Sarg

I wish someone would start a thread on just the Strasser Collection. The most mysterious of all pedigrees?

What the heck is a "N.J.P.O. Bandit"?

Pulps were periodicals printed on uncoated pulp wood paper. It was a medium that thrived between 1895 and 1950. Pulps specialized in popular fiction, and selling at a price of 25 cents, were more affordable than hard cover books ($3.00 to $6.00). The introduction of comic books and mass market paperbacks in the USA in the mid-to-late 1930s started a competition with pulps, which contributed to their decline. True Detective, Stag, Saga, and many more men's adventure titles from the 1950s onward are magazines, not pulps. However, the writing style in many stories in those magazines can be called "pulp fiction." Weird Tales, Black Mask, The Shadow, Doc Savage, The All-Story, Astonishing Stories, Adventure, are prime examples of pulps.

So the woman was the famous comic strip artist? If three dames are the suspects, why is a man's hand holding a smoking gun? Early transgenderism?

I still have never understood why they were planning on bringing out a NEW horror title in late 1954 (The Crypt of Terror), as this editorial alludes to.

Famous comic strip artist does what?

I wonder if any of those still exist?

Fully clothed, but prominent headlights.

An Avon cover with a fully-clothed woman must be the rarest of all paperbacks.

What are the most desired, most valuable western pulps?

The Library of Congress sold their pulps? When did this happen?

Does this open up slabbing for all magazines in general?

Good to finally see these...

Strong Jack Davis influence, but not as good as Jack.

The Fountainhead Signet PB is "rare"? That's surprising. It was a well-publicized best-seller in hardcover, so you'd normally assume that the paperback would be pretty common. I guess the size and cost (three times more expensive than a regular 25 cent PB) turned buyers off.

Gotta be a George Gross cover, no?

That's quite a cover for Jonas. He's quoted in "Paperbacks, USA" to the effect that the other paperback covers were pornography, but not his "symbolist" Signet covers. The above shows that even Jonas could not escape the editorial demand for cleavage, cleavage, cleavage! -- as Tom Waits would say.

That cover is so ludicrously inappropriate for the story that it's hilarious. A greatly missed opportunity, IMO...if someone like say James Avati had been given the assignment, it may have been one of the classic paperback covers.

Those are new to me. Amazing.

The rarest Schomburg item?

Artist unknown? That's really a finely-drawn elephant.

Speaking of "EC adjacent" items...if you'll indulge me with a non-comics item for one post. On the cover of Lucky Fights It Through (1949), the upper right corner shows a record and says, "The story of that ignorant, ignorant cowboy. All words and music of the song favorite." In the centerfold, a cowboy sings "That Ignorant, Ignorant Cowboy," and all the music and lyrics are printed. Song favorite? How could a song about venereal disease become a "favorite"? Well, that part was hyperbole. But the record was actually released on 78 rpm. The singer is Tom Glazer. There is no label, but it has a location of Communications Material Center of Columbia University Press, New York. Copyright 1949." It was also issued commercially on Mercury Records.

Good Lord. Sans the water, these look brand new!

I never knew Donenfield and Goodman worked for the same company prior to 1932. The comics business was a smaller world than I'd imagined.

Those Strand covers are so boring. They needed George Rozen.