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Select the first letter of the word from the list above to jump to appropriate section
of the glossary. If the term you are looking for starts with a digit or symbol, choose the
'#' link.
NOTICE: Would you like to write about a character or magazine
that should be included in this Glossary? Email us what you have to submit and we will
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Adventure was published as a direct competitor to Argosy. Adventure mostly featured
foreign locals in their stories, as well as wild west yarns. French Foreign
Legion...Amazon River Explorers...Bronco Busting...Canadian Mounties...these and more each
and every issue, published bi-monthly beginning in 1911.
A genre of pulp that was made popular by the magazine "Adventure." Stories
included a broad range of topics from adventurers on the Amazon to the French Foreign
Legion. Adventure pulps included some of the largest number of titles.
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Hugo Gernsback has been credited with the creation of the
term Science Fiction. Amazing Stories was his first pulp, published in bedsheet format
(8x11). Amazing began mostly as a reprint publication reprinting fantastic fiction from
Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, Gernsback finally began to find authors for this new type of
fiction and the magazine continued through different owners and sizes, lasting all the way
until today as a digest sized magazine.
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Frank Munsey began Argosy as a boy's story paper and it finally made it's way as the
first pulp paper magazine. Argosy published every type of story imaginable, from aviation
to westerns. Science fiction theme stories were published before the term science fiction
was even invented. The largest stable of writers of any magazine was published in Argosy
making it probably the best fiction pulp ever published. Argosy under many different
variations of a title published one issue a week for decades and becomes one of the
hardest pulps to collect a complete file.
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- Aviation pulps began as World War I ended and the horror of battle subsided and the
heroic tales of aviators began to take hold. Aviation pulps mostly retold stories based on
World War I, but as World War II began, most of the magazine switched stories to the
current conflict. The aviation magazines never did that well during World War II, and most
died out.
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Walter Baumhofer like Tom Lovell began his career with
the lesser pulp publisher, Harold Hersey. Known as the
"King" of pulp covers, the highest praise came from his fellow artists.
Walter Baumhofer's work can be found on Doc Savage Magazine, Dime Detective, Detective
Tales, Pete Rice Magazine, Wild West Weekly, Gangster Stories, Gangland Stories, Fire
Fighters and more. Walter semi-retired from the pulps around 1936 when he finished
his last covers for Doc Savage and Pete Rice. Only occasionally would his work turn
up after that, as Walter found too many advertisers and slick work willing to pay so much
more than the average pulp publisher. His covers displayed great grace and style
which made him the most popular with all pulp publishers of the day.
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Began as a all-around pulp featuring detective, western and even aviation stories.
Later became known as the originator of the hard-boiled
detective. Credited as having the best talent writing for a detective pulp, Black Mask
included Erle Stanley Gardner, Lester Dent, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond
Chandler, Norbert Davis, Frederick Davis and more.
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- Burroughs began his career with the publication of a science fiction tale sent to
Munsey. Not knowing if the publisher would think that Burroughs was a kook for writing
such a tale, he listed himself as a Normal Bean...or being even minded. Argosy published
the story "Under the Moon of Mars" but misprinted his name as Norman Bean!
Although his science fiction tales would gather him an audience, his character of Tarzan
gave him great fame and wealth. Tarzan originally appeared in a Munsey title: The
All-Story in October 1912, and almost overnight Burroughs became a household name. Movies,
hardback books, paperback books, TV series and nearly ninety years later Burroughs'
character of Tarzan is still going strong.
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Chandler came after Hammett and is another devotee to the hard-boiled school of
detective writing. His stories were published in Dime Detective, Detective Story
Magazine, Black Mask and others. Known as a real loner, Raymond Chandler's career
mirrored that of Hammett as most of his pulp stories were redone as novels and movie
scripts.
