Pulp Proverbs #1 - Don't look a gift horse in the mouth

Merry Christmas everyone, be sure to appreciate gift-givers. Message brought to you by Street and Smith's Western Story Magazine, September 21, 1935. Cover by Sidney Riesenberg

Cover for Western Story magazine. September 21, 1935 by Sidney Riesenberg

Pulp News Roundup - Pulp Art Exhibitions, Santa Claus , Book recommendations from Michael Dirda

Pulp Art Exhibitions

The Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, MA is exhibiting some of the work of pulp artist Gloria Stoll Karn on February 10, 2018 from 5:30 to 7:30 PM.

More information here: https://www.nrm.org/event/gloria-stoll-karn-pulp-romance/

Santa Claus in Science Fiction

Tor.com has an article about Santa Claus in the comics and science fiction digests:

https://www.tor.com/2017/12/19/depictions-of-santa-claus-in-science-fiction-magazines-and-superhero-comic-book-covers/

Book recommendations from Michael Dirda (for the last minute gift givers among us)

Full review:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/michael-dirdas-wondrous-holiday-book-recommendations/2017/12/10/c2ce58e8-daaa-11e7-b859-fb0995360725_story.html

George Bronson-Howard - Author, Playwright, Movie Director, Scriptwriter

I came across George Bronson-Howard in some early issues of The Popular Magazine. I read a couple of stories about the diplomatic agent, Norroy. They’re well-written stories. The pace is best described as genteel, and the evil-doers much more gentlemanly than you’d expect, but they’re redeemed by the characterization and settings. A partial description of Norroy in his first adventure should give you the flavor of the writing: His clothes were just a little too much the mode of the day, and one indefinably regretted that a man of his intelligence should spend the thought necessary for such ultra-fashionable attire.

Looking for more information about him, I didn’t find anything online except the dates of his birth in 1884 and death in 1922. A little digging unearthed a few interesting facts, I got sucked in and before I knew it I had accumulated a few pages of material on him. To do his life justice would need a book, this article is a start.

George (Fitzalan) Bronson-Howard (c. 1916)

Black Friday ebook deals from Amazon

I know that many readers of this blog don't take to ebooks, but they're a great complement to my physical book library - I can read them anywhere, no additional space needed in my house for them. Disable your adblockers to see the full links, or click the inline links.

Here are a few ebooks that I think you'd be interested in, and Amazon has good deals going on today:

The first 2 books in Joe Gore's excellent DKA series for 2 and 3 dollars respectively. What a deal! The DKA series has a great detective agency in charge of repossessing cars whose drivers have missed their payments. A great cast of characters in the agency, and always interesting plots.






The best writing about the worst books - it's hard to stop laughing, so maybe this isn't the best recommendation on a full stomach. But laughter is supposed to be the best medicine, so here you go with Bill Pronzini's Gun in Cheek

Pronzini takes aim at the worst western fiction in this one, and what a roundup it is! Six-Gun in Cheek



Probably more bargains there, but i haven't found them ... yet! Let you know when i do. Happy shopping.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone...

Hope you had an easier time getting your turkey than this guy. Happy Thanksgiving

Western Story Magazine, November 29 1930 cover by Sidney Riesenberg

Swipe or inspiration - you decide

I saw a post on a Facebook group about an artist copying (swiping) a cover from a previous issue of another magazine, and i also heard that it was done many times. I decided to take a deeper look into this, you decide if it's swipe or inspiration. Leave comments with your thoughts.

Shadows at the waterhole (1907) by Frederic Remington vs. Adventure May 15, 1931 by L.F. Wilford

Adventure 1936 May cover  by Walter Baumhofer vs Short Stories Feb 25 1938 by A.R.Tilburne

Adventure March 1 1932 cover by G.C. Delano vs Short Stories December 25 1936 by A. R. Tilburne

Adventure July 1934 cover by Walter Baumhofer vs Short Stories January 10 1937 cover by A. R. Tilburne

Adventure June 1 1931 cover by Remington Schuyler vs Short Stories March 25 1937  cover by A.R. Tilburne

Adventure May 1931 cover by Remington Schuyler vs Short Stories April 25 1937 cover by A. R. Tilburne

Adventure June 1934 cover by Walter Baumhofer vs Short Stories September 25 1937 cover by A. R. Tilburne

Adventure March 1936 cover by Hubert Rogers vs Short Stories April 10 1938 cover by A. R. Tilburne

Adventure November 10 1929 cover by Hubert Rogers vs Short Stories July 25 1938 cover by A. R. Tilburne

Adventure December 15 1930 cover by G.C. Delano vs Short Stories May 10 1939 cover by A.R. Tilburne

Adventure December 1939 cover by Wesley Neff vs Short Stories December 10 1943 cover by A. R. Tilburne

Adventure March 15 1928 cover by Dominic Cammerota vs Short Stories February 10 1946 cover by A. R. Tilburne

Interior illustration for Dusky by Jim Kjelgaard from Short Stories February 10 1946

And this last one has to be unique, the same artist on both sides

Adventure September 1941 cover by A. R. Tilburne vs Short Stories September 10 1944 cover by A. R. Tilburne

Pulp AdventureCon 2018 - photos

The door to paper treasures

The dealer's room

Dealer with his collection

Some more magazines

Adventure House's wall of pulp

Some detective and mystery pulps

Art from science fiction digests

Stag magazine cover

Ken for Men magazine cover

More art

Frank R. Paul interior illustrations for Famous Fantastic Mysteries

Cover for Talbot Mundy paperback "The Devil's Guard"

Virgil Finlay interior illustration

Roy Krenkel print of Red Sonja

Couple of pulp collectors having a "friendly" discussion

My find - Adventure #1, November 1910. Not in great shape, very hard to find in any condition.

