Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: All-American Fiction, May/June 1938

That's an intriguing cover by Rudolph Belarski on this issue of ALL-AMERICAN FICTION, and what a lineup of authors! It's hard to beat H. Bedford-Jones, Max Brand, Cornell Woolrich, Philip Ketchum, Richard Sale, and Karl Detzer. Also on hard are the lesser-known Eustace Cockrell, Robert Cochran, J.R. Beehan, and Thomas Nelson. The author of the featured story "Meet Me in Miami", Joseph Mickler, has only two credits in the Fictionmags Index, both in Munsey pulps in 1938, for whatever that's worth. I would read this issue just for those other guys if I had a copy.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Argosy, April 21, 1934

I haven't featured an issue of ARGOSY in a while, and this one sports a nice dramatic cover by Paul Stahr, whose covers I nearly always enjoy. As usual, there are some fine writers inside this issue: Erle Stanley Gardner, Max Brand, Fred MacIsaac, J.D. Newsom, Karl Detzer, and the lesser-known Anson Hatch and Howard Ellis Davis. The Brand, MacIsaac, and Detzer stories are all serial installments, but if I had a copy of this one (I don't) I'd be happy to read the novelettes by Gardner and Newsom.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Adventure, July 30, 1923

A.G. Peck, an artist I'm not familiar with, painted the evocative cover on this issue of ADVENTURE. As usual, the line-up of authors inside is very strong: Harold Lamb, J. Allan Dunn, Georges Surdez, Hugh Pendexter, J.D. Newsom, Karl W. Detzer, Bill Adams, and Raymond S. Spears. Arthur Sullivant Hoffman was still the editor at this point. ADVENTURE was a great pulp, issue after issue.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Blue Book, May 1939

As far as I'm concerned, BLUE BOOK was at its peak in the mid-to-late Thirties, although it remained at a pretty high level on into the Forties. But that's the era when it had great authors and a long run of consistently excellent covers by Herbert Morton Stoops. Here's one of them, illustrating a story from H. Bedford-Jones' series "Trumpets From Oblivion". Bedford-Jones had two other stories in this issue, an installment of "Ships and Men" (a "collaboration" between him and the fictional Captain L.B. Williams) and one under his Gordon Keyne pseudonym. Other authors in this issue are Will Jenkins (better known under his pseudonym Murray Leinster), Georges Surdez, Karl Detzer, and Fulton T. Grant. That's a great bunch of pulpsters.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Complete Stories, December 15, 1932

Pulp covers loved that bright red and yellow combination. Those are some scary-looking dogs on this cover by H.W. Scott, too. This issue of COMPLETE STORIES has some fine authors in it: Frederick C. Davis with a White Wolf story (ghosted under the name of the late Hal Dunning), George Harmon Coxe, Allan Vaughan Elston, Richard Howells Watkins, C.S. Montanye, Karl Detzer, and a pulpster I'm not familiar with, James Clarke. I've never read an issue of COMPLETE STORIES, but I know it doesn't have the same sort of reputation as the big-name general fiction pulps like ARGOSY, ADVENTURE, and SHORT STORIES. However, judging by the authors this looks like a pretty good issue.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Short Stories, October 25, 1932

I always wanted a pith helmet when I was a kid, probably because of all the jungle adventure movies I'd watched on TV. I never got one, which was almost certainly a good thing, as I'm not sure how well it would have gone over in the small Texas town where I was already something of a weirdo. And there's no way I would have looked as tough and dashing as the guy on the cover of this issue of SHORT STORIES. The art is by William Reusswig. The lead novel by Eustace L. Adams sounds like a good one, and Adams was a reliably entertaining author of adventure fiction. Also on hand were Karl Detzer, Conrad Richter, Bill Adams, Jacland Marmur, Charles Green, Cliff Farrell, and Garnett Radcliffe. Those names don't mean much now, with the possible exception of Conrad Richter, but they were top-notch pulp authors. (You know, you can buy pith helmets on Amazon . . . I'm just sayin' . . . Nah, I probably shouldn't.)