Austin Briggs' Blue Book Pulp illo's

Since I was unable to find much on Briggs' pulp work on the web, I decided to add my own.  I find Austins work to be wonderful in this period: 1936 to 1939( a random sample of my Blue Books). I think its his top work.  Better that his Flash Gordon comics strip work, after all its really hard to be as good as Alex Raymond.  I really love pen and ink work like Briggs did in the pulps and  no one talking about his magazine work seemed to notice his work there.Well after all, he was doing work in the '40's for Saturday Evening Post, Cosmo, Ladies Home Journal and others getting paid a hell of a lot more money and getting much more exposure there than at Blue Book.  Am pretty sure he got lots of people to notice him there at Blue Book, because McCalls got very good distribution, but not like the slicks.  Lets look at these drawings from Sept. 1936 illustrating  "Jail-Bait" By Robert R. Mill an FBI story of police crime.  An excellent read, somewhat on the order of Law and Order the TV program. You know, detecting, arrest and conviction. The drawing is a beautiful example of cross-hatching, very moody and atmospheric.  Great use of black and white spaces and nice corner to corner design.  Not your average pulp illo!  Then again, Blue Book was not your normal pulp, and had a literary lean to it, as well as giving artist on the way up and down a very good pay, as opposed to the other pulps.

Blue Book had a gob of really excellent artists on their staff and is always a pleasure to read and look at.  As a plus they frequently added color to their pages, sometimes to add to the drawings sometime as a completely different bit of art to give it a ghostly appearance.  Its like how they used to show the Shadow in Shadow Comics, as a blue drawing without the black outline.    I can see why Briggs was inducted into the Society of Illustrator's Hall of fame.  Great man. 

Action : Adventure : Treasure Trove

1. 

That's what I saw this week hunting up some pulps when I had some time.  I was at this antique store and notice the above looking out at me from a rack of magazines.  Being the good pulp hunter that I think I am, pulled it out to find this great mag.  Sea Story Anthology #1 and only, 1948, Street and Smith publication.  Filled with great stories of the sea,  and mind you some excellent western writers too!  Ernest Haycox, and Tom Roan are here as well as better know sea writers, Linclon Colcord, Albert R. Wetjen, and James F. Dwyer.  Most of the stories are reprinted from the 20's, but some good ones none the less.  I read the Roan story because I had to know how he would handle a sea tale, it does have a tendency to read like a western, right down to his use of the words savvy and gat (which is more like a later detective term, the story is hard to put a time to). Either way a good story.  The cover by H. C. Murphy, is an excellent painting, being that he died in 1931, was probably used on a early Sea Story cover.  The cover at one time was a nice slick paper, but after 64 years has faded somewhat.  The whole mag is printed on what looks to be coloring book paper and about the size too!  Dunno, I really like the bed-sheet size pulps like this.

 And, speaking of  bedsheets, the mag,

 I found next to this was nice too, a Blue Book December 1947 it was a cover-less copy, but tucked into the mag was the cover!  And, just to set everything off the price on the Blue Book was Free!  OK, the price on the Sea Stories was $1, yup, a buck!  Man, can't beat that!  I just love these Blue Books, Bed Sheet size, cover by Stoops covering his states issues, this one on New Jersey.  The stories are  just amazing to me, I mean to start off with Theodore Goodridge Roberts' Strike Hard! Bite Deep!  The Quest of the Mazed Knight in ancient Britain/ King Arthur's day.  Its the first story I'm gonna read here and there are some others too. The illustration is by Frederick Chapman, very nice, he worked largely for Woman's Home Companion and The American.  Other stories here include Grandpa and the Werewolf by Georges Surdez, The Golden Cup By H. Bedford-Jones a cool looking story about clipper ships and the China Trade, but the most interesting story is by Ross De Lue called The Flight of the XS-102 a SF story with great illos  by Wilson Thomson, don't know much about him, or de Lue.  Should be a good read.  Finally in this issue, there looks to be a wonderful story by the prolific Wilbur S. Peacock  called A Gambler's Reputation with some great drawings by one of my favorite artist for Blue Book, John Russel Fulton, I can't look at Blue Book without thinking of his work, so good.

I just love Fulton's dry Brush technique and I like the use of color too, it adds some depth to the black and white drawing.  I like to think that Fulton added the color, but suspect that they had a color guy or gal doing that.  Check out his women, especially the one with the fan in the foreground, man that's good!  I've read, I think in the Mike Ashly story of Blue Book in Pulp Vault #14 that Fulton was fazed out because he had an old fashion style, whoever thought that was a good idea, I will never know, these drawing he did are fantastic, and will never be anything but outstanding in the world of illustrations, IMO. Be sure to check out his Facebook page his grandsons have put up for him, some great information and a photo of him working at a painting can be seen there. 

Next time the rest of the pulps from the very same store....all at a buck a piece!