Cult magazines A to Z a compendium of culturally obsessive and curiously expressive publications 9781933065144, 9781933065151, 1933065141, 193306515X

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Editors Earl Kemp, a national nuisance, has been known by many guises: adventurer, explorer, lover, beloved, rebel, First Amendment convict savant, and numerous others, almost all bad. Also a Hugo Award-winning editor and SF Worldcon Chair, Kemp is best known as the notorious producer, during the Golden Age of Sleaze Paperbacks, of more than 5,000 novels and half again that many “girly” magazines for Greenleaf Classics, Inc. For the past nine years of his dotage, he has been dribbling salacious memories at efanzines.com/EK/index.html and has become the chronicler of the entire sleaze book and magazine genre. Luis Ortiz is the author of Emshwiller: Infinity x 2, a Hugo Award nominee. At present he is preparing a biography of the artist Jack Gaughan.

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THE SECRET LIFE of America in the 20th century is displayed in the thousands of specialized magazines produced between 1925 and 1990.This period can be seen as a precursor to the cyberspace age where every fad, taste, obsession, and hush-hush desire is gratified.The list of cult magazines is legion: Black Silk Stockings, Castle of Frankenstein, Gee-Whiz, Jaybird,Amazing Stories, bOING bOING, Bronze Thrills, Ballyhoo, Doctor Death, Dream World, Eyeful, Exposé, Fate, Flying Saucers From Other Worlds, Magazine of Horror, Monster Times, Phantom Detective, Humorama, Psychotronic, Search & Destroy, Satana, Red Channels, Mobster Times, Sexology, Spicy Stories,The Spider,The Nudist,True Thrills, Spy, Sunshine & Health,Tiger Beat,True Strange,Web Terror,Whisper,Weird Tales, and Zest, to name just a few. Nothing was beyond the scope of imaginative publishers and eccentric editors whose main goal was to make a profit by giving their readers the magazines they really wanted to read. In the process they also created exuberant populist art and literature. CULT MAGAZINES: from A to Z is an encyclopedia of mid-century America at its sub-culture best. Illustrated with hundreds of magazine covers.

CULT MAGAZINES : A

NONSTOP PRESS

A C OMPENDIUM OF C ULTURALLY O BSESSIVE & C URIOUSLY E XPRESSIVE P UBLICATIONS

NONSTOP PRESS

CULTMAGAZINE S A

TO

Z

A COMPENDIUM OF CULTURALLY OBSESSIVE & CURIOUSLY EXPRESSIVE PUBLICATIONS EDITED BY EARL KEMP & LUIS ORTIZ

Nonstop Press • New York

C U LT MAGA ZINES A

TO

Z

A COMPENDIUM OF CULTURALLY OBSESSIVE & CURIOUSLY EXPRESSIVE PUBLICATIONS

First edition Copyright ©2009 Nonstop Press

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopy, recording, or any other information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher or copyright holders. All images are copyright their respective publishers, creators or copyright holders and are shown for review and historical purposes.The authors and publishers apologize for any inadvertent errors or omissions and will be happy to correct them in future editions, but hereby disclaim any liability. For information: [email protected] or address: POB 981, Peck Slip Station, New York, NY 10272-0981 Nonstop Press www.nonstop-press.com publisher’s catalog-in-publication available upon request Book designer Luis Ortiz Copy editors: Beret Erway Karan Ortiz Production by Nonstop Ink ISBN-13 cloth: 978-1-933065-14-4 ISBN-13 ebook: 978-1-933065-15-1 Printed in S. Korea

Magazine of Fantasy & SF to Mystic . . . . . . . . . . . . 119

Contents

Nemesis to Nocturne . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5

Operator #5 to The Organ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6

Pearson’s Magazine to Punk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138

Acme News Company to The Avenger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153

Ballyhoo to Brain Power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

Ray Gun to Rogue Magazine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157

Captain Billy’s Whiz Bang to Creem . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

Satana to Super-8 Filmmaker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169

Daring Doll to Dream World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54

Tales of Magic & Mystery to True Strange Stories . . . . . 194

Elvis Presley to Eyeful . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62

Uncanny Tales to Volitant Publishing . . . . . . . . . . . 199

Face & Physique to Future Sex . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

Weider Magazines to World War 3 Illustrated . . . . . . 203

Gasm to Ghost Stories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90

The Yellow Peril to Your Body . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213

Health Knowledge to Humorama . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95

Zane Grey’s Western Magazine to Zest . . . . . . . . . . . 217

I.F. Stone’s Weekly to Imagination . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

INTRODUCTION MAGAZINE SIZES

Jack Dempsey’s Fight to Jungle Stories . . . . . . . . . . 114 Knight Magazine to Lunatickle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .219 C O N T R I B U T O R S . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .219 I N D E X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .221

CULTMAGAZINE S A TO Z

5

Introduction Dirty Laundry BY LUIS ORTIZ

I

was too young to have seen most of the magazines covered here when they originally appeared on newsstands, sometimes strung up like dirty laundry on a clothesline or in some cases hidden behind the newsdealer’s counter. But when I was growing up in New York City, I used to go to Ruby’s Books in downtown Manhattan to browse the wooden shelves filled with old Rolling Stones, Creems, National Lampoons, Monster Times, Evergreen Reviews, and various men’s adventure magazines. A few blocks away, near the Woolworth Building, there was Mendoza’s Books where I found piles of old mustysmelling science fiction and mystery magazines. At both places the prices were bargains and I bought them by the dozen. To this day I have images of particular covers stamped in my brain. But what exactly is a cult magazine? The only thing they all seem to have in common is that they serve a need.The editor and author Damon Knight once attempted to define science fiction by saying that it was whatever he said it was. He had enough background, and had read enough in the genre, to make this statement without any sense of smart-alecky hubris. I am going to apply the same Knight criteria to the cult magazines presented here. Some of them fit into a category that goes back to the dime novels of the 1800s and evolved into the pulps of the mid-20th century. Some follow the personal trajectory of eccentric and profit-minded publishers (Bernarr Macfadden), or idiosyncratic editors riding a hobbyhorse (Raymond Palmer with UFOs), or, like Elmer Batters, bluntly pleasing themselves as much as their readers. Cult Magazines: From A to Z makes no attempt to be comprehensive.This is a personal selection. There are many categories here that would require an entire volume (or volumes) to cover properly; for instance, the “spicy” or “snappy” class of risqué magazines that flourished during the Great Depression, or the “confidential” types of scandal rags of the 1950s.Then there is the story of the clergyman who became the first to publish and fight for American nudist publications. Books have been published on the subjects of men’s adventure magazines, science fiction, detective mysteries, and “girlie” magazines, but these have mostly been general overviews, heavy on illustrations and light on history. There is a lot of primary research that still needs to be done on the interaction between publishers, distributors, organized crime, and also the interdicting of nudist, left-wing, and men’s magazines by

Church and State.The history of cult magazines reveals the progress of a free press despite the barriers set up by authorities.The publishers presented here always knew they were dancing along the edge of a cliff. Neither should one forget the sense of illicitness of buying some of these magazines at the time. The heyday, or golden age, of cult magazines began in the 1920s and continued up until the 1970s, when magazines were beginning to be bought and sold by larger and larger business interests, like the flinty Condé Nast. Ownership changed to new types of confidence men, and magazines became more and more alike, metamorphosing into dispirited products that read more like sales catalogs than magazines.The new order has created a mass of jaded, if not sated, readers. There are a few cult magazines that fall outside the golden age timeframe that are included here because they link up to, or are a continuation of, a cult genre. For instance, cyberpunk magazines, which began appearing in the 1980s, fall under our purview as part of the development of the science fiction magazine genre that Hugo Gernsback set in motion in 1926. The chief ingredients of golden age cult magazines are sex, celebrity gossip, illustrations or photographs of scantily clad and nude women, salaciousness, crime, contrariness against political and religious authority, sexism, and obsession. Obviously, few cult magazine editors were going to admit to such base guiding principles. As one “spicy” title editor put it:“There will be nothing Lewd, Lascivious,Vulgar, Obscene, Prurient, Pernicious, or in any way offensive to the Popular Public Taste [in our magazine].”These were all the main selling points of the magazine he was editing. Indeed, a few of the magazines covered in this book would create a public firestorm if they appeared on newsstands today (though the same material in cyberspace would not elicit a peep.) Authorities saw these cult magazines as outside mainstream consumer culture and therefore suspect, but many had a loyal following that actively searched for their favorite magazines.This book can be read as a tribute to the daring of a few non-conformist publishers and editors, and the readers that danced with them along the edge of that wide-open cliff. New York City 2009

6 Magazine Sizes *The bedsheet size is problematic when it comes to magazines. The term originally referred to 19th century oversized newspapers that were printed on sheets so large that when unfolded they could almost serve as a blanket for the average sized person. Today the term is applied indiscriminately to pulps or any oversized magazine.

bedsheet* tabloid pulp

magazine

half mag

digest mini

Acme News Company |

A ACE HIGH DETECTIVE see Battle Birds ACME NEWS COMPANY Acme News Company could have been the inspiration for Wile E. Coyote’s Acme Catalog since the company showed the same ability to carry a seemingly unlimited, albeit unusual, product line to meet any dubious occasion.ANC was a New York City-based distributor that incorporated in the early 1900s to service regional newsstands outside major cities. Twentieth-century magazines with high circulation like Time, Life, and The Saturday Evening Post, could always write

their own ticket with national distributors. Regional distributors like ANC carried everything else, squeezing nickels and dimes from pulp and marginal magazines.After World War II, a few of these regional distributors realized that they could generate their own products and in effect created a closed loop between publisher, printer, and distributor, with most of the profit going to them. Distributors like ANC branched out to become publishing partners and printers. ANC worked as packagers to publishers and made arrangements that included fronting the money to pay for a print-run of a new magazine. In this business scenario, distributors would cut themselves a sweetheart deal, using presses they owned or controlled to print magazines — in a sense they were the de-facto publisher since they controlled the purse strings and owned the exclusive rights to sell on newsstands.These magazines were nearly always copycat titles: cheaply pro-

duced knock-offs of anything that was known to sell: Acme had a Mad magazine knock-off, Nuts Magazine (1958); Famous Monsters of Filmland knock-offs like The Journal of Frankenstein (1959), Shriek (1965), and Monsters and Heroes (1967); Fate magazine’s knock-off was Exploring the Unknown. During the 1950s, ANC set up a subsidiary company called Health Knowledge Inc., to directly produce magazines for them. HKI’s early output catered to prurient taste under the guise of sex education with titles such as Real Life Guide: Vital Sex Knowledge Magazine (1959), Big (1962), and Tomorrow’s Man, which on the surface appeared to cater to muscle builders, but one could not miss the homoerotic “beefcake” poses of these muscle men.Thrown into the mix were a few magazines like Exploring the Unknown (HKI’s version of Ray Palmer’s Fate and Mystic occult magazines), along with a few genre fiction mags, Magazine of Horror (1963) and Startling Mys-

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tery Stories (1969), to fill in open press time. In the 1960s, HKI turned more and more to producing girlie and fetish publications. Satana (1963) was a fetish magazine featuring betterthan-average photography of zaftig women in black stockings, skimpy underwear, and high heels, along with letters, fiction, cartoons with fetish appeal, and psycho-essays by Harold Doktor, Modern Life Illustrated (1967) followed the same fetish formula of garter belts and panties, Happy Sun-In published full frontal, if airbrushed, photos of nudists, the strange Female Mimics (1965) covered - or uncovered - female impersonators. Striparama (1960) a men’s magazine, showcasing strippers of the time, was taken over by Acme from Leonard Burtman’s Selbee Associates, Inc. (Striparama featured many pictorials with stripper and model Tana Louise, who was Burtman’s wife). HKI and ANC also got into the sexy cartoon market with Oversexed, Spicy Fun, Pin-Up

ACME NEWS COMPANY

8 | Acme News Company Fun, Gals & Gags and Girlie Fun (the latter two included many cartoons by Bill Wenzel). In the mid-1960s, when the English rock invasion was all the rage, ANC published oneshot magazines on the Beatles and Rolling Stones; there was even Elvis Presley vs.The Beatles (1965). ANC filed for bankruptcy on August 26, 1970, and in liquidation proceedings Myron Fass’s Countrywide Publication bought out all the titles from the Health Knowledge division. Fass was only interested in the sex and fetish magazines and promptly killed everything else, including all the fiction magazines.—LO [see Health Knowledge Inc, Lunatickle, and Castle of Frankenstein]

magazine’s office files. A crusading Los Angeles DA hit four magazines that April day: Black Silk Stockings, Cocktail, Snap, and Adam. Most of the charges against Adam were based on a single photo of Virginia Bell in the April, 1959, issue.The DA had a weak case and settled for a misdemeanor plea deal, and the state department managed to calm down the Iranian government. For a few issues Adam carried the slogan: “The most talked about magazine in the U.S.” Adam was one of the better men’s magazines, carrying a good mix of quality pictorials, fiction, cartoons, and articles throughout most of its nearly fifty-year run. Knight Publications also published Adam Bedside Reader, Adam Film Quarterly edited by Bill Roster (covering adult films), and Knight magazine.—LO [see Captain Billy’s Whiz Bang]

ADAM The first American incarnation of Adam magazine was by Fawcett Publications in 1952. Fawcett, as one of the biggest publishers and independent distributors around, and the originator of Captain Billy’s Whiz Bang, should have been able to produce a better product. But at this point in their history they had become too big and their men’s magazine reflected their corporate conservatism by being too tame, even by 1950s standards. Four years later Bentley Morris’s Knight Publications brought out two companion men’s magazines titled Adam and Eve. Eve quickly vanished, but Adam went on to become a mainstay on newsstands where it was easy to notice due to the colorful vertical cover stripes, which appeared on every issue until 1969. Adam almost didn’t make it into the sixties due to two unrelated events. A 1959 issue of the magazine created a small international incident when the Iranian government filed a protest with the state department over an article on Mohammed in the magazine.The second incident began earlier in the year when local Hollywood authorities raided Adam’s offices, citing a conspiracy to distribute obscene materials, and seized the

ADVENTURE Adventure, along with Blue Book and Argosy, was one of the top three American pulp magazines to which all such authors aspired to contribute. Of the three, Adventure was arguably the most popular, especially in the 1910s and 1920s, and it has retained that cult status ever since. In October, 1935, Time magazine dubbed it the “No. 1 pulp,” and though its reputation faded thereafter, for half of its life Adventure was everyone’s favorite pulp.The very mention of its name will bring a rheumy sparkle to the eyes of old pulpsters, and a yearning to the hearts of young collectors. Its title was symbolic of pure escapism and its covers evocative of a golden age of daring and excitement. Its first issue is dated November, 1910. It was published by the Ridgway Company, which also published the slick up-market Everybody’s Magazine. Both magazines were edited by the explorer and former Blue Book editor Trumbull White. That issue ran to 188 thick pulp pages and sold for fifteen cents. The early issues, probably for budgetary reasons or the lack of an adequate

Adventure | inventory, ran several stories by British writers from British magazines. These included William Le Queux, C.J. Cutcliffe Hyne, R. Austin Freeman and William Hope Hodgson, whose “The Albatross,” in the July, 1911 issue, had not previously appeared in Britain. The British sources of stories by two authors in particular cast an interesting light on the early contents of Adventure. John Buchan’s novel, “Prester John”, was serialized in the March to June, 1911 issues. This had first appeared in Britain the previous year as a serial in the boys’ magazine The Captain, which is not only an indication of the quality of British boys’ fiction, but an example of the gut-level drive of Adventure’s fiction. The work of the Italian-born Britishbased historical swashbuckler Rafael Sabatini was ideally suited to Adventure. His first appearance in the magazine was with “The Pretender” in the December, 1911 issue. This had previously appeared in the British Lady’s Magazine in August, 1911, showing the strong link between adventure and romance – the two words were once synonymous. Sabatini’s work would be one of the features of Adventure in the 1920s, with the rousing exploits of Captain Blood and the magnificent serial “The Sea-Hawk” (October 20November 30, 1922). Adventure ran the pulp heroics equivalent of cinema’s Errol Flynn and Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. The author whose work perhaps came best to symbolize Adventure, however, was Talbot Mundy. He rapidly established himself as Adventure’s most popular contributor and his work was often cited as the epitome of the Adventure story. Though British born, Mundy settled in America in 1909 and became a naturalized citizen in 1916. He had adopted the name Mundy to hide his past per-

sona, who had been something of a rogue. He subsequently fabricated much of his previous thirty years to make himself sound like an adventurer and explorer rather than an ivory poacher and conman.Truth or fiction was all the same to him and once settled in America it seemed only natural to become a story-teller, at which he was a huge success. His first appearance in Adventure was with an article, “Pig-Sticking in India” (April 1911). His first story, “The Phantom Battery” was in the August, 1911 issue, but his claim to fame came with “The Soul of a Regiment” in the February, 1912 issue.This tale of courage, valor and loyalty became the single most popular story the magazine ever published and was reprinted seven times in Adventure alone.Thereafter Mundy’s name sold issues and, as he appeared in over 160 of them, he is clearly a significant part of Adventure’s cult status. Amongst his most popular work was the series featuring the American secret agent James Grim, usually known as Jimgrim, who confronts the mystical east in “The Gray Mahatma” (November 10, 1922), also in book form as The Caves of Terror.This was the start of Mundy’s more fantastic stories. It was something of a sequel to an earlier novel,“King, of the Khyber Rifles,” which is amongst Mundy’s best known though this had been serialized in Everybody’s rather than Adventure, a sign of Mundy’s growing popularity. Other stories and serials in the Jimgrim series, all in Adventure, include “Khufu’s Real Tomb” (October 10, 1922), “The Nine Unknown” (March 20April 30, 1923), “Ramsden” (June 8-August 8, 1926) and “King of the World” (November 15, 1930-February 15, 1931). Similar popular stories include “Om” (October 10-November 30, 1924) and his series set in the time of the Roman

PG 7 Lt to R – SHRIEK #1, 1965 (©Acme News Company); STRIPARAMA Vol. 2, No. 8, 1965 (©Health Knowledge Inc.); GIRLIE FUN #11, 1968 (©Acme News Company). PG 8 Lt to R, Top to Bot – ADAM, v.1, #12, Dec. 1957(©Knight Publications); SATANA, #08, Summer 1965, (©Health Knowledge Inc.); BABES & DOLLS, Summer, 1965, #8, (©Health Knowledge Inc.); ADVENTURE, Nov, 1941 (© respective copyright holder); PG 9, AMAZING DETECTIVE, June 1939 (© Techni-Craft Pubs).

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10 | Adventure Empire, which began with “Tros of Samothrace” (February 10, 1925). Mundy’s tales of lost empires and hidden knowledge were written with a gusto and spirit that brought the worlds and characters alive and has kept his work perennially popular. Mundy’s debut coincided with a change of editor at Adventure.At the end of 1911,White was succeeded by Arthur Sullivant Hoffman (18761966), who would steer Adventure’s fortunes over the next fifteen years. It was due to him that Adventure became the leading pulp magazine. For the first two years Hoffman was assisted by Sinclair Lewis, and although Lewis had no stories published in the magazine, he may have contributed to the editorial features. Hoffman started several important features within the magazine that add to its cult status.The first was “The Camp-Fire”, which began in June, 1912.This was not only the first important letter column in the pulps, but Hoffman developed it to become a major interaction between reader and writer. It was here that readers would tell of their own adventures and experiences and where writers would provide background to their stories. Hoffman also introduced a “Lost Trails” feature to reunite friends and families and which sometimes helped identify and track down lost explorers. He created an identification card to be carried by explorers so they could be identified if they were killed or endangered. In 1915, he started the American Legion department, a feature that became the basis for the organization of that name created in 1919. These departments, especially “The Camp-Fire” have never been fully indexed and contain many contributions by leading writers. Mundy, for instance, caused quite a stir in the issue for February 10, 1925, when he launched an attack on Julius Caesar. Over the next fifteen years, Hoffman developed Adventure into a magazine that sizzled with energy and was a constant buzz of excitement. In addition to Mundy, all of the other major contributors to the magazine appeared during Hoffman’s editorship.These included Hugh Pendexter (from July 1912),Arthur D. Howden Smith (from

August 1913), Gordon MacCreagh (from October 1913), J.Allan Dunn (from November 1914), Harold Lamb (from October 1917), Arthur O. Friel (from September 1919), and George Surdez (from October 1922). Each had their own special territory, and each their own cult following. Together they made a magazine that shimmered with intrigue and wonder, serving as a window to readers upon what the world had to offer. Pendexter is perhaps the least remembered today and yet his many serials and stories traced the history of the American nation in meticulous detail from the earliest frontier days. He often contributed nuggets of rare information to “The Camp-Fire.” Arthur D. Howden Smith wrote both sea stories and historical adventures, and is best remembered for his series based on the Orkneyinga Saga featuring the Norse sea-rover Swain, which began with “Swain’s Stone” (August 20, 1923). He also wrote a prequel to Treasure Island, “Porto Bello Gold” (February 10-March 20, 1924) and a series about a sword, “Grey Maiden,” down through the ages (beginning on August 23, 1926). J. Allan Dunn was noted for his sea stories, Arthur O. Friel for his South American jungle adventures and Georges Surdez for his foreignlegion tales. Harold Lamb was an immensely popular writer of historical extravaganzas, especially stories of the Crusades or of the Mongol Empire. He was an expert on Genghis Khan.Amongst his most popular stories were “The Three Paladins” (begun July 30, 1923), the Crusades series that began with “Saladin’s Holy War” (December 1, 1930) and the early Mongol stories, especially “Khilit” (November 3, 1917). His stories provided some of the most colorful covers for the magazine, such as that for “Khilit” (November 1, 1917) that was by noted Oz artist John R. Neill. Gordon MacCreagh was best known for his many African adventure tales, but perhaps his most significant contribution was an account of an expedition organized by Adventure to search for the Ark of the Covenant. An adventure worthy of Indiana Jones, it appeared as “Adventure’s

Adventure | Abyssinian Expedition” in seven “reports” from July 1, 1927, to May 15, 1928. There were many other contributors to the wealth of Adventure’s contents during this period. There were the wilderness tales of Raymond S. Spears, the often humorous westerns of W.C.Tuttle, and the more gutsy westerns of Gordon Young. Several of Edgar Wallace’s Sanders of the River stories appeared during 1913. British expatriate L. Patrick Greene, who has been compared to Wallace, contributed many stories with an East African setting. Another British ex-pat, Albert R. Wetjen, contributed many sea stories, whilst Canadian-born H. Bedford-Jones, one of the most prolific of all pulpsters, could turn a hand to anything and everything. British writer F. St. Mars (real name Frank Atkins) contributed many animal stories (most of which had previously appeared in British magazines like The London).After his death Jim Kjelgaard took over that role. T.S. Stribling, whose first appearance was with the noted science-fiction story,“The Green Splotches” (November 10, 1925), contributed several unusual stories including “The Web of the Sun” (January 30, 1922) and “Christ in Chicago” (April 8, 1926), as well as his early stories about detective Dr. Poggioli, starting with “The Refugees” (October 10, 1925). These are just a few of the key contributors and stories appearing during Hoffman’s editorship, to which can briefly be added Hugh Lofting, the author of the Dr. Dolittle books, who had just one story in Adventure,“Ilari” (January 1914), Baroness Orczy with her serial “The Laughing Cavalier” (May-August 1914), Maurice Leblanc’s “Arsène Lupin and the Tiger’s Teeth” (AugustNovember 1914), and H. Rider Haggard’s serial “Finished” (January-May 1917). The cover art for Adventure was always distinctive and frequently minimalistic. Adventure did not go in for detailed covers but frequently presented an image that, in its simplicity, projected the essence of action and intrigue. This may be simply a soldier’s face against a white background, or a slinking jaguar, or an Arab on a camel. The

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covers seldom seem to age and they certainly help sustain the value of the magazine. During the First World War, the covers featured women in fashionable garb, like many of the popular magazines, as if hoping to attract women readers, but the contents did not change and Adventure was always a men’s magazine. There was never one dedicated cover artist but the main contributors during this period include H.C. Murphy, Charles Livingston Bull, and Edgar Franklin Wittmack. Although Adventure began as a monthly, it switched to twice monthly starting on September 1, 1917, and thrice monthly starting on October 10, 1921. Producing a full-size pulp magazine every ten days was demanding and inevitably led to a drop in overall quality, but Hoffman had such a solid stable of reliable authors that there was always something of merit in most issues. It returned to twice monthly in April, 1926. Hoffman resigned as editor in 1927, during a dispute with the publisher (now Butterick Publishing) over upgrading Adventure to a slick magazine. The experiment did not work and in the process Adventure lost its main driving force. It never really recovered. Thereafter Adventure underwent a constant stream of editors, few of whom lasted for many years and even fewer of whom made any impression on the magazine. For some time after Hoffman’s departure the magazine sustained its sales on its name alone and the continuing presence of most of the writers whom Hoffman had developed. A few more names of interest appear. The later noted film producer,Val Lewton, had a couple of articles,“Kavkaz, Grandaddy of Polo” (February 1, 1930) and “Gauntlet Swords” (June 1, 1931). Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson, who became a significant name in the comic-book field, contributed many rousing adventures, and Donald Barr Chidsey, better known for his work in Argosy, made an occasional appearance, including the serial,“Glenallan of the Clans” (begun on December 1, 1931). But Adventure was noticeably going downhill. By 1934, the Butterick Company had lost inter-

