The cover on this issue of WESTERN ACTION is credited to Robert Stanley. It doesn't look exactly like a typical Stanley cover to me, but maybe I'm just used to his Mike Shayne covers. Archie Joscelyn has two stories in this issue, one under his own name and the lead novella as by Al Cody. Also on hand are T.W. Ford, Ralph Berard (Victor H. White), and Cliff Campbell, the last of those a house-name who could have been any of the other guys in this issue, or even none of them, although that doesn't seem likely. The Columbia pulps edited by Robert W. Lowndes were low-budget affairs but often quite good.
As a bonus, here's the cover of the Pocket Books edition of the novel BITTER CREEK, under the Al Cody by-line. There was also a hardback edition published by Dodd, Mead.
3 comments:
Hardback, paperback, and pulp magazine appearances for the same story. How common was that? And, was the publishing order always hardback first, then paperback edition, followed by the pulp reprint?
It varied from case to case. With this book, the pulp actually came out first. The Dodd, Mead hardback was published in 1947, but I don't know what month. However, a pulp dated January 1947 would have been on the stands in December 1946, because the cover dates were off-sale dates. So the true first appearance of BITTER CREEK is in this issue of WESTERN ACTION. Of course, it's possible the text isn't exactly the same in the two versions. Joscelyn could have expanded the story some for hardback publication. But the story runs 50 pages in the pulp, and the Columbia pulps usually had pretty small print, so he might not have had to expand it much.
A number of the Powder Valley Westerns by "Peter Field" appeared in various Columbia Westerns pulps about the same time as they were published in hardback by William Morrow. The same was true of Davis Dresser's Western novels as "Don Davis". I don't know if there was a connection between Columbia and those hardback publishers, or if everybody just sort of played fast and loose with such stuff in those days.
Informative. Thank you!
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