This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan. My guess as to the cover artist is Robert Stanley, but I’m not certain about that. There are a couple of things about this one I don’t like—the guy’s hands and arms don’t look quite right to me, and neither does his holster—but overall it’s an effective cover. I’ve said this many times before and probably will again, but Walt Coburn was really inconsistent in his work, especially in the second half of the Forties onwards. But he’s still one of my favorite Western authors because when he’s on his game, he’s really, reall ..read more

Instead of one of the Westerns for which Max Brand (Frederick Faust) is most famous, I’m writing about one of Faust’s espionage novels. THE PHANTOM SPY is set in Europe in the mid-Thirties, the era during which it was written. This isn’t a Ruritanian, Graustarkian, comic opera Europe, either. It’s the real thing, with the grim threat of Hitler’s growing power in Germany looming over everything. In Faust’s novel, however, Hitler isn’t even the real menace. The true villains are an international cabal of warmongers who think that Hitler isn’t moving fast enough and want him to go ahead an ..read more

Last week after I reviewed Arnold Drake’s novel THE STEEL NOOSE, a friend reminded me that Drake also co-authored what is considered by some the first graphic novel, IT RHYMES WITH LUST, published in 1950 as a digest-sized paperback by the comic book publisher Archer St. John. Drake co-wrote the script with Leslie Waller under the pseudonym Drake Waller. The black-and-white art is by Matt Baker (pencils) and Ray Osrin (inks). This book has been reprinted in both paperback and e-book editions, so I picked up a copy of the e-book to check it out. IT RHYMES WITH LUST is set in Copper City, some ..read more

Young rancher Johnny Lang returns to his hometown in New Mexico after serving five years in prison. He was guilty of the robbery he committed, but there were extenuating circumstances. Johnny was railroaded behind bars anyway by his enemy, local cattle baron Ben Mohegan. In most traditional Western novels, Johnny would want to settle the score with Mohegan, but not in Philip Ketchum’s THE GHOST RIDERS, published as half of an Ace Double with William Heuman’s HARDCASE HALLORAN in 1963. Johnny doesn’t plan to stay long; he just wants to pay a visit to the old home place and then light out for ..read more

Rudolph Belarski provides the eye-catching cover for this issue of THRILLING MYSTERY, and spinning the yarns inside are Robert Bloch, G.T. Fleming-Roberts, Carl Jacobi, Stewart Sterling, Arthur K. Barnes, house-name Will Garth, and lesser-known pulpsters Russell Stanton and David Bernard. With covers and titles like that, it's no wonder the Weird Menace pulps sold so well for a while ..read more

This issue of the iconic Western pulp WESTERN STORY sports a particularly striking cover by Norman Saunders. And it's an all-star issue as far as the authors represented in its pages, too: T.T. Flynn, Harry F. Olmsted, Ray Nafziger, Cliff Farrell, Tom Roan, Tom Curry, and Frank Richardson Pierce. Man, that's a strong line-up! The Flynn story is "Death Marks Time in Trampas", which was the title story in a collection published by Five Star in 1998 that was my introduction to his work. I've read a bunch of his novels and stories since then and enjoyed them all ..read more

I’ve been reading quite a bit of sword and sorcery fiction in recent months, and I’m still in the mood for it. So after finishing the new anthology NEITHER BEG NOR YIELD, I moved on to SWORDS & SORCERIES: TALES OF HEROIC FANTASY, VOLUME 1, which came out several years ago. Edited by David A. Riley and published by Parallel Universe Publications, it features eight stories, some by authors I’m familiar with and some by authors I’m encountering for the first time. The cover and interior illustrations are by Jim Pitts. The book leads off with “The Mirror of Torjan Súl” by Steve Lines, a Brit ..read more

I’ve been aware of Arnold Drake’s work as a comic book writer for a long, long time, having been a fan of one of his best-known creations, the Doom Patrol, ever since those stories began appearing in DC’s MY GREATEST ADVENTURE comic more than half a century ago. In the Seventies, I was also a regular reader of his GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY series for Marvel. But I had no idea he was also a novelist until Black Gat Books reprinted THE STEEL NOOSE, originally published by Ace Books in 1954. It’s an Ace that I just never came across over the years. THE STEEL NOOSE is narrated by fast-talking, wis ..read more

Hey, lady, look out for that skull with the glowing eyes! I don't know who painted this cover, but it sure caught my eye when I was scrolling through the Fictionmags Index. FIVE-NOVELS MONTHLY didn't actually publish five novels in each issue; the stories are all novellas or novelettes in a variety of genres. But plenty of good authors and fine fiction appeared in its pages. In this issue there are stories by one of my favorite authors, L.P. Holmes, along with John Murray Reynolds (who wrote the first Ki-Gor novel), L. Ron Hubbard, Reg Dinsmore (don't know him), and Edmond Du Perrier (not fa ..read more

Ouch! That definitely looks painful. This appears to me to be a Sam Cherry cover, although it hasn't been attributed to him as far as I know. And it's a very effective one. The lead story in this issue is a novella by the dependable Joseph Chadwick, backed up with stories by Edward Parrish Ware (a reprint from the May 1937 issue of POPULAR WESTERN), Harold F. Cruickshank, and lesser-known writers Frank Watson, Garold Hartsock, and house-name Tex Mumford. I don't own this issue, but it looks like a good one ..read more