Pulp Glossary
Just what is a pulp?  Find out here!

Pulp Glossary

 

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ADVENTURE

Adventure was published as a direct competitor to Argosy. Adventure mostly featured foreign locals in their stories, as well as wild west yarns. French Foreign Legion...Amazon River Explorers...Bronco Busting...Canadian Mounties...these and more each and every issue, published bi-monthly beginning in 1911.

ADVENTURE PULP

A genre of pulp that was made popular by the magazine "Adventure." Stories included a broad range of topics from adventurers on the Amazon to the French Foreign Legion. Adventure pulps included some of the largest number of titles.

AMAZING STORIES

Hugo Gernsback has been credited with the creation of the term Science Fiction. Amazing Stories was his first pulp, published in bedsheet format (8x11). Amazing began mostly as a reprint publication reprinting fantastic fiction from Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, Gernsback finally began to find authors for this new type of fiction and the magazine continued through different owners and sizes, lasting all the way until today as a digest sized magazine.

 

ARGOSY

Frank Munsey began Argosy as a boy's story paper and it finally made it's way as the first pulp paper magazine. Argosy published every type of story imaginable, from aviation to westerns. Science fiction theme stories were published before the term science fiction was even invented. The largest stable of writers of any magazine was published in Argosy making it probably the best fiction pulp ever published. Argosy under many different variations of a title published one issue a week for decades and becomes one of the hardest pulps to collect a complete file.

AVIATION PULP

Aviation pulps began as World War I ended and the horror of battle subsided and the heroic tales of aviators began to take hold. Aviation pulps mostly retold stories based on World War I, but as World War II began, most of the magazine switched stories to the current conflict. The aviation magazines never did that well during World War II, and most died out.
 

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WALTER BAUMHOFER

 Walter Baumhofer like Tom Lovell began his career with the lesser pulp publisher, Harold Hersey.  Known as the "King" of pulp covers, the highest praise came from his fellow artists.  Walter Baumhofer's work can be found on Doc Savage Magazine, Dime Detective, Detective Tales, Pete Rice Magazine, Wild West Weekly, Gangster Stories, Gangland Stories, Fire Fighters and more.  Walter semi-retired from the pulps around 1936 when he finished his last covers for Doc Savage and Pete Rice.   Only occasionally would his work turn up after that, as Walter found too many advertisers and slick work willing to pay so much more than the average pulp publisher.   His covers displayed great grace and style which made him the most popular with all pulp publishers of the day.

 

BLACK MASK

Began as a all-around pulp featuring detective, western and even aviation stories. Later became known as the originator of the hard-boiled detective. Credited as having the best talent writing for a detective pulp, Black Mask included Erle Stanley Gardner, Lester Dent, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Norbert Davis, Frederick Davis and more.

EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS

Burroughs began his career with the publication of a science fiction tale sent to Munsey. Not knowing if the publisher would think that Burroughs was a kook for writing such a tale, he listed himself as a Normal Bean...or being even minded. Argosy published the story "Under the Moon of Mars" but misprinted his name as Norman Bean! Although his science fiction tales would gather him an audience, his character of Tarzan gave him great fame and wealth. Tarzan originally appeared in a Munsey title: The All-Story in October 1912, and almost overnight Burroughs became a household name. Movies, hardback books, paperback books, TV series and nearly ninety years later Burroughs' character of Tarzan is still going strong.

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RAYMOND CHANDLER

Chandler came after Hammett and is another devotee to the hard-boiled school of detective writing.  His stories were published in Dime Detective, Detective Story Magazine, Black Mask and others.  Known as a real loner, Raymond Chandler's career mirrored that of Hammett as most of his pulp stories were redone as novels and movie scripts.

