Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Gun-Swift Western, September 1938

This is a pretty obscure Western pulp. I don't know how many issues there were, since only one has been indexed on the Fictionmags Index. This is Volume 1, Number 5. Nor do I know who painted the cover. But the group of authors inside is a decent one: Ed Earl Repp, J.E. Grinstead, Hapsburg Liebe, Carmony Gove, and Clem Yore. Those hombres generally knew what they were writing about.

UPDATE: On Facebook, John Locke provided some information from the magazine AUTHORS & JOURNALISTS about GUN-SWIFT WESTERN and its editor/publisher (?) Z.S. Sklar. From the October 1939 issue:

Who Is Z.S. Sklar?

Col. John J. Boniface, who writes under the pseudonym of Wilton West and various others for the adventure magazines, sends us a heavy sheaf of correspondence which he defines as a serial entitled, "The Mystery of Z.S. Sklar."

The opening installments of this engrossing serial relate to the call of a magazine entitled Gun-Swift Western, of 19 Avon Place, Springfield, Mass., for manuscripts. The call brought a manuscript last spring from Col. Boniface under one of his pennames, Gordon Strong. Not hearing from the manuscript, the author wrote several letters of inquiry, which were never answered, although the letters were not returned. The Railway Express Agency, in whose hands the matter then was placed, had no better luck, reporting: “Unable to contact the party.”

THE AUTHOR & JOURNALIST, writing in behalf of the author, had a little better luck. In response to its inquiry, came a brief typewritten note: “Magazine has been discontinued.--Z.S. Sklar.”

Acting on this information, the author put the matter into the hands of the post office department. Though declining to take action, the inspector at Boston, Mass., informed him that other writers had complained, and reported that their manuscripts were later returned by the Double-Action Publishing Co., of New York. But Cliff Campbell of the D-A group reported when queried that he had no record of the yarn.

Final appeal was made to the police department of Springfield--and here the mystery not merely persisted, but deepened. Quoting from the letter of John L. Maloney, chief of police:

“While I have caused a thorough investigation to be made, I am unable to locate Z.S Sklar or the Gun-Swift Western magazine at 19 Avon Place, this city. Inquiries were made of the janitor of the above-mentioned address, which is an apartment block in the residential section, who informed our investigating officer that Sklar or this magazine company which you mention has never been located at that address. Inquiries were also made of the letter carrier who delivers mail in this district, who states that he has never delivered mail to Sklar at 19 Avon Place. He is not receiving mail at our local post office. His name does not appear in our city or telephone directory.”

Evidently it all never happened--but others who are in like position must join the author in wondering how come that the magazine did receive manuscripts at that address, return some, and contrive that others were returned through the Double-Action group. We hate to see a masterly and persistent job of sleuthing for a lost manuscript, such as that conducted by Col. Boniface, end up in a blind trail.

 
From the November 1939 AUTHOR & JOURNALIST:

 
Responding to the editorial in our last issue, relating to the mystery of Gunswift Western and Z.S. Sklar, Louis H. Silberkleit, president of Winford Publications, Inc., writes: “Gunswift Western was not connected in any way with the Double Action Group. It so happens that when the magazine was discontinued, the editor, who certainly did run his business from 19 Avon Place, Springfield, Mass., approached us for a job, and was hired. He asked if we would permit him to have his mail forwarded from Springfield to this office. We said yes. That's all we know about the situation.”

I'm always fascinated by stuff like this, and many thanks to John Locke for providing it.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Wild West Weekly, September 21, 1940

I haven't posted a WILD WEST WEEKLY cover for a while and figured it was time. This painting by Duncan Coburn features an old codger, one of my favorite types of Western supporting character. Inside are some fine authors, including a Tommy Rockford story by Walker A. Tompkins (a series that really needs to be reprinted) and yarns by Chuck Martin, C. William Harrison, and Hapsburg Liebe writing under the house-name Philip F. Deere. The lead novella is by Shoshone Gwinn, actually William R. Gwinn, an author I'm not familiar with. But a while back I read and reviewed an early Gold Medal novel called DEATH LIES DEEP by William Guinn, evidently the only thing he ever wrote. I wonder if that could be the same guy despite the slight difference in spelling in the last name. We'll probably never know, but such speculation interests me. 

