Happy Thanksgiving!

A very happy Thanksgiving to all of you who celebrate the holiday. As always, I have a great deal to be thankful for, including all of you reading this blog. I appreciate your patience and your continued interest after all these years. That's the First December 1930 issue of TOP-NOTCH MAGAZINE, by the way, and it looks like a pretty good issue with stories by Donald Bayne Hobart, John Wilstach, Ben Conlon, and a Kroom, Son of the Sea yarn by house-name Valentine Wood. (I feel confident in saying that no one else will mention Kroom, Son of the Sea to you this Thanksgiving, but feel free to bring him up around the dinner table if you want to.)

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Street & Smith's Top-Notch, December 1932

TOP-NOTCH, despite its name, definitely played second-fiddle to ARGOSY, ADVENTURE, BLUE BOOK, and SHORT STORIES when it comes to adventure pulps, but even so, it published some good fiction. I like the title "Fandango Island", Fred MacIsaac was a dependable author, and John Coughlin's cover illustrating the story is pretty good. Also in this issue are stories by Leslie McFarlane (ghost of the Hardy Boys!), Galen C. Colin, Lee Bond with a Western novelette under the house-name Tex Bradley, Kenneth Gilbert, Tom J. Hopkins, Ben Conlon with a serial installment under the house-name Ralph Boston, and a Zip Sawyer story by Reginald Barker writing as Vance Richardson (I have no idea who Zip Sawyer was; not a bad pulp character name, though). That's a solid enough line-up I suspect this was an entertaining issue.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Street & Smith's Wild West Weekly, January 8, 1938

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my somewhat battered copy in the scan. The cover art is by H.W. Scott, and it’s an excellent depiction of T.W. Ford’s series character Solo Strant, also known as the Silver Kid because of the silver conchos on his shirt and hatband, the silver-inlaid butts of his guns, and the silver death’s-head clasp on his hat's chin strap. Ford was tremendously prolific in several genres—Western, sports, detective, and aviation—as well as working in the pulps as an editor, but the Silver Kid series is probably his magnum opus. He wrote approximately 60 Silver Kid stories, all of them novella length, which is a pretty significant body of work. They appeared in WILD WEST WEEKLY from 1935 to 1941, then in various Columbia Western pulps from 1942 to 1952. Solo Strant is a small but deadly gunfighter/adventurer who’s not above selling his gun skills if he believes it's for a worthy cause.

In this issue’s lead novella, “Traitors Ride the Sundown”, Strant is hired to find out who’s trying to murder a rancher who has a spread in the Sundown Hills. On the way to take the job, he runs into trouble at an outlaw roadhouse in Bad Man’s Pass but is helped out by a friendly old-timer who is headed in the same direction. When Strant reaches his destination, he has to deal with several bushwhackings and murders before he untangles what’s going on. There are a couple of occasions where someone is about to give him some vital information, only to wind up dead. The plot is pretty simple and straightforward and doesn’t contain any surprises, but I really enjoy the way Ford writes. His punchy, action-packed style really races along and Solo Strant is a very likable protagonist. I’ve read several Silver Kid novellas before and always enjoyed them. “Traitors Ride the Sundown” is also quite entertaining. If somebody were to reprint this series, I’d certainly be a customer for it. Until then, I’ll read ’em where I find ’em.

Ben Conlon is best remembered for writing the Pete Rice stories, which appeared in the character’s own magazine and also in WILD WEST WEEKLY, under the pseudonym Austin Gridley, but he wrote a couple of hundred Western, sports, and adventure yarns for various pulps and under various pen-names over the years. He has a stand-alone story, “Texas Blood”, in this issue under his own name. It’s about a young former Texas Ranger starting a ranch in New Mexico and running into rustling trouble. The stereotypical pulp Western dialect is really thick in this one. Everybody talks that way. My Mangy Polecat Threshold is higher than most people’s, but Conlon overdoes it to the point that I almost gave up. I’m glad I didn’t because, other than the dialogue, his writing is pretty clean and swift and vivid, and the plot has some clever twists leading to a smashing climax. I wound up enjoying the story quite a bit.

J. Allan Dunn wrote approximately 160 stories for WILD WEST WEEKLY about a young Texas Ranger named Bud Jones. This issue’s yarn is called “Buckshot and Bullets” and finds Bud trying to head off a war between Texas cattlemen and Mexican sheepherders. I nearly always enjoy Dunn’s work, but a couple of things about this one bothered me, the most troublesome that he seems to think Houston is the capital of Texas, not Austin. Also, he has all the Texans referring to the Mexicans as “Mexies”, a term I don’t think I’ve ever heard. That said, this is a pretty well-written, exciting tale with some nice action. Bud Jones is a very likable protagonist, too.

The most prolific series of all in WILD WEST WEEKLY starred Billy West, the young owner of the Circle J ranch in Montana, and his two friends who work for him, feisty, redheaded Joe Scott and cantankerous old codger Buck Foster, along with Sing Lo, the ranch’s Chinese cook. Upwards of 450 novelettes starring this bunch were published between 1927 and 1941, written by half a dozen different authors under the house-name Cleve Endicott. I’d read a few of them before and enjoyed them. The story in this issue, “Gun-Fight Valley”, is by Norman L. Hay, who probably wrote more Circle  J novelettes than anyone else. Our heroes are in Arizona on a cattle-buying trip when they get drawn into the mystery of a missing wagon train. What they find turns out to be somewhat unexpected. This is a nicely plotted yarn with plenty of excellent action. Billy, Joe, and Buck are standard characters but are handled well and I enjoy reading about their exploits. I’d love to see some of this series reprinted someday.

