Pulp International

Mar 7 2022

Elephants are the animal kingdom's gentle giants. Most of the time.

This collection of vintage magazine covers features angry elephants and a little of everything else too. The assorted great white hunters are mandatory, but you also get half a dozen tigers, various natives in deadly peril, including one being thrown at an elephant like a piece of furniture, which we have to say is most uncool, and numerous scantily clad women. We had no idea elephants hated tigers so much. Or maybe the tigers are the haters, and the elephants are merely reacting as anyone would. In any case, there are six tigers mixing it up with nature's gentle giants in this collection and we think they all lose. Consider these covers additions to our two groups of animal attack magazine fronts, which you can visit here and here. We also have a stack of adventure magazines we haven't scanned yet, but we'll get to that in due time. We're traveling tomorrow and the next day. Hope to see you on Thursday.

Vintage Pulp

Jan 29 2022

It's always fun to take a trip with Adam magazine.

This issue of our favorite men's magazine Adam was published this month in 1977 with a cover illustrating J. Edward Brown's story, “Tramway to Nowhere.” This is an interesting tale. It's about a smalltown trolley line that runs out to a secluded beach. People won't ride the train after dark because it's supposedly haunted by dead soldiers. We've never encountered a supernatural story in Adam, and this isn't one either. Cleverly, it turns out that the trolley is being used by criminals who dress as soldiers to keep the legend alive and scare folks away. They're searching the beach each night for a lost treasure. Our hapless protagonist stumbles upon the plot, and that's the very night the local police decide to raid the train. When the gunfire starts our guy almost loses his shit thinking he's being attacked by ghosts, but he soon sees that it's a regular old shootout, cops against robbers. Fun concept, and a pretty good story.

There's more in Adam, as always. We were drawn by the story about old cruise liners. The author talks about various decommissioned or lost ships such as the French behemoth the SS Normandie, and laments the fact that the age of luxury ship travel has passed, but we see cruise ships chugging past our balconies most days of the week, some of them incredibly large. In fact, the world's largest, the Symphony of the Seas, was in dry dock here last year. While the Normandie was three-hundred thirteen meters long and had twelve decks, the Symphony is three-hundred sixty-one meters long, with seventeen decks holding twenty-restaurants, twenty-six bars, nineteen pools, two rock climbing walls, a nine-deck high zip line, and a helipad.

So from our point of view, the age of luxury morphed into the age of ridiculous excess. Seriously, you need to see some of these ships to believe them. Most are far bigger than any hotel in town. We don't imagine traveling on one would be fun aside from the drinking, though we've never taken a cruise, so we don't really know. But generally, the idea of being with a thousand people whose idea of luxury is flashing lights, ringing bells, mass-cooked food, and pool water tainted with toddler pee scares us. We know—that makes us sound like snobs, but we're not. If we were snobs we wouldn't be collecting all these rare mags and sharing them with you. We're more-the-merrier type people. Except when todder pee is involved. We have forty-plus scans below.

Australia Adam Magazine J. Edward Brown magazine art literature

Femmes Fatales

Dec 8 2021

You're the new secretary? Take a memo. Recommendation: bonuses for everyone in the HR department.

We've been making our way through the old television show Bewitched, which has been entertaining and surprisingly funny. As always, such series had numerous guest stars, some of whom would later become famous themselves. Beverly Adams, who you see above, guest starred on the show in 1965, episode 30, as a character named Danger O'Riley, and rarely has an actress made such a splash. It wasn't her first Hollywood credit, but it was one of her most memorable. See what we mean here. Adams went on to appear in such films as The Silencers, Murderer's Row, and The Ambushers, as well as television shows like Police Story and Quincy M.E. She was never a big star, but she was certainly a rare beauty. This photo dates from 1967.

Bewitched The Silencers Murderer's Row The Ambushers Police Story Quincy M.E.Beverly Adams television

Vintage Pulp

Nov 27 2021

Flee for your life like the Romans do.

