This cover by W.C. Brigham is eye-catching for a couple of reasons: the sheer brutality of the scene depicted, plus the use of a swastika in the logo well before it gained notoriety for other reasons. THE UNDERWORLD MAGAZINE was an early gang pulp published by Harold Hersey, and if I recall correctly, a lot of Hersey's pulps used a swastika in their logos. There are some good authors in this issue including James P. Olsen and Galen C. Colin (both probably best remembered for their Westerns), Henry Leverage (one of the stars of the gang pulps, and he appears twice in this issue, once as himself and once under the name Carl Henry), Armitage Trail (the author of SCARFACE), veteran pulpsters Anatole Feldman and Harold Ward, and a couple of one-shot authors, Mack Ozark and W. Jeremiah Evans. Mack Ozark especially sounds like a pseudonym to me. I've read almost nothing from the gang pulps, and I really think I should explore them more. Just a matter of finding the time.
2 comments:
The reverse swastika was a symbol of both Buddhism and American Indians.
Thanks. I knew it had some other significance but couldn't recall what it was. Seems an odd thing to put on pulp magazine logos but certainly not sinister at that point in time.
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