MARVEL SCIENCE STORIES started as a science fiction pulp, as you'd expect from that title, but after five issues, it abruptly changed to a Weird Menace pulp under the name MARVEL TALES. That experiment last only two issues, then it switched back to MARVEL STORIES, then MARVEL SCIENCE STORIES (again), and finally MARVEL SCIENCE FICTION. None of them were successful, but it wasn't for lack of trying. This is the second and final issue under the MARVEL TALES name, with a cover by J.W. Scott that's certainly worth of a Weird Menace pulp. Most of the authors inside were top-notch, although they tended to use pseudonyms, maybe because of the generally disreputable air the whole enterprise gave off. The lead story in this issue is by Nils O. Sunderland, who was really Jack Williamson, and backing him up are Robert O. Wentworth (Edmond Hamilton), Russell Gray (Bruno Fischer), and a couple of guys using their real names, Frederic Arnold Kummer Jr. and George E. Clark. If you want to check out this pulp for yourself, the entire issue can be found here.
J.W. Scott liked to use blondes on his Western pulp covers instead of redheads, but he teams them with the usual Stalwart, Red-Shirted Cowboy and Wounded Old Geezer, as on this issue of WESTERN SHORT STORIES. Ed Earl Repp is the author with the biggest name in this one, and he's on hand twice, once as himself and once as Brad Buckner. Other authors include the distinctively named Carmony Gove, Jack Sterrett, Rolland Lynch, Nels Leroy Jorgensen, Harold F. Cruickshank, Luke Tyler (who sounds like a house-name but apparently wasn't), and Ken Jason and John Cannon, who were house-names. I don't own this issue or any other issues of this pulp, as far as I remember, but it looks pretty good. For a lower-rung Western pulp, WESTERN SHORT STORIES ran a long time, from December 1936 to January 1957.
I really like the dramatic cover on this issue of WESTERN NOVEL AND SHORT STORIES. I think it's by J.W. Scott, but as always when it comes to art, I could be wrong about that. I'm not familiar with the author of the lead novel, James Dorn, but he appears to have been very prolific over a two-year span from 1939 to 1941, turning out two dozen stories, mostly novellas and novelettes, during that period. Then nothing. Such things always make me wonder what happened to cut short what appeared to be a promising career. Or was James Dorn a house-name? Likely we'll never know. Ken Jason, definitely a house-name, also appears in this issue, as do Ed Earl Repp and Mojave Lloyd. I don't own this issue, and the copy in the scan from the Fictionmags Index has some water damage, but it looks like a mighty fine Western pulp anyway.
On this issue of WESTERN NOVEL AND SHORT STORIES, J.W. Scott gives us his version of the Iconic Trio: the Stalwart Cowboy, the Gun-totin' Redhead, and the Old Geezer. The Old Geezer is tied up instead of wounded, and the Redhead doesn't look particularly angry, but the Cowboy is definitely stalwart and wearing a red shirt, to boot. (Red shirts on Western pulp covers don't have the same meaning as red shirts on STAR TREK, by the way.) A fine bunch of writers can be found inside this issue, too: Eugene Cunningham, Harry Sinclair Drago, Larry A. Harris, Raymond S. Spears, and Ken Jason, a house-name but usually used by one of the top authors. I don't own this one, but it looks like a top-notch Western pulp that's probably well worth reading.
SKY DEVILS was a short-lived (7 issues) air war pulp from the Red Circle group. This is the first issue, and it has a nice cover by J.W. Scott. Inside are some of the usual suspects--Robert Sidney Bowen, John Scott Douglas, and Anatole Feldman writing as Anthony Field--plus some names that may well be pseudonyms and/or house-names: Terry Dell, John Loring, John Carlisle, and "Ace" Denver (the by-line has the quotes in it). It wouldn't surprise me at all if all of those were either Bowen or Feldman.
