Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Dime Western Magazine, April 1948

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan, ragged edges and all. That’s one tough-lookin’ hombre on the cover! I think it was painted by Robert Stanley, but I’m not sure about that.

Walt Coburn leads off the issue, as he so often did, with a novelette called “Law of the Lawless”. The Table of Contents may refer to it as a novel, but it’s about 10,000 words, I’d say. And man, does Coburn pack a lot of back-story in those words, also as usual. Most of the story takes place at the outlaw hideout known as Hole-in-the-Wall, and it consists of tense verbal clashes between two owlhoots who share some history. There’s a neglected wife, a crippled kid, an attempted suicide, hidden loot from a bank robbery, and a sinister bounty hunter who has already wiped out all of the gang led by one of the main characters. Yeah, this is melodramatic stuff, but nobody did it better than Coburn. This suspenseful opening leads up to a couple of fine action scenes that provide a satisfying conclusion. I’ve been told that by this time in his career, the editors at Popular Publications were rewriting Coburn’s stories pretty heavily because his drinking caused him to turn in unpublishable manuscripts, and that may well be true. But the complex plot, the emotional torment some of the characters go through, and the sense of frontier authenticity are pure Coburn, as far as I can tell. It’s not a perfect story—there are a couple of continuity errors that can probably be chalked up to the above-mentioned boozing—but I loved it anyway. It’s just a real gut-punch of a hardboiled Western yarn.

As I mentioned last week, Tom W. Blackburn was a very dependable Western author. His story in this issue, “A Matter of Quick Buryin’”, is about a government investigator trying to break up a ring of thieves that’s been selling stolen horses to the army. Reluctantly, he winds up with a colorful sidekick in a drunken ex-preacher. The ending in this one seems a little rushed to me, but other than that it’s excellent and is still very good overall.

In addition to being a pulp writer, William Chamberlain was in the army and in fact had a long, successful career there, retiring as a general. So it’s not surprising that his numerous Western and adventure yarns for various pulps usually had some sort of military connection. “Mount Up, You Sons of Glory!”, his story in this issue, is a cavalry tale about a campaign against the Sioux in Dakota Territory in the dead of winter. It uses the standard plot of a new, heavy-handed commanding officer ignoring the advice of his more seasoned junior officers, but Chamberlain’s straightforward, effective prose, his sense of realism, and a very poignant ending elevate this to something more than the ordinary.

I’ve come to appreciate C. William Harrison as one of the better Western pulpsters. His short tale in this issue, “Too Tough to Tame”, is about a young man whose father was an outlaw, and when he’s unjustly accused of a crime, he decides he’ll go ahead and follow the owlhoot trail. There are a couple of twists in this one, one that I saw coming and one I didn’t, and that makes for a very good story.

When he wasn’t writing classic comic book scripts in the Forties, Gardner F. Fox was writing Westerns and science fiction stories for the pulps, just as he would soon be turning out dozens of paperback original novels during the Fifties and Sixties while continuing his comics career. “The Town That Bullets Built” in this issue is about a lawman who has retired but keeps getting drawn back into trouble. Fox was a fine storyteller and keeps this one moving along briskly with well-drawn characters until a couple of very good action scenes wrap things up and bring the story to a heartwarming and satisfying conclusion. I haven’t read that many of Fox’s Westerns, but this is certainly a good one.

Peter Dawson was one of the most dependable Western writers of the Twentieth Century. In real life, he was Jonathan Glidden, brother of Frederick Glidden, also known as highly successful Western writer Luke Short. I’d hate to have to pick between the two of them as far as which one was the better writer. The Peter Dawson novella in this issue, “Hell’s Free for Nesters!” is excellent. Against his better judgment, a drifting cowboy helps a nester girl whose wagon is stuck in a river, and that lands him in the middle of a range war, a land swindle, and a murder for which he’s blamed. Just top-notch stuff all the way around, with plenty of action, good characters, and polished writing.

