Above you see two covers for Robert O. Saber’s thriller Too Young To Die, the first from Graphic Books, and the second from Australian publisher Phantom. The art at top, which we think is brilliant, was painted by Walter Popp, a well known paperback and men’s magazine illustrator who we’ve talked about several times. You can see some of those examples by clicking his keywords at bottom. His cover was copied by an anonymous artist for Phantom’s re-issue. So as always we come back to the question: Why were publishers able to copy original art, but not to use it outright?

Assume you’re Walter Popp and you’ve already been paid by Graphic for the use of your art. Phantom comes along and asks you to reuse it. It’s free money in the sense that you’ve already done the work, and it’s more exposure for your talent. So why not say yes? Since there’s no reason in the world to say no we can only assume he was never asked. Looking at it from the other side, if you like Walter Popp’s cover work but can’t obtain the right to use it, how is it that you can get away with publishing a near exact copy? We posed that question to Bob over at the authoritative website menspulpmags.com, and he said that he thinks copycat covers that were not actual reuses of the original skated under copyright laws, and generally nobody paid much attention to them.

Bob also offered these insights:

Some of the artists who worked for mid-20th century men’s adventure magazines and paperbacks that I’ve talked to have said they sometimes got paid small reprint fees for reuses of their work, but often did not. In the case of the men’s adventure magazines, I know the artists typically only sold first publication rights and the artists who were most business savvy, like Mort Kunstler, made sure to get their originals back from the company or get fees for reuses. But some artists just turned in their illustrations to the art directors and didn’t bother to get them back to track whether they were reused.

Some magazines that published multiple men’s adventure magazines, like those put out by Martin Goodman’s Magazine Management company, often reused illustrations in several different issues and sometimes used a magazine illustration on the cover of a paperback published by their paperback subsidiary (Lion Books in the case of Magazine Management), or vice versa. I show an example of a Samson Pollen painting used on a Lion paperback and a Mag Mgt. men’s adventure mag in a recent post on my blog here.

There are many other examples of men’s adventure mag illos being used on both a paperback cover and in a men’s adventure magazine. For example, Pyramid published both paperbacks and Man’s Magazine and many Pyramid cover paintings showed up as illustrations in Man’s. I don’t know if artists typically only sold first use rights to paperback publishers or all rights. I suspect it varied with the publisher. I do know many paperback cover paintings were reused both on other paperbacks and in men’s adventure mags.

I also know that Gil Cohen, who I recently interviewed for my blog, told me he sold only first rights to Pinnacle for the roughly two-hundred Executioner/Mack Bolan paperback cover paintings he did. I’d guess that whether an artist got paid for reuses depended on how honorable the publishers were. Mag Mgt. and Pyramid actually treated their artists pretty well, from what I have been able to glean.

However, it seems pretty clear that many low budget men’s adventure mags and paperback publishers just ripped artists off by reusing their artwork without paying them. I think that practice was pretty common and there was really no way for artists to keep track of all reuses back then. They would just have to happen to run across them on newsstands. And even then, they might not think it was worth the hassle of trying to do anything about it. Pulp art was basically viewed as “disposable” artwork without a lot of resale value back in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s. I think most artists were more concerned about getting their next assignment than trying to get smaller reprint fees for past work.

So there you have it, from someone who has spoken to many of the creators from the period. The art was just difficult to keep track of back then. As copies go, Phantom’s Walter Popp rip-off is a decent one, though we’ve seen much better. We have another example of the practice you can check out here. And we’re now sure our longstanding suspicions about the usage of celebrity images, which we’ve discussed several times, fall into the same category. Thanks to Bob for his answers, and we recommend that pulp fans check out his expansive and incredibly informative men’s magazine website.