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- Beginning in the early 20's, Clayton started his publishing empire. Some of his
titles became some of the longest running series in the pulps, albeit finishing their runs
under different publishers. Ranch Romances was published for some 50 years and
Astounding Stories ran 40 years. William Clayton published a wider variety of genres
than the average pulp publisher of his day. Science fiction, western, aviation,
adventure, detective almost all genres except that of the hero pulps. If Clayton
hadn't made a financial mistake in the early 30's and gone bankrupt, there was probably no
doubt he would have been one of the largest publishers of pulps. His best titles
were sold off to other publishers.
- LINKS FOR WILLIAM CLAYTON - Astounding Stories - Ranch Romances
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Norman Daniels, born Norman Danberg, wrote millions of words of fiction for the pulps.
He penned many different pulp characters including, Doc Savage, The Black Bat, The Candid
Camera Kid, Phantom Detective, Crimson Mask and more.
- LINKS FOR NORMAN DANIELS - Doc Savage - Black Book Detective
- Phantom Detective - Detective Novels Magazine
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Original author of Doc Savage, Lester Dent began his career as a short story writer.
Published in Top-Notch, Air Stories, Western Trails and various Dell Publication
pulps, Lester caught the eye of editor John Nanovic with a short series of stories in the
All Detective Magazine with a character by the name of Click Rush, The Gadget Man.
Although the character of Doc Savage was designed by publisher Ralston and editor Nanovic,
it was Lester Dent who fleshed out the fledgling crime fighter. Doc Savage was only
second to The Shadow in the number of copies printed per issue and some plans were made to
make it a bi-weekly. Lester Dent went on to writing for Black Mask, Argosy,
Crimebusters and other pulps, yet he yearned to break into the slicks and higher
pay. Lester Dent made a couple of inroads into hardback mystery fiction, but never
found the wider audience outside of the pulps.
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Rafael deSoto (1906-1992)
Barta Rola, Spain , a small town along the Portuguese border, was the
birthplace of Rafael deSoto. As a young man deSoto considered a life in the preisthood
before deciding upon a career in the arts. He came to New York City to study architecture
at Columbia University but the depression forced him to quit school. Like so many others,
Rafael broke into the pulp field by doing black and white interior dry brush drawings for
Street & Smith, primarily for their western titles such as Wild West Weekly, but also
for Top-Notch and others.
After two years of doing dry-brush he sold a cover to Street and Smith and
his painting career took off. He created many covers for Ace, Dell, and Standard,
but the body of work he is undoubtedly best remember for are the images he created
for Popular Publications. For Popular deSoto had as regular monthly assignments and
created long runs of covers on The Spider, Dime Dectective, Detective Tales, Black Mask as
well as a host of lesser known titles.
Rafael deSoto created well over 450 covers for the pulps before moving
into the then new paperback market in which he also led a very prolific career. [text by
Tom Roberts]
LINKS FOR RAFAEL DE SOTO - Wild West Weekly - Top-Notch - Spider- Dime Detective - Detective
Tales - Black Mask - Captain Zero
Street & Smith's DETECTIVE STORY MAGAZINE is credited with starting the trend. Although 1915 was the first
issue of that magazine, detectives in fiction runs back much farther than that. Dime
Novels and Story Papers ran stories about detectives, most of them being young well-to-do
well bred men. The detective pulp kept the stereotype in place for much of the teens and
early twenties. With BLACK MASK, the school of the hard-boiled detective
began. The genre of detective pulps is as varied as the number of titles offered by every
publisher during the lifetime of the pulps.
DIME DETECTIVE, MYSTERY, SPORTS, WESTERN, etc.
