I find the cover on this issue of WEST interesting for a couple of reasons. First of all, the guy reminds me of Alfred E. Neuman of MAD MAGAZINE fame. Secondly, compare this cover to the cover from the January 1951 issue of MAMMOTH WESTERN painted by Robert Gibson Jones (below). It's not a direct swipe, but when I saw this WEST cover, I was reminded immediately of the MAMMOTH WESTERN cover. Had Jones seen the earlier cover and remembered it? Pure coincidence? I have no way of knowing, of course, but I find the similarity interesting. I'm sure the stories in this issue of WEST are pretty interesting, too. The authors on hand are all prolific pulpsters: Larry Harris, Dean Owen, Bill Gulick, Kenneth Fowler, and John A. Thompson. I met Gulick a couple of times. He continued writing and publishing into the 1990s, far past the end of the pulp era.
Another action-packed cover that I think may be by Robert Stanley. Maybe someone better at artist IDs than I am can confirm or deny that. There's no denying that there are plenty of good writers in this issue of NEW WESTERN, though. There are stories by Walt Coburn, Thomas Thompson, Tom Roan, Dee Linford, Bill Gulick, and the lesser-known J. Walton Doyle, who wrote a series about a couple of characters called Hashhouse and Dumbo. I may be jumping to conclusions here, but those names remind me of Syl McDowell's Swap and Whopper and Alfred Garry's Ham and Eggs, and I don't like those series at all. On the other hand, we have W.C. Tuttle's Tombstone and Speedy (to say nothing of his Hashknife and Sleepy, one of my all-time favorite series), so maybe Hashhouse and Dumbo are okay.
For Fourth of July weekend, a patriotic cover from one of the longest-running and most iconic pulps, ADVENTURE. That painting is by E. Franklin Wittmack, and I really like it. Inside are stories by Gordon MacCreagh, Tom Roan, Bill Gulick (Hey, I've met him! Jackson, Wyoming, at the 1992 Western Writers of America convention. ), Samuel W. Taylor, and Barre Lyndon. Not the most star-studded line-up of authors ever, but some solid writers there and I'll bet it's a good issue.