Pulp Flakes: Cover Art

Showing posts with label Cover Art. Show all posts

Thursday, 28 November 2019

Happy Thanksgiving everyone

As god is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly!

Probably had a cover like this to blame.

Alberto Vargas cover for Burten's Follies, November 1933

Saturday, 10 November 2018

Crazy Cows and Horrified Horses - The western art of George Harrison Wert

I like pulp covers, but i have to confess that most of the people portrayed on the covers had a total lack of expression comparable to the Great Stoneface, Buster Keaton himself. They could be dealing with a rogue elephant, a runaway stagecoach or a snarling man eating beast, and they would serenely confront them, as if the artist were trying to show Buddha vs. Beast.

Canine Covers in honor of National Dog Day

Pick your favorite. Mine's the German Shepherd in the Argosy.

Adventure, July 18, 1919 cover by James Reynolds

Argosy, February 7, 1925 cover by Charles Livingstone Bull

Argosy, February 7, 1925 cover by Charles Livingston Bull

Blue Book, February 1934 cover by Joseph C. Chenoweth

The Popular Magazine, March 20, 1916 cover by John A. Coughlin

Short Stories January 10th, 1941 cover by A.R. Tilburne

Western Story Magazine, August 31, 1931 cover by Sidney Riesenberg

Possibly the silliest pulp cover ever to feature a dog
Weird Tales October, 1925 cover by Andrew Brosnatch

Wednesday, 8 August 2018

Five Stahr covers

On his birthday, a few of the artist Paul Stahr's cover paintings for Argosy. High resolution photos made from multiple photos taken by me (click on the pictures to view in their full glory), the odd angles are to avoid reflections as much as possible. All paintings except the last one are from the astonishing collection of Doug Ellis, the man behind the Windy City pulp and paper convention in Chicago and covers from the FictionMags Index.

Stahr painted more than 300 covers for Argosy between 1923 and 1936. Of those, 212 were done between 1930 and 1934, when he had about 40 covers each year out of the 52 weekly issues. I don't think any other pulp artist comes close in terms of number of covers. Happy to be shown I'm wrong - leave a note in the comments.

Cover painting by Paul Stahr for Argosy December 8, 1928

Image courtesy

Cover painting by Paul Stahr for Argosy March 21, 1931
(Yes, the text is painted on)

Cover painting by Paul Stahr for Argosy December 10, 1932

Cover painting by Paul Stahr for Argosy January 27, 1934

Cover painting by Paul Stahr for Argosy May 16, 1931 (image courtesy Heritage Auctions)

Saturday, 4 August 2018

Pulpfest 2018 - trip report

Recently returned from Pulpfest 2018, a 4 celebration of the pulp magazines. This year, the theme was World War 1. As usual, the convention had something for everyone. A fantastic job by the organizing committee - thanks to Jack Cullers and his family, Barry Traylor, Mike Chomko, Chuck Welch and many others.

The Panels

John Fleming Gould was the subject of a talk by his son. The artist did about 15,000 illustrations for the pulps in his career. I just about remembered to take a photo.

I didn't take a photo during David Saunder's excellent talk on the artists take on World War 1 in the pulps. I was too absorbed.

A new department - the art show. Some photos from it later.

And the biggest reason for going there, the Alladin's cave that is the dealers room

View of Pulpfest 2018 dealer room from the entrance

View of Pulpfest 2018 dealer room from the other end

I nearly missed my own talk on Leonard H. Nason thanks to a delayed dinner. However, i managed to get my food in time by bribing our waiter to meet my deadline. In doing so, I also managed to delay the rest of the people at dinner and they mostly missed the talk. Pity.

The dealers

Just a few of those present.

John Gunnison of Adventure House in front of the Great Wall of Pulps

Tony Tollin of Sanctum Books had a lot of high grade hero pulps for sale

Chet Williamson had some high grade pulps

Artwork

Craig Poole had some beauties for sale. Possible Underworld pulp cover - girl getting smoking gun from garter

Rafael De Soto sports pulp cover

As did Doug Ellis, who was off pulp hunting somewhere at the time this photo was taken

Treasures

One of the large (bedsheet) size issues of Rangeland Romances

True Gang Life magazine

Phantom Detective issue

Black Book Detective

Triple-X Western

Attendees - A couple of the usual suspects.

Walker Martin - the man who collects everything

And Digges La Touche, the man who has everything and can't remember where he put it :-)

Auction Highlights

Marathon sessions on Friday and Saturday for the auctioneers and bidders

Edd Cartier Christmas card

Rafael De Soto preliminary for recreation of Spider cover

Mark Wheatley's artwork for Swords Against the Moon Men

Friday, 20 July 2018

Gayle Hoskins - prints from "A Cowboy's Day" series of covers

[On the occasion of the artist's birthday]

The artist Gayle Hoskins did many covers for Western Story Magazine, starting in 1929. One of the few positive things to emerge from the Great Depression was that many excellent cover artists were forced to do illustrations for pulp magazines as their incomes dropped. This led to improved quality in covers overall during the early 1930s, and provided good mentors like Emmett Watson to up and coming artists like Rudolph Belarski.

Hoskins did a series of 27 thematically related covers titled "A cowboy's day" starting with the January 3, 1931 issue and ending with the July 4th issue. Of these covers, 20 were collected as a set of prints offered for sale by Street and Smith, the publisher of Western Story. I don't know why some of the covers were omitted, i included them here (taken from the FictionMags Index of Western Story Magazine).

I got hold of a nearly complete set, missing only a single print. Thought you might want to see it. Tell me your favorites in the comments. Mine are 4, 14 and 20 in the printed set, and "Snake and his rustler band" from the unreprinted ones.