When Popular Publications began publishing in
1930, they decided to produce four premiere publications. Why four? Because that was the
number of issues it would take to fill a press. So they would produce four pulps at the
same time. The genre of magazines were western, aviation, detective and gang. At the time
all four were very popular pulp themes. Steeger found out the
hard way and his magazines began to flounder. He told a story that we would have his
secretary put off the bill collectors and he and his partner would run down the back
stairs to the pool room until they got the all clear signal. Harry Steeger in late 1931
began the title that would save his early publishing house. DIME DETECTIVE was an almost
overnight success. DIME DETECTIVE went on to spawn the rest of the "Dime"
series, but also piggybacked upon the success of the HARD-BOILED
school popularized by BLACK MASK. DIME WESTERN continued the
success in 1932 and DIME MYSTERY BOOK MAGAZINE and DIME SPORTS soon followed. Dime Mystery
Book Magazine's sales began to flounder almost immediately and Steeger cast about looking
for an alternate theme for his magazine title. After returning from Paris, France Harry
Steeger decided to pattern Dime Mystery after the theater of the macabre. Torture, horror
and terror was to be the guiding theme and soon after Dime Mystery Book Magazine was
transformed into DIME MYSTERY MAGAZINE and the genre of weird
menace was born. All four "dime" publications lasted almost the entire time
Popular Publications was producing pulps. Even when the price of the magazines rose to 15
cents, the title "DIME" continued.
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- The second in line of venerable Street & Smith hero publications. John Nanovic
was given orders to begin a second series of stories. Looking to start more of an
adventure type hero to go along with the detective mysterious type hero in THE SHADOW, John Nanovic started looking for the right type of
author. Lester Dent was given the task to ghost write a story
for THE SHADOW and from that work and the strength of a host of
character Dent had been writing for other publishers, John Nanovic gave him the series.
Doc Savage was a world traveling hero cut from completely different cloth from any other
character. Most hero pulps had a detective in disguise, but Doc Savage was different. He
spanned the globe looking to solve problems that could threaten the world. There were few
imitators, but no equal.
LINKS FOR DOC SAVAGE
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Popular Publications continued their line of
character pulps with G-8, an aviation spy/hero. G-8's adventures had little to do with the
great war outside of the fact that he flew a Spad against the Germans. He also flew
against headless men, giant floating demon heads, trained tigers that jumped from airship
to airship to kill the pilot...you get the idea. Fantastic, outrageous and absolutely fun!
All 110 issues were written by pulp wordsmith Robert J. Hogan.
Also every cover was painted by the fabulous Frederick Blakeslee.
During the late 20's and early 30's, several publishers jumped on the popularity of
such underworld figures like Al Capone. No publisher outside of Harold
Hersey made much of the genre and the numbers of magazines are small and very rare.
The gangster pulp fell in popularity with a growing morality and a public outcry against
making heroes of such criminals. Gangster pulp then gave way to the opposite genre of G-Men magazines. Gangster pulps are in high demand, mostly because
their print runs were small and the number of copies remaining are very limited.
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Good Girl Art. Pinup, damsels in distress, many styles of GGA art was seen in the
pulps. The Weird Menace magazines were the mainstay of GGA. The hapless
females tortured, in various forms of nudity was the norm. Science fiction covers
showed less than realistic attire for spacefairing women. Westerns even had tattered
clothing for it's covers. GGA in the pulp was another reason that pulps received the
bad publicity.
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- Walter Gibson was a struggling writer of magic shorts and books, as well as a sometime
contributor to several magazines before his big break with The Shadow. Walter was an
editor and erstwhile publisher of a short series pulp - Tales of Magic and Mystery, and
was lucky to have happened along to be tapped as the "biographer" of the man
behind the mysterious voice on radio of The Shadow. Walter's output set records as
he quickly took the character from a quarterly publications, to monthly and on to
bi-weekly. Rarely writing less than twenty four Shadow novels a year, Walter Gibson
also wrote for many other publications, including Crimebusters. Gibson also was a
biographer and ghost writer for different magicians of their day including, Houdini and
Blackstone. Walter Gibson went on to pen hundreds of books about everything from
Horse Racing to Magic books, yet he is best remembered as the hand behind the phenomenal
character of The Shadow.
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One of the fathers of the "Hard-Boiled" school of detective fiction.
