Sam Cherry's cover on this issue of POPULAR WESTERN is a slightly humorous one, which is a little unusual for him. His covers were dramatic and often action-packed, but most of the time they're not funny. I like this one quite a bit. The blonde reminds me of Gloria Grahame. Inside are stories by Syl McDowell (a Sheriff Blue Steele yarn under the Tom Gunn pseudonym), Johnston McCulley, Oscar J. Friend, Cliff Walters, Alfred L. Garry, and house names Scott Carleton (a Buffalo Billy Bates story) and Jackson Cole.
Here we have Injury to a Squeezebox on this issue of POPULAR WESTERN, but somehow I doubt if that will become a recurring category like Injury to a Hat. But you never know about these things. The lead story in this issue is a non-series yarn by the great W.C. Tuttle. Also in the issue are installments in two series that ran regularly in POPULAR WESTERN, Sheriff Blue Steele by Tom Gunn (probably Syl McDowell) and Sheriff Egg and Deputy Ham by Alfred L. Garry. I like what I've read of the Blue Steele series. The other authors in this issue are the always reliable Joseph Chadwick, C.V. Tench (a reprint from the March 1933 issue of ALL STAR WESTERN & FRONTIER MAGAZINE, a pulp I'm not familiar with) and the little-remembered Ted Fox and Andrew Bronson.
I think that's the first time I've seen anybody use a shovel for cover during a gunfight. Doesn't seem to be like it would be all that effective, although it seems to be doing the job in this cover by Sam Cherry. This issue of POPULAR WESTERN has a strong group of authors inside, including William Hopson, Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson, Louis L'Amour, Tom Gunn (probably Syl MacDowell), Ben Frank, Harold F. Cruickshank, Alfred L. Garry, and house-name Jackson Cole. I'm not that fond of some of those writers, but their work was popular and they sold plenty of it.
Since Robert E. Howard Days is going on in Cross Plains, Texas, this weekend, here's a pulp featuring one of his stories. As I understand it, the dates on pulp magazines were actually off-sale dates, not on-sale dates, so this issue of COWBOY STORIES would have been on the newsstands before Howard's death on June 11 and unsold copies would have been pulled a few days before that. Howard's name isn't on the cover, but inside is his story "A Man-Eating Jeopard", featuring his character Buckner Jeopardy Grimes. This issue also features a novella by Luke Short and stores by S. Omar Barker, Archie Joscelyn, Hapsburg Leibe, and Alfred L. Garry.