12 | Adventure est in it. It had dropped to monthly publication in June, 1933 and in May, 1934 it was sold to Popular Publications, a new company that would become the biggest and the last bastion of the pulps. (It also ended up owning most of the major titles including Argosy and Black Mask.) Popular restored the twice-monthly schedule briefly, but in November, 1935 it reverted to monthly. Under Popular, Adventure became a more routine adventure pulp with little of the flair or excitement of its early days. Many of the major contributors still appeared, though less frequently, as they moved on to other fields or died. Mundy’s death in 1940 marked the end of an era. His last original appearance was in the March, 1941 issue. Of the new names to appear in Adventure in the 1930s, only two stand out. Erle Stanley Gardner contributed a couple of early atypical stories, “The War Lord of Darkness” (July 1934) and “The Joss of Tai Wong” (March 1939) and L. Ron Hubbard also appeared twice: “He Walked to War” (October 1, 1935) and “Mr.Tidwell, Gunner” (September 1936). The covers during the 1930s and 1940s were also more routine, action-oriented, and far less striking than the early ones. Nevertheless some notable pulp artists appeared, including Walter Baumhofer, Rafael de Soto, Hubert Rogers, Lawrence Sterne Stevens and his son Peter and, in the early 1950s, Norman Saunders. For most of the 1940s, Adventure was edited by Ken White, son of the original editor, Trumbull White. But White also edited Black Mask, which captured most of his attention and Adventure languished. Inevitably, during the war it published much war fiction, which was of immediate gratification, but nothing now stands out. After the war the magazine shifted towards being a hard-edged men’s magazine. Of interest is the March, 1946 issue with the first story by Philip José Farmer, “O’Brien and Obrenov.” John D. Macdonald also contributed to several issues starting in July 1949. In April, 1953 Adventure shifted from the standard pulp size to the large flat size, the format

already adopted by Blue Book and Argosy. It also shifted to bi-monthly publication. From here on it became a full-scale men’s magazine, running many nude or semi-nude photographs and featuring articles on sex, scandals and violence. Most of the contents were written by staff writers under pseudonyms, including the editor Alden H. Norton, but there are still some surprises.Arthur C. Clarke had three stories from his “Tales of the White Hart” sequence, starting with “Armaments Race” (April 1954).That issue also contained a story by Evan Hunter, better known as Ed McBain, and he contributed two others during the 1950s. One of Sax Rohmer’s last stories, “The Death Flower,” appeared in the April, 1955, issue. Norman Mailer’s early story “The Paper House” appeared in December, 1958. Adrian Conan Doyle (Sir Arthur’s son) had three feature articles in the 1960s, starting with “Man Eater” (October 1961). Ross Macdonald made just one appearance,“One Brunette for Murder” (August 1967) and, perhaps of most interest, Ian Fleming appeared with “Berlin Escape” (June 1970), the basis for the film The Living Daylights (1987). These issues may appeal to collectors of men’s magazines but they have lost that sparkle and glamour that made the magazine the greatest of the pulps. The Fleming story appeared at a time when Adventure was undergoing one final transformation. In December, 1970 the magazine was converted to a digest and once again became a fiction magazine. But it saw only three issues in this format and, with the issue for April, 1971, it folded. In total, Adventure ran for 881 issues.The most important are the 360 edited by Arthur S. Hoffman and the least important are the 120 or so as a men’s magazine. But for almost half its run Adventure presented not only some of the best adventure fiction ever written but also stimulated activity amongst readers and writers to undertake

new adventures. It buzzed with excitement and a sense of achievement. This mood was lost with the Second World War and now feels part of another world, but dipping into those early issues can transport you back to those days of adventure and glory.—MA

ALL DETECTIVE see Doctor Death AMAZING DETECTIVE TALES see Sexology AMAZING STORIES Hugo Gernsback, the immigrant technocrat who named the genre, thought that science fiction should be fiction about science. Further, he planned to publish a literature that would foresee the possibilities of science-to-come, stories of imaginary technology, stories that might appear to be fiction today, but would be fact tomorrow. In 1924, his dream nearly died unborn when he circulated an announcement to 25,000 people about his new proposed magazine, Scientifiction. Due to the dismal response he received, his new idea for a magazine lay dormant for nearly two more years. In March, 1926 Gernsback published the first issue of his new magazine with an April cover date and without any further announcement. Described as a “magazine of scientifiction,” it was called Amazing Stories. In an editorial Gernsback wrote: “We really need not make any excuse for Amazing Stories, because the title represents exactly what the stories really are. There is a standing

PG 10, ALL-STORY, Jan. 1916 (©Munsey); PG 11 – ACE-HIGH DETECTIVE MAGAZINE, Mar. 1937 (© Popular Pubs.); PG 12 top to bot – REAL ART STUDIES, #13, circa 1930s (© respective copyright holders); ARTISTS AND MODELS, #26, circa 1930s (© respective copyright holders); PG 13 – AMAZING STORIES, Oct. 1949, art by Harold Mccauley (© Ziff-Davis).

Amazing Stories | rule in our editorial offices that unless the story is amazing, it should not be published in the magazine.To be sure, the amazing quality is only one requisite, because the story must contain science in every case.” From its initial appearance, Amazing Stories broke all the rules as the first magazine devoted to science fiction. It was not at all like Argosy, which was a general fiction pulp magazine. It was not like one of the new, specialized pulp magazines, like Weird Tales. Initially Amazing Stories was not a pulp as it was printed on a special type of thick book paper. It was something brand new and different. The cover art by Frank R. Paul and the subject matter allowed it to stand out from every other magazine on the newsstand. Amazing Stories appeared at the right time. E.E. Smith had just submitted his novel “The Skylark of Space” to Argosy, and it was rejected. Eventually it would be rejected 50 times by various other publishers before Gernsback would publish it in Amazing Stories.When “The Skylark of Space” appeared in Amazing Stories in 1928, Edward Elmer Smith was instantly recognized as the premier writer of American magazine science fiction. He would remain so for fully a dozen years more with one expansive serial novel after another. The August, 1928 issue of Amazing Stories has become a much-sought-after collector’s item. It is important in the history of the space opera subgenre because it includes the story “Armageddon 2419 A.D.” — the first appearance of Buck Rogers — and E.E. Smith’s “The Skylark of Space,” considered one of the first space opera novels. Although “Armageddon 2419 A.D.” was not a space opera, the comic strip based on it certainly was. Edgar Rice Burroughs was a regular contributor at Argosy, where they had rejected his latest Martian story, “A Weird Adventure on Mars.” It would appear in Amazing Stories Annual under the title “Mastermind of Mars.” Inside the pages of Amazing Stories began the segregation of science fiction from other kinds of stories, allowing writers a market, a unique readership, and a place to

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further develop this particular medium. Future generations of science fiction readers would come to reckon the very creation of science fiction from the date the first issue of Amazing Stories appeared. From its inception, Amazing Stories was set apart from the other pulp magazines, in part because it was in a slightly larger format — 8 .5 by 11 inches.This was called the bedsheet format. It came with neatly trimmed edges and a slightly higher cover price.The much copied logo, Amazing Stories, loomed across the cover, the initial “A” fully 3 inches high, the rest dwindling off toward infinity. The first attention-grabbing covers were painted by Frank R. Paul, an Austrian immigrant with architectural training. Paul was a master colorist, adept at rendering cogent visions of the future. He would go on to paint covers for Amazing Stories for its first three years of existence. Frank R. Paul created a notable body of work during his lifetime, including the cover painting of the first Marvel Comics (October-November 1939), which featured the debuts of The Human Torch and SubMariner (currently good copies sell at auction for $20,000 to $30,000). Throughout his career he painted over 220 magazine covers. For its first two years of publication Amazing Stories was filled with reprinted stories from the past, essentially a recapitulation of the development of science fiction during the previous century. Works by Edgar Allan Poe appeared along with those of Fitz-James O’Brien. Gernsback would to serialize five novels by Jules Verne, and would eventually republish all of H.G.Wells’s classic scientific romances. Gernsback would then go on to find new writers, publishing original work by David H. Keller, Jack Williamson, Edmond Hamilton, and H.P. Lovecraft, among others. During the boom years of the early Amazing Stories, Gernsback spent his money on various projects, such as his radio station and television broadcasts. In February, 1929 his financial miscalculations caught up with him. His printer and paper supplier had been pushed too far and sent Gernsback’s publishing companies into bankruptcy.

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There has been a lasting debate about whether this process was genuine, manipulated by publisher Bernarr Macfadden, or was a Gernsback scheme to begin another company.Whatever the case, a new publishing company was organized by the receiver and creditors, and Amazing Stories continued regular publication without missing an issue. But Hugo Gernsback was out, severed from his creation. Not undone, Gernsback bounced back.With an illicit copy of the Amazing Stories subscription list, unpublished manuscripts, and an unknown source of financing, he managed to have an entirely new science fiction magazine on the newsstands within two months, Science Wonder Stories. His friend, the artist Frank R. Paul, followed him to the new publication. Along with the various items offered in the new magazine, it also offered a new brand name — science fiction — a name that would soon be generally adopted, replacing the original term “scientifiction.”

Modern science fiction fandom owes a great debt to Gernsback and both of the magazines he created. Amazing Stories printed readers’ comments in a letter column and included the full addresses of its correspondents, which allowed fans of the genre to begin contacting each other in person and via the mails. Later in 1934 Wonder Stories began chartering local fan clubs under the umbrella of the Science Fiction League. Hugo Gernsback would continue his long, successful career in the industry. His early introduction of letters to the editor would be cited as the foundation for the incredible world of science fiction fandom that would follow. The most sought-after award given by fandom in yearly appreciation of works in the field would be named after him, the “Hugo.” The new publishers of Amazing Stories installed T. O’Connor Sloane, Ph.D., a whitebearded old man who had formerly been Gernsback’s chief sub-editor, as editor. Sloane was an

inventor whose son had married a daughter of Thomas Edison. When he became editor of Amazing Stories in November, 1929 he was nearly 78 years old. Sloane lacked Gernsback’s vision and ambition. However, Gernsback’s new publications were not able to overtake Amazing Stories in the marketplace. And to make matters worse for Gernsback, in December, 1929 a new pulp magazine appeared to stiffen the competition, Astounding Stories of Super-Science. Sloane continued to edit Amazing Stories until the April 1938 issue, when the title was sold to Ziff-Davis. He was replaced as editor of the magazine by the notable and formidable Raymond A. Palmer. The first few issues were assembled by Palmer under the editorial guidance of Bernard G. Davis. Under Palmer’s leadership Amazing Stories would alter its format to the more traditional pulp size with rough-cut pages and follow a less serious bent, achieving commercial success. Critical derision would soon follow when Palmer

began to publish the “Shaver Mystery” stories. Palmer continued running the magazine until December, 1949, at which time Palmer finally left Ziff-Davis to form his own publishing house, which brought out such titles as Fate and Other Worlds, although none of them lived up to the success of Amazing Stories during his time there. He eventually published Space World magazine until his death. Late in 1945, Palmer edited and rewrote a 10,000-word manuscript by Richard Shaver.The rewritten and expanded 31,000-word novella appeared under the title “I Remember Lemuria!” in the March, 1945 issue of Amazing Stories.The issue sold out and sparked an outpouring of letters from people claiming to have had their own mysterious encounters. Soon Shaver Mystery Clubs were being formed by these people. Shaver stories spilled over into Fantastic Adventures, a fantasy-oriented magazine published by Ziff-Davis since 1939. Over the next few years the Shaver

American Aphrodite | Mystery continued to fill issues of Amazing Stories, sometimes to the exclusion of other stories. This editorial policy continued until 1948, when sales dipped. The Shaver Mystery was derided by many in the community of science fiction fans, who publicly condemned it as “the Shaver Hoax.” Notably, young fan Harlan Ellison badgered Palmer into admitting it was a “publicity grabber.” When this story came out, Palmer angrily responded that this was hardly the same thing as calling it a hoax. The publication of Richard Shaver’s stories (which maintained that the world is dominated by insane inhabitants of the hollow earth) would cause Palmer to be partially shunned by the science fiction community, but also contribute to his leaving Amazing when he started his own magazine on occult themes called Fate.

Any unsold copies of Amazing Stories or Fantastic Adventures were returned complete to the publisher, who stripped off the original covers and bound three consecutive issues together under a new cover and offered them as Amazing Stories Quarterly and Fantastic Adventures Quarterly, which were huge bargains. Fantastic Adventures was published until 1953,. By then an experiment with a quality digest magazine, Fantastic, had proved so successful, that the two magazines merged. Amazing was also converted to digest format. Both magazines briefly attempted a more sophisticated look under editor Howard Browne (January 1950August 1956), when the publisher increased their production and editorial budgets, but this did not translate into more sales and Amazing and Fantastic soon went back to publishing routine science

fiction and fantasy. In 1980, the two magazines merged under the title Amazing Stories. After Browne’s departure, Paul W. Fairman became editor under whom the magazine sank to its lowest point. In 1959, Cele Goldsmith became editor (January 1959-June 1965), and began to publish some of the better new writers, including Thomas M. Disch, Piers Anthony, Roger Zelazny, and Ursula K. LeGuin. Amazing was at its best under Goldsmith, but this all ended when ZiffDavis sold the magazine to Sol Cohen in 1965 and the magazine became almost entirely reprint. The late 1960s and 1970s shows an impressive group of editors: Harry Harrison, Barry Malzberg, Ted White. Since 1982 Amazing had been published by the fantasy role-playing game publisher TSR and subsequently by their successors, Wizards of the Coast and Paizo Publishing, with various editors, including George Scithers, at the helm. In 2004 it was relaunched by Paizo Publishing, but after the April, 2005 issue, the magazine went on “hiatus.” In March, 2006 Paizo announced that it would no longer publish Amazing Stories. Of note, movie director Steven Spielberg licensed the title for use on an American television show called Amazing Stories that ran from 1985 to 1987. Amazing Stories has left an indelible mark and laid the foundation for the new science fiction literature of the modern era.—ETK [see The Hidden World, Fate]

AMERICAN APHRODITE American Aphrodite was a book magazine (hardbound in cloth) showcasing literary erotica, art,

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and photos of nude women, which first appeared in 1951. Editor and publisher Samuel Roth wrote in the first issue:“American Aphrodite seeks to fill a social and aesthetic vacuum created by two world wars and the preparation for a third holocaust, by re-establishing the principle of integration — love in all its marvelous manifestations, especially in the realm of the erotic. Our Christian world has created a split between Eros and Agapae, between love beneath and above the diaphragm, a cleavage that began with St. Paul and was aggravated by the Calvins and Constocks of our own time.” Roth’s in your face attitude caught up with

PG 14 Lt to R – ADVENTURE, Mar 3, 1919; ADVENTURE, Sept. 1946 (©Popular Publications); ARGOSY August 30, 1941, (© Red Star Magazine); ALL-STORY WEEKLY (©Munsey); PG 15 Lt to R – illustration from ADAM BEDSIDE READER #4, 1960 (© Knight Publications); AMAZING STORIES, the model for the mad scientist on the cover is editor Raymond Palmer (© Ziff-Davis).

16 | American Aphrodite him in 1955 when he was charged with violating the Comstock Act, a federal statute making it a crime to send pornographic or obscene materials through the mail. Before 1955, postal officials had trouble convicting publishers because all of them were in New York, and they could not get a New York jury worked up about lewd publications. In that year they were able to amend the law and initiate prosecution in any state where naughty publications were delivered. (Obscene publications included birth control literature — at the prompting of the church.) It did not take long for local communities to learn how to use the law to drag out-of-state publishers into local courts. The objectionable magazines cited by court papers included American Aphrodite, Good Times:A Review of the World of Pleasure, and Photo and Body. Today they all seem quite tame, showing topless photos and art that seemed unlikely, even at the time, to cause much of a stir. Roth was eventually convicted, sentenced to five years in prison, and fined $5,000. His case was appealed before the Supreme Court in 1957, where the conviction was upheld. Supporting Roth, with “friends of the court” briefs, were Hugh Hefner (Playboy) and Bill Hamling (Rogue for Men). Despite the outcome, the case did manage to crack the door on obscenity standards by asserting that to be obscene a publication must be “utterly without redeeming social importance.” Roth has the distinction of being one of the first publishers fighting against state and federal censures. He also had a long history of antagonizing both sides of the censorship battle. During the late 1920s he was tagged as both a pornographer and a literary pirate when he published James Joyce’s banned Ulysses in his magazine Two Worlds Monthly — without permission or payment — an act that angered the author, censors, and a few progressive publishers working to get the book published legally in the United States He would serve a six month jail sentence in 1930 for circulating obscene literature. In most of Roth’s court battles it was hard to tell if he was an anti-censorship pioneer or just a predatory

businessman without scruples. Erotic artwork by the enigmatic fantasy and horror artist Mahlon Blaine appeared in American Aphrodite numbers 9, 10, 13, 15, and 16.The magazine also reprinted work by Sacher-Masoch, Picasso, Rhys Davies, John Collier,Aleister Crowley, Henry Miller, and Anaïs Nin, and photography by Zoltan Glass. Also published by Roth: Everybody’s Pleasure.—LO

AMERICAN AUTOPSY see Medical Horrors AMERICAN MANHOOD see True Strange ARCADE see Raw ANCIENT ASTRONAUTS see Lunatickle ARGOSY & ALL-STORY Argosy was the first of all pulp magazines, but it had a long history both before and after its pulp days and in all its forms it was significant and influential. Created by publisher Frank A. Munsey, Argosy began one of the biggest publishing businesses of the twentieth century and effectively created the cult of pulp fiction. Its origins, though, were in another world and another day. It began in 1882 when Frank Munsey, who managed a telegraph office in Augusta,

Maine, moved to New York with the hope of running a magazine. Munsey had been promised financial support,but once he arrived in NewYork his backers pulled out.He had just $40 with which to compile, print, and distribute his magazine. It was only through his ingenuity and determination that he succeeded, and that determination became synonymous with his magazine. It was called The Golden Argosy and was intended for young readers, chiefly young teenage boys. Its first issue, dated December 9, 1882, was in tabloid newspaper form, with just eight pages, selling for five cents.The sub-titles of its first two serials by Horatio Alger and Edward S. Ellis sum up Munsey’s philosophy: “Do and Dare; or a Brave Boy’s Fight for a Fortune” and “Nick and Nellie; or God Helps Those Who Help Themselves.” Perhaps the most representative author in these early issues was Oliver Optic, the alias of Boston writer William T. Adams, whose upbeat serials “Making a Man of Himself,” “Every Inch a Boy,”“How He Won,” and others, promoted Munsey’s goal for self-achievement. Munsey had entered a highly competitive market filled with scores of dime novels and story-papers for the young, and the main offering that The Golden Argosy had over its rivals was a positive attitude towards achievement and success, not unlike the British Boy’s Own Paper which had started in similar style and format just three years earlier. Indeed, that inveterate writer of school stories,Talbot Baines Reed, would appear in both magazines. In those days, with no international copyright protection, it was free game to reprint material from abroad, and with his limited finances, Munsey did all the reprinting he could. When he couldn’t pay contributor Malcolm Douglas, he made him editor with a small but regular remuneration.

PG 16 Top to Bot – AMAZING STORIES, Mar. 1950 (© Ziff-Davis); AMAZING STORIES 1948 back cover ad (© ZiffDavis); PG 17 Lt to R – ARGOSY 1932 (© respective copyright holder); (© Edwin Bower Hesser); LIVING ART MODELS, Vol.1, #3, July, 1928; LIFE STUDY, #17, 1950s (© respective copyright holder); LENS AND LIFE STUDY, (©1940 respective copyright holder).

Argosy & All-Story | Munsey’s determination paid off. Although he had operated at the outset on credit from his publisher, E. G. Rideout, Munsey made sufficient money in the first year to repay Rideout and take over publication of the magazine. In 1887, Munsey also took over the monthly magazine The Boys’World, which he absorbed into The Golden Argosy. It was the first of many takeovers and mergers that would become synonymous with Munsey. One rival claimed that Munsey was not so much a magazine publisher as a magazine “manufacturer.”The former editor of Boys’World, Matthew White, Jr., became editor of Golden Argosy, a role he held for forty years, until his retirement in 1928. Munsey continued to experiment with The Golden Argosy. He had already dropped the subtitle during 1886 and on December 1, 1888, he dropped the “Golden.” At the same time he shrank the dimensions of the magazine and increased the page count to emulate the dimenovel format. In February, 1889 he began Munsey’s Weekly, essentially as a comic paper, but aimed at older readers. He changed this to a 112-page monthly magazine in October, 1891, but the more important step came in October, 1893 when he cut the cover price from 25 cents to 10 cents. It was nothing short of a revolution, as Munsey did not reduce the quality of the magazine but offered plenty of illustrated material and a wide range of fiction and articles. Circulation rocketed from 40,000 to 500,000 in less than two years and soon Munsey’s claimed the highest magazine circulation in the world. Bolstered by this success, Munsey followed suit with The Argosy. In April, 1894, he made it a monthly magazine, similar to Munsey’s with articles and illustrations. In October, 1896 he dropped the illustrations and made it an all-fiction magazine, followed two months later by converting the newsprint to pulp paper. As a result, in December, 1896 the pulp magazine was born. Munsey claimed that the story was worth more than the paper, and he was proved right. Circulation, which had been as low as 9,000 in

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1894, promptly rose to 80,000, peaking at 500,000 in 1907, the fifth-highest amongst American magazines. Curiously, despite this success, Munsey had the pulp field to himself for nearly ten years. What’s more, the issues of The Argosy during this time, whilst in a different format, did not differ significantly in content to the early Golden days. It continued to run serials by Horatio Alger and Oliver Optic, plus work by other dime novelists and boys’ writers, including William Murray Graydon,William Wallace Cook, and Howard R. Garis. Stories were still imported from Britain, including those by Max Pemberton (then editor of Chums), Harry Collingwood, John Oxenham and Frank Aubrey. Argosy continued to run two or three serials consecutively each issue, sometimes more, and this remained its trademark until the late 1930s. It was only gradually that The Argosy shifted from its boys’ image to a more adult one.Writers who helped in that change included Upton Sinclair, Ellis Parker Butler, O. Henry, whose story “Witches’ Loaves” (March 1904), appeared under his real name, Sydney Porter, and Mary Roberts Rinehart. The Argosy does not have a big track record for discovering writers – that talent belonged to Bob Davis, editor of Argosy’s new companion title, All-Story – but it was a good market for developing writers and did occasionally make a new discovery. It was during this period that Argosy published the first stories by Hulbert Footner, James Branch Cabell, and Charles Fort. The most prolific “discovery” at this time, though, was Albert Payson Terhune, who had previously sold only a handful of stories. He received a simultaneous boost with two serials running from the April to November issues of All-Story and a third serial,“The Fugitive,” commencing in the August, 1905 Argosy. It was some years before Terhune established a reputation for his dog stories, but he soon earned a name in Argosy where he remained a regular for the next decade. It is from 1905 that the pulp magazine

ZIFF-DAVIS PULPS entered a new phase. Argosy had seen its first competition from Street and Smith’s Popular Magazine in 1904, and Munsey countered by introducing his own companion, All-Story, in January, 1905. Under Bob Davis, All-Story was the more ground-breaking magazine, as Davis was never averse to experimentation. In this sense the two magazines complemented each other: All-Story being the brash youngster open to a wide variety of submissions, whilst Argosy was more conservative, taking on authors once they had become established and thus, in theory, publishing the better quality work. It was not until Argosy merged with All-Story in 1920 that

the strengths of both magazines combined. Thus it was that All-Story published the first appearances of two of the great iconic characters of the twentieth century – Tarzan and Zorro – both of which would become mainstays in Argosy in the twenties. Edgar Rice Burroughs had first appeared in the February, 1912 All-Story under the alias “Norman Bean” (meant to be “Normal Bean,” suggesting level-headed) with “Under the Moons of Mars,” the first of his adventures of John Carter on Barsoom (Mars). The first Tarzan novel, “Tarzan of the Apes,” ran complete in the October, 1912 issue with a striking cover by Clinton

PG 18 Lt to R – AMAZING STORIES, Dec. 1949 (© Ziff-Davis); FANTASTIC ADVENTURES, Mar. 1941 (© Ziff-Davis); AMAZING STORIES, Aug. 1949 (© Ziff-Davis; PG 19 – AMAZING DETECTIVE CASES, Feb. 1942, art by Norman Saunders (© Crime Files, Inc.).

