Pulpvault

In the course of my on-again, off-again efforts to organize my pulp shelves, I found this one tucked in an out of the way spot. Don't recall when I picked it up, but several years ago at least. It's Complete Love Novel Magazine, April 1930. Though volume 1, number 2, internally it references itself in the editorial as the first issue. Copyright records show January 1930 as v1n1, so that may have been an ashcan.

Here's a painting we picked up earlier this year. It's by artist Robert Fuqua, and was used as the back cover for the September 1939 issue of Amazing Stories, showing Arctic Radio Farms. It was originally sold at auction at Chicon (the second World Science Fiction Convention) in 1940.

Great report!

Looks great - congratulations!

It is indeed very pretty!

This copy of the October 1933 Weird Tales is one of a few dozen WT pulps (and one of a couple hundred pulps) that will be in the Friday night (September 10) auction at the 2021 Windy City Pulp and Paper Convention. The convention (our 20th) is being held at the Westin Lombard Yorktown Center in Lombard, IL on September 10-12, 2021. See the forum post devoted to the convention for more details or visit www.windycitypulpandpaper.com.

We can think about it for down the road, but for this year it's not an option.

I'm sorry, I wasn't clear. The Early Bird is a 3 day membership. It allows you early access on Friday, as well as regular access on Saturday and Sunday. On Saturday and Sunday, early birds, regular three day membership and single day memberships all enter at the same time. There is no one day Early Bird option; if you purchase Early Bird, it's a special three day membership, but the special feature is early admission on Friday. Otherwise, it's the same as a regular three day membership.

Other than Friday, there's no need for an early bird on Saturday or Sunday, as the dealers and the attendees get in at the same time on those days. So Early Bird is only useful for those who want to get in early on Friday.

With the Windy City Pulp and Paper Convention now just over two weeks away (September 10-12, 2021), we thought we’d post a bit about the show. We’re very excited to be back; our last show was in April 2019, so it will be nearly two and a half years between shows, which is much too long! And don't let the name fool you -- while pulps are the focus on the show, there will be plenty of vintage comics and original comic at the show. As has been the case since our show in 2008, this year’s convention will be held at the Westin Lombard Yorktown Center, Lombard, Illinois. Our pre-registration figures are in line with those in previous years, and all 180 tables in our dealer room are sold out. Obviously, in the new reality we’re currently living with, we’re tracking what restrictions or changes might be required at our convention. Based on the latest news from Illinois, a mask mandate goes into effect on August 30, which we anticipate will be in place for the show. As usual, we will have auctions on both Friday (September 10) and Saturday (September 11) nights, and this year’s auctions will truly be fantastic. The Friday night auction features 200 lots of material from the estate of famed collector Robert Weinberg, while the Saturday night auction begins with 96 lots from the estate of Glenn Lord, literary executor for the Robert E. Howard estate, followed by 5 lots from the estate of author and Arkham House co-founder August Derleth, finishing up with several lots from other consignors. And additional lots will be added to the Saturday night auction at the convention, to include material consigned there by convention attendees. Among the highlights in this year’s auctions are: - A fine copy of the October 1933 issue of Weird Tales, featuring the Margaret Brundage’s famous Batgirl cover (See photos in this post) - A beautiful copy of the August 1929 issue of Weird Tales, featuring Robert E. Howard’s “The Shadow Kingdom” – the first sword and sorcery story! - A lovely copy of the February 1928 issue of Weird Tales, featuring “The Call of Cthulhu” by H.P. Lovecraft - Numerous other issues of Weird Tales, including several Conan issues, many in gorgeous condition (likely publisher file copies) - Robert E. Howard’s incredibly scarce first book, “A Gent from Bear Creek”; fewer than 20 copies are known to exist - Several letters to Robert E. Howard - August Derleth’s rarest book, “Love Letters to Caitlin”, of which fewer than 20 copies exist - Clark Ashton Smith’s “Ebony and Crystal” – inscribed and signed by this legendary fantasist to his friend, Robert E. Howard - A rare signed letter from Weird Tales editor Farnsworth Wright to one of Weird Tales’ few female authors, Greye La Spina, from 1925 - The manuscript for “Divide and Rule” by L. Sprague de Camp, which ran in Unknown - A signed copy of “The Horror on the Asteroid” by Edmond Hamilton, the author’s first book - Other signed items by H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, August Derleth, Otis Adelbert Kline, Dean Koontz, Max Brand, Fritz Leiber, Zorro author Johnston McCulley, Spider author Norvell Page and many others - The first year of the pulp Astounding Stories of Super-Science - The only issue of the Amazing Stories Annual from 1927, featuring “The Master Mind of Mars” by Edgar Rice Burroughs - Complete runs of the pulps Unknown, Strange Stories and Tales of Magic and Mystery - Many rare U.K. and Australian science fiction pulps and books - Numerous Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft items - Rare items by Clark Ashton Smith, including “The Star Treader and Other Poems,” “Nero and Other Poems” and the manuscript for “The Dragon-Fly” - Many early Arkham House books, including Robert E. Howard’s “Skull-Face and Others”, H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Outsider and Others” and “August Derleth: Twenty-Five Years of Writing, 1926-1951” - Frank Belknap Long’s rare “A Man from Genoa and Other Poems”, published in 1926 in an edition of less than 300 copies - A complete bound set of the legendary fanzine, “The Acolyte” - And much more! The complete auction catalog, along with images, is now available on our website: www.windycitypulpandpaper.com You can also find updates on our Facebook page -- search FB for Windy City Pulp and Paper or go to: https://www.facebook.com/windycitypulp/ The website has details on absentee bidding, for those who can’t make it to the convention. Note, however, that we can't do absentee bids as part of the live auction at the con, but we will start the bidding at the high absentee bid, and if it does not get overbid, then the absentee bid would win. We don't have the tech or the staff to do it differently. But the auctions aren’t our only highlight! Friday through Sunday, our massive dealer room will be buzzing, bursting with 180 six foot long tables, with roughly 100 dealers displaying pulps, vintage paperbacks, science fiction, fantasy & mystery hardcovers, golden and silver age comics, original science fiction, comic and other illustration art, movie memorabilia and more! Our art show will feature a great display of art from the pulps Astounding and Black Mask. As usual, our film programming, curated by Ed Hulse, will run Friday and Saturday, showing movies and serials based on pulp stories. Our evening programming will include presentations on Edgar Rice Burroughs and Black Mask. And Sunday morning will see New Pulp Sunday, programming devoted to the vibrant and colorful world of New Pulp organized by Ron Fortier of Airship 27 Productions. And all attendees will get a copy of our fabulous convention book, put out by Tom Roberts of Black Dog Books. We hope you’ll join us for the fun and excitement at this year’s Windy City Pulp and Paper Convention! For more info, contact Doug Ellis at pulpvault@msn.com.

