Lose the fake italics in the title! It’s really obvious, and with a font as trendy as Badhouse, even non-designers will notice something is wrong. I’d consider entirely different typefaces; Badhouse is just very trendy in movies and TV right now, so it looks out of place in a print article about old Mexican books. Franklin Gothic doesn’t fit much either, it’s just too neutral. Why not go with an appropriate serif that would have been used in the period? Caslon or ITC Garamond would probably work.

Ditch the yellow background, it’s just too puissant. It could work for a spread here and there throughout a book, but five pages of type on yellow is going to fry the reader’s eyeballs, and a yellow that intense sucks the impact out of everything else. It might be cool to leave a couple sheets of newsprint in the sun for a few days to yellow like old pulp, then scan them up and use them as the background.

Try just punching things up by starting with a spread that combines the title, the author’s name, an image, and only the first two paragraphs. I’d either lay the title right over a full-bleed version of the intro illustration and then put the author’s name facing, or move the UFO illustration up front and have all of the text on the facing page.

Indeed, the yellow is frightfull for people actually wanting to read the intro.

What you’ve done here is trying to match the sensationalism of the pulp-covers in the surrounding design. This could work, but it is not easy. It is hard to match two loudly screaming voices. Maybe you are better off creating a bit of contrast in visual voices. I’d try making the design of the book itself rather restrained, and typographically ’quiet’. This has two advantages - it makes the covers themselves stand out more, and it creates an atmosphere of taking the subject more serious.

I know this suggestion differs totally from what you have now, but then design is often redesign.

[Insert harsh criticism here. Then edit it 3 or 4 times to attempt more constructive input. Then delete the entire post.]