Pettee. Burroughs continued to sell to All-Story, but becoming over-awed with his own success (and self-importance), struck out for other markets, returning occasionally to Munsey.When the two magazines merged, Argosy inherited Tarzan, who appeared in “Tarzan the Terrible” (February 12-March 26, 1921) and six other serials through to 1941. Burroughs also contributed further Martian stories and other adventures set on Venus and elsewhere. Johnston McCulley, a former police reporter, had started selling stories to the pulps around 1907 – his first story may well have been “Doomed by Post” in the June, 1907 Argosy.This was followed by the science-fiction serial “Land of Lost Hope” (May-August 1908) and a few other contributions before he moved on to other magazines. What reads like a dry run for Zorro, “Captain Fly-by-Night,” ran as a serial in All-

Story during May/June, 1916, before the masked crusader appeared in all his glory in “The Curse of Capistrano” (All-Story, August 9-September 6, 1919).The popularity of the serial led to the film The Mark of Zorro starring Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., in 1920. McCulley brought the character back in the now combined Argosy All-Story in “The Further Adventures of Zorro” (May 6-June 10, 1922) and five other stories before the series moved on to become a regular feature in the magazine West. During All-Story’s heyday and before its merger with Argosy, it was noted for publishing what it labelled “different” or off-trail stories including many fantasies and early science-fiction.Although it was less evident in Argosy, it still caught some of the overspill and featured works by those gaining a reputation. Thus, during the period of 1905-1920, Argosy published unusual stories by William Wallace Cook, Garret Smith,

Argosy & All-Story | James Francis Dwyer, Perley Poore Sheehan, Garrett P. Serviss, Victor Rousseau and J.U. Giesy. Though most of those names are generally forgotten today, they are still revered amongst the nostalgia buffs of early science fiction and their work contributes to the cult image of Argosy. One writer who would become renowned for his weird fiction, H. P. Lovecraft, did not sell any stories to Argosy, but between 1911 and 1914 the magazine published several of his letters, some of which were written in verse form, and that alone makes those issues highly valued. Other names who would establish their reputations either in Argosy or companion Munsey magazines appeared during the War years: Harry Stephen Keeler, Zane Grey, Edison Marshall, Achmed Abdullah and, in particular, Max Brand. Brand was the best known alias of Frederick Faust who became dubbed the “King of the Pulp Writers.” His original desire was to be a poet, but in 1917 he began to sell stories to Bob Davis at AllStory and he soon flowed over into Argosy. Brand became best known for his westerns, though his early material included several unusual stories.Yet, the best known Faust story published in Argosy was a hospital drama,“Young Doctor Kildare,” and that not until 1938, by which time he had poured out many millions of words. Among the authors of unusual stories, there was a particularly fine blossoming in the years immediately after the War, by which time Argosy was appearing weekly. They include Murray Leinster, Francis Stevens (a woman writer under a male pseudonym), Ray Cummings and, most notably, Abraham Merritt. Merritt had likewise debuted in All-Story, but with the merger his exotic and unique fantasies now filled Argosy. There were seven serials from “The Metal Monster” (August 7 and September 25, 1920) to “Seven Footprints to Satan” (June 24–July 22, 1939). In 1938, Argosy conducted a poll for readers to vote on the most popular story to appear in the magazine and Merritt won with “The Ship of Ishtar” (November 8–December 13, 1924).Today, Merritt’s appeal has perhaps faded except

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amongst a devoted core, but those issues still attract collectors, as much for their exotic covers by Modest Stein, Paul Stahr and Robert Graef, as for their fiction. The flourish of science fiction in Argosy soon gave way to the domination of the western, supported by crime and adventure fiction, and it was here that Argosy excelled. Amongst the western writers, in addition to Max Brand, were Charles Alden Seltzer, Hapsburg Liebe, James B. Hendryx,Tom Curry,Walt Coburn, and Clarence Mulford. The last was the creator of Hopalong Cassidy, who had first appeared in Outing Magazine, but he now made Argosy his home in two long series that ran between 1923 and 1925. For crime fiction Argosy could boast Octavus Roy Cohen, Edgar Wallace, Hulbert Footner, Carroll John Daly and Erle Stanley Gardner. Dashiell Hammett appeared just once with “Nightmare Town” (December 27, 1924). During the 1930s, this roster was augmented by Lawrence Blochman, Paul Ernst, Richard Wormser and, in particular, Cornell Woolrich, although Argosy was never able to rival the greatest of all crime pulps, Black Mask. Argosy’s forté was adventure fiction and its authors included the immensely prolific H. Bedford-Jones, Loring Brent (with his Peter the Brazen series), L. Patrick Greene, George F.Worts, Georges Surdez (with his foreign-legion stories), Fred MacIsaac,Talbot Mundy, Burroughs imitator Otis Adelbert Kline, Theodore Roscoe, Jacland Marmur and, just once, Rafael Sabatini. John Buchan’s new Richard Hannay novel, “The Three Hostages,” was serialized in Argosy in 1924. His classic,“The 39 Steps,” had run in All-Story in 1915 and was reprinted in Argosy during December, 1938. Earlier in 1938, C. S. Forester had made his first appearance in Argosy with the serialization of the Hornblower novel “Ship of the Line” (February 26-April 2). With its success, the first Hornblower novel, “Beat to Quarters,” which had already appeared in book form, was run in Argosy later in 1938. Two other authors add to the desirability of

20 | Argosy & All-Story issues from the 1930s. Robert E. Howard, the creator of Conan, appeared in only six issues, first in July 20, 1929, with “Crowd Horror,” a supernatural boxing story, and then with a bunch of stories during 1936, all westerns, and including a supernatural cowboy story, “The Dead Remember” (August 15, 1936). L. Ron Hubbard had rather more stories in Argosy, starting with his “Hell Job” series in 1936. Hubbard issues are now fanatically collected. Of particular interest is the issue for October 3, 1936, the only edition of any pulp to include stories by Burroughs, Howard and Hubbard. During the 1930s, amidst considerable rivalry amongst the pulps, Argosy’s circulation had been falling. Munsey had died in 1925 and his publishing corporation had been taken over by William T. Dewart. He in turn sold it to Henry Steeger’s Popular Publications in October, 1941, and Argosy was soon to undergo dramatic changes. It had already been converted to the large flat format in January, 1941, but reverted to pulp in January, 1943. In September, 1943 the pulp format was dropped altogether and Argosy shifted to the flat semi-slick format as a men’s adventure magazine. Argosy wasn’t the first of these – it was following a trend established by Bernarr Macfadden and others in the 1920s with their various true-style magazines.The change proved exceptionally beneficial. Argosy’s circulation increased from 40,000 in 1942 to over a million within ten years. Initially it still ran a sizable dose of fiction, all with a more sophisticated veneer than the old pulp issues – the new editor, Rogers Terrill, referred to it as an “all-fiction slick,” although it was never quite that. But during the 1940s and 1950s it ran new material by Leslie Charteris, P.G. Wodehouse, Robert A. Heinlein, Geoffrey Household, John D. MacDonald, Louis L’Amour, Elmore Leonard, Kurt Vonnegut, Ellery Queen,Arthur C. Clarke, and Rex Stout. Into the 1960s it ran several of Ian Fleming’s James Bond stories – “Paris Courier” (March 1961), an extract from Thunderball (December 1961) and “Berlin Escape” (June 1962) – plus work by Nicholas Montsarrat, Alis-

tair Maclean, Erle Stanley Gardner, Ed McBain, John Creasey, Ross Macdonald, and Arthur Hailey. Fittingly, it also published the final Hornblower story by Forester, “The Last Encounter” (April 1967). However, from the forties on, there was an increasing emphasis on non-fiction, with the inevitable articles on baseball, fishing, hunting, guns and the American way, plus true stories of adventure and heroism, alongside exposés and the usual macho material one associates with men’s magazines – Russ Meyer became an occasional contributor, for instance. Fortunately, Argosy retained a sensible balance and never went to extremes, unlike other magazines during the 1950s and 1960s. Of particular interest was a long-running series by Erle Stanley Gardner, “The Court of Last Resort,” which began in 1946, where Gardner looked at miscarriages of justice and other legal issues. Argosy soon became a general interest magazine with features running from Jack Dempsey’s view of the state of boxing (April 1950), to a re-appraisal of Custer’s Last Stand (May 1956), to the Space Race (March 1958), to an extensive interview with Ernest Hemingway (September 1958), right through to the hunt for and capture of Adolf Eichmann (September 1971), and “The Secret Life of Houdini” (December 1974). Of particular interest was an article by Vincent Gaddis in the February, 1964 issue which introduced the phrase the “Bermuda Triangle.” Argosy’s lead was inevitably chipped away by the growth in men’s magazines in the 1950s, but it remained a dominant player in the field for another twenty years. Popular Publications was eventually dissolved in November 1972 and Argosy came under the control of Blazing Publications, re-incorporated as Argosy Communica-

tions in 1988. Argosy continued until the issue for September, 1979, after a run of 97 years and some 2,573 issues. Its name was retained for the occasional one-off special or short-lived revival, each drawing upon its cult status.The latest incarnation in 2004, from Coppervale Productions, saw three issues, each in a beautiful slip-cased edition with a digest-sized slick magazine accompanied by a separate booklet – the first being “The Mystery of the Texas Twister” by Michael Moorcock. Although a far cry from its story-paper origins and pulp heyday, Argosy continues Munsey’s ideal of never giving up.—MA

ARTISTS & MODELS Figure “Art” magazines Beginning in the early 1920s, figure studies magazines began to appear on many big city newsstands, or in many cases behind the counter, purportedly to aid struggling artists unable to afford models.These publications of course found their way into the hands of people without any artistic talent or interest. They were easy and cheap to produce (using minimal copy) and in many cases a printer could get his hands on a cache of photos and slap the whole thing together in-house overnight when business was slow. Artists & Models, carrying the tagline “for art lovers and art students” was a title that appeared from different publishers during the 1920s and 1930s. Living Art Models, printed an editorial on the inside front page of their July, 1929 issue that could serve as the outward operating principle of all “art” magazines: “In presenting this issue of LIVING ART MODELS, it is our ardent wish that only those to whom art appeals, and who

PG 20 Top to Bot – GOODTIMES, Vol 2, #14, 1955 (© Samuel Roth); ARGOSY(© Munsey); PG 21 L to R, Top to Bot – HESSER'S ARTS MONTHLY PICTORIAL, Oct 1926; (© Edwin Bower Hesser); LIVING ART MODELS, Vol.1, #3, July, 1928; LIFE STUDY, #17, 1950s (© respective copyright holder); LENS AND LIFE STUDY, (©1940 respective copyright holder).

Astounding Science Fiction | truly appreciate its significance, will study its pages. For Beauty is such a fragile and perishable thing, that the ugly curiosity of the unappreciative would be in the nature of a desecration. There is nothing within these pages that will bring anything but happiness and joy to the many thousands of readers who wait eagerly for the appearance of this magazines each month.” Some artists did use these magazines as inspiration.There are a few images that are recognizable in fantasy artist Virgil Finlay published work that include the likeness of Bettie Page and other nude models from various “art study” publications. Other titles include, 1920s: Studio Models, Edwin Bower Hesser's Arts Monthly. 1930s: French Models, Real Art Studies, Girl Beautiful from Graphic Arts Studio in Chicago; Screen Art Studies, Modern Art & Stories. In the 1940s and 1950s there was Photo Arts, Glamorous Models, Art Photography, Figure Quarterly, Lens & Life Study, Female Form, Femme, Figure File, and Figure Study.—LO [see Dell vs American News Corporation]

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION Astounding Stories of Super-Science first appeared on newsstands in December, 1929. The new magazine had all the appearance of being an experiment, created as a means of producing money by an already-established pulp company, Publisher’s Fiscal Corporation, which later became Clayton Magazines. It started as, and initially remained, a pulp magazine, printed on thick, poor quality paper with untrimmed edges. Immediately it offered a comprehensive challenge to Hugo Gernsback’s proprietorial dictate that science fiction be the creation of future science. The first editor of Astounding, Harry Bates, had modeled Astounding after Amazing Stories. But he found nothing of merit to say about his rival: “Amazing Stories! What awful stuff…cluttered with trivia! Packed with puerilities.Written by unimaginables!”

Bates attempted to outdo Gernsback by establishing an amusing and entertaining magazine, rather than a scientific and instructional one. In order to do this he called upon Clayton Magazines’ stable of professional pulp writers. Not the most innovative writers, they typically produced conventional stories of action-adventure. Fantastic science was then added to the mix.The combination of boiler-plate writing coupled with a much higher rate of payment made Astounding a powerful force to be reckoned with in the industry. Under Clayton’s control, Astounding was willing to pay four times more than the rates offered by Hugo Gernsback’s rival Amazing Stories. Harry Bates was more than merely an editor. Along with his assistant editor, Desmond W. Hall, they collaborated on the “Hawk Carse” series and other stories using the pseudonyms Anthony Gilmore and H.B. Winter. Bates’s best known story,“Farewell to the Master” (1940), was significantly altered for the 1951 motion picture The Day the Earth Stood Still. After the first year of publication, the original name Astounding Stories of Super-Science was shortened to Astounding Stories. After three years of slowly establishing the new title, the publisher, William Clayton, attempted to buy out his partner and financial backer, and failed.The last Clayton Astounding was dated March, 1933. Astounding Stories was then purchased by another pulp chain, Street & Smith, and after a gap of six months, the magazine reappeared in October, 1933. With F. Orlin Tremaine at the helm as editor, Astounding took a turn for the better with his new philosophy. Tremaine introduced the concept of the “thought variant” story.Trying desperately to leave the old recycled adventure plots behind, he inspired his writers to create new original science fiction ideas.With this in mind, in 1934 Astounding became the first science fiction magazine to publish a work of non-fiction, Charles Fort’s Lo! (Charles Fort has been described as the patron saint of cranks. During his lifetime, Fort collected phenomena that science could not account for and thus rejected or ignored. His published works

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22 | Astounding Science Fiction have led many to consider him the father of paranormalism.) Under Tremaine’s leadership, Astounding became the pre-eminent magazine of its time long before he departed in 1937. Tremaine announced in a December, 1933 editorial that each issue would include at least one story that would either present some fresh new concept or at the least stand some tired old idea on its head. The old, outdated utilitarian notions about science fiction as put forth by Hugo Gernsback could not compete with the challenging, innovative ideas of F. Orlin Tremaine. While Amazing Stories and Wonder Stories floundered, Astounding flourished and set the stage for the advent of modern science fiction. Within the 50 issues of the magazine he edited,Tremaine launched the careers of such notable authors as L. Sprague de Camp and Eric Frank Russell. With the groundwork done by Tremaine in place, another giant of the industry stepped forward to move science fiction into its golden age. In September, 1937 successful science fiction writer John W. Campbell, Jr., became the next editor of Astounding. His first major move was in March, 1938, when he changed the name of the magazine to Astounding Science-Fiction. The following year he added another soon-to-befamous title to the pantheon, Unknown. Tremaine, recently promoted to editor-inchief of the Street & Smith publications, made a remarkable choice when he hired the then 28year-old Campbell. At the time Campbell had not even learned how to type. He knew nothing about how to produce a monthly magazine, but he was a quick study. Campbell would become more than a technical master of the industry, he was determined to become a complete editor and a setter of new directions. When he was hired, John W. Campbell, Jr., was already a successful and prolific writer under his own name and also his pseudonym, Don A. Stuart. His most famous work, “Who Goes There?” (Astounding, August 1938), was written under the Stuart pseudonym, about a group of

Antarctic researchers who discover a crashed alien vessel, complete with a malevolent shape-changing occupant. The story was first filmed as The Thing from Another World (1951) and again as The Thing (1982). Published when Campbell was only 28 years old, it would be his last significant piece of fiction. As the new editor of Astounding, he would turn his vision toward a new horizon and lead a new batch of writers toward it. First, he would broaden the scope of the letter column. Originally restricted to scientific discussion, it would now include feedback and reader participation. Next, Campbell encouraged new writers, having them contribute under various pseudonyms, so that he could point to the growing number of talented new writers working for Astounding. He would continue to find and encourage new writers throughout his career. Astounding was directed by Campbell toward a more precise relationship with the true facts of the universe. Instead of the gaudy, unrealistic covers painted by Frank Paul for Amazing Stories, Campbell emphasized real human possibilities in his covers and stories. Astounding became a magazine filled with stories about where men might really go, and how things would really appear to them. In May, 1938 F. Orlin Tremaine left Street & Smith abruptly. John Campbell would remain in complete editorial control of Astounding from then on. For more than a decade Astounding, under Campbell’s leadership, would completely dominate the field. It was John Campbell and his vision that would oversee the shift in science fiction as it had been before to the new science fiction of the Atomic Age, eclipsing the Technological Age as put forth by Hugo Gernsback. Campbell had arrived on the scene at the pivotal moment when science had spilt the atom, and he helped to usher the real apprehension over this into modern literature.

At the heart of this vision was Campbell’s insistence that writers think out how science and technology would really develop in the future — and how those changes would affect the lives of human beings. It was the sophistication of his vision that soon made Astounding the undisputed leader in the field. Throughout the 1940s, Campbell was to nurture the careers of a number of young and often previously unpublished writers by offering copious amounts of feedback and encouragement, even when accompanied by a rejection slip. He launched the careers of Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, and A.E.Van Vogt. In March, 1938 Campbell began this process by publishing Lester del Rey’s first story.The July issue contained A.E. van Vogt’s first story, “Black Destroyer,” and Isaac Asimov’s early story “Trends.” In August he brought out Robert A. Heinlein’s first story, “Lifeline,” and the next month Theodore Sturgeon’s first story,“The Ether Breathers,” appeared. Campbell had single-handedly brought about a revolution in science fiction, pushing the literature into the Atomic Age. Because of this, 1939 is often seen as the start of the Golden Age of magazine science fiction. In this same remarkable year Campbell started the fantasy magazine Unknown (later Unknown Worlds). Sadly, it was cancelled after only four years, a victim of the wartime paper shortage that finally forced the well-known pulp magazines of the era to reduce their size to a smaller one, the digest. But just as he had changed the direction of science fiction with Astounding, the editorial direction of Unknown would have as significant an effect on the evolution of modern fantasy. During the wartime year of 1944, a year before the detonation of the first atomic bomb, Campbell published a short story by Cleve Cartmill, “Deadfall.” Without a doubt, it is the most

PG 22 Top to Bot – REAL MYSTERY MAGAZINE, vol. 1, #1, April 1940 (© Red Circle); ALL-DETETECTIVE MAGAZINE, Oct. 1933 (© Dell Publications); PG 23 – ARGOSY, Mar. 1951 (© respective copyright holder); cartoon from ACE, Vol. 4, #5 (© respective copyright holder).

Avant Garde | famous example of the direction toward which Campbell led his writers, speculative but plausible science fiction. Campbell and Cartmill worked together on the story, drawing their scientific information from papers published in technical journals before the war.The short story described the mechanics of constructing a uranium-fission bomb. In horror and alarm, the FBI descended on Campbell’s office after the story appeared in print and demanded that the issue be removed from the newsstands. Campbell, not to be trifled with, persuaded them that by removing the magazine “the FBI would be advertising to everyone that such a project existed and was aimed at developing nuclear weapons” and the demand was dropped. The change to a digest format with the November 1943 issue made little difference to readers. If the 1940s were the height of Campbell’s power and influence over the literature, the 1950s would see the torch passed to other magazines such as The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and Galaxy Science Fiction, and to paperback originals. Even though Campbell remained at the helm of Astounding, the growth of the marketplace meant that he was no longer the only place to find top quality science fiction. Also in the 1950s, Campbell developed a one-sided interest in fringe, or alternative, theories of science that began to isolate him from some of his writers. In editorials Campbell wrote about such things as the “Dean drive,” a device that supposedly produced thrust in violation of Newton’s third law, and the “Hieronymus machine,” which could allegedly amplify psi powers. Based on his growing interest in these areas, he published many stories about telepathy and other psionic abilities. As a capstone to his ill-chosen new editorial direction, in May, 1950 Campbell became interested in the emerging Dianetics movement. Initially Campbell was a strong supporter of L. Ron Hubbard’s first Dianetics article in Astounding, believing it to be “one of the most important articles ever published.” Further alienating his stable of writers and vast horde of fans, he even claimed

to have successfully used dianetic techniques himself. L. Ron Hubbard would soon expand his dianetic concepts into Scientology, in support of which Campbell continued to write editorials for some time. However, despite his growing interest in fringe science, during the 1950s Campbell was still publishing some of the best science fiction ever written. Tom Godwin’s “The Cold Equations” appeared in the August, 1954 issue. The story has long been regarded as one of the top dozen or so best science fiction short stories ever written. It generated more response mail than any story the magazine had ever printed. Astounding had gone through several philosophical shifts in editorial policy under the various editors in charge. In 1946, Campbell began to de-emphasize the word “astounding,” as he felt it made the magazine too “sensational” and “juvenile.” At first he printed the “astounding” in a small typeface above the bold words “SCIENCE FICTION.” But even this was not enough for Campbell, so in 1960 Astounding Science-Fiction was renamed Analog Science Fact & Fiction. The transition to Analog was done slowly. Campbell retained the large initial “A” while fading out the “stounding” under the new title “nalog.” He even went so far as to invent a pseudo-mathematical symbol comprising a horizontal right-pointing arrow piercing an inverted U-shape to replace the word “and” in the new title. Campbell told everyone that it meant “analogous to.”The magazine is still in publication as of this date as Analog Science Fiction and Fact. After Campbell died in 1971, Ben Bova took over as editor starting with the January, 1972 issue. After 34 years at the helm of Astounding/ Analog, Campbell’s quirky personality and occasionally eccentric editorial demands had alienated a number of his most illustrious writers, such as Asimov and Robert A. Heinlein, to the point where they no longer submitted works to the magazine. This was a problem that Ben Bova quickly solved. Bova remained editor until November, 1978. During his tenure he won the

Hugo Award for Best Professional Editor for five consecutive years (The award did not exist before 1973.), 1973 through 1978. One of the highlights of his tenue was Orson Scott Card’s “Ender’s Game”. In 1978, Ben Bova was succeeded as editor of Analog by Stanley Schmidt, a position that Schmidt still holds. Of some small note, Schmidt has been nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Professional Editor for 26 consecutive years, 1980 through 2005, without ever winning it. Stanley Schmidt, like John Campbell, frequently prints material from previously unknown authors, notably Timothy Zahn and Michael Flynn, the early works of Harry Turtledove in the 1980s, and Paul Levinson in the 1990s. Under Schmidt’s leadership, Analog has become well known for focusing on the brass tacks of science and technology, even its book review column is called “Brass Tacks,” though some critics have referred to this as “scientist fiction” and charge that scientific accuracy is often presented as more important than plot or character in Analog stories. Under its five inimitable steersmen, Harry Bates, F. Orlin Tremaine, John W. Campbell, Jr., Ben Bova, and Stanley Schmidt, Astounding/Analog has steered a course from the Age of Technology through the Atomic Age and beyond. In over 80 years of publication the magazine has entertained, amazed, and yes, astounded, generations of readers. It brought us the Golden Age of science fiction, which is a priceless act in itself.—ETK

AVANT GARDE When a publisher calls his latest magazine publishing effort something as iconoclastic as Avant Garde, it is an announcement that the contents will be unique. This was precisely what Ralph Ginzburg had in mind when he launched his quality art magazine in January, 1968.The first cover featured a color reproduction of a Richard Lindner paint-

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ing. From that very first issue, Ginzburg sought to emphasize an incredibly high literary standard as well, with articles on the Fugs, metamorphic jewelry, and a series of illustrations by Muhammad Ali. This type of eclectic mix would be a touchstone for all fourteen of the issues. Ralph Ginzburg covered the entire field of print publications in his lifetime as an author, editor, publisher, and photojournalist. He was best known for publishing books and magazines on erotica and art that led to his 1963 conviction for violating federal obscenity laws. Ginzburg started his career in journalism in 1949 as a copyboy and cub reporter for the New York Daily Compass. After a stint in the army during the Korean War, he shifted into broadcasting and magazines, working for such notables as Esquire, NBC, Read-

er’s Digest, and Look. When he was finally economically solvent, he rented his first office, a fifth-floor walk-up in Manhattan. It was there he produced his first publication, An Unhurried View of Erotica, in 1958, which examined English erotic literature in an interpretive and explanatory context, complete with an introduction by the noted psychoanalyst Theodor Reik. Ginzburg had started on the publishing path that would eventually lead him to fame and prison. In 1962, Ginzburg started his first major publishing work, Eros, with his long-time friend Herb Lubalin as the art director. Only four issues of the quarterly hardbound periodical were published. The cardboard-bound, 13”x10”, 90-page magazine contained articles and sensational photo-essays on love and sex. After releasing the

fourth issue, Ginzburg was indicted under federal obscenity laws for distributing obscene literature through the mails. For a number of years he had felt unduly prosecuted by the reactionary rightwing conservatives in the United States, most notably the smut-hunting Catholic priest Morton Hill, and United States Attorney General Robert Kennedy. In the second issue of Eros, Ginzburg had featured an eight-page photo-essay on the female reaction to John F. Kennedy. Kennedy was a notorious, very well known adulterer, and Ginzburg wanted to expose the moral

corruption of his chief persecutor. In spite of all the various indictments against Ginzburg, the federal case was so weak and his magazine had such obvious artistic merit, that the focus of the witch hunt became a single indictment regarding a mailed advertisement for the magazine. Not only that, the high court was forced to conclude that neither the book nor the advertising mailer were themselves obscene, but only that the advertisement attempted to sell the book by characterizing it as obscene, which was a violation of federal law. Ginzburg had offered a

PG 24 L to R – ASTOUNDING STORIES, April 1932 (© Clayton Magazines); ASTOUNDING STORIES, May 1937; ANALOG SCIENCE FACT & FICTION, Feb. 1961 (© Street & Smith); PG 25 – BEDTIME STORIES, vol. 6, #2, 1938, cover art by Earle Bergey (©Detinuer Publishing Company).

