Darwination

Also Nugget Magazine #1

Was doing a little digging and found some risqué Baker.

Hold them all and sell some Wolverine and X-Men. 
 

This one was so good it was used a few times.  I forget the book, but somewhere in the Baker thread it was used in an interior, and of course here:

Not my copy!  But an image I worked with this morning from Mycomicshop, Bud Plant's copy, still there. Norman Saunders on the second issue (the first of two #11s, as can happen in the golden age).
Me too, or ooh la la? How fun is this?  Great colors.

Readers of GA romance recognize the workplace romance as a common plot if not a great way for a young woman to meet a husband.  Don't tell HR
Having worked the cover, I gave it a read. From the JVJ project at the comic museums, with excellent edits from Tilliban. 
https://digitalcomicmuseum.com/index.php?dlid=24121
A nice one pager black and white job on the ifc.  And a giant sized indicia, damn Ziff-Davis

The artist is Paul Parker, who I last encountered in a re-read of his Mr Zin Hatchet Killer stories in The Killers.  He's got the lead story, too, which I don't like as much as the style on The Pianist and The Earl there.
The second story's from Ogden Whitney.  I always like an opening scene in a diner.

My favorite story in here, if not exactly graceful, are the pages from the Lin Streeter story

Storywise, there's lots of melodrama throught the issue, but is does get a little catty in the last tale (Reed Crandall).  Redheads are always trouble.

The Saunders might just be my favorite Ziff-Davis romance cover, but there's one or two others vying for my heart.

It’s been quite a while since my last post, hello to all my FH collecting friends. 
Here is my latest book :

When I was sorting through a few piles of books last night, I started thinking and I don’t believe I’ve ever shared this one before.  I’ve had it for a while.  

I've never quite understood the fascination with this issue

That is a crazy, and worthy endeavor!

A follow up on This Week.  Phil S-P has pointed out during a discussion in Pulpscans on the subject of possible variance that This Week has been digitized as part of the NEH's Chronicling America initiative in the pages of the Evening Star.  It's all black and white (as is the case with a lot of "institutional scanning") but still super cool.  There's an indexer working on it for Galactic Central that's made it up to 1941 and is including illustrator credits. Excellent!
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045462/1935-02-24/ed-1/4/
 
 

With all the new interest in pulps, I started to convince myself I’d find less and less, and while that may prove true in the long run, I was happy to find these reasonably priced at an antique mall in Ohio. 
The romance pulps are from the mid to late-50s, and I’ve seen many more from the 30s and 40s over the years leading me to believe the print runs were but a fraction of decades earlier.

Love, love, love Vargas girls    The guy sold a lot of Esquires.
Vargas did make some appearances in girlie pulp adjacent material in the mid-20s in places like Burten's Follies and Ziff's.  There's a lot of highjacked stuff in that era from foreign sources (the French predominately), but I'm pretty sure Vargas sold some work directly to American publishers.  Whether Cap'n Joey paid for this one or jacked it, I do not know, but he sure seemed to like this Turkey (not the greatest lol), as he used it in 1925, 1929, and 1933



I better post a better Vargas to refresh the eyes, woof, or rather me-yow.

 

A follow up on This Week.  Phil S-P has pointed out during a discussion in Pulpscans on the subject of possible variance that This Week has been digitized as part of the NEH's Chronicling America initiative in the pages of the Evening Star.  It's all black and white (as is the case with a lot of "institutional scanning") but still super cool.  There's an indexer working on it for Galactic Central that's made it up to 1941 and is including illustrator credits. Excellent!
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045462/1935-02-24/ed-1/4/
 
 

Lol theres that midwestern humour. Actually the new standards incentivize doing just that - no purple, no real hit on mid grade, which is now 4.5ish. Might as well give those bad boys a haircut for that sweet squarebound look.

I don't mind putting raw pulps out on a table to flip through, but I find overhangs to be so important that I usually trim them off the pulps and place them in mylar bags to be preserved for future generations.

