Saturday, May 26, 2012

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Lariat Story, November 1943

LARIAT STORY usually had good covers, and this one is no exception. I think it's a little unusual with that dark blue color scheme, and only a little red and yellow visible. As for the authors inside, Les Savage Jr. and William R. Cox, both excellent writers, are there, along with prolific pulpsters Lee E. Wells and John Jo Carpenter. Also present is Wilfred McCormick, probably better remembered for a lengthy series of young adult sports novels featuring stalwart high school athlete Bronc Burnett. I read a bunch of those when I was a kid. None of them had girls in them like the one on this cover, as I recall.

6 comments:

Randall Martoccia said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

I love this cover and have used as a desktop background more than once.
You got your awesome heroine, body raked by firelight, blasting a slug through one of the fellows inadvisedly trying to hang her buddy in the background, while another masked desperado is blazing away at her. I'll bet he pays for that.

Then, as this pulp is from Fiction House, we have some of the best titles and blurbs ever. Our heroine is none other than the Gallows Gal of Gunfire Rim.

And, just when you think it can't get any more melodramatic, the blurb describes her as starring in a 'Novel of a Wildcat Woman and a Hoot-Owl Man on Senor Satan's Range'!
If you read that aloud you will discover that it tastes like well-smoked bacon.
Man, pulps are sublime.

John Hocking

James Reasoner said...

Indeed they are, John, indeed they are. (Mmmm . . . bacon.)

Anonymous said...

That is one hell of a cover. I'd love to have that original cover painting!Is this one easy or hard to find? I'd like to read it.

James Reasoner said...

I don't own a copy myself, so I don't know how hard it is to find. I wouldn't mind reading it, either.

Walker Martin said...

Fiction House had several titles in the 1940's, and just about all of them used sexy art with damsels in distress. I've owned a couple LARIAT covers paintings and wished I had not traded them years ago.

The magazines are not that difficult to find in the 1940's. I've seen many of them at PulpFest(pulpfest.com).