Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Dime Western Magazine, April 1948

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan, ragged edges and all. That’s one tough-lookin’ hombre on the cover! I think it was painted by Robert Stanley, but I’m not sure about that.

Walt Coburn leads off the issue, as he so often did, with a novelette called “Law of the Lawless”. The Table of Contents may refer to it as a novel, but it’s about 10,000 words, I’d say. And man, does Coburn pack a lot of back-story in those words, also as usual. Most of the story takes place at the outlaw hideout known as Hole-in-the-Wall, and it consists of tense verbal clashes between two owlhoots who share some history. There’s a neglected wife, a crippled kid, an attempted suicide, hidden loot from a bank robbery, and a sinister bounty hunter who has already wiped out all of the gang led by one of the main characters. Yeah, this is melodramatic stuff, but nobody did it better than Coburn. This suspenseful opening leads up to a couple of fine action scenes that provide a satisfying conclusion. I’ve been told that by this time in his career, the editors at Popular Publications were rewriting Coburn’s stories pretty heavily because his drinking caused him to turn in unpublishable manuscripts, and that may well be true. But the complex plot, the emotional torment some of the characters go through, and the sense of frontier authenticity are pure Coburn, as far as I can tell. It’s not a perfect story—there are a couple of continuity errors that can probably be chalked up to the above-mentioned boozing—but I loved it anyway. It’s just a real gut-punch of a hardboiled Western yarn.

As I mentioned last week, Tom W. Blackburn was a very dependable Western author. His story in this issue, “A Matter of Quick Buryin’”, is about a government investigator trying to break up a ring of thieves that’s been selling stolen horses to the army. Reluctantly, he winds up with a colorful sidekick in a drunken ex-preacher. The ending in this one seems a little rushed to me, but other than that it’s excellent and is still very good overall.

In addition to being a pulp writer, William Chamberlain was in the army and in fact had a long, successful career there, retiring as a general. So it’s not surprising that his numerous Western and adventure yarns for various pulps usually had some sort of military connection. “Mount Up, You Sons of Glory!”, his story in this issue, is a cavalry tale about a campaign against the Sioux in Dakota Territory in the dead of winter. It uses the standard plot of a new, heavy-handed commanding officer ignoring the advice of his more seasoned junior officers, but Chamberlain’s straightforward, effective prose, his sense of realism, and a very poignant ending elevate this to something more than the ordinary.

I’ve come to appreciate C. William Harrison as one of the better Western pulpsters. His short tale in this issue, “Too Tough to Tame”, is about a young man whose father was an outlaw, and when he’s unjustly accused of a crime, he decides he’ll go ahead and follow the owlhoot trail. There are a couple of twists in this one, one that I saw coming and one I didn’t, and that makes for a very good story.

When he wasn’t writing classic comic book scripts in the Forties, Gardner F. Fox was writing Westerns and science fiction stories for the pulps, just as he would soon be turning out dozens of paperback original novels during the Fifties and Sixties while continuing his comics career. “The Town That Bullets Built” in this issue is about a lawman who has retired but keeps getting drawn back into trouble. Fox was a fine storyteller and keeps this one moving along briskly with well-drawn characters until a couple of very good action scenes wrap things up and bring the story to a heartwarming and satisfying conclusion. I haven’t read that many of Fox’s Westerns, but this is certainly a good one.

Peter Dawson was one of the most dependable Western writers of the Twentieth Century. In real life, he was Jonathan Glidden, brother of Frederick Glidden, also known as highly successful Western writer Luke Short. I’d hate to have to pick between the two of them as far as which one was the better writer. The Peter Dawson novella in this issue, “Hell’s Free for Nesters!” is excellent. Against his better judgment, a drifting cowboy helps a nester girl whose wagon is stuck in a river, and that lands him in the middle of a range war, a land swindle, and a murder for which he’s blamed. Just top-notch stuff all the way around, with plenty of action, good characters, and polished writing.