In some respect, I can understand the different standards for different purposes.  If it's in the box, the cover is the most important thing.  If you're handling it and want to read it, the overall condition is more important.  One of the funky things that stick out for me with CGC is that you can have an issue, albeit in nice physical condition, that's faded af and gets a good grade.  I'd take a lower grade with good color almost every time if we are talking about display.
Brittleness is the worst problem a comic can have.  I've seen comic issues (as well as pulps and especially newsprint items) that look pretty damn nice but with total brittleness.  Thumb a few pages and the spine just might split down the entire issue. Gimme fat, supple, and grubby pages over clean, thin, and brittle pages any day.
As for Mask Comics, any copy is a good copy                   Good lord - "Classic cover. Bullet in head panel."

On the other hand, say you are a E.R.B. fan and expect to find that full story in this super-pricey book you've just purchased if you do happen to crack it.  You'd be pretty upset if the first page of the story (or whole story) was clipped when that's a key part of the value of the book.
I hear you, though, noticing cut outs or a neatly clipped page can be tricky, especially in a 200+ page book.  And, yes, just thumbing through a brittle or semi-brittle book can shed much pulp flake (with supple pages, though, you might have zero issues with this, some pulps are very sturdy).  Overhangs can be especially delicate and sometimes the loss of those bits affect the overall look of the cover.
And while we're celebrating the wonders of the pulps here, and while I'm digging in my files from curiosity, some illos from Doc's particular (very cool) issue there.  First published appearance of Anne McCaffrey?
Scans courtesy of Gorgon.  Having a good scan available of a pulp or golden age comic might ease the mind in putting a copy under ice.
Peter Poulton with a slightly unsettling spot illo for the McCaffrey story

Or how about Virgil Finlay illustrating Philip Jose Farmer? 



I wonder if the pulps might have influenced any later Sci Fi imagery, hmm

On the other hand, say you are a E.R.B. fan and expect to find that full story in this super-pricey book you've just purchased if you do happen to crack it.  You'd be pretty upset if the first page of the story (or whole story) was clipped when that's a key part of the value of the book.
I hear you, though, noticing cut outs or a neatly clipped page can be tricky, especially in a 200+ page book.  And, yes, just thumbing through a brittle or semi-brittle book can shed much pulp flake (with supple pages, though, you might have zero issues with this, some pulps are very sturdy).  Overhangs can be especially delicate and sometimes the loss of those bits affect the overall look of the cover.
And while we're celebrating the wonders of the pulps here, and while I'm digging in my files from curiosity, some illos from Doc's particular (very cool) issue there.  First published appearance of Anne McCaffrey?
Scans courtesy of Gorgon.  Having a good scan available of a pulp or golden age comic might ease the mind in putting a copy under ice.
Peter Poulton with a slightly unsettling spot illo for the McCaffrey story

Or how about Virgil Finlay illustrating Philip Jose Farmer? 



I wonder if the pulps might have influenced any later Sci Fi imagery, hmm

I agree that pages must be counted (as problematic as that is).  Some notable / valuable pulps with landmark firsts have very unimpressive covers, or the covers are unrelated to the important content. i.e REH's first Conan in WT has a nice St. John cover that has nothing to do with Conan, PKD's first published work in Planet Stories has a decent but generic cover, Lovecraft's first Cthulhu story in WT has an unrelated and unremarkable cover. The story pages are the gold here, not the covers. 

On the other hand, say you are a E.R.B. fan and expect to find that full story in this super-pricey book you've just purchased if you do happen to crack it.  You'd be pretty upset if the first page of the story (or whole story) was clipped when that's a key part of the value of the book.
I hear you, though, noticing cut outs or a neatly clipped page can be tricky, especially in a 200+ page book.  And, yes, just thumbing through a brittle or semi-brittle book can shed much pulp flake (with supple pages, though, you might have zero issues with this, some pulps are very sturdy).  Overhangs can be especially delicate and sometimes the loss of those bits affect the overall look of the cover.
And while we're celebrating the wonders of the pulps here, and while I'm digging in my files from curiosity, some illos from Doc's particular (very cool) issue there.  First published appearance of Anne McCaffrey?
Scans courtesy of Gorgon.  Having a good scan available of a pulp or golden age comic might ease the mind in putting a copy under ice.
Peter Poulton with a slightly unsettling spot illo for the McCaffrey story

Or how about Virgil Finlay illustrating Philip Jose Farmer? 



