Here's more proof, as if we needed it, of just how dangerous it was to sit down at a poker table in the Old West. I don't know the artist on this cover, but I think it's a good one. The fellow being choked reminds me a little of Randolph Scott. (I don't know about you, but whenever I see or hear his name, I have this urge to put my hand over my heart and say, "Randolph Scott!" I don't actually do that, but the thought does cross my mind.) This is one of those issues of WESTERN STORY that's dominated by Frederick Faust. He has a novella under his Max Brand name in it, plus serial installments as by David Manning and Peter Henry Morland. I've wondered how many of WESTERN STORY's readers ever figured out that all of Faust's pseudonyms were the same guy. Also on hand in this issue are prolific and well-regarded pulpsters Frank Richardson Pierce, Hugh Grinstead, and Austin Hall.
6 comments:
LOL I think the same thing when I hear "Randolph Scott". As you've said, poker was a dangerous game in the Old West, I've often wondered if they ever finished a poker game without a fight breaking out.
Based on pulp covers, nope, none of them ended peacefully. Playing poker was even more dangerous than going to the barber shop.
IIRC, this cover was by the Nebraska artist John Falter, who started out in the pulps and went on to do one hundred and twenty covers for the Saturday Evening Post.
Thanks, Sai. I wasn't familiar with Falter, but looking at some of his other pulp covers, I agree, this certainly could be his work.
Do you think that those stories originally published under names other than “Max Brand” “eventually were republished in paperback form once that name rose to the top as a marketable moniker?
Yeah, many of the Max Brand paperbacks were published originally in the pulps under other pseudonyms. There were a few paperbacks who used the Evan Evans pseudonym, but even some of those made mention of the Max Brand name as well. It certainly became one of the best-known pseudonyms of all time.
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