Also on that list of most dependable Western writers of the Twentieth Century is Clifton Adams, who nearly always turned in really fine yarns. As an Oklahoma writer, Adams was very familiar with the oil industry there and wrote a number of stories and novels set in the early days of that business. “Boss of Purgatory’s Pipeline”, Adams’ novelette in this issue, finds a range detective becoming an oilfield detective when his client, the owner of an oil pipeline suffering from sabotage, is murdered before the protagonist even arrives on the scene. The mystery is a good one and fairly complex for a story of this length, and as always, Adams’ writing is very, very good, carrying the reader along at a swift pace. This is a terrific story.

In fact, this is a terrific issue, one of the best Western pulps I’ve ever read. If you own some issues of DIME WESTERN, I’d advise you to check your shelves for this one, because it’s definitely worth reading.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Frontier Stories, Winter 1944

I featured this issue of FRONTIER STORIES several years ago, but I’ve since acquired a copy and just read it. Unfortunately, that copy is completely coverless, including the spine, but I’m not a fan of that Sidney Reisenberg cover anyway and all the pages are complete and easily readable, so I’m all right with that. Once again, the scan is from the Fictionmags Index, but my comments below are new.

Les Savage Jr. is one of my favorite Western writers. His mountain man novella “Queen of the Long Rifles” leads off this issue. That title is somewhat deceptive, and I suspect editor Malcolm Reiss may have come up with it. The story features a strong female character in Mira Phillips, the daughter of a trading post owner in the Big Horn Mountains during the fur trapping era. The actual protagonist is Batteau Severn, a French-Canadian trapper who clashes with a ruthless New Englander trying to take over the fur trade. This winds up as an out-and-out war between the two factions, which provides Savage with the opportunity for plenty of big, sweeping action scenes, as well as some brutal fistfights and one-on-one showdowns. This is a terrific story, full of excitement and a vividly portrayed, historically accurate setting. Batteau is a tough and very likable hero, Mira is a fine heroine, there are several top-notch sidekicks, some thoroughly despicable villains, and several surprisingly poignant moments. Savage could just write the heck out of a yarn like this. I loved it.

Tom W. Blackburn was also a consistently excellent Western author. His novelette “Devil’s Cache” starts with a freighter following the trail of whoever stole four of his horses. Not very far along, though, the story takes an abrupt turn and appears momentarily that it’s about to turn into a lost race yarn. That’s not how things play out, but the plot is still fairly off-beat for a Western pulp tale. This one is very well-written and I enjoyed it a lot, too.

Sometimes reading a pulp is educational. “Red Reckoning” is about a stagecoach trying to make it across the country to San Francisco before a ship can sail around South America and reach the same destination. An enormous wager is riding on the outcome. The protagonist is a frontier scout hired to help the stagecoach make the journey safely. Naturally, there’s a lot of trouble and treachery along the way, as well as romance with the daughter of the stagecoach line owner who made the bet. It’s a well-written yarn that moves along at a nice pace. I had never heard of the authors, Frankie-Lee Weed and Kelly Masters, so I did a little research on them, and that’s where the educational part comes in. My first thought was that they might be a husband-and-wife writing team, but nope, turns out they were just occasional writing partners who had much more prolific careers on their own. Kelly Masters published a few stories under his real name, but most of his work, which consisted mainly of slick magazine stories and boys’ adventure novels, was published under the pseudonym Zachary Ball. A couple of his novels were adapted as episodes of the original Walt Disney TV show. Frankie-Lee Weed published quite a few stories in the Western romance and love pulps under her real name, as well as the pseudonym Saliee O’Brien. Under the O’Brien name she went on to publish numerous historical romance novels in the Sixties, Seventies, and Eighties. I remember seeing those books when they were new. So both authors went on to bigger (not necessarily better) things but got their start in the pulps.

