Going home and ran into these pulps...

So, this morning I was headed to Lacrosse, WI. to unload and was heading back to the castle here and I get distracted when I don't have anywhere to go right away; I stop at a antique mall   It's one I stop at cause its easy to park at and I have gotten pulps there before.  But nothing turns up, a few Colliers and a Liberty, I'm trying to stay with pulps as I like the stories better.  The art in the slicks(Colliers)  is pretty cool I have to admit, but that's another story, so to speak!  On down the main drag to my hacienda and I know there is another older store down the road that I drive on every single week and its always closed, I mean its been 10 years going back and forth past that place, never, ever open.  Its Memorial Day weekend and I think, yeah, if anytime its now.  WOW, yup, by god its got an open sign out front of the joint!  Some of you may know that I drive a 80 foot long red monstrosity that's friggin' hard to park, but I ain't missing this guy being open, not in your life.  I park it on the side of the highway as far as it will fit and not be in the ditch, put the flashers on and go in.  Pretty cool when there is a very large stash of Life and Look and Colliers, and American Boy and just a huge bunch of magazines in the first row.  Got to be some pulps here, hey?  Well, the first thing I see is 2, foot high stacks of Railroad pulps, neat, but not my thing.  Next to them is the above stack of 7 nice westerns 30's and 40's!  Right on top is the Fifteen Western Tales, great cover by Robert Stanley I think, would have bought it in the day.  I love interior art in these Popular Pulps, like this:

The art could be Gerald McCann, who had a very nice style and a excellent design sense. Any time I can score a Masked Rider pulp is a good day for me, and it'll rise to the top of my pile of reads, very fine cover probably by George Rosen, kinda dark figures seems to be his color choice.  You can double click on the group shot and see his signed one on the Western Romances, I like the equal opportunity covers for the Romance titles.

This is the first time I've turned up any Dell Pulps,in the real world, the WR and the All Western are both by them and look like interesting reads, I mean the WR has a Anthony M. Rud  Story, the guy wrote everything from SF to Romance and was an editor also!  I love the trimmed edges lots easier to page though and looks better to me.  Still, got to have a place in your head for the rough edges too, a true pulp!

Seems to me the earlier pulps like the All Western and the copy of West, both from the 30's had less interesting art, but the stories are such Golden Age greats, that is,it doesn't matter!  More on the stories in part 2 of this and when I get to reading them.

West has a great cover, very different from the others and striking to me, would have glommed on to that right away, and really the stories look like great reads too!  I have not done any research on these yet, so will be checking them out over the next few days for info.  The Star Western claims to have 6 complete novels and its less than 100 pages,(Was issues)  about 15 to 18 pages each!  Cool!  Let's close with a interior from Star Western, another McCann pen and ink.

Good stuff, just a fun find, how can you miss on this stuff?  Anyone read any of these?

Complete Northwest Magazine and Lost Bookmarks!

I picked up a beautiful stack of great pulp magazines in Black River Falls WI. at an antique mall a few years back looking for a china cabinet.  We got the cabinet on E-bay later in the year, but the guy had a nice booth of old magazines, a lot of Fishing and Hunting mags, but a nice stack of pulps, which I picked up a foot tall stack of including some magazine sized issues of Blue Book, including the fabled Ian Flemming James Bond issue, about which later.  The rest being some nice westerns and the issue below, which I wanted to read first.

So, not the best of condition, the dreaded  athletic tape always a drag to get off, and I guess it will remain there forever, no back cover but complete and it was cheap too.  Its from March 1938 a Columbia Pub.  The cover is by an unknown artist, but I find it to be very nicely done, the painterly landscape at the bottom is very effective, OK, and the painting does not have anything to do with any of the stories as far as I can tell.  Well the Mountie does have a lanyard attached to his gun that the Cambell story refers to and it does have a woman featured in the tale, most the stories are set in the dead of winter so no use for a canoe. 

The first story up is Law of the Mounted by Cliff Cambell is a excellent tale of just 6 characters who live and work above Arctic Circle, a very cruel place to be sure.  I like the way the story unravels itself and how the people in it come together and then dissolve away again.  Very nice flow and feel for them and he really does a wonderful job of describing the Circle and its sense of emptiness.  The story is a northern mystery and everyone seems to have a secret.  It was hard to put down, very  pulply as you would expect, but well written. I could not find out much about Campbell, the Fictionmags site does not list but a few stories. He is listed on the Statement of ownership as the Editor, but above the table on contents it lists Michael Ivan.  So don't know.

