Above, a great cover of Mammoth Western from March 1949 with art by Arnold Kohn illustrating Alexander Blade’s novelette “Prepare To Die, Amigo!” Kohn did quite a bit of work for Ziff-Davis Publishing, which in addition to the above imprint owned Mammoth Detective, Mammoth Adventure, and Mammoth Mystery. Kohn's work also appeared in Amazing Stories, Fantastic Adventures, Playboy, and many other magazines. See a few more of his covers here, and check him pin-up mode here. 

Pulp books and magazines reused art quite a bit, and the piece above—by Julian Paul—is a good example. Here you see a tough soldier of fortune and a native girl floating on dangerous waters, but on a version we posted from Action for Men back in March, there were three figures. We joked that whenever two men and one woman were involved, a disagreement was soon to follow. Looks like the guy with the gun won. 

Here’s a great random shot of Alma Heflin we found in a 1940 copy of Click magazine. Heflin was a test pilot for the Piper Aircraft Corporation, and was one of the first women—if not the first—to make a living testing commercial craft. We assume she didn’t fly in pumps, so this is probably a staged publicity shot. Heflin got to be pretty famous, and even published a book in 1942 titled Adventure Was the Compass. We also found a reference to her in a book called History’s Best Test Pilots, so clearly she was tops in the field. But all of this is just background info. The reason we're sharing this photo is simply because it perfectly captures the romance of flight during the last century. If we run across any more images like these we’ll definitely post them. 

Anouska Hempel was born in New Zealand, but her exotic name comes from her Russian ancestry. As a public figure her first recognition was as an actress in such films as On Her Majesty's Secret Service and Scars of Dracula, but she later went on to become a major figure in hotel ownership and interior design. And as this photo shows, she should also be known for her waistline. She isn't, though. We checked. And we won't even get into her insane hair. The photo was made in 1970 as a promo for the television series The Adventures of Don Quick. 

The above cover can be interpreted a couple of ways. It’s possible the man is the hero, and he’s trying to lead the women on an escape from prison, but it seems more likely he’s just a coward who, in his terror, is about to drag the women to their doom. The metaphors go deep, but whatever the case, we love the art. Adventure began publishing in 1910, and was home to many respected artists and authors, not least among them novelist Sinclair Lewis, who in 1930 became the first American to win the Nobel Prize for literature (he had won the Pulitzer earlier but declined it). While he was an editor at Adventure he helped create a novelty identity card that was included in issues of the magazine. Readers carried the card, and if they were killed, whoever found the card would notify the magazine, who would in turn notify the reader’s next of kin. The idea was a flight of pure fancy, but also a stroke of genius, and the cards became such a powerful idea that a group of reader-travelers formed the Adventurers Club of New York in 1912. That club led to similar clubs being formed in other cites. A cursory check on the trusty interweb reveals that at least one—the Los Angeles chapter—survives today, so if the magazine cover has inspired you, there’s a place you can meet with like-minded types. Who knows? With a little effort and good fortune, maybe you’ll get to escape from prison on a bed sheet yourself one day.     

Adventure pulp magazine, first published today in 1931, with fiction by Ared White, Thomson Burtis and others, plus an excellent cover from Gerard Delano. More Adventure covers here.

If this isn’t the most diabolical cover art ever painted, we don’t know torture when we see it. Of course, that’s entirely possible—the memo we got from the Bush justice department a while back still has us really confused on the issue. 

Assorted pulp magazines, circa 1950s. Once again nature gets tired of being eaten and decides to eat back.

In case you had any doubts that pulp literature was often used by authors as a catharsis for their racial fears, here’s a representative sampling of vintage magazines featuring assorted cultural stereotypes. Pulp—where men are men and natives can’t get women without kidnapping white ones.

Assorted Adventure magazines, featuring an array of animals to be hunted, shot, stuffed with sawdust, and mounted in your den, circa 1921, 1922.