Pat Calhoun

#105 1950 3rd, #555 1956 1st -cover by Charles Binger

here's another big-league femme fatale perhaps slightly more fictive than Mata Hari. 1958 reprint of 1951 PBO and 1954 PBO 'Return of Sumuru' with cover by James Meese

also from 5/30 4E checks in...

1930 Astounding (#5!) Hans 'Wesso' Wessolowski cover, and 1949 Fantasy Publishing hardback with Bill Benulis cover

above cov Howard Brown, the interior unsigned but is probably his work as well...

Amazing Amazings! funny you should mention Astounding because seemed to me the best way to follow up 'The Color Out of Space' is with 'The Shadow Out of Time'...

well, she offers him the poison cup- he picks up the club and says 'Taste first or die!' she throws the cup to the ground and runs away as the wine hisses and boils and burns into the marble floor...

Theseus and Medeia the witch

Wow- some fantasy art heavyweights, to be sure! I like my ‘The Heroes, Greek Fairy Tales for My Children’ for several reasons (Medici Society 1924 reprint by Charles Kingsley art by W. Russell Flint): fine printing, nice art, heroic fantasy, prose poetry. There is one passage that’s high on my list of great scenes in world literature and since text was online I have attached it along with 2 scanned plates. There came a lady to him through the wood, taller than he, or any mortal man; but beautiful exceedingly, with great gray eyes, clear and piercing, but strangely soft and mild. On her head was a helmet, and in her hand a spear. And over her shoulder, above her long blue robes, hung a goat-skin, which bore up a mighty shield of brass, polished like a mirror. She stood and looked at him with her clear gray eyes; and Perseus saw that her eye-lids never moved, nor her eyeballs, but looked straight through and through him, and into his very heart, as if she could see all the secrets of his soul, and knew all that he had ever thought or longed for since the day that he was born. And Perseus dropped his eyes, trembling and blushing, as the wonderful lady spoke. 'Perseus, you must do an errand for me.' 'Who are you, lady? And how do you know my name?' 'I am Pallas Athene; and I know the thoughts of all men's hearts, and discern their manhood or their baseness. And from the souls of clay I turn away, and they are blest, but not by me. They fatten at ease, like sheep in the pasture, and eat what they did not sow, like oxen in the stall. They grow and spread, like the gourd along the ground; but, like the gourd, they give no shade to the traveller, and when they are ripe death gathers them, and they go down unloved into hell, and their name vanishes out of the land. 'But to the souls of fire I give more fire, and to those who are manful I give a might more than man's. These are the heroes, the sons of the Immortals, who are blest, but not like the souls of clay. For I drive them forth by strange paths, Perseus, that they may fight the Titans and the monsters, the enemies of Gods and men. Through doubt and need, danger and battle, I drive them; and some of them are slain in the flower of youth, no man knows when or where; and some of them win noble names, and a fair and green old age; but what will be their latter end I know not, and none, save Zeus, the father of Gods and men. Tell me now, Perseus, which of these two sorts of men seem to you more blest?' Then Perseus answered boldly: 'Better to die in the flower of youth, on the chance of winning a noble name, than to live at ease like the sheep, and die unloved and unrenowned.' Then that strange lady laughed, and held up her brazen shield, and cried: 'See here, Perseus; dare you face such a monster as this, and slay it, that I may place its head upon this shield?' And in the mirror of the shield there appeared a face, and as Perseus looked on it his blood ran cold. It was the face of a beautiful woman; but her cheeks were pale as death, and her brows were knit with everlasting pain, and her lips were thin and bitter like a snake's; and instead of hair, vipers wreathed about her temples, and shot out their forked tongues; while round her head were folded wings like an eagle's, and upon her bosom claws of brass. And Perseus looked awhile, and then said: 'If there is anything so fierce and foul on earth, it were a noble deed to kill it. Where can I find the monster?' Then the strange lady smiled again, and said: 'Not yet; you are too young, and too unskilled; for this is Medusa the Gorgon, the mother of a monstrous brood. Return to your home, and do the work which waits there for you. You must play the man in that before I can think you worthy to go in search of the Gorgon.' Then Perseus would have spoken, but the strange lady vanished, and he awoke; and behold, it was a dream. But day and night Perseus saw before him the face of that dreadful woman, with the vipers writhing round her head.

Jolly Good Show!

1947 PB & 1/51 Fantastic Novels illo for 'The Cats of Ulthar'

BB, BB, BB, BB, BB, you have to get Abner #68- the 'Anyface' saga is one of the gretest comic books ever- we are talking top ten stuff here.Lester Gootch sits in a closet in the dark in an asylum drawing out the Fosdick adventure slipping finished pages under the crack at the door bottom. Abner is beside himself waiting for the 'daily fix', while Anyface makes 'masters of disguise' look like greenhorns, and Fosdick is well- Fosdick- oh baby this is a graphic novel for the ages- probably strip reprints but nicely formatted into that all-important package. get now and fall in love...

Argosy 4/22/33

Seaboard 1950

maybe not the classic 'Buck' but certainly a fine cover (image from web)

1966

Congrats, Steve, 4/34 Great Ish- 5 Classic Stories & Madame Margaret etc- YUM !! 4/34 WT highlights Black Thirst [*Northwest Smith] • C. L. Moore • novelette Corsairs of the Cosmos [*Interstellar Patrol] • Edmond Hamilton • novelette Shadows in the Moonlight [*Conan] • Robert E. Howard • novelette The Death of Malygris [*Malygris] • Clark Ashton Smith • short story Bells of Oceana • Arthur J. Burks • short story we are talking Super-Pulp !!!

Since 2 of BZ’s 3 oddball pulps were Macfadden Publications- I looked up their history (via Wiki…) wow! Bernarr Macfadden was the father of ‘physical culture’ a combo of exercise, diet, and philosophy- he founded 'Physical Culture' magazine in 1899 and added the original reality pulp 'True Story' in 1919 full of fiction disguised as documentary. Both mags were big hits and he added 'Liberty', 'True Detective', 'True Romances', 'Dream World', 'Ghost Stories', and 'Photoplay'. Thus the 'True Strange Stories' fits in, and the 'Danger and Daring' reminds me of Gernsback’s 'Pirate Stories' from the same era. So they were a magazine powerhouse if not a big player in ‘our kind’ of pulps. On a very different note from Macfadden- one of my favorite comics (is PB style) that may be scarce as Archie apparently won a lawsuit against MB and many copies were destroyed-recalled or some such… 1962 reprints from ‘Help’ mag: with spoofs of S*perm*n, T*rz*n, Sea Hunt, and Archie.

had a hunch it was 'the big guy'- yeah GG is glorious

wow- any backstory on that awfully nice Gianni ?

Charmonious !!! would welcome more...

name on Zep Stories looked familiar- turned out is the father of a fifties noir writer...(1951 PBO)