Evidently, “Burro Bait” by Phil Squires is part of a humorous series about a young man from Missouri called Hinges Hollister who goes west to become a cowboy. The story is told in the form of letters between Hinges and his mother and girlfriend back home. The dialect is so thick as to be almost indecipherable, and the humor falls flat. Not to my taste at all, and I didn’t finish it.

The issue wraps up with “Tommy Rockford Bucks the Nevada Wolves” by one of my favorite Western writers, Walker A. Tompkins. By WILD WEST WEEKLY standards, the Tommy Rockford series wasn’t that prolific: approximately 50 stories in a dozen years, 1931-43. But it’s a good one, and Tommy Rockford is one of my favorite characters from this pulp known for its series characters. He’s a young railroad detective, and if they had ever made any Tommy Rockford movies, Roy Rogers would have been perfect to play him. In this yarn, which takes place in Arizona and Mexico, despite the title, Tommy takes on an outlaw gang that has traveled from Nevada to Arizona to visit another gang and see their hideout. This leads to a stagecoach holdup, an attempted bank robbery, and Tommy being captured by the outlaws. I found this one to be something of a disappointment because, despite all those plot elements, it never comes together as a very compelling story. It’s more a case of just throwing things in the pot until there are enough pages. Even worse, Tommy does something that’s so out of character, it just about ruined the story for me, and it wasn’t even necessary to make the plot work. I think it would have been more effective handling things a different way. The story is readable enough because Tompkins’ prose is always smooth and just races right along, but this is easily the worst of the Tommy Rockford series I’ve read so far.

So what you have in this issue is definitely a mixed bag. The cover is excellent, the Silver Kid and Circle J stories are both very good, the Bud Jones story is flawed but entertaining, the Tommy Rockford story definitely sub-par, the Ben Conlon story okay but with overdone dialect, and the Hinges Hollister story not for me at all. I still like WILD WEST WEEKLY, but this is far from my favorite issue. It does make me want to read more Silver Kid and Circle J stories, though.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Pete Rice Magazine, August 1934

I don't normally associate beautiful women with Walter Baumhofer's pulp covers, like I do with, say, Allen Anderson or Earle Bergey, but the blonde on this issue of PETE RICE MAGAZINE proves that he could paint one when he wanted to. The Pete Rice series is an odd one. Created by Street & Smith to try to recreate the success of DOC SAVAGE, it featured the heroic Pete Rice as an Arizona sheriff with a group of colorful assistants. The pulp ran for 32 issues and almost three years, with most of the novels being written by Ben Conlon under the house-name Austin Gridley. Then, after Pete's own magazine was cancelled, he appeared in 20 more adventures in WILD WEST WEEKLY, still under the Gridley name but written by Conlon, Laurence Donovan, Lee Bond, Paul S. Powers, and Ronald Oliphant. Despite all that material, few, if any, of the Pete Rice stories have ever been reprinted. I read one issue of the pulp many years ago with a Conlon novel in it, and I recall not liking it much. Even so, I'd be interested in reading more of them. Sometimes my first impression of a series doesn't hold up. At any rate, I like this Baumhofer cover, and the other authors in this issue are Harold A. Davis (who would go on to ghost some of the Doc Savage novels), Wilfred McCormick (whose juvenile sports novels were favorites of mine when I was a kid), and George Allan Moffett, who was really prolific pulpster Edwin V. Burkholder.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Ghost Stories, March 1930

One Halloween when I was a kid, I went trick or treating in a ghost costume my mother made out of an old sheet. It had been raining a lot that week and may have rained earlier in the day on Halloween, I don't recall. But by the time I got home that evening with my bag of candy, my ghost costume was soaked with mud up to the knees. That sheet went in the trash. I always thought it was one of my best costumes, though, and a very enjoyable Halloween. Thinking about that reminded me of the pulp GHOST STORIES. This issue has a cover by Dalton Stevens and a lot of stories by authors whose names are completely unfamiliar to me. The only ones I recognize are Arthur Conan Doyle, Roy Vickers, and Ben Conlon. GHOST STORIES tried to make its contents look like true stories, but most of them were pure fiction.

I normally try to do more horror and supernatural-related posts in October, especially the week of Halloween, but this October has been like none other. At least I was able to get this one in. With luck, I'll have more time next October. In the meantime, Happy Halloween!

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Wild West Weekly, July 4, 1936

Although it doesn't have a patriotic-themed cover, this is the issue of WILD WEST WEEKLY dated July 4, 1936. Behind that cover by H.W. Scott, which I like quite a bit, are the usual assortment of series characters readers found in this pulp: a Silver Kid story by T.W. Ford, a Johnny Forty-five story by Paul S. Powers writing as Andrew A. Griffin, a Pete Rice story by Ben Conlon writing as Austin Gridley, a Risky McKee story by Norman W. Hay writing as William A. Todd, and (Wait a minute! How'd they get in here?) stand-alone stories by Lee Bond writing as Nelse Anderson and George C. Henderson. A person could get exhausted just trying to keep up with all the series characters in WILD WEST WEEKLY, but the readers seemed to have loved it for a long time. I've enjoyed all the issues I've read.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Pete Rice Magazine, June 1934

That's a dynamic Walter Baumhofer cover (but I repeat myself) on this issue of PETE RICE MAGAZINE. The other notable thing about this issue for me is the title of the lead novel: "Wolves of Wexford Manor". Somehow I never expected to see the name "Wexford Manor" in the title of a Western pulp novel. Sounds more like some eccentric amateur detective should be gathering the suspects in a picturesque English country house to reveal who really killed Aunt Henrietta. There are two back-up stories in this issue, both by Harold A. Davis, one under the pseudonym Rand Allison. I've read only one Pete Rice novel and wasn't impressed with it, but the magazine had very good covers.