WILLIAM CLAYTON

Beginning in the early 20's, Clayton started his publishing empire.  Some of his titles became some of the longest running series in the pulps, albeit finishing their runs under different publishers.  Ranch Romances was published for some 50 years and Astounding Stories ran 40 years.  William Clayton published a wider variety of genres than the average pulp publisher of his day.  Science fiction, western, aviation, adventure, detective almost all genres except that of the hero pulps.  If Clayton hadn't made a financial mistake in the early 30's and gone bankrupt, there was probably no doubt he would have been one of the largest publishers of pulps.  His best titles were sold off to other publishers.
 

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NORMAN DANIELS

Norman Daniels, born Norman Danberg, wrote millions of words of fiction for the pulps. He penned many different pulp characters including, Doc Savage, The Black Bat, The Candid Camera Kid, Phantom Detective, Crimson Mask and more.

LESTER DENT

Original author of Doc Savage, Lester Dent began his career as a short story writer.   Published in Top-Notch, Air Stories, Western Trails and various Dell Publication pulps, Lester caught the eye of editor John Nanovic with a short series of stories in the All Detective Magazine with a character by the name of Click Rush, The Gadget Man.   Although the character of Doc Savage was designed by publisher Ralston and editor Nanovic, it was Lester Dent who fleshed out the fledgling crime fighter.  Doc Savage was only second to The Shadow in the number of copies printed per issue and some plans were made to make it a bi-weekly.  Lester Dent went on to writing for Black Mask, Argosy, Crimebusters and other pulps, yet he yearned to break into the slicks and higher pay.  Lester Dent made a couple of inroads into hardback mystery fiction, but never found the wider audience outside of the pulps.

 
 

RAFAEL DE SOTO

Rafael deSoto (1906-1992)
    Barta Rola, Spain , a small town along the Portuguese border, was the birthplace of Rafael deSoto. As a young man deSoto considered a life in the preisthood before deciding upon a career in the arts. He came to New York City to study architecture at Columbia University but the depression forced him to quit school. Like so many others, Rafael broke into the pulp field by doing black and white interior dry brush drawings for Street & Smith, primarily for their western titles such as Wild West Weekly, but also for Top-Notch and others.     
   After two years of doing dry-brush he sold a cover to Street and Smith and his painting career took off.  He created many covers for Ace, Dell, and Standard, but the body of work he is undoubtedly  best remember for are the images he created for Popular Publications. For Popular deSoto had as regular monthly assignments and created long runs of covers on The Spider, Dime Dectective, Detective Tales, Black Mask as well as a host of lesser known titles.
    Rafael deSoto created well over 450 covers for the pulps before moving into the then new paperback market in which he also led a very prolific career. [text by Tom Roberts]

DETECTIVE PULP

Street & Smith's DETECTIVE STORY MAGAZINE is credited with starting the trend. Although 1915 was the first issue of that magazine, detectives in fiction runs back much farther than that. Dime Novels and Story Papers ran stories about detectives, most of them being young well-to-do well bred men. The detective pulp kept the stereotype in place for much of the teens and early twenties. With BLACK MASK, the school of the hard-boiled detective began. The genre of detective pulps is as varied as the number of titles offered by every publisher during the lifetime of the pulps.

DIME DETECTIVE, MYSTERY, SPORTS, WESTERN, etc.

 When Popular Publications began publishing in 1930, they decided to produce four premiere publications. Why four? Because that was the number of issues it would take to fill a press. So they would produce four pulps at the same time. The genre of magazines were western, aviation, detective and gang. At the time all four were very popular pulp themes. Steeger found out the hard way and his magazines began to flounder. He told a story that we would have his secretary put off the bill collectors and he and his partner would run down the back stairs to the pool room until they got the all clear signal. Harry Steeger in late 1931 began the title that would save his early publishing house. DIME DETECTIVE was an almost overnight success. DIME DETECTIVE went on to spawn the rest of the "Dime" series, but also piggybacked upon the success of the HARD-BOILED school popularized by BLACK MASK. DIME WESTERN continued the success in 1932 and DIME MYSTERY BOOK MAGAZINE and DIME SPORTS soon followed. Dime Mystery Book Magazine's sales began to flounder almost immediately and Steeger cast about looking for an alternate theme for his magazine title. After returning from Paris, France Harry Steeger decided to pattern Dime Mystery after the theater of the macabre. Torture, horror and terror was to be the guiding theme and soon after Dime Mystery Book Magazine was transformed into DIME MYSTERY MAGAZINE and the genre of weird menace was born. All four "dime" publications lasted almost the entire time Popular Publications was producing pulps. Even when the price of the magazines rose to 15 cents, the title "DIME" continued.

