure if it's a cute cover gone awry or what. A mixture of dirty and weird, I get a sleazy vibe, har har

A recipe for cheesecake, eh?

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Pin-ups and their pets, a peek at a peke?

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Lastly, a war bonds cartoon from Courtney Dunkel. Dunkel worked in some of the earliest comics for Dell in the 20s, did cartoon work for Judge in the 30s, and worked on syndicated strips at various points in his career. His lambiek page is here.


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Once again, thank you McCoy for these scans and all your work in the digital preservation of vintage magazines. You're definitely one of the guys on the scan scene that is making it happen.