A FAMILIAR STORY

It's a man's man's man's world, but it wouldn't be nothing without a woman... to fight over.

When Fawcett Publications launched its Gold Medal line, Man Story was the second paperback it put out. It’s a fiction anthology culled from the pages of True magazine, which was part of the Fawcett stable, and it came out in 1950 numbered 102 on the cover because the series began at 101. There are heavyweight, widely published authors in this collection, including William Attwood, Daniel Mannix, and Barnaby Conrad. Of special note are Philip Wylie, who wrote Gladiator, Paul Gallico, who wrote The Poseidon Adventure, and MacKinlay Kantor, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his novel Andersonville.

The Gold Medal line actually helped bring about the demise of pulp magazines. This was due partly to the sheer number of books it published (it went from 35 titles in 1950 to 66 the next year and never looked back), as well as to the shift in tone from the pulps it represented. Some of the writers published by Gold Medal would become huge names moving forward, including John D. MacDonald, Louis L’Amour, Richard Prather, and Charles Williams. Yet for all the importance of this second Gold Medal paperback, it’s cheap as hell. We saw it selling for five dollars, which is a pretty nice price for the motherlode of testosterone fiction.

They're entertaining to read but let's hope none of the stories come true.

Below are fifteen mid-century book covers featuring nuclear explosions, which are a major part of the photo history we document here at Pulp Intl. You’ll notice three of the authors wrote six of the books. That’s because once you write nukes, you never go back. And actually, a couple of these are non-fiction, so our wish for them not to come true is too late.

They call it the Devil’s wheel for a reason.

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.

If it feels good just do it.

You never forget your first kiss, right? Pulp and sleaze paperback covers have always been a medium for this form of affection, and so today we have for you below some of the most memorable kisses we’ve encountered over the years. Art by Paul Rader, Louis Carrière, Ernest Chiriaka and others. Enjoy.

Ladies, trust me, there's enough to go around.

We tend to get books in lots, without knowing much about them, and with Gladiator we were thinking bodybuilding titillation, sort of like this book. But no. It’s the life story of a superman. The main character, Hugo Danner, can lift a horse, jump forty feet straight up, crush bones, is bulletproof, and a genius. Originally published in 1930, the Danner character preceded the comic book Superman by eight years. Some say Superman was even a deliberate copy, though that remains in dispute.

But unlike Superman, Hugo Danner is earthly, with earthly worries about family, women, and morality, which makes for an affecting tale. His doubts come to the fore in the trenches of World War I, where he crushes enemies’ heads to jelly, rampages German strongholds with such ferocity that even after bullets and bayonets rip his clothes from his impervious body he still kills hundreds while naked and drenched in gore. And he comes to realize the utter pointlessness of it all:

His heart ached as he thought of the toil, the effort, the energy and hope and courage that had been spilled over those mucky fields to satisfy the lusts and foolish hates of the demagogues. [snip] The war was only another war that future generations would find romantic to contemplate and dull to study. He was only a species of genius who had missed his mark by a cosmic margin.

Recommended stuff. These paperback editions from Avon appeared in 1949 and 1957, with nice cover art by unknowns. We should mention, though, that the art is deceptive. Hugo is no fuckboy. In fact, the book barely focuses on sex apart from his earliest encounters. Gladiator is an attempt at serious, speculative sci-fi. Know that going in and you’ll probably enjoy it.

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

1925—Mein Kampf Published

While serving time in prison for his role in a failed coup, Adolf Hitler dictaes and publishes volume 1 of his manifesto Mein Kampf (in English My Struggle or My Battle), the book that outlines his theories of racial purity, his belief in a Jewish conspiracy to control the world, and his plans to lead Germany to militarily acquire more land at the expense of Russia via eastward expansion.

1955—Disneyland Begins Operations

The amusement park Disneyland opens in Orange County, California for 6,000 invitation-only guests, before opening to the general public the following day.

1959—Holiday Dies Broke

Legendary singer Billie Holiday, who possessed one of the most unique voices in the history of jazz, dies in the hospital of cirrhosis of the liver. She had lost her earnings to swindlers over the years, and upon her death her bank account contains seventy cents.

1941—DiMaggio Hit Streak Reaches 56

New York Yankees outfielder Joe DiMaggio gets a hit in his fifty-sixth consecutive game. The streak would end the next game, against the Cleveland Indians, but the mark DiMaggio set still stands, and in fact has never been seriously threatened. It is generally thought to be one of the few truly unbreakable baseball records.

1939—Adams Completes Around-the-World Air Journey

American Clara Adams becomes the first woman passenger to complete an around the world air journey. Her voyage began and ended in New York City, with stops in Lisbon, Marseilles, Leipzig, Athens, Basra, Jodhpur, Rangoon, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Wake Island, Honolulu, and San Francisco.

1955—Nobel Prize Winners Unite Against Nukes

Eighteen Nobel laureates sign the Mainau Declaration against nuclear weapons, which reads in part: “We think it is a delusion if governments believe that they can avoid war for a long time through the fear of [nuclear] weapons. Fear and tension have often engendered wars. Similarly it seems to us a delusion to believe that small conflicts could in the future always be decided by traditional weapons. In extreme danger no nation will deny itself the use of any weapon that scientific technology can produce.”

Uncredited art for Poker de blondes by Oscar Montgomery, aka José del Valle, from the French publisher Éditions le Trotteur in 1953.
Rafael DeSoto painted this excellent cover for David Hulburd's 1954 drug scare novel H Is for Heroin. We also have the original art without text.
Argentine publishers Malinca Debora reprinted numerous English language crime thrillers in Spanish. This example uses George Gross art borrowed from U.S. imprint Rainbow Books.
Uncredited cover art for Orrie Hitt's 1954 novel Tawny. Hitt was a master of sleazy literature and published more than one hundred fifty novels.

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