Review: Art of the pulps

Beautiful art - a retro blast from the past

This book takes readers back to an era without television or radio, when magazine covers featured original art designed to lure readers into picking up and buying them. From the early 1900s to the early 1950s, pulp magazines were the popular entertainment media of choice for millions of readers across the English speaking world.They were published in America and to a lesser extent, in Canada and the United Kingdom and read across the world, reaching as far as Australia and South Africa. Some were even translated into French and Spanish.

The pulp magazines were the medium through which a variety of genres established themselves - science fiction, fantasy and hardboiled detective among them. They brought a range of authors and memorable characters from Edgar Rice Burroughs (Tarzan), Johnston McCulley (Zorro), Lester Dent (Doc Savage), H. P. Lovecraft (Cthulu), Robert E. Howard (Conan, Solomon Kane, Kull) and Dashiell Hammett (The Continental Op, Sam Spade) to readers. And they sold this with covers that made you want to pick them up, and interior illustrations that drew the reader deeper into the stories, till you bought and took them home.

This book surveys the pulp magazine field, taking us on a journey from the early days of the field in the 1900s when there a few general fiction magazines, to the end in the 1950s, when paperbacks and television replaced the pulps. All the major genres - adventure, detective/mystery, westerns, aviation, sports, love/romance, horror, science fiction, hero pulps (predecessors of the comics) and spicys - are covered. It's rounded off with a couple of essays on two great artists and authors. Each section's essay comes from an expert in the field, and all are published writers, so they know how to tell the tale. 

But you're not buying this book for the essays - excellent though they are - the art is the reason to buy this book.The book is printed on glossy paper, and the scans are from original issues in the personal collections of the authors. Each chapter is about 20% text and 80% art; with 12 chapters and about 240 pages it's almost 200 pages of gorgeous art for your money. A few sample pages below (some pages are cropped because my scanner isn't big enough):

Adventure	Aviation	Mystery/Detective
Hero	Horror	Romance
Science Fiction/Fantasy	Spicy	Sports
Weird Menace		Western

If you like illustration art, you have to pick this up. Link here: http://amzn.to/2iSHMjy 

Adventures in Editing - Donald A. Kennicott, article on editing Blue Book magazine for 42 years

On the occasion of the 136th birthday of Donald A. Kennicott, the long-time editor of Blue Book magazine, I'm happy to present to you this article written by him in the November 1954 issue of Blue  Book magazine, 2 years after he had stopped editing the magazine. It's a great companion to Mike Ashley's article about Blue Book which covers the magazine during Kennicott's tenure.

ADVENTURES IN EDITING

DONALD A. KENNICOTT

The gentleman and scholar who was a Bluebook editor during 42 of this magazine's 50 years looks back on an exciting and distinguished career.

First issue of the magazine that became Blue Book

After a long experience in magazine editing, Burgess Johnson wrote an autobiography which he called “As Much as I Dare, ” taking his title from Montaigne: “I speak the truth, not so much as I would, but as much as I dare; and I dare a little more as I grow older. ” Ellery Sedgwick, recalling his 30 years of “adventuring in human nature” as editor of the Atlantic, chose “The Happy Profession” as the title for a memoir of those years. After my 42 years with Bluebook, I am inclined to think that Burgess Johnson chose the better title.

Jay Paul Jackson - Artist (1905-1954)

Jay Jackson was the name he gave as an artist for the pulp magazines in Chicago. I came across his work when i was reading an issue of Golden Fleece magazine which had illustrations by him. Not finding much about him on the web, I did a little research and found this article on him which I thought was worth sharing for the picture it painted of a struggling African American artist in the days of the Great Depression.

Cover for Golden Fleece, December 1938 jointly credited to Jay Jackson and Harold S. DeLay
(Image courtesy the FictionMags Index)

This autobiographical article appeared in the October 1941 issue of Fantastic Adventures. The only other article about him that i could find on the web was this one: https://www.artslant.com/la/articles/show/40444

Jay Paul Jackson aka Jay Jackson (1905-1954)

Charles Richard Beeler aka Caddo Cameron - Cowboy, Railroader, Author

Charles Richard Beeler wrote under the pen name Caddo Cameron. He had many novels starring a pair of Texas Rangers – Blizzard Wilson and Badger Coe - in Short Stories, all of which were later issued in hardcovers. This was in addition to a series of stories about a pair of troublesome Texas twins – Paint and Pinto Hawkins. All worth reading, for he was one of those men who had witnessed the settlement of the American West, and could write with earthy humor about it.

Charles Richard Beeler aka Caddo Cameron (1881-19??)