Carlo Jacono painted this brilliant cover for La ragazza che scappa, or “the girl who runs away,” written by American author Adam Knight, aka Lawrence Lariar, for Ponzoni Editore's series Gialli Canarino, with the translation chores handled by Lydia Lax. We read a Knight book a while back, weren't impressed, and forgot about him, but here he is earning a translation into Italian. Does that mean the book is good? We've always assumed without evidence that translations were an indicator of quality, but now we have doubts. Or maybe that limp Knight yarn we read wasn't typical of his work. La ragazza che scappa was originally published in 1956 in the U.S. as Girl Running. We could probably find it if we wanted to, so we will actually consider picking up a copy if it's out there cheap. We're just curious enough.

Italy Ponzoni Editore Adam Knight Lawrence Lariar Carlo Jacono cover art literature

Femmes Fatales

Nov 9 2021

Hepburn brings a special kind of style to Hollywood.

We don't smoke, but Katherine Hepburn sure makes smoking look good in this RKO promo photo shot by Ernest Bachrach in 1935. Though she had a long and storied career, this early shot is pretty much her iconic image. Prints of it are even sold on Wal-Mart's website. Hepburn is incomparable. Her must-watch films include Bringing Up Baby, Adam's Rib, The Philadelphia Story, The African Queen, Long Day's Journey into Night, The Lion in Winter, the groundbreaking Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (which inspired an excellent reggae song by Black Uhuru), and On Golden Pond.

You can sum up Hepburn's output by saying she was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar twelve times and won a quartet, the most ever. The Oscar has failed to stay as relevant as it could have over recent decades, and the Academy has made some embarrassing Best Picture choices (Forrest Gump over Pulp Fiction—really?), but it's always been a reliable measure of acting quality, so Hepburn's four wins are meaningful. The one thing she didn't do was make a lot of pulp style movies. One that looks as if it qualifies is the 1946 drama Undercurrent. We'll circle back to that and the divine Miss H. in a bit.

RKO Radio Pictures Bringing Up Baby Adam's Rib The Philadelphia Story The African Queen Long Day's Journey into Night The Lion in Winter Guess Who's Coming to Dinner On Golden Pond Undercurrent Suddenly Last Summer Keeper of the Flame Academy Award Katherine Hepburn Ernest Bachrach

Vintage Pulp

Nov 7 2021

The search for alien life is over. Just look in the back.

Adam magazine's cover illustrations usually deal with criminals, ranchers, wild animals, runaway vehicles and the like, so what is this unusual thing on the front of this issue published this month in 1968? It's a shlunk, and it comes from Tod Kennedy's science fiction story, “To Catch a Shlunk,” about a bloodsucking alien—named for the sound it makes—that terrorizes a hunter. In form this alien is like a squid, but with four thick tentacles. “It moved with a glutinous rhythm [and had] a band of flickering lights around its domed head that blinked off and on like radar stations seeking contact. With one quick motion its body shot upward and the four legs distended like chewing gum.”

That's pretty scary. As the hunter watches in silent horror, the creature, which seems part organic and part machine, grabs a wallaby, crushes it, and sucks its insides out. Needless to say, the hunter flees at the first opportunity, and thinks he's dodged this creature, but misses the part where it jumps in the back of his truck and rides home with him. Whoops. From that point Kennedy's tale deals with the hunter's defeat of the creature, which is accomplished via unlikely means. In the end, “To Catch a Shlunk” is merely a ripe concept that goes rotten due to poor execution.

But Adam on the whole is as rich as always, filled as it is with more fiction, fun cartoons, exotic factual stories, and great illustrations. Primary artist Jack Waugh even signed a couple of his pieces, which later, during the 1970s, he mostly stopped doing. Will we ever stop buying these? Well, since we've bought more than one hundred, it seems not. They are, however, becoming more difficult to obtain without buying issues we already have, though most vendors are understanding about separating issues from a group. Still though, it may be time to find another magazine to obsess over. We have a few candidates. Meanwhile, thirty-plus scans below.

Australia Adam Magazine Jack Waugh Tod Kennedy magazine art sci-fi

Vintage Pulp

Oct 15 2021

Drug enforcement agents and heroin dealers settle their issues Outback.

