Pulp International

vintage and modern pulp fiction; noir, schlock and exploitation films; scandals, swindles and news

GOING FOR A THREE-PIET

Marée stakes a claim as one of the best vintage cover artists.

Dutch artist Piet Marée has to be considered a true contender. His covers showcase a unique style that consistently dazzles the eye. These were made for novels by Dutch authors Aleid Ages-van Weel and Luc Willink, and French author Alexandre Dumas, and were editions from 1949 and 1950 of works from decades earlier. The Dumas book is obviously The Three Musketeers, which goes all the way back to 1844 and is one of the most successful early books by a black author (his father was a freed slave). Marée winkingly painted the cover’s duellists in a city setting that architecturally is Dutch, not French. It’s a fun touch. The previous two covers we shared from him are as amazing as those here. Click his keywords below to see.

Netherlands, Aleid Ages-van Weel, Alexandre Dumas, Luc Willink, Piet Marée, cover art, literature

POLICE SEND HELP

Also, please call my parents and tell them this wasn't my fault. They'll only believe it coming from you.

We can never see a hostage cover without thinking of our own experience with this crime, but we don’t have to go into it here—we already did a while back. So let’s focus on the art. Ellen Edisson’s Enkele reis Moskou (“one-way trip to Moscow”) came from Dutch publisher Uitgeverij Nooit Gedacht in 1960 for its Zwarte Molen collection and the art is by James Dwyer, which he originally painted for Collier’s magazine and a John D. MacDonald short story titled “Flight of the Tiger.” Maybe. Or—stick with us here—it was painted by Dwyer, but based on an illustration by Ward Brackett, also for Collier’s. Sources vary on that. To make things even more confusing, Dwyer’s or Brackett’s art was used in 1958 by Spanish publishers Editorial Molino for their translation of Agatha Christie’s The Big Four, titled in Spanish Los quatros grandes. We could dig deeply into this and sort it out, but why bother? It’s the digital age. Everybody knows everything, but nobody knows anything. There’s another edition of the book to be seen here.

Netherlands, Uitgeverij Nooit Gedacht, Collier's, Ellen Edisson, James Dwyer, cover art, magazine art, literature

VAMPIER SLAYER

Shooting people is a hell of a lot easier than biting them.

Above: an unknown artist’s work fronts 1960’s Vampier of Vlinder by Conald Lueger, from Antwerp based Uitgeverij A.B.C., part of its Faun collection. Many of the company’s covers were borrowed wholly or in part from U.S. paperbacks, but if so in this case, we don’t know which book it was. Lueger, or Leüger, as he’s sometimes credited, authored numerous mysteries for Dutch and Belgian publishers, but little seems to be known about him. You can see a bit more of his output by clicking his keywords below.

Netherlands, Belgium, Antwerp, Uitgeverij Publiforce, Conald Lueger, Conald Leüger, cover art, literature

CURL UP AND DIE

Is it the most comfortable position in which to breathe your last? Surveys have been inconclusive.

If you have to go, do it in relative comfort, as demonstrated by this Dutch cover for the Al Wheeler mystery Meisjes op zicht, which means “girls on sight,” and is a translation of the 1957 novel No Law Against Angels, known in the U.S. as The Body. The art is Dutch fave J.H. Moriën, who based his art on that of Barye Phillips, directly below. We have many links for those of you with time to kill, and the willingness to kill it with us. First, click here, here, and here for Moriën at his best. That’s mandatory. Then click here, here, here, and here to see more curled up (or semi-curled) corpses. And finally, we have a couple of dead body collections that include a curled up unfortunate or two here and here. We just thought of this theme today in a flash. Does it mean we’re morbid? Don’t answer that. Below are more examples, with the last showing the approved step-by-step process of curling up and dying.

Netherlands, Australia, Carter Brown, Alan G. Yates, George Bagby, Brett Halliday, Ellery Queen, Thomas B. Dewey, Erle Stanley Gardner, Peter Cheyney, John Shepherd, Craig Rice, J.H. Moriën, Paul E. Lehman, James Hadley Chase, Ferguson Findley, H. Vernon Dixon, Frank Kane, W.R. Burnett, John B. West, Agatha Christie, Richard Marsten, Helen Reilly, Bill S. Ballinger, Louis Trimble, Jonathan Craig, G.G. Fickling, René Roques, Jean Bazal, Barye Phillips, cover art, cover collection, literature

DUIVEL IN THE HOUSE

Hey, Satan, you perv! Down in front! Why do you always make a spectacle of yourself?

Above: W. Howard Baker’s De Duivels can-can, from Netherlands based W.P. van Stockum & Zoon in 1956. It was originally published in Britain as part of the Sexton Blake Library under the same title but in English—The Devil’s Can-Can. The cover was painted by David Wright, a new name for us, and the same art was used on both editions.

Netherlands, Britain, W.P. van Stockum & Zoon, W. Howard Baker, David Wright, cover art, literature

TROUBLE SPOT

This next bit is definitely going to huur a little.

Above: nice art by Michel Atkinson for Als huur-moordenaar by Belgian author Lou Merryl (a pseudonym of Ludo van Eeckhout), published by Kerco in 1970. The title of the book means “as a hitman,” so that suggests the gist of the tale. Mike Spot was a franchise character in twenty-six thrillers published beginning in 1964. We’ve featured Atkinson once before: here.

Netherlands, Belgium, Uitgeverij Kerco, Mike Spot, Michel Atkinson, cover art, literature

GOING DUTCH

On a slow boat to the tropics.

