Sunday, June 28, 2009

10 Story Book , August 1938 and July 1934 / Anybody Can Write a Sex Novel



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As promised, today we look at a fresh scan of a delightful pulp that is quickly becoming one of my favorite titles. A few peeps have told me the title is unappetizing and scant describes the mag, but I find it charming. 10 Story Book never fails to entertain. "Intriguing Stories, Spiced With Pretty Girls" is the tagline, and it is indeed a fun formula. 10 Story Book hops from mystery to comedy to raunchy and back again and is interspersed with cheesecake, illustrations, and naughty cartoons like you might expect from gentleman's joke mags. "NO ESSAYS - NO SERIALS - JUST SNAPPY STORIES AND SNAPPIER GIRL PHOTOS". It ran from 1901 to 1940 for a run of approximately 450 issues, and the mag was published by Daily Story then Ten Story Publishing Co. One of the longer running pulps, it must of had something of a following, though it’s not really terribly common on ebay. Writers such as Dashiell Hammet, Clarke Ashton Smith, August Derleth, Carroll John Daly, Octavus Cohen and others appeared in 10 Story Book over the years. The covers almost always incorporate a photo in a red white and black scheme and often displayed movie stars.

This issue is most notable for the story screaming of the front page, “Anybody Can Write a Sex Novel” by Jack Woodford. And while I thought I’d be getting a primer on writing naughty stories, the article is something else entirely, a fun look into the mind of a pulp writer and a candid look at publishing in the late thirties. The advice is very different from what you might expect to hear in a creative writing course, but there seems to be some good advice in Woodford’s motivational approach. Splendid Stuff.

You can get the scan of this August 1938 issue here .

Contents



In addition to the Woodford story, I also enjoyed these naughty bits, the first filled with a funky slang and the second a risqué parody of the greek theater:



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And what’s a post without a little cheesecake,eh? One thing my journeys through old magazines has taught me is that you can add girls to just about any type of magazine and make it more appealing.



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And I can’t get away from this pulp without pointing out “The Revenge of Sarras” by George Bronson-James, a very strange story of a traveling Jewish scholar, a farmer’s wife, and a very odd exchange of saliva in the church. Definitely worth a read.

Big thanks to fellow mag scanner McCoy for his splendid editing work on this issue, it really turned out great! I have a feeling his edits will be appearing regularly alongside mine on this blog for a while,as he’s really helping me to get some good work done.

And while I’m rapping on 10 Story Book, here’s an older scan I did a while back of another great issue. This time from July, 1934.



This is Ida Lupino on the cover giving the old come hither. Of note in this issue are a stories by Carroll John Daly and Otis Adelbert Kline. Sadly, there is a page missing from the Kline story (the opposite page being a photo I believe), but hopefully that will turn up sometime down the road. (scan it for me if you have it!)

The scan of 10 Story Book, July 1934 can be had here .

Contents:



Samples:









Enjoy,

Darwin

Saturday, June 27, 2009

The Great Speckled Bird 1972-04-10 / Hot times in Hotlanta



Up for your perusal today a scan one of the more highly esteemed underground papers, The Great Speckled Bird out of Atlanta.

You can check out what looks to be the official site of the paper here. This site has news about reunions as well as links to some photo galleries and a history of the publication.

Also I’ll point out a couple of nice retrospectives on The Bird and its times, the second link being from the sort of publication that has grown out of the underground press movement what I think they’d call these days the alternative press.

http://www.atlantaprogressivenews.com/news/0052.html

http://atlanta.creativeloafing.com/gyrobase/the_bird_flew_high_and_so_did_its_readers_/Content?oid=483067

Back when I had the good fortune to live in Athens, GA, I always enjoyed my time spent in Atlanta, a city which most definitely has its own unique flavor. Some vestiges of hippie culture remain in Atlanta but midtown which once flourished with counterculture types has been since been built over with skyscrapers, high end condos and the like. Hippies everywhere had to deal with a lot of strange looks and stigmatization from the mainstream, but I have no doubt in my mind being a hippie was especially rough in the South.
The first couple pages of this issue attest to some harassment from the authorities:




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I think my favorite piece in here is from a writer from Orlando that has witnessed Disney World come to her hometown. We all resent development and the erosion of natural features in the environs of our youth, so I understand the bitter tone this writer has taken. Certainly much of the natural wonder of Florida has been lost in it’s development. I highly recommend Peter Mathiessen’s Killing Mr. Watson trilogy as an account of the exploitation of one of America’s last frontiers. No doubt, having Disney invade your town would be completely surreal…



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I always like in these underground papers when you see a collision of cultures. In this issue, we see a bluegrass fest invaded by hippie youth. The comments of the performers and country types about their new-found hippie audience is great. There was a lot of investigations (and appropriations) of roots music during the 60s and there still is a very real appreciation for old country and bluegrass among the hipsters of the South. It certainly sounds like a good time was had by all this year:




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Some of my favorite parts of these papers are the strange letters you can often find. This kind soul puts out a warning, having fallen for a quick con, watch out ye naïve flower children!


Lastly, a cartoon from the UPS on American exit strategy from Vietnam. You better believe this is still part of our exit strategy from Iraq. Backup for Iraqi security forces is going to come in the flavor of air power…



You can get the scan of this entire issue of The Bird here .

Big thanks to McCoy for editing this issue for me. He’s a fellow magazine scanner who has been doing a grand job editing my magazines while I laze about the pool. Hopefully I can pick up the pace of my posts here to get the good stuff he’s been helping with up here as well as a the growing backlog of magazines I haven’t had the time to post yet, oh my! Tomorrow, a fresh scan of one of my favorite pulps, 10 Story Book.

Stay Cool,

Darwin

Saturday, June 20, 2009

The Killers 01, 1947 / This is what Wertham was talking about



A notorious comic up today from Vin Sullivan's Magazine Enterprises featuring a nice L.B. Cole cover which promises corpses piled up high. I recently managed to get my hands on both issues of this series, and I was thrilled to get them even though they are in bad shape. This issue was missing a good chunk of the front cover so I appropriated the nicest image I could find from Heritage and polished it up a bit. Sadly, the inside front cover is missing a bit of the text of Gardner Fox's "The Killers Three", but hopefully someone can replace this or even just let me know what the words of the text are, and I can fix the page. The pages were pretty browned out and had been punched into a four hole binding, but I took the time to patch them up since it's a scarcer comic I was excited to scan.

This is one of those comics Dr. Wertham was talking about. It kicks off with a brutal and xenophobic tale of the yellow menace with art from Paul Parker:




There's all sort of different ways to kill a man, children, take notes. Axe to the head! Old school drive-by?




Or you can just hit em with your car




Geez...




and if Murder doesn't faze those youngsters, how bout some whipping, oh my!



Shocking fun for sure, but it is most definitely mind-blowing that little johnny and suzy were picking these comics up at the five and dime.

The second story is "The Killer Behind the Killer" titled after John Chase, Baby Face Nelson's associate in arms. Things turn tough when the G-men get involved. Third up is "Poison Claw Killer". Always beware the scientist with the bad comb over and giant eyebrows. Fourth is "They Tricked the School Girl's Killer" in which a mob comes to lynch a suspected black laborer, completely passing over the strange blonde German florist in the cell next door. The odd and convoluted plan the cops use to gain a confession is not at all out of place in a golden age comic. The last story is from Vernon Henkel, "'Ace' High Private Eye". When a blond client comes into his office with a problem regarding her late father's stolen jewels, Ace responds, "Say no more Bay-Bee! Just cross my palm with enough silver." He may talk an odd slang, but he sure hurls a mean crystal ball.

Get the full scan Here

All in all, a fun comic, but it's hard to top the velocity of mayhem and ridiculousness in the first story. Perhaps there will be more outlandishness in issue 2...

Cheers and Enjoy,

Darwin

Sunday, June 14, 2009

World Outlook, June 1920

A very interesting magazine up for your perusal tonight, a missionary/geography type magazine featuring large slick pages, lots of photos, and nice production values. This is my scan but edited by my pal and intrepid explorer of the bones, McCoy666. This magazine was published by the Interchurch World Movement which was a short-lived but ambitious post-war effort to organize the whole spectrum of North American churches to unite in addressing the ills of the world in missionary fashion. Harnessing a sense of cooperation and sense of global interconnectedness, this was called a religious counterpart to the League of Nations. Rich men like John Rockefeller helped in the campaign that was supposed to have raised 336 million (there’s a two page spread in the magazine on these efforts). I’m told rich backers began to pull out after the movement did a report on the woes of steel strikers. I’m not sure how big of a place World Outlook had in their publicity, but it’s most definitely a well done mag.

