Monday, December 12, 2016

THE PULP CALENDAR: December 12

George F. Worts' Singapore Sammy made his debut in Short Stories in 1930. After five appearances in little more than a year, Sammy moved to Argosy, where Worts was publishing his Gillian Hazeltine series under his own name and the Peter the Brazen stories as Loring brent. This 1931 issue reintroduces Sammy to the pulp public with a two-party story named for the protagonist. It may be Sammy's first cover. His last Short Stories appearance is top-billed on the May 10, 1931 cover, and I assume the same cover was used for the "Mid-September" British reprint, but the character coming out of the water in a diving suit with a rifle doesn't look like the redhead Argosy readers would come to recognize. In any event, after being reintroduced in dramatic fashion Sammy went on hiatus until 1933, which is regrettable since the adventurer with a grudge against his dad is easily the best of Worts/Brent's three major creations. Overall this looks like a decent issue to have, thanks also to novelettes by Eustace L. Adams and F. V. W. Mason. The continuing stories are Kenneth Perkins' bayou mystery The Tavern of Terror and J. E. Grinstead's western Golden Derringers, while Foster-Harris, Kenneth MacNichol and William Merriam Rouse contribute short stories. Should you choose to get Singapore Sammy complete you'd get novelettes by Erle Stanley Gardner and H. Bedford-Jones in next week's issue. You could definitely do worse.

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