I recently picked up this birth announcement regarding the arrival of Superman editor Mort Weisinger's (and his wife, Thelma's) daughter, Joyce Carole Weisinger. Dated May 2, 1945, he had Joe Shuster do up this Superbaby announcement.

Friday Night auction - Weird Tales 6/30

Friday Night auction - Weird Tales 12/24

Friday Night auction - Weird Tales 11/23

Friday Night auction - Weird Tales 1/24

Friday Night auction - Weird Tales 10/31

Friday Night auction - Weird Tales 9/31

Friday Night auction - Weird Tales 8/31

Friday Night auction - Weird Tales 7/30

Friday Night auction - Weird Tales, 4/29

Will post several more pulps from the auction over the next few days. As I mentioned, several of the Weird Tales are possible file copies -- the copies of editor Farnsworth Wright. These are all from the estate of my friend, Bob Weinberg. Bob told me on several occasions that a number of his issues of Weird Tales were originally Farnsworth Wright’s copies. Unfortunately, he’d bought so many copies of Weird Tales over the years, upgrading when he could, that he couldn’t remember any more which ones they were! But he did note that they were generally in great shape. I never asked him how he got them, but in contacting several of Bob’s longtime collector friends in the course of putting together this auction, I think we’ve figured out a likely source of them. The Gallery Book Store, on Clarke Street just north of the river in Chicago, was a mecca for pulp collectors back in the 1960’s and 1970’s. A few years before Bob moved to Chicago, the Gallery had several Margaret Brundage cover paintings for sale. In 1972, Bob got his start collecting original pulp art by buying the cover art to the first issue of Oriental Stories (published by the same publisher as Weird Tales) from the Gallery. (And if you want the story of the other Oriental Stories cover they had, but which Bob was never able to buy, read a copy of “Weinberg Tales!”) Besides original art from Weird Tales and related magazines, one of Bob’s friends who frequented the Gallery before Bob moved to Chicago remembers that they also had multiple mint file copies of Weird Tales pulps. While many of these had sold by the time Bob arrived in Chicago, they still apparently had many left at that time. It seems reasonable that this would have been the source of those copies that Bob referred to as Farnsworth Wright’s copies. As mentioned, Bob no longer remembered which of the ones he owned came from this source, but in going through all of his issues preparing for this auction, we've made educated guesses and have noted those as “Possible File Copy.” But that’s just a guess on our part, and there’s no way to prove that provenance. We could be right, or we could be wrong. They are, however, beautiful copies! Here's one, Weird Tales January 1929.

An H.J. Ward I purchased at an auction many years ago, for Spicy Mystery, March 1941. The auction house was a small company in western Massachusetts. They also had the Allen Anderson cover for the March 1941 issue of Spicy Western, which a friend of mine won. The two paintings sold for far in excess of their $1,000 estimates, and when I called the next day to pay for mine, I asked the auction house owner if the consignors had attended the auction. He told me that they had, and I said that they must have been very happy. He said they were, but they were also depressed. When I asked him why they were depressed, he told me that these two paintings, and four others, came out of the attic of the consignor's deceased aunt. They took the six paintings to the local antique store and was told they were worthless. So they kept the two they liked best and threw away the other four. The auctioneer was a friend of the family, and when he saw the two paintings weeks later, he told them that they had value, so they consigned them to him. But the other four are decaying in a trash dump somewhere in western MA. Sigh...

Gorgeous Flanagan! He was one of the greats.

In the Friday night auction - Tales of Magic And Mystery March 1928,. featuring Lovecraft's "Cool Air."

In the Friday night auction - featuring Brundage's first cover for Weird Tales (September 1932).