Curtis Bishop was a Texas newspaper reporter who followed the rodeo circuit while also writing scores of Western and sports stories for various pulps, along with a number of juvenile sports novels and some well-regarded Western novels. I haven’t read much by him, but everything I’ve read has been very good. So I expected to enjoy “Turning Trails”, his novelette in this issue set in Texas during the days right after the Civil War. It starts off strong with a former Confederate officer having left his home and headed west after the war, as many actually did. He arrives in San Antonio and gets mixed up in the clash between the beautiful blond owner of a nearby ranch and the brutal, corrupt Reconstruction authorities who run things in Texas at this point. Then it becomes a trail drive story as the protagonist tries to help the young woman get a herd of cattle across the Red River into Indian Territory before the crooked sheriff can seize them. Bishop writes with a nice sense of time and place, but this story goes off the rails in the second half as he makes a number of geographical errors (I mean, I understand dramatic license, but that only goes so far, especially when you’re a Texan writing about Texas), and the plot twist that fuels the story’s resolution stretches willing suspension of disbelief ’way past the breaking point. I just didn’t accept that things could ever happen that way—and I’m a guy who has no problem with, say, Jim Hatfield’s almost super heroics. So this story, despite having some good stuff in it, wound up being a major disappointment.

This issue wraps up with the novella “The Conestoga Pirate” by another of my favorite authors, Dan Cushman. It’s an important story in Cushman’s career because it introduces his series character, the good guy outlaw Comanche John, although in this story and the next one in the series, he’s called Dutch John. This story was reprinted in the Leisure Books collection NO GOLD ON BOOTHILL, but since I have the original pulp version, that’s what I read. I hadn’t read any of the Dutch/Comanche John stories until now, although I think I own them all in one form or another.

Something about “The Conestoga Pirate” struck me as familiar right away, and a glance at the story intro in NO GOLD ON BOOTHILL explained why. Cushman used parts of this novella in his later novel NORTH FORK TO HELL, which I read several years ago, although he dropped Dutch John from that version. In this one, Dutch John is more of a supporting character, although an important one. The protagonist is young Wils Fleming, who, along with the old-timer Bogey and the disreputable gunfighter/outlaw Dutch John, encounter a wagon train full of immigrants being duped by a group of villains pretending to be guides and scouts. This leads to drama, gunplay, ambushes, and attempted lynchings. It’s a good, fast-moving story, with a little bit of an off-kilter tone, as many of Cushman’s stories have. He wrote a lot of Western and adventure stories for the pulps that were firmly in those traditions yet just a little different at the same time. It took me a while to understand that and appreciate his work, but as I said above, he’s now one of my favorites. I guess I need to read the rest of the Comanche John stories and novels.

There are also two Western history articles in this issue, one about the outlaw Black Jack Ketchum by Harold Preece and one about the Bannock War by Fairfax Downey. As usual, I just skimmed these. I like Western history and have read a bunch of it, but when it comes to pulps, I’m there for the fiction. And despite my ultimate disappointment in Curtis Bishop’s novella, this is an excellent issue of FRONTIER STORIES overall, with outstanding yarns from Savage, Cushman, and Blackburn. If you have a copy, it’s well worth reading.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Speed Adventure Stories, September 1944

This issue of SPEED ADVENTURE STORIES sports a fine cover by H.J. Ward and a pretty strong line-up of authors. Tom W. Blackburn, best remembered as a top-notch Western author, of course, leads things off. I don't own this issue so I don't know if Blackburn's yarn is a Western, but I'm sure it's good regardless. Also on hand are Dale Clark, Stanley Vickers, house-name Clark Nelson, as well as Victor Rousseau with three stories, one each as by V.R. Emanuel (his actual initials and last name), Clive Trent, and Hugh Speer.

Review: Buckskin Man - Tom W. Blackburn

In the early Sixties, there was no bigger Davy Crockett fan than me. I watched the two Disney “mini-series” (what they amounted to, although the term didn’t exist yet) with Fess Parker as Davy every time they aired. I read and reread the juvenile novelizations of them, which I checked out from the bookmobile. I had a coonskin cap (bought in one of the local stores and quite possibly not the real thing) and a genuine coonskin cap made by my uncle from the pelt of a raccoon he shot. And not once during that whole era did I wonder even for a second who actually wrote those TV shows that made me such a fan.

The answer is Tom W. Blackburn.