Author of the detective with no name..The Continental Op. Wrote mostly for Black
Mask, although a few stories were also published in sister magazines of Black Mask, The
Smart Set and others. Once retired from the pulps, Hammett never wrote again, but
re-edited his stories or serials into books and movie scripts.
Hard-boiled detectives were from the gutter. This detective no longer went about
solving crimes among the rich and elite, the hard-boiled detective dug down into the
gutter and the dirt. He was hard as nails and his cases normally reflected this style.
ROBERT GEORGE (R.G.) HARRIS
- (b. 1911) When the great Walter Baumhofer informed Street and Smith he was
relinquishing the cover assignment on Pete Rice, art director W. H. James had a problem.
Pete Rice was an important title to Street & Smith, as they had recently put
“Pistol Pete Rice” on the radio airwaves as well. Baumhofer had set high
artistic standards that had come to be expected by the readers of Pete Rice. His talent
had defined the characters on every issue since its premeire. The talent of Baumhofer had
helped to raise the level of artistic merit across the entire pulp field. Baumhofer was
indeed a hard act to follow. But W.H. James had no farther to look than R.G. Harris,
who was producing exciting covers for Wild West Weekly and other Street & Smith
titles. Every pulp artist knew the work of Baumhofer. He was the top dog and all had great
admiration (and sometimes envy) for his abilities. Harris realized the responsibility ask
of him and knew they were indeed big shoes to fill. A very capable artist in his own
right, Harris had no trouble adhering to the style set by Baumhofer. After Harris’s
first issue on Pete Rice, with the artistic transition from Baumhofer to Harris going so
smoothly, James knew he had made the right artistic choice. A few months later when
Baumhofer announced his decision to was relinquishing the cover assignment on the Street
& Smith flagship title Doc Savage, art director James immediately knew where to turn.
And again R.G. Harris easily solved his problem. Born in Kansas City, Harris set his
sights early on a career as an artist. While studied at the Kansas City Art
Institute under the tutelage of Monte Crews, Harris met John Falter, who was already
working for the Street & Smith western titles. This immediately appealed to Harris who
had a strong desire to paint cowboys and scenes born of the American West. Harris moved to
New York in 1933, along with fellow Kansas City artists Richard Lyon and Emery Clark. The
trio set up shop in a studio shared with John Falter. Soon the cover assignments were
flowing, and over the next five years these four produced an incredible amount of cover
work for an array of publishers. Harris got his start working for Ned Pines’
Thrilling Group on such titles as The Feds, Thrilling Adventure, Thrilling Western, and
Thrilling Ranch. Across town at Street & Smith, Harris produced over fifty covers
alone for Wild West Weekly, and in addition to his Doc Savage and Pete Rice work, his
images also graced the covers of Complete Stories, Top Notch, and Western Story.
Harris left the pulp field for the better paying slick magazines in 1938. He continued
illustrating for the women’s magazines until 1961 when he ceased all other commercial
assignments to devoted his ample talents strictly to portraiture. R.G. Harris hung
up his brushed in 1989 and now lives happily and quietly in retirement (with no deadlines
to meet) with his wife Marjorie. [text by Tom Roberts]
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- Hero pulps, or character pulps grew from the overwhelming success of The Shadow. Heroes
ran the gamut of detectives, adventurers, science fiction, aviation, mystery and others.
Hero pulps gave way to comic books and quite a few characters made the leap to their own
comic. Among collectors, hero pulps are a major draw.
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A publisher of off-beat titles. Hersey got his start with THRILL BOOK for Street
& Smith in 1919 after working in the Copyright office for the Library of Congress.
