THE PULP CALENDAR: February 16

You might assume that Foreign Legion stories are celebrations of imperialism, but usually they're more cynical than that, or too much concerned with the personal struggles and feuds within the Legion to worry much about the politics. J. D. Newsom was one of the top Foreign Legion writers, but in an autobiographical sketch contributed to this 1935 issue's "MenWho Make the Argosy" column, he makes his own worldview more clear.

Newsom sounds like no fan of either "hypotrophied nationalism" or the sort of imperialism that depended upon a Foreign Legion. "Grenades for the Colonel," on the other hand, takes a "natives can't be trusted" tack, as a disgraced Legion unit proves the only defense against a Moroccan uprising stirred up by a local demagogue who "had the same hold upon his people that some European dictators have acquired of late years in more civilized communities." This rabble-rouser stirs up some of the Legion's nominal allies, the Senegalese Tirailleurs, whom the rogue unit had earlier beaten up in a street brawl. It's not the best I've read from Newsom but it's entertaining enough. Despite the patriotic optimism he expresses above about America's potential for "a new form of civilization," Newsom would later in 1935 write a story about an American legionnaire in Indochina that in a way feels prophetic of things to come. He was just about done with pulps at this point and soon to be recruited for the Federal Writers Project, a New Deal program he would eventually lead. I find it interesting that a pulp writer would land such a job, but I suppose such a person would know all about lifting oneself out of poverty with a pen.

Let's see what else is in this issue:

By a comfortable margin, the serials are the highlights of this Argosy. Eustace L. Adams continues his kickass American-airmen-in-Latin America story Anywhere But Here, as you'll see for yourself shortly, while Frederick "George Challis aka Max Brand" Faust wraps up his second serial about Tizzo the Firebrand, The Great Betrayal. Best of the rest is Theodore Roscoe's satirical story "King for a Day," a sketch of the stressful life of a mitteleuropean monarch that all serves to set up a punch line about an American tourist dreaming of changing places with the ruler he doesn't recognize tending a garden. Just as Newsom invokes fascism faintly in his story, so Roscoe numbers Nazi Germany among his protagonist's many problems. Bits like these add contemporary color to the stories, but pulps had not yet taken a propagandistic or Popular Front turn. The goofiest story this week is easily Ray Cummings' fantastic, as Argosy called science fiction stories, "The Moon Plot." This look at the future from one of the pioneer sci-fi writers, who identifies himself as a 23rd century narrator, becomes instant camp when the defeat of a Martian plot to overthrow the government of the Moon hinges on a heroic girl disguising herself as not just a boy, but a Spanish boy, complete with the comic-strip accent, to win the confidence of a half-breed revolutionary. It's one of the few pulp stories I've read that I honestly find unintentionally hilarious. That leaves us with Allan Vaughan Elston's novelet "Badge of Honor," which builds up to the hero telling a noble lie to a small boy about the boy's father, Richard Howells Watkins' auto-racing story "Two Seconds Slow," and a little bit of torture pulp from William Merriam Rouse, "The Golden Fawn." Adams, Challis, Newsom and Roscoe make this issue worth having, but next week's issue, I think, is even better. Nevertheless, this issue of Argosy is brought to you by...

PULP READING: Eustace L. Adams, ANYWHERE BUT HERE pt.1

From my battered but unbroken February 9, 1935 issue of Argosy, here's the first of three installments of Eustace L. Adams's serial Anywhere But Here. Check out my Feb. 9 Pulp Calendar piece for more info about the story. Adams was a wartime flier -- publicity placed him with the legendary Lafayette Esquadrille -- whose main gig was a series of aviation adventures for kids featuring Andy Lane. Pulps were his adult writing and he rose to the occasion with crisp action-adventure tales that are part hard-boiled and a little part Lost Generation in their world-weary attitude. Adams broke into Argosy in 1928 and, apart from flying pulps, that remained his main pulp market, with Short Stories running a distant second. He also wrote for such slicks as The American Magazine, a monthly from the makers of Collier's, and Cosmopolitan when it was more fiction-oriented than it is today.

This is a good-sized, thirty-page opening installment graced with the spot illustrations of the main characters with which Argosy broke up the monotony of text in 1934 and 1935 -- an enhancement it made no sense to abandon. Rest assured that I own the February 16 and 23 issues, so as long as they're cooperative you can expect to get the complete three-part serial if this installment gets you interested. Begin now this combination bromance and romance in turbulent Central America by clicking the link below:

Eustace L. Adams, ANYWHERE BUT HERE, Part One,

ARGOSY, February 9, 1935

THE PULP CALENDAR: February 15

That's a beautiful cover by Edgar Franklin Wittmark from a 1930 Adventure. I have no clue what the cover story, H. Bedford-Jones's "Jewels For a Lady," is about, but it's safe to guess that an Adventure cover story is Bedford-Jones in top form. The so-called "King of the Pulps" spread the wealth around the four major adventure pulps, with Blue Book getting the most, with plenty to go around for other magazines. Two other heavy hitters this issue are Arthur O. Friel, who starts a two-parter, and Thomson Burtis, who most often did airborne crime-fighting stories but worked other genres as well. Bill Adams, who has a fiction piece this issue, was virtually Adventure's house philosopher during the 1920s, when his non-fiction "Slants on Life" appeared regularly. Redvers' Cry Havoc!, introduced so dramatically on last issue's cover, wraps up this time, while E. S. Dellinger, Henry LaCossitt, Edmund M. Littell and Barry Lyndon round out the fiction lineup. Adventure is supposed to be past its prime by this point, but on an issue-to-issue basis I doubt any rival could top it yet.

PULP READING: Sidney Herschel Small, "THE GLOVE OF THE FOX," BLUE BOOK, September 1935

If the Sidney Herschel Small story I linked you to the other day gave you an appetite for more, or if you're interested in freebooting adventures in 1930s China, here's the one and only Small story I own in its original pulp form. As of 1935 pulp stories set in China had not yet taking a propagandistic turn. Sure, the Japanese are bad guys, but in this period it's hard to find a good guy in China. No one was obligated to treat Chiang Kai-shek as one, for instance. China stories thus could take a hard-boiled, almost amoral tone, if not a "plague on all your houses" attitude toward the brutal factions vying for the country.

In this story, Red Carson and his rugged Mongol sidekick encounter a "Red" warlord -- interestingly, Small describes his villain as a "theoretical" Red, as if he's only playing Communist for convenience -- while trying to rescue some Christian missionaries. This is a startlingly grim story, in which the hero allows an innocent white woman to be poisoned in order to persuade the villain to take poison himself, and tells the victim's bereaved husband that she's better off, since she'd been driven mad by the atrocities she's witnessed.

If you download the story you'll see why Blue Book had a reputation as the best illustrated pulp magazine. Other publishers were often stingy with illustration, but Blue Book was lavish with art from the likes of John Richard Flanagan, who contributed a couple of double-page spreads to the Small story. I've put the September 1935 cover at the front of the file so you can get the full impact of those spreads if you go to two-page mode. "Glove of the Fox" is a brisk 11 pager and the first of more to come from this issue of Blue Book. Look for more Pulp Reading scans in the days to come.

Sidney Herschel Small, "THE GLOVE OF THE FOX,"

Blue Book, September 1935

THE PULP CALENDAR: February 14

Not every Asian on a pulp cover is the Yellow Peril. This fellow, for instance, is more likely defending his own land against a White Peril in the form of Jimmie Cordie and his merry band of American mercenaries, whom I presume to be the heroes of W. Wirt's serial The Guns of The American. Even if this isn't a Cordie story I've enjoyed everything by Wirt I've read so far. The enigmatic Wirt -- I still don't know what the first W stands for -- headlines what looks like a mighty 1931 issue of Argosy. Not only are two of my regular favorites, Frank Richardson Pierce and Ralph R. Perry, inside this week, and not only does Theodore Roscoe have a novelet, but the incredible Frederick Nebel makes what seems to be his only appearance ever in Argosy. Nebel is probably the best writer from the Black Mask stable after the canonized Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. There's an emotional intensity in his hard-boiled stories of cops, detectives and reporters, a fury directed at crooks and crooked cops alike, that no other pulp writer I know of can match. I'm not sure what genre "The Creed of Sergeant Bone" falls into, but I suspect the story will kick ass, since everything pulp I've read from Nebel has done that. Tragically, Nebel himself didn't appreciate his gift. He seemed happy to write boring stuff for the slicks from about 1937 on and didn't care to see his pulp stuff reprinted. Sometimes writers themselves don't realize how good they are. That's probably more true for the pulps, where every writer presumably is conscious of writing by the word for the money, than anything else. As for this pulp, it's an issue I'd definitely like to own some day.

THE PULP CALENDAR: February 13

This is Jimmy Wentworth. In the past year, Sidney Herschel Small published eleven of Wentworth's adventures in Detective Fiction Weekly. He ended up writing thirty Wentworth stories, though only four after 1933. You can read one of those stories here. This same week Small, who'd been publishing regularly in pulps since 1923, cracked the slicks with a story in Collier's, where he became a mainstay for the rest of the decade. Small specialized in East-West encounters, stories of whites in Asia or, as in the Wentworth stories, in an American Chinatown. I've read more of his Collier's stuff than his pulp work, and he ended up becoming one of my favorite writers for "The National Weekly." A number of Collier's writers crossed back and forth regularly from slick to pulp: Albert Richard Wetjen, Jacland Marmur and Georges Surdez are some of the others. But back to DFW: a more venerable series character appearing this issue is George Allan England's T. Ashley, who came to life in Street & Smith's Detective Story in 1922, lasted less than a year there, and returned to sporadic life starting in 1927. From 1931 until England's death in 1936 the character appeared in DFW exclusively. Among the other contributors are DFW stalwart Judson Philips, who wraps up a three-part serial, and Robert Speyder Case, whose serial The Fifth Man, which begins this week, is his only known pulp work. I didn't pick this issue for today because I thought the cover was that great, though it's probably the most dynamic February 13 cover out there, but because I wanted another chance to recommend Sidney Herschel Small to fans of adventure fiction. But since some of his stuff is back in print these days, I may be preaching to the converted.

THE PULP CALENDAR: February 12

The Fiction Mags Index doesn't give us the contents of this 1938 issue of Argosy, but several booksellers do. While Argosy doesn't follow the Collier's practice of putting Abraham Lincoln on its cover on this week in February every year, you'll see that the venerable weekly honors Old Abe's birthday with a story by Richard Sale. At this time Sale was doing a lot of Civil War stories for Argosy, along with the occasional Civil War-inspired Twilight Zone-style story set in the modern day. The other novelet this week is the cover story, Richard Howell Watkins's "Salvage Tide." Edgar Rice Burroughs wraps up Carson of Venus while Luke Short continues Golden Acres, but chances are that the best thing in this issue is the Georges Surdez short story, "The Coat of M'sieu Picart." Apart from these big names, Garnett Radcliffe continues his serial, London Skies Are Falling Down, while William Chamberlain, Philip Ketchum, Robert E. Pinkerton and James Lockette Hill contribute short stories. As usual in this period, Stookie Allen draws a page or two on the subject of "Men of Daring," this week honoring "Con Colleano -- Wire Wizard." Argosy was still 144 pages every week at this point -- it would slip to 128 pages later this year -- and this issue looks like a typically thick and possibly rich package of fiction.