I don't know who painted the cover on this issue of TOP-NOTCH -- Tom Lovell, maybe? -- but it's pretty dramatic. TOP-NOTCH was getting near the end of its long run by this point but was still publishing some very good authors. In this issue are stories by Arthur J. Burks, Major George Fielding-Eliot, William Merriam Rouse, Samuel Taylor, and Robert H. Leitfred. The other authors aren't familiar to me: Paul Randell Morrison, Edmund du Perrier, Hal Firanze, and Kurt von Rachen. Wait a minute, Kurt von Rachen was L. Ron Hubbard, so I guess I've heard of him after all. Controversial though he may be, I like Hubbard's pulp stories for the most part, and for all I know, those other guys were fine writers. So this is probably a decent issue.
2 comments:
I’m probably wrong but the cover looks kinda like William Soare’s work to me. There’s a ruddy, almost waxy quality to the skin tones that reminds me of Soare’s stuff. Whoever painted it, I agree that it’s dramatic and effective.
b.t.
After looking at some of Soare's covers, I can certainly see him as a possibility. He seems to have used a wide variety of styles, but his covers that feature two men fighting bear a resemblance to this one.
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