THE PULP CALENDAR: February 18

Another eye-catching cover design from Western Story in 1939. Norman Saunders did this one but I'm sure much of the credit goes to a Street & Smith art editor. Keeping the cover copy to a minimum keeps the potential reader focused on the cowboy in the gunsight. It certainly promises intense drama in the cover story, Tom Roan's "Funeral Mountain," even though Roan has never really made a strong impression on me. There's also a novelet by the questionably named Ney N. Geer --was that for real? The prolific Harry F Olmstead has a short story and the poet of the western pulps, S. Omar Barker, contributes some characteristic verse. Eugene R. Dutcher, Kenneth Gilbert and Jackson Gregory are the other fiction contributors. Dutcher's "Hate Rides Valley Pass" and Gilbert's "The Cunning of the Damned" are promising sounding titles, but "Funeral Mountain" has a stark simplicity, for a pulp title, that matches the dramatic simplicity of the cover design. Whether it's all good to read or not, it's definitely cool to look at.