Avant Garde | full and unconditional refund if his book did not reach the purchaser due to United States Post Office censorship interference. It was enough to seal his fate, since he had already encountered serious trouble from them by his attempt to get mailing permits from Blue Balls and Intercourse, Pennsylvania. After several trials, including a hearing before the United States Supreme Court, his five-year conviction was upheld in March, 1966.The same day the Court announced its decision in the case commonly known as the “Fanny Hill” case after the public nickname for the book (and the name of the primary character). This was the case that declared that the First Amendment would not allow a work to be banned unless it was “utterly without redeeming social value.” Many commentators have been troubled by Ginzburg’s conviction for three works plainly more “socially valuable” than the trashy Fanny Hill. The public and mainstream press heavily supported the decision of the Supreme Court. However, Ginzburg’s conviction became a cause célèbre among the American left. Novelist Sloan Wilson, who did not even know him, raised funds for full-page newspaper protest ads. Allen Ginsberg traveled to Washington and picketed the Supreme Court building. Vocal supporters included Melvin Belli, James Jones, the ACLU’s Mel Wulf, Nat Hentoff, Ashley Montagu, Yale Law Professors Alexander Bickel and Tom Emerson,Arthur Miller, Clay Felker, Louis Untermeyer, I.F. Stone, Barney Rossett, and Ken McCormick, among others. From January, 1964 to August, 1967 Ginzburg published a quarterly magazine named fact:, which could be characterized as a humorous, scathingly satiric journal of comment on current society and politics. One of the editors of fact: was Robert Anton Wilson, a prolific science fiction author whose works include the Illuminatus! series. fact: had little erotic content, and could best be called a political journal with a muckraking slant. It was the first to publish Ralph Nader when he was a Harvard student. It contained articles such

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as “139 Psychiatrists Say Barry Goldwater is Unfit for the Presidency.” Goldwater successfully sued Ginzburg for defamation all the way to the Supreme Court, but it was a Pyrrhic victory, he received only $1 in damages. From January, 1968 through July, 1971 Ginzburg published Avant Garde, which like Eros was a handsome hardbound periodical. It was as if Eros and fact: had gotten together and had a baby.As smart and stylish as it was confrontational, Avant Garde made sex political and politics sexy. Avant Garde would have only a modest circulation, but it was championed by the nation’s advertising and editorial art directors. Herbert Lubalin, Ginzburg’s collaborator on his four best-known magazines, designed an original typeface for the Avant Garde logo. It was inspired by Ginzburg and his wife, designed by Lubalin, and realized by Lubalin’s assistants and Tom Carnese, one of Lubalin’s partners. In 1970, the International Typefont Corporation, of which Lubalin was a founder, released a full version to the public. Still free pending a hearing for a reduced sentence, Ginzburg was anything but penitent. For months, at great expense he promoted his new magazine, Avant Garde, promising to outdo Eros. In one advertisement he showed a girl, eyes shut, mouth open, in ecstasy. On the opposite page he described the magazine’s content as: “An orgasm of the mind.Total immersion in sensual pleasure. Love on a mink blanket.” Highlights from the magazine’s roughly fouryear lifespan include a poster contest themed “No More War;”“The Marilyn Monroe Trip,” a phantasmagoric portfolio by Bert Stern using DayGlo ink; the photo essay “Mr. and Mrs. Brown Go Walking,” which follows an attractive mixed-race couple through the streets of New York City gauging people’s reactions; a parody of Willard’s famous patriotic painting, “The Spirit of ’76,” with a woman and a black man; and a graphic shot by Ed Van der Elseken in an Amsterdam gymnasium.An entire issue was devoted to Picasso’s erotic gravures and another to John Lennon’s

26 | Avant Garde — Avenger erotic lithographs. More than one cover featured an image of a woman’s nipple, which is a publishing taboo to this day. The first three issues of Avant Garde proved to be much more conservative than promised, more rear-garde than avant, its contents strictly remembrances of erotica past. Issue three contained a story by Norman Mailer,“The Taming of Denise Gondelman,” about the heroic efforts of a blond Aryan to bring an intellectual Jewish girl to her first orgasm. It had been published before, in 1959, as “The Time of Her Time.” Another reprint was a story by Roald Dahl about a wily Arab who lured young men to his home to make love to his daughter, a leper; it had appeared in Playboy three years prior. For the avant garde in politics, the issue offered a profile of Richard Nixon. For the latest in poetry, a verse by Ho Chi Minh, written in a Chinese prison in the 1940s. Despite over 420,000 subscribers snagged by Ginzburg’s expensive promotion, Avant Garde had a precarious existence. Ginzburg had to split his time between battling the Goldwater lawsuit, his pending incarceration, and his new publication. Avant Garde folded in 1971 when Ginzburg finally went to prison to serve his sentence for obscenity. He stayed in a minimum-security facility in Pennsylvania for only eight months, but his prison sentence destroyed any desire he had to continue publishing. After his release, he and his wife tried to revive Avant Garde as a tabloid newspaper, but it lasted only one issue. It was a costly mistake that drove them to the brink of bankruptcy, which was averted only through the success of yet another periodical, the consumer adviser Moneysworth, which attained a circulation of 2.4 million. At 55, Ginzburg retired from publishing and he turned to photography. In 1999, he produced I Shot New York, a visual chronicle of a year in the

life of the city. For the remainder of his life, Ginzburg felt his prison record prevented him from becoming a major force in American publishing. He remained a freelance spot-news photographer until his death and specialized in New York scenes and sporting events, even covering a soccer match three weeks before his death. Avant Garde was created by Ginzburg with a desire to break new publishing ground, to create something truly original that would be long remembered. “I really wanted to create a magazine of art and politics. Its glorious design was the most notable feature, but it also had a psychological maturity with regard to all the burning issues of the day.” Among the magazine’s biggest fans: John Lennon and Pablo Picasso, whose agents approached Ginzburg and gave him permission to publish their rare erotic lithographs free of charge. The magazine, published with a bare-bones staff of less than six people, including Ginzburg’s wife, Shoshana, barely paid its way. Ginzburg always cited a lack of advertising, plus other problems, as the real reason the publication failed. Today, Avant Garde is just a memory; Ginzburg himself, dead. But one tangible legacy remains from those fourteen issues of the longforgotten, arty publication: the angular, snazzy Avant Garde still ranks among the best-selling type fonts in the country. Another less tangible legacy remains. Ralph Ginzburg would be surprised to find himself cited as a hero, one who stood in the front lines of the fight for the freedom of speech and the freedom of the press, fighting that good fight against enormous odds.—HW [see Eros]

PG 26 – BLUEBOOK, Aug. 1938 (© McCalls); PG 27, L to R, Top to Bot. – THE AVENGER, Nov. 1940 (© Street & Smith); BREEZY STORIES, Oct. 1938 (© respective copyright holder); BLACK NYLON & HIGH HEELS, vol. 2, #3, (© Dawson Publishing Company); BALLYHOO, Aug. 1935 (© Dell Publishing).

THE AVENGER Throughout the 1930s, Street & Smith’s general manager Henry W. Ralston and his editorial confederate John L. Nanovic tried to replicate the success of The Shadow and Doc Savage. A revived Nick Carter failed to recapture the magic that had endeared him to an earlier generation.Variations of their flagship heroes in the form of The Whisperer and The Skipper were launched in 1936, and crushed by the so-called Roosevelt Recession of 1937. Crime Busters, featuring their top writers contributing heroes of their own, followed. It began faltering in 1939, when the pair decided that a character combining the best elements of Doc and The Shadow might succeed where the others had failed. Once again, Ralston turned for inspiration to his memory of Colonel Richard Henry Savage, who had ranged the world as a soldier, engineer, diplomat, and author. A man who built railroads in Texas and bridges in Egypt, Savage would lend the more colorful aspects of his rich background to the new hero. He had already served to inspire Doc Savage, and to a lesser degree,The Shadow. Ralston called his amalgamated hero Richard Henry Benson. But what to call his magazine? The Shadow was known as the Dark Avenger and the Master Avenger — avenger being the S&S house term for an extralegal crime fighter. So Benson became The Avenger. To grab Doc Savage readers, his author would write under the house name of Kenneth Robeson. Nanovic had built up a stable of reliable writers to fill out the back pages of his group of magazines. Some, like Steve Fisher and Frank Gruber, lacked the temperament for the monthly novel grind. Others had flopped on earlier series, or had fallen by the wayside. Nanovic approached Paul Ernst, a veteran of many pulp genres just breaking into the slicks. Ernst had specialized in wild horror tales for Weird Tales and the science fiction magazines early in his fiction career. Now he was a seasoned detective-story writer who had written the odd

episode of The Phantom Detective.The slicks were beginning to print his work. He could do it. But would he? Ernst was initially reluctant. “John Nanovic asked me to do the character thing,” Ernst recalled.“I said no. He quoted a figure. ‘Look, we’ll even give you the idea.’ I said okay.They paid me $750 a novel, for The Avenger. I didn’t copy Dent’s style, though. Henry Ralston, one of Street & Smith’s vice presidents, gave me the plots. I don’t know whether he gave Walter Gibson his ideas for The Shadow or not, but I suspect he did...” Gibson and Doc Savage author Lester Dent were brought in to contribute ideas, and help Ernst find his way. It is doubtful they were paid for their trouble. Ernst brought his own ideas into the mix. He was fond of icy-eyed detective heroes he habitually described as “machine-like” in their relentless pursuit of rough justice. So Benson became “a merciless man of steel.” Ernst equipped Benson with a pair of weapons field-tested in half-forgotten yarns for rival houses. Mike, a silenced .22 carried police-style in an ankle holster, was employed to crease the top of a foe’s skull, detonating unconsciousness. (Like Doc Savage, The Avenger refused to kill outright.) Ike was a hollow-handled throwing dagger. The introductory novel, Justice, Inc., ran in the September, 1939 issue of The Avenger. It was an exemplary example of a pulp origin story. Boarding a plane to Montreal with his wife and daughter, Benson dozes off. Upon awakening, he discovers his family is no longer on board. Passengers and crew swear that the retired adventurer boarded alone. No sign or record of them can be found on the plane’s passenger manifest. Benson mercifully succumbs to shock. All pulp heroes — even the eagle-nosed Shadow and the bronzed giant Doc Savage — managed to become masters of disguise. Benson took this wild talent to a place never before seen. Regaining consciousness in the hospital, his hair has turned white. His face had lost all color and

sensation. Benson discovers it can be molded like clay, making him the perfect natural quickchange artist. Picking up a pair of assistants who had also been victims of crime, Benson unravels the riddle, avenges his murdered family, and founds Justice, Inc. in a converted warehouse in Greenwich Village. He has become The Avenger. With him are the giant Algernon Heathcote Smith, a.k.a. Smitty, and dour Scot chemist Fergus MacMurdie, nicknamed “Mac.” The series followed standard S&S templates. In the second adventure, Benson came into pos-

session of a hoard of lost Aztec gold and a female assistant in the form of Nellie Gray. Both Doc Savage and The Shadow had roots in preColumbian civilizations. Issue 3 introduced the unusual husband and wife team of Josh and Rosabel Newton. They were African-Americans. Highly educated graduates of Tuskegee University, they often posed as undercover domestics.This rounded out the formative Justice, Inc. team. The stories gravitated toward a mild mix of high adventure and vulgar crime fighting. Ernst wrote in a cool understated style that emulated Lester Dent on Doc Savage,but seemed pitched at more mature readers. According to all recollections, the first year of The Avenger was successful. Plans were laid to issue an Avenger comic book. Unfortunately, Benson was depicted as a mature hero, much in the vein of The Shadow, instead of the youthful Doc Savage.This and his grim back story — every issue dwelt on his coldly glacial grief, his frozen face and shocked emotional state — made him perhaps too downbeat a character to hold readers past the novelty of newness. Doc Savage and The Shadow had a firm hold on their readers. More importantly, Benson was bucking an unstoppable tide: the rise of the new comic book superheroes. The flood of colorful comics magazines pushed the pulps into serious decline by the summer of 1940. Nanovic and Ralston huddled with Ernst and formulated a drastic reinvention of the foundering character. In Murder in Wheels, Benson was subjected to a ray that restored his para-

PG 28 – BALLYHOO (© Dell Publishing Com.); PG 28-29, Bot. Band – SLAPSTICK, #4, May 1932 (© respective copyright holder); BALLYHOO, July 1933 (© Dell Publishing Com.); HOT STORIES, Apr. 1930 (© Irwin Publishing Com.); BALLYHOO (© Dell Publishing Com.).

lyzed facial muscles to normal. His white hair fell out.When it grew back, it was as black as it had been in the beginning. He shucked off his nondescript gray suit and began wearing black.A few years were magically shaved off his resume. According to Ernst, the gray fox had become a black panther. A new assistant, the youthful Cole Wilson, joined Justice, Inc. An electrical engineer, his buoyant personality was clearly calculated to counterpoint the downcast originating members of Justice, Inc., all of whom had known tragedy and grief. Nanovic put three previously written novels on hold, rushed Murder on Wheels into print, blithely explaining away Cole Wilson’s absence in the inventory stories as they were released. His blue pencil updated the old gray fox Avenger into the vibrant new 1940 model. Street & Smith’s Avenger Comics was put on hold, its contents distributed among their other fourcolor titles. It was not enough. The superheroes kept coming. On its first anniversary, The Avenger shifted to bimonthly frequency. After Pearl Harbor, a wave of government paper allotment restrictions forced Street & Smith to cancel their weaker titles. Among them was The Avenger, in whom they still retained faith. Benson was transferred to lead feature in Clues-Detective, with Emile C.Tepperman writing the truncated novelettes. Another paper cut felled Clues in 1943. A final Avenger story straggled into print in 1944, landing in the pages of The Shadow.“To Find a Dead Man “ ran under Tepperman’s own byline, as if the character no longer deserved the honor of the Kenneth Robeson house name. During the first year of the magazine, it boasted vibrant covers by H.

Winfield Scott. These gave way to the more restrained depictions of Graves Gladney, Leslie Ross, and others.The back pages were filled out by the usual suspects from Nanovic’s reliable stable, including Ed Burkholder and Edward S. Ronns. Author’s agent and mystic dabbler Ed Bodin contributed a monthly column on Numerology, in which he confidently predicted Wendell Wilkie’s election to President of the United States in 1940.—WM

Avenger — Ballyhoo |

B BALLYHOO Great Depression Risqué Humor Magazines In 1931,America was well into the Great Depression, with a quarter of the work-force out of jobs, including Norman Hume Anthony, who had been the editor of the original humor version of Life magazine. Anthony was the sort of person, when not drinking or getting into screwball antics, who seemed to have the Midas touch when it came to editing humor magazines. In 1923, he was an editor at Judge, working alongside

pre-New Yorker Harold Ross for a time, and helped that magazine triple its circulation by cutting back on text and adding a lot more cartoons. In 1929, he moved to Life and began to increase sales there until the stock market crash in October mortally wounded the magazine. Anthony came to Manhattan from Buffalo, New York, freshly married and practically broke. He had gone to art school in Buffalo and was a fan of humor magazines of the day: Puck,Judge and Life. He had been sending them illustrated ideas as an art student and after hundreds of submissions finally sold a cartoon to Life. In New York Anthony shared a bedbug-infested studio on Forty-second Street and Eighth Avenue with a bunch of journeymen magazine artists. The place became more of a social club than workplace when

Anthony and his friends were around. A typical day would find him rushing through an art assignment before getting back to a poker or crap game going on in a corner of the studio. Girls from the Ziegfeld’s Follies across the street paraded through the studio as artists’ models, trying to make an extra buck.These were prohibition days, but there was always bathtub gin available in the studio, which added to the general bedlam. Anthony’s own drawings combined a busy drip-ink pen-line with the sere style of Charles Dana Gibson, who was his boss at Life. He found some success as an artist and achieved the singular feat of having nine drawings in the September 11, 1919 issue of Life. But Anthony was a better writer than artist. Some time around 1920 Anthony landed at Judge as an idea man writing

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captions for James Montgomery Flagg, John Held, Jr., and Ralph Barton.The weekly’s parent business, Leslie-Judge Company, had recently been taken over by its printer in lieu of payment of overdue press bills. The William Green Printing Company had also gotten Leslie’s Weekly, Popular Radio, Snappy Stories, and Film Fun in the deal. Anthony had an editorial hand in putting out Film Fun, at this time a cheerless magazine filled with publicity stills and photos from movie studios. No one at the company seemed to care about the magazine and this gave Anthony the freedom to experiment with gag captions to the photographs and make Film Fun live up to its name. To everyone’s surprise Film Fun began to sell, outstripping the sales of all the company’s other magazines. Showing how much it knew

GREAT DEPRESSION RISQUÉ HUMOR

30 | Ballyhoo about publishing, or cared, the Green Printing Company took this opportunity to sell Film Fun to Dell Publishing, for $750, where it continued to make a nice profit for George Delacorte over the next twenty years. By early 1931, Anthony was desperate enough to contact everyone he knew in publishing looking for any kind of job. The only response came from Dell publisher George T. Delacorte, Jr., who asked Anthony to suggest some ideas for a humor magazine that could be done on the cheap. Anthony thought that Delacorte was nuts to attempt a new magazine in that economic climate, but came back with one idea: a magazine making fun of advertising. He had done one issue of Judge burlesquing advertising and it had sold well, but made advertisers angry. He later wrote, “If you put out a book that the public liked, the advertisers got sore, and vice versa; you were licked either way.” Delacorte did not care what advertisers thought, he published cheaply printed confession magazines and pulps like I Confess, Inside Detective, and All Detective and made his money from newsstand sales. “[This was] a chance to get back at the boys who had put me in the ashcan,”Anthony remarked later. Anthony got the name Ballyhoo from the title of a book on fishing.The editorial budget for the first issue was $500, and with this money Anthony brought twenty-five of the funniest cartoons he could find. He wrote and drew everything else. He could not decide what to do for the cover and with the deadline looming, settled on an overlapping patchwork of colored squares that looked liked a collage of multi-colored sticky-notes.The first issue of Ballyhoo (all 150,000 copies) sold out. Circulation increased with each issue: 300,000 for the second; 600,000 for the third. By the end of the year Ballyhoo’s circulation was 1,500,000, the magazine was clearing a monthly profit of at least $30,000, and a delighted Delacorte made Anthony a partner in Ballyhoo. Delacorte quickly started a knockoff version of Ballyhoo called Hullabaloo to beat competitors to the punch. Not that this stopped imitators. Aw

PG 30, Top - Bot – BALLYHOO, #2, June 1962 (© respective copyright holder); BLACK BAT DETECTIVE MYSTERIES, #3, Dec. 1933 (©Berryman Press); PG 31 – Bot Band L to R – SKY DEVILS, vol. 1, #4, Jan. 1939 (© respective copyright holder); WINGS, Winter 1943-44 (Fiction House Magazines); DUSTY AYRES AND HIS BATTLE BIRDS (© Popular Publications).

Nerts, Slapstick published by Harold Hersey (a continuation of Tickle-Me-Too), Smokehouse, Koo Koo, Bunk, and Fawcett’s Hooey all crowded newsstands soon enough. Anthony wrote later, “The imitators caused us a lot of trouble, too, even if they didn’t give us much competition. In an attempt to attract attention, they published the smuttiest jokes they could find, went in for plain filth. While Ballyhoo was risqué, and sometimes downright bawdy, it was good, clean fun. Nevertheless we were tarred with the same stick.” Dell won all court cases that tried to get Ballyhoo off newsstands. In recognition of the quality of the magazine, Time called what Ballyhoo printed “smart smut,” a couple of steps above the bathroom bawdiness of Captain Billy’s Whiz Bang and American pseudo-“French” magazines such as the La Vie Parisienne and Paris Nights. Comments like this did not hurt sales. Anthony, with the editorial help of old friend Phil Rosa, prepared the magazine every month out of a 12 x 15 office.The payment rate for cartoons had gone from $15 to $150 each, and at this rate Ballyhoo was getting submissions from the best cartoonists of the day. Peter Arno became a regular Ballyhoo contributor for material Harold Ross considered too salacious for the New Yorker, though the puritanical Ross could not always tell the difference. Many of the best covers were done by Russell Patterson. Early issues of Ballyhoo ran to 32 pages, which thickened up to 48 pages by the mid-1930s. Anthony created a make-believe editorial staff all with the same last name Zilch and the magazine’s agnomen publisher Elmer Zilch was born. Anthony called him, “...a sort of jerk, i.e., an advertising man.” In its heyday Ballyhoo spawned a Broadway musical, a card game, a toilet paper brand, and one

of the first pinball machines, which also gave the new company a name — Bally. Ballyhoo did not survive the 1930s; towards the end it became a digest and its final issue appeared in the spring of 1939. Dell attempted a restart in 1948, and published intermittent issues until 1954, just as the next big humor magazine appeared on newsstands.This was, of course, Mad. Anthony, after the demise of Ballyhoo in 1939, licensed the name Hellzapoppin from the hit play and published Hellzapoppin, “The World’s Screwiest Magazine.” Hellzapoppin only lasted a few issues. A men’s magazine using the name Ballyhoo appeared in the 1960s, but had no connection to Dell or the original magazine.—LO

BATTLE BIRDS Battle Birds first started publication in December, 1932 as an aviation-oriented pulp magazine. It had a short run for the era, of only 19 issues. In July, 1934 the owner, the Chicago-based Popular Publications, made a slight title change, Dusty Ayres and his Battle Birds, and a major change in the type of stories it was going to carry. The title, now using a science fiction formula, lasted for an additional twelve issues before it was discontinued. Although much different than its predecessor in content and format, it continued the numbering from the original Battle Birds. But it was this run of twelve issues that made a lasting impression on readers and fans as the best of both aviation to come and fantastic aerial combat.All the stories in the science fiction issues were set against the same background of a future invasion of the United States of America. The lead Dusty Ayres novels in each issue is attributed to Robert Sidney Bowen. The short

Battle Birds | stories rarely carried bylines and usually featured secondary characters. However, whether intentional or otherwise, the contents pages for each issue were rather ambiguous, implying that Bowen wrote the entire issue. A separately numbered revival of Battle Birds, in its original format, was published from February, 1940 until May, 1944. The 26 issues in the revival never reached the peak of success or stirring imagination of the earlier Dusty Ayres science fiction issues. It is to Dusty Ayres and his Battle Birds that fans and collectors turn to recapture the amazing, thrilling visions of the pre-World War II era. Every month, beginning in July, 1934 through July, 1935, the local newsstands would sell out as each new issue appeared.

Bowen told the story of his hero set against the backdrop of an ongoing world war.The war began in the near future, three years after “all Asia and Europe had been a seething inferno of war.” A hero is nothing without a villain, and Bowen created a worthy masked threat from “an obscure part of Central Asia” to challenge Dusty Ayres. Fire-Eyes, the dire enemy, had arisen and declared war on the world. He was a brutish figure, sporting a bulletproof black uniform, black gauntlets, and a black skull cap. Fire-Eyes and his armed hordes, the Black Invaders, stage an invasion of the United States after they have conquered the rest of the world. They use radio-controlled gas rockets and midget flame tanks. It is Dusty Ayres and his Battle Birds who have to stop him.

Dusty is, of course, the top American pilot, and with the help of his friends he is responsible for turning back the Black Invaders and foiling the plans of Fire-Eyes. Ayres is not a man alone; he is aided by Jack Horner,Agent 10 and the son of the man in charge of United States Intelligence. Dusty’s pals Curley Brooks and Biff Bolton also give him much-needed assistance. Stopping Fire-Eyes is not an easy task. Dusty Ayres must first kill Zytoff and Ekar the Avenger before taking on Black Hawk, Fire-Eyes’s evil lieutenant and an air ace nearly Dusty’s equal. After seven separate encounters, he shoots down Black Hawk. In the final episode it is Fire-Eyes who meets his doom at the hands of Dusty and with his end the Black Invasion falls apart. The decision to cancel the magazine had

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already been made. In the last novel, “The Telsa Raiders,” Dusty Ayres and his friends kill the evil villain who has been trying to conquer the United States.And it is in that episode, when the pulp hero finishes off his enemy, that the first ever clear-cut end to a pulp serial storyline coincides with the magazine’s actual demise. Battle Birds was first published by American Fiction Magazines, Inc.The 128-page pulp magazine was sold for 10 cents and regularly featured covers by Frederick Blakeslee. It was selling for 15 cents at the end of its first series run in June, 1934. An internal corporate restructuring occurred before the first Dusty Ayres appeared in July, 1934 and American Fiction Magazines, Inc., became Fictioneers, Inc., but they were still printing their magazines under the Popular Publications imprint.