We’re circling back to Frans Mettes today, a Dutch illustrator whose cover work we featured not long ago. He was a commercial artist as well as dust jacket illustrator, and above you see a beautiful poster he painted for Vereenigde Nederlandsche Scheepvaartmaatschappij’s (United Dutch Shipping Company’s) regular Holland to West Africa liner service. The art is from 1958, but the VNS line debuted in April 1920, with ships stopping in the Canary Islands before heading onward to ports in French West Africa (now Senegal), Belgian Congo (now the Democratic Republic of Congo), and Angola. The piece is a frameable wonder from a more elegant era of travel advertising.

Netherlands, Spain, Canary Islands, Angola, Belgian Congo, Democractic Republic of Congo, French West Africa, Senegal, Frans Mettes

DUBBEL DUTCH

Twice the Moriën is a good thing.

Above: two more covers by Dutch artist J.H. Moriën for Nederlandsche Keurboekerij and its S.O.S. Series, this time for Blackshirt’s dubbel-ganger by Roderic Graeme, 1958, and Na de ramp de liefde by Mary Richmond, year unknown. The art on these is maybe a bit middle-of-the-road for Moriën, but still very nice, and at his best he’s unique and great. See what we mean here, here, and here.

Netherlands, Nederlandsche Keurboekerij, Roderic Graeme, J.H. Moriën, cover art, literature

LUST IN PARADISE

It's lovely here in the Virgin Islands. I just hope they let me stay after what I've been doing.

This is a Flickr find, a really nice cover painted by Dutch artist Alja Cousin for Peggy Swenson’s Pearl de zwoele maagd. We assumed we’d find no other traces of Cousin out there, but there are actually a couple of other covers floating around, though not in a size useful enough to share. We’ll see if she turns up again. The title of this in English means “Pearl the sultry virgin,” but Swenson originally wrote it as The Unloved, and saw it published in 1964 by Midwood Books, a top sleaze imprint that partnered with her several times. And by her we mean him, since Swenson was in reality Richard E. Geis. See nice Swensons here and here.

Netherlands, Amsterdam, Uitgeverij Orion, Peggy Swenson, Richard E. Geis, Alja Cousin, cover art, literature

JUST ABOUT TO LAND

When she flies it's always first class.

Marion Michael, who was born in Königsberg, Germany (later renamed Kalingrad and now part of Russia), debuted in the 1956 television movie Liane, das Mädchen aus dem Urwald, aka Liane, Jungle Goddess, when she was just sixteen. The role is said to have generated controversy because Michael was topless in it, but a sequel was made, so we guess it wasn’t exactly a crippling controversy. We know what you’re thinking—topless in a television movie? Hey, it’s Germany. They have that whole freikörperkultur thing. This photo looks a bit West Coast, U.S., but it’s actually a promo distributed by Amsterdam based N.V. Standaardfilms, probably used when Liane played in the Netherlands in 1959. It’s a soaringly great shot.

Germany, Russia, Netherlands, Königsberg, Kalingrad, Amsterdam, N.V. Standaardfilms, Liane das Mädchen aus dem Urwald, Liane Jungle Goddess, Marion Michael
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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

1953—MK-ULTRA Mind Control Program Launched

In the U.S., CIA director Allen Dulles launches a program codenamed MK-ULTRA, which involves the surreptitious use of drugs such as LSD to manipulate individual mental states and to alter brain function. The specific goals of the program are multifold, but focus on drugging world leaders in order to discredit them, developing a truth serum, and making people highly susceptible to suggestion. All of this is top secret, and files relating to MK-ULTRA’s existence are destroyed in 1973, but the truth about the program still emerges in the mid-seventies after a congressional investigation.

1945—Franklin Roosevelt Dies

U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt dies of a cerebral hemorrhage while sitting for a portrait in the White House. After a White House funeral on April 14, Roosevelt’s body is transported by train to his hometown of Hyde Park, New York, and on April 15 he is buried in the rose garden of the Roosevelt family home.

1916—Richard Harding Davis Dies

American journalist, playwright, and author Richard Harding Davis dies of a heart attack at home in Philadelphia. Not widely known now, Davis was one of the most important and influential war correspondents ever, establishing his reputation by reporting on the Spanish-American War, the Second Boer War, and World War I, as well as his general travels to exotic lands.

1919—Zapata Is Killed

In Mexico, revolutionary leader Emiliano Zapata is shot dead by government forces in the state of Morelos, after a carefully planned ambush. Following the killing, Zapata’s revolutionary movement and his Liberation Army of the South slowly fall apart, but his political influence lasts in Mexico to the present day.

1925—Great Gatsby Is Published

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby is published in New York City by Charles Scribner’s Sons. Though Gatsby is Fitzgerald’s best known book today, it was not a success upon publication, and at the time of his death in 1940, Fitzgerald was mostly forgotten as a writer and considered himself to be a failure.

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BRAZIL UNDERGROUND

Edições de Ouro and Editora Tecnoprint published U.S. crime novels for the Brazilian market, with excellent reworked cover art to appeal to local sensibilities. We have a small collection worth seeing.

FLUENT IN VIOLENCE

Walter Popp cover art for Richard Powell's 1954 crime novel Say It with Bullets.

IN HOT WATER

There have been some serious injuries on pulp covers. This one is probably the most severe—at least in our imagination. It was painted for Stanley Morton's 1952 novel Yankee Trader.

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