Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Fifteen Western Tales, October 1942

Wanted posters show up a lot on Western pulp covers. Usually, the outlaw depicted on the poster is standing there either shooting or about to shoot. You can't really tell if the fellow on the cover of this issue of FIFTEEN WESTERN TALES is also the one on the reward dodger, but there's a good chance he is. There are stories by some fine Western pulpsters in this issue: Philip Ketchum, William Heuman, Thomas Thompson, and Frank Bonham. Other well-known authors in this one include Joe Austell Small, R.S. Lerch, John Wilstach (better known for his adventure yarns in ARGOSY and elsewhere), Carl G. Hodges (best remembered for his mystery stories and novels), and Edwin K. Sloat. Then there are the ones I'm not familiar with--P.J. Delanoye, Roy B. Angell, and W.W. Montgomery--and house names Ray P. Shotwell and Lance Kermit. I'm going to name the hero in a Western novel Lance Kermit one of these days. I'm sure this is a good issue since the Popular Publications Western pulps were consistently top-notch.

UPDATE: As Paul Herman points out in the comments, this hombre is wearing a lawman's star, so he's not the outlaw on the wanted poster. And since there's powdersmoke coming from the barrel of his gun, I reckon we can figure he just ventilated the owlhoot in question. Dadgum it, I don't know how I missed that! Thanks, Paul.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Famous Western, Summer 1944

That's a nice dramatic cover on this issue of FAMOUS WESTERN, although the hand holding the knife looks 'way too large to me. It's almost as big as the other guy's head! There are some good authors inside, including T.W. Ford, Joe Austell Small, Wilbur S. Peacock, and Archie Joscelyn. Also on hand are Lee Floren, Brett Austin (Lee Floren), Lee Thomas (also Lee Floren), Charles S. Richardson, the completely unknown to me James Lebur (he published a dozen stories in various Western pulps, but I don't recall ever coming across his name before), and house-name Cliff Campbell. Hmm, wonder if that could be Lee Floren? I wouldn't rule it out.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Western Aces, April 1943

This issue of WESTERN ACES sports an action-packed cover by Allen Anderson, an artist usually more associated with Fiction House pulps, instead of Ace. But it's a good one, and I like it. J. Edward Leithead has only one story in this issue, the lead novelette, which is kind of unusual because he often had two stories in an issue of WESTERN ACES, one of them under his Wilson L. Covert pseudonym. In my experience, Leithead is always worth reading, no matter what the by-line, and I love the title "Trail of the Hoodooed Herd". Also in this issue are stories by another favorite of mine, Gunnison Steele (Bennie Gardner), Lee E. Wells, Joe Austell Small, Stephen Payne, Orlando Rigoni, R.S. Lerch, and none other than Leslie Reasoner, no relation to me but the only Reasoner to get his name in a pulp magazine, as far as I know. (And technically, we are related, I suppose, because all the Reasoners can trace their ancestry back to one guy who came to this country in the early 1700s. But I digress . . .)