Nice early cover by Rafael DeSoto on this issue of TEN DETECTIVE ACES, which includes stories by Frederick C. Davis (a Moon Man yarn), Paul Chadwick (creator of Secret Agent X), T.W. Ford, W.T. Ballard, Emile C. Tepperman, and Joe Archibald. TEN DETECTIVE ACES was a pretty good pulp, from everything I've seen about it.
5 comments:
I see this issue has a Moon Man story, one of the crazy hero characters who would solve crimes. This guy ran around with a fish bowl on his head which was almost as crazy as the Crimson Clown, who solved crimes dressed in a clown outfit. So bizarre that they are fun to read.
I think I'll put on my Easter Bunny costume today and harass the Trenton NJ criminals and drug dealers...
Hey, that's the only issue of this magazine I own!
And I told you about when I bought it right here...
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I see Ten Detective Aces as kind of a proving ground for the authors who went on to write the great hero pulps.
Although Davis is better known for his great work on Operator #5, his stories about the Moon Man are, I think, some of the finest hero pulp yarns of them all.
John Hocking
I agree about the work of Fred Davis. Much of his best work was done for DIME DETECTIVE in the 1930's but his most interesting series may be his 16 long novelets in the 1940's for DIME DETECTIVE starring crime reporter Bill Brent.
Brent screwed up and angered his editor who then in a fit of rage assigned him to write the Advice to the Lovelorn column under the pen name of Lorna Lorne. Brent still managed to solve murder cases in an amusing fashion.
At several recent pulp conventions I met his grandaughter, Karen Cunningham who was collecting his pulps. Fred Davis wrote hundreds of stories and she was managing to track down quite a few. I once praised her t-shirt that had a photo of Davis on it and she gave it to me at the next convention. I now wear it as a good luck charm at least once at every Windy City and PulpFest convention.
John,
So you did. You have a better memory than I do! I've never read any of the Moon Man stories. I think somebody reprinted all of them (Battered Silicon Dispatch Box?). I ought to hunt them up. Davis's Operator #5 novels are excellent.
James,
It seems to me kind of a crime that you haven’t read any Moon Man stories. We’re talking about a genuine pulp hero, a masked Robin Hood figure of the Great Depression no less, who features in a chain of linked stories that went on for years.
The Moon Man is ordinary cop Steve Thatcher, who is compelled by his better nature to confront the crime, poverty and injustice of the Depression by stealing from criminals and giving the loot to the disadvantaged.
Gangland hates him, the cops think he’s the worst criminal of all, and his girlfriend’s Dad is tough police Sergeant Gil McEwen, who has sworn to see the Moon Man burn in the electric chair.
The Moon man goes up against villains that range from simple murderers to crime rings to costumed supercriminals that Secret Agent X might hesitate before engaging.
Davis puts a principled ordinary guy into diabolically dangerous situations in which having his identity exposed might literally be worse than death, and in doing so gives this series a strong dose of something often missing from hero-pulp stories--- suspense.
These are ripping yarns, James. Do not miss them.
John Hocking
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