Sunday, October 18, 2020

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Top-Notch, July 1936


I've noticed that Tommy guns seem to show up fairly often on the covers of TOP-NOTCH. I'm not sure who painted this cover. Tom Lovell, maybe. There's no doubt some good authors contributed stories to this issue, however: Harry F. Olmsted, Carl H. Rathjen, Wilfred McCormick (author of a bunch of young adult sports novels I read as a kid), Hapsburg Liebe, Samuel Taylor, and Jack Sterrett. I'm familiar with TOP-NOTCH mostly because that's where Robert E. Howard's El Borak stories were first published, but they put out plenty of other good adventure yarns, too.

5 comments:

David Cranmer said...

Harry F. Olmsted had quite the career. Between screenplays and stories for magazines, books. It has always been a name that stands out as I'm reading.

Ed Hulse said...

It's a Lovell cover.

James Reasoner said...

Thanks, Ed. I'm getting a little better at identifying some of these artists.

Mike Taylor said...

Hal Field Leslie did some good fantastical work for TOP-NOTCH...including THE CURSE OF ATLANTIS, THE SHADOW OF ATLANTIS and my favorite TIME TURNS BACK.

James Reasoner said...

I'm not familiar with his work at all, Mike, so thanks for the tip. Doesn't appear any of it has been reprinted, but I'll have a look around and see what I can find.