A fantastic cover from Katherine Van Wyck, an artist I am able to find nothing about:



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EDIT 5/25/2010: I was recently contacted by the grandaughter of this artist, and she let me know a little bit about her:

I was very surprised when I saw your article on World Outlook and the illustration by Katherine Van Wyck. She was a magazine illustrator for several magazines in New York. I have this one and one that she did for Vogue. She moved out West shere she met my step grandfather. She was into watercolors. She had works in the Los Angeles Museum. She won an award for one of her watercolors. She and my grandfather married and she later went under the name of Katherine Spicer. She died in 1929 from cancer. My grandfather was so devastated, he put all her works away, not to be discovered again until 1990 by me. She was truly ahead of her time. So now you know a little something about her. Terri Brooks

I think this is a very touching story, and I can completely understand how Terri's grandfather would put away her paintings. Using the name she went under later, I did find just a little bit more information at Askart here. Thank you very much for writing me, Terri. Perhaps people that come across Katherine's work in magazines will now be able to find out a little bit about her via web-search.

The Contents. Herbert Hoover on America’s relief effort in Europe, the anti-Imperial movement in Japan, the prospects for mission work in China, and more:



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There is a piece of fiction, “Sandy’s Fifty Per Cent” by Alfred MackKinnon featuring illustration by Thomas Fogarty, one of Norman Rockwell’s teachers.



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I couldn’t find much on Fogarty but did find a blog page featuring some of his illustrations for the Century Magazine illustrating an account of Captain Slocum’s maritime journeys

The real draw of this magazine for me, besides the cover, is the article on life in logging camps which is packed with big photographs from the rugged occupation of logging. The centerfold:



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The machinery they used to haul logs from where they fall, to maneuver them from peak to peak, down chutes, and in enormous log rafts that travel by river, what a monumental task.



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Thanks again to McCoy for the fine edit!

Here's the full scan.

Cheers and enjoy,

Darwin

Saturday, June 13, 2009

Ideal Romance 005, August 1954

Well all, I've been on vacation and fighting some difficulties with my scanner(s) but I did get a chance to do some work in the golden age this week and also have some recent scans I haven't managed to get up, so here we go, let's see if I can post a few days in a row.



I love the colors on this cover and find it tender and sweet in spite of the fact that the gent that sold it to me advertised it as a "Chest Kissing" cover. Overstreet credits it to Bernard Baily. This is the first Key romance I've read, and I thought it was pretty good. The first story "Uncertainty" involves a couple that bump into each other on the golf course and quickly get swept into romance. After the gent proposes marriage, the protagonist discovers he was previously married when he calls his dead wife's name in the heat of a kiss. She becomes very jealous, eventually asking that he tear up the picture he always carries of his dead love. I kind of like how this one resolves...

The second story is "First Love" about a woman who marries a boring man and comes to think often of Eddie, her first love. I like the second page of this story, sort of an additional splash:



I've gotta admit, her inattentive hubby doesn't seem too sympathetic, and I'm not sure I buy the story's resolution. This gal doesn't seem to have a good way out of a dull existence.

The text intermission is a somewhat incoherent tale of class-hopping romance entitled "The Wandering Wallet of Love" (how's that for a bad title ;D).

The third story is "The Man I Love" and might be the most fun story in here and is signed by S. Finnocchiaro and E.E. Hughes (I've never heard of either). The story involves an aspiring model and her attempts to catch the attention of a model agency owner who realizes quickly how willing she is to gain success. A couple nice cheesecake panels in this one. I love her beachside tactics:




The comic's last story is "Too Many Lovers" about a dance team that finds love traveling the lower rungs of the dancing circuit. What happens when the team breaks up so our heroine can become a star? Can Stella get her groove back? Read and find out...

Get the scan HERE

Good stuff, I like the writing and will keep my eye out for more issues of this series (I'm especially after issue 6). This is the first issue scanned, the series started as Tender Romance in 1953 at issue one and switched to Ideal Romance for issues 3-8, ending in February of 1955.

Cheers,

Darwin