DOC SAVAGE

 The second in line of venerable Street & Smith hero publications. John Nanovic was given orders to begin a second series of stories. Looking to start more of an adventure type hero to go along with the detective mysterious type hero in THE SHADOW, John Nanovic started looking for the right type of author. Lester Dent was given the task to ghost write a story for THE SHADOW and from that work and the strength of a host of character Dent had been writing for other publishers, John Nanovic gave him the series. Doc Savage was a world traveling hero cut from completely different cloth from any other character. Most hero pulps had a detective in disguise, but Doc Savage was different. He spanned the globe looking to solve problems that could threaten the world. There were few imitators, but no equal.
 

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G-8 AND HIS BATTLE ACES

Popular Publications continued their line of character pulps with G-8, an aviation spy/hero. G-8's adventures had little to do with the great war outside of the fact that he flew a Spad against the Germans. He also flew against headless men, giant floating demon heads, trained tigers that jumped from airship to airship to kill the pilot...you get the idea. Fantastic, outrageous and absolutely fun! All 110 issues were written by pulp wordsmith Robert J. Hogan. Also every cover was painted by the fabulous Frederick Blakeslee.

 

GANGSTER PULP

During the late 20's and early 30's, several publishers jumped on the popularity of such underworld figures like Al Capone. No publisher outside of Harold Hersey made much of the genre and the numbers of magazines are small and very rare. The gangster pulp fell in popularity with a growing morality and a public outcry against making heroes of such criminals. Gangster pulp then gave way to the opposite genre of G-Men magazines. Gangster pulps are in high demand, mostly because their print runs were small and the number of copies remaining are very limited.

  
             GGA

Good Girl Art.  Pinup, damsels in distress, many styles of GGA art was seen in the pulps.  The Weird Menace magazines were the mainstay of GGA.  The hapless females tortured, in various forms of nudity was the norm.  Science fiction covers showed less than realistic attire for spacefairing women.  Westerns even had tattered clothing for it's covers.  GGA in the pulp was another reason that pulps received the bad publicity.

WALTER GIBSON

Walter Gibson was a struggling writer of magic shorts and books, as well as a sometime contributor to several magazines before his big break with The Shadow.  Walter was an editor and erstwhile publisher of a short series pulp - Tales of Magic and Mystery, and was lucky to have happened along to be tapped as the "biographer" of the man behind the mysterious voice on radio of The Shadow.  Walter's output set records as he quickly took the character from a quarterly publications, to monthly and on to bi-weekly.  Rarely writing less than twenty four Shadow novels a year, Walter Gibson also wrote for many other publications, including Crimebusters.  Gibson also was a biographer and ghost writer for different magicians of their day including, Houdini and Blackstone.  Walter Gibson went on to pen hundreds of books about everything from Horse Racing to Magic books, yet he is best remembered as the hand behind the phenomenal character of The Shadow.
 

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DASHIELL HAMMETT

One of the fathers of the "Hard-Boiled" school of detective fiction.   Author of the detective with no name..The Continental Op.  Wrote mostly for Black Mask, although a few stories were also published in sister magazines of Black Mask, The Smart Set and others.  Once retired from the pulps, Hammett never wrote again, but re-edited his stories or serials into books and movie scripts.

