Modified Covers

The third issue presents Mark as a damsel in distress. An assassin bursts through the balcony widows, into Mark's room, where he looks frightened, standing in a full-length gown. By clueing readers into his thoughts, the periodical makes it clear that "The killer must think" he is "Yvonne" since "he doesn't realize" that mark is "just trying on her clothes!"

The cover to Sex-Change Doctors shows a buxom nude (unfortunately under a sheet that drapes her from the middle of her breasts to just above her knees). She lies upon an operating table, and a pair of physicians is in attendance. One is ready with an aesthesia mask, while the other holds a pair of scissors in one hand and a scalpel in the other. The one with the surgical implements tells his colleague, "By the time this private dick [i. e, detective] wakes up, he'll be a three-dollar whore in some Thailand brothel." It seems an expensive means of supplying white slaves, even if the motive is not only profit but vengeance, but the storyline permits a sexy cover.

A copy of Man-Made Woman, featuring "The Girling Chamber" shows a pulchritudinous brunette lying supine inside a glass tube surrounded by men (who may be scientists; the setting has a vague laboratory-like look to it). One holds a lit blowtorch. "It's too late," he laments to his fellows. "Even if we can get him out, Mike's going to be a woman forever." Although the title of the story, "The Girling Chamber," suggests a technological transformation may be underway, nothing explicitly explains the cause of Mike's fate-worse-than-death. Presumably, to learn the details of his transformation, one must fork over the 10-cent cover price and read the story promoted by the cover.

Many of the modified covers are those of comic books. On one such magazine, Lana Lang and Lois Lane, assisted by a transsexual Jimmy Olsen surround Superman, presenting him with bouquets of flowers. The cover story, "The Flowers of Tiresias," concerns posies that have the power to transform men into women: "One whiff of their scent turned Jimmy into a woman! Will Lana and Lois change Superman next?" Maybe, if he doesn't have too much testosterone in those super genes! The modified magazine includes the story.