William Hamling (publisher) of five." The Greenleaf Publishing Company initially published science fiction magazines and a spectrum of similar publications, and it was not until November 1955 that Greenleaf published the first issue of "Rogue" (although it had a cover date of December), a magazine which was competitive with "Playboy", a magazine dealing with sex which had been published for about two years at this time. In 1953, as a solo and unidentified effort, Hugh Hefner's "Playboy" V1#1 appeared without a date late in the year [November]. It was an almost immediate success with that wonderful calendar photo of Marilyn Monroe being reused
Rogue (magazine) friend Hugh Hefner coming to me in 1953 to propose an idea for a magazine to be called "Playboy". Hef was talented but poor and his passion had been fantasy. He was a struggling cartoonist and had been working in a clerical capacity at "Esquire". I had been buying fantasy cartoons from him for several years (they were so bad I never published them but he needed the money and to this day we have a running routine where I threaten to issue them as a nostalgic bonanza but defer to his pleadings of personal embarrassment) and one evening he