Thomas Wakefield Blackburn was a very prolific pulpster, writing hundreds of stories for the Western pulps in a career that started under his own name in 1938. Before that, but I don’t know exactly when, he got his actual start in the business by working as a ghost for Ed Earl Repp, as numerous other Western pulp authors did. In the late Forties, he moved into writing novels, screenplays, and TV scripts, including the Davy Crockett episodes for Walt Disney. He even wrote the lyrics for the theme song, which I’m sure some of you are hearing in your head right now. (“Davy! Davy Crockett! King of the Wild Frontier!”)

Well, that’ll be stuck in my head the rest of the day. And yours, too, more than likely. You’re welcome.

Anyway, to get around to the actual subject of his post, while I’d read a few of Blackburn’s pulp stories and thought they were very good, I’d never read one of his novels until now. I started with BUCKSKIN MAN, first published as a paperback original by Dell in 1958. Although it’s set in 1847 toward the end of the mountain man era and several of the main characters are mountain men, this isn’t a fur trapping novel. Rather, it’s about a trade war in Santa Fe and along the Santa Fe Trail back to St. Louis. Jim King, a former trapper, has established a store in Santa Fe, but he’s burned out by a vicious competitor who works for Edouard Duval, an evil tycoon back in St. Louis. Jim tries to recoup his losses by striking back against Duval and his minions. Along the way he acquires a mysterious, sharpshooting ally and clashes with a beautiful young woman with an agenda of her own. While all this is going on, a dangerous conspiracy is brewing in Santa Fe that may plunge all of New Mexico Territory (recently taken over from Mexico by the United States) into a bloody war.

BUCKSKIN MAN is more of a historical novel than a traditional Western. Blackburn does a great job of taking some actual events and spinning a compelling fictional yarn around them. Jim King is a stalwart hero, Toni Bandelier (great name!) is a fine heroine, the villains are suitably despicable, and the mountain man supporting characters are colorful. Blackburn captures the setting well and keeps the pace moving along nicely. My only complaint about the writing is that the ending seems a little bit rushed.

Overall, I really enjoyed BUCKSKIN MAN and am eager to read more of Blackburn’s novels. This one was reprinted several times by Dell, there were a couple of large print editions, and it’s currently in print in both e-book and trade paperback editions. It’s a top-notch historical novel and I recommend it.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Frontier Stories, Summer 1945

I don't own this issue of FRONTIER STORIES, so I haven't read it. But it has a dramatic cover by Richard Case and a fine group of writers inside. The lead story by Les Savage Jr., "The Lone Star Camel Corps", may have been cannibalized for Savage for his novel ONCE A FIGHTER. It was reprinted in one of the Les Savage Jr. collections packaged by Jon Tuska and I have a copy of that book on order. I'm looking forward to reading the story. Also on hand in this issue of FRONTIER STORIES are William Heuman, Tom W. Blackburn, William R. Cox, R.S. Lerch, Fairfax Downey, and the lesser-known Ben T. Young and Raymond L. Hill. Lots of good reading there, I have no doubt about that.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Street & Smith's Western Story, August 30, 1941

This issue of the iconic WESTERN STORY sports a fine, very dramatic cover by A. Leslie Ross, one of my favorite pulp and paperback cover artists. The authors inside are no less notable: Harry Sinclair Drago, L.L. Foreman (with a Preacher Devlin novella), Tom W. Blackburn, S. Omar Barker, Frank Richardson Pierce (as Seth Ranger), George Michener, and Eric Howard. Definitely looks like an issue worth reading. I don't own a copy, or I just might. I do have Harry Sinclair Drago's novel BUCKSKIN EMPIRE, one installment of which is serialized in this issue. May have to see if I can find the book.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: 10 Story Western Magazine, October 1944

That is one rough-looking hombre on this issue of 10 STORY WESTERN MAGAZINE. I'm not sure if that cover is by Sam Cherry or Robert Stanley, but it's a mighty good one no matter who painted it. I don't own this issue, but if you do, it looks like a good one to read since it includes stories by L.P. Holmes, Norman A. Fox, Tom W. Blackburn, Philip Ketchum, William Heuman, Gunnison Steele (Bennie Gardner), William R. Cox, and lesser-known authors Morgan Lewis and Joe Payne. It would be hard to find a better lineup of authors in a Western pulp from the mid-Forties.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Dime Western Magazine, January 1946

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan. My guess as to the cover artist is Robert Stanley, but I’m not certain about that. There are a couple of things about this one I don’t like—the guy’s hands and arms don’t look quite right to me, and neither does his holster—but overall it’s an effective cover.

