Pulpvault

Here's another of the Weird Tales which arrived yesterday, which will be auctioned in the Saturday night auction at this year's Windy City Pulp and Paper Convention (April 21-23, 2023 at the Westin Lombard Yorktown Center in Lombard, IL). This one is the October 1933 issue, which among other tales features Robert E. Howard's Conan novelette, "The Pool of the Black One," as well as a reprint of H.P. Lovecraft's "The Festival" and Clark Ashton Smith's, "The Seed of the Sepulcher."

Here's another of the Weird Tales which arrived yesterday, which will be auctioned in the Saturday night auction at this year's Windy City Pulp and Paper Convention (April 21-23, 2023 at the Westin Lombard Yorktown Center in Lombard, IL). This one is the October 1933 issue, which among other tales features Robert E. Howard's Conan novelette, "The Pool of the Black One," as well as a reprint of H.P. Lovecraft's "The Festival" and Clark Ashton Smith's, "The Seed of the Sepulcher."

We're now just three months away from the 22nd Windy City Pulp and Paper Convention! This year's show will be held April 21-23, 2023 at our usual venue, the Westin Lombard Yorktown Center, Lombard, Illinois. We've sold out all 180 of our dealer tables, to dealers spanning the U.S., from Canada and the U.K. In addition to pulps and paperbacks, there are always many dealers there with Golden Age, Silver Age and other vintage comics, as well as original comic art. As has been the case in years past, this year's convention will feature some incredible material in our estate auctions. Friday night (April 21), our auction will focus on material from the estate of legendary collector Robert Weinberg (including many more issues of Weird Tales), while on Saturday night (April 22), material from several consignors will be featured, including the first Conan and bat woman cover issues of Weird Tales, some very rare H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard items, and much more. You can head to our website for complete details: https://windycitypulpandpaper.com/home/ We hope to see you there!

Our friendly neighborhood UPS man delivered a box earlier today containing over 90 issues of Weird Tales, from 1927 through 1940. These will be auctioned in the Saturday night auction at this year's Windy City Pulp and Paper Convention (April 21-23, 2023 at the Westin Lombard Yorktown Center in Lombard, IL). Most are in great condition. Here's one of 'em - the December 1932 issue featuring the first appearance of Robert E. Howard's immortal hero, Conan, in "The Phoenix on the Sword."

Our friendly neighborhood UPS man delivered a box earlier today containing over 90 issues of Weird Tales, from 1927 through 1940. These will be auctioned in the Saturday night auction at this year's Windy City Pulp and Paper Convention (April 21-23, 2023 at the Westin Lombard Yorktown Center in Lombard, IL). Most are in great condition. Here's one of 'em - the December 1932 issue featuring the first appearance of Robert E. Howard's immortal hero, Conan, in "The Phoenix on the Sword."

Our friendly neighborhood UPS man delivered a box earlier today containing over 90 issues of Weird Tales, from 1927 through 1940. These will be auctioned in the Saturday night auction at this year's Windy City Pulp and Paper Convention (April 21-23, 2023 at the Westin Lombard Yorktown Center in Lombard, IL). Most are in great condition. Here's one of 'em - the December 1932 issue featuring the first appearance of Robert E. Howard's immortal hero, Conan, in "The Phoenix on the Sword."

Here's a couple of other rare items that will be in the Saturday night auction at this year's upcoming Windy City Pulp and Paper Convention (April 21-23, 2023, held at the Westin Lombard Yorktown Center in Lombard, IL). First is a carbon typescript of Donald Wandrei's "The Sea Change" (published in the May 1933 issue of Weird Tales as "Spawn of the Sea"). This copy was apparently sent to members of the Lovecraft Circle for comments; per pencil notations on the first page it was sent to H.P. Lovecraft, then on to August Derleth, then on to Clark Ashton Smith, then back to Wandrei. The typescript consists of 19 pages, each in a protective plastic sheet, placed in a three ring binder. Second is a copy of the May 1927 issue of "Midwest Student", published by the Midwest Student Association in Minneapolis, Minnesota. This issue contains a weird poem by Donald Wandrei, “The Corpse Speaks” (later collected in 1964 in Wandrei’s collection of poems, “Poems for Midnight,” published by Arkham House). It's signed by Wandrei on the contents page.

If you're looking for a rare H.P. Lovecraft item -- whether for yourself or as a gift for someone special in your life -- look no further than this year's upcoming Windy City Pulp and Paper Convention (April 21-23, 2023, held at the Westin Lombard Yorktown Center in Lombard, IL). There will be plenty of HPL material in our 180 table dealer room, featuring dealers from the U.S, Canada and the U.K. And our Friday and Saturday night auctions will have even more HPL material, including this incredibly rare item in our Saturday session. It's a typescript leaf used by the printer for HPL's first published book, "The Shadow Over Innsmouth," published by The Visionary Publishing Company in 1936. At some point, collector, book dealer and small press publisher Roy Squires acquired 43 of the surviving pages of this typescript. He then bound each one separately, of which this is number 25. In addition to the bound page, the lot includes the printed envelope created by Squires to house it, as well as the original mailing envelope used to mail it. Needless to say (but I'll say it anyway!), an extremely scarce HPL collectible!