AIR COMBAT PULPS

32 | Battle Birds Popular Publications titles included detective (Ace High Detective), adventure, romance, and western fiction. Popular Publications was also well known for their several “weird menace” titles such as Terror Tales and Horror Stories, and a string of character pulps they published, which included Captain Combat, Captain Satan, Captain V, Captain Zero (considered to be the last hero pulp), Dr. Yen Sin (a Fu Manchu clone), G-8, Mysterious Wu Fang (another Fu Manchu clone), The Octopus/The Scorpion, Operator No. 5, Secret Six, and The Spider. Popular Publications was formed in 1930 by Henry “Harry” Steeger. In 1942, the company acquired the properties of the Frank A. Munsey Co., chief among them the pulp magazine Argosy. In 1949, they picked up the rights to several of the Street & Smith pulps.At the time, rumors circulated that they might acquire Street & Smith’s best-known pulp heroes, The Shadow and Doc Savage, but this never happened. David Goodis was perhaps the most famous author to write for Battle Birds. Goodis, a popular American noir writer, wrote under several pseudonyms, for pulp magazines including Battle Birds, Daredevil Aces, Dime Mystery, Horror Stories, Terror Tales and Western Tales, sometimes churning out 10,000 words a day. Over a five-and-a-half year period he produced some five million words for the pulps. Bowen based Dusty Ayres on his own incredible adventures during World War I. Bowen began the war as an ambulance driver in France in 1914, but was sent home because he was too young. Somehow he got to Britain,lied about his age,and joined the Royal Flying Corps, later known as the Royal Air Force. At the tender age of 14, he was the youngest pilot in the RAF, and soon became an ace, shooting down eight enemy aircraft. After the war, Bowen worked continually at writing for pulp magazines such as Popular Sport, G-Men, and Battle Aces. In the early 1940s, he went on to write the Dave Dawson War Adventure Series and the Red Randall series. After World War II, Bowen stopped writing series

PG 32 Top to Bot – BIG DADDY ROTH, Oct. Nov. 1964 (©Millar Publications); BLACKSTONE’S MAGIC, 1930 (© Shade Publishing); PG 33 L to R, Top to Bot – THE OCTOPUS, Mar. 1939 (© Popular Publications); BLACK MASK, vol. 33. #4 (© respective copyright holder); THE SCORPION, April/May 1939 (© Popular Publications); SHEER DELIGHT, #2, 1958 (© Elmer Batters ).

books, to the lasting regret of all his fans. Dusty Ayres left his mark not only in the pages of the pulp magazines, flying across the skies of a freedom-loving United States, but also in the minds of many readers who went on to careers in aviation because of the heroic deeds of Robert Sidney Bowen’s creation.The adventures that entertained a generation were reprinted in the 1960s under the Corinth Regency imprint of Greenleaf Classics, allowing yet another generation to become inspired and follow after Dusty into the blue skies. In 1972, Popular Publications sold its various rights to Blazing Publications. In 1988, Blazing Publications renamed itself Argosy Communications and under that name published a few comic book versions of its most famous characters, as well as allowing the reprinting of several other main properties it now owned.—FJ [see G-8 and His Battle Aces,Terror Tales]

Back, Beatles Are Here, Beatles Color Pin-Up Album, Beatles Complete Coverage of N.Y. Appearance, Beatles Complete Life Story, Beatles Complete Life Story From Birth till Now, Beatles in Cincinnati, Beatles Make a Movie, Beatles on Broadway, Beatles Personality Annual, Beatles Pictures for Framing, Beatles Round the World #1,Talking Pictures #1 – The Beatles, Beatles Round the World #2, Beatles Starring in A Hard Day’s Night, Beatles Talk!, Beatles U.S.A., Beatles Whole True Story, Best of the Beatles, Elvis Vs. the Beatles, Help!, Meet the Beatles, New Beatles – The Fab Four Come Back, Original Beatles Book, Original Beatles Book Two, Real True Beatles, Ringo’s Photo Album,Teen Pix Album,Teen Screen Life Story, Teen Talk,Teeners Special Beatles #1,Who Will Beat the Beatles?—JH

BEATLEMANIA

BLACK MASK

During the 1960s, the British rock group The Beatles became a world-wide phenomenon. In the United States alone, there were some 40+ one-shot magazine titles issued, and another baker’s dozen British titles. All of these magazines had large print runs and sold out rapidly to eager teenagers. The Beatles-related magazines are rapidly becoming sought-after collectors’ items today. Following is a partial list of the Beatlemania magazine titles, most were nothing more that a compilation of pin-up pictures: All About the Beatles, All About Us, America Vs. Beatles: Battle of the Groups, Beatle Fun Kit, Beatle Hairdos & Setting Patterns, Beatledom, Beatlemania #1, Beatlemania Collector’s Item, Beatles, Beatles Are

There are not many magazines that give their name to a new vogue in fiction. In the earliest days, Blackwood’s Magazine certainly created a sensational form of fiction that Edgar Allan Poe mercilessly lampooned. The New Yorker is closely associated with its sophisticated form of sharp satire. Unknown lent its name to a special form of fantasy. But the one we all know, without question, is Black Mask, whose name, even today, instantly conjures up the world of hard-boiled crime fiction. Without Black Mask, no doubt some other magazine would have become the vehicle, but maybe not in the same way, not with the same force, and not with the same flair.After all, Black Mask had them all: Dashiell Hammett,

BIG DADDY ROTH see Choppers Magazine

Black Mask | Raymond Chandler, Carroll John Daly, Erle Stanley Gardner, Raoul Whitfield, Frederick Nebel, and Frank Gruber, all concentrated into a span of less than a decade. Like many legends, Black Mask – or The Black Mask as it was called for its first seven years – had an ignominious start. It was the third of a series of pulps started by H.L. Mencken and George J. Nathan in the hope of raising funds to support their ailing literary magazine, The Smart Set.They had found that they could start a new magazine for as little as $500 and then sell it for a substantial profit soon after. They had already done this with Parisienne in 1915 and Saucy Stories in 1916. The Black Mask was next, launched in April, 1920. It was not the first crime-fiction magazine of the period – Street & Smith’s Detective Story Magazine and Frank Tousey’s Mystery Magazine had both preceded it, both outgrowths of dime novel series – but it would become the most memorable and the most original. Indeed, it prospered far better than The Smart Set, which it had helped finance. When Mencken and Nathan soldThe Black Mask after only eight months to Eltinge Warner (owner of Field & Stream), it netted them a profit of nearly $12,000 (over $130,000 in today’s money). Even that was not enough to keep The Smart Set solvent. That magazine was sold in 1924, by which time The Black Mask was well established. It published nothing special under its first editor, a woman, F.M. Osborne. Its best-known contributor at that stage was Vincent Starrett, but only with four stories, none of much merit. Its most prolific contributor was Harold Ward, who churned out regular formulaic fare. It did not publish only crime fiction, but a wide range of adventure stories, war stories, westerns, even ghost stories. Had Black Mask folded when its first editor moved on, in October, 1922 no one would remember it today, and yet it proved popular at the time and sales were sufficient that in February, 1923 it stepped up production and (until May 1924) appeared twice monthly. Moreover, there must have been some sign in those early issues that the magazine would be different. The pres-

ence of westerns meant that it included stories of outlaws and there was a thin line between the wild west and the post-war rise in gangs and hoodlums in prohibition America. Seeds must have been sown, for when George W. Sutton, Jr., took over in October, 1922 everything changed, and he promptly published two of the biggest names for which the magazine would be remembered: Carroll John Daly and Dashiell Hammett. Daly made his pulp debut with “Dolly,” a short mood piece, in that October, 1922 issue, but the real milestone came two issues later. The December, 1922 issue, called by pulp expert Robert Sampson “one of the key issues in pulp magazine history,” carried the first of Daly’s tough-guy stories, “The False Burton Combs” and the first story by Hammett (writing under the alias Peter Collinson), “The Road Home.” These two writers were destined to create and establish the hard-boiled school of crime fiction. Daly was the first.After a couple of early, notquite-there efforts, he created the character of Terry Mack, the first true hard-edged tough-guy private investigator in “Three Gun Terry” (May 15, 1923). Mack appeared in one more story, “Action! Action!” (January 1, 1924), but by then Daly had found a new character that worked even better, Race Williams. Williams first appeared in “Knights of the Open Palm,” in a special issue of Black Mask (June 1, 1923) dedicated to the subject of the Ku Klux Klan, and one of the most desirable of many amongst the magazine’s run.Williams would appear in 53 stories in Black Mask and although the readers lapped them up, they have not dated well compared to those that followed. Daly had no gracious writing style and Williams had no finesse. He slugged his way through cases with no detective skills and with no qualms over killing where necessary. He’s as much a thug as the villains, with only a shade better idea of what constituted right and wrong, but within him burned some of those characteristics that became embedded in the Private Eye persona – tough, determined, and a loner – and the stories were told in the first person.

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34 | Black Mask Of far greater merit were the Continental Op stories by Hammett, which began with “Arson Plus” (October 1, 1923) under the Collinson alias. Daly had no idea how a private investigator operated – in fact Daly couldn’t even find his way home one night, and another time was arrested the same day he bought his one and only gun. Hammett, on the other hand, knew it in detail. He had worked for Pinkerton’s Detective Agency on and off between 1915 and 1922, and the cases and people he knew became the basis for his stories.The Continental Op stories, which are set in San Francisco, are narrated in the first person and we never learn the narrator’s name. He was always the Op – the Continental came from the name of the building in Baltimore where the Pinkerton offices were located. These stories are far more realistic than Daly’s, still tough but less violent.

The Op has morals and a code of loyalty, but is just as determined to solve his cases. Although Daly had started the Private Eye vogue, it was Hammett who refined it. Hammett soon came out from behind his Collinson alias with “Crooked Souls” (October 15, 1923).There were 34 Op stories in total in Black Mask through to November, 1930, which was Hammett’s last appearance in the magazine. Sutton’s tenure as editor was short and he left in March, 1924, to be replaced by Philip Cody, who stayed for a little more than two years. Between them, they established the writers and characters who would make Black Mask’s name. Cody had seen the value of regular series characters and encouraged both Daly and Hammett to produce more Race Williams and Continental Op stories. It was under Cody that Erle Stanley

Gardner became a regular contributor, though it was Cody’s associate editor, Harry North, who had been with the magazine from the start, who worked with Gardner to develop his style. Cody had hitherto rejected most of Gardner’s stories. However, once Gardner hit upon the character of Ed Jenkins, known as the Phantom Crook, who debuted in “Beyond the Law” (January 1925), Cody knew he was onto a winner. Jenkins was an outlaw, in true wild-west tradition, who pitted the criminals against the police and vice versa for his own gain. Jenkins was the hard-boiled version of the gentleman crook that had started with Raffles and Arséne Lupin, and like Lupin, Jenkins was a master of disguise. But there was nothing gentlemanly about him. He was as tough as Race Williams, but more streetwise and clever. The Jenkins stories were ingenious, fast-paced, and

entertaining. They were extremely popular and became the longest running series in Black Mask: 73 stories through to “The Gong of Vengeance” in September, 1943. Cody was a good editor but did not enjoy it, preferring to be at the business end of the magazine. He found his replacement in a 52-year-old ex-army captain, Joseph Shaw. When Shaw entered the offices of Black Mask in 1926, hopeful of selling a story, he had never read the magazine and knew nothing about editing.Yet Cody clearly saw something, and he was right. Once “Cap” Shaw, as he became known, took the helm in November, 1926, Black Mask moved to another level. His ten years there would see not only Black Mask’s best years but arguably the most significant years of any of the pulps. Shaw did his homework, saw what made the magazine click,

BEATLESMANIA

Black Mask |

and set about building a stable of writers. Hammett had turned his back on Black Mask when he was unable to secure a better word-rate but Shaw brought him back with suggestions for longer stories featuring the Continental Op. Hammett responded with two linked novellas, “The Big Knock-Over” and “$106,000 Blood Money” (February and May 1927), which later made up the novel Blood Money (1943). Hammett then produced four more connected Op stories, the Poisonville sequence, which began with “The Cleansing of Poisonville” (November 1927), and came together as Hammett’s first book, Red Harvest (Knopf, 1929). Four more, which ran from November, 1928, through February, 1929,

became The Dain Curse (Knopf, 1929). Then came “The Maltese Falcon,” serialized from September, 1929, through January, 1930. Sam Spade – the real Sam Spade of the serial, not the romanticized Bogart version – is cunning, cold, and calculating, but he does have a strong sense of loyalty, and in the cut-and-thrust between villains he is both realistic and believable. Hammett’s output continued with four more connected stories (March to June 1930), which make up the nonseries novel The Glass Key (Knopf, 1931). After one more Continental Op story, “Death and Company” (November 1930), Shaw lost Hammett, first to the slick market and then to Hollywood. Those magic three years, which saw Hammett at his peak, established what Shaw wanted for Black Mask. He later wrote: “Hammett was the leader in the thought that finally brought the magazine its distinctive form.” Shaw wanted his other writers to produce material in a similar vein and cajoled them so much that Gardner accused Shaw of trying to “Hammettize” the magazine. Shaw worked with his other popular contributors, amongst them Raoul Whitfield and Frederick Nebel. Whitfield, who had been a First World War flying ace, is virtually forgotten today, but he was a prolific pulpster. Many of his stories featured wealthy sportsmen or aviators in pursuit of adventure, but he was also a devotee of Hammett’s work and was keen to emulate the master. His most Hammettesque work was the “Crime Breeders” sequence (December 1929-April 1930), where ex-con Mal Ourney is caught up in a violent search for stolen emeralds. Hammett read the stories and suggested Whitfield send them to his editor at Knopf, which resulted in Whitfield’s first book, Green Ice (1930). Another of Whitfield’s characters was Hollywood detec-

PG 34 – Bot Band L to R – ALL ABOUT THE BEATLES, #1 1965 (© respective copyright holder); THE BEATLES (© respective copyright holder); THE BEATLES PERSONALITY ALBUM, #1 1964 (© respective copyright holder); PG 35 L to R, Top to Bot – ALL TRUE-FACT CRIME CASES, June 1952 (© respective copyright holder); BLACK MASK, Jan. 1950 (©Popular Publications); BLACK MASK DETECTIVE MAGAZINE, July 1951 (©Fictioneers Inc.).

tive Ben Jardinn, who was introduced in the serial “Death in a Bowl” (September-November 1930), which also made it into book form (Knopf, 1931). Whitfield’s most popular contributions to Black Mask, though, were his 24 stories about the Island detective, Jo Gar, set in the Philippines. These appeared under the alias Ramon Decolta and ran from “West of Guam” (February 1930) to “The Amber Fan” (July 1933). Because of the pseudonym, Whitfield never really got sufficient credit for them. They did not appear in book form until Keith Alan Deutsch collected the bulk of them in Jo Gar’s Casebook (Crippen & Landru, 2002), nearly 60 years after Whitfield’s early death. Frederick Nebel was a small, mild man who enjoyed the open country and wild parts of the world. His real desire, which he eventually achieved, was to write for the quality women’s magazines, but that was not to be before he had churned out over 200 stories for the pulps. He first sold to Black Mask in 1926, and soon fell under the Hammett influence. When Hammett refused to write any more stories featuring Sam Spade, Shaw asked Nebel if he could produce an equivalent character and Nebel promptly obliged with ex-cop Donny Donahue, who had left the force rather than bow to corruption and who joined the Inter-State Detective Agency. The series ran from “Rough Justice” (November 1930) to “Ghost of a Chance” (March 1935) and while the stories lack Hammett’s polish and finesse, they have a shrewdness and honesty that makes them believable. Even without Hammett, Shaw was thus able to perpetuate the mood of his stories, not only through the work of Whitfield and Nebel, but also Horace McCoy, Paul Cain, W.T. Ballard, Norbert Davis, Theodore Tinsley, and Dwight V. Babcock, but fortune really smiled when he discovered Raymond Chandler. Or rather Chandler discovered him. Chandler was in his mid-1940s, dissatisfied with life and on an emotional decline, when he stumbled across a copy of Black Mask. He was immediately hooked. It took him five

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36 | Black Mask months to write his first story, “Blackmailers Don’t Shoot” and, when typing the final copy, he even took the trouble to justify the right-hand margin. When Shaw read the story he was amazed. He forwarded it to Willis Ballard with a note stating that Chandler was either a genius or a madman.The story appeared in the December, 1933 Black Mask. It featured a private eye called Mallory, a clear forerunner of Philip Marlowe. Chandler had delighted in the written word from an early age and had written some poetry and sketches but had not pursued it seriously. But now he had the bug, inspired by the works of Hammett and Norbert Davis.With his third story, “Finger Man” (October 1934), Chandler felt he had come to terms with his new medium. Black Mask published only eleven of Chandler’s stories, including a series featuring private eye Ted Carmady, another Marlowe forerunner, but the magazine was crucial to his development as a writer. Equally important was his relationship with Shaw, who always liked to help and encourage his writers and who, Chandler acknowledged, brought the best out in him. Chandler later cannibalized several of these early stories to rework into his novels. Both “Killer in the Rain”(January 1935) and “The Curtain” (September 1936) formed the core of The Big Sleep (Knopf, 1939), and “The Man Who Liked Dogs” (March 1936) and “Try the Girl” (January 1937) were the basis for Farewell, My Lovely (Knopf, 1940). Under Chandler, the hardboiled form of crime fiction reached its peak. Where Hammett marked the start of Black Mask’s Golden Age, Chandler brought it to a close. Shaw had built the magazine’s circulation from 66,000 in 1926 to 103,000 by 1930, but with the Depression sales declined again and by 1934 were as low as 47,000. Warner decided to cut salaries, which led to a dispute with Shaw.As a result Shaw was fired. His authors were stunned and many of the major contributors, including Nebel and Chandler, never wrote for

the magazine again. Shaw was replaced, in November, 1936, by Fanny Ellsworth. She was the editor of Ranch Romances, a title that Warner had bought when the Clayton titles went up for auction in 1933. There was a world of difference between the two magazines, but Ellsworth was a good, disciplined editor and knew what was needed. She brought both Frank Gruber and Cornell Woolrich to the magazine. Neither of them were her discoveries but both knew what to deliver. Gruber’s stories included his series about Oliver Quade, the “Human Encyclopedia” while Woolrich contributed his typically tense stories of fear and neurosis. Black Mask’s circulation rallied but then fell again.Warner eventually decided to sell his magazines and from the June, 1940 issue Black Mask was taken over by Popular Publications, becoming a companion to its closest rival, Dime Detec-

Black Silk Stockings | tive. Its editor at Popular was Ken White, who had long wished to run the magazine. Unfortunately, White could not risk making the magazine too similar to Dime Detective, and as a consequence Black Mask suffered. It became just another crime magazine. From 1941 onward, it also found itself facing a small but hugely popular rival, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, which brought a new and more sophisticated type of crime fiction to a receptive readership. Black Mask published little that was memorable during the forties. Perhaps its best-known serial was Curt Siodmak’s “Donovan’s Brain” (September-November 1942), a science fiction horror tale which felt rather out of place. Deserted by its readers – it became bi-monthly in 1943 – it also began to lose most of its leading writers. After the War its only remaining contributors of note were G.T. Fleming-Roberts, D.L. Champi-

on, William Campbell Gault, Fredric Brown, Bruno Fischer, and John D. MacDonald. While they all produced quality work, there was no mistaking that Black Mask was a pale shadow of its former self, and that the world of crime fiction had moved on. Public tastes had changed so dramatically that when Joseph Shaw compiled an anthology of the best stories from Black Mask, called The Hard-Boiled Omnibus, he had difficulty finding a publisher.When it eventually appeared from Simon & Schuster in 1946, many of the authors represented complained about the reissuing of their early work. Never had a vogue so defiantly come and gone. White had stepped down as editor by 1949 and in its final two years, now called Black Mask Detective, the magazine ran mostly on reprints. After its 340th issue, dated July, 1951, it merged with Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, which later

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PG 36 – BLACK MASK, Nov. 1947 (© Popular Publications); PG 36 -37 Bot Band L to R – REAL SCREEN FUN, May 1938 (© respective copyright holder); SAUCY MOVIE TALES, Dec. 1936 (© Movie Digest); MOVIE MERRY-GO-ROUND (©respective copyright holder); STAGE AND SCREEN STORIES, Apr. 1936 (© Movie Digest).

ran a Black Mask section. There is a certain irony about this merger. Ellery Queen’s was owned by the American Mercury Company, which had been established by Mencken and Nathan in 1924 to publish The American Mercury, their successor to The Smart Set. Little could they have suspected that their prodigal son would eventually return to the fold. During its 31-year existence, it had created a whole new genre of detective fiction, leaving behind a far greater legacy than either of its founders could have imagined.— MA [see Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine]

BLACK SILK STOCKINGS Black Silk Stockings was Los Angeles-based Elmer A. Batters’s first go as an independent publisher, and the first time he had a real showcase for his leg, stocking, and women’s nyloned feet fetish photography. Batters’s own photos in Black Silk Stockings (1958), and later publications Sheer Delight (1959), and Man’s Favorite Pastime (1960), very rarely strayed into full nudity, yet Batters daringly gave his pictures a titillating sense of the erotic potential hidden in every woman, and this was enough, in 1959, to get him busted for obscenity when other men’s magazines were

1930S RISQUE MOVIE MAGS

1930S MYSTERY MAGAZINES going further a field in naked flesh delineation. Batters’s photography was more personalized, even intimate, and this may have been what brought it to the attention of censors. His wife worked at his side, assisting in his studio, and there has been talk that she did not understand the full import of her husband’s photographic aretifism. This seems unlikely as she was a full partner in his work throughout his life. In the 1960s, Batters worked for Milton

Luros’ Tip-Top, Nylon Jungle (1964), and other leg, garters, garter belts, and lingerie magazines and had a section in some of Luros’ magazines called “Dear Elmer Batters” where he answered letters from readers. His photography ended up in the 1980s at Leg Show magazine.—LO [see Jaybird and Sunshine & Health]

PG 38 – Top Band, L to R – AMERICAN DETECTIVE FACT CASES, May 1937 (© Quality Publication); DETECTIVE SHORT STORIES, vol. 1, #3, Apr. 1938 (© Red Circle); CRIME DETECTIVE, Vol. 1, #1, Oct. 1938 (© Hillman Publications); PG 39 L to R, Top to Bot – STOCKING PARADE, #3, 1966 (© respective copyright holder); BLACK SILK STOCKINGS, vol. 1, #5, 1958 (© respective copyright holder); interior b&w page from BLACK SILK STOCKINGS, 1958; BLACK SILK STOCKINGS, vol. 1, #1, 1958 (© respective copyright holder).

