Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Thrilling Adventures, July 1939

THRILLING ADVENTURES may have set the record for the most covers with pith helmets on them. Somebody with more time than I have should look into that. I don't know the artist on this cover, but I like it. Inside is a pretty good lineup of authors led by E. Hoffmann Price with two stories, one under his name and one as by Hamlin Daly. Also on hand are Charles S. Strong (one of the editors at Standard Magazines, as well as a writer), Louis C. Goldsmith, Edward Parrish Ware, little-remembered Crawford Sullivan, and house-name Capt. Kerry McRoberts. I think this issue probably would be worth reading just for the Price stories. He was great at exotic adventure yarns.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Western Short Stories, June 1952

With all the action on this cover, you know it has to be the work of Norman Saunders. Seven guys, a beautiful girl with a quirt and a six-gun, and two stampeding horses. I'm not sure anybody but Saunders could have packed that much into a cover and made it work. As for the authors inside this issue of WESTERN SHORT STORIES, it's a fine group: H.A. DeRosso, D.B. Newton, Joseph Chadwick, Stephen Payne, Ray Gaulden, Joseph Payne Brennan, Ray Townsend, Roger Dee (Roger D. Aycock, probably better remembered for his science fiction), and a number of lesser-known authors including John Lumsden, Clem Yager, Jay Arrow, and house-name Ken Jason. Steve Frazee is listed on the cover but doesn't actually have a story in this issue, according to the Fictonmags Index.

Guns of the Damned - Stone Cody (Thomas E. Mount)

THE WESTERN RAIDER was a short-lived Western hero pulp that ran for three issues in 1938 and ’39. It featured the adventures of Silver Trent, a heroic outlaw sometimes known as the Hawk of the Sierras or the Rio Robin Hood. And like the Robin Hood of legend, Silver Trent has a band of colorful followers and fellow adventurers who ride with him, known as Hell’s Hawks. After the three short novels that were published in THE WESTERN RAIDER, Silver Trent returned in ten short stories and novelettes that appeared in STAR WESTERN from 1939 through 1942. I recently read the first Silver Trent novel, “Guns of the Damned”, from the August/September 1938 issue of THE WESTERN RAIDER.

This yarn opens with two Texas cowboys who have crossed the border into Mexico to look for a friend of theirs who disappeared. The friend was trying to find out who’s behind a series of rustling raids, and he’s sent word back that he suspects an outlaw named Silver Trent. His two pards who are searching for him are about to get gun-trapped in a cantina when a mysterious stranger rescues them. No bonus points for guessing that the mysterious stranger turns out to be Silver Trent his own self, and he’s no rustler. In fact, his mortal enemy, a rich but evil Mexican rancher known as El Diablo, is actually behind the raids across the border into Texas, and the two cowpokes are drawn into Silver Trent’s on-going war against El Diablo.

That’s about as complicated as the plot of this novel gets. It’s basically just a series of shootouts, captures, escapes, and epic battles, pausing occasionally to introduce more supporting characters from Silver’s friends, which include a priest with a hard right hook, a melancholy Mexican gunman tortured by religious guilt, a drunken doctor, a fast-gun gambler, an old geezer, and, of course, a beautiful girl.

Silver Trent himself is a bigger-than-life character, the sort of mythical figure who can out-shoot, out-fight, and out-ride anybody that shows up so often in Frederick Faust’s work. In fact, he reminds me quite a bit of Faust’s Silvertip, and while I have no way of knowing, it wouldn’t surprise me if the similarity in names wasn’t entirely a coincidence. Silver needs to be as competent as he is, because he’s evenly matched with El Diablo, about as despicable a villain as I’ve run across in a pulp Western.

Keeping everything moving at a breakneck pace is author Stone Cody, who was really Thomas Mount, a bit of a colorful character himself who I wrote about a while back in my review of his novel THE GUN WITH THE WAITING NOTCH. I really enjoy Mount’s over-the-top prose, such as this bit from late in the book:

The battle cry of Silver’s men!

In brazen-clanging Spanish and hard-bitten American—a sound like a trumpet call, that the desert knew and quivered to, that the mountains had flung back triumphantly in a hundred slashing whirling fights, that echoed still, fearfully, in the dreams of men who listened to it and lived to tell the tale.

“To Silver! Hell’s Hawks for Trent!” And now the sudden, staccato thunder of the guns!

Great literature, maybe it ain’t. But great literature generally doesn’t make me literally pump a fist in the air like I did when I read that line about the thunder of the guns. And that goes a long way toward explaining why I write like I do.

