This is the first and apparently only issue of this Western pulp published by Avon and edited by Donald A. Wollheim. There was an earlier PIONEER WESTERN, a few issues of which were published by Popular Publications in the Thirties, but the two magazines aren't connected other than by title. I don't know why this version of PIONEER WESTERN lasted only one issue, but it couldn't have been because of the authors: William Hopson, Dean Owen, Will C. Brown (C.S. Boyles, the other author from Cross Plains, Texas), Roe Richmond, C. William Harrison, Walt Sheldon, and Robert Moore Williams. That's a really solid line-up of pulpsters. I like the cover, too. I thought at first the art might be by Norman Saunders, but this issue isn't listed on his website. Whoever painted it, I like it. There's also a comic strip story inside with art by the great Joe Maneely.
1950 is a bit late to start a pulp, no? Solid lineup but what really is interesting is “32 pages illustrated in full color”. Seems like an expense for a 25 cent pulp.
ReplyDeleteI was familiar with Wollheim’s sf/fantasy hybrid pulp-with-comic-insert OUT OF THIS WORLD ADVENTURES, but had no idea he’d done a Western one too. Fascinating. I wonder if there’s a scan of it at comicbookplus or the Internet Archive….
ReplyDeleteb.t.
Wait, there was another pulp writer from Cross Plains?
ReplyDeleteYep, Clarence Scott Boyles Jr., born in 1909 in Baird but raised in Cross Plains. So he was three years younger than Bob, but they would have been in high school at the same time. I believe he was a newspaperman who started writing for the Western pulps in the mid-Forties and published about 70 stories over the next fifteen years, all under the pseudonym Will C. Brown. He also wrote about a dozen novels. I haven't read a lot by him, but all of it was quite good. His best known novel is probably THE BORDER JUMPERS.
ReplyDeleteThanks. I hadn't heard of him.
ReplyDeleteThe Border Jumper (aka Man of the West) was the basis for 1958 Anthony Mann's movie "Man of the West" starring Gary Cooper, Julie London and Lee J. Cobb. The novel won the Dell Book Award for best western of 1955. His novel THE NAMELESS BREED won the Golden Spur Award from the Western Writers of America as best novel in 1961.
ReplyDeleteTiziano Agnelli