Next up is Bandits Rule The Snow Frontier by Brain Loomis a pulp writer of westerns and northerns.  This is a more modern tale of the Mounties involving cars vs horses.  He tells a nice believable story of how autos might help.  I like the fact that woman play a role in both these stories and are very much in the hunt to solve the problems involved. 

The short stories here one by the hugely prolific Samual Taylor who wrote a vast amount of pulp fiction his story Gold Eating Wolves was OK, as was C V Tench's story Quits.  The better of the shorts is by Thomas Barclay Thompson its called Trail Breed a great dog story about how naturally the dog gets him out a fix.  Am a sucker for dog stories.  Thompson did not seem to publish much fiction, very little listed.  Silver Fox is the final short here is of a native and (again) his wonderful dog.  The k9 saves his life more than once.  Everyone wants the dog, but he wants to give him to someone deserving of him. As for the silver fox, you'll have to read it yourself! 

The Statement of Ownership I thought was interesting, it lists L. Miesel ( Louis K Miesel's dad maybe?  The latter is a dealer in Photo-real art and I knew him from his pin-up originals he owned), Dave Gross and Louis H. Silbertket ( of Archie Comics, which he started in 1941 with John Goldwater).  And, as mentioned early Campbell as ed and managing ed. 

A very decent mag a bottom of the barrel publisher, but I thought plenty good for 15 cents in the day! 

Lastly, to add to my list of Lost Book marks and you can see my old ones by checking out my older blogs on the subject. 

This one is kinda cool, it a ticket for Strum, WI's Steam Engine days, the town is about  30 miles from where I got the pulps in Black River Falls, WI.  I see a few things on the net about this fair, its at least been going on since 1964, but may go way back, under a different name.  Pretty cool steam tractor event.  This ticket may have been from around the days when the purchaser picked up the pulp, back in the thirties.  I think its pretty neat, looks as if he only got though the first story by Campbell where I found it! 

A pile of Science Fiction reading...

Here's some items I picked up and blogged about a few years back, and finally got around to reading some of. 

I picked up the Venture mags along with some Imagination mags at a antique mall in Mid-Ohio, a very short run on this mag 16 issues, the last 2 published in 1969 and 1970.  I have the May 1957, Sept and Nov., plus the Jan. 1958 issue, nice covers. 

The paperbacks, I picked up at a Antique mall in WI,  a big box full for $17 cheap at half the price. 

The Star Fox by Anderson was first published in The Mag. of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Feb.thru June 1965.  The book was cobbled together from the short stories in the FSF.  I had a great time reading it and others must have liked it also as it was nominated for a SF award, but wasn't a winner in '65.  The alien character ( Cynbe) is pretty cool and the kids of the story pick up its hair style, dances, and cloths, just like we did with the Beatles.  Or, at least as I did, pegged pants and Beatle boots, still remember them.  Ya gotta love fads!  The Tech is pretty spot-on I thought, he had cell phone, a desk Computer ( in the days of those giant IBM jobs I used to work at in the 70's), TV info-trive and other cool stuff.  Over all the tale is not unlike America's fight with England over independence.  Very good. 

As for the Dick book Galactic Pot-Healer, its my first read by him, I wanted to read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, but never got to get a copy.  Its one of my favorite movies, Blade Runner that is.  In any case its  a very well thought out tale unlike any other I have read.  The "Book" in the tale is very smart phone or tablet like, very cool as it turns out.  The work they do as a group is a beautiful thing indeed.  Dick must have like pottery very much!  Everyone should ( and most of you guys probably have) read this one. 

The May 1957 of Venture has a nice cover by Emsh about the first tale by James Gunn Space Is A Lonely Place.  Its the last of a series of tales about what his idea of what space travel might be like.  I think he did a very good job of visualizing space from what appears to be the space station ( like ours out there now) in a family oriented situation.  Another interesting mention is the stove they have a "shortwave" device, very cool, almost a microwave, hey?

 The next story The Corpse In Your Bed Is Me, by Walter M. Miller and Lincoln Boon.  I generally like Miller's stuff, but don't like SF stories about Comedians.  OK, it takes place in 2045 and there is a Martian in it, but not very good SF.

