Sunday, November 23, 2014

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Black Mask, March 1935


Not a fantastic cover, but on the other side of it you've got a Donahue story by Frederick Nebel, a Flashgun Casey story by George Harmon Coxe, and novelettes by Theodore Tinsley and Jack Bertin. Pure hardboiled pulp goodness, in other words.

3 comments:

Barry Traylor said...

Any mid 30's Black Mask is a good one. Very fond of the ones with a white background as it really makes the art pop.

Morgan Holmes said...

BLACK MASK has an iconic status but overall very little has been reprinted outside of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler.

Walker Martin said...

There have been some other writers reprinted from BLACK MASK recently like Paul Cain, Raoul Whitfield, and Theodore Tinsley, but Morgan Holmes has a point.

It's possible that the present copyright owner of BLACK MASK requires a higher payment than most reprint publishers want to pay. For instance Altus Press has recently published several collections from DIME DETECTIVE but only the Fred Nebel stories from BLACK MASK.

Also Battered Silicon Dispatch Box has published several DIME DETECTIVE authors like Fred Davis, Merle Constiner, and the Needle Mike stories by Barrett but nothing from BLACK MASK.

The last several years I've been encouraging one reprint publisher to reprint the Luther McGavock private eye series from BLACK MASK but so far nothing has appeared. This series by Merle Constiner is on the high level of The Dean series in DIME DETECTIVE and it deserves to be reprinted.

Many reprint publishers do not really sell many copies and therefore cannot pay much for reprint rights. Thus some BLACK MASK fiction remains unreprinted.

I recommend THE BIG BOOK OF BLACK MASK STORIES which is edited by Otto Penzler and available from amazon at a discount. This is an enormous anthology and well worth the money. It gives a good look at the fiction in BLACK MASK.