Altus Press/Steeger Books has reprinted the entire Silver Trent series, and I own all six volumes. I’ll be reading the rest of them soon. If you love Western pulp adventure as much as I do, I give them a very high recommendation. I love this stuff.

The Shadowed Circle #2 - Steve Donoso, ed.

The first issue of THE SHADOWED CIRCLE, a new journal devoted to the iconic character The Shadow in all his forms, was excellent. The second issue is even better.

This volume kicks off with a look at HITLER’S ASTROLOGER, a 1988 graphic novel written by Denny O’Neil and drawn by Mike Kaluta, two of the top comics creators from the Seventies and Eighties. I remember very well when this book came out and would have sworn that I’d read it, but after reading this fine review by Malcolm Deeley, I’m not sure I have. Now I have to find a copy and read it, for sure.

Shadow expert and author Will Murray contributes an excellent essay about how he and Anthony Tollin decided which Shadow novels to pair up in their long-running series of Sanctum reprints. As always, it’s an interesting, well-written piece. I’ll read anything Will Murray wants to write about The Shadow.

In a lengthy article, editor Steve Donoso uses vintage photographs by Berenice Abbott to illustrate the haunts of 1930s New York where so many of The Shadow’s exploits took place. This is fascinating stuff. I always enjoy looks back into history such as this.

In another highlight, Todd Severin and Keith Holt tackle the history of The Shadow as a pulp character, beginning with his murky origins in radio. Long-time Shadow fans have read this story before, but even so, Severin and Holt present it in such clear, concise, entertaining prose that I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. Newer fans can learn a lot from this series, and I look forward to reading future installments of it.

There’s also a review by Steve Donoso of Will Murray’s MASTER OF MYSTERY, a book collecting a number of articles and interviews pertaining to The Shadow’s authors, editors, and illustrators, plus articles about The Shadow’s connection to the Explorer’s Club (by Julian Puga) and military heraldry (by Tim King). These round out the issue very nicely, along with art by Cristian Diaz, Alvaro Fernandois, Steve Novak, John Sies, Santiago Bojorquez, Luke Forster, Mike Hammen, David Hitchcock, and the late, legendary Frank Hamilton, whose fantastic work graced so many of the pulp fanzines I’ve read over the past four decades. Kudos as well to deputy editor Rebecca Robinson and website and Facebook page director Sam Oatley. As editor Donoso says, it takes a lot of people to produce something this good, and everyone involved deserves the thanks of Shadow fans everywhere.

Speaking of the Facebook page, it can be found at facebook.com/burbank1931. You can contact the journal at theshadowedcircle@yahoo.com, and the website is www.theshadowedcircle.com . Print and digital subscriptions are available, and you can also buy single copies on Amazon. I’ve been reading the adventures of The Shadow for close to 60 years now, and I’m really enjoying this look at the character. Highly recommended.

Battling Britons 2 - Justin Marriott, ed.

Justin Marriott is back with BATTLING BRITONS 2, the fine journal he edits and publishes devoted to British war comics, which is good news indeed for comics fans.

The cover features by Justin Marriott and Paul Trimble focus on war comics set in Burma, but as always, there’s a wide variety of subject matter in this issue. Jim O’Brien takes a look at stories set during the conflict between the U.K. and Argentina over the Falkland Islands, and Justin Marriott contributes an article about Hellman of Hammer Force, one of the best-known German protagonists in war comics, along with an overview of other “good Germans” who starred in their own stories. Two real highlights are an article/interview with Gary Dobbs, one of the current COMMANDO scripters, and an interview with Keith Richardson and Oliver Pickles, the editors of a series of reprints called the Treasury of British Comics (published by Rebellion, the company that currently holds the rights to a lot of great material).

Dobbs is also the author of an excellent article about “Charley’s War”, regarded by many as the best British war comic ever published. I haven’t read that one, and since the whole run by the original writer and artist (Pat Mills and Joe Colquhoun) has been reprinted, I really ought to. But there are also plenty of other reviews and features that make me want to search for reprints or see if digital editions are available. As always, this issue of BATTLING BRITONS is going to make me add to my collection!