Night Sky Of Venus by Erik Fennel is my kind of tale; an excellent description of what Venus might be like.  And, Mike the main character who comes of age there with the planet and native people.  I very much like Fennel's  Storytelling style.  He had some tales in two my favorite pulps, Planet Stories and Blue Book. 

Cold Victory by Paul Anderson has a great title and seems to be another political SF tale, the other is Star Fox a decade later.  This tale is about 2 brothers who end up at odds with each other and how the story twists to fit it.  Interestingly told, but not my glass of beer!

Birds of Prey by Marion Zimmer Bradley is what I thought to be a superior bit of fantasy story telling.  The point of view of a woman telling a story though a man is pretty nice.  She is a very descriptive writer.  I will read more by her!  And, I have a bunch in the above mentioned box of books. 

Finally by Theodore Sturgeon Affair With a Green Monkey, not my kind of tale, its rather strange story of a guy who knows whats wrong with this, what he thinks is a gay fellow, but is really not, as his wife finds out!  But, not like you would imagine.  

Seems like a good SF magazine, but uneven, a good bunch of writers.

Where have I been...

Now, I ask you what is wrong with this picture?!  I mean check out this guy in front of me, I mean really, what the hell is HE thinking?  This is about a month ago at where I-55 and I-40 meet in Memphis, TN.  I was there for about 5 hours, moving about a mile an hour, really in the ballpark of the Atlanta, GA. affair where everyone abandoned their cars and walked!  Oh, and tell me America's needs do not travel by truck, look at all of them.  And, here's a shot of the other side of the road!

So, your thinking what does one do in a thing like this, well the first thing was try and get around it, routing in a big rig is hard to change, so I was told to stay on the interstate, not a good concept!  But, a i-Pod helps lots, as does a CB radio, but mostly, I'm the kind of guy who reads, especially when you have the air brakes pulled and your not moving, of course!  This then is what I reviewed, a short read in any case, but a nice mag I picked up at a antique store about a mile from my terminal in WI.

It was a in a stack of Hunting and Fishing mags and a pretty good size pile of Dime Novels  all were Tip Tops,  all by Street and Smith publishers.  So, every last one of those Tip Tops was a sports, hunting, fishing, story, not high on my list.  But, in the middle is this Top Notch Vol. 1 Number 1, March 1st 1910 and hell, its got a western cover!  I would have bought the thing if it had a fishing cover, hard to find one of these!  Cover is uncredited, and is familiar for some reason, nice comic book like drawing.  It illustrates the Albert W. Tolman story In The Coulee.  Here's the table of contents.

Really the mag was intended for it would seem about say 12 to 15 years old, back in the day.  The first story is Bob Halliday, Freshman by Edwin Larkmore, who did all his magazine fiction for Top Notch to about 1910.  Its a story that was OK, Bob is a "top notch" athlete at Princeton who take off in the middle of the season to visit the Athletic Club in New Orleans and get involved in a car chase of over 40 MPH, pretty exciting stuff.  Don't know how they could have afforded the train ride, let alone renting a car in 1910!  Its a serial and Bob meets the sister of the guy who gets hit my the other automoble-ist, and she's a mysterious one.  The guy they chase is of course involved in all this.  Not a favorite.

Second story by Gilbert Patten The Deadwood Trail is much better a western set in the Black Hills of the Dakota's.  This one is much better, a kid sets out to meet his uncle and go to his gold claim, misses him and chances after him.  He at least has a sensible explanation of why they would send so young a kid from the east out there by himself!  He meets a girl and her brother and you have an idea where it goes from there!
William George Patten is his real name and his other writing name is Burt L Standish, who as it turns out is the Editor for the mag. 

Best Story for me in the issue is In The Coulee by Albert W. Tolman a short story with a tough steer!  He wrote quite a bunch of fiction from 1910 to about 1944, which being that he was born in the 1860's was probably his last bit of wordage. 

There's a Julian St Dare Baseball story, I'm not big on, and a Robert Russell one on football, OK, but not my style. 

So, very interesting reads for back in the Pre-Pulp days of Top Notch, by October of this same year, it had switched from its 8x10 32 page 5 cent (go figure when they call them Dime novels) mag to the better known 7x10 128 page pulp mag.  With a much more diverse set of stories and more to my liking.  Oh, and I was looking at the Fiction Mags site ( you can Google it and see) where most of the info I found  was and low and behold there's my copy of the mag, tape and all.  Pretty cool, I found the issue awhile back and posted on the Pulpmags list page about it, and was placed it on the opening page. 