I like the J.W. Scott cover on this issue of a little-remembered Western pulp that ran for about five years in the mid-to-late Thirties with a few name changes along the way, starting as WESTERN FICTION MAGAZINE, becoming WESTERN FICTION MONTHLY, then going back to WESTERN FICTION MAGAZINE and finally ending up as WESTERN FICTION. I don't own any of them and don't think I've ever laid eyes on an issue. But they had decent covers and plenty of good writers appeared in their pages. In this particular issue are stories by William MacLeod Raine, Alan LeMay, Harold Channing Wire, Hugh Pendexter, and the lesser-known Forrest R. Brown. I'm sure the readers who picked it up back then enjoyed it.
TOP-NOTCH DETECTIVE lasted for only three issues, of which this is the first one. That cover has enough going on that I thought at first it might be by Norman Saunders, but it's actually by J.W. Scott. The fact that this pulp didn't last long couldn't be due to the quality of the authors in its pages. This issue features stories by Cleve F. Adams, Arthur J. Burks, G.T. Fleming-Roberts, Edward Ronns (Edward S. Aarons), Norman A. Daniels, Henry Treat Sperry, and Orlando Rigoni, as well as a number of other, lesser-known authors. That's a pretty strong lineup and an indication of a pulp worth reading.
J.W. Scott didn't do a lot of covers for science fiction pulps, concentrating instead on Western, detective, and sports titles, but the SF covers he did were good ones, like this issue of MARVEL STORIES. Raymond Z. Gallun and John Russell Fearn are the best-known authors in this one. The other authors on hand are Henry Haase, A. Fedor, Richard O. Lewis, D.D. Sharp, and John L. Chapman. If you're like me, some of those names make you go, "Who?" If you'd like to check out this issue, you can find it online here.
I'm not sure I've ever heard of ALL STAR ADVENTURE FICTION, let alone come across a copy. But I'm also not sure why it's not better known and wasn't successful at the time, running for only seven issues. It had decent covers by J.W. Scott, including this one, and some fine authors. This issue features stories by Donald Barr Chidsey, J. Allan Dunn, Frank Richardson Pierce, Lemuel de Bra, Rollin Brown, and Arthur Hawthorne Carhart, all of them fine pulpsters who appeared regularly in the top magazines. Their stories here may well have been rejects from ARGOSY, ADVENTURE, etc., but they were probably still pretty good.
We have three characters in the J.W. Scott cover on this issue of WESTERN NOVEL AND SHORT STORIES, but it's not the usual trio of Stalwart Cowboy, Wounded Old-timer, and Angry, Gun-Totin' Redhead. Even so, this is a pretty effective cover. I like the jodhpurs on the blonde. Inside are stories by Ed Earl Repp, as himself and as Brad Buckner, Rolland Lynch, Carmony Gove, and Ken Jason, a house-name used by, among others, D.B. Newton, Jonathan Glidden (better known as Peter Dawson), Bennie Gardner (better known as Gunnison Steele), Victor H. White, and editor Robert O. Erisman. So there's really no telling who wrote the Ken Jason story in this issue. I like the story's title, though: "Gun Raiders of Silver City". "Last Notch in a Killer's Colt" and "Satan's Gun-Ghost" are also good titles.
There's a lot going on in this cover by J.W. Scott. I like it. This issue of MARVEL SCIENCE STORIES features stories by authors I've heard of but read very little or nothing by: Frederick Arnold Kummer Jr., R.R. Winterbotham, R. DeWitt Miller, Lloyd Arthur Eshbach, and Harl Vincent.
The cover by J.W. Scott for this issue of DETECTIVE SHORT STORIES looks more like it was done for a Weird Menace pulp, but hey, that's all right with me. The fumes rising from that beaker certainly are strategically placed, aren't they? Inside are stories by a couple of my favorite pulp authors, E. Hoffmann Price and Donald Barr Chidsey, along with the prolific Anatole Feldman (writing as Anthony Field), Oscar Schisgall, and assorted house-names and little known authors.
