WESTERN ADVENTURES was a second-string Street & Smith Western pulp (if you consider both WESTERN STORY and WILD WEST WEEKLY to be first-string), but from what I've seen it was a pretty solid publication. The covers aren't great, but there were plenty of good authors published in its pages. In this particular issue, for example, are stories by Walker A. Tompkins, Leslie Ernenwein, Ed Earl Repp (writing as Brad Buckner), and Rolland Lynch. I certainly wouldn't hesitate to pick up an issue of WESTERN ADVENTURES for some good reading.
9 comments:
I kind of like that cover, and the format...was this a particularly striking example? Most more pedestrian/uninspired yet?
Aside from DIME WESTERN, STAR WESTERN and the Dell ZANE GREY (aside from the Grey stories themselves), what outshines the S&S titles clearly? (Sorry to ask something which is treading old ground...I suspect I've asked a variant of this question at least twice over the years.)
I like this cover better than most from WESTERN ADVENTURES. They all have either the large, frame-like border all around or a large top border that takes up a third of the cover. I just prefer covers where the painting fills up the whole cover.
I think all the Popular Publications Western pulps are better than the S&S pulps, especially once you get into the Forties. I've found a lot of good hardboiled stories in the issues of TEXAS RANGERS and RANCH ROMANCES from the Fifties. I'd prefer those issues to WESTERN STORY in the Thirties. WESTERN STORY in the Twenties is so dominated by Frederick Faust that whether you like that era depends pretty much on how you feel about his work. I don't think that really answers your question, but I can find plenty to like in most of the post-war Western pulps.
No, I think that does answer my question pretty well...I've barely dipped into any Western pulp earlier than the '40s, myself. I've read some pretty good along with mediocre in both WWW and RR, but, for example, have yet to read LUKE SHORT or most of the other magazines I've heard from time to time had more than a little to recommend them...not even the Flying Eagle GUNSMOKE yet...
Judging by the contents lists, GUNSMOKE looks great, but I've never seen a copy of either issue. LUKE SHORT'S WESTERN seems slightly less impressive but still good. Never seen those issues, either.
I think the reason RANCH ROMANCES and the Columbia Western pulps edited by Lowndes are so much better than their reputations might suggest in the late Fifties is that they were the only games in town by that point, so they got first look at the output of some excellent writers, many of whom had moved into paperback originals but still wanted to so some shorter work, too. Gordon D. Shirreffs and Clair Huffaker are good examples. I remember reading the original novella version of Huffaker's THE WAR WAGON in an issue of RANCH ROMANCES, I think.
I don't think I've ever seen an issue of WESTERN ADVENTURES. (Or maybe I just don't recall.) Some of the westerns in BLUE BOOK are pretty good -- Luke Short showed up in there from time to time. But most people aren't picking up BB for the westerns. Also some good quality westerns in SHORT STORIES, but the better reading will be found more reliably in the titles James mentions.
WEST was a magazine that lasted a long time but during the time that Doubleday published it(1926-1935), it was probably better than Street & Smith's WESTERN STORY. They had Tuttle and Ernest Haycox for example and did not fill issue after issue with Max Brand fiction. Faust simply wrote too much and too fast.
Concerning GUNSMOKE, I have both issues and there was even a GIANT GUNSMOKE which consisted of the two issues rebound as one big digest format magazine. MANHUNT was such a rousing success that they decided to do the same with the western genre. GUNSMOKE was full of hard boiled, tough stories that were unusual and well written. But even in 1953 the typical western fan did not want good and unusual westerns. They wanted the same old western formula which they loved. They did not want anything different. At least that's my theory that I've been muttering for years.
The two issues of GUNSMOKE are certainly in the running for the best two issues of westerns ever published.
Walker,
On your high recommendation, I picked up (and likely overpaid for) the first issue of gunsmoke 1953. ab guthrie is in there---so yeah, it's gotta be worthwhile: the big sky sits alongside the ox bow incident, lonesome dove, singing guns, and beyond the outposts as my top five favorite western books.
Craig, I'd be very interested in your opinion of GUNSMOKE. I saw the stories as being very different and better than the usual westerns. Thus my theory about why it failed. Even today, many western readers want that formula or they are disappointed.
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