Saturday, March 13, 2021

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Range Riders Western, Fall 1942


Another action-packed scene involving a stagecoach on this issue of RANGE RIDERS WESTERN. I don't know the artist. For those of you not familiar with this pulp, it featured a lead novel in every issue starring a trio of range detectives, Steve Reese (the leader) and his two sidekicks Hank Ball and Dusty Trail. It's a time-honored setup (think of all the trio B-Western movies that were made during the same era) and RANGE RIDERS WESTERN delivered consistently good stories, many of them by Walker A. Tompkins, the author of this issue's lead novel. I've never understood why the stories from this pulp weren't reprinted in paperback during the Sixties and Seventies the way the stories from TEXAS RANGERS, RIO KID WESTERN, and MASKED RIDER WESTERN were. I think they would have done well. This particular issue also has some back-up stories by Allan K. Echols, Eugene A. Clancy, Clinton Dangerfield, and Ralph Yergen, not big names but steady producers in the Western pulps. 

4 comments:

Thom said...

interesting cover, everyone is left handed.

James Reasoner said...

I never noticed that!

Steve M said...

Probably because the publisher printed the image the opposite way round to the way it was painted. You see similar on books published today, were the cover characters are left-handed but the main characters in the story aren't.

James Reasoner said...

That's entirely possible.