BLACKSTONE’S MAGIC see Stephen King’s Horror Mag BLUE BOOK Blue Book was one of the leading general fiction pulp magazines in the first half of the twentieth century and was referred to at the time as the ‘King of the Pulps’, the highest in quality – indeed, almost a ‘slick in pulp clothing’.The title had originally been The Monthly Story Magazine when it was launched in May, 1905, but after a year this changed, first to the clumsy The Monthly Story Blue Book Magazine, and eventually, in May, 1907, to The Blue Book Magazine.The name was selected because by then the phrase “Blue

Book” had already become synonymous with setting a high standard.The interpretation of the word “blue” as something risqué or lewd was far from the publisher’s thoughts. From the start, Blue Book intended to be the definitive fiction magazine, a cut above the pulps but not as elitist as the major slicks.That is how it is still remembered. It was published in Chicago by the Story-Press Corporation, the second magazine created by local businessman Louis Eckstein. His first had been Red Book in May, 1903.That was an all-around magazine, printed on coated stock, which ran features and stories with plenty of illustrations and considerable advertising. The Monthly Story Magazine was all fiction. For the most part it was published on thin newsprint, only slightly better than pulp – though it ages badly and its pages these days are

Black Silk Stockings — Blue Book | extremely brittle. There was no advertising and, with one exception, no illustrations. The one exception was a heavily illustrated feature called “Stageland,” printed on coated stock.This showed scenes from the latest theatrical ventures along with photographs of the actors and actresses. With some later issues, there was a pull-out color portrait of that month’s featured actress. The “Stageland” feature, which at its height filled thirty-two pages, would last for ten years and is one of the more collectable aspects of the magazine’s early life. The “Stageland” feature aside, the magazine ran for 192 pages, all solid fiction. Early issues were a mixture of popular American writers of the day, now mostly forgotten, like humorist Forrest Crissey and dime novelist W. Bert Foster, plus imports from Britain, including Eden Phillpotts, Guy Boothby and Robert S. Hichens.The editor of these early issues was not credited, though it was almost certainly Trumbull White, a former war reporter and journalist who also edited Red Book. His place was soon taken by Karl Harriman. Few of these early issues carried much notable fiction. Amongst the exceptions is “The Time Deflector” (September 1905), the first story by popular author and occasional science-fictionist George Allan England. “The Red Grave” in the January, 1907 issue may well be the first published story by Damon Runyon, then still signing himself Alfred Damon Runyon, yet it seems to have generally passed unnoticed by Runyon devotees. The real gems of these issues are those featuring the early work of British writer William Hope Hodgson. The April, 1906 issue carried “From the Tideless Sea,” a haunting story of a family stranded for decades in the Sargasso Sea. The story’s popularity demanded a sequel,“More News from the Homebird,” which appeared in August, 1907.The next issue ran the weaker “The Terror of the Water-Tank,” but the real prize, in the November, 1907 issue, was the first appearance of Hodgson’s masterpiece,“The Voice in the Night.” It was with these stories that Hodgson established his reputation and these issues are now

extremely rare and highly valued. Despite the genteel, society image of the magazine’s cover, which for over a decade portrayed nothing but women in the latest fashion, Blue Book carried a mixture of adventure, mystery and humor stories. Blue Book made a point of declaring that it would run no serials, but that all stories would be complete, with the emphasis on series. One of the most remarkable – in terms of stamina – first appeared in the March, 1910 issue. This was the Buchanesque “The Adventures of a Diplomatic Free-Lance” by Clarence Herbert New, about freelance British agent Lord Trevor, who was called in by diplomats to help them out in difficult situations throughout Europe. New continued this series for 289 installments till his death in 1933, the most of any magazine series, totaling some three million words. Overall, New contributed 387 stories to Blue Book, under his own name and two pseudonyms, making him the most prolific contributor. One of the regulars from the start was Ellis Parker Butler, with his usual blend of clever, satirical stories, though sometimes he took a more serious tone. “The Last Man” (September 1914) is the story of a lone survivor in New York after a catastrophe. Butler would later contribute his series about Jabez Bunker, country-boy conman in the big city. Another regular was Australian adventurer James Francis Dwyer, whose exotic stories, frequently with jungle or oriental settings, fired the imagination. Dwyer caused Blue Book to break its rule in not running serials when, after already publishing a dozen of his stories, it ran his novel Blue Lizard in six parts (August 1913-January 1914). By now Blue Book was well established as a magazine of mystery and adventure. Although it maintained the demure-lady covers for a few more years, in October, 1914, it cut out all pretence of being a quasi-slick magazine by transferring the “Stageland” feature (which had become the “Motion Picture Department” in May, 1914) to its short-lived companion Green Book and becoming an all-fiction pulp. It increased the

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BLUE BOOK number of pages to 240, although the price remained at fifteen cents, and began running complete novels as well as serials.These included the lost-race adventure “Bride of the Sun” by Gaston Leroux (November 1914). By now Blue Book had a solid roster of regulars. In addition to those already mentioned, there were Edwin Balmer, E. Phillips Oppenheim, Max Rittenberg, Octavus Roy Cohen, Edgar Wallace, and James Oliver Curwood, but over the next four years the big guns would come into play. The first of these was no less than H. Rider Haggard. His new Allan Quatermain novel, The Ivory Child, was serialized in eight parts starting in February, 1915. That same issue marked the first appearance in Blue Book of Canadian-born writer H. Bedford-Jones, who would become the magazine’s second most prolific contributor. The real scoop came in the September, 1916

issue with the first of twelve “New Stories of Tarzan” by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Burroughs had become one of the rapid success stories of the pulps with his first Tarzan story in Munsey’s AllStory in October, 1912. Blue Book’s new editor, Ray Long, had managed to win Burroughs away from Munsey and although Burroughs would always play off one magazine against another, Blue Book remained one of his more regular markets for the next twenty years. The Burroughs issues, not surprisingly, are among the most prized of the Blue Books.To top it all, before the Tarzan series had finished, Blue Book began a Zane Grey serial “The Roaring U.P. Trail” (June 1917-January 1918) and soon after published, complete, one of Clarence E. Mulford’s Bar-20 novels, The Man from Bar-20 (May 1918). It also ran complete Burroughs’s non-series novel, The Oakdale Affair (March

1918), and soon after the three novelettes that make up his novel of arrested evolution, The Land That Time Forgot. Although Blue Book had already had a respectable life of ten years, it can really be said to have arrived from 1915 onwards and that was due solely to editor Ray Long. He had edited Blue Book and its two companions since 1911 and had shown an unerring ability to tap into the mood of the nation. He left at the end of 1918 to join William Randolph Hearst’s organization where he edited Cosmopolitan, almost doubling its circulation. He was reputedly one of the highest-paid editors of the 1920s, earning $100,000 dollars a year (today the equivalent of $1 million). Although Karl Harriman returned as editor-inchief, Donald Kennicott was in charge of acquiring material for Blue Book. Kennicott was one of the great pulp editors. He had served as the assis-

tant editor at Blue Book since 1910 and remained at the helm until 1951, seeing the magazine through its Golden Age. He added his own new writers, including Edison Marshall, L. Patrick Greene, and Bertram Atkey, but his major scoop was securing the first U.S. publication of Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot stories. These began in September, 1923 with “The Affair at the Victory Ball,” previously published in Britain in The Sketch, and ran, with just one gap, for the next two years.The September, 1923 issue is significant for another reason: It was the first to carry a traditional action pulp cover rather than the demure ladies of the last eighteen years, and from there on Blue Book’s cover artists came into their own. Foremost among them was Laurence Herndon, who provided most of the action covers, though there was also Frank Hoban, who illustrated most of the

Blue Book | Burroughs issues, and the legendary J. Allen St. John. It was under Kennicott that internal artwork was introduced (stories had borne no illustrations hitherto apart from occasional small headers), but from September, 1926 on, the magazine was styling itself The Illustrated Blue Book Magazine. Kennicott also introduced the idea of a $100 prize for each best true-story experience submitted by readers, along the lines of the anecdotes that were popular in Adventure’s “Camp Fire” department, and this remained a standard feature throughout the thirties. Apart from a break of four months (June to September 1928), Burroughs was in every issue of Blue Book from December, 1927 to March, 1932, and again August, 1932 to January, 1933. These issues saw the serialization of “Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle,” “Tarzan and the Lost Empire,” “Tanar of Pellucidar,” “Tarzan at the Earth’s Core,” “A Fighting Man of Mars,” “Tarzan, Guard of the Jungle,” “The Land of Hidden Men,” “The Triumph of Tarzan,” and “Tarzan and the Leopard Men.”This last serial ran alongside another blockbuster,“When Worlds Collide” by Edwin Balmer and Philip Wylie, which generated the sequel, “After Worlds Collide” (November 1933 to April 1934). In 1929, Eckstein sold Red Book and Blue Book to the McCall Corporation (Green Book had ceased in 1921), and the offices moved to New York. From October, 1930 to August, 1932, Blue Book experimented with moving from the standard pulp format to the large flat size, sometimes erroneously called “bedsheet.” These issues were also on paper of slightly better quality and gave Laurence Herndon a chance to paint some of his best covers. It reverted to the standard pulp size in September, 1932 an announcement claiming that readers had found the large size less convenient.

Nevertheless, those twenty-three large issues are some of the most highly treasured because of their Burroughs content and covers. A new cover artist took over with the smaller format issues, Joseph Chenoweth. His covers are less colorful than Herndon’s, but are more suggestive of action, as if the characters portrayed are about to move any moment.Another artist during this period was Henry J. Soulen, whose few covers during 1934/35 are highly exotic and colorful. Austin Briggs provided no covers, but drew many interior illustrations where he proved himself one of the more popular artists with his dramatic action pictures. By contrast, John R. Flanagan was the master of the exotic, his illustrations bringing alive stories of the south seas or the ancient past. In April, 1935 a new cover artist appeared who would paint all the covers for the next thirteen years.This was Herbert Morton Stoops, who had a remarkable ability for drawing historical scenes with pleasing authenticity. Stoops’s covers frequently told their own story and later, especially during the war years, they were produced around individual patriotic features, such as “This is Our Land.” Stoops’s covers are never less than beautiful and are frequently breathtaking, especially his work on William Chester’s Kioga series. “Hawk of the Wilderness,” a serial by Chester, starting in the May 1935 issue, was a good imitation Tarzan, except it was set in a hitherto unknown Arctic land where water currents and a volcano keep the climate temperate. Kioga (the name means “Snow Hawk”) is the orphaned child of explorers who is raised by the natives on the island,believed to be the common ancestors of the American Indians and Inuit and, like Tarzan, develops special physical skills. Kioga appeared in three serials during 1935/37, which proved highly popular and remain highly collected.

PG 40, Top Band L to R – BLUE BOOK, Dec. 1931 (© McCalls Corp.); BLUE BOOK FOR MEN, Oct. 1960 (© H. S. Publisher); BLUE BOOK, Nov. 1974 (© respective copyright holder); PG 41, Top to Bot – BEDTIME STORIES, vol. 3, #4 1935 (Detinuer Publishing Company); CRIME DOES NOT PAY, Mar. 1969 (© M. F. Enterprises).

It was at this time that H. Bedford-Jones came into his own. He appeared in every issue of Blue Book from1935 to 1944, sometimes with as many as four stories. At the same time, he was writing for many other pulp magazines, earning as much as $60,000 a year in the mid-1930s. He became dubbed the “King of the Pulps” (like the magazine) and it is likely he was the most prolific pulpster of all. He certainly wrote more than Frederick Faust (better known as Max Brand) who is usually attributed with that title. Bedford-Jones could turn his hand to most adventure stories and mysteries, and though he also wrote westerns, the majority of his work for Blue Book is historical. Sometimes these would have a fantasy element. For instance, his “Trumpets from Oblivion” series (November 1938 to October 1939) looked at the stories behind the origins of various legends and provided Stoops with some of his best covers. Writing as Michael Gallister, he wrote a series about man’s conquest of the air, while under his own name he wrote about the origins of the theatre (“The World Was Their Stage”), man’s conquest of the sea (“Men and Ships”), and many other long-running series. By the time of Bedford-Jones’s death in 1949, Kennicott reported that Blue Book had published 360 of his stories, 7 serials and 6 complete novels. Although Clarence New exceeded that in numbers, Bedford-Jones exceeded it in wordage. Bedford-Jones has since become something of a forgotten writer though he was held in high regard in his day – Kunitz and Haycraft wrote in Twentieth-Century Authors that “he is one of the best known of the ‘pulp paper magazine’ story writers and one of the better men in that medium.” Another major contributor was William J. Makin, the British writer, reporter, traveler and soldier who met his death in the thick of battle during the Second World War. Starting with the December, 1932 issue, Makin contributed over fifty stories to Blue Book. Most fell into one of three series, the most popular of which featured the “Red Wolf,” a Lawrence of Arabia type character operating in North Africa.Another featured

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42 | Blue Book Isaac Heron, a gypsy detective, and Jonathan Lowe was the lead in a series of unusual mystery stories. Makin’s presence always guaranteed sales and he developed a strong cult following. Other popular contributors included Beatrice Grimshaw, well known for her South Sea romantic adventures, George Surdez,Achmed Abdullah, Donald Barr Chidsey,Arch Whitehouse, Fulton T. Grant, Jacland Marmur, Leland Jamieson and many other reliable and capable writers who produced their own sophisticated brands of mystery and intrigue. There are also the occasional surprise contributions by Michael Arlen, Rafael Sabatini (with a story of the French Revolution), Dornford Yates (“When the Devil Drives,” serialized July-October 1940), Andre Maurois, Georges Simenon, Gelett Burgess, Irvin S. Cobb, and Manuel Komroff. The thirties was without doubt Blue Book’s Golden Age. It was a period that saw some of the best adventure fiction in the pulps published with a seal of approval that assured readers of its quality and entertainment value. Blue Book took over from Adventure as the magazine that provided the most escapism and excitement to readers, making it a legend amongst not just pulps but also all magazines. In September, 1941 Blue Book again converted to the large flat format. Factors had changed in the previous nine years.The pulps had passed their heyday with many falling by the wayside. Many more would fall victim to the Second World War. The future seemed to lay in the large format slick magazine and some publishers were converting their printing requirements to follow that trend. When Red Book turned large size, Blue Book followed, but whereas Red Book targeted the women’s market, Blue Book promised “Stories of Adventure for Men, by Men.” The number of non-fiction features increased, especially after the war, when censorship allowed for regular accounts of wartime activities, and there was a greater emphasis on true adventures and experiences. Throughout the 1940s, Blue Book grew in sophistication. Most of its regular authors

PG 42, Top to Bot – TITTER (© Titter Inc.); BEAUTY PARADE, (© Beauty Parade); PG 43, L to R, Top to Bot – HOT DOG, October 1931 (© respective copyright holder); FRENCH STORIES, 1935 (© French Stories); FILM FUN, Aug. 1936 (© Dell Publications); REAL BOUDOIR TALES, V1#22, 1935 (© Burnham Company); Bot tier: PEP STORIES, vol. 6, #8, Aug. 1936 (D. M. Publishing Company); SILK STOCKING, May 1936 (© respective copyright holder); NEW YORK NIGHTS V3#4, 1936 (© H. M. Publishing Co.); TATTLE TALES, vol. 5, #5, 1937 (© Detinuer Publishing Company).

remained, joined now by Nelson Bond, who produced many humorous fantasies, Frank Brandon and Wayne D. Overholser, authors of powerful westerns, John D. MacDonald, who contributed both mysteries and science fiction, C.T. Stoneham, renowned for his animal stories, Robert A. Heinlein, MacKinlay Kantor, Harold Lamb, William P. McGivern, Robert S. Carr; the line-up continued to be impressive. One unusual item in the October, 1945 issue was “Paradise Crater” by Philip Wylie, about the development of the nuclear bomb by the Nazis.Wylie had completed this story some months before the first atomic bomb was detonated.When he submitted it, Kennicott thought he should clear it with the authorities and CIA agents promptly descended on Wylie, placing him under house arrest.After a few checks Wylie was cleared but Kennicott felt it wise to keep the story under wraps until after the war. In 1949, a new President at McCall’s, Phillips Wyman, set in motion a series of changes to increase the circulation of an ailing Red Book. By the early 1950s it had become a magazine for young women. The consequence of this was to push Blue Book further down the road of the mens’ magazines. A few changes were evident during the final months of Kennicott’s tenure, but he was clearly not happy and he retired at the end of 1951, after 42 years of editorial responsibility. The changes were instigated by his successor Maxwell Hamilton, and such cover blurbs as “Beware of Sex Racketeers” were a sign of the times. Even so, Hamilton did not push it all the way. Although the ratio of non-fiction to fiction was reversed there still remained a quantity of strong stories with authors including Robert Bloch, Richard Deming, William Sambrot, and

even TV personality Steve Allen.There were also such intriguing items as “Sherlock Holmes – Dead or Alive?” by Will Oursler (May 1953), “Race With Death” (August 1953), an article by famed musician Guy Lombardo on his passion for speedboats, and C.S. Forester’s uncharacteristic fantasy, “Macnamara’s Exhilarating Elixir” (October 1954). However, the prize of these later years is the issue for May 1954 that contains not only a story by P.G.Wodehouse, “The Ordeal of Bingo Little,” but also the first publication of Ian Fleming’s James Bond novel Live and Let Die. Writers of note continued to appear – Evan Hunter, Donald Hamilton, Robert Sheckley,Victor Canning, and the March, 1956 issue, which had a feature on the coming Space Age, ran Frank M. Robinson’s novel The Power. But the writing was on the wall. Sales had been falling with the inevitable competition of television and the more sensational men’s magazines, going down the road that even new editor Andre Fontaine,previously at Collier’s, would not go. Publisher Phillip Wyman died in 1955, and new publisher Wade Nichols suspended Blue Book with the May, 1956 issue. It seems there may have been some deliberation about reviving it, but in the end the title was sold to H.S. Publications, who relaunched it in October, 1960. Now called Bluebook for Men, it was unashamedly an all-action men’s “sweat” magazine. Surprisingly, its first editor was the same Maxwell Hamilton who had taken over from Kennicott, and his few issues tried to replicate the old Blue Book, but he soon handed the magazine over to a quick succession of editors and its contents grew increasingly sleazy and violent.This later incarnation, which continued until 1975, is a different magazine and certainly one to

Great Depression Risqué |

43

44 | Blue Book avoid rather than sully the memory of the original Blue Book. Readers who enjoyed such contents as “Lust Orgies of Frustrated Wives” or “Inside the Reds’ 42 Mile Sin Strip” would probably not have appreciated or even been aware of the glories of the original magazine. The original Blue Book had run for a total of 613 issues and remains in the memory of all pulpsters as the quality pulp by which all others were measured.— MA

bOING bOING The zeitgeist of the 1980s through 1990s was full of people attempting to meld computers, technology, sex, literature, and art.The science fiction subgenre cyberpunk was one offshoot of this mating, and it served as the hot core of many new magazines. Mondo 2000, Black Ice (from England), N6, Nonstop, SF Eye, Future Sex, and bOING bOING were all ‘zines that shared much of the same mindset, and some of the same writers. In 1988, Mark Frauenfelder and his then-girlfriend (now wife) Carla Sinclair, began putting together a fanzine full of fun technology, freaky comics, Silicon Alley gutter-curb culture, cyberscience fiction culture, and all manner of posthuman irreverent things. Frauenfelder, while working as a mechanical engineer, had discovered Factsheet 5, a review for do-it-yourself magazines, and was inspired to create his own zine. He used a dot matrix printer and the copier at his office to publish the first 32-page issue of bOING bOING, which included an interview with Robert Anton Wilson, a piece on brain machines by Sinclair, and comics by Frauenfelder.The couple sent copies to Factsheet 5, and the review there brought the ‘zine to the attention of Ubiquity Distributors in New York City.Soon Fine Print and Dessert Moon distributors, who were all looking to get into the zine boom of the early 1990s, picked it up. Paul Di Filippo's “Ribofunk”ran in the second issue, along with work by Gareth Branwyn who joined the editorial staff. By the fifth issue, the self-

styled “neurozine”began running color covers,and carried ever-changing mottos: “The perpetual novelty brain jack” or “The brain mutator for higher primates.” It didn’t take long for bOING bOING to find its audience (a group made up of alternative comics fans, first generation cyberpunks, and computer geeks), and the magazine was soon selling over ten thousand copies an issue,even though it is quite probable that none of its readers could describe the magazine to non-readers. A sort of editorial/manifesto appeared in the eighth issue: “How can our paranoid one-maze monkey brains integrate new structures and patterns? Where is the hard reset button on our nervous systems that’ll allow us to flavor our thinking with new epistemological spices? One of bOING bOING’s purposes is to explore metanoia (the ability to simultaneously incorporate multiple tunnel realities) and discover some of the countless ways to achieve this fun state.” bOING bOING was put together by geeks for geeks. Frauenfelder was also the magazine’s main illustrator, and utilized a cartoony style that appeared cribbed from the spare 50s television cartoons of Gene Deitch.The writers included a mulligan stew of science fiction authors and techheads like Bruce Sterling, Lewis Shiner, Richard Kadrey, John Shirley, Charles Platt, and Rudy Rucker. Circulation reached 17,500 by the 16th issue, but the bankruptcy of Fine Print Distributors left Frauenfelder and Sinclair in the hole for $30,000. The distribution aspect had always been on shaky ground and when another distributor collapsed Frauenfelder and Sinclair attempted to sell the magazine directly to readers with mixed results. In the magazine’s last year, the couple were working on books and internet projects that would eventually replace bOING bOING. Frauenfelder was an editor at Wired from 1993-1998 and founding editor of Wired online. bOING bOING was a website for a while, before turning into the popular web blog it is today. In an interview, Sinclair said, “bOING bOING always comes back.” — LO [see Future Sex and SF Eye]

Captain Billy’s Whiz Bang |

BRAIN POWER see Physical Culture

C CAPTAIN BILLY’S WHIZ BANG Before Playboy (1953) there was Esquire (1933), before Esquire there was Captain Billy’s Whiz Bang (1919). Whiz Bang was one of the more popular lowbrow men’s publications, originally geared to solders, that came out after World War I, indeed the publisher and editor of the magazine, Wilford

Hamilton “Captain Billy” Fawcett, kept a box in every issue containing the following copy: “This magazine is edited by a Spanish-American and World War veteran and is dedicated to the Fighting Forces of the United States and Canada.”The magazine began as a mimeographed sheet filled of innuendos based jokes and titillating “news items” meant to amuse disabled servicemen in veterans’ hospitals. A typical example ran along the lines of:“According to George Spelvin of the New York Press, a Bronx woman, crouched under a tree with a golf club upraised, suffered a curious accident. A bolt of lighting struck the tree, ran down the golf club and tore off the woman’s silk underwear without so much as singeing her rainsoaked outer garments. George mentioned the phenomenon in his paper that it might be clipped out and used by thoughtless ladies as an alibi.” As the Captain Billy’s Whiz Bang story goes,

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44, L to R, Top to Bot – MONDO 2000, #6, 1992 (© Fun City Megamedia); bOING bOING, #6 (©bOING bOING); bOING bOING, #10 (© bOING bOING); NONSTOP MAGAZINE, #3, 1995 (© Nonstop Magazine); PG 45, Bot Band, L to R – SMOKEHOUSE MONTHLY, Aug. 1932 (© Fawcett Publications); CAPT. BILLY’S WHIZBANG, De. 1929 (©Fawcett Publications); TRUE CONFESSIONS, Dec. 1932 (© Fawcett Publications).

Fawcett ran away from home at the age of 16 to join the Army, and found himself in the Philippines fighting the Spanish-American War. He had advanced to the rank of captain by World War I. In that war he found himself working for the Army publication Stars and Stripes. After the war, he became a police reporter for the Minneapolis Journal. Home from the war, Fawcett borrowed a typewriter and half for amusement, half with a vague hope of profit, began Whiz Bang.The title was inspired by the World War I sound of bombs exploding over the battlefield trenches. His efforts

were instantly popular. With the backing of a small printer, he ordered 5,000 copies of the first issue because the printing cost seemed low when compared to the expense of printing a few hundred. After giving copies to wounded veterans and to his friends, he shipped the surplus to hotel newsstands. Almost overnight, ex-soldiers, salesman, sporting men, bellhops, and curious schoolboys started to buy his bawdy cartoon and joke magazine.The amazing sales of Whiz Bang became the launching pad for a vast publishing empire. Whiz Bang never carried advertising, but by

FAWCETT PUBLICATIONS

46 | Captain Billy’s Whiz Bang 1923 it reached a circulation of 425,000 with $500,000 in annual profits, although this figure dropped to about 150,000 at the beginning of the Great Depression. Editorially, Whiz Bang was built around the rousing escapades and shady epigrams of the characters of “Whiz Bang Farm” (supposedly at Robbinsdale, suburb of Minneapolis): Gus, the hired man; Olaf; Deacon Callahan; his daughter Lizzie (whose virtue was always being designed upon); and Pedro, the Whiz Bang bull. (Rejection slips to authors explained, “Pedro, the Whiz Bang bull, didn’t like this one.”) The magazine was a collection of frankly bawdy jokes, tame drawings, and double-entendres that depended upon the reader’s sexual knowledge for a laugh. While Whiz Bang was never barred from the mails, occasional issues were held up until they were made passable and there were sporadic brushes with local authorities over its sale. In its pages,“hell” appears as “h—,” or “heck;” language in Whiz Bang was really quite decorous. The magazine reflected an uncertain mixture of prewar standards with post-war behavior. With the rising readership of Captain Billy’s Whiz Bang, Fawcett racked up more sales with Whiz Bang annuals, and in 1926 he launched a similar publication, Smokehouse Monthly.The popularity of Whiz Bang peaked during the 1920s. Circulation slowed as readers graduated to the more sophisticated humor of magazine like the NewYorker and later Ballyhoo.A price reduction to 15 cents, somewhat raunchier jokes, and a brief experiment with nudity enabled the magazine to survive until 1932. With the money earned in the first few years, Fawcett launched a largely successful series of publishing ventures, assisted by his brothers Roscoe and Harvey. The first, True Confessions, a copycat of Macfadden’s True Story, used actual confessions of caught criminals and other figures in the news, but later turned to the usual anonymous bad girl narrative. In practice all of Fawcett’s magazines were imitations: Modern Mechanics (1928) had to changed its name to Mechanics Illustrated when Popular Mechanics objected. Ballyhoo

PG 46, Top to Bot – CRIME CONFESSIONS, July 1957 (© Skye Magazines); 3-D MONSTERS, #1 (© respective copyright holder); PG 46-47, Bot Band, L to R – CASTLE OF FRANKENSTEIN, #1, 1962 (© Gothic Castle Publications); WORLD FAMOUS CREATURES, #2 (© respective copyright holder); MONSTER PARADE, #1, 1958 (© respective copyright holder); CASTLE OF FRANKENSTEIN, #11, 1966 (© Gothic Castle Publications).

gave Fawcett the idea to do Hooey, and Spot was a close imitation of Life. Other Fawcett titles over the decade included Battle Stories, Cavalier, Daring Detective, Dynamic Detective, Motion Picture, Movie Story, Rudder, Screen Secrets, Secrets,Triple-X Western, and True. The illustrator, Norman Saunders, became a Fawcett staffer in 1927. One of his earliest covers was for the August 1929 issue of Modern Mechanics and Inventions. Saunders would go on to better fame as a pulp cover illustrator. Fawcett Publications saw a huge growth during the early 1930s, and relocated its offices to both New York City and Greenwich, Connecticut. Wilford Fawcett slowly brought his sons into the business as boys by having them peddled copy of Whiz Bang around Minneapolis. Fawcett’s sons continued the expansion of the company after their father’s death on February 7, 1940.That same year, the company launched Fawcett Comics, the first of many diversifications it would make in its history The paper shortages of World War II forced Fawcett to fold 49 magazines, keeping only fourteen going. Woman’s Day, added to the line-up in 1948, realized a circulation of 6,500,000 by 1965. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Fawcett Publications shifted its focus to paperback newsstand distribution, most notably distributing New American Library’s Mentor and Signet

paperbacks, as well as their own Fawcett paperbacks, Gold Medal. Sales soared as they launched the careers of such writers as John D. MacDonald and Kurt Vonnegut. But, surprisingly they missed the boat in the booming men’s magazine marketplace, though they did put out a tame player in that field named Adam in 1950 that died quickly. Some year later Knight Publication would go on to do much better with the Adam title. Fawcett created a division,Whitestone Publications, in the 1950s for exploitative scandal magazines Cuckoo,