After THRILL BOOK folded, Hersey
went to work for several other publishers such as William
Clayton for which he helped start the longest running pulp of all time: RANCH
ROMANCES. Leaving the Clayton group of magazines, Hersey went to work for Bernarr
MacFadden who then had him edit a line of magazines under the banner of Magazine
Publishers, Inc. MacFadden was a silent part owner. Hersey's claim to fame was his view
that specialty magazines catering to a specific audience could be a gold mine. He
published magazines with such titles as: FIRE FIGHTERS, SPEED STORIES, SPEAKEASY STORIES, COURTROOM STORIES, STRANGE SUICIDES,
MEDICAL HORRORS and others. A large
number of his magazines never made it past a fourth issue with only his Gangster pulp titles really doing any business.
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Mostly known for his aviation character pulp, G-8 and His Battle Aces. Hogan
wrote a massive amount of fiction, and almost single-handed wrote all of the G-8 stories
and the filler stories as well. Hogan also wrote two other series characters for
Popular, The Mysterious Wu Fang and The Secret 6. Writing from W.W.I experiences,
Hogan made his way into the pulps via the numerous number of aviation titles.
Daredevil Aces, Battle Birds, Battle Aces all saw his prose. Hogan outside of his
single character pulps rarely ventured outside of the aviation genre. When he did,
he wrote mostly western fiction.
HOUSE NAME also known as pen names
House names hide the real identity of the author. Publishers used house names to either
keep the continuity of a series going (i.e.: DOC SAVAGE MAGAZINE written by Kenneth
Robeson), or in the case of an author not wanting his name to be recognized on a
particular magazine (i.e.: Hugh B. Cave wrote under the name Justin Case for the Spicy
line of magazines), or perhaps a single author wrote many stories for the same magazine
and the publisher didn't want his name listed over and over. (i.e.: Robert Leslie Bellem
wrote under Ellery Watson Calder or Jerome Severs Perry and many others.)
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- (1885-1958) Born in White Plains, New York, Howitt was struck with a case of polio at
age four. During his time of recovery and convalescing, his father drew pictures for the
boy and encouraging him to draw also. As he got older and his affliction limited his other
physical activies, drawing became a passion for “Newton,” and he devoted more
serious attention to it. The young Howitt was quite studious and
graduated from high school at age sixteen. He then enrolled at the Art Students league in
New York City where he studied under noted the noted instructor George Bridgeman.
Howitt embarked upon a career in illustration,
and from 1910-1930 he led an extensive commercial career with paintings appearing in the
magazines Pictoral Review, Liberty, The Saturday Evening Post, Colliers, and Delineator,
all of which were extremely high profile publications of the day. In addition he
illustrated several books as well as stories for the newspaper supplemental sections, This
Week, New York Herald Tribune, and the American Sunday Monthly Magazine.
During the 1920s Howitt was commisioned to create advertising work for
several nation-wide companies that included Jello Foods, Post Bran Flakes, Devoe Paints,
Vermont Marble and Crisco Shortening. In between commercial
assignments, Howitt always devoted his time to painting landscapes. He traveled
extensively in North America, painting everywhere he went. He established a solid
reputation as a landscape painter of high quality and he exhibited his works regulary in
prominent galleries. To this day his landscapes hang in noted museuems and public
collections across the country.
As the depths of the Depression struck, Howitt apparently found himself
on shaky ground financially. Unable to earn a living from his past markets, he turned to
the pulps as a means to make a living. Howitt had reached middle-age and was much older
than many of his contemporary pulp artists just beginning a career. The forty-eight year
old Howitt could have considered the pulps nothing but a step down from the level of
succes he had achieved. According to Mrs.
Shirley Steeger, wife of Harry Steeger who knew Howitt well, he “deplored the work
— but it was meticulously done.”
But how did this prominent landscape artist and illustrator make his
way into the sordid melodrama of the pulp-paper magazines? This has been a point of
question to many.
For a number of years Howitt had rented a studio at 163 West 23rd
Street in New York City. Also renting studio space on the same floor of this building was
Jerome Rozen, who himself had been working for the pulp publishers for several years.