I’ve said this many times before and probably will again, but Walt Coburn was really inconsistent in his work, especially in the second half of the Forties onwards. But he’s still one of my favorite Western authors because when he’s on his game, he’s really, really good. “Mail-Order Outlaw” in this issue is one of his really, really good stories. The cover calls it a novel, but at 16 pages, even with fairly small print left over from the war years and paper rationing, it’s more of a novelette. Even so, Coburn manages to give this tale of a young cowpuncher who falls in with a gang of bank robbers a bit of an epic feeling. The action is great, the protagonist is very likable, and the villains are despicable. It’s also more tightly plotted than many of Coburn’s stories, which tend to sprawl around and get melodramatic. The sense of authenticity is there as always. No matter how over-the-top Coburn’s plots could get, the characters and settings always ring true. This is a superb story, one of the best by Coburn that I’ve read.

I don’t know much about Michael Oblinger, just that he wrote several dozen stories for various Western pulps. His short story “Hell-on-the-Hoof” starts out with a horse identifying a killer, but that’s just the opening act in a very convoluted tale about an accused murderer hunting down the real culprits. I didn’t think this story was well-written and didn’t care for it.

Since the cover date on pulps was the off-sale date, that means this January 1946 issue of DIME WESTERN was actually on the stands in December 1945. Accordingly, there’s a Christmas story included in the line-up, the novelette “Colt Christmas at Bitter Creek” by Rod Patterson. Last year I read a pulp yarn by Patterson that I enjoyed quite a bit, as well as his novel WHIP HAND, which I found pretty flat and uninspired. Now that I’ve read this story, I’m starting to suspect that Patterson was better at less than novel length. “Colt Christmas at Bitter Creek” is about the showdown between two feuding ranches during a blizzard. It’s well-written, moves right along, and has a nice hardboiled tone. I still want to try more of Patterson’s novels, but I’ll be keeping an eye out for his pulp stories.

Charles Handley is another forgotten pulpster. His story “The Devil’s Sky-Pilot” is a short-short about an outlaw-turned-preacher—or is he? The twist ending in this one is pretty predictable, but it still works and the story is fairly entertaining.

Tom W. Blackburn often wrote stories that weren’t about the usual cowboys, outlaws, lawmen, etc. The protagonist of the novelette “Battle Call For Big-Wheelers” is a partner in a freight company located in a Sierra Nevada mining boomtown. Double-crossed by a man he considered a friend, framed by a rival for murder, Cole Banning finds himself in a mighty deep hole and Blackburn just keeps piling more trouble on his head until I honestly wondered how in the world Banning was going to get out of this mess. But he does, and although the resolution might have been just a tad too quick and convenient, this is still a really good story with interesting characters, strong writing, and plenty of action. Blackburn’s work is nearly always good and this one is no exception.

John Richard Young wrote a couple of dozen Western and adventure stories for various pulps in the Forties and Fifties. His story in this issue, “Law of the Blizzard-Born” is an animal yarn about an old hunter stalking a wolf. This type of story with little or no dialogue and some, if not most, of the story written from the point of view of the animal is one that I just have trouble reading. I wound up skimming this one and didn’t like it.

