Dancing girl of the golden west.
Above is a cover of Frank A. Munsey’s Argosy from June 18, 1938, with a famous painting by Rudolph Belarski for Max Brand’s western adventure story “Señor Coyote”. Even though Argosy was the first real pulp magazine, we haven’t featured it often here because issues in good condition can be difficult to find. With this one we got lucky—the highly regarded antiquarian and collectible website National Road Books, who we’ve bought other magazines from, sent us an e-mail letting us know they’ve uncovered a trove of more than a hundred issues of Argosy, and included the scan. So thanks for the assist, guys. It’s always needed. And speaking of assists, we want to remind everyone that our reader pulp feature, in the sidebar at right, is available to anyone who wants to share pulp treasures. How’s about we all make that a resolution for 2011? Agreed? Great.
Tyger tyger burning bright. Frank Munsey’s Argosy is generally considered to be the first pulp magazine. By the time this beautiful June 1955 issue came out it had already been publishing for seventy-three years, and would last another twenty-three. The cover art, with its fearsome cat exploding from the heart of darkness to strike at a solitary hunter, perfectly embodies William Blake’s famous poem The Tyger, in which he wrote of the fire in the creature's eyes, and of its brain forged in a furnace. We’ll have much more from Argosy in the future.
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1939—Batman Debuts
In Detective Comics #27, DC Comics publishes its second major superhero, Batman, who becomes one of the most popular comic book characters of all time, and then a popular camp television series starring Adam West, and lastly a multi-million dollar movie franchise starring Michael Keaton, then George Clooney, and finally Christian Bale. 1953—Crick and Watson Publish DNA Results
British scientists James D Watson and Francis Crick publish an article detailing their discovery of the existence and structure of deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA, in Nature magazine. Their findings answer one of the oldest and most fundamental questions of biology, that of how living things reproduce themselves. 1967—First Space Program Casualty Occurs
Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov dies in Soyuz 1 when, during re-entry into Earth's atmosphere after more than ten successful orbits, the capsule's main parachute fails to deploy properly, and the backup chute becomes entangled in the first. The capsule's descent is slowed, but it still hits the ground at about 90 mph, at which point it bursts into flames. Komarov is the first human to die during a space mission. 1986—Otto Preminger Dies
Austro–Hungarian film director Otto Preminger, who directed such eternal classics as Laura, Anatomy of a Murder, Carmen Jones, The Man with the Golden Arm, and Stalag 17, and for his efforts earned a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame, dies in New York City, aged 80, from cancer and Alzheimer's disease. 1998—James Earl Ray Dies
The convicted assassin of American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., petty criminal James Earl Ray, dies in prison of hepatitis aged 70, protesting his innocence as he had for decades. Members of the King family who supported Ray's fight to clear his name believed the U.S. Government had been involved in Dr. King's killing, but with Ray's death such questions became moot.
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