Also on that list of most dependable Western writers of the Twentieth Century is Clifton Adams, who nearly always turned in really fine yarns. As an Oklahoma writer, Adams was very familiar with the oil industry there and wrote a number of stories and novels set in the early days of that business. “Boss of Purgatory’s Pipeline”, Adams’ novelette in this issue, finds a range detective becoming an oilfield detective when his client, the owner of an oil pipeline suffering from sabotage, is murdered before the protagonist even arrives on the scene. The mystery is a good one and fairly complex for a story of this length, and as always, Adams’ writing is very, very good, carrying the reader along at a swift pace. This is a terrific story.

In fact, this is a terrific issue, one of the best Western pulps I’ve ever read. If you own some issues of DIME WESTERN, I’d advise you to check your shelves for this one, because it’s definitely worth reading.

Atomic Werewolves and Man-Eating Plants: When Men's Adventure Magazines Got Weird - Robert Deis and Wyatt Doyle, eds.

The men’s adventure magazines of the Fifties, Sixties, and Seventies certainly published a wide variety of material, and while it wasn’t as common as some other genres, you could sometimes find tales of science fiction, fantasy, and horror in them. ATOMIC WEREWOLVES AND MAN-EATING PLANTS: WHEN MEN’S ADVENTURE MAGAZINES GOT WEIRD, the latest volume from the Men’s Adventure Library edited by Robert Deis and Wyatt Doyle, collects some of the best of those offbeat stories, with the usual great cover and interior illustrations to go with them. With some of these, their MAM appearances were reprints from other magazines such as WEIRD TALES and GALAXY, but some were written specifically for the men’s adventure market.

My favorite story is one that wasn’t a reprint when it was published in a men's adventure magazine. “The Man Who Couldn’t Die” by Gardner F. Fox appeared originally in the August 1961 issue of ADVENTURE, the iconic pulp-turned-MAM. Fox, of course, is a legendary name in comic book history and also wrote scores of well-received paperbacks in various genres. This science fiction story is about a sociopathic criminal whose brain is transplanted into a robot body so he can go on a space voyage outside the solar system in search of habitable planets. Of course, what he decides to do instead is to become the greatest criminal overlord the solar system has ever seen. But then, as you might expect, things don’t turn out exactly as he plans . . . This is an excellent, fast-moving yarn with a nice twist at the end. I really had fun reading it.

Another well-known SF author, Theodore Sturgeon, contributes “The Blonde With the Mysterious Body”, from the April 1962 issue of MEN. This one appeared originally as “The Other Celia” in the March 1957 issue of the science fiction digest GALAXY. It’s a wryly humorous, genuinely creepy tale about voyeurism.

“The Hunted” by Rick Rubin, from the October 1961 ADVENTURE, is a top-notch story about humans on the run from robots bent on hunting them down. The twist ending is a little predictable, but Rubin, whoever he was, does a really good job of creating suspense and keeping things moving at a brisk pace.

In horror fiction, you don’t get much more well-known than H.P. Lovecraft, who is represented here with his story “The Rats in the Walls”, reprinted from its January 1959 appearance in SENSATION. The story appeared first in WEIRD TALES in 1924. Another horror tale that appeared first in WEIRD TALES (in 1940) is Manly Wade Wellman’s “Song of the Slaves” from the April 1959 issue of CAVALIER. As you’d expect from a Wellman story, it’s very well-written, and even though you’ll probably see the ending coming, it’s still really effective and downright chilling.

Elsewhere in this volume, you get stories about vampire bats, vampire tarantulas, giant lizards, man-eating trees (by Robert Moore Williams, the veteran SF and Western pulpster), devil worshippers, virgin sacrifices, crazed chicken choppers (a truly weird but good story), mad doctors, evil Nazis (but I repeat myself), and a really good Korean War/Civil War story that reminded me of the great Haunted Tank comic book series. Add some fine essays and introductions by Mike Chomko, Stefan Dziemianowicz, and editors Deis and Doyle, and you’ve got one of the best volumes so far in the Men’s Adventure Library. I had a wonderful time reading ATOMIC WEREWOLVES AND MAN-EATING PLANTS, and I give it a very high recommendation. It’s available in hardback (with a bonus story) and paperback editions.