The novelette that wraps up this issue, “The Phantom Hangman of Yellow Jacket”, is another mining camp story. Somewhat unusual for a Western pulp, it’s also a murder mystery as a ruthless vigilante known as The Citizen is killing people in the camp for no apparent reason. The son of a mine owner who is one of the victims returns from San Francisco, where he’s been something of a wastrel, to grow up and get to the bottom of things. As it turns out, this story isn’t a particularly strong mystery, but it does have a good protagonist and some nice action as it moves along at a fast pace. The author, Harry F. Olmsted, is one of my favorites. Olmsted was known to farm out some of his work, much like Ed Earl Repp, so there’s no way of knowing if some other author had a hand in this one. The story reads like the other Olmsted stories I’ve read, but that may be because even on the ghosted stuff, he did a lot of editing and revising. Regardless of the details, which we’ll likely never know, this is a solid, entertaining yarn.

Overall, this issue of DIME WESTERN MAGAZINE is quite a mixed bag. There are a couple of stories I didn’t like, but the others range from good to excellent and include one of the best Walt Coburn stories I’ve read. So I’d say that if you have a copy on your shelves, it’s well worth reading.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Big-Book Western Magazine, February 1941

Yet another example of what should have been a friendly poker game interrupted by gunplay on this issue of BIG-BOOK WESTERN MAGAZINE. Those "2 Big Novels" are actually novellas, of course, but I can't disagree with the "2 Top-Hand Authors" part of that blurb. Given Ed Earl Repp's tendency to use ghostwriters, there's no telling who actually wrote "Boothill Guns Save Satan's Range", but here's the thing: Repp helped plot the ghosted stories and often revised them as well (according to Frank Bonham's famous essay "Tarzana Nights", and as bitter as Bonham was toward Repp, I don't see any reason for him to lie about that), and the ones I've read have all been pretty good no matter who the actual author was. And William L. Hopson, author of "Iron Man of Vengeance Valley" is a long-time favorite of mine. Also on hand in this issue are Tom W. Blackburn, Dee Linford, Jim Kjelgaard, Cliff M. Bisbee, and Le Roy Boyd.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: North-West Romances, Winter 1943

RODEO ROMANCES yesterday, NORTH-WEST ROMANCES today. This is actually a fairly significant issue of the iconic "Northern" pulp because it features Dan Cushman's first published story, "Girl of the Golden Lode". And it's featured prominently on the cover, to boot. Also on hand in this issue are Tom W. Blackburn, Victor Rousseau, Chart Pitt, and lesser-known writers Ralph Cunningham, Glenn Vernam, and Douglas Durkin.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Frontier Stories, Winter 1944

I'm not crazy about this Sidney Riesenberg cover, but inside this issue of FRONTIER STORIES are yarns by Dan Cushman, Les Savage Jr., Tom W. Blackburn, Curtis Bishop, and Harold Preece. That's an excellent bunch of writers, so I'll bet this is an entertaining issue.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Fifteen Western Tales, November 1943

And so another Old West poker game comes down to a powdersmoke payoff on the cover of this issue of FIFTEEN WESTERN TALES. Sam Cherry was doing most of the covers for FIFTEEN WESTERN TALES during this era, but this one doesn't strike me as being Cherry's work. Whoever painted it, it's effective, no doubt about that. Inside are some excellent authors, including William Heuman, Tom W. Blackburn, Rod Patterson, Lee E. Wells, M. Howard Lane, Glenn Shirley, James Shaffer, Thomas Calvert McClary, house-names David Crewe, Ray P. Shotwell, and Logan C. Claybourne, and lesser-known authors Edwin K. Sloat and Byron W. Dalrymple. That poker player's left hand seems oddly misshapen. I'd like to think that plays into one of the stories inside, but I doubt it.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: 10 Story Western Magazine, June 1942

The cover on this issue of 10 STORY WESTERN MAGAZINE has an unusual but very effective perspective. I don't know the artist. 10 STORY WESTERN was considered a second-string Western pulp from Popular Publications, but I've always thought it was consistently good to very good, with a lot of excellent authors appearing in its pages. In this issue, for example, are stories by Tom W. Blackburn, L.L. Foreman, Philip Ketchum, Tom Roan, Robert E. Mahaffey, John G. Pearsol, M. Howard Lane, Rolland Lynch, and George Armin Shaftel. Some of those are better remembered than others, but they were all prolific, well-regarded pulpsters.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Western Short Stories, March 1957

A Western pulp from very late in the pulp era, but judging by the authors inside, this issue of WESTERN SHORT STORIES was still pretty good: H.A. DeRosso, S. Omar Barker, Edwin Booth, Clayton Fox, William Vance, and reprints by Tom W. Blackburn, D.B. Newton, John G. Pearsol, Giles A. Lutz, and Glenn H. Wichman. That's a fine bunch of Western pulpsters no matter what the era.