Other than the later bedsheet Blue Books, the only wraparound pulp cover I know of is for the November 15, 1933 issue of The Twice-a-Month Love Book Magazine.

Continuing the theme from yesterday of aviators facing avian menace, here's the September 20, 1930 issue of The Popular Magazine, featuring a Howard Brown cover for an installment of "Morgo the Mighty" by Sean O'Larkin.

Adventure House is great, as is Heartwood Books. And of course, conventions like Windy City Pulp and Paper Convention and PulpFest.

Apparently eagles had a bone to pick with early aviators, as demonstrated on these two pulp covers. The cover for Wings, November 1929, is by Charles E. Dameron. From the prior month, the cover for Flying Stories, October 1929, is by Otto Bierhals. Sadly, The Lone Eagle pulp missed an opportunity and never used a similar theme on its covers.

Street & Smith's The Popular Magazine was the first pulp to feature full color covers. Its third issue, dated January 1904 (shown here on the left) is the first full color pulp Christmas cover. Next to it is another early pulp Christmas cover, from January 1906.

Many of the spicy pulps ran Christmas covers (though I think even more ran New Year's Eve covers). Paris Nights ran them regularly; here are two, from 1928 on the right and 1929 on the left.

Earlier this year, at the Windy City Pulp and Paper Convention, I was fortunate enough to acquire the painting used as the cover for the March 1911 issue of Adventure. It illustrated the first installment of the novel, "Prester John," written by John Buchan. Many thanks to Fred Taraba of Taraba Illustration who had this at his booth. Unfortunately, the 111 years since it had been painted had not been kind to it. Among other things, the canvas had been removed from its stretcher bars and glued to board, which had gotten wet at some point resulting in mold. So I took it to The Conservation Center in Chicago to do their magic, and I picked up the restored painting earlier today. I took a quick shot of it with my phone to post here; the way it looked when I first acquired it is also posted.

Moving away from odd pulp magazine Christmas covers with a war theme, here are two early Christmas covers from the Clayton pulp chain. The Snappy Stories is dated January 4, 1919, while the Telling Tales is actually dated on Christmas Day from 98 years ago, December 25, 1924. The artist on Telling Tales is Otto Greiner, while the signature of the artist on Snappy Stories reads Stoner, but inside appears to be mistakenly credited to Ann Brockman.

Two other pulps with Christmas messages on covers that don't quite scream Merry Christmas. Both dated January 1931.

Once again, Dell decided to put a Merry Christmas message on the cover of a January 1931 issue of one of their pulps. This time it's on that issue of War Stories. And really, what spreads Christmas cheer like a soldier shooting through barbed wire, while the story title on lower right proclaims, "Death to America!" SPOILER ALERT - Pulp fans will be shocked to learn that America does not die, but instead prevails, in this story of the next World War by Major George Fielding Eliot.

I'm usually not a fan of folks having put stamps on pulp covers, but I think this one is pretty neat. It's on the cover of the December 1928 issue of Amazing Stories, and is a Christmas Greetings stamp dated 1928. But I'm not sure why it's of a galleon.

For Morey Monday, I thought I'd post a painting by pulp artist Leo Morey which we acquired in a trade about a half dozen years ago. This one appeared as the cover to the December 1936 issue of Amazing Stories, illustrating "Space Marines and the Slavers" by Bob Olsen.

In keeping with the frigid temps by us today, and in sympathy for those of my family and friends back home in the Buffalo area dealing with a massive amount of snow, I thought I'd post this pulp painting that I acquired in a trade with a friend several years ago. By Chicago-based artist Robert Gibson Jones, it was the cover to the November 1949 issue of Fantastic Adventures, illustrating "Queen of the Ice Men" by S.M. Tenneshaw (a Ziff-Davis house name).

I’ve never been so pleased to pick up a coverless pulp as I was earlier today. This is the October 1912 issue of The All-Story Magazine, containing “Tarzan of the Apes.” I’ll keep looking for a better copy but I’m happy to have this!

I have a fine/very fine set of the 18 issues of Avon Fantasy Reader for sale. Shoot me a message for details if you might be interested.

During the period from the end of 1932 to mid-1934, Enoch Bolles did a series of covers for the spicy pulps, Bedtime Stories and its sister publication, Tattle Tales. According to ads inside, many of these illustrations were available as prints, but I've never seen those.

Some Two Book Saucy fun. Note that since these just rebound two unsold copies of Saucy Movie and/or Saucy Detective, different copies of the same issue may contain different interior content. Each of the “duplicates” shown here is different inside from the other copy with the same date and cover.