RE: I wish AMA's MA magazine would.....
There are a lot of other magazines out there that have a much more focused audience and therefore can do more depth than MA can. MA's articles are just too short.
Also, "build along" series articles almost never work well for most magazines, but there might be some out there that still do it.
One magazine you might want to look at is RC Report. They are fairly general, but do have a strong tilt towards scale modeling, and some of their columnists have recnetly covered "how to" info on scale detailing and such.
There are several others out there as well, though since I don't subscribe, I can't say for sure. Some titles that I've heard good things about, but don't know much about myself include "Fine Scale Modeler" and "Model Builder". Old issues of "Model Airplane News" and "RC Modeler" (to a lesser extent) might be good too, though RCM is toast, and MAN currently isn't what it used to be.