THE PULP CALENDAR: October 28

One way to take your  mind off a gloomy winter, whether the weather or the news causes your gloom, is to bask in the sunlight of a vintage West cover like this one from 1931. The only name in the table contents that really means anything to me is W. C. Tuttle, who finishes his two-parter The Vinegaroon this issue. Frederick J. Jackson's Slivers Cassidy first appeared in Adventure way back in 1914, but the series didn't really start until Jackson brought the character West in 1926. There aren't really that many stories in the series -- the FictionMags Index counts nineteen stories, including one serial, though it looks like there are more than that -- and to my knowledge the series hasn't been anthologized but Slivers was popular enough to be name-checked on the cover most of the times he appeared. Jackson wrote stories, plays and screenplays in many genres; his best known stage/screen work may be The Bishop Misbehaves. As for the other authors, I've seen Stephen Payne's name a lot but I don't really have an opinion on him, and I have even less to say about Benjamin F. Ferrill, Norrell Gregory and Raymond W. Porter. West was coming out "every other week"  at this point but would have to go monthly approximately one year later. Doubleday, Doran did everything possible, it seems, to keep Short Stories on its twice-a-month schedule but West ultimately proved expendable, and by the fall of 1935 it was in other hands.

THE PULP CALENDAR: September 18

There's nothing special I can say about the contents of this 1929 issue of West, but its red cover certainly would have caught any eye on the racks. And now I'll take back the "nothing special" disclaimer after looking up this issue's short-story collaborators, Elliott W. Michener and Jack Laird. These guys were a fairly prolific writing team, working mostly for West, during the years when they were inmates at the Oregon State Penitentiary. Once free again, they found crime more lucrative, or less difficult, than pulp writing. Both eventually went to Alcatraz, where Michener rehabilitated himself for good through gardening and Laird actually managed to escape, albeit for an hour, using a homemade army uniform. Freed for good in the 1950s, they became inventors and lived to ripe old ages. I suspect their true story is stranger than any fiction they came up with in stir.

THE PULP CALENDAR: September 2

For variety's sake, here's a West from 1931, when the Doubleday, Doran pulp was a biweekly. That meant readers would get three issues that September compared to only two of West's stablemate, the twice-a-month Short Stories. I haven't much to say about the contributors except that some were familiar names to genre fans of the time; [William] Colt MacDonald, Allan K. Echols, Frank C. Robertson and Charles W. Tyler, for instance, though there's also a one-time-only author here named Hunter Eaton. In all such instances, however, you might guess that Eaton really was one of the aforementioned writers getting a second story into the issue. I picked this one mainly because I thought the blue-green sky of William Reusswig's cover contrasted nicely with West's sunbeam banner. By the way, this issue is the first appearance of the cover hero, George C. Shedd's Ben Pickering, in the FictionMags Index, but I'd guess he wouldn't be called by name on the cover if he hadn't appeared before.

THE PULP CALENDAR: August 13

In 1927, after roughly a year and a half of existence, West celebrates its promotion from twice-a-month to weekly. Technically West switched to weekly on August 6, but I suppose this one's the first truly weekly issue in that it followed just one week after the previous number. The publisher couldn't maintain the punishing pace set by Street & Smith's Western Story and Wild West Weekly, however, and West relapsed to twice-a-month in November 1928. The noteworthy contributor this issue is R. R. Whitfield, better known as Raoul and best known for his stories, under his own name and as Ramon Dacolta, in the legendary hard-boiled pulp Black Mask. As with some other western pulps, for West at this time "western" was more a geographic than a chronological category. Hence Whitfield could publish "air patrol" stories here. He published five stories in West, but I leave it to the specialists to inform us whether all of these were air stories. The advertised star writer is Oscar J. Friend, whose Gun Harvest must have been bang-up stuff, since he really hadn't published enough to be advertised on the strength of his name. Maybe his sideline as a literary agent helped get him recognition here. Familiar oldtimers like Raymond S. Spears and Frank C. Robertson are also on hand, as are lesser-known names like Sig Young and T. von Ziekursch. West is supposed to be a pretty great western pulp but I haven't sampled one yet, though I'm increasingly tempted to do so.