Oddly enough Howiit began working for the very same publishers as Jerome Rozen. It is the
belief of this writer that it was either through the advice and recommmendations, or
possibly a personal introduction from Jerome Rozen that brought Howitt to the offices of
Harry Steeger at Popular Publications and across town to the publishing empire of Street
& Smith.
Howitt’s first known pulp work appeared on the cover of The Spider
for November, 1933. He continued to paint The Spider covers for 71 consecutive months
until September, 1939. Howitt simultaneaously took on monthly assignments from Popular to
provide covers for Dime Detective, Horror Stories, Terror Tales and Operator #5. He is
also credited with created the covers for the one-shot titles The Scorpion and The
Octopus. For Street & Smith Howitt created covers for The Whisperer, Top Notch, Clues
Detective and Love Story.
But Howitt was not limited to only Popular and Street and Smith. In
additon to their work, he painted several covers for rival publishers titles such as
Adventure and Popular Detective.
From this entire body of work, the images that have recieved the most
attention and recognition are the gothic-centered paintings that Howitt created for what
has come to be known as the “weird-menace” pulps. For Horror Stories and Terror
Tales. “ ... he did a series of astonishing covers that remain unmatched as perfect
examples of the pulp vision of madness unleashed,” wrote pulp historian and author
Robert Weinberg. “His work was the stuff of modern nightmares ...,” Weinberg
added further.
- Although he created all his work with a consumate professional
approach, Howitt thought very poorly of his pulp work. Howitt had throughout his career
signed his complete name on a single line in legible block lettering, often
accompanied by the date. Shorlty after starting to work in the pulps, he ceased in signing
his namefor fear that it would damage his reputation with the slick magazines. But Howittt
was a true artist, and could not leave his work unsigned
completely. He adopted a blazoned red “H” to mark his creations. As soon as the
markets changed that would allow him to return to painting his beloved landscapes,
portraits and higher profile illustrations or advertisements, he dropped the pulp work
entirley.
Throughout his pulp career, Howitt maintained, although sporactically,
to work for such magazines as The Saturday Evening Post and Liberty. After 1940 conditions
allowed him to resume working for his former outlets. His last known
cover appear for Thrilling Detective for the February, 1940 issue.
He became well-known as a portrait painter in his later years and was
active in several art organizations. His love of nature led him to create covers for
magazines such as Outdoor Life which centered around activies or recreation in
the countrysides around the nation.
Only one single, original painting has surfaced out of all the pulp
covers that Howitt created. This fact simply adds greater specualtion to the legend that
Howitt personally burned all of the original paintings of his pulp covers out of contempt.
Today his prized landscapes are nothing but a footnote in the history of American Art
while his “moonlighting” career for the pulps has brought him greater attention,
discussion and recognition than his placid scenes of nature ever did.
He died in 1958, at his home in Port Jervis, New York.
[text by Tom Roberts]
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Beginning as a teenager in the 20's, Tom Lovell began his art career in the employ of
one of the cheapest payers of all pulpdom, Harold Hersey. Tom Lovell would soon
graduate to Popular Publications and Street & Smith and his covers would become minor
works of art. Lovell was meticulous in detail, and his covers where normally action
packed. The colors he would use as either highlights or main lighting set his work
apart from much of that present day crowd. Dramatic could best be said of Lovell's
work for such magazines as: Dime Detective Magazine, Dime Mystery Magazine, Wild West
Weekly, Detective Tales and more. Tom Lovell also did a large number of interior
black and white drawings for The Shadow magazine. It wasn't too long before Lovell's
work could be contained within the confines of a pulp page and he branched out into slicks
and ad art. Lovell's career was long and varied, as he continued his almost
photorealistic style in a series of Civil War illustrations that has been reproduced in
large format collector's prints. Tom Lovell recently passed away while driving his
car in Arizona.
Most love pulps were written for young juvenile women. The amazing thing about love
pulps was that the publishers and most of the editors were men. In fact there were a quite
a few male authors who hid behind female house names just to
sell a story. Jean Francis Webb was one such author, who wrote for many different
magazines, but he had the perfect name to sell also to the love pulps, without changing
his name.