Castle of Frankenstein | Sh-h-h-h, Cockeyed, and Exposed. Although Captain Billy’s Whiz Bang was often derided and criticized, the rather scruffy acorn sprouted in various directions and grew into a sturdy corporate oak. Profits from Whiz Bang subsidized True Confessions, Secrets, Battle Stories, and many other magazines. Publication of the Mickey Spillane novels created a firm financial base that was strengthened by the success of John D. MacDonald’s novels and Charles Schulz's Peanuts series, which the company began soon after the strip’s debut. For a time Fawcett Publications was one of the most successful publishers in the country, and it all started with a few bawdy, low-brow, handprinted sheets.—ETK [see Adam]

CAPTAIN SATAN see Battle Birds CASTLE OF FRANKENSTEIN Calvin Thomas Beck Forrest J. Ackerman (4FJ) and James Warren invented the monster/horror film magazine field when the first issue of Famous Monsters of Filmland appeared on newsstands in February, 1958.Ackerman was an agent and sometime author who had done some writing for Warren’s men’s magazine After Hours.With the failure of After Hours following an obscenity bust,Warren was casting around for other publishing ideas when Ackerman tried

to sell him on the idea of a science fiction magazine called Sci-Fi. Warren had no real affinity for SF, but liked another idea that Ackerman had mentioned almost as an afterthought. Ackerman showed Warren an issue of the French language film magazine Cinéma 57, sub-titled Le Fantastique. Cinéma 57 was a special issue given over to American horror films. Ackerman told Warren that he could easily put together a similar magazine using material in his personal collection of thousands of motion picture stills from fantastic movies going all the way back to the silent film era. Before this, any kind of material on monster movies in American magazines was limited to isolated write-ups such as the one in the March, 1955 issue of Vue — America’s Photo Digest, a three-page article about “Japan’s Secret Weapon”

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showing stills from a new Japanese movie titled Gojira. Vue was a tame men’s magazine that kept most of its pin-up girls in bathing suits. Gojira was renamed Godzilla when it reached America. Warren visited 4FJ in Los Angeles to begin work on a magazine he called Wonderama, and found that, if anything, 4FJ had been modest as to the Xanadu extent of his collection. (Warren had traveled from Philadelphia to Las Vegas by bus, and had taken a plane from there to L.A. to impress Ackerman at the airport.) Bookshelves filled with all things related to science fiction in particular, and to fantastic movies in general lined every wall in Ackerman’s two-story Spanish style home. At this time Ackerman referred to himself as a “professional science fictionist.”With the first issue of Famous Monsters of Filmland (a title change

EARLY MOVIE MONSTERS PUBLICATIONS

48 | Castle of Frankenstein imposed by the distributor), Ackerman and Warren established the look, mode and manner for all film monster magazines that followed. The title was geared to the mindset of a typical 1950s tenyear old boy, with contents that included “Every Monster has a Ghoul Friend” and “We Monsters have Just Begun to Fright.” Calvin T. Beck, like Forrest J.Ackerman, was a hardcore science fiction fan. Also like Ackerman, Beck was a fan of fantastic films. Both had put together mimeograph science fiction fanzines while growing up. During the 1950s, Calvin Beck worked in various capacities for Science Fiction Quarterly, Joe Weider’s True Weird, and Spaceways. Beck approached Kable News, the distributor of Famous Monsters, in late 1958, with his own idea for a film magazine titled Screen Wonders. Kable was not interested (this was before the distributor had

seen the sales report for Famous Monsters — which they essentially viewed as a one-shot — and found that most of the print-run of 150,000 had sold). Beck found a regional distributor, Acme News Company, that would pay for the printing of a scaled-back magazine and he produced the first issue of The Journal of Frankenstein very much like a fanzine. The cover layout was amateurish, utilizing two colors, and the masthead a rip-off of the logotype used for Dick Briefer’s Frankenstein comic book from a few years earlier. Some of the film photos were appropriated directly from issues of the movie magazine Sight & Sound. Despite the cheap look and sloppy layout, Beck’s passion for films permeated the magazine. In a later interview Calvin said that he hoped to produce a fanzine on a professional level. By the early 1960s, Frankenstein and Dracula

had replaced Roy Rogers and Hopalong Cassidy as the pre-eminent pop entertainment for American kids. From the start, Beck had not been happy with Acme’s parsimony, but they owned the distribution rights to the magazine called Journal of Frankenstein. Kable was receptive to more monster magazines after seeing the success of Famous Monsters. A title change was necessary and Castle of Frankenstein #1 appeared on newsstands in November, 1961 listing Charles Foster Kane (Citizen Kane) as publisher and Victor Frankenstein III as the editor. Fearing legal action from Acme, Beck’s own name did not appear in his magazine until issue number 8, along with Helen Beck as the associate publisher. She was Calvin’s mother. To better understand Calvin Beck one, had to understand his odd relationship with his mother. She was a constant presence in his life.Anywhere

that Calvin went, his mother would tag along. There are accounts of her monitoring college classes with Calvin. She would be at his side at sf conventions and at parties given by Calvin’s fan friends. She completely dominated his life – or perhaps he was too deferential to tell her he was a grown man and didn’t need her constantly following him around. Visitors to the Beck home in North Bergen, N.J., reported that Helen Beck could be heard screeching at Calvin in Greek from another room in the house. She was also capable of breaking up any of Calvin’s friendships that she thought were becoming too close, or if she just felt as if she was being cut out of the picture. If it weren’t for his mother, Calvin might have been more successful socially. Most people that met him said he could be good company, funny and insightful.

ROBERT HARRISON PUBLICATIONS

Castle of Frankenstein |

In science fiction fandom circles it was rumored that Robert Bloch had written his novel Psycho using a composite of Ed Gein and Calvin Beck for the character of Norman Bates. Supporting this rumor are the known facts about the notorious Gein, which show little information on Gein’s relationship with his mother.The Norman Bates from the novel also resembled Calvin: pale and overweight, with black hair and a mustache, and wearing glasses. Even before Journal of Frankenstein and Castle of Frankenstein came out, there had already been a crowd of imitators of Famous Monsters: World Famous Creatures, Monster Parade, and Monsters and Things. 4FJ later wrote, with some pride (and when the crowd had grown into a multitude), that FM – and only FM – was the first and best. This comment would lead to a paper feud between Beck and 4FJ when Beck stated in print that there had been many one-shot film monster

themed periodicals on American newsstands before FM. 4FJ challenged Beck to back up his statement with proof of these magazines. Beck never backed down nor presented evidence for his assertion, and 4FJ never forgave Beck for this. An English magazine, Screen Chills, may have appeared before FM, but this hardly fits the particulars of Beck’s argument for numerous titles. The first few issues of CoF were mostly edited, designed, and written by Larry Ivie and Ken Beale. On CoF #3, Bhob Stewart was listed as art editor and would soon be doing most of the editorial heavy lifting, working at Beck’s home in Northern New Jersey. In 1961, Bhob was booking short films into the Charles Theater, an art cinema, on New York’s Lower East Side. If Calvin was the heart of CoF, then Bhob became the defacto soul of the magazine over the next four years, a period considered by many to be the magazine’s glory days. Bhob Stewart (the unusu-

al spelling was to avoid confusion with another Bob Stewart in sf fandom) had originally come to New York from Texas hoping to get a job with James Warren.When this didn’t pan out he began working for TV Guide. After the snub by Warren, Stewart had approached Beck, but it took a year before he was asked to help with CoF. Stewart soon began inserting more comics and material on sf fandom, including “Cofanaddicts” a feature on fanzines (copying a Famous Monsters feature on monster fanzines in their 27th issue).As a fan of American and European new wave directors and films, Stewart brought some of this ethos into the CoF mix. Calvin and Bhob had different tastes in film, but Beck was willing to let Bhob, who worked

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cheap, have his way. Bhob always said that he was producing a magazine for adults, and didn’t really care about payment. He stopped working on CoF after an incident with Calvin’s mother, where she physically threatened him. The alphabetical capsule reviews “Frankenstein Movie Guild,” which began in issue #6, managed to cover a wide range of films. Written by Joe Dante, Jr., and Bhob Stewart, the movie guild ran the gamut from Bat Fink & Boo Boo to Sange de Pear. Monster and horror films were never the complete focus of Castle of Frankenstein.The magazine gave a review, and special recommendation, to SF artist Ed Emshwiller’s avant-garde film classic Relativity — a film that had first appeared at science fiction conventions before going on to

PG 48, Bot Band, L to R – EYEFUL, vol. 4, #6 (© Eyeful, Inc.); WINK, Feb. 1955 (© Wink, Inc.); TITTER, vol. 1, #1, 1943 (Titter, Inc.); PG 49, Top – interior spread from PEOPLE TODAY, Oct. 21, 1953, showing Bettie Page modeling (© Hillman Publications).

50 | Castle of Frankenstein become an avant garde icon. CoF never matched the look of Famous Monsters, which had better design, typographer, and layout by Harry Chester. Ultimately, CoF’s strength was its eclectic coverage of “B” and genre films, and its point of view. One of Beck’s “Headitorials” made angry reference to the Vietnam War, going as far as reprinting the famous photo of the Vietnamese girl running naked down a road after being burned by napalm with the headline:“Award for Best Horror Picture of 1972.” Certainly the stills from the European version of The Brides of Fu Manchu exhibiting the ruthless villain’s bare-breasted concubines were a first for a monster magazine. Later, a semi-nude “Slaymate of the Month” photo kept some of the teenage readers’ hormones agitated. After fifteen years of an intermittent publishing schedule, the last issue was #25 in June, 1975. The magazine featured art by the horror and fantasy artists Hannes Bok and Virgil Finlay, sf artist Jack Gaughan, and comic book artists like James Steranko and Wally Wood.When not using photos, cover paintings were done by Larry Ivie, Russ Jones, Robert Adragna, Lee Wanagiel, Marcus Boas, Frank Brunner, Maelo Cintron, Tom Maher, and Ken Kelly. Writers included William K. Everson, Richard Lupoff, Ramsey Campbell, Lin Carter, and Bill Mantlo. Like Famous Monsters, Castle of Frankenstein would influence many later newsstand magazines: Video Watchdog, Shock Cinema, Scary Monsters, Magick Theatre, Psychotronic Video, and Filmfax.—LO [see Acme News Company, Famous Monsters of Filmland]

CHOPPERS MAGAZINE Choppers Magazine, the first custom bike magazine, came to be when Ed “Big Daddy” Roth was riding his hog one day and a street legal V8 shot by him on the road. He decided then and there to build his own V8 cruiser bike.At this point he realized that there was little information available on “chopping”(modifying) motorbikes.The first issue of CM, in 1969, featured Roth riding his custom

V8 trike on the cover. Roth was an iconic figure in the west coast hot rod scene of the 1960s, both as a hot rod customizer and a cartoonist whocreated and drew the character Rat Fink.Choppers Magazine included 6 to 10 feature bikes in each issue and articles on the technical aspects of customizing a Chopper. Monthly departments included “Jammin Big Daddy Speaks” (Ed Roth),“Wheelers in Action,” and “Chopped Ham.” In the mid 1960s Pete Millar published a series of comic magazines such as Big Daddy Roth that featured Rat Fink and other comic strips by Roth.—LO

CINEMAGIC see Super-8 Filmmaker CONFIDENTIAL Confidential may have been a scandal rag that reported on dysfunctional Hollywood stars, athletes, and politicians, but it was also a family business like all Robert Harrison publications.When he launched Beauty Parade, his first magazine, in 1941, his sisters, niece, and nephew were there with cash and editorial assistance. Within a few years Wink, Whisper, Titter, Eyeful, and Flirt were added to the lineup and Harrison became a publishing mogul. In the beginning Harrison used pictures of models shot in his apartment, and the playboy publisher appeared in quite a few photo spreads as a male catalyst to the action, which could include spanking a scantily-dressed model. By the early 1950s sales were down on all of the girlie publications. Harrison got the idea for Confidential in 1952 when he noticed the popularity of the Kefauver Senate hearings on organized crime; people were glued to their TVs and newspapers. Throughout its history, Confidential would carry few stories on organized crime participants. Harrison once said that the mob was behind magazine distribution and it would be suicidal, business-wise, to go that route. Instead he found plenty of good copy in scandal-ridden

Crawdaddy | Hollywood and set up his niece, Marjorie Meade, and her husband Fred, in Los Angeles as Hollywood Research, Inc. They dug up dirt on stars using informants, tipsters, and detectives. Harrison was smart enough to stay in New York City, hire lawyers to fact check everything, and leave details to his trusted niece, who as a teenager had given him $400 to help him start Beauty Parade. Soon enough Confidential hit on the themes that would carry it to the high point of a five million plus circulation: Homosexual exposés, Red bashing, Movieland bad boys and girls, and black/white romances. It is a myth that lawsuits were a constant business expense at Confidential. Most injured parties had little interest in details of a scandal coming out in a courtroom. If anything, Confidential published cleaned up versions of scandals. The Hollywood establishment finally caught up with Harrison in a 1958 show trial and he was forced to sell Confidential. Under a new owner, the magazine turned to stories on voodoo practices, weight reducing pills, and Fidel Castro. Harrison walked away a rich man, never imagining that his magazine would eventually come to signify the sinister underbelly of 1950s Los Angeles. Some of the better Confidential imitators include: Hush Hush, Inside Story, Rave, The Lowdown, Top Secret, and Uncensored. —JH [see Whisper]

COVEN 13 Coven 13 was a digest size supernatural horror fiction magazine that attempted to cater to the perceived audience for late 1960s supernatural horror movies like Rosemary’s Baby, and the rise of interest in the occult, paganism, and witchcraft. The first issue was a weak effort in all areas except for the cover and interior art by William Stout.

Later issues had stories by Robert E. Howard, Ron Goulart, and Harlan Ellison (“Rock God,” a story originally written around a Frank Frazetta cover painting for Creepy), but these stories were not much of an improvement. Coven 13 lasted four issues when, by most accounts, its distributor Kable pulled the plug on the magazine due to poor sales. Coven 13 was later revived as Witchcraft And Sorcery, a wretched imitator of Weird Tales.— LO

CRACKED MAGAZINE see Web Detective CRAWDADDY Crawdaddy! began at Swarthmore College in 1966, as a project of student Paul Williams. Williams, a science fiction fan and rock music lover, wrote his comments and mimeographed them, distributing the copies to interested friends by hand. In rapid order those single sheets turned into a stapled fanzine (amateur publication) selling for 25 cents a copy. It quickly metamorphosed into Crawdaddy!, the first United States magazine of rock music criticism to gain newsstand distribution. In the first issue (February 7, 1966),Williams wrote,“You are looking at the first issue of a magazine of rock and roll criticism. Crawdaddy! will feature neither pin-ups nor news-briefs; the specialty of this magazine is intelligent writing about pop music....” The pioneer of rock journalism, Crawdaddy! was home to many fledgling writers of the music scene. Williams resigned from the magazine in late 1968, but it continued publication until 1969 when the title was suspended for a while.When

PG 50, L to R – CAPTAIN SATAN, Apr. 1938 (© Popular Publications); CARNIVAL, Nov. 1955 (© Hillman Publications); COVEN 13, Mar 1970 (© respective copyright holder); CONFIDENTIAL, Jan. 1956 (© Confidential Inc.); PG 51 – CRIME CONFESSIONS, #1, May 1939 (© Hillman Publications).

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52 | Crawdaddy PG 52 – CRACKED, #8, 1958 (© All-American); PG 52 - 53, Bot Band L to R – TERROR TALES, Nov. 1940 (© Popular Publications); DIME MYSTERY MAGAZINE, July, 1937 (© Popular Publications); HORROR STORIES, Sept. 1937 (© Popular Publications); DIME MYSTERY MAGAZINE, Oct. 1938 (© Popular Publications).

it returned without its exclamation point, in 1970, Peter Knobler was editor and Greg Mitchell was senior editor. It was during this period that Crawdaddy moved into its own, featuring the biggest-name professionals in the business at the time, including critics and well-known shock writers of the period. However, when sales began to decline in 1979, the name of the magazine was changed to Feature and it ran with that title for three issues before closing down. In 1993, Paul Williams reclaimed the title and published 28 issues before finally closing Crawdaddy down as a print magazine in 2003. In 2007, with Paul Williams as a consulting contributor, Crawdaddy was revived yet again as a weekly online magazine. Jim Linwood adds, “Paul Williams named the magazine after the Crawdaddy Club based at the Station Hotel, Richmond, where the Stones and others performed in the early 1960s. In the 1970s the Station Hotel became The Bull and Bush pub that was recently gutted to create Edwards, an unpopular pub with aggressive bouncers.”—JH

CRACKED see Web Detective CREEM Publisher Barry Kramer and founding Editor Tony Reay started the Detroitbased Creem in March, 1969. Much con-

fusion has been generated concerning the roots of this publication. It began as many magazines of that era and genre did, by focusing on local issues and people, but Creem magazine’s involvement with Michigan was short-lived. Publisher Kramer abandoned the original concept immediately and moved Creem directly toward national distribution, and especially toward lucrative advertising dollars. Creem survived initially from newsstand sales, and probably could have continued to do so by remaining a regional publication.

Creem | As it matured, Creem began to cover pop music as a product in the consumer marketplace. Due to its geographic location, a certain irreverent, deprecatory tone permeated the magazine.At first it simply identified with the counterculture as a social movement. Quickly, however, Creem began criticizing and satirizing the counterculture’s inability to separate itself entirely from consumer life. This self-conscious analysis, often full of irony, did not mean the magazine was abandoning the idea of transforming American society. Rather, Creem sought to pursue social transformation via another route — by using humor as a tool to help readers understand their own predicament, and their potential power, as individuals embedded in a mass culture. Its location also encouraged it to be among the

first national publications to cover local artists Iggy Pop, Alice Cooper, Bob Seger, Ted Nugent, and Parliament-Funkadelic, and midwesterners such as Cheap Trick and The Raspberries in great depth. Creem picked up on the punk rock and New Wave movements early on, years before magazines like Rolling Stone finally woke up. Creem coined the term “punk rock” in 1971. It gave massive exposure to artists like Lou Reed, Bowie, and the New York Dolls years before the mainstream press. In the hotbed of social and musical upheaval of the time, publisher Kramer sought to make Creem the crème de la crème of rock criticism. The magazine laid waste to the stifling conventions of rock journalism with rabid reportage on such chest-pounding backyard bad boys as MC5, Amboy Dukes, Grand Funk Railroad, Mitch

Ryder, and the Detroit Wheels; as well as the more androgynous offerings of imports like Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones, and David Bowie. Creem employed a coterie of writers of broad literary and cultural scope, including Robert Christgau, Dave Marsh, Patti Smith, Cameron Crowe, and of course, the muddy-water streamof-consciousness of the late Lester Bangs. During the heyday of the Beatles’ “Apple” business in the late 1960s, their office building, John Lennon’s piano, and an entire line of clothing were designed and hand-painted by a quartet of Dutch folk who had been befriended by Paul and John. Their swirling rainbows of colors, moons, stars, and planets, were de rigueur in the late 1960s. Mercury Records in Chicago released an album by this well-connected but musically

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inept foursome. It was titled, after the name that they had chosen for themselves,“The Fool.”Their sound was representative of the era and Creem’s first cover pictured the group. An accompanying article was largely filled with quotes from their own press release and re-used the cover graphic simply to fill the space above the article. R. Crumb created the famous “Boy Howdy” milk-bottle logo for Creem when he needed money for a clap shot. Kramer paid $50 for the cover drawing, and fought hard to reduce the sum to $30. Zap comix were just beginning to get national distribution in head shops across the country and R. Crumb had just done the Janis Joplin/Big Brother record cover for Columbia. Kramer paid the money for the use of Crumb’s name, and was not impressed with the results that

POPULAR PUBLICATIONS

54 | Creem would go on to become a nationally recognized icon of the generation. The magazine moved its base of operations to New York City and then to Los Angeles shortly before its demise. Bill Holdship and J. Kordosh were both involved in Creem’s move to Los Angeles after it was purchased by Arnold Levitt. At its demise in 1988, writers Steve Peters and David Sprague were the last men standing of the original group from the magazine’s inception in 1969. Robert Matheu, a regular Creem photographer since 1978, and his business partner Ken Kulpa, head up the current online resurrection attempt with a talented new staff that includes editor-inchief Brian J. Bowe and veteran Creem alumnus Jeffrey Morgan, who serves as the Canadian editor. Beyond the wildest expectations of the publisher, Creem became a national locus for individuality and irreverence, and a training ground for some of the most expressive music writing of the era.The combined efforts of the talented staff that produced Creem are a testament to an idea that a few pals could put out a magazine that would go on to national success and became a cultural icon for an age gone by.—AW

CRIME CONFESSIONS, CRIME DETECTIVE see Uncensored Detective CRIME DOES NOT PAY see Lunatickle

D DETECTIVE ACTION see Terror Tales

DELL vs. AMERICAN NEWS COMPANY An epochal event in the world of newsstand magazines was the 1957 shutdown of American News Company,after nearly a century of being the dominant distributor of periodicals in the United States.ANC had their humble beginnings in 1864 on Nassau Street, around the corner from Park Row, also referred to as Newspaper Row, the newsprint epicenter of Manhattan. They distributed dime novels and penny newssheets across the city.After the Civil War, they branched out into the publishing of postcards and the sale of tobacco and other newsstand sundries at railroad stations and hotels, through a subsidiary company, Union New Company, and grew into a virtual monopoly. In 1893, Frank Munsey cut the price of Munsey’s Magazine to a dime when most popular magazines were sold for a quarter. ANC saw this action as detrimental to its pricing control of the marketplace and refused to carry the magazine. Munsey struck back by starting his own directto-dealer wholesaling system, backed by a strong advertising campaign, and effectively broke the stranglehold that ANC held up to that time. Publishers learned a lesson from Munsey. Macfadden (True Story, Physical Culture), Hearst (Harper’s Bazaar), and Curtis (Saturday Evening Post, Ladies Home Journal) effectively distributed their own magazines and were able to get better terms from wholesalers for regions of the country they did not cover. But not every publisher was prepared to go this route as an independent distributor (ID). With the post-WWI explosion of pulp publishers, ANC began taking on many new magazine accounts — usually at terms favorable to ANC.This did not endear them to many of these publishers, who by the sheer number of titles accounted for the bulk of newsstand titles, and a few of them balked at the second class treatment they received from ANC. Street & Smith stopped doing business with ANC in the late 1920s when they were unable to get what they felt was proper accounting on the sales of their

Doc Savage | pulp magazines and shifted their titles to S.M. News Company, a coalition of publishers doing their own distribution. It was the IDs that carried most marginal pulps, “snappy” and risqué titles, racetrack tout-sheets, left and right wing periodicals, and crime magazines.These were exactly the types of magazines that usually fell into a cult category. ANC was content hawking their familyoriented fare and pulps with mass-market appeal. Things started to unravel for ANC in 1954, when Time/Life Publishing canceled its contract and pulled all their titles from the distributor. A month later Look and Newsweek left. Forbes magazine reported that customers were “fed up with [the] slipshod and arrogant ways” of ANC. In 1955, Henry Garfinkle and an association of 200 investors paid $8 million for ANC. Garfinkle was now the principal owner and new president of the company. Before this Garfinkle had business connections with Sam Newhouse, the newspaper media head. Garfinkle gain control of ANC with the help of Lawyer Roy Cohn (Senator Joe McCarthy legal counsel, and adviser to the Newhouse media empire). Throughout the 1950s there had been a general decline in magazine sales and ANC looked to generate profits by sometimes using heavy-handed tactics. ANC, through Union News Company, would routinely ask for special payments from some of their smaller publishers (calling them “display promotional allowances”) and threatened to discontinue delivery of a publication if a publisher refused. Since UNC also owned newsstands, publishers were uneasy about this top-to-bottom control of distribution, wholesale, and retail outlets. At the beginning of 1957, ANC started notifying magazines, like The New Republic, that it would no longer handle titles not edited for mass audiences. In April of that year, Dell Publishing

Company, ANC’s largest client, gave the distributor notice that it was canceling its contract and would distribute its own publications. A month later Dell filed an anti-trust lawsuit against ANC charging restraint of trade.This set off a rush to the lifeboats by other mass-market magazines who now saw ANC as a sinking ship; The New Yorker, Vogue, and Look signed with Curtis Circulation, Ziff-Davis Publications left for Macfadden Circulation.The Dell lawsuit proved to be the last straw. ANC also had to face the collapsed of five mass-circulation family magazines, including Collier’s, during the previous two years, but more telling was the Department of Justice’s office in New York had been looking into ANC’s business practices since 1952. Finally, in what appears to be a making-the-best-of-a-bad-situation, ANC stopped the nationwide wholesaling of periodicals altogether and in June, began cutting most of its workforce and liquidating much of the company’s physical assets; trucks, warehouses and other real estate at book values. A stripped-down ANC and UNC continued running and servicing the 1,500 newsstands that they still owned.The company also continued its “display promotional allowances” program to publishers. Indeed, in 1958 the total amount of these special payments to Union News Company amounted to $890,000 — or 17% of UNC’s $5,280,000 total magazine sales that year. In the 1960s, The Wall Street Journal printed a story outlining connections between Garfinkle and organized crime. Mystery and science fiction digests, comic books, and second-tier scandal and men’s magazines — all titles that survived primarily through newsstand sales — were hardest hit by ANC’s 1957 exit from the national newsstand marketplace. These magazines had few subscribers and

PG 54, L to R –DIME DETECTIVE MAGAZINE (© Popular Publications); DOC SAVAGE, Nov. 1938 (© Street & Smith Publications); FANTASTIC STORIES OF THE IMAGINATION, Jan. 1961 (© Ziff-Davis); TRUE WEIRD, May 1956 (© Weider Publications); PG 55, Top to Bot – CAVALIER, May 1953 (© respective copyright holder); FANTASTIC NOVELS MAGAZINE (©Popular Publications).

their limited circulations or specialized audience did not entice major advertisers. With a glut of magazines looking for newsstand delivery, IDs could now cherry-pick the titles that they wanted to take on. Publishers like Columbia Publications (Future, Original Science Fiction), Martin Goodman’s Magazine Management Company (including Atlas comics), and Weider Periodicals (Fury,True Strange) were hit hard. Columbia shut down within a few years. Goodman, always known as a high volume publisher, canceled 85% of his titles and was forced to sign a distribution deal with a competitor, DC Comics, to get a limited amount of his comic books on newsstands. Weider Periodicals retrenched to a single magazine, Muscle Builder, until their fortunes changed in the late 1960s. Many other magazines died in the mass extinction that followed ANC’s exit of the distribution business.—LO

DOC SAVAGE The startling success of Street & Smith’s Shadow Magazine in 1931 inspired that august pulp magazine publishing company to expand in the direction of a line of character-centered titles. S&S’s General Manager Henry W. Ralston had joined the firm in the days of the long-defunct Nick Carter and Buffalo Bill dime novels and sensed that the hero cycle was ripe for repeating. Since The Shadow occupied the mystery-suspense genre, Ralston believed reviving Nick Carter would admirably fill the detective niche. But for adventure readers, a new hero had to be created. Huddling with Shadow editor John L. Nanovic, Ralston evolved a scientific adventurer inspired by a soldier of fortune and author named Richard Henry Savage (1846-1903). Dick Savage became the Supreme Adventurer, Doc Savage. Ralston concocted a group of professionals to surround Savage in the manner of Robin Hood’s Merry Men. Like their leader, many were inspired by people Ralston knew. They were chemist Monk Mayfair, lawyer Ham Brooks, electrical

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ROCK expert Long Tom Roberts, archeologist Johnny Littlejohn, and civil engineer Renny Renwick. Each was considered the top man in his field, yet the genius of Doc Savage would exceed them. Finding a writer proved challenging. Most seasoned pulpsters shied away from house-owned characters, feeling they were a throwback to dime-novel drudgery. S&S reached out to an extelegrapher from Tulsa named Lester Dent. He had made a strong impression two years before with his highly imaginative debut adventure novels for Top-Notch and The Popular Magazine. Dent was given a Shadow novel to write as a test. Plans were laid to launch the first issue of Doc Savage Magazine in the fall of 1932, the traditional kick-off period for new pulp periodicals, but the worsening Depression forced a delay while the nation chose between incumbent President Herbert Hoover and Democratic challenger

Franklin D. Roosevelt. No sooner had the optimistic Roosevelt been elected, than Lester Dent was called in, and the fleshed-out concept placed before him.With his own fiction markets in turmoil, he was eager to take on the task. Dent offered a number of ideas of his own, including headquartering the new hero in a thinly disguised Empire State Building and funding him via a treasure trove of Mayan gold. Nanovic produced a treatment for the debut novel,“The Man of Bronze” Dent knocked it out in ten days flat. The first issue was rushed into print with a March, 1932 cover date. It hit newsstands only days after the President-Elect narrowly escaped an assassination attempt, and two weeks before Roosevelt closed the nation’s troubled banks. Despite a scarcity of dimes, Doc Savage nearly sold out.