A pulps cover...

While picking out something to write about pulp-wise, you can't help looking at the covers.  Yeah, back in the day I would have bought a ton of these things just for the cover.  Here's a good example from Populars line of Dime Mystery, this is the ones that came after the name change to 15 Mystery Stories.

I think the cover is by Sam Cherry, its a classic.  The novel in the mag is William Campbell Gault's Keeper of The Cat-Bride,  a very good tale in my opinion.  I find most everything he did here and in Dime Mystery to be unique and well written. 

Interior art pretty cool also, I don't know who's the artist, but nice.

Another classic pulp cover this time for DM, this time I think its Stan Drake he used this model a bunch of times, maybe his wife.  The novel in this issue I thought was the strongest story, it by Franklin Gregory and the title is Once in a Murderer's Moon.  He wrote some in DM and his output at this time was mostly in Adventure and Blue Book.  I also like the story Dark Inquest by Cyril Plunkett who was a very prolific writer of detective fiction writing for everyone it looked like in the pulps and a bunch for Popular, New Detective, Detective Tales DM, etc. 

An interior drawing from DM, looks to be either Everett Raymond Kinstler or Gerald McCan, they are oddly similar in style sometimes.  Both of their bio's can be found at Pulp artists field guide. 

So, if I was browsing the racks back in the late 40's early 50's, I would positively snag these 2 issues!  OK, well if I had the dough 15 to 25 cents a pop, I would have bought doubles of each for trading purposes later, just like buying doubles of all #1 issues.  An old comic book deal.  Anyone else do this?

Some new Astounding Pulps

Some really nice Astounding came my way, just love reading these awesome issues from March, July Aug , Nov, Dec, 1940 and Jan. 1941.  Some excellent stories from Heinlein's If this Goes On, to Slan by A E van Vogt ( with a drawing by Schneeman).  I have only gotten though the March 1940 issue with the conclusion to the Heinlein story which was excellent.  It also has what I thought was the best story in the mag Chapter from the Beginning by Alexander M Phillips a story of early man and a later evolution of same, hunting him.  Excellent tale of possible historical cross-over of the species, very cool. 

Seems that according to Fictionmags excellent site that he did work for Top Notch in 1936, some Shortstories in the 40's, probably more Astounding than is listed. The Wiki mentions work for Amazing, Wonder and Unknown.  It also mentions his being a president of the Phily SF society.  I thought the tale was very good, but, me, I just am a sucker for this kind of yarn. 

Some really nice art here from The Stars look Down drawn W A Koll, whom I don't know much. Nice work though

And one of my favorite guys illustrating pulps Edd Cartier.  Pulpartists says he went to Pratt and studied under Harold Scott ( who influenced a lot of pulp artists and was a very prolific one himself)  and William James ( who was an art director at Street and Smith) gave him his start at S and S.  He went on to do over 800 illo's for The Shadow mag. 

Another Cartier, he did say that he likes to put humor in his work and he does come across and does a nice light job of it.

Some more nice illos's...

 
Possibly some of the most excellent reading you can get in a pulp magazine, plus some of the better pulp drawings in one mag.  You really got you 20 cents worth of entertainment back in the day!  You can't exactly end without mentioning  John Campbell the editor who made it all happen, and had a real lively letters section too!  Wonderful stuff!

The Spicy's

                                                                                                          

