I don't know who painted the cover on this issue of FAR EAST ADVENTURE STORIES, but it's pretty eye-catching. That's a tough-looking Cossack. I assume he's the protagonist of Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson's serial "The Red Cossack". This issue has a sterling lineup of authors that also includes H. Bedford-Jones, Hugh B. Cave, Lawrence G. Blochman, Chart Pitt, and Jack D'Arcy (D.L. Champion). Also on hand are W.C. Harding, better known under his pseudonym Anson Hard, along with H.C. Langer, real name Hedwig Langer (never heard of her), and newcomer H. DeWitt Thomason, who has no other credits in the Fictionmags Index, so his story here may well be the extent of his career. FAR EAST ADVENTURE STORIES didn't last long, only a dozen issues, but it published some good stuff.
Walter Baumhofer is one of my favorite pulp cover artists, and I like this whimsical depiction of a harmonica-playing cowboy fending off an empty tomato can hurled at him by some listener, but I'm not sure how appropriate the scene is for a pulp subtitled "A Magazine of Hair-Trigger Hombres". But maybe that description refers to the music critic instead of the fella with the harmonica. I'd expect something more hard-bitten from a magazine called WESTERN OUTLAWS, but hey, owlhoots can enjoy a tune now and then, too. The best-known author in this issue is William Colt MacDonald, one of the big names of the pulp era and all the way through the Sixties, really. Chart Pitt and Thomas Thursday are on hand, too. Other than that, the writers are all unknown to me: Wolf Wilson, Willard E. Hawkins, Albert Wm. Stone, J.R. Johnson, Al H. Martin, R.T. Barkley, L. Simpson Turner, Charles P. Gordon, and Ludwig Stanley Landmichl. I may have heard, vaguely, of one or two of those, but I don't know anything about them. Still, I like the cover, a little odd though it may be, and MacDonald was always worth reading.
RODEO ROMANCES yesterday, NORTH-WEST ROMANCES today. This is actually a fairly significant issue of the iconic "Northern" pulp because it features Dan Cushman's first published story, "Girl of the Golden Lode". And it's featured prominently on the cover, to boot. Also on hand in this issue are Tom W. Blackburn, Victor Rousseau, Chart Pitt, and lesser-known writers Ralph Cunningham, Glenn Vernam, and Douglas Durkin.
I don't know the artist (Richard Lyon, maybe?), but this is an eye-catching cover on this issue of THRILLING ADVENTURES. Nor am I familiar with Crawford Sullivan, evidently the real name of the author who wrote the featured story. But I know the work of the other authors in this one: Tom Curry, Frederick C. Painton, Jack D'Arcy (D.L. Champion), Chart Pitt, S. Gordon Gurwit, and William Merriam Rouse. An adventurous bunch, indeed!
ACTION STORIES published a lot of Westerns, and the covers reflected that, especially from about 1930 on. But it also published all the other genres of adventure fiction and that can be seen on some of the early covers such as this one by H.C. Murphy. The stories in the January 1927 issue include the cover-featured Alaskan yarn by Chart Pitt, an author I'd managed never to hear of until now, despite the fact that he had a 30-year career in the pulps, plus a jungle tale by Frederick Nebel, a historical by A. deHerries Smith, and nautical adventures by Albert Richard Wetjen and Bob Du Soe. That's a pretty good mix of exciting stories.
.jpg)