Doc Savage is seen today as the forerunner of the superhero, but Dent clearly saw him as the twentieth-century incarnation of the tall tale folk hero, a descendant of Paul Bunyan and Daniel Boone. Clark Savage, Jr., was the world’s smartest, strongest, richest man. A surgeon, Doc also excelled in most other fields and professions. While the stereotypical pulp adventurer could be expected to sport a deep tan, Dent painted his interpretation of Doc as a demi-god forged out of cold metal, and possessing uncanny gold-flake eyes that seemed supernaturally animated. Dent, Nanovic, and Ralston concocted the Man of Bronze out of the singular attributes of heroes who had come before. As Dent once admitted, “I looked at what people had gone for already, so I took Sherlock Holmes with his deductive ability, Tarzan of the Apes with his towering physique, Craig Kennedy

with his scientific knowledge, and Abraham Lincoln with his Christliness. Then I rolled ‘em all into one to get — Doc Savage.” Add to that an eerie signature sound borrowed from Max Brand’s mythic Whistling Dan Barry, the golden eyes of Jack London’s Wolf Larson, and other elements borrowed from Erle Stanley Gardner’s human fly, Speed Dash, as well as a background lifted from the dime novel version of Nick Carter. Doc’s given name was derived from the top box office star of 1933, Clark Gable. All did not go smoothly at the beginning. Dent was irate at seeing the premier adventure printed under the house name of Kenneth Roberts. So was bestselling historical writer Kenneth Roberts. The opinion of Shadow radio announcer Ken Roberts was not recorded.With the second issue, the byline became Kenneth

Doc Savage | Robeson, placating everyone except Dent. Dent’s early depiction of Doc was that of a grim, two-fisted avenger in the vein of The Shadow. He killed his opponents with the righteous implacability of an avenging angel. Someone must have pointed out that as a licensed physician, Clark Savage had taken the Hippocratic oath, prohibiting him from doing harm. Out went the scenes of Doc brutally breaking necks. Anesthetic mercy bullets went into his supermachine pistols. Doc was transformed from a fierce figure of vengeance to an angel of mercy in four issues flat. The monthly grind transformed Lester Dent, an admirer of Mark Twain and Dashiell Hammett who had aspirations for the slicks, into an arresting action writer with a flair for humor and invention. The unrelenting pressure to produce led to a nervous collapse late in 1933, forcing him to abandon his other pulp markets. When S&S decided to go semi-monthly with Doc Savage, they hired Laurence Donovan as a supplementary ghost. Dent began employing ghostwriters to step up his own output. It was during this period that the series reached its most science fictional heights as Doc and his crew battled invisible men, a criminal teleporter, and discovered not one, but two, supercivilizations at the center of the earth.Taking the Christ analogy to its ultimate extreme, Dent had Doc Savage raise a dead Egyptian mummy in 1936’s “Resurrection Day.” Along the way, novels explored Doc Savage’s “crime college,” where he secretly operated on the diseased brains of captured criminals, wiping out their memories as well as all felonious tendencies before restoring them to society, the lost Mayan valley from which came his gold reserves, and his Arctic Fortress of Solitude, later to become the property of Superman.

Back-of-the-book short stories were the work of moonlighting adventure writers and an assortment of Doc Savage ghosts. When other S&S pulps went bust, its refugee heroes took up residence in Doc Savage. Among them were The Skipper, Bill Barnes, and Harold A. Davis’s business scout, Duke Grant. Much credit goes to the artists who painted the vibrant covers. Walter M. Baumhofer established the look of the Man of Bronze, while Robert G. Harris and Emery Clarke continued the tradition. Paul Orban executed almost all of the interior illustrations during the magazine’s sixteen-year run. Along with The Shadow, Doc Savage laid down the myths and conventions of the comic book superhero, which began to appear in 1938. By 1940, the proliferation of comic book heroes were punishing pulp circulations unmercifully. Oft-postponed plans to publish Doc Savage every two weeks were permanently abandoned. Dent chafed under a Christmas Eve pay cut. A gradual retooling raised the Doc adventures from raw pulp to light escapist fare. Sales held steady. Dent kept turning them out, but looked forward to the day he could move on to the better-paying slick magazines. A severe paper allotment cut led to the departure of editor John L. Nanovic in the summer of 1943. The magazine was downsized to a digest under new editor Charles Moran, who ordered Dent to demythologize the Man of Bronze, and pen more mature missions. “After the flood of super-people, phantoms, batmen, and such that Doc started coming out of the cartoonists’ and artists’ ink-wells,” Dent said in 1945, “my stomach kind of turned. I’ve toned Doc down now to where he is not the slam-bang fire-eater he was. He still discovers strange tribes of people in the heart of one of the world’s

PG 56 – Top Band, L to R – CRAWDADDY, #23, June 1969 (© respective copyright holder); CREEM, vol. 3, #6 (© respective copyright holder); RAY GUN, #1, Nov. 1992 (© Ray Gun Publishing, Inc.); PG 57, Top to Bot – FILM FUN, July 1939 (© Dell Publications); DOC SAVAGE, Jan. 1943 (© Street & Smith Publications).

deserts, but he doesn’t come across nations in the Earth’s interior any more.” Over succeeding editors, Doc Savage segued from indomitable superman to wartime troubleshooter, often battling fifth columnists on the home front when not invading enemy territory to capture Hitler or rescue Allied scientists from Nazi concentration camps. Both Doc and his author seemed like new men.They had grown up along with their readers, many of whom were now reading Doc Savage on the battlefields of Europe. In the post-war era, Doc settled into the role of high-profile investigator for a period until a revival as scientific detective that coincided with an upgrade in paper stock and format. Out went Modest Stein’s moody covers; in came the stylized confections of Walter Swenson. Cold War concerns began to creep into the stories under Babette Rosmond, and experiments with firstperson storytelling brought out the best in a mature Lester Dent.Yet the magazine slipped into bi-monthly frequency. In its final year, editor Daisy Bacon oversaw a reversion to pulp size and adventures. Doc Savage came to a fitting end in a demi-fantasy,“Up From Earth’s Center,” where the mythic hero made an Orpheus-like descent into Hell. The final issue was dated Summer 1949. Despite reportedly strong sales, the magazine fell victim to a company-wide purge of its pulps. “Something I will never understand is the cycle of life — not even the cycle of life of the pulps,” mused H.W. Ralston at the end.“Last year, when our Love Story faded out of the picture, I felt pretty bad, but I told myself that Doc Savage and The Shadow and our two other pulps were certainly indestructible, with many happy fruitful years ahead of them.... Now they’re going the way of all flesh — of all pulp, you might say....We tried our best to make them good, but the public seems to want more sex nowadays — or something beyond sex, which I can’t figure out.”—WM

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58 | Doctor Death PG 58 – DETECTIVE ACTION, Aug.-Sept. 1937 (©Popular Publications); PG 59 – Bot Band, L to R – ALL DETECTIVE MAGAZINE, July 1934 (© Dell Publications); DOCTOR DEATH, Apr. 1935 (© Dell Publications); DOCTOR DEATH, Feb. 1935 (© Dell Publications).

DOCTOR DEATH Doctor Death is the name of one of the best known, although most short-lived villains, ever to appear inside the pages of a pulp magazine. The sinister Doctor Death originally appeared in All Detective (vol. 7, #21) in the July, 1934 issue in an episode entitled “Doctor Death.” In all, Edward P. Norris would go on to write five stories total (“A Deal in Phonies”August 1934,“Cargo of Death” September 1934, “Death’s IOU” October 1934, “13 Pearls” January 1935) about Doctor Death for All Detectives before the entire pulp magazine would be re-titled Doctor Death for its February, 1935 issue. Dell Publishing Company saw a good thing with the increased circulation brought about by the appearance of the new character named Doctor Death. But when they renamed the pulp magazine, they changed everything. The new Doctor Death was written by a different author and was about different characters. Clearly, they did not foresee the problems involved with producing a pulp magazine where the series character was a vile, evil villain. The first Doctor Death pulp magazine appeared in February, 1935 with a new tale of menace and horror, “12 Must Die,” about “the most dangerous criminal the world had ever known,” written by Harold Ward under the publishing house pseudonym “Zorro.” Dell Publishing Company would only produce three issues under the new title before sadly discontinuing the line. Each of these issues contained a complete Doctor Death novel, all written by Harold Ward under that same house pseudonym, “Zorro.” March, 1935 would bring out “The Gray Creatures,” and April, 1935 the last original Doctor Death story, “The Shriveling Murders,” would appear.

Doctor Death would turn out to be one of the oddest pulp villains ever created, and because of that he would also become one of the most fondly remembered of all such villains by generations of readers and fans. Doctor Death was Rance Mandarin, a mad scientist who had become the world’s greatest occultist. Once upon a time, Rance had had a normal life as Dean of Psychology at Yale University, but as master of the occult he become quite insane and bent on destroying civilization. Rance Mandarin, the infamous Doctor Death, believes that the potential of mankind has been stifled by the material benefits created by civilization. In order to save mankind from itself, Doctor Death decided that the best thing to do for mankind is for civilization to be destroyed and humanity returned back to the Stone Age. Rance Mandarin is an elderly, white-haired, “cadaverous,” man who does not want power over mankind. As Rance, he believes that he is being truly altruistic, only helping mankind onto the proper, enlightened path. But as Doctor Death he is a powerful magician, a practitioner of voodoo, necromancy, and black magic. He is able to control various supernatural forces, from zombies to elementals. Several attempts are made to explain away these bizarre phenomena in modern, scientific terms, but these explanations are not successful. The supernatural powers of Doctor Death can never be fully explained, or his other superscience weapons, the dissolution rays and antigravity aircraft chief among them. The Doctor plots his evil and carries out his plans from his secret headquarters far underground, a mile from the Lake View Cemetery. Doctor Death is opposed by an organization known as the “Secret Twelve,” organized by the President of the United States, Franklin D. Roo-

Doctor Death | sevelt. His chief adversary is James Holm, the leader of the “Twelve,” a wealthy young criminologist. Holm is well versed in the supernatural. Orphaned, and adopted by the mayor of New York City, he has also become an expert in chemistry and psychiatry. John Ricks, the New York City Chief of Police, is a main member of his team. So is Nina Ferrara, the lovely niece (and adopted daughter) of Doctor Death, who loves her uncle, but knows that he is insane, completely mad. Nina and James fall in love, of course, and eventually marry. It falls on the shoulders of President Roosevelt to organize the Secret Twelve in order to combat the sinister, supernatural powers of Doctor Death.The organization of twelve important men, led by James Holm, is dedicated to fighting the evil menace of Doctor Death. They finally succeed, but Doctor Death confounds them time

and time again, coming back from certain death to plague Holm and the Secret Twelve one more time. With his final death accomplished, Holm and the Twelve are still not certain they have seen the last of Doctor Death and his hand of doom. In the first novel, “12 Must Die,” Doctor Death appears as a mad, odd, wizard, with the power to summon loathsome gray horrors from hell’s attic. Doctor Death decrees that the country’s most famous men must die as carrion for his ghostly, gray vultures.A whole nation is panicked at the sinister super-scientist’s plans to change civilization. Only one man, James Holm, has a clue to the strange power of Doctor Death and he must face both torture and possible death to combat this new master of carnage. Doctor Death, like Wu Fang and Yen Sin, is a variation of the inimitable Fu Manchu. Like those other evil villains who were title characters of

their own pulp magazines, Doctor Death is extremely detailed and colorful, but the hero, James Holm, is relatively bland.The overall story line is almost the classic cliché. A mad genius attempting to destroy the world begins a series of pre-announced assassinations of those who might stand in his way. A team comprised of a grizzled old veteran and a younger man are all that stand in the path of evil, and the madman’s gorgeous niece falls in love with the younger hero, intentionally undermining the villain’s evil plans. It is the difference between Fu Manchu and Doctor Death that makes the latter so entertaining in a lurid, gruesome way. Fu Manchu was from the far reaches of the Orient, the embodiment of the Yellow Peril, who fought against the British, attempting to throw them out of China and then uniting all the Asian races into a new empire, with himself as leader. Doctor Death is a

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truly American menace. His fight is against the established order in the United States. Doctor Death does not plan on building a new empire; rather he aims at stopping all industry and manufacturing. The mad dreams and plans of Doctor Death are of a different order and magnitude than Fu Manchu.The Doctor wants to create an agrarian utopia for all mankind, and he is willing to destroy and massacre as many people as it might take to achieve his goal. Doctor Death is a malignant sorcerer of the first order, a practitioner of Black Magic who commands armies of zombies, who spend much of their time scavenging graveyards for fresh corpses. Death can project his consciousness into a zombie or another living human, possessing them for as long as he wants. He can even shoot lightning from his hands. While he often seems sad at the killings he performs, he frequently

DOCTOR DEATH PULPS

60 | Doctor Death

bursts out in shrill fits of maniacal laughter. Opposing the loony mastermind is Detective Inspector John Ricks, a beefy, blunt flatfoot, and James Holm, millionaire dabbler in the occult. In spite of their teamwork and skills, only the help of Nina Ferrara, the villain’s henchwoman ( Doctor Death’s niece and adopted daughter), lets them survive to the final page. Nina, an exotic beauty raised by the Doctor, knows just enough magic and super-hypnotism to protect and help James. With no hope of his grand plan working, Doctor Death begins killing larger and larger groups of people. Soon, he has the entire country in a panic, with shadowy elementals looming over crowds, and armies of zombies stalking the streets. Of course, James Holm is successful in stopping Doctor Death, and the Doctor reappears in the next story. In the next Doctor Death issue, “The Gray Creatures,” the Doctor has returned. The battle begins in the dark tombs of Egypt, where the

Doctor seeks the secret of resurrection. Death strikes at his pursuers with walking cadavers, bloodthirsty, nauseous gray creatures, the terrible inventions of his warped mind.“The Gray Creatures” is the gripping account of the brave detective’s struggle to defeat Doctor Death once again. The final installment of Doctor Death appeared in the April, 1935 issue with “The Shriveling Murders.” Two further epics were written, but they never reached the newsstands, and eventually they were printed in fanzines.The unpublished fourth story,“The Red Mist of Death,” appeared in the fanzine Pulp Vault, issues 5 and 6, in 1989. The fifth story, “Waves of Madness,” appeared in the fanzine Nemesis Inc., issues 28, 29, and 30. They are harder to locate than the original pulps. “The Shriveling Murders” is a lot like the two previous Doctor Death novels and the four short stories that first introduced the character. As the story picks up the dangling threads, Dr. Rance Mandarin’s twisted scheme to topple civilization and send mankind back to the Stone Age has not succeeded yet.The biggest impact Doctor Death’s threats have had on society is to compel gangster Tony Caminatti, the uncrowned king of the underworld, to issue a strict order that all illegal activities must stop. “The Shriveling Murders” has a dreamlike quality to it as one horrifying event follows another. Doctor Death is still trying to assassinate the nation’s leaders, and the President has placed James Holm in charge of everything from the Secret Service to the New York Police Department. James tackles his assignment with gusto, with the help of his tough old sidekick, homicide expert Inspector Ricks, and the input of Doctor Death’s niece, the lovely young psychic Nina Ferrara. James Holm is up against a slew of difficulties in this issue. Doctor Death is a master of super-science who can fly in his anti-gravity plane, watch anyone on his long-range viewing screen, and his newest device is the shriveling ray, which reduces people to doll size by dehydrating their bodies. At the same time, the Doctor relies on his powerful Black Magic.At his command is an army

of mindless Zombies. If these are not enough obstacles to defeat James Holm, there are also Russian anarchists, and a cult of Black devotees of Voodoo.At one point,Nina is abducted to become the new high priestess of this cult and James drops his pursuit of the Doctor to go and rescue her. James Holm is up to the task. He defeats Doctor Death once again through dogged determination. The ongoing battle between the two adversaries brings into focus the main problem with an ongoing series starring the villain, the apparent lack of resolution. In the pulp magazine tradition, the villain is either seemingly killed at the end of each story, producing a cliff-hanger, or the villain is captured, only to escape on the final page, ready to appear in the next episode. Either way, there is no feeling of triumph or closure at the end of a Doctor Death story. Sax Rohmer faced the same difficulties with his evil characters Fu Manchu and Sumuru, but he was able to space their reappearances out a bit. In the mid-1960s the Doctor Death stories were reprinted by Corinth Publications. My father, Earl Kemp,was editor for the series as well as the model artist Robert Bonfils used for Doctor Death on all four of the series covers. Although the reprints were timely and made these wonderful stories available to another generation, they lacked several of the best aspects of the original pulp magazines. The back-up stories, many of which were as good as, or even better than, the main story, were lost in translation. So were the odd advertisements that are astonishingly nostalgic, capturing the color of a way of life from a lost era. Also lost were the crude black and white interior illustrations. These simplistic sketches usually gave the stories a visual punch at critical junctures, providing atmosphere that helped the reader to picture the characters. The Doctor Death pictured on the cover is an unsavory, white-haired old man with a grimace, but the character inside, as a black and white sketch, is

loathsome and vile. These drawings of Doctor Death scattered throughout the issue keep his evil visage fresh in your mind as you read.The images and stories, although crude and unsophisticated, keep alive a truly unique villain, Doctor Death, America’s premier menace.—ETK

DR.YEN SIN see The Mysterious Wu Fang DREAM WORLD Dream World was a magazine of wish-fulfillment fantasy.There were actually two periodicals with this name.The first was a love and romance magazine published by Bernarr Macfadden in the 1920s, in the style of his confession titles, with plenty of photographs of film stars and flappers. The second was a fiction magazine with the emphasis on voyeurism, sexual fantasies and power – its tagline was “Stories of Incredible Powers.” It was published in 1957 by the venerable firm of Ziff-Davis, at the time the leading publisher of special-interest magazines, with titles including Modern Bride, Popular Boating, Sports Car Illustrated, plus two other fiction magazines, Amazing Stories and Fantastic, to which Dream World was related. The magazine had come about when Howard Browne, the editor of Fantastic, had experimented with what he called “a new kind of fiction” in the December, 1955 issue of Fantastic. This had been promoted in advance as being devoted to fiction that was “the fulfillment of every man’s secret urges and desires.” The issue ran stories by the magazine’s two most regular contributors, Paul W. Fairman and Milton Lesser (better known later as Stephen Marlowe), under their own names and pen names, plus a story by John Toland, who was later awarded the Pulitzer

PG 60 – DREAM WORLD, Feb. 1957 (© Ziff-Davis);PG 61 – DOC SAVAGE, Feb. 1945 (© Street & Smith Publications).

Dream World | Prize (though not for his fiction in Fantastic). Stories included “All Walls Were Mist,” in which a man improves his brain power and finds he can walk through walls into women’s bedrooms, and “He Took What He Wanted,” which deals with a thoroughly amoral individual who finds he is irresistible to women. The issue proved so popular that Browne ran further such stories and decided, with publisher Bernard Davis, that there was scope for a special magazine. During 1956, Browne took up a writing opportunity in Hollywood and so passed the editorial baton to Paul Fairman, one of the ZiffDavis magazines’ most prolific contributors. Fairman put together another special issue of Fantastic, for October, 1956, which may be treated as an advance issue of Dream World, which was announced in that issue. Once again it ran stories of mildly erotic escapism alongside tales of individuals who discover they have remarkable powers that they usually put to sexual or financial gain. In “An Eye for the Ladies,” our hero has the ability to transfer his mind into a different husband every night. In “Peter Merton’s Private Mint,” the fortunate Merton discovers his safe has an endless supply of money.Also in the issue was “The Passionate Pitchman,” where the protagonist finds himself in a world with no inhibitions. These stories had the added bonus of beautiful illustrations by Virgil Finlay, who was always adept at portraying the female form. The basis for Dream World was thus well established when the first issue appeared in midDecember, 1956, dated February, 1957. Its cover, by regular artist Ed Valigursky, showed a man able to see through walls into a woman’s bedroom, illustrating “The Man With the X-Ray Eyes,”published under the house name of Leonard G. Spencer (on this occasional probably Randall Garrett). The lead story was “Legs on Olympus” by Milton Lesser writing as Adam Chase. Based on the Greek legend of the judgment of Paris, it tells how Abner Paris is confronted by a totally nude goddess in his hotel room and taken away to Mount Olympus to judge a beauty contest. Other

titles such as “Oswald’s Willing Women” by Bill Majewski and “A Bucketful of Diamonds”by Harlan Ellison reveal all they need to about the plots. Curiously, Fairman also ran two items, by Thorne Smith and P. G. Wodehouse, perhaps to give the magazine a veneer of sophistication; their names were the only ones displayed on the cover. Wodehouse’s “Ways to Get a Gal” was a reprint of his 1911 story “Ahead of Schedule,” about two men who fall in love with a chorus girl. Smith’s “Sex, Love and Mr. Owen” was an extract from his racy 1933 novel Rain in the Doorway, a wonderfully over-the-top tale in which Mr. Owen finds he has slipped into another world where anything goes.The chapter was originally entitled “Pornography Preferred.” The first issue was “something of a sensation,” if Fairman’s editorial in the second issue is in any way accurate. But it was also something of a onenote tune.The contents of Dream World were anything but subtle as the story titles suggest: “The Man Who Made His Dreams Come True,” “You Too Can Win a Harem” (the ultimate quiz show), “So You Want to be President,” “He Fired His Boss,” “To Walk Through Walls,” “His Touch Turned Stone to Flesh,” “Anything His Heart Desires,” and so on.They were all stories in which men’s dreams come true, simple flights of fancy mostly written in a light-hearted tone, intended to titillate rather than corrupt. Most of the stories were provided in conveyer-belt fashion by the core of Ziff-Davis’s stable of fiction writers: Robert Silverberg, Randall Garrett, Harlan Ellison, and Milton Lesser. Mixed with the stories were cartoons and anecdotal accounts of how people had stumbled across windfalls, met their dream girl, or otherwise experienced