This cover looks like it should have been used on an issue of SPICY WESTERN, but as far as I can tell, it never was. So I think there was a chance it was a left-over painting from the magazine that finally got used on this issue of SIX-GUN WESTERN, also from Trojan Magazines, Inc. Inside are stories by the legendarily prolific E. Hoffmann Price and Larry A. Harris, another stalwart of the Western pulps. The other authors are either house-names or guys I've never heard of. I suspect it's an entertaining issue anyway.
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I find the 16 pages of included comics amusing. Was this common for pulps of that era, or specific to Six-Gun Western?
Most of the Spicy pulps had comics sections. SPICY DETECTIVE and HOLLYWOOD DETECTIVE ran many, many Dan Turner comics stories. There was another series called Sally the Sleuth, and SPICY WESTERN had Polly of the Plains. I think some of the other pulp publishers used comics sections, as well, but I'm not as familiar with them.
Neither common nor exclusive. Most of the pulp publishers were also comics publishers, even as most of the pulp publishers were at least taking some shot at paperback publishing. But comics in the pulps never seemed to do too well for the magazines that tried it...if I wanted comics, I'd buy comics off the same rack. OUT OF THIS WORLD ADVENTURES is the most famous sf/fantasy pulp to try it in all two of its Avon issues, for example.
Aside from the Dan Turner comics, did any of the other inserts run for more than a year or so?
Sally the Sleuth was the most successful I know of, running almost twenty years from '34 to '53 in various titles, mostly SPICY DETECTIVE and PRIVATE DETECTIVE.
Most, if not all, of the comic pages found in either FIGHTING WESTERN and SIX GUN WESTERN were reprinted in WESTERN CRIME BUSTERS COMICS, cleaned up a bit to make them acceptable as newsstand comics. Rex Maxon (under the name of R. Hayden), well-known as the artist who drew the Tarzan newspaper strip for many years and also the first issue of Dell's TUROK, SON OF STONE, Four-color #596, was responsible for the art on K BAR KATE.
Good to know! All the examples I'd seen were, as noted, very short-lived. Trojan clearly knew what kind of comics to offer pulp readers!
"Bad Kate" ??
I think I went out with her in college.
Despite what it says on the cover, the series was actually called K-BAR KATE (K-Bar being her ranch, I assume) and ran for eight episodes in SIX-GUN WESTERN. However, I like your version, too, Dan. In fact, I might steal that name for a character one of these days . . .
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