HARD-BOILED

Hard-boiled detectives were from the gutter. This detective no longer went about solving crimes among the rich and elite, the hard-boiled detective dug down into the gutter and the dirt. He was hard as nails and his cases normally reflected this style.

        ROBERT GEORGE (R.G.) HARRIS

(b. 1911)  When the great Walter Baumhofer informed Street and Smith he was relinquishing the cover assignment on Pete Rice, art director W. H. James had a problem. Pete Rice was an important title to Street & Smith, as they had recently put “Pistol Pete Rice” on the radio airwaves as well. Baumhofer had set high artistic standards that had come to be expected by the readers of Pete Rice. His talent had defined the characters on every issue since its premeire. The talent of Baumhofer had helped to raise the level of artistic merit across the entire pulp field. Baumhofer was indeed a hard act to follow.  But W.H. James had no farther to look than R.G. Harris, who was producing exciting covers for Wild West Weekly and other Street & Smith titles. Every pulp artist knew the work of Baumhofer. He was the top dog and all had great admiration (and sometimes envy) for his abilities. Harris realized the responsibility ask of him and knew they were indeed big shoes to fill.  A very capable artist in his own right, Harris had no trouble adhering to the style set by Baumhofer. After Harris’s first issue on Pete Rice, with the artistic transition from Baumhofer to Harris going so smoothly, James knew he had made the right artistic choice.  A few months later when Baumhofer announced his decision to was relinquishing the cover assignment on the Street & Smith flagship title Doc Savage, art director James immediately knew where to turn. And again R.G. Harris easily solved his problem.  Born in Kansas City, Harris set his sights early on a career as an artist.  While studied at the Kansas City Art Institute under the tutelage of Monte Crews, Harris met John Falter, who was already working for the Street & Smith western titles. This immediately appealed to Harris who had a strong desire to paint cowboys and scenes born of the American West. Harris moved to New York in 1933, along with fellow Kansas City artists Richard Lyon and Emery Clark. The trio set up shop in a studio shared with John Falter. Soon the cover assignments were flowing, and over the next five years these four produced an incredible amount of cover work for an array of publishers.  Harris got his start working for Ned Pines’ Thrilling Group on such titles as The Feds, Thrilling Adventure, Thrilling Western, and Thrilling Ranch. Across town at Street & Smith, Harris produced over fifty covers alone for Wild West Weekly, and in addition to his Doc Savage and Pete Rice work, his images also graced the covers of Complete Stories, Top Notch, and Western Story.  Harris left the pulp field for the better paying slick magazines in 1938. He continued illustrating for the women’s magazines until 1961 when he ceased all other commercial assignments to devoted his ample talents strictly to portraiture.  R.G. Harris hung up his brushed in 1989 and now lives happily and quietly in retirement (with no deadlines to meet) with his wife Marjorie. [text by Tom Roberts]
 

HERO PULP

Hero pulps, or character pulps grew from the overwhelming success of The Shadow. Heroes ran the gamut of detectives, adventurers, science fiction, aviation, mystery and others. Hero pulps gave way to comic books and quite a few characters made the leap to their own comic. Among collectors, hero pulps are a major draw.

HAROLD HERSEY

A publisher of off-beat titles. Hersey got his start with THRILL BOOK for Street & Smith in 1919 after working in the Copyright office for the Library of Congress. After THRILL BOOK folded, Hersey went to work for several other publishers such as William Clayton for which he helped start the longest running pulp of all time: RANCH ROMANCES. Leaving the Clayton group of magazines, Hersey went to work for Bernarr MacFadden who then had him edit a line of magazines under the banner of Magazine Publishers, Inc. MacFadden was a silent part owner. Hersey's claim to fame was his view that specialty magazines catering to a specific audience could be a gold mine. He published magazines with such titles as: FIRE FIGHTERS, SPEED STORIES, SPEAKEASY STORIES, COURTROOM STORIES, STRANGE SUICIDES, MEDICAL HORRORS and others. A large number of his magazines never made it past a fourth issue with only his Gangster pulp titles really doing any business.