We just shared a 1950 issue of Adam last week, but since it was too fragile for us to scan it all here's a second one, more completely documented. This hit Aussie newsstands this month in 1975 and you see the bright colors and dynamic art that was its trademark in those years. The cover illustrates Alex Tait's tale, “The Raw Deal,” which has to do with two undercover agents setting up a sale of pure heroin in order to take down a drug ring. The two agents, male and female, are posing as a couple, and as happens in fiction, the posing turns into reality. Interestingly, they have little choice because the villains have installed a two-way mirror in the agents' quarters and are keeping watch. So it's either get busy or blow their cover. The helicopter on the cover is the cavalry coming to the rescue right when it looks like the two agents will be executed. Adam's illustrations, at least from the early 1960s onward, were never generic. They were always tailor-made for a story in the magazine. Since most of the writers were relatively inexperienced, we can only imagine how thrilling it must have been for them to see their work represented this way. We have twenty-eight scans below for your enjoyment.

Australia Adam Magazine Alex Tait magazine art literature

Vintage Pulp

Oct 10 2021

Abandon all boats ye who enter here.

This issue of Adam magazine published this month in 1950 was in delicate condition, so we were able to scan only a small selection of pages. The cover illustrates the story, “Swamp Bait,” by Leslie T. White, which deals with a sailor who manages to get his schooner trapped in a South Carolina swamp and is offered help by a ragtag stranger who turns out to be an escaped murderer planning to steal the boat and sail it to Brazil. Swamps have hungry gators, venomous snakes, toxic plants, and deep quicksand, but it's the humans you really need to be careful of. That's true anywhere, though, we guess. The protagonist has about twelve hours to think of a solution or he's fish food.

This is a very early Adam—in fact it may the earliest one we've bought. Hang on a sec. Yep, it's the earliest one, and because of the time period its focus is almost solely on fact and fiction. The cartoons and models had yet to dominate. There are exactly two photos of women, and four cartoons. However, the stories are of consistently better quality than during later decades. We'd love to pretend this magazine has value, but we doubt we could sell it in the condition it's in. Still, it's a nice addition to the collection, which is well beyond a hundred issues now. That means we'll share more Adam soon.

Australia Adam Magazine Leslie T. White Jaye Fitzpatrick Marion Lynde Marian Cowley literature magazine art

Vintage Pulp

Sep 19 2021

Into battle, me mateys! And tonight for those who survive—extra portions of organic Chai tea!

Today is International Talk Like a Pirate Day, not an official holiday, sadly. We asked the Pulp Intl. girlfriends what they'd do if they were pirates and the answers weren't pretty. Making all the men walk the plank was the most charitable of their thoughts, with swords and whips coming into play pretty quickly after that. Good thing we're only supposed to talk like pirates. Arrr... let's tone down the homicidal thoughts, girls.

Above and below is a collection of vintage paperbacks with women pirates. Well, maybe the woman on the cover of Rafael Sabatini's The Fortunes of Captain Blood isn't a pirate so much as someone defending herself. But anyone who can handle two pistols at once is an honorary pirate, at the least. We found eleven examples, and the cover art on display is by Harry Schaare, Rudolph Belarski, Barye Phillips, Paul Anna Soik, and others.

Frank Shay Gardner F. Fox Philip Rush Robert E. Howard Jeramie Price Douglas Brown Raafael Sabatini Inglis Fletcher Frank G. Slaughter C.V. Terry Adam Shaw Harry Schaare Rudolph Belarski Barye Phillips Paul Anna Soik cover art cover collection literature

Intl. Notebook

Aug 30 2021

All the best people showed up.

The West German pop culture and celeb magazine Party, which was produced in Hannover by Lehning Press, is an obscure publication. It's very vivid, with bright color, many full page photos, and many film celebrities represented. Equal time is given to unknowns too, for example, the cover features Annelies Niessner, who was... we have no idea, and inside a color page is given to Cornelie, identified only as a “millionärstochter geht eigene wege,” a millionaire's daughter who goes her own way.

In terms of celebs you get Carol Lynley, Jane Russell, Sandra Dee, Stella Stevens, Laya Raki, a beautiful portrait of Jane Fonda, numerous shots of Ursula Andress, and many others. This publication didn't waste words, even on the copyright date. The cover tells us this is issue eight, so we're going to say it came in August, and we're thinking it's from 1967. Though it may be short on info, Party is an appropriate name, because it's a very fun magazine. We have several more issues, so look for those later.