I can't quite tell whether the man in the hat is rescuing or threatening the poor man in the transparent case. It looks like the switch could go either way and the expression John A. Coughlin gives the gentleman in the chapeau isn't exactly reassuring. This is a 1934 Detective Fiction Weekly cover that seems to show the "shudder pulp" influence, however the stories inside read. If the man in the hat is the hero, then he is Show-Me McGee, a character Frederick C. Davis created in 1933. "Stone Dead" is the seventh of eight McGee stories Davis would publish in less than a year. Another story along "weird menace" lines is Anthony M. Rud's serial The Strange Scent of Murder, featuring Jigger Masters. The other series characters this issue are Milo Ray Phelps' Fluffy McGoff and Edward Parrish Ware's Tug Norton, who first appeared in DFW back in 1926, when it was still known as Flynn's. You can read more about Norton, a cowboy turned Kansas City private eye, in Monte Herridge's article at the MysteryFile website. The other fiction contributors this issue are future screenwriter James Edward Grant and Charles "Colonel" Givens, a Detroit newspaperman who merited a New York Times obituary. Pulp veteran Tom Roan contributes a nonfiction piece. It's maybe not the most stellar DFW lineup imaginable, but that cover does get you interested in what's going on inside.
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