Debuting in July 1950, THE PECOS KID WESTERN was the last pulp magazine created to feature a full-length novel in each issue about the title character, although not the last one published. Several other "hero" Western pulps started before it and outlasted it. THE PECOS KID WESTERN ran for only four issues, of which this is the last.
Dan Cushman wrote all four novels in the series. There was a fifth Pecos Kid story published in another Western pulp after the Kid's own magazine was cancelled, but I don't recall which one. All five novels (which were closer to novella length, actually) have been reprinted in hardback and paperback about ten years ago. I've read the first two or three, but not this one, I'm pretty sure. This issue also features a novelette by Harry F. Olmsted, and it's hard to go wrong with that. I'm not sure THE PECOS KID WESTERN ever had much of a chance -- the pulps were already starting to die when it was launched -- but it was a decent magazine while it lasted.
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Cushman wrote these stories? Then they're especially worth reading. Cushman (and Les Savage) were the stars of the Fiction House Line.
The short and probably doomed run of The Peco Kid reminds me of the one-short volume of Sheena, Queen of the Jungle. The bulk of the issue was taken up with three novelets about Sheena and on reflection I assume that an on-going Sheena series had been planned, lead novels commissioned and then, perhaps seeing the fate of Peco Kid, the project was shelved and later dumped on the market as a one-shot pulp in an attempt to recoup some of their expense. But wouldn't it have been glorious if there had been 3-4 issues of Sheena?
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