Saturday, May 14, 2011

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Western Story, June 24, 1922

I like stampede covers, and this is a pretty good one.  That cowboy had better hope his horse doesn't trip.  They'll both be in trouble if it does.  As for the contents, there are two Frederick Faust stories in this issue, one under the John Frederick pseudonym, the other as by George Owen Baxter.  Did the readers of the time really believe all those Faust pseudonyms were different writers?  All the stories read like the work of the same author to me, which, of course, they were.  The only other author in this issue whose name I recognize is F.R. Buckley, who I haven't read, but several people on the WesternPulps list have had good things to say about his stories.
Posted by at
Labels: ,

5 comments:

Walker Martin said...

This is a great cover and representative of the 1920's cover art where WESTERN STORY emphasized scenes showing the life of the cowboy. It wasn't all shoot-em-ups like many of the covers from the thirties and forties. In fact I have the original painting showing a similar scene for the September 24, 1938 issue. Painted by Walter Haskell Hinton it shows a stampede in a storm also.

I think the vast majority of the readers fell for the story that Brand, Baxter, etc, were all different writers. WESTERN STORY even dreamed up author profiles for each of the pseudonyms.

8:23 AM, May 14, 2011
James Reasoner said...

Walker,
I'm not surprised that "George Owen Baxter" and the other Faust pseudonyms got their own bios. I came across the same thing in BLUE BOOK with H. Bedford-Jones's pseudonyms.

8:51 AM, May 14, 2011
Ron Scheer said...

Great cover, James. Thanks. I noticed right away (as Walker Martin observes) that it doesn't feature gunfire. The illustrations in the early western novels (1900-1915) seldom seem to feature a scene in which guns are being fired...Reading a collection of Brand stories, I was struck by the subtle differences in them, as if each took place in its own imagined world.

9:28 AM, May 14, 2011
Duane Spurlock said...

Thanks for sharing. Love this era of WSM cover paintings -- lots of scenes that capture real life of drovers of the Cowboy Age. I don't recall seeing this one before.

1:34 PM, May 14, 2011
Thomas Block said...

Hi James,

haven't read any western yarn by Buckley so far, but I really enjoyed some of his historical tales in "Adventure". Yet another coincidence between Buckley and Faust, who penned similar swashbuckler stories for "Argosy". It impressed me once and again how those great writers could handle so different topics with equal results. But you're one of them too, so to speak...
Best regards

Thomas from Germany

2:07 PM, May 14, 2011

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)