Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Mammoth Western, December 1948

That's certainly an eye-catching cover by Arnold Kohn on this issue of MAMMOTH WESTERN. The line-up of authors inside is a little eye-catching, too, but not for the reason you might expect. There's not a single author in this issue who's really known as a Western writer. Paul W. Fairman is the closest thing to that. Some of the others are Ziff-Davis house names: S.M. Tenneshaw, Alexander Blade, G.H. Irwin. The rest are science fiction authors: Don Wilcox (who has two stories in this issue, one under his own name and one as Max Overton) and Charles Recour (who was really Henry Bott). Which is not to say that the stories are bad, I really don't know. I don't own this issue and it doesn't appear to be on-line, so I'll probably never find out. But I do like the cover.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Mammoth Western, March 1950

Another dramatic cover by Arnold Kohn graces this issue of MAMMOTH WESTERN. The most well-known author inside is probably H.A. DeRosso, although there's also a Richard Brister story. The lead novel, "The Heiress of Copper Butte", was published under the name Guy Archette, normally a pseudonym for Ziff-Davis regular Chester S. Geier, but this one was actually written by Paul W. Fairman, then expanded and reprinted under his name in paperback at least twice, first by Handi-Books (an edition I own but haven't read) and then Lancer. Also in this issue are stories by Dupree Poe, Francis M. Deegan, Bill Kirk, W.P. Brothers, and Clint Young. I've never considered MAMMOTH WESTERN one of the top Western pulps, but there are still some good stories in its pages.