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Mainly known as the author of The Spider. Page took over the character from
R.T.M. Scott with the third issue of The Spider. Transforming The Spider from the
typical millionaire playboy/detective into one of a brooding, schizoid crime fighter who
shows no mercy. Page wrote for many other pulp titles from Dime Detective, Horror
Stories, Terror Tales and even Street & Smith's Unknown.
Began on borrowed money by Harry Steeger and Harold Goldsmith in 1930. Popular
Publications would grow to be the largest pulp publisher
A magazine printed on inexpensive newsprint "pulp" paper. The Pulps were also
known a pulpwood magazines and given the connotation of poorly written magazines for the
masses.
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Known for his wide variety of pulp paintings, Norman Saunders ran the gamut more than
any other major pulp painter. Whether he was painting under the name of Blaine for
Saucy Movie Tales, or under his given name for a myriad of other publications, his women
was the key to recognizing his style. Norman Saunder's amazing ability could be seen
on detective covers, to science fiction covers, to sports, to westerns to any and all
genres. Never relying on a single market, Norman Saunders could very well be the
most published pulp artist ever.
Sci-Fi or Science Fiction pulps began in earnest when Hugo Gernsback started AMAZING
STORIES. Although several other editors or publishers tried to take credit for being
first, Gernsback has been credited with not only starting the first all science fiction
magazine, but even coining the phrase. Before AMAZING STORIES, ARGOSY and Munsey's other
magazines published stories with a sci-fi theme, as well as Street & Smith's THRILL
BOOK. Although Science Fiction pulps had some of the smallest base of readership, those
readers more than made up for their numbers with their all-out passion for the genre. Even
today, large numbers of science fiction pulps exist.
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An almost direct link from that was THE SHADOW, when Street &
Smith sponsored a radio program with stories being adapted from Detective Story and hosted
by someone known only as "The Shadow." Confused listeners enjoyed the program
but they asked for copies of The Shadow magazine when they visited their newsstands. Not
to miss an opportunity, Street & Smith quickly assigned an
editor (John Nanovic) and found a young writer (Walter Gibson)
and THE SHADOW was born.
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The Spicy line is best known for its usage of barely clad females being menaced by
various types of insidious creatures. The publishers who would later go on to publish D.C.
Comics, sold their line of magazines for a princely sum of 25 cents each and most of the
sales was either under the counter or hidden on racks because of their racy cover art.
Spicy line was a strange line of publications, since the publishers never deemed the
magazines worthy enough to copyright, yet they paid their authors some of the best wordage
rate going. Robert Leslie Bellem was the dean of Spicy writers, sometimes penning entire
issues under his and other names. Other well known authors also wrote for the Spicy's but
they used pennames to hide their real names for fear of being tossed out of other
magazines. Hugh B. Cave probably had the best penname for his stories with the Spicy's -
Justin Case.
 Spicy-Adventure
Spicy Mystery
Spicy Detective
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- Harry Steeger publisher or Popular Publications decided that he also would jump on
the hero bandwagon after THE SHADOW took off in sales. Steeger
got Secret Service Smith author, R.T.M. Scott to begin the series about a well-to-do
millionaire crime fighter. The Spider was both an enemy to the underworld and the police,
as both sides tried to squash the Spider. The series never took off until Steeger replaced
Scott with Norvell Page. The stories got more violent, death
and blood splashed on every page. The series became a hit and Popular began to diverge
from the practices of it's rival Street & Smith.
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- Although the numbers of sports pulps on the market is small, their numbers during the
heydays of the pulps was large. Quite a few publishers had a sports pulp on the market.
Sports pulps run the gamut from general titles like SPORTS STORY MAGAZINE that ran stories
of all sports to BASEBALL STORIES
that quite obviously ran nothing but baseball yarns.
