SLAYING FOR KEEPS

Let that serve as notice. I'm Splay-Footed Jack and I'm gonna shoot every pigeon-toed son-of-a-bitch in the county.


A high percentage of western paperback covers are unintentionally absurd, and this one by an unknown artist for the obscure 1959 novel Sierra Slayer fits the bill. This was written by Anthony G. Murphy, and he had us baffled for a while. Then we disscovered he was actually a Spanish writer named Antonino González Morales, who was both a journalist and novelist, using multiple pseudonyms, including Ambler Ketchum, Ana María Luján, A. G. Morales, A. G. Murphy, Alex Mor, Inglis Carter, Gordon C. McGuire, and possibly others. The name Anthony G. Murphy was generally reserved for his westerns, and Sierra Slayer, which was put out by George Turton Publishers in Britain, would, then, have to be a translation from Spanish. All of which brings us back to the art. Since Turton was not a major publisher, it possibly reused the Spanish art, and since Morales/Murphy wrote his westerns for Madrid’s Editorial Rollán, and many of those were illustrated by Prieto Muriana, this could be Muriana’s work. Then again, it easily could not. 

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

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.

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.

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.

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.

1941—Auschwitz Begins Gassing Prisoners

Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest of Nazi Germany’s concentration camps, becomes an extermination camp when it begins using poison gas to kill prisoners en masse. The camp commandant, Rudolf Höss, later testifies at the Nuremberg Trials that he believes perhaps 3 million people died at Auschwitz, but the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum revises the figure to about 1 million.

This awesome cover art is by Tommy Shoemaker, a new talent to us, but not to more experienced paperback illustration aficionados.
Ten covers from the popular French thriller series Les aventures de Zodiaque.
Sam Peffer cover art for Jonathan Latimer's Solomon's Vineyard, originally published in 1941.

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