Two recent reads mine are the above pictured pulp magazines of the Culture group, sometimes known as Trojan Publishing.  Trojan also published one of my favorite lines of 50’s crime and horror comics.  Being they printed some of the best gory and violent group of comics a guy could want!   The pictured pulp of an early nature: the Spicy Detective dated May 1941 a scarcer issue of that series and a later publication of theirs: Speed Western July 1947.  For you guys and gals who read pulps you know that this was a publisher out to fill a part of the buying public that was of an adult nature.  So, OK, your kid goes into buy a comic or pulp, say Doc Savage and the dad goes with him and gets a little something for himself to read, and asks for a Spicy.  Mostly, these were under the counter items, so you got a Spicy Mystery, Detective, Adventure or whatever you liked.   Cool, now you got a piggy-back sale, like selling a candy bar with you comics or pulp purchase.  More dough, yah know?  Anyway down the line Culture got cracked and had to tame down their line and renumbered and renamed their line Speed, hence the Speed Western from Spicy Western.  Oddly, enough at least in the Speed Western case no more “sex” but pretty violent for a western.  An example of both of these early and late series pulps would say be from my favorite detective writer Robert Leslie Bellem, the story is called Future Book a horse racing tale of a bookie who takes bets on future races ( weird, I know).  It’s a tale of Dan Turner Hollywood Detective.  To quote Dan ( and, ladies I’m sorry about the politically incorrect line, but its funny) “When I spoke to her, she drew a quavery (sic) gasp that swelled the front of her suede jacket in a most distracting way!”  Alright, kind of quaint, but, you get the idea about Spicy.  As for the Speed side, from Frontier Law by Paul Hanna: “Allan’s hand shot up and grasped that thumb, and the crack of the broken bone sounded though the room.”  Ouch, not something I’d find in a Western Story mag. yarn ( The cover quote: is stories as clean as the outdoors). 

  

  Let's talk about the artists with Culture Pubs.  The cover to the Detective is by Allan Anderson.  It’s a very nice design, the way the two people lean to the left and the door on that side brings the eye around over to the gun and back to the characters--a classic triangle design, good drapery and a nice on the eyes female.  An excellent cover made to sell.  The Western is by George Rosen, not a slouch in the cover painting department.  Notice the arms on the female and male that make the eye keep looking at the scene, a nice rectangle.  Makes me want to know what’s going on in the magazine.  And as for what is inside, well some very good pen and ink drawings by Parkhurst and Joe Sokoli.  Sokoli, had a relationship with the guys at Culture in a round about sort of way, which I find interesting to no end.  I read a very nice article in Illustration magazine here by David Saunders which is very long and detailed and he has the sweetened and condensed version at his very excellent Field hunters guide to Pulp Artists here.  To paraphrase some of that, Joe lived the life of the Dead End Kids ala Jack Kirby ( who did some pulp illo’s and created some character name Captain America with Joe Simon of course).  His father was a barber to many famous people, including Wild Bill Hickock, President Woodrow Wilson and a guy named Frank Costello, a gangster and a good tipper!  Joe went to Pratt to get an engineering degree, but switched to art, because of the great depression ( 1932), where the alumni of the school were making big bucks.  The teachers included, Walter Baumhofer, H. Winfied Scott, Rudolph Belarski, Fred Blakeslee, and John Flemming Gould.  They all returned to Platt to tell others how to break into the pulps.  The students included: Earl Mayan, George Gross, and Sokoli.  Seems as if Joe’s father died and at the same time the gangster Frank Costello comes in the Culture game with partner Harry Donenfield, Costello being the silent partner.  So, Joe needs a job…A last note on Donenfield is how what Dave says he may have made his money to buy National (later to merge into DC Comics) was by smuggling Canadian booze into the US in the hollow of the paper rolls he used in publishing his Spicy’s.  Just a rumor! 

 

Ah, now the writers had just a little to do with the mags, in Speed Western , Walter A Tomkins with Spawn of the Trigger Breed a story of a father’s rep and what happens to his son, good tale.  John Jo Carpenter, Laurence Donovan a great story on bringing Morgan horses west to sell.  William Decater, Paul Hanna and Joel McCoy about Mexico’s war with Texas, very cool.  The Spicy Detective has Luke Terry, Robert A Garron, Robert Leslie Bellen who has the destination of writing for most all the issued of Spicy Detective, Max Neilson, Carl Lennox, Walton Grey, Stan Warner and Paul Hanna again.  A lot of these guys used other names when writing here in the Spicy’s for whatever reasons.  

And Without a doubt, Culture Publications is one of the most interesting houses of the Golden Age of pulps, comics and other material.  Just scratched the surface here, more to be read! 

And Without a doubt, Culture Publications is one of the most interesting houses of the Golden Age of pulps, comics and other material.  Just scratched the surface here, more to be read!  

The above comics are notable for the way the title changed from the #1 issue with  emphasis on the Western to the Crime issue #7 and the Wally Wood Art on Six Gun, great stuff hey?  The Sally  art  on top of the Joe S. art is by Adolphe Barreaux , who is also listed as editor on the comics line, so he too was connected with Culture pubs. too.