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.

Last month we shared a reprint-by-demand Horwitz cover for Carter Brown’s Death of Doll that featured a young Elke Sommer. We got to wondering if other celebs had been used on Horwitz covers and decided to have a look. Above you see Brown’s Swan Song for a Siren, which Horwitz printed in 1958, and the face staring out at you is that of Austrian actress Senta Berger. That’s her, right? Full lips. Sensuous eyes. Hawk eyebrows. Gotta be. Like they had with Sommer, Australia-based Horwitz appropriated Berger’s image when she was barely famous, having appeared in only four films to that point, none in starring roles. We have a photo of Berger below for comparison, and we think you’ll agree it’s her. We’ll dig up a few more of these Horwitz celebrity covers later. 

It’s been a while since we’ve put together a pulp collection, so below you’ll find vintage cover art that uses the roulette wheel as a central element. They say only suckers play roulette, and that’s especially true in pulp, where even if you win, eventually you lose the money and more. Art is by Ernest Chiriacka, Robert Bonfils, Robert McGinnis, and many others.

Last week we shared some images of Elke Sommer from the debut issue of the French magazine Stop. Those were a deliberate preface to today's post, which shows the cover for Carter Brown’s, aka Alan G. Yates’ mystery Death of a Doll from Australia's Transport Publishing, the paperback division of Horwitz Publications.

You can see that the designer used Sommer for his inspiration. Her normally blonde hair was changed to match the hair color of the story’s redheaded femme fatale, but what’s really interesting about this cover is the yawning pose. At least a couple of images from the Stop layout would have worked better, we think, but that’s just our humble opinion.  

At first we thought the designer here was Bernard Blackburn, who made many of Horwitz-Transport’s photo-illustrated covers during the mid-1950s, but then we learned that this “reprint by demand” edition appeared in 1960. So we have no idea who created the cover, but he/she had good taste in models, though we seriously doubt Sommer received any compensation for her starring role. Check out the rest of those rare Stop images here and see if you don’t agree about the designer making a weird choice.

There’s no safe place in pulp—especially not the bathtub. Above and below is a collection of vintage covers featuring various unfortunates who chose the wrong time to be naked and defenseless. Well, most of them are naked. A few have clothes on for reasons we cannot discern. Art is by Willard Downes, Barye Phillips, Robert Bonfils, Jef de Wulf, and others. See another good example here.

Above and below you will find a large collection of pulp, post-pulp, and sleaze paperback fronts that have as their titles a character’s first name. There are hundreds of examples of these but we stopped at thirty-two. The collection really highlights, more than others we’ve put together, how rarely vintage paperback art focuses on male characters. The prose is virtually all male-centered and male-driven, of course, but because the mid-century paperback market was male-driven too, that meant putting women on the covers to attract the male eye. We tell our girlfriends this all the time, but they still think we just don’t bother looking for male-oriented vintage art. But we do. For this collection we found two novels that have male characters’ names as their titles, and we looked pretty hard. If we had to guess, we’d say less than 5% of all pulp art is male-oriented. In any case, the illustrations come from the usual suspects—Barye Phillips, Robert McGinnis, Jef de Wulf, Paul Rader, et al., plus less recognized artists like Doug Weaver. Thanks to all the original uploaders for these.

We’ve explored several cover motifs in pulp art, and another we’ve grown to appreciate is the use of venetian blind shadows or silhouettes. Always a dramatic addition to a cover, we could probably compile fifty of these, at least, but here are twenty examples. The artists—Emilio Freix, Robert Maguire, James Hodges, and others—use them to greater and lesser degrees, and opt for both literal and stylized renderings. For instance, the above cover from Maguire shows vertical shadows, but the sense of venetian blinds remains. As always, thanks to all the original uploaders.

Never has a woman looked so intently serious about the feel of her own rear end as in this illustration by Robert McGinnis for Carter Brown’s The Bombshell. The book was published as Doll for the Big House in 1957, then revised and republished under its new title in 1960. Neither edition, by the way, had anything to do with glute ham raises. Signet produced three covers total. The above was from 1967. Below are McGinnis’s effort from 1971, followed by Barye Phillips' great cover from 1960, and finally Horwitz’s Aussie edition by an unknown artist. Would this have been a lot easier if we’d just put the covers in chronological order? Perhaps, but then we wouldn’t have been able to say “glute ham raises.” It’s worth the inconvenience.

Update: We read this book a bit later and our write-up is here.

Above are two covers for Carter Brown’s, aka Alan G. Yates’ thriller Who Killed Dr. Sex? Robert McGinnis painted the cover art at top in 1964 for the Signet paperback, and in 1965 another artist painted a dupe of the cover for Horwitz International’s release. You probably shouldn’t get any credit for copying work, but we have to confess we like the second version quite a bit. McGinnis is a master figure painter, of course, and his reclining woman beats the dupe, but the second version’s wall filigrees and iridescent green bed are nice additions. The other main difference is the direction of the woman’s gaze. McGinnis painted her looking slightly away, while the copycat painted her looking directly at the viewer. It’s a major shift in mood, and an interesting choice. We discussed this copying practice in relation to Carter Brown’s paperbacks before, and we assume it has to do with rights issues between the American and Australian publishers, and Robert McGinnis, but we’d love to know the details. Hopefully, more information will become available down the line.