I wonder if the pulps might have influenced any later Sci Fi imagery, hmm

Even though it's not from a pulp, this picture showed up on a flea market ad.  It was in the February 1944 issue of Esquire although it could be a reprint or something like that.
 

On the other hand, say you are a E.R.B. fan and expect to find that full story in this super-pricey book you've just purchased if you do happen to crack it.  You'd be pretty upset if the first page of the story (or whole story) was clipped when that's a key part of the value of the book.
I hear you, though, noticing cut outs or a neatly clipped page can be tricky, especially in a 200+ page book.  And, yes, just thumbing through a brittle or semi-brittle book can shed much pulp flake (with supple pages, though, you might have zero issues with this, some pulps are very sturdy).  Overhangs can be especially delicate and sometimes the loss of those bits affect the overall look of the cover.
And while we're celebrating the wonders of the pulps here, and while I'm digging in my files from curiosity, some illos from Doc's particular (very cool) issue there.  First published appearance of Anne McCaffrey?
Scans courtesy of Gorgon.  Having a good scan available of a pulp or golden age comic might ease the mind in putting a copy under ice.
Peter Poulton with a slightly unsettling spot illo for the McCaffrey story

Or how about Virgil Finlay illustrating Philip Jose Farmer? 



I wonder if the pulps might have influenced any later Sci Fi imagery, hmm

On the other hand, say you are a E.R.B. fan and expect to find that full story in this super-pricey book you've just purchased if you do happen to crack it.  You'd be pretty upset if the first page of the story (or whole story) was clipped when that's a key part of the value of the book.
I hear you, though, noticing cut outs or a neatly clipped page can be tricky, especially in a 200+ page book.  And, yes, just thumbing through a brittle or semi-brittle book can shed much pulp flake (with supple pages, though, you might have zero issues with this, some pulps are very sturdy).  Overhangs can be especially delicate and sometimes the loss of those bits affect the overall look of the cover.
And while we're celebrating the wonders of the pulps here, and while I'm digging in my files from curiosity, some illos from Doc's particular (very cool) issue there.  First published appearance of Anne McCaffrey?
Scans courtesy of Gorgon.  Having a good scan available of a pulp or golden age comic might ease the mind in putting a copy under ice.
Peter Poulton with a slightly unsettling spot illo for the McCaffrey story

Or how about Virgil Finlay illustrating Philip Jose Farmer? 



I wonder if the pulps might have influenced any later Sci Fi imagery, hmm

The mag box length is 13 3/4" long. With a narrow label it handles the bedsheet.  Although 1" box is too deep, at least for this book.  I'll be reholdering to get into one of the new tweener slabs.
 

The miracle is that we have so many creator attributions given the paucity of formal records and the neglect and disinterest of so many participants.
What has been accomplished, pre-internet, by Vadeboncoeur, Hames Ware, Jerry Bails, Michelle Nolan and many others working tirelessly uncompensated for decades, is extraordinary.  They were feeding information to Overstreet, who took advantage of this free resource to the extent he could, but he had enough of a challenge keeping up with what was published and what it's worth to obsess over artists' credits.  CGC is in a similar position and provide creator attributions as a supplement to their service rather than their primary focus.
Grand Comics Database offers a much better platform and supports a more rigorous process and repository than Overstreet.  It is an informal crowd-sourced effort and there are disagreements that can't always be resolved definitively. 
Artist attribution is not unique to comics.  Anyone taking a dip into the fine art market will quickly find a much more complicated process,  involving scientific expertise, historical research, computer-aided stylistic analysis, and Catalogue Raisonnée Committees.
I have enjoyed watching this series that is devoted to examining attribution questions.