Saturday, July 30, 2011

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Pioneer Western, September 1937

I don't think I've ever seen an issue of PIONEER WESTERN and I don't know how long it lasted, but it looks like a good solid Western pulp from Popular Publications. This issue includes stories by long-time Western author Cliff Farrell, old favorite Harry Olmsted, and reliable pulpsters Foster-Harris, Robert Mahaffey, and John G. Pearsol. That looks like a Baumhofer cover to me, although the Angry Redhead (whose identity was established in previous posts as artist Tom Lowell's wife) is featured on it. Looks like a pretty good issue to me.
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3 comments:

Tom Roberts said...

That's a Tom Lovell cover, James. He provided art for the second and third issues of the magazine. The first issue sported a cover by Jerome Rozen.

PIONEER WESTERN was short-lived, published by Popular Publications for three monthly issues from August through October 1937.

Purely speculating, but the title may have been created as an outlet to use up an overstock of stories previously bought for DIME WESTERN or another Popular Publications Western title.

Publisher Harry Steeger is on record as saying he/Popular created new titles all the time. If the numbers (meaning sales numbers) were not high enough, instead of working to boost a lagging title, they simply created a new title to try out.

Tom Roberts
Black Dog Books

9:24 AM, August 01, 2011
James Reasoner said...

Thanks, Tom. That explains the presence of Pinky Lovell, then. (Wasn't that her name?) I thought the guy in the buckskin shirt looked a lot like Doc Savage, that's why I thought maybe it was a Baumhofer cover.

9:36 AM, August 01, 2011
Walker Martin said...

Looks like Tom Roberts and I cannot get enough pulp. We both were at Pulpfest surrounded by thousands of western pulps. I saw Tom buy some of the Doubleday FRONTIER STORIES from the 1920's, a title we both like alot.

5:58 PM, August 01, 2011

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