WESTERN ADVENTURES may have been Street & Smith's third-string Western pulp (behind WESTERN STORY and WILD WEST WEEKLY), but it had some excellent authors in its pages. This issue featured stories by Walker A. Tompkins, Norman A. Fox, Jim Kjelgaard, Eli Colter, Ney N. Geer, and M. Howard Lane.
10 comments:
Even given the rough-hewness of the illo, a very clean and elegant cover design.
You mention Walter A. Tompkins there, which gives me the chance to connect to Jim Hatfield/Walt Slade. Living in Sweden I have tried to document the first editions of the original titles of the hundreds of Walt Slade paperbacks published here under the author name Jackson Cole. A few titles have escaped all my attempts so far and I have begun to wonder if they ever have existed (years are Swedish printing years):
Chuck-line rider guns 1962
Corpse and cartridge 1963
Death rides the river trail 1968
Grave for a ranger 1964
Guns and gold 1964
Guns of the Texas plains 1963
In the shadow death waits 1966
The dead don't talk 1965
The death walk 1964
Just a small proportion of all published titles, but still annoying.
Any help in documenting the original publication of any of these titles would be most welcome. I've got the feeling that the author of this blog and the cats who follows it has a lot of expertise within the field, some also being true fans of El Halcon stories.
Anders Nilsson, Nordmaling, Sweden
Anders,
Very difficult to say, but I can make a few guesses:
Chuck-line rider guns 1962
Corpse and cartridge 1963
Death rides the river trail 1968 (might be Death Rides the Rio Grande, originally published 1962)
Grave for a ranger 1964
Guns and gold 1964 (probably Trail of Guns and Gold, orig. pub. 1964)
Guns of the Texas plains 1963
In the shadow death waits 1966 (might be Horseman of the Shadows, orig. pub. 1964)
The dead don't talk 1965
The death walk 1964
All of the Walt Slade paperbacks were published originally in the U.S. by Pyramid Books under the pseudonym Bradford Scott. All of them were written by A. Leslie Scott except for the final book in the series, which was ghosted by Tom Curry. Before the paperbacks, Walt Slade stories appeared in the pulp THRILLING WESTERN, also by A. Leslie Scott writing as Bradford Scott. Some of the paperback novels are expansions of previously published pulp stories, but most of them were originals. I've read a lot of the Walt Slade novels and enjoyed them, although they're very formulaic. I just like Scott's writing.
James,
Best thanks for your comments. I was first thinking along these lines myself, but the problem is that the alternative titles you give were also published in Sweden, and they really are different stories. I think one has to consider the possibility that the stories I've listed never were published in the US and that the Swedish translations may provide originals (other countries not checked so far). Some other evidence in favour of this interpretations is the fact that at least 5 other of the Walt Slade titles were published in Sweden before they were published in the US, meaning that the Swedish translations are the first editions. I give only one example here:
Catalog of Copyright Entries. Third Series: 1967: January-June, page 914:
SCOTT, LESLIE.
Bullet brand, by Bradford Scott, pseud. New York, Pyramid Books (K-1349) 128 p. (A Walt Slade western) 'copyright symbol' Pyramid Publications, Inc.; 15May67 (in notice: 1966); A913142
Printing date in Sweden: 1965 ('Grymmare än döden', Walt Slade #93 by Jackson Cole)
I have earlier documented several similar cases in relation to England and Sweden, but this would be the first ones in relation to the US. Seems that translations not always refer to already published foreign original.
Anders,
This is very interesting stuff. It's odd that some of the Walt Slades would have been published in Sweden before they came out in the U.S., but I suppose it's possible that Scott was writing the books so fast that Pyramid had a number of them in inventory. I can see them sending a book to Sweden to be translated and published there, but then the manuscript gets set aside at Pyramid and they don't get around to publishing it until a year or two later. Certainly could have happened that way. And I suppose it's possible that some of them never got published in the U.S., as you suggest. Do you think it's possible that the Swedish publisher might have hired someone to write original novels for them, so that some of the books actually weren't written by Leslie Scott?
James,
It seems that Pyramid had more Walt Slade manuscripts than they could publish during this period and therefore sold some of them abroad. In England the same thing happened when the paperback market broke down but I do not know if it was the same reduction of sales in the US in the 60'ies. Most likely competition from TV and comic books had some impact on the number of western paperbacks they could sell. Looking at the copyright issues it seems that Leslie Scott had the rights registered on himself for the titles published in the US, whereas the copyright holders in the Swedish books are given either as Pyramid or as "The Co-operating European Pocket Book Publishers Ltd." The latter organisation had its office in Norway. Seems they bought the rights to publish US books and manuscripts in several countries, probably at a cheaper price for each European publisher that was part of it. This is why I suspect that the Walt Slade titles published in Sweden, but seemingly not in the US, also can be found in other countries like Norway and Denmark. One could ask if the author did get any money for the publications of his works in Europe? So far, I have found no reason to believe that the Walt Slade texts were written by any other author than Leslie Scott.
James, you always speak favorably of Walker Tompkins' writing--has any of his work ever been collected...? Mike
As far as I know, none of Tompkins' shorter work has been collected, but quite a few of his novels under his own name have been reprinted in paperback and large print and can be found fairly easily and inexpensively. Some of these were expanded from stories that originally appeared in the pulps. In addition, many of his Western pulp series novels were reprinted in paperback during the Sixties and Seventies, and copies of those can still be found, too. His Rio Kid and Masked Rider novels were published under his name, except for the Rio Kid novel BUGLES ON THE BIGHORN, which was published under the Jackson Cole house-name for some reason. Also, one of the Rio Kids attributed in paperback to Tompkins, TRAIL OF THE IRON HORSE, was actually written by Tom Curry. The following Jim Hatfield novels from TEXAS RANGERS were all written by Tompkins: THE TOMBSTONE TRAIL, THE KIOWA KILLER, THE VANISHING VAQUEROS, RANGE OF NO RETURN, THE LOBO LEGION, DINERO OF DOOM, LOST RIVER LOOT, and TIN-STAR TARGET. As you can tell, he was fond of alliteration in his titles! All these Hatfield novels were reprinted in paperback by Popular Library under the Jackson Cole name. Finally, one of Tompkins' novels under his own name, MANHUNT WEST, is currently available in an e-book edition bundled with novels by Dean Owen, Allan K. Echols, and Jackson Gregory for 99 cents. Well worth the money if you read e-books.
Thanks for all the info, James. I first got interested in Tompkins when I learned he had written the first few Kroom stories and all the Ozar the Aztec tales for Top-Notch. I've always found him to be a smooth, competent writer...Mike
Mike,
I was under the impression that the Ozar stories were the only ones Tompkins wrote as Valentine Wood. I don't remember where I read that, though. The Ozar stories are great. I read them six or seven years ago when a friend of mine was going to reprint them, but I'm pretty sure that reprint never came out. I've never read any of the Kroom stories. Tompkins' style is fairly easy to spot, so I'd be interested in doing so sometime to see if I could tell.
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