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- Harry began his career editing aviation pulps for the Dell Magazine Group. Along with
partner Harold Goldsmith (who was working for Magazine Publishers) borrowed $3000 and
started Popular Publications in 1930. Some hard times followed, but Harry Steeger caught
his first big break with the introduction of Dime Detective in 1931 and the rest was
history. Harry Steeger thought covers were the key to capturing the reader, and that
action was the way to keep them. He had constructed a newsstand in his office and would
arrange magazines on the rack to best see what colors and designs would attract the would
be buyer. His pulps were not short on action and his heroes were perhaps the bloodiest of
all the pulps. Popular Publications would later be the largest publisher of pulp titles
after buying out several companies or their titles.
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STREET & SMITH PUBLICATIONS
- Originally a publisher of Story Paper before the turn of the century, S&S turned to
Dime Novels and then later switched some of those titles over to pulps. Street & Smith
didn't turn out more titles of pulps like Popular, but their print run was unmatched.
Street & Smith published and printed their pulps and had massive print runs for most
of their top titles like The Shadow, Detective Story Magazine, Popular Magazine, Love
Story Magazine, Doc Savage and Western Story Magazine. In 1949, Street & Smith
proclaimed the end of the pulps and ceased publication of almost every pulp. Astounding
continued on as a digest publication and they sold Love Story, Detective Story and Western
Story to Popular Publications.
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Began as a new concept, Thrill Book was edited by Harold
Hersey. Street & Smith gave the reigns to this fledgling
pulp that only saw distribution in New York City in 1919. Hersey had no other editorial
experience and yet was able to publish Thrill Book that included some of the first
fantasy/science fiction of it's kind. Going through several changes, Thrill Book was not
successful and Hersey went on to work for William Clayton.
Thrill Books are some of the rarest pulps ever and only a couple of complete collections
are known to exist.
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- The Thrilling line of publications were edited by Leo Marguiles. Thrilling along with
most every other publisher never shrank from duplicating the success of other publishers.
Seemingly as soon as Popular Publications would publish a title or theme, along came
Thrilling to duplicate. Dime Mystery from Popular - Thrilling Mystery from Thrilling. Dime
Sports - Thrilling Sports. Dime Western - Thrilling Western. You get the idea. Leo wasn't
able to get quite the same line of authors and artists to grace his magazines and so
Thrilling was never able to top Popular in sales or popularity. The strange quirk though
was that the Thrilling Group went into paperback publishing, as Popular Library, using
their stories from their pulps and reprinting them in paperback, effectively placing
another nail in the coffin of the pulps.
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Little is known by this author in regards to H.J. Ward, outside of the fact that most
of his work can be found on numerous covers for the "Spicy" line of pulps.
Spicy Mystery, Spicy Detective, Spicy-Adventure, Private
Detective, Super-Detective, Spicy Western, Speed Detective, Speed Mystery and more all
bore the distinctive artwork of H.J. Ward. Between Ward and Parkhurst, they
produced nearly 90% of all the covers for the original "Spicy" line of
pulps. His women are voluptuous, his men are evil, his themes are graphic...perhaps
this is why so many collectors seek after the pulps that grace his work.
A genre of magazines that normally had horror stories. The cover displayed a woman in
bondage or in some form of torture, while a helpless male was watching. These magazines
are highly sought after by many collectors.
Western pulps sprang straight from the pages of their predecessors the Dime Novels. The
first all-western magazine was Street & Smith's WESTERN STORY MAGAZINE, which was the
re-titling of THE NEW BUFFALO BILL WEEKLY. Western pulps were among the elite when it came
to word rate for the writers and the circulation figures for the publishers. Most every
publisher had at least one western title among their lists of magazines, with many of
those titles being issued weekly or bi-weekly.
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Writers and publishers used to call their stories yarns. As in they would weave a story
or yarn!
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Revised: October 15, 2007.
Copyright © 2004 by Adventure House.
All trademarks or product names mentioned herein are the property of their respective
owners.
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