  
             ROBERT J. HOGAN

Mostly known for his aviation character pulp, G-8 and His Battle Aces.  Hogan wrote a massive amount of fiction, and almost single-handed wrote all of the G-8 stories and the filler stories as well.  Hogan also wrote two other series characters for Popular, The Mysterious Wu Fang and The Secret 6.  Writing from W.W.I experiences, Hogan made his way into the pulps via the numerous number of aviation titles.   Daredevil Aces, Battle Birds, Battle Aces all saw his prose.  Hogan outside of his single character pulps rarely ventured outside of the aviation genre.  When he did, he wrote mostly western fiction.

HOUSE NAME also known as pen names

House names hide the real identity of the author. Publishers used house names to either keep the continuity of a series going (i.e.: DOC SAVAGE MAGAZINE written by Kenneth Robeson), or in the case of an author not wanting his name to be recognized on a particular magazine (i.e.: Hugh B. Cave wrote under the name Justin Case for the Spicy line of magazines), or perhaps a single author wrote many stories for the same magazine and the publisher didn't want his name listed over and over. (i.e.: Robert Leslie Bellem wrote under Ellery Watson Calder or Jerome Severs Perry and many others.)

JOHN NEWTON HOWITT

(1885-1958) Born in White Plains, New York, Howitt was struck with a case of polio at age four. During his time of recovery and convalescing, his father drew pictures for the boy and encouraging him to draw also. As he got older and his affliction limited his other physical activies, drawing became a passion for “Newton,” and he devoted more serious attention to it.     The young Howitt was quite studious and graduated from high school at age sixteen. He then enrolled at the Art Students league in New York City where he studied under noted the noted instructor George Bridgeman.         Howitt embarked upon a career in illustration, and from 1910-1930 he led an extensive commercial career with paintings appearing in the magazines Pictoral Review, Liberty, The Saturday Evening Post, Colliers, and Delineator, all of which were extremely high profile publications of the day. In addition he illustrated several books as well as stories for the newspaper supplemental sections, This Week, New York Herald Tribune, and the American Sunday Monthly Magazine.
    During the 1920s Howitt was commisioned to create advertising work for several nation-wide companies that included Jello Foods, Post Bran Flakes, Devoe Paints, Vermont Marble and Crisco Shortening.     In between commercial assignments, Howitt always devoted his time to painting landscapes. He traveled extensively in North America, painting everywhere he went. He established a solid reputation as a landscape painter of high quality and he exhibited his works regulary in prominent galleries. To this day his landscapes hang in noted museuems and public collections across the country.
    As the depths of the Depression struck, Howitt apparently found himself on shaky ground financially. Unable to earn a living from his past markets, he turned to the pulps as a means to make a living. Howitt had reached middle-age and was much older than many of his contemporary pulp artists just beginning a career. The forty-eight year old Howitt could have considered the pulps nothing but a step down from the level of succes he had achieved. According to Mrs.
Shirley Steeger, wife of Harry Steeger who knew Howitt well, he “deplored the work — but it was meticulously done.”
    But how did this prominent landscape artist and illustrator make his way into the sordid melodrama of the pulp-paper magazines? This has been a point of question to many.
