Crack Detective Stories, May 1949 / Ten Detective Aces, November 1945

And lastly in this series of posts on detective pulp, I offer two of my earliest pulp scans. It's sort of painful for me to look at some of my earlier scans with uneven color and jacked contrast, etc., but it is what it is.


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Get the scan here.

Here's one of those covers I'm embarrassed to admit to liking. There's something more than a little bit unwholesome in the faces of the terrified girls that endured all sorts of rough treatment on pulp covers. They were at the art of the scream long before the modern horror film. What this says about the male attraction to sex and violence, I can't say, but these covers are certainly rich in Freudian subtext and charged imagery.

Contents:



I particularly enjoyed "Murder in Small Packages" and "Deuces Dealt for Death". A lot of the stories seem to have a sort of gothic inner-workings of terror thing going on.

Splash samples:





A couple of ads within:



The simplicity of that. Send me a dollar please and I'll fill you in on life's big secrets. There are also all sorts of self-help, weight-loss, marital aid, and other types of ads for the insecure. I find it reassuring to know some of this cultural anxiety has been around for a while. But on to tonight's second issue:


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Get the cover to cover scan here.

contents:


samples:

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Next time on Darwination Scans, a quick sojourn in the land of milk and honey, a look at a selection of vintage girlie magazines from the 50s and 60s and more than likely a few words in adoration of the full-figured female.