Bogey and Lauren, one of the most iconic Hollywood couples
TEN DETECTIVE ACES NOVEMBER 1935
cafeinevitable: “Bennie Green - Lullaby of the Doomed artwork: JH Murphy ”
Pulp-Fiction-Art!
Okay, so, this is how this is going to work: I'm going to read a bunch of horror fiction and then write about it. If you've read my posts talking about this project, then you already knew that, but, unfortunately, that really is what this is going to be. I say "unfortunately" because while I acknowledge that it would be nice if I could have some over-arching theme, and in fact I made -- and am even still making -- some attempt to group these stories and novels in a manner that will connect them in more specific ways than the simple fact that they all belong to the same genre, that's going to be nearly impossible, I think. This is due entirely to the fact that I haven't read any of these stories and novels before, and so I don't know what their themes are, or how they historically fit into the horror genre, or anything like that. I can read a bunch of stories written during the same basic time period (which I have done for my first group of selections), or that are part of the same horror sub-genre (for instance, I have a novel and anthology of stories that revolve around movies), or I can pair authors, one of whom has influenced the other. And I'm going to do all of that, but it'll still be a crap-shoot, because I won't really know what I'm getting into from story to story, novel to novel. So, this might turn out to read more like a journal of my experience, and might even devolve into a rant wherein I moan about how this was a really horrible idea. Because, really, horror -- as much as I sometimes love it -- is a terribly frustrating genre. Its full artistic potential is almost never met; writers are too often influenced by bad movies they grew up with, and labor under the belief that ridiculously graphic violence is the same thing as horror. I don't mean to sound too negative, though. After all, I did my best to pick novels and stories from my collection that I thought I had a better than fair chance of enjoying (though I did pick some less promising stuff in order to write a whole "state of the genre" thing). But I have a love-hate relationship to this stuff, and I don't really know how this is going to work out for me. So, fingers crossed, everybody, because I begin tomorrow. Oh, and if anybody can come up with a title for this whole business, let me know, because I got nothin'.
"Jack Webb for Dragnet", 1953 - Art by Dan Goozee.
The Best Of The Worst
James Ellroy, The Hilliker Curse: My Pursuit of Women, 2010; cover art by Cardon Webb. (via The Hilliker Curse)
Artist inspired art created in Midjourney #ai #jackvettriano #illustration #pulp #pulpart #midcentury
Dell used maps as a standard feature for a significant amount of time: 1943 - 1951. In the Dell 25¢ reprint series, 577 books had back covers of maps or designs. Of those 577 original mapbacks, 25 exactly duplicated previous maps, so there were 552 different maps in the series. Of these, 24 revised earlier maps, so all together 528 original maps exist in the 25¢ series. The decline of the maps was part of an overall re-design instituted by Frank Taylor, executive editor. At the time many readers complained about the omission of the maps, but the kinds of books Dell was beginning to publish then did not need maps and having an in-house artist prepare them was expensive. For a short period the maps were revived in a more decorative form by Walter Brooks "if the books demanded them". But they never became a standard feature after 1951; collectors thus have only 577 books with maps on the back covers. stevensteinbock.blogspot.com/2006/12/collecting-dell-mapb...
Explore Hang Fire Books' 2130 photos on Flickr!
Jonathan Craig - Alley Girl Lion 206 (1954) Cover art by Robert Maguire
Posts about Pulp Fiction Art written by James
This is a far from complete, chronological gallery of Brabbins's book covers. Valley of Death by W. R. Hutton Hamilton & Co., Dec 1946...
Posts about Temptress written by Pulp Covers
