Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Pete Rice Magazine, June 1934

You can't go wrong with a Walter Baumhofer cover, and this one featuring Pete Rice is pretty dramatic. I've read two Pete Rice stories, one by Ben Conlon writing as Austin Gridley in Pete's own magazine, which I thought was just okay, and the other one of his adventures in WILD WEST WEEKLY penned by Laurence Donovan under the Gridley house-name that I really liked. The story in this issue is by Conlon, and I've got to admit "Wolves of Wexford Manor" is a pretty intriguing title for a Western! I certainly wouldn't mind seeing the whole series reprinted and would be happy to buy those volumes. There are two back-up stories in this particular issue, both by Harold A. Davis, one under his name and one as by Rand Allison. I don't know much about Davis except that he ghosted some Doc Savage novels for Lester Dent, and I didn't like them very much when I read them all those years ago when the Bantam reprints were new. But maybe I should try something else by him one of these days.

UPDATE: I just realized I posted this cover before, almost seven years ago, and said almost exactly the same things about it. I'm too lazy to take it down and replace it, but I apologize for the accidental duplication.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Pete Rice Magazine, August 1934

I don't normally associate beautiful women with Walter Baumhofer's pulp covers, like I do with, say, Allen Anderson or Earle Bergey, but the blonde on this issue of PETE RICE MAGAZINE proves that he could paint one when he wanted to. The Pete Rice series is an odd one. Created by Street & Smith to try to recreate the success of DOC SAVAGE, it featured the heroic Pete Rice as an Arizona sheriff with a group of colorful assistants. The pulp ran for 32 issues and almost three years, with most of the novels being written by Ben Conlon under the house-name Austin Gridley. Then, after Pete's own magazine was cancelled, he appeared in 20 more adventures in WILD WEST WEEKLY, still under the Gridley name but written by Conlon, Laurence Donovan, Lee Bond, Paul S. Powers, and Ronald Oliphant. Despite all that material, few, if any, of the Pete Rice stories have ever been reprinted. I read one issue of the pulp many years ago with a Conlon novel in it, and I recall not liking it much. Even so, I'd be interested in reading more of them. Sometimes my first impression of a series doesn't hold up. At any rate, I like this Baumhofer cover, and the other authors in this issue are Harold A. Davis (who would go on to ghost some of the Doc Savage novels), Wilfred McCormick (whose juvenile sports novels were favorites of mine when I was a kid), and George Allan Moffett, who was really prolific pulpster Edwin V. Burkholder.