Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Terror Tales, July 1935

Nobody could accuse TERROR TALES, or any of the other Weird Menace pulps, for that matter, of being subtle and restrained. That's certainly true of this cover by John Howitt, which is one of the more lurid that I recall. The lineup of authors inside this issue is pretty much an all-star one for this genre: Hugh B. Cave, Wyatt Blassingame, Wayne Rogers, Paul Ernst, Nat Schachner, and James A. Goldthwaite writing as Francis James. All those guys wrote other things, too, of course, but they were prolific and well-regarded contributors to the Weird Menace pulps.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Thrilling Adventures, December 1932

Pith helmet alert! Seeing bullets whizzing through Stetsons was common on Western pulp covers, but I don't recall ever seeing any Injury to a Hat covers involving pith helmets. Surely, there must have been some. Allan K. Echols, author of the cover story in this issue of THRILLING ADVENTURES, was best known for his Westerns, but obviously he wrote some jungle yarns, too. Something about this one seems to me like the cover painting might have existed first and Echols wrote the story to fit it, but that's pure speculation on my part and could be entirely wrong. The other authors in this issue make it a pretty strong lineup: Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson, Arthur J. Burks, Anthony M. Rud, Wayne Rogers, Perley Poore Sheehan (with a Captain Trouble story--I have a collection of those and need to get around to reading them!), and Thomson Burtis. Those guys were all popular, prolific pulpsters who knew how to spin a yarn.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Thrilling Detective, May 1934

This issue of THRILLING DETECTIVE sports a creepy, eye-catching cover by Rafael DeSoto. The lineup of authors inside is a strong one: George Harmon Coxe, Johnston McCulley, Norman A. Daniels, George Fielding Eliot, Wayne Rogers, Joe Archibald, and George Allan Moffatt, who was really Edwin V. Burkholder. I don't own this issue, but I think it would be well worth reading if I did.

Forgotten Books: Spawn of the Flames - Wayne Rogers

Several years ago, Altus Press published a series called TERROR TRIOS, each volume of which reprinted three Weird Menace novellas by leading authors in that genre. SPAWN OF THE FLAMES focuses on Wayne Rogers, who was notable for writing some of the most violent Weird Menace stories in the pulps.

Rogers’ real name was Archibald Bittner. For many years he was primarily an editor, helming such iconic pulps as ARGOSY and SHORT STORIES. However, he also dabbled in writing using the Wayne Rogers name and eventually concentrated on that end of the business. During the Weird Menace boom, he was one of the most prolific and highly regarded pulpsters turning out those stories, as well as occasionally filling in on pulp hero series such as Operator #5 and The Spider.

Art by John Newton Howitt

“Spawn of the Flames”, the title story in this volume, was published originally in the June 1936 issue of TERROR TALES. The protagonist is a young man who was born in a crematorium and fears that he has grown up to have a split personality, one of whom is a vicious pyromaniac and torture killer. He comes home because his father is ill and on the verge of death, bringing his fiancee, his best friend, and his best friend’s girlfriend with him. His lawyer and stepmother are on hand, too. Some of them won’t survive, as “Spawn of the Flames” becomes as violent and sadistic as any slasher movie or splatterpunk novel. I’m not a fan of such graphic stuff in movies, but it doesn’t bother me as much in prose. Rogers’ style is incredibly fast-moving, which also helps. This is one of those stories where the plot only makes sense if you squint your eyes and hold your mouth just right, but I enjoyed it anyway.

Art by John Newton Howitt

“The Devil’s Step-Daughters” (TERROR TALES, February 1936) is set in the idyllic-seeming town of Malstead in New Hampshire, where the narrator, lawyer Ted Walton, is engaged to the oldest of three beautiful sisters who are believed to be descendants of a witch who lured young men to their deaths back in the Seventeenth Century. When a wave of grisly murders strikes Malstead and sinister black-robed figures begin prowling the streets, the placid façade of the town is shattered forever. As a mystery (which most Weird Menace tales, at their heart, really are), this one is pretty easy to figure out, and Ted Walton is an even more ineffective protagonist than you usually find in yarns like this. However, it does have Rogers’ breakneck pace and brutal action scenes going for it, so while it’s not as enjoyable as “Spawn of the Flames”, it’s still pretty entertaining.

