Happy Fourth of July

 

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Lariat Story Magazine, May 1940

The cover on this issue of LARIAT STORY MAGAZINE has a lot going on, and I like it. I don't know the artist, but if I had to venture a guess, I'd say A. Leslie Ross or H.W. Scott. But I could be completely wrong about that. I know I'm right about there being some good authors in this issue, starting with Walt Coburn, Harry F. Olmsted, James P. Olsen, and Art Lawson. There's a Bart Cassidy story, and that's probably Olmsted, too, as well as one by house-name John Starr, who could be almost anybody. Frank H. Richey, who has one of the cover-featured stories, wrote only half a dozen stories in the late Thirties and into 1940; this appears to be his last one. I don't know anything about him. The other story in this issue is by the more prolific but equally obscure Don Stuart. All I know about him is that he's not "Don A. Stuart", the pseudonym of legendary science fiction editor/author John W. Campbell.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: New Western, March 1948

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.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Star Western, October 1947

Another Injury to a Hat cover on this issue of STAR WESTERN. I'm not sure of the artist. Looks to me like it might be Robert Stanley. Inside are some fine authors, including Walt Coburn (although rumor has it that by this stage of his career, his work had to be edited heavily because of his drinking problem), Giff Cheshire, William R. Cox, Dee Linford, John M. Cunningham, and Rod Patterson. I like the title of the Coburn story: "The Devil Sent His Gun-Angels!" Probably a Popular Publications editor came up with it, but whoever did, it sounds like my kind of yarn.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Lariat Story, March 1949

This looks like a pretty good issue. The cover is okay, if not quite up to the same gaudy, lurid level as some of the other Fiction House pulps. But the line-up of authors is particularly strong with stories by Dan Cushman, D.B. Newton, J. Edward Leithead, and John Jo Carpenter.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Roaring Western Stories, May 1953

This is the only issue of this pulp known to exist, although there may be more. It's got an action-packed cover by Milton Luros, and the authors include Will C. Brown (really C.S. Boyles, the other famous author from Cross Plains, Texas), Bryce Walton, and several more, none of whom I've ever heard of. This was the era during which pulps were dying right and left, so the idea of starting a new one seems pretty risky, a risk that evidently didn't pay off. But considering that Westerns hung on longer than any other pulp genre, maybe it was worth taking. The issue looks like a decent one, anyway.