Wednesday, February 24, 2016

THE PULP CALENDAR: February 24


Still moving back in time with Detective Fiction Weekly, we reach 1940, at a point when Munsey was still commissioning cover paintings. This is a good one by Emmett Watson, presumably illustrating Judson P. Philips's Murder Is My Hobby, though the cover appears to be illustrating Suicide is My Hobby. The nearly omnipresent Richard Sale has a short story this issue, but DFW takes him for granted, not even listing his name on the cover. As for those on the cover, Paul Ernst was spending most of his time playing Kenneth Robeson for Street & Smith's The Avenger, while Roger Torrey shared his talent with DFW, Black Mask, and the "spicy" pulp Private Detective, and Myles Hudson continues his Blue Ghost serial. Maitland LeRoy Osborne, an old-time with only three stories to his credit in the Fiction Mags Index, contributes a short story, as does Kenneth Crossen under his Bennett Barlay pseudonym. When you could produce attention-grabbing covers like this one, why would you give up that ability? Times must have been tough at Munsey to make them give up on cover paintings later this year.

No comments:

Post a Comment