Art by Tom Lovell

This volume wraps up with “The Mummy Pack Prowls Again”, from the April 1937 issue of DIME MYSTERY MAGAZINE. This novella also takes place in a small New England town, Waterville, which is plagued by the sudden outbreak of a mysterious malady that turns its victims into living mummies by withering their flesh until they’re just skin and bones. This affliction also drives them mad and makes them seek human flesh. In other words . . . they’re zombies, in the sense that the word is often used now. The narrator, Warren Craig, is the city manager (protagonists in Weird Menace usually have mundane occupations like that, instead of being cops, private eyes, etc., probably to make them more identifiable for the readers). Compounding the horror is the fact that his beautiful fiancee falls victim to the sinister illness. This one isn’t quite as gruesome as the other two yarns, possibly because it was published in DIME MYSTERY, the flagship of Popular Publications’ Weird Menace line, rather than the generally more graphic TERROR TALES.

Having read these three stories, my first impression is that Wayne Rogers’ work in this genre is a little too violent for my taste, or maybe I just read them too close together. (I did space them out with other stuff in between but still read all three in the span of a week and a half.) That said, I’d read more by him because his action scenes are very good and he knows how to maintain the sort of breakneck pace that I like. I can see why he was a popular writer. For now, if you’re already a fan of Weird Menace stories I can certainly recommend SPAWN OF THE FLAMES. If you’ve never sampled the genre before, this might not be the best place to start.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Strange Detective Mysteries, May 1941

This issue of STRANGE DETECTIVE MYSTERIES has a good cover, but the real attraction is the line-up of authors: Day Keene, Hugh B. Cave, Norvell Page, Emile C. Tepperman, and Wayne Rogers. That's a powerhouse bunch of pulpsters!

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Detective Tales, November 1936

This issue of DETECTIVE TALES sports a good cover by Tom Lovell and a great line-up of authors: Norbert Davis, Norvell Page, Steve Fisher, Arthur Leo Zagat, Wayne Rogers, and Fred MacIsaac. Those are some fine yarn-spinners!

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Thrilling Adventures, January 1935

Here's another pulp featuring a Robert E. Howard story, and he made the cover this time. The story is "The Treasures of Tartary", a desert adventure featuring his character Kirby O'Donnell. There's a particularly strong line-up of authors in this issue with REH, Arthur J. Burks, Ray Cummings, Johnston McCulley, Wayne Rogers, and house-names Sam Brant and Kerry McRoberts. This looks like a really fine issue.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Dime Mystery, July 1936

Have to go with a Weird Menace pulp on the day before Halloween. This issue of DIME MYSTERY features a cover by Tom Lovell and stories by several masters of the genre, including Norvell Page, John H. Knox, Paul Ernst, and Wayne Rogers. Pretty spooky stuff, I imagine.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Western Romances, November 1931

WESTERN ROMANCES was Dell's attempt to compete with RANCH ROMANCES, I supppose, and judging by this issue, they did a pretty good job of it, at least where the quality of the cover and fiction is concerned. That's a nice Oklahoma Land Rush cover by Sidney Riesenberg. Inside are stories by top-notch pulpsters Murray Leinster, F.V.W. Mason, J.E. Grinstead, Anthony M. Rud, and Kenneth Perkins. The editor was Archibald Bittner, who also wrote pulp fiction as Wayne Rogers.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Thrilling Adventures, January 1934

The Thrilling Group's Western pulps featured many covers with knives stuck into things, and here's that motif over on the company's general adventure pulp. And a reasonably thrilling cover it is, too. The lead novel, "Claws of the Red Dragon", was published under the house-name Jackson Cole, so there's no telling who wrote it, but I like the title quite a bit. Other authors with stories in this issue are Ray Nafziger (with a title like "Outlaws All", it's probably a Western, some of which made their way into THRILLING ADVENTURES), Arthur J. Burks, Allan K. Echols, Victor Rousseau, and Wayne Rogers. This looks like a really fun issue to me. I'd snatch it up and read it if I ever had the chance, I can tell you that.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Detective Tales, July 1937

I love the dangerous, gun-totin' women in many of Tom Lovell's covers for the Western pulps, and here's proof they showed up in his detective pulp covers, too. This one's a blonde, not a redhead, but still not a gal you'd want to cross. Inside are stories by Norvell Page, Paul Ernst, Wyatt Blassingame, Ray Cummings, Wayne Rogers, and more. Hope they lived up to the promise of that cover.