Saturday, May 2, 2009

The Frontier, May 1926

An old scan but one of my favorite mags I've had the fortune to scan thus far, an absolutely fantastic cover from William Reusswig adorns the cover of this charming pulp title.




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I love the colors here and the iconic image of the lone paddler, I think it's very meditative.

At this time the pulp was a nice big, bedsheet-size and full of stories of cowboys with three columns and profuse illustration. It ran as a bedsheet for nine issues between November 1925 until the August issue of 1926 when it would return to a smaller format and become Frontier Stories which Fiction House would publish for many years. When I look for this pulp, it seems like the earlier issues aren’t that common but that the 40s issues with a girl in distress in the GGA style of the day are around in greater numbers.

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I really enjoyed the first story in this issue, a tale of pirates and treasure, loyalty and deception, and attacks and counterattacks. This lively tale is enriched by all of the illustrations. I love the little illustration for the beginning letters of some of the paragraphs. They are something of a snapshot of what is happening in the story and add to the atmosphere. Or the inclusion of the island’s map is a great touch. It's a shame that illustration has dropped out of so much of today's fiction and the trend is likely to get worse with some of the text only e-formats in heavy use. Samples. The splash for for the first story, “The Devil’s Cauldron”



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The scan is Here. Enjoy!

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