| Vintage Pulp | Feb 14 2013 |
We tried to find something warm and loving to post for Valentine’s Day, but this is the best we could come up with. It’s a Rudolph Belarski cover for Richard Sale’s World War II adventure Death at Sea, née Destination Unknown. The Popular Library paperback you see here appeared in 1948. And if you absolutely must have appropriate Valentine’s Day material, we posted some romance pulps back in 2009, and you can see them here.
| Vintage Pulp | Aug 20 2012 |
Above, seven excellent if morbid paperback covers showing a favorite pose of pulp artists—the beautiful supine dead woman with (just to make it extra creepy) nice cleavage. It's amazing how similar these covers are. Art is by Maurice Thomas, Rudolph Belarski, Willard Downes, George Geygan, Harry Schaare, and unknowns.
Update: We were also sent another example in this style by a reader. Check here.
| Vintage Pulp | Mar 29 2012 |
We love vintage paperback covers featuring armed women. But we especially love them when the women are directing their attention toward the viewer. Since pulp style literature is read primarily by men, such illustrations speak implicitly about a man’s thwarted expectations, and conversely of threatened women turning the tables to become empowered. We see this above, where a beleaguered woman defends her helpless man against an enemy we can't see because we're living inside his body. Below are thirteen more examples of women menacing you the viewer, with art by James Avanti, Robert Maguire, Harry Schaare, Rudolph Belaski, Harry Barton, and others. Thanks to flickr.com for some of these.
| Vintage Pulp | Sep 14 2011 |
Top notch Rudolph Belarski art for Anthony Abbot’s circus-based mystery About the Murder of the Circus Queen, paperback version published 1933. See more Belarski by clicking his keyword below.
| Vintage Pulp | Jul 27 2011 |
Below, eight pulp covers with corporal punishment as their central themes, with art from Rudolph Belarski, Bob Abbett and others.
| Reader Pulp | Jul 18 2011 |
Above are three Argosy covers sent to us by our friends over at National Road Books, where the trove of these they found are continuously making their way onto the NRB website. In the magazine’s pages each month were eight to ten original adventure tales, and often pieces of novels that were being serialized across numerous issues. The heavy focus on interior art pulp is known for was not a characteristic of these early Argosys, but there were a few illustrations, and the covers were always beautiful. These particular examples, from 1938 through 1940, were painted by Rudolph Belarski (top two) and Emmett Watson. You can find more details here. (update: website defunct)
| Vintage Pulp | Jun 27 2011 |
The most difficult piece of human anatomy for an artist to master, so we've heard, is the hand. But pulp icon Rudolph Belarski was so good at hands that they were often the central element of his covers. Below are seven examples culled from around the internet showing his proficiency—indeed, flaunting his ability—in this area. And you can see an eighth handsome Belarski here.
| Vintage Pulp | May 7 2011 |
Above, four issues of the weekly pulp magazine Argosy from 1937 through 1940 with three covers from Rudolph Belarski and one from Marshall Frantz, plus early fiction from L. Ron Hubbard. These all came courtesy of our friends over at National Road Books.
| Vintage Pulp | Feb 24 2011 |
You know we’re fond of anniversaries around here, so today we have an Argosy that was published seventy-one years ago today, in February 1940. The cover has Rudolph Belarski art, and inside is a slate of pure escapist fiction, from Eric North’s tale of Australian mysticism and adventure “The Green Flame,” to Charles Marquis Warren’s tale “Then I’ll Remember,” set aboard Noah’s Ark. And speaking of arks, in case you’ve wondered, an argosy is a merchant ship laden with an abundantly rich cargo. So it’s a fitting, if obscure, name for a magazine that publishes adventure fiction. As with all our recent Argosys, this one comes from National Road Books, and if you visit their website (edit: now defunct) you’ll find that they’re laden with an abundantly rich cargo as well. Thanks again guys.
| Reader Pulp | Jan 28 2011 |
The guys at National Road Books have fed us more scans from their large Argosy collection, and above are five from 1938 through 1940. In these issues there’s fiction from Max Brand, C.S. Forester, and a raft of capable in-house writers. The cover art is from Rudolph Belarski (panels one and two), G.J. Rosen (three and four), and Emmett Watson (five).
After two years of finding almost nothing from Argosy suddenly we have a pipeline into a treasure trove thanks to NRB and we’re ecstatic, because Argosy was the first real pulp magazine, launched on a $500 budget by Frank A. Munsey in 1882. The venture wasn’t an instant success. Munsey had conceived a children’s publication and that version of Argosy went bust immediately. But Munsey managed to keep ownership of the idea and kept publishing on a shoestring budget.
As he learned the market, he realized a children’s magazine wasn’t the direction he wanted to continue. By fits and starts, he began shifting from young readers to pulp fiction and eventually transformed the magazine into an American staple that lasted until 1978. We’ll have more on Munsey’s publishing adventures later. Got any pulp treasures of your own? Feel free to do what National Road Books did and use the pulp uploader in our sidebar. Our mailbox is always open.
Edit: The Pulp Intl. uploader is on the fritz and has been for a long time. We keep meaning to fix it, but you know how it goes.
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