Magazine Management, History Of

Part the first.

Every writer on staff learned to keep the action moving, cut copy, cut adjectives, never overwrite.* “Give them Big Emotions,” intoned “Big Jim” Bryans, an early editor there. Coverlines like “100 Times a Murderer,” “The Night 80 Call Girls Took Over Sing Sing,” and “Use the Whole Damn Fleet, But Save Ensign Thompson!”

In the sex department, Martin Goodman restricted the staff to phrases like “dark triangle” and “heaving chest.” Art director Mel Blum spent hours meticulously airbrushing out aureoles or stray pubic hairs from girlie photos—only to spend the latter years of his career brushing them back in.

Nice work if you can find it.

From here; also, links to parts two through five.

*Rules we live by.