THE PULP CALENDAR: July 9

This is a 1930 issue of West, another twice-a-month publication from the publisher that brought you Short Stories. Star author Ernest Haycox had been writing almost exclusively for the Doubleday, Doran company since 1928, dividing his efforts between the two pulps. Less than a year from this issue Haycox made his breakthrough in Collier's, and from that point he continued to publish in pulps until the end of 1935, now working with a wider range of publishers, presumably since he was now more in demand. By the 1940s he was probably the most popular western author in the country. He might have remained so longer had he not died prematurely in 1950. The other featured author, Jay Lucas, is better known in some quarters as Jason Lucas, who after his pulp days became an expert on bass fishing, the author of a popular guide to the sport, and a longtime fishing editor for Sports Afield magazine. Of the names on top, (William) Colt McDonald and Stephen Payne probably are familiar to genre fans, while Ladd Haystead had a fairly brief pulp career -- his "Hell's Going to Pop" was only his third story in four years -- before becoming "the country's No. 1 farm journalist" according to Popular Science magazine. Future New York Journal-American editor (Sam) Houston Day and Gladwell Richardson are the other fiction contributors, while Griff Crawford contributes a poem and "Soogum Sam" does his regular "Ask Me an Old One!" column. You'll note that pulp fiction was a springboard to bigger things for a lot of people, at least in this issue.

THE PULP CALENDAR: May 5

Here's an early issue of West. It's Vol. 2, No. 3 from 1926, but it took just six twice-a-month issues to make a volume in those days. The Fiction Mags Index doesn't label W. C. Tuttle's story "Rainbow's End" as a series story, but we're clearly expected to know who "Peaceful" is. Presumably he's Peaceful Peters, the protagonist of a 1920 Short Stories novelette (hence from the same publisher as West) that was made into the 1922 movie Peaceful Peters. There's no way to know how many Peaceful Peters stories Tuttle wrote, as there's no titling gimmick to tip us off, unless you're a Tuttle completist. We know that he wrote a string of stories about the character for Street & Smith's Western Story in 1937-8. Tuttle could work a character a long time, so there may be more beyond those that aren't clearly labeled. Anyway, one of Tuttle's peers, Frank Richardson Pierce, lands a short story this issue, while Murray Leinster, later better known for science fiction, gets the "complete novel" (53 pages) advertised on the cover. Charles Wesley Sanders starts a serial, Young Lightning, while Hugh F. Grinstead, Howard E. Morgan, Stephen Payne and Al Priddy bring up the rear. The funny thing about this issue is that it sports a so-so cover by James C. McKell, who would graduate to Saturday Evening Post cover, while the inside front cover sports a frontispiece by the legendary western artist Charles M. Russell, one of three he'd contribute to West in the final year of his life. That seems just a little backwards to me.

THE PULP CALENDAR: March 18

West was published originally by the same people who put out Short Stories, Doubleday, Page & Co., and like Short Stories it came out twice a month at first. West must have been a hit, because after about a year and a half it was promoted to weekly in the summer of 1927, putting it in direct competition with Street & Smith's Western Story. It only stayed weekly for little more than a year, reverting to twice a month in November 1928. It slowed to once a month late in 1932. Doubleday sold West in 1935, and in 1938 it ended up with Ned Pines' Thrilling group, where it continued until on a bimonthly schedule until most of the Thrilling westerns were cancelled at the end of 1953. This is a 1931 issue sporting West's snazzy setting-sun cover device, its answer to Short Stories' red sun motif until West revamped its cover design in 1932. Bellow Bill Williams creator Ralph R. Perry has the lead novelette this issue. He'd been a regular contributor to West in its early days, but this was his first story for them since the fall of 1928. Perry finished his pulp career writing westerns, his last appearing in the last issue of Thrilling's Popular Western for November 1953. Also in this issue, W. C. Tuttle introduces what I presume to be another comic mystery solving team, but Terry McCune and Howdy Hepburn must not have gone over. Tuttle published four stories in three years, then revived the characters once more for a single outing in 1944. Murray Leinster, best known today for his science fiction, continues the serial Dead Man's Shoes while Bennett Foster, a decent writer, places a short story, "The Jurisdiction of Colonel Colt." The other contributors are unknown to me, but it looks like West as a rule published the "top hand" western writers of the day, with the conspicuous exception of Max Brand. I've never read an issue of West from its glory days, but I'd guess it would be good reading.