    For a number of years Howitt had rented a studio at 163 West 23rd Street in New York City. Also renting studio space on the same floor of this building was Jerome Rozen, who himself had been working for the pulp publishers for several years. Oddly enough Howiit began working for the very same publishers as Jerome Rozen. It is the belief of this writer that it was either through the advice and recommmendations, or possibly a personal introduction from Jerome Rozen that brought Howitt to the offices of Harry Steeger at Popular Publications and across town to the publishing empire of Street & Smith.
    Howitt’s first known pulp work appeared on the cover of The Spider for November, 1933. He continued to paint The Spider covers for 71 consecutive months until September, 1939. Howitt simultaneaously took on monthly assignments from Popular to provide covers for Dime Detective, Horror Stories, Terror Tales and Operator #5. He is also credited with created the covers for the one-shot titles The Scorpion and The Octopus. For Street & Smith Howitt created covers for The Whisperer, Top Notch, Clues Detective and Love Story.
    But Howitt was not limited to only Popular and Street and Smith. In additon to their work, he painted several covers for rival publishers titles such as Adventure and Popular Detective.
    From this entire body of work, the images that have recieved the most attention and recognition are the gothic-centered paintings that Howitt created for what has come to be known as the “weird-menace” pulps. For Horror Stories and Terror Tales. “ ... he did a series of astonishing covers that remain unmatched as perfect examples of the pulp vision of madness unleashed,” wrote pulp historian and author Robert Weinberg. “His work was the stuff of modern nightmares ...,” Weinberg added further.
    Although he created all his work with a consumate professional approach, Howitt thought very poorly of his pulp work. Howitt had throughout his career signed his complete name on a single line in legible block lettering, often
accompanied by the date. Shorlty after starting to work in the pulps, he ceased in signing his namefor fear that it would damage his reputation with the slick magazines. But Howittt was a true artist, and could not leave his work unsigned
completely. He adopted a blazoned red “H” to mark his creations. As soon as the markets changed that would allow him to return to painting his beloved landscapes, portraits and higher profile illustrations or advertisements, he dropped the pulp work entirley.
    Throughout his pulp career, Howitt maintained, although sporactically, to work for such magazines as The Saturday Evening Post and Liberty. After 1940 conditions allowed him to resume working for his former outlets. His last known
cover appear for Thrilling Detective for the February, 1940 issue.
    He became well-known as a portrait painter in his later years and was active in several art organizations. His love of nature led him to create covers for magazines such as Outdoor Life which centered around activies or recreation in
the countrysides around the nation.
    Only one single, original painting has surfaced out of all the pulp covers that Howitt created. This fact simply adds greater specualtion to the legend that Howitt personally burned all of the original paintings of his pulp covers out of contempt. Today his prized landscapes are nothing but a footnote in the history of American Art while his “moonlighting” career for the pulps has brought him greater attention, discussion and recognition than his placid scenes of nature ever did.
    He died in 1958, at his home in Port Jervis, New York.
[text by Tom Roberts]

