That's a dynamic Walter Baumhofer cover (but I repeat myself) on this issue of PETE RICE MAGAZINE. The other notable thing about this issue for me is the title of the lead novel: "Wolves of Wexford Manor". Somehow I never expected to see the name "Wexford Manor" in the title of a Western pulp novel. Sounds more like some eccentric amateur detective should be gathering the suspects in a picturesque English country house to reveal who really killed Aunt Henrietta. There are two back-up stories in this issue, both by Harold A. Davis, one under the pseudonym Rand Allison. I've read only one Pete Rice novel and wasn't impressed with it, but the magazine had very good covers.
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The S&S western magazines, in my limited experience of reading from them, were less distinctive than the Popular westerns and perhaps the Ace and Thrilling on balance...also odd given how at least commercially and/or artistically competitive S&S was in most other categories, if not all other. Were any of their titles among the best western (non-motel) titles? WILD WEST WEEKLY being the best of those I've read from, not too surprisingly...but a fair amount of bland material there, too...but the covers pretty good, indeed.
WESTERN STORY was the top S&S Western pulp and regarded as one of the best Western pulps, period. Dominated by Frederick Faust in the Twenties, it published a lot of classic Western authors all the way through its run and was considered a more adult magazine than WILD WEST WEEKLY, which with all its series characters was aimed at a slightly more juvenile audience. This is the conventional wisdom, anyway. Personally, I think WILD WEST WEEKLY is a little more fun to read, especially in the Forties when the number of series characters decreased. WESTERN STORY published a lot of great stuff, but it could also be rather stodgy. I really prefer the Western pulps from Popular and Thrilling.
Don't forget that Street & Smith's WESTERN STORY MAGAZINE published the bulk of Max Brand's output, including most of his best-remembered novels (not the least of which was "Destry Rides Again," serialized in WSM as "Twelve Peers." There's plenty of dreck, I admit, but that happened with practically all weekly pulps. But there's also lots of good stuff besides the Brand yarns.
Like you I'm a big fan of the early Popular Westerns, such as '30s DIME WESTERN, STAR WESTERN and the revived ACE-HIGH. But I find the Ace and Thrilling Group Westerns somewhat less satisfying: competent, entertaining, but in no way distinctive. (I'd use those words to describe the entire Thrilling output, with the exception of their SF titles post-WWII.)
If I had to pick one Western pulp to read to the exclusion of all others, I'd probably pick STAR WESTERN because the novella is my favorite length for fiction. But DIME, BIG-BOOK, ACE-HIGH, and 10-STORY are all consistently very good. I have a soft spot for the Thrilling pulps because so much of their output was reprinted in paperback during the Sixties and Seventies and that's how I discovered a lot of the Western pulp authors and characters. Not to mention the Phantom Detective, a long-time favorite of mine despite the fact that the series doesn't have the greatest reputation. I like the Ace Western pulps once J. Edward Leithead is featured so frequently in them, because I really enjoy his work.
STARTLING STORIES and THRILLING WONDER STORIES are the best SF pulps from the second half of the Forties, as far as I'm concerned. ASTOUNDING was always prone to the same sort of stodginess as WESTERN STORY, although certainly a lot of great stories were published there.
I also like DIME WESTERN and STAR WESTERN and the other western titles published by Popular Publications but WESTERN STORY is right up there also and was a leading western fiction magazine during much of its run when Street and Smith published it during 1919-1949.
Though I never started out to compile an almost complete run because my main genre interests were SF, detective and adventure titles, I now lack only 9 issues of WESTERN STORY. In other words I have over 1250 issues from 1919-1949. How I ever got to this stage is a puzzle to me. I guess I just love to read and collect old fiction magazines.
But actually WEST, during the Doubleday years of 1926-1935 or so, may actually be the best western magazine of them all. Ernest Haycox wrote many of his early westerns for WEST. And we shouldn't forget the mainstream adventure pulps which published many excellent westerns. Magazines like ADVENTURE, SHORT STORIES, THE POPULAR, and ARGOSY used westerns as one of their main genres.
Yeah, a lot of novels by Luke Short, W.C. Tuttle, and other top Western writers were serialized in ARGOSY, ADVENTURE, and the other general fiction pulps. Westerns were just about everywhere.
I'm very fond of the Don Ward/Dell ZANE GREY WESTERN as well, once past the Grey abridgments in any given issue (the late issues with no Grey fiction whatsoever, better yet)...but what I've read from WEST was good, too...and BLUE BOOK deserves a mention...as do the better slicks.
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