THE PULP CALENDAR: March 7

We're getting a little ahead of ourselves in charting the decline and fall of Argosy as a Munsey publication. There are two cover format changes to come between the hideous collage design circa February 1941 and this redesign from 1942. By this point the venerable weekly was no longer weekly; it had gone twice-a-month the previous October, and would decline to monthly by May of this year. Photo covers weren't standard; there had been four since the latest redesign. Since these movie-star photos -- Dorothy Lamour had been preceded by Henry Fonda, Sabu and Fay McKenzie -- have nothing to do with the contents inside, I wonder whether they were paid advertising from these actors' respective studios. The "Argosy" on the cover is in a new, more streamlined font, with a plane replacing the ship that had been part of the cover design since the magazine gave up on cover paintings in 1940. Since the switch to twice-monthly Argosy had put more emphasis on its non-fiction lead story; this issue's Gestapo expose outranks the Arthur Lawson novelette, for instance. The majority of the magazine was still fiction, including serials by Charles Marquis Warren and Louis C. Goldsmith. George Michener contributes a sci-fi story, "Last Stop - Earth," while Don Tracy delivers a short story. Lawson's an okay western writer and Goldsmith is pretty good, and if Warren's serial is on the level of his Bugles Are For Soldiers then even this product of Argosy's decrepitude probably is still worth having.

THE PULP CALENDAR: March 6

Emmett Watson's cover promises an action-packed 1937 Argosy, headlined by a new Eustace L. Adams serial. Some of you may have sampled Adams's work when I uploaded his 1935 Anywhere But Here. I haven't read Skyway to Peril yet but it looks like characteristic Adams product of the period. 1937 was a busy year for him. It started with him wrapping one serial. He completed four more during they year, ranging from three to six installments, and was in the middle of yet another by year's end. Adams is overshadowed for posterity by the penultimate installment of Theodore Roscoe's seminal Z is for Zombie, recently reprinted in the Black Lizard Zombies! Zombies! Zombies! anthology. The "big novel" by Frederick "George Challis" Faust actually started in the previous issue; The American is an adventure set in Revolutionary France. While Patrick Lee's The Redcoat Renegade might be presumed to take place in Revolutionary America, a check of the February 13 cover heralding its launch shows it to be a Canadian Mountie serial. The name above the title, Edmund Littell -- a onetime collaborator with Borden Chase -- specialized in tales of "sandhogs," urban tunnel diggers known for superhuman endurance and tremendously dangerous work. This was so popular a genre that Chase would write a serial simply called Sandhog later this year. John K. Butler, James Stevens and Samuel Taylor round out the lineup for an impressive-looking issue that probably would have you shopping for prior and subsequent issues to complete all the serials. Doing that is more of a chore the more serials are running. 1935 is my favorite Argosy year for collecting in part because the venerable weekly only ran two serials at a time back then.

THE PULP CALENDAR: March 5

Detective Fiction Weekly seems to have reached its aesthetic peak of cover design around 1938. Here's an eye-catcher with an admirable minimum of cover copy. Richard Sale's "Die, Hamlet!" is one of his Daffy Dill stories; the other series character in this issue is Edgar Franklin's George Batey, who first appeared in 1931 but didn't return until nearly five years later. Seven more Batey stories appeared over the next two years, the last in December 1938. Regulars Cleve F. Adams, Dale Clark, Frederick C. Davis, and Samuel Taylor put in appearances as well. If it had Judson Philips it would have been as nearly generic an issue of DFW as you could ask for, but that cover on a newstand would look pretty tempting.

THE PULP CALENDAR: March 4

You can hardly go wrong with a 1939 Western Story cover. This one by H. W. Scott succinctly symbolizes the cover story by Bennett Foster, whom I consider a pretty good western writer for this period. Better still is Luke Short, whose serial Bounty Guns, beginning this issue, I've read in novel form. It's very good, though the novel may be an enhanced form of the serial. Also inside is C. K. Shaw, short for Chloe Kathleen, one of the rare woman pulpsters outside the romance genre. It's said that authors who went by initials often were women (see also C. L. Moore), which is why I still wonder about Jimmie Cordie chronicler W. Wirt. In addition to these authors, Jackson Gregory wraps up a serial while John G. Pearsol and Kenneth Gilbert -- an animal story specialist, I believe -- complete the fiction roster. With Short and Foster in the lead this could be a better-than-average issue of the Street & Smith weekly.

THE PULP CALENDAR: March 3

Here's a 1934 Argosy that I'll soon own, since the "South Seas Novelette" mentioned in the lower left corner of the cover is a Bellow Bill Williams story. Bill is outranked this issue by Hulbert Footner's Mme. Rosika Storey, who'd been solving mysteries in Argosy since 1924 and here gets the cover spotlight poor Bill never received. By this point Storey was dividing her time between Argosy and that rarity of rarities, a slick genre magazine called Mystery. Footner ended her series in that magazine in May 1934 with "The Last Adventure With Madame Storey," but returned to work for Argosy that November. On the serial front, sci-fi pioneer Murray Leinster concludes the two-part War of the Purple Gas, while W. C. Tuttle continues Buckshot and Frederick "George Challis" Faust continues  his swashbuckling The Naked Blade. The hero's name is Ivor Kildare, and Faust clearly liked the sound of the last name, later giving it to "Max Brand's" young doctor who, for a while, was his most famous creation. Short stories by Joseph Creamer, James Stevens and John H. Thompson round out an issue I expect to enjoy.

THE PULP CALENDAR: March 2

Rudolph Belarski gives this 1940 Argosy a cover perhaps more suited for the pulps' new competition, superhero comics, as a colossal Smooth Kyle slugs a symbolic Bundist -- a member of the German-American Bund --in the heart of an American metropolis. That poor Kraut is going to impale himself on that skyscraper if he isn't careful. The Sun Sets at 5 was Borden Chase's revival of his cabby-turned-government agent after nearly three years dormant. The first of two Smooth Kyle serials that year -- his last appearances, I believe -- they mark his transformation from crimefighter to Axis-fighter, in keeping with the mood of the moment. The other highlight of this issue, which is available at unz.org, is Cornell Woolrich's novelette "All At Once, No Alice." The other serials this week are Frank Richardson Pierce's The White Oomailik and Eric North's The Green Flame, the latter reportedly a reprint from 1924. Richard Sale, Robert W. Cochran and John Ames York round out the fiction contents. I've read The Sun Sets at 5 in full and like the other Smooth Kyle adventures it's pretty entertaining, particularly when Smooth is bantering with his hard-boiled girlfriend Gilda. It's definitely more entertaining than the propagandistic cover copy might lead you to believe.

THE PULP CALENDAR: March 1

This guy might pass for Bellow Bill Williams except that Bill is more completely tattooed on his upper body and favors fine-cut chewing tobacco over cigars. Our cover boy for this 1932 Adventure is the creation of Gerard C. Delano. Take him as the generic brawny South Sea sailorman. The big stars this issue are Talbot Mundy, who offers a story about the Indian con man Chullunder Ghose, and J. D. Newsom, whose work I'll take on faith. Also on hand are L. G. Blochman, who could do some good exotic adventures, Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson, a founding father of DC Comics, and A. E. Dingle, better known to pulp readers by his rank of Captain, as well as the industrious but not very distinguished Allan Vaughan Elston. Throw in Searchers author Alan LeMay co-writing a non-fiction piece and this is a pretty decent if not overpowering lineup to start off a new month.