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TOM LOVELL

Beginning as a teenager in the 20's, Tom Lovell began his art career in the employ of one of the cheapest payers of all pulpdom, Harold Hersey.  Tom Lovell would soon graduate to Popular Publications and Street & Smith and his covers would become minor works of art.  Lovell was meticulous in detail, and his covers where normally action packed.  The colors he would use as either highlights or main lighting set his work apart from much of that present day crowd.  Dramatic could best be said of Lovell's work for such magazines as: Dime Detective Magazine, Dime Mystery Magazine, Wild West Weekly, Detective Tales and more.  Tom Lovell also did a large number of interior black and white drawings for The Shadow magazine.  It wasn't too long before Lovell's work could be contained within the confines of a pulp page and he branched out into slicks and ad art.  Lovell's career was long and varied, as he continued his almost photorealistic style in a series of Civil War illustrations that has been reproduced in large format collector's prints.  Tom Lovell recently passed away while driving his car in Arizona.

LOVE PULP

Most love pulps were written for young juvenile women. The amazing thing about love pulps was that the publishers and most of the editors were men. In fact there were a quite a few male authors who hid behind female house names just to sell a story. Jean Francis Webb was one such author, who wrote for many different magazines, but he had the perfect name to sell also to the love pulps, without changing his name.

 

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NORVELL PAGE

Mainly known as the author of The Spider.  Page took over the character from R.T.M. Scott with the third issue of The Spider.  Transforming The Spider from the typical millionaire playboy/detective into one of a brooding, schizoid crime fighter who shows no mercy.  Page wrote for many other pulp titles from Dime Detective, Horror Stories, Terror Tales and even Street & Smith's Unknown.

POPULAR PUBLICATIONS

Began on borrowed money by Harry Steeger and Harold Goldsmith in 1930.  Popular Publications would grow to be the largest pulp publisher

PULP

A magazine printed on inexpensive newsprint "pulp" paper. The Pulps were also known a pulpwood magazines and given the connotation of poorly written magazines for the masses.

 

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NORMAN SAUNDERS

Known for his wide variety of pulp paintings, Norman Saunders ran the gamut more than any other major pulp painter.  Whether he was painting under the name of Blaine for Saucy Movie Tales, or under his given name for a myriad of other publications, his women was the key to recognizing his style.  Norman Saunder's amazing ability could be seen on detective covers, to science fiction covers, to sports, to westerns to any and all genres.  Never relying on a single market, Norman Saunders could very well be the most published pulp artist ever.

SCIENCE FICTION PULP

Sci-Fi or Science Fiction pulps began in earnest when Hugo Gernsback started AMAZING STORIES. Although several other editors or publishers tried to take credit for being first, Gernsback has been credited with not only starting the first all science fiction magazine, but even coining the phrase. Before AMAZING STORIES, ARGOSY and Munsey's other magazines published stories with a sci-fi theme, as well as Street & Smith's THRILL BOOK. Although Science Fiction pulps had some of the smallest base of readership, those readers more than made up for their numbers with their all-out passion for the genre. Even today, large numbers of science fiction pulps exist.

THE SHADOW

An almost direct link from that was THE SHADOW, when Street & Smith sponsored a radio program with stories being adapted from Detective Story and hosted by someone known only as "The Shadow." Confused listeners enjoyed the program but they asked for copies of The Shadow magazine when they visited their newsstands. Not to miss an opportunity, Street & Smith quickly assigned an editor (John Nanovic) and found a young writer (Walter Gibson) and THE SHADOW was born.

 

SPICY MYSTERY, DETECTIVE, ADVENTURE

The Spicy line is best known for its usage of barely clad females being menaced by various types of insidious creatures. The publishers who would later go on to publish D.C. Comics, sold their line of magazines for a princely sum of 25 cents each and most of the sales was either under the counter or hidden on racks because of their racy cover art. Spicy line was a strange line of publications, since the publishers never deemed the magazines worthy enough to copyright, yet they paid their authors some of the best wordage rate going. Robert Leslie Bellem was the dean of Spicy writers, sometimes penning entire issues under his and other names. Other well known authors also wrote for the Spicy's but they used pennames to hide their real names for fear of being tossed out of other magazines. Hugh B. Cave probably had the best penname for his stories with the Spicy's - Justin Case.

THE SPIDER

 Harry Steeger publisher or Popular Publications decided that he also would jump on the hero bandwagon after THE SHADOW took off in sales. Steeger got Secret Service Smith author, R.T.M. Scott to begin the series about a well-to-do millionaire crime fighter. The Spider was both an enemy to the underworld and the police, as both sides tried to squash the Spider. The series never took off until Steeger replaced Scott with Norvell Page. The stories got more violent, death and blood splashed on every page. The series became a hit and Popular began to diverge from the practices of it's rival Street & Smith.

SPORTS PULP

 

Although the numbers of sports pulps on the market is small, their numbers during the heydays of the pulps was large. Quite a few publishers had a sports pulp on the market. Sports pulps run the gamut from general titles like SPORTS STORY MAGAZINE that ran stories of all sports to BASEBALL STORIES that quite obviously ran nothing but baseball yarns.
 

HARRY STEEGER

Harry began his career editing aviation pulps for the Dell Magazine Group. Along with partner Harold Goldsmith (who was working for Magazine Publishers) borrowed $3000 and started Popular Publications in 1930. Some hard times followed, but Harry Steeger caught his first big break with the introduction of Dime Detective in 1931 and the rest was history. Harry Steeger thought covers were the key to capturing the reader, and that action was the way to keep them. He had constructed a newsstand in his office and would arrange magazines on the rack to best see what colors and designs would attract the would be buyer. His pulps were not short on action and his heroes were perhaps the bloodiest of all the pulps. Popular Publications would later be the largest publisher of pulp titles after buying out several companies or their titles.
 

STREET & SMITH PUBLICATIONS

Originally a publisher of Story Paper before the turn of the century, S&S turned to Dime Novels and then later switched some of those titles over to pulps. Street & Smith didn't turn out more titles of pulps like Popular, but their print run was unmatched. Street & Smith published and printed their pulps and had massive print runs for most of their top titles like The Shadow, Detective Story Magazine, Popular Magazine, Love Story Magazine, Doc Savage and Western Story Magazine. In 1949, Street & Smith proclaimed the end of the pulps and ceased publication of almost every pulp. Astounding continued on as a digest publication and they sold Love Story, Detective Story and Western Story to Popular Publications.
 

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THRILL BOOK

Began as a new concept, Thrill Book was edited by Harold Hersey. Street & Smith gave the reigns to this fledgling pulp that only saw distribution in New York City in 1919. Hersey had no other editorial experience and yet was able to publish Thrill Book that included some of the first fantasy/science fiction of it's kind. Going through several changes, Thrill Book was not successful and Hersey went on to work for William Clayton. Thrill Books are some of the rarest pulps ever and only a couple of complete collections are known to exist.

THRILLING DETECTIVE, MYSTERY, SPORTS, WESTERN, etc.

The Thrilling line of publications were edited by Leo Marguiles. Thrilling along with most every other publisher never shrank from duplicating the success of other publishers. Seemingly as soon as Popular Publications would publish a title or theme, along came Thrilling to duplicate. Dime Mystery from Popular - Thrilling Mystery from Thrilling. Dime Sports - Thrilling Sports. Dime Western - Thrilling Western. You get the idea. Leo wasn't able to get quite the same line of authors and artists to grace his magazines and so Thrilling was never able to top Popular in sales or popularity. The strange quirk though was that the Thrilling Group went into paperback publishing, as Popular Library, using their stories from their pulps and reprinting them in paperback, effectively placing another nail in the coffin of the pulps.
 

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H.J. WARD

Little is known by this author in regards to H.J. Ward, outside of the fact that most of his work can be found on numerous covers for the "Spicy" line of pulps.   Spicy Mystery, Spicy Detective, Spicy-Adventure, Private Detective, Super-Detective, Spicy Western, Speed Detective, Speed Mystery and more all bore the distinctive artwork of H.J. Ward.   Between Ward and Parkhurst, they produced nearly 90% of all the covers for the original "Spicy" line of pulps.  His women are voluptuous, his men are evil, his themes are graphic...perhaps this is why so many collectors seek after the pulps that grace his work.

WEIRD MENACE PULP

A genre of magazines that normally had horror stories. The cover displayed a woman in bondage or in some form of torture, while a helpless male was watching. These magazines are highly sought after by many collectors.

 

WESTERN PULP

Western pulps sprang straight from the pages of their predecessors the Dime Novels. The first all-western magazine was Street & Smith's WESTERN STORY MAGAZINE, which was the re-titling of THE NEW BUFFALO BILL WEEKLY. Western pulps were among the elite when it came to word rate for the writers and the circulation figures for the publishers. Most every publisher had at least one western title among their lists of magazines, with many of those titles being issued weekly or bi-weekly.

 

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YARN

Writers and publishers used to call their stories yarns. As in they would weave a story or yarn!

 

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Revised: September 16, 2008.
Copyright © 2004-2008  by Adventure House.
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