Emmett Watson's cover promises an action-packed 1937
Argosy, headlined by a new Eustace L. Adams serial. Some of you may have sampled Adams's work when I uploaded his 1935
Anywhere But Here. I haven't read
Skyway to Peril yet but it looks like characteristic Adams product of the period. 1937 was a busy year for him. It started with him wrapping one serial. He completed four more during they year, ranging from three to six installments, and was in the middle of yet another by year's end. Adams is overshadowed for posterity by the penultimate installment of Theodore Roscoe's seminal
Z is for Zombie, recently reprinted in the Black Lizard
Zombies! Zombies! Zombies! anthology. The "big novel" by Frederick "George Challis" Faust actually started in the previous issue;
The American is an adventure set in Revolutionary France. While Patrick Lee's
The Redcoat Renegade might be presumed to take place in Revolutionary America, a check of the February 13 cover heralding its launch shows it to be a Canadian Mountie serial. The name above the title, Edmund Littell -- a onetime collaborator with Borden Chase -- specialized in tales of "sandhogs," urban tunnel diggers known for superhuman endurance and tremendously dangerous work. This was so popular a genre that Chase would write a serial simply called
Sandhog later this year. John K. Butler, James Stevens and Samuel Taylor round out the lineup for an impressive-looking issue that probably would have you shopping for prior and subsequent issues to complete all the serials. Doing that is more of a chore the more serials are running. 1935 is my favorite
Argosy year for collecting in part because the venerable weekly only ran two serials at a time back then.
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