Forgotten Books: Blood Trail - Gardner F. Fox

As you can see from the back cover copy above, BLOOD TRAIL by Gardner F. Fox (originally published in paperback by Belmont in 1979) is a revenge Western, a very common plot in the genre. Fox doesn't really bring anything new to the table in the story he tells in this book (on the trail of the three men who bushwhacked him and left him for dead, the protagonist finds himself in the middle of a range war), but it's the execution that really matters in a book like this, not the plot. And in that respect, Fox does a superb job.

Not only is Abel Kinniston, the gunman/protagonist, a fully fleshed-out character, Fox give us really good portraits of his supporting characters, too, especially the villains. The description of the New Mexico Territory setting is excellent, and the action scenes and pacing are top-notch, as you'd expect from an old pulpster and comic book scripter like Fox. If you're a fan of traditional Westerns, this is a very good one and well worth reading.

I read the e-book edition that's currently available, but I also have an old, beat-to-hell paperback edition that served as the source for the scans at the top of this post. I couldn't find any other cover images of BLOOD TRAIL on-line, so I decided to post this one even though the book is in bad shape. I did take off the rubber band that's holding the pages together when I scanned it, though.

Forgotten Books: Kothar--Barbarian Swordsman - Gardner F. Fox

I must have read hundreds of comic books written by Gardner Fox when I was growing up, but at that time I had no idea he was also a novelist. The only books by him that I read were his sexy spy novels in the Lady From L.U.S.T. series, which he wrote as Rod Gray. I figured Rod Gray was a real guy and never dreamed he was the same person writing all those issues of THE FLASH and JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA I read. Anyway, I've since learned that Fox was a prolific paperbacker and wrote quite a bit of science fiction and fantasy under his own name, including a couple of sword and sorcery series. I've seen these books around for years and finally read one of them, KOTHAR: BARBARIAN SWORDSMAN, the first book in the Kothar series.

Kothar is a mercenary swordsman from the northern land of Cumberia (any resemblance to Cimmeria is totally coincidental, I'm sure), although he wasn't born there. He was found as an infant in a boat that washed up in a bay, and his true origins are unknown, at least when this book opens. Maybe his history will be revealed later on. This volume consists of three related novellas, which as far as I can tell were written for it, instead of being published elsewhere and then collected here.

In the first story, "The Sword of the Sorcerer", Kothar is working as a captain of foreign mercenaries in the land of Commoral, which is engaged in a civil war between the witch Red Lori, who has claimed the throne through sorcerous means, and Elfa, the rightful queen. Both women, of course, are breathtaking beautiful. After a battle against Lori's forces in which he's the only survivor, Kothar stumbles over the crypt of an ancient wizard who gives him a magic sword and commands him to help Queen Elfa regain the throne. The only catch is that whoever possesses the enchanted blade Frostfire can't own anything else valuable, which amounts of a vow of poverty. With that in mind, off Kothar goes to battle a sea monster, rescue another wizard who's on Elfa's side, and hack and slash with a bunch of Red Lori's soldiers before finally battling the witch in a final showdown. I don't think it's too much of a spoiler to reveal that Kothar wins and Elfa's kingdom is restored to her.

The second story, "The Treasure in the Labyrinth", finds Kothar being hired by a wealthy merchant to penetrate to the center of a labyrinth filled with deadly traps and steal the treasure that's supposed to be hidden there. No one knows what that treasure is, but everyone believes it's something immensely valuable. Kothar, naturally enough, battles his way to the center of the labyrinth, taking on several different supernatural menaces including a giant spider, rescues a beautiful girl, and eventually recovers the treasure. There's a twist, of course, but it's not too obvious and turns out to be fairly satisfying. Even more than the first story, this one shows a lot of Robert E. Howard influence.

"The Woman in the Witch-Wood" is the Lady Alaine, a sorceress who's been trapped there by an evil warlock who has taken over her castle. When Kothar meets her, of course he agrees to defeat the warlock and lift the spell holding Alaine in the evil woods. This leads to Kothar battling all sorts of mystical dangers that the warlock throws at him, then squaring off against the wizard himself. This final story in the book has a very nice twist at the end that I didn't see coming.

