Main Page

PS Magazine Archive

Updates

01-27-2014: Scanning continues and we are actively filling in the gaps. We have another meeting with the PS team to get more magazines, so stay tuned for more issues!

01-01-2014: You might notice that some issues, particularly the ones after 1986 where the cover images seem to be "dull". This is due to the change of the cover printing style from a glossy finish to a matte one. Scanners use reflected light to gain a degree of "brightness" in scans. Since this matte is not as reflective as the previous ones, they will show as vibrant as the previous ones. We are working on correcting this in the scanners, but we will have to rescan them to get it. Thats not a problem since we have physical copies and can rescan at any time.

12-20-2013: We are adding issues from the Virginia Commonwealth University Libraries which are numbers 1-229, these do not contain any OCR content. We will OCR everything at a later date and update them all. Our concern is that they resolution of the VCA versions may not be high enough to get accurate OCR output. We might rescan to get that level at a later date.

As the US Army ramped up for its involvement in the war on the Korean peninsula, it realized that its soldiers were encountering problems with their equipment. The Army had experienced some degree of acceptance and success during WWII with the instructional publication Army Motors, for which Corporal Will Eisner, an established comic-book writer-artist-editor, had been appropriated to draw such characters as Private Joe Dope, Connie Rodd, and Master Sergeant Half-Mast McCanick. In 1951, the Army hired Eisner to create similar instructional material for its new publication, PS, The Preventive Maintenance Monthly. Eisner was the publication's artistic director from its inception through the end of 1971. The magazine's artists have included Eisner, Murphy Anderson, Joe Kubert, Dan Spiegle, Scott Madsen, Malane Newman, Alfredo Alcala, and Mike Ploog. As of 2010, Kubert is the art contractor for the magazine, having begun his PS work in 2001. The magazine from its inception has been, written, researched, and edited by Department of the Army civilians. The home office of PS was located at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, from April 1951 through January 1955, when it was moved to Raritan Arsenal, New Jersey. It was moved again in October 1962 to Fort Knox, Kentucky. It remained there until July 1973, when it moved to the Lexington-Blue Grass Army Depot in Kentucky. In June 1993, it moved to Redstone Arsenal, Alabama. In March 2011, the magazine published its 700th issue.