Vintage Pulp

December 8 2013

STARS ALIGNED

Twelve signs of the Zodiac.

Not long ago we showed you the cover from one installment of a French pulp series called Les aventures de Zodiaque. That was a lovely piece of art, but the series had modest beginnings. Above and below are one dozen fronts from the series’ early days, when it was being published in Montreal by Éditions PTE under agreement from the French parent publisher Éditions de Neuilly. These are all from the early 1950s.

Edit: Writing six years later, we realize now that these are not random women on these covers. They’re celebrities. Or at least, we assume so, because we recognize Belgian actress Dominique Wilms on the fifth cover below, the light brown one. If we identify others we’ll update this little addendum, but don’t count on it, because if, like Wilms, the other women are French or Belgian, well, we’re not as good on those actresses as we’d like. But we’ll sure try.

France, Canada, Montreal, Éditions de Neuilly, Éditions PTE, Les aventures de Zodiaque, Gaston Martin, Gaston Martineau, Dominique Wilms, cover art, literature

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

September 7

1978—Giorgi Markov Assassinated

Bulgarian dissident Giorgi Markov is assassinated in a scene right out of a spy novel. As he’s waiting at a bus stop near Waterloo Bridge in London, he’s jabbed in the calf with an umbrella. The man holding the umbrella apologizes and walks away, but he is in reality a Bulgarian hired killer who has just injected a ricin pellet into Markov, who develops a high fever and dies three days later.

September 6

1901—McKinley Fatally Shot

Polish-born anarchist Leon Czolgosz shoots and fatally wounds U.S. President William McKinley at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. McKinley dies September 12, and Czolgosz is later executed.

September 5

1939—U.S. Declares Neutrality in WW II

The Neutrality Acts, which had been passed in the 1930s when the United States considered foreign conflicts undesirable, prompts the nation to declare neutrality in World War II. The policy ended with the Lend-Lease Act of March 1941, which allowed the U.S. to sell, lend or give war materials to allied nations.

September 5

1972—Munich Massacre

During the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, West Germany, a paramilitary group calling itself Black September takes members of the Israeli olympic team hostage. Eventually the group, which represents the first glimpse of terrorists for most people in the Western world, kill eleven of the hostages along with one West German police officer during a rescue attempt by West German police that devolves into a firefight. Five of the eight members of Black September are also killed.

September 4

1957—U.S. National Guard Used Against Students

The governor of Arkansas, Orval Faubus, mobilizes the National Guard to prevent nine African-American students known as the Little Rock Nine from enrolling in high school in Little Rock, Arkansas.