UPDATE: My friend Bob Deis has identified this cover artist as Jim Bentley and tells us that the cover was used originally on the January 1956 issue of MALE. Thanks, Bob.

 

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Star Western, September 1948

One of Popular Publications' flagship Western pulps, along with DIME WESTERN, STAR WESTERN was still going strong in the late Forties, with this issue being a prime example. Behind that dramatic Robert Stanley cover are stories by a really fine group of writers: T.T. Flynn, Tom W. Blackburn, Frank Bonham, Van Cort (Wyatt Blassingame), John Jo Carpenter (John Reese), Kenneth Perkins, and writer/editor Art Lawson with two stories, one under his name and one as by William Fargo.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Fifteen Western Tales, January 1944

We have a tough-looking hombre, courtesy of Sam Cherry, gracing the cover on this issue of FIFTEEN WESTERN TALES. The collection of authors inside is pretty good, too: William Heuman, Philip Ketchum, Les Savage Jr., Tom W. Blackburn, Chuck Martin, Rod Patterson, M. Howard Lane, James C. Lynch, James Shaffer, house-names Ray P. Shotwell and Lance Kermit, and lesser known authors Frederick Bales and Joe Payne. They always counted the features in FIFTEEN WESTERN TALES, so actually there are only thirteen stories in this one.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Ranch Romances, First February Number, 1952

A really nice cover on this issue of RANCH ROMANCES. I think I want to write a story with that redhead in it! I don't know the artist. There's a signature in the bottom right corner, but I can't make it out. There's a great group of writers inside, too: Wayne D. Overholser, Todhunter (W.T.) Ballard, Giff Cheshire, Elmer Kelton, Tom W. Blackburn, and Arthur Lawson. It would be hard to go wrong with that bunch.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Argosy, March 1943

This is the final issue of ARGOSY published by the Frank A. Munsey Company before Popular Publications took over the magazine the next month. I used to own a copy of this issue--I remember that fine cover by Peter Stevens--but I don't think I ever got around to reading it. That's a shame, because inside are stories by H. Bedford-Jones, Norbert Davis, E. Hoffmann Price, Georges Surdez, Robert Carse, Tom W. Blackburn, William R. Cox, and Stewart Sterling. That's a great bunch of authors, but just par for the course where ARGOSY is concerned. 

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Western Short Stories, August 1942

Not many Western pulps had Halloween covers, at least that I've been able to find, and I think I've used all of them in past years. So this year I'm just going to fall back on an old favorite, Norman Saunders, with this cover for WESTERN SHORT STORIES. "All-Star Stories", it says, and based on the authors inside, that's a pretty solid claim. In this issue, you'll find stories by D.B. Newton, Dean Owen, H.A. DeRosso, Tom W. Blackburn, Gunnison Steele (Bennie Gardner), James P. Olsen, Hapsburg Liebe, Ralph Berard (Victor White), James C. Lynch, and Raymond W. Porter. Those are all prolific, well-regarded pulpsters.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: 10 Story Western Magazine, March 1942

The cover on this issue of 10 STORY WESTERN MAGAZINE is more proof, as if we needed it, that the barber shop was one of the most dangerous places in the Old West. I don't know who painted this one, but I like it quite a bit. There's the usual fine bunch of writers inside the magazine, too: Tom W. Blackburn, Frank C. Robertson, Tom Roan, Leslie Ernenwein, Art Lawson, Glenn Wichman, Dabney Otis Collins, and James C. Lynch. No Olmsted or Coburn, surprisingly. But solid pulpsters, for sure.