In the late Forties, WINGS got away from the usual aerial dogfights that most aviation/air war pulps used and started putting good-looking women on their covers, probably in a shameless attempt to boost sales. I have a hunch it would have worked on me, because I like this cover quite a bit. I have no idea who painted it. The authors inside are pretty darned good, too, starting with iconic aviation pulpster Arch Whitehouse, who in this issue brings back his characters the Casket Crew, the stars of a series going back to 1931. A volume of early Casket Crew stories has been published by Age of Aces Books, and of course I have a copy, but equally inevitably, I haven't read it yet. Also on hand in this issue are Walt Sheldon, a prolific pulp writer and a well-respected paperbacker, J.L. Bouma, best remembered for his Westerns, Alfred Coppel Jr., known for his science fiction and mainstream novels, and an assortment of names unfamiliar to me: Cornelius Morgan, Scott Sumner, Frank Harvey, and Joe James. Whitehouse, Sheldon, Coppell, and Bouma would make this issue worthwhile for me.
2 comments:
Cover looks like Norman Saunders to me. At first glance, the Lovely Leggy Lady reminded me of one of Bob Lubbers’ iconic covers for Fiction House’s WINGS COMICS — a quick peek at the Grand Comics Database, and sure enough, Saunders seems to have based this painting pretty closely on Lubbers’ cover for WINGS COMICS #93 from earlier that year. I’ve seen similar instances of double-dipping cover compositions on Fiction House’s JUNGLE and PLANET pulps and comics before, but this the first time I’ve spotted one on their WINGS titles. Sometimes, it’s the other way around (a pulp cover painting being turned into line-art). Now I’m wondering if they did it with their Western mags too…
b.t.
I think you're right. I can see Saunders there, too.
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