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Western Story, December 5, 1942

This cowboy's got a lot of trouble coming at him in this cover by H.W. Scott for WESTERN STORY, the granddaddy of the Western pulp genre. Inside this issue is the novella featured on the cover, "Salinas Showdown" by Bennett Foster, plus other stories by Wayne D. Overholster, Gunnison Steele (Bennie Gardner), Hapsburg Liebe, Cliff Walters, and Kenneth Gilbert. That's a solid lineup of Western authors.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Argosy, August 17, 1935

Yes, the serials are annoying and the bane of a collector's existence, but I love ARGOSY anyway. There was just so much fine fiction and so many great authors to be found in its pages. This issue has a cover by Paul Stahr, who did most of them for the magazine during the Thirties. The lead story is a circus yarn by John Wilstach. I haven't read this one, but I've read other circus stories by Wilstach and enjoyed them all. Also on hand are Frederick Faust (twice, as Max Brand and Dennis Lawton), H. Bedford-Jones, Borden Chase, Anthony M. Rud, and Hapsburg Liebe. And that's just a typical issue of ARGOSY in the Thirties, the magazine's glory days as far as I'm concerned. 

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: All Western Magazine, December 1936

The Gun-Totin' Redhead, a fixture on the covers of Western pulps from Popular Publications, even shows up on Dell's ALL WESTERN MAGAZINE, as in this cover by Arthur Mitchell. She doesn't appear particularly angry in this one, more like annoyed, but she's still ready to burn some powder and throw some lead. It's a safe bet that plenty of powder gets burned inside this issue, with stories by Tom Roan, Charles M. Martin, Hapsburg Liebe, Sam H. Nickels, Galen C. Colin, house-name Clay Starr (who might well have been Martin, too), and lesser known authors Victor Kaufman and Stanley Hofflund.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Western Short Stories, August 1942

Not many Western pulps had Halloween covers, at least that I've been able to find, and I think I've used all of them in past years. So this year I'm just going to fall back on an old favorite, Norman Saunders, with this cover for WESTERN SHORT STORIES. "All-Star Stories", it says, and based on the authors inside, that's a pretty solid claim. In this issue, you'll find stories by D.B. Newton, Dean Owen, H.A. DeRosso, Tom W. Blackburn, Gunnison Steele (Bennie Gardner), James P. Olsen, Hapsburg Liebe, Ralph Berard (Victor White), James C. Lynch, and Raymond W. Porter. Those are all prolific, well-regarded pulpsters.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Top-Notch, July 1936

I've noticed that Tommy guns seem to show up fairly often on the covers of TOP-NOTCH. I'm not sure who painted this cover. Tom Lovell, maybe. There's no doubt some good authors contributed stories to this issue, however: Harry F. Olmsted, Carl H. Rathjen, Wilfred McCormick (author of a bunch of young adult sports novels I read as a kid), Hapsburg Liebe, Samuel Taylor, and Jack Sterrett. I'm familiar with TOP-NOTCH mostly because that's where Robert E. Howard's El Borak stories were first published, but they put out plenty of other good adventure yarns, too.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: All Western Magazine, October 1936

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That's my copy in the scan. ALL WESTERN MAGAZINE, and for that matter, the other pulps published by Dell, are little remembered these days, but I’ve read several issues of ALL WESTERN and found them to be very solid. The cover on this issue was painted by Arthur Mitchell, who did most of the covers for this pulp.