Kothar makes one big mistake in this book: he leaves Red Lori alive, and although she doesn't really play a part in the other stories, I have a hunch she'll show up again in later books in the series to cause more trouble for Kothar.

So what did I think of KOTHAR: BARBARIAN SWORDSMAN? Well, starting out, it struck me as generic, derivative, and downright silly. And really . . . it is. But somehow Fox won me over. His writing is vivid and fast-paced and has plenty of action, as well as being appropriately creepy when it needs to be. And the plots, while very typical of the genre, take an interesting turn here and there. Plus Kothar is a likable protagonist, not the smartest guy around but not exactly dumb, either, and certainly stalwart when it comes to battling evil. Novellas like these are the perfect antidote to the enormous doorstopper endless series that have come to dominate heroic fantasy. I had a lot of fun reading this book. I have the other four books in the series and suspect that I'll get around to them, too.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Leading Western, February 1950

LEADING WESTERN was one of the Trojan Publications pulps (as if you couldn't tell that from the cover). Another bottom-rung market, according to conventional wisdom, it featured stories by some decent authors despite that, including in this issue Frank C. Robertson, who had been around forever by 1950 (I love that title, "Crossfire in Skull City"), Robert Moore Williams, and Gardner Fox. I'm sure they were pretty entertaining yarns, too.

Forgotten Books: Crisis on Multiple Earths - Gardner Fox

After reading THE GOLDEN AGE, James Robinson's deconstruction of some of DC's Golden Age superheroes, a while back, I was in the mood to read some of the real thing, or at least a reasonable facsimile thereof. CRISIS ON MULTIPLE EARTHS, a trade paperback from 2002, reprints a series of stories from JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA that were a big deal in comics fandom in the early to mid-Sixties. Some quick background for those of you who aren't familiar with it (and for those of you who haven't muttered, "Another damn comic book post on Reasoner's blog" and clicked on to something else):

When the Silver Age was launched by the introduction of The Flash in 1956, in SHOWCASE #4, DC's Golden Age heroes were long since gone and had no place in this new version of the DC Universe. But writer Gardner Fox, who had written stories featuring many of those heroes in the Forties, remembered them and came up with a brilliant way to bring them back. He imagined another Earth, occupying the same space as the regular DC Earth, but vibrating at a slightly different frequency. That Earth, which Fox dubbed Earth-Two, was where the Golden Age characters lived. The Flash from Earth-One, Barry Allen, met the Flash from Earth-Two, Jay Garrick, in the iconic story "Flash of Two Worlds" (which I happen to have bought off the spinner rack in Tompkins' Drugstore, by the way).

Fox kept playing with that concept in a few more Flash stories, then went whole hog in the pages of JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #21, in the summer of 1963. In this story, "Crisis on Earth-One!", and its sequel in the next issue, aptly titled "Crisis on Earth-Two!", Fox reintroduced several more Golden Age characters from the Justice Society of America and had them cross the vibrational barrier to meet their Earth-One counterparts, the Justice League of America. (I missed these two issues when they were new but bought beat-up used copies of them later at Thompson's Bookstore in downtown Fort Worth.)

Well, this two-part story was a huge success, both critically and financially, and for years after that, the JLA and the JSA would team up in a two-parter every summer. The fans loved 'em. I was a semi-regular reader of JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA (I was a Marvel fan, first and foremost by then, but I read a lot of DC comics, too) and I always managed to pick up the JLA/JSA crossover. CRISIS ON MULTIPLE EARTHS reprints the first four of those annual epics, the forerunners of the annual Big Event storylines from both DC and Marvel that have gone a long way toward ruining current comics for long-time fans such as myself (or "curmudgeons", if we're being honest).

Anyway, these stories from 1963-66, with their more innocent attitudes, almost non-stop slam-bang action, and crisp scripts by Gardner Fox are just tremendous fun as far as I'm concerned. True, they're a little low-key in places, and the lack of real ambition on the part of the villains is a good example of what some have cited as the real difference between Marvel and DC during that era: Both companies could take the same basic concept, but where DC came up with Matter-Eater Lad, Marvel came up with Galactus. Despite that, while reading these stories I was flipping the pages and having a great time.

I haven't mentioned the art. The pencils in all eight stories are by Mike Sekowsky, and I knew even then that Sekowsky's art was...odd, let's say. His enormously barrel-chested figures always seemed unbalanced to me, as if they were about to fall on their faces. Anatomy aside, though, I never had any trouble following what was going on in a story with art by Mike Sekowsky. His storytelling was top-notch, and he was capable of drawing some pretty memorable panels here and there. A good inker, like Murphy Anderson on the original covers of these issues, helped a lot.

So if you're an old-time comics fan like me, CRISIS ON MULTIPLE EARTHS gets a very high recommendation. I really enjoyed reading these stories again. If you started reading comics in the past ten years, you might look at them and say, "What is this crap?"

You really had to be there.

Forgotten Books: Escape Across the Cosmos - Gardner Fox

Return with us now to the days when rocket ships had fins and square-jawed heroes carried positron ray guns. Gardner Fox’s ESCAPE ACROSS THE COSMOS has all that and more. It opens with the hero, Kael Carrick, being marooned on the prison planet Dakkan, which is actually more of an execution planet because it’s totally barren of life and anyone left there with no supplies is doomed to death by lack of food and water. This is how the Empire deals with prisoners convicted of murder. Carrick has been convicted of killing the famous scientist Hannes Stryker, who had saved Carrick’s life by rebuilding his body after the former soldier was gravely injured during a battle against an alien race. Carrick’s brain was the only thing preserved, and Stryker was able to regrow a new synthetic body around it. Got all that? This is back-story from before the book even starts.

Obviously, Carrick was framed and didn’t really kill his benefactor, but he’s left to die on Dakkan anyway. Luckily for him, the planet isn’t as bare of life as everybody thinks it is. It’s actually the secret hideout of a society of criminals (this isn’t too much of a spoiler, as it’s revealed very early on) and Carrick falls in with them. Eventually he escapes and sets out to discover who really killed Hannes Stryker and framed him for the crime. Naturally the beautiful blond crook who has fallen in love with him comes along, too.


At this point, ESCAPE ACROSS THE COSMOS takes on a certain Gold Medal-ish “man on the run” feel, despite the science fiction trappings. Fox isn’t content to leave it at that, though. Instead he piles on a conspiracy that threatens the entire galaxy and a heapin’ helpin’ of Lovecraftian horror, along with a lot of colorful, pulpish action, and it all winds up in a fine showdown with the real bad guys. Yes, it’s mostly silly, hokey, very dated stuff, and most modern SF fans would read a few pages, laugh or sneer, and toss the book aside. But if you grew up reading this sort of hardboiled adventure science fiction like I did, ESCAPE ACROSS THE COSMOS is a lot of fun indeed. It’s also about 50,000 words, instead of a bloated trilogy five or six times that long.


Gardner Fox is probably best known for writing comic books, and he turned out some of the most important, influential stories in that medium, most notably “Flash of Two Worlds”. But he was also a prolific pulpster, turning out many yarns for PLANET STORIES and the like, and he also produced a lot of paperback originals in various genres and under various pseudonyms. He was one of the best at swashbuckling historical adventures, and he created and wrote a well-remembered sexy spy series in the Sixties, THE LADY FROM L.U.S.T., under the name Rod Gray. I’ve found his paperback work to be inconsistent but have enjoyed many of his books. ESCAPE ACROSS THE COSMOS, published by Paperback Library in 1964, may have been an expansion of a pulp story, but if so, I couldn’t find any evidence of it. It shares some concepts with some of the comic book stories Fox was writing at the time, so I suspect it was probably an original. No matter what its origins, I found it to be an entertaining novel and well worth reading if you’re an old guy like me who doesn’t mind if the rocket ships have fins.