THE PULP CALENDAR: September 5

Simpler is better most of the time with pulp covers. Street & Smith seems to have gone through cycles of cover design. Like 1939, 1931 was a period of relatively minimal cover copy, with paintings that might well tell their own stories independently of any story inside. This is a nice example from 1931. Robert J. Horton is the star author, but also inside are Max Brand, continuing his serial Golden Lightning, and Jackson Gregory, wrapping up The Silver Star. An editor might have been tempted to throw "bronze" into one of the other stories, but if so the temptation was resisted. Hugh F. Grinstead, Joseph F. Hook, Ray Humphreys and Howard J. Perry are the other fiction contributors. And it looks like that cowboy has a winning hand one way or the other.

THE PULP CALENDAR: August 19

Here's one Western Story cover from 1939 that doesn't quite work for me. In his focus on the close up of hands and weapons H. W. Scott loses some of the sense of height and peril -- despite the bird in the distance -- that this predicament should have. Of course, if the real subject is mutually assured destruction, the cover does have a point. Inside, this issue is dominated by L. L. Foreman's "book-length novel" Bullet Blockade. At 53 double-column pages, this one is a relatively plausible claimant to that much-abused title, and it could well be a good one, since I've liked what I've read of Foreman so far. It leaves room for only two more short stories, by B Bristow Green and Tom Roan, along with this week's installment of Bennett Foster's serial Blackleg. Of course, each Western Story comes with a quota of nonfiction and regular columns. On any given week it looks like it was definitely worth a dime.

THE PULP CALENDAR: August 14

This 1926 cover doesn't have the visual imagination of Western Story covers from 1939, but it has a simplicity and directness of design that makes it just as appealing. While the cover doesn't promote any of the authors in the issue, it has some familiar names inside. Frank Richardson Pierce returns to one of his first successful series characters with a tale of Flapjack Meehan. Pierce created Flapjack back in 1921 The novella "Flapjack Blows It Up" was the character's 43rd appearance as counted by the Fiction Mags Index, and the third Flapjack story of the year. From this point, however, Pierce began to lose interest; Flapjack would not appear again until November 1927, and then only five times more (including the serial Flapjack Meehan in Street & Smith's Far West Illustrated) over the next three years. Meanwhile, Robert Ormond Case introduces a new character -- or so we can safely assume, since all his stories bear his first name -- in Windy Delong. An aggressive attempt was made to put Windy over; he'd appear in two more novelettes in the next three weeks. The character appeared more sporadically thereafter; thrice in 1927, twice in 1928 and 1929; once in 1930 and 1931. He then showed up thrice more between 1934 and 1937. Frederick Faust has a serial running under his John Frederick alias, while Joseph B. Ames continues The Man From Wyoming. There's also a novelette by Harry Golden, who was actually Harold de Polo, and short stories by Harry Adler, Austen Hall and E. E. Harriman. The cover promises "Big Clean Stories of Western Life," which may or may not be a benefit depending on what you mean by "Clean."

THE PULP CALENDAR: July 19

This 1941 Western Story marks the pulp debut of a great genre writer. Harold A. DeRosso had just turned 24. As our occasional correspondent Sai S. of Pulpflakes notes in a biographical sketch, "Six Gun Saddlemates" was his first sale after he'd written eighty stories. Whether it anticipates the H. A. DeRosso known to genre fans for his often bleak, regretful tone I can't say. I have a few DeRosso stories in the western pulps in my collection, and those I've read I've liked. By comparison, cover author Tom Roan had been at the game since 1923. A western specialist by this point, though he did occasional detective stories, he started out as a sea story writer.He endured to the end of the pulp era, publishing frequently in Bluebook in the 1950s. Philip Ketchum and L. P. Holmes, both decent writers, are here also, as is Seth (Frank Richardson Pierce) Ranger with a serial chapter. It looks like a pretty solid lineup for this magazine.

Pulp Reading: WESTERN STORY ROUNDUP, June 1951 - COMPLETE

After Street & Smith's venerable Western Story pulp folded in 1949, Popular Publications eventually acquired the rights to the title and revived it at the tail-end of the pulp era. Before that, Popular tried out a slightly different title, Western Story Roundup, for three issues in 1951. Picking up the numbering from All Story Western -- this third and final issue is technically Volume 4, No. 2 -- Roundup was one of several titles, including Adventure and Black Mask, with which Popular tried a new format that was smaller than the standard pulp but larger than the increasingly popular digests that would inherit pulp's kingdom. Popular went ad-free on these titles and kept interior illustration to the barest minimum. The final issue of Roundup was the most reprint-heavy of the three; six of its nine stories had appeared before, though the cover story by top-hand author Steve Frazee was an original. While Roundup didn't survive, the other titles reverted to full-scale pulp for the time they had left, while the last of all pulps, the Thrilling group's Ranch Romances, would adopt this format in its sad last years. Popular would revive Western Story Roundup in 1955 during its last-gasp attempt to maintain a line of fiction mags in the more conventional magazine format Adventure had adopted in 1953. Taking over the numbering of Rangeland Romances, Roundup and  Fifteen Western Tales ended with the year 1955, marking the end of Popular's once-mighty western magazine line. As for this issue, the Frazee story is good and I'll leave the rest for you to judge for yourselves. The complete issue is available in scanned form for download from the link below.

WESTERN STORY ROUNDUP, Vol. 4, No. 2, JUNE 1951