The issue leads off with a novella by Tom Roan, “The Two-Gun Sheriff of Painted Rock”. Roan was most prolific in the Western pulps from Popular Publications, but he appeared in others as well. This yarn begins with a couple of owlhoots bushwhacking a rider who they believe to be the new sheriff on his way to tame the wild town of Painted Rock. Their unfortunate mistake sets in motion a chain of violent events as the new sheriff clashes with the crooked saloon owner who runs the town. It’s a stereotypical plot, but Roan keeps things moving very fast and has a good touch with an action scene. He’s never been one of my favorite Western pulpsters, but he’s dependably entertaining, and so is this novella.

Miles Overholt sounds like a pseudonym, but evidently that was his real name. He had a long, prolific career as a pulpster stretching from 1909 to the early Fifties, writing a variety of genres early on and then concentrating on Westerns. His story in this issue, “Gunsmoke Money”, is the first thing I recall reading by him. The protagonist is a young, drifting cowboy who’s forced to kill an hombre trying to steal his horse. The dying man asks him to deliver some money that’s in his saddlebags, and the cowboy’s promise to do so lands him in the middle of a range hog’s attempt to take over a beautiful young woman’s ranch. Nothing new there, but Overholt spins his yarn in such a breezy, fast-moving fashion, and his protagonist is so likable, that I really enjoyed this story and will be keeping my eyes open for more of his work. As far as I can tell, he never wrote any novels, just short fiction.

I’ve read a number of stories by Hapsburg Liebe over the years. His contribution to this issue is the short story “The Britches Kid”, which finds a prodigal son returning home to help save his father’s ranch from yet another range hog. It’s very different from the Miles Overholt story with a similar plot, and not as well written as Overholt’s story, to be honest, but several interesting, offbeat characters make this one worthwhile.

Charles M. Martin, who also frequently wrote as Chuck Martin, was a very prolific Western pulpster who worked as a real cowboy in his younger years. His work is heavy on pseudo-Western dialect and standard plots, but he wrote good action scenes and kept his yarns moving right along. His story in this issue, “Casa Grande Bullets”, find two Arizona Rangers trying to arrest a couple of bank robbers, and the ensuing shootout results in a vengeance quest that leads across the border into Mexico. It was entertaining enough to keep me reading but pretty forgettable at the same time.

The novelette “Lightning in Levis” is by Harry F. Olmsted, one of my favorite Western pulp authors. Some have claimed that Olmsted farmed out all of his work and never wrote anything on his own, but I don’t believe that. I don’t doubt that he might have gotten some help from other authors from time to time. That’s common among high-producing writers, and although I haven’t counted them, I read somewhere that Olmsted is credited with more than 1200 stories. The voice in the ones I’ve read is pretty consistent. That said, the tone in “Lightning in Levis”, which features a number of colorfully named characters and a convoluted plot, seems a little goofier than the usual Olmsted yarn. So I guess it’s possible somebody else contributed to this one, or maybe Harry was just feeling a little more whimsical than usual when he wrote it. At any rate, it’s an entertaining tale that finds the Wild Bunch (Butch, Sundance, and the rest of the boys) clearing their names after being framed for some robberies and killings they didn’t commit.

Arthur H. Carhart (sometimes billed as Arthur Hawthorne Carhart) is a name I’ve seen on a lot of Western pulps, but I don’t recall ever reading by him until now. “A Streak of Powder” is the story of two rival ranchers trying to capture the same outlaw so they can use the bounty on him against each other. It’s not a bad plot, but the writing is very bland and never hooked me. I finished this one, but it took some effort to do so.

Carson Mowre is another author I haven’t read before. His story “Timber Foot” is about a ferry operated by an ex-outlaw who helps other owlhoots escape from the law, all while waiting to take vengeance on an old enemy. It’s an intriguing idea, and Mowre does a fairly good job with it. The twist ending is pretty predictable but the story overall is enjoyable.

I like S. Omar Barker’s Western poetry and non-fiction, but his humorous short stories don’t appeal to me. “Two Tough Tails”, in this issue, is part of his Boosty Peckleberry series, which involves cowboys with colorful names sitting around the bunkhouse telling shaggy dog stories. I didn’t care for it.

There are some good stories here from Roan, Olmsted, Overholt, and Mowre, but taken as a whole, this is probably the weakest issue of ALL WESTERN I’ve read so far. Still, I’m glad I read it, of course. I’ve never read a Western pulp that didn’t provide some entertaining yarns.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Cowboy Stories, June 1936

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.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Western Adventures, June 1942

There were always a lot of good authors in WESTERN ADVENTURES. In this issue, that includes Norman A. Fox, Giff Cheshire, S. Omar Barker, Gunnison Steele, Hapsburg Liebe, Rolland Lynch, C.K. Shaw, and Ralph Yergen. I've always found the covers on WESTERN ADVENTURES a little lacking, but the authors are consistently very good.

Forgotten Books: Pulpwood Days, Volume 2: Lives of the Pulp Writers - John Locke, ed.

I always like reading about authors, especially pulp authors, so PULPWOOD DAYS, VOLUME 2: LIVES OF THE PULP WRITERS is targeted right at me. Edited by John Locke and published by Off-Trail Publications in 2013, I’m just now catching up with it.

This is a collection of twenty articles by pulp authors published in various writer’s magazines such as WRITER’S DIGEST and THE AUTHOR AND JOURNALIST, from the Twenties to the Fifties. Included are articles by a number of Western pulpsters whose work I’m very familiar with: Chuck Martin, Hapsburg Liebe, Tom W. Blackburn, Frank H. Bennett (who wrote Westerns as Ben Frank), and Tom Curry, whose 12,000+ word memoir is the centerpiece of the volume as far as I’m concerned. There are other big names as well: Arthur J. Burks, Steve Fisher, Eustace L. Adams, Thomas Thursday, Harold Q. Masur, and Jean Francis Webb. Then there are the writers I know little or nothing at all about, such as Walter J. Norton, Ludwig S. Landmichl, and Paul E. Triem. All of them have interesting things to say, though.

I’m fascinated by how writers work and the stories behind the stories, so to speak, and there’s plenty of that here. As you’d expect since they’re all by yarnspinners, even articles like these are well-written and entertaining. I really enjoyed this book. There’s a companion volume, PULPWOOD DAYS, VOLUME 1: EDITORS YOU WANT TO KNOW, as well as an earlier collection of writer’s magazine articles by assorted pulpsters, PULP FICTIONEERS. I’ve already ordered copies of both of them. In the meantime, if you’re a fan of the pulps or writing in general, I give this one a high recommendation.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: All Detective Magazine

ALL DETECTIVE MAGAZINE wasn't all that successful for Dell, running less than three years, but it had some good covers, like this one by Rafael DeSoto, and some fine authors, including in this issue Erle Stanley Gardner, Frederick C. Painton, Dwight V. Babcock, Edward P. Norris, and Hapsburg Liebe. I love that redheaded babe's expression.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Top-Notch Magazine, October 1, 1925

I don't know about you, but I don't remember the last time I read a gripping polo story. Or any kind of polo story, for that matter. But C.S. Montanye provides one in this issue of the long-running pulp TOP-NOTCH. Montanye is best remembered, if at all, as one of the authors of the Phantom Detective novels under the house-name Robert Wallace. In fact, I think I recall reading that Montanye died in the middle of writing a Phantom novel and someone else had to finish it. He had a long, prolific career in a variety of pulps, though. Other authors of note in this issue are Burt L. Standish, S. Omar Barker, Hapsburg Liebe, Nels Leroy Jorgensen, and William Merriam Rouse. Actually, I kind of like that cover and the title "When the Mallet Flashed". If I was going to read a polo story, it might be that one.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Short Stories, October 25, 1935

Another good-looking issue of SHORT STORIES with a fine Mountie cover by Frank Spradling and stories by the all-star line-up of H. Bedford-Jones, Clarence E. Mulford, Harry Sinclair Drago, L. Patrick Greene, Hapsburg Liebe, S. Omar Barker, and Richard Howells Watkins. SHORT STORIES was always a high quality pulp.