I wrote another column in this one in which I have short reviews of a dozen issues of COMMANDO, the long-running (since 1961!) digest comic for which several of my friends have written scripts over the years. Unfortunately, this is my final column in BATTLING BRITONS, as the press of both writing and editorial work has become too time-consuming to keep it up. I’ve really enjoyed working on these and plan to continue reading COMMANDO on a regular basis (all the new editions are available as ebooks on Amazon, which sure makes it easier for those of us stateside), as well as the reprints I’ve already picked up. And I look forward to forthcoming editions of BATTLING BRITONS. This issue and the previous ones all get very high recommendations from me.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Adventure, January 15, 1935

This issue of ADVENTURE isn't exactly loaded with big names. The cover is by Ray Dean, who was much more prolific as a pulp cover artist and interior illustrator under his real name, Stockton Mulford. With the first issue of a serial called "The Sea Plunderers" in this issue, the cover is pretty effective. Speaking of "The Sea Plunderers", its author, Berry Fleming, wrote this serial and a handful of other stories, but that's the extent of his pulp career. I don't know a thing about him. The most well-known of the other authors is probably William Chamberlain, a long-time pulpster and, in his spare time, a general in the United States Army. Also on hand are John Murray Reynolds and Robert E. Pinkerton, two names that are at least recognizable to pulp fans, and lesser-known Tex O'Reilly, Palmer Hoyt, Alfred Batson, Eddy Orcutt, and Andrew A. Caffrey.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Dime Western Magazine, June 1946

I'm not quite sure of everything that's going on, but dang, what a great cover anyway! Pure action and drama. I'm sure there's a lot of that in the stories in this issue of DIME WESTERN, too, since the authors are Walt Coburn, Harry F. Olmsted, Frank Bonham, William R. Cox, Van Cort (Wyatt Blassingame), and Ralph Perry. By this point, Coburn (supposedly) wasn't at the top of his game because of his drinking, but I still enjoy his work from all eras of his career.

Assassin - Ted Bell

(This post originally appeared on September 9, 2007.)

ASSASSIN is the second book in Ted Bell’s series about Lord Alexander Hawke, British nobleman, billionaire businessman, and freelance secret agent for the British and American governments. These books are deliberate throwbacks to the more outrageous espionage novels of the Sixties, with larger-than-life heroes and colorful, eccentric villains bent on ruling and/or destroying the world. Bell has updated that whole scenario for a post-9/11 world, of course, and the bad guys in this book are Islamic terrorists who are a. systematically assassinating American ambassadors and their families worldwide, and b. working on a concurrent plot to launch a devastating attack against the United States on American soil. Obviously, the only man who can deal with this terrible danger is Alex Hawke, even though a mysterious enemy from his past is seeking vengeance on him at the same time.

There’s a lot to like about this book. Hawke and his friends and allies are an appealing bunch, and the last 150 pages are filled with action and very suspenseful. Before that, though, the plot meanders around quite a bit and seems to take a long time to develop. There are nice set pieces all the way through the novel but too many of them have long stretches between them where nothing much happens, giving the book a padded feeling, something I didn’t think happened in the first book. Maybe I just read it too soon after HAWKE, the initial entry in the series.

Overall, I enjoyed ASSASSIN enough that I’ll definitely continue to read the series, but I’ll probably let more time go by before I tackle the third book, PIRATE.

(Update: I lied. I never went on with the series and read the third book. Or maybe I just haven't gotten to it yet. Yeah, that's it. I'll read it one of these days, once I've retired and have more time to read long books. You believe that, don't you?)

Now Available: Outlaw Ranger: Ravagers of the Border - James Reasoner

I have a new book out today from Wolfpack Publishing, the latest Outlaw Ranger novel RAVAGERS OF THE BORDER. Outlaw gangs are robbing banks, rustling cattle, murdering anybody who gets in their way, and generally raising hell on both sides of the border. Roped into the case by a former fellow lawman, G.W. Braddock, the Outlaw Ranger, sets out to discover what's really going on and bring the owlhoots to justice, no matter whether it means risking the wrath of a beautiful senorita or being tossed into a deadly sinkhole or facing the guns of a horde of vicious killers.

Most of you reading this know of my fondness for the fictional Texas Rangers Jim Hatfield and Walt Slade, and the influence of A. Leslie Scott and the other authors who contributed to those great Western pulp series on my work ought to be pretty obvious. I had a great time writing this book and hope that many of you will enjoy it as well. You can read it for free if you have Kindle Unlimited, or get a copy of the e-book for 99 cents, or pick up a handsome trade paperback edition if you prefer print.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Detective Tales, February 1942

I hope whoever has that gun hands it to the babe in the red dress. She looks a lot more capable of using it than that doofus she's tied up with. I don't know who painted this cover. Inside this issue of DETECTIVE TALES is an absolutely top-notch group of writers: Fredric Brown, Day Keene, John K. Butler, D.L. Champion, Stewart Sterling, John Hawkins, Curt Hamlin, Edward S. Williams, and William Benton Johnston. I'm not familiar with the last one of those guys, but I'll bet he was a pretty good writer to crack a Popular Publications pulp.