Originally written by the mysterious B. Traven and published in 1927, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre appeared in the above Pocket Books version in 1948 with Barye Phillips on the cover chores. We have to say, he did a bang-up job capturing Bogart's world weary mug. You already know the story in this book: lust for riches lays a greedy man low. But it's a particularly good riff on that theme. A highly recommended read. 

Above, a small collection of Mickey Spillane covers illustrated by Barye Phillips in similar style for Signet Books published throughout the 1950s. Spillane had many cover treatments over the decades but these, which were made for the Mike Hammer series, are among the best. There's one more, for Vengeance Is Mine, but we plan to read that and report back, so we've left it out. Phillips did other art for Signet, including illustrating the fronts of James Bond and Al Wheeler novels. We're also big fans of this piece, and this one too. And you can also see another Spillane collection we put together here.

We come across lots of similar covers but these two from Gold Medal Books are truly twins. The first, for Walt Grove's The Man Who Said No, is uncredited, but the second, for Mike Heller's So I'm a Heel, was painted by Barye Phillips. These could actually both be Phillips, looking at them. He sometimes didn't sign his work. But absent confirmation, we'll just say both are great. 1950 and 1957. 

Above and below are assorted covers featuring yet another fun mid-century paperback art motif—the looming or threatening shadow. The covers are by the usual suspects—Rader, Phillips, Gross, Caroselli, Nik, as well as by artists whose work you see less often, such as Tony Carter’s brilliant cover for And Turned to Clay. That's actually a dust jacket, rather than a paperback front, but we couldn't leave it out. You’ll also notice French publishers really liked this theme. We’ll doubtless come across more, and as we do we’ll add to the collection. This is true of all our cover collections. For instance, our post featuring the Eiffel Tower has grown from fifteen to twenty-two examples, and our group of fronts with syringes has swelled from thirteen to twenty-six images. We have twenty-four twenty-six—see what we mean?—more shadow covers below, and thanks to all original uploaders.

John Monahan was a pseudonym used by W.R. Burnett, the man behind Little Caesar, High Sierra, The Asphalt Jungle, and other enduring novels. He also wrote or co-wrote such screenplays as This Gun for Hire and Scarface. In Big Stan he tells the story of a cop named Stanislaus who’s tasked with catching a masked criminal known as the Black Phantom. The Phantom proves elusive until he makes the mistake of targeting Stan’s wife. It’s a fairly well regarded book from an author who wrote some of the classics. The art on this 1953 Gold Medal paperback is by Barye Phillips. 

The above cover for Milton White’s Cry Down the Lonely Night dates from 1954 and features art by Barye Phillips. The novel tells the story of Nora, who wants to be loved and constantly degrades herself looking for validation. Which brings us to the fact that today marks the end of our seventh year maintaining Pulp Intl., a run that began in November 2008 with the post at this link and has lasted far longer than we expected. That’s 2,555 days, and 3,114 posts on the site. We know—it’s shocking. It still doesn’t truly sink in. For a while this was the most trafficked pulp-themed website in the world, as near as we were able to tell from our analytics measured against research we did about other sites. For an entire year we pulled in about 50,000 unique visitors a month. Since then Google has adjusted its rankings and is penalizing sites that aren’t fully compatible with various mobile apps. What that seems to mean is though we still have killer traffic, thanks to all of you, we would have to rework Pulp Intl. to retain a high ranking—i.e., like Nora, we'd have to degrade ourselves looking for validation. But we’re not going to bother, because there will inevitably be even more streamlined internet interfaces, and we won’t fit into those either. So we think we’ll just stay as we are—imperfect, arcane, and incompatible with mobile tech. At least for now. Here’s hoping for more great years ahead. 

Two years ago we shared five covers of women standing over men they had just killed and mentioned that there were many examples in vintage cover art of that particular theme. Today we’ve decided to revisit the idea in order to reiterate just how often women in pulp are the movers and shakers—and shooters and stabbers and clubbers and poisoners and scissorers. Now if they do this about a billion more times they’ll really be making a difference that counts.

French publishers, interestingly, were unusually fond of this theme—so egalitarian of them. That’s why many of the covers here are from France, including one—for which we admit we bent the rules of the collection a bit, because the victim isn’t dead quite yet—of a woman actually machine gunning some hapless dude. But what a great cover.

We also have a couple of Spanish killer femmes, and a Dutch example or two. Because we wanted to be comprehensive, the collection is large and some of the fronts are quite famous, but a good portion are also probably new to you. Art is by the usual suspects—Robert Maguire, Barye Phillips, Alex Piñon, Robert Bonfils, Robert McGinnis, Rudolph Belarski, et al. Enjoy.

The hitchhiker has been a central element of many a mid-century thriller, with the results of these rides ranging from hot sex to bloody murder, and several outcomes between. Above you see a cover for Jean Holbrook's Girl on the Run, and below is a collection of more paperback covers depicting various characters casting their fates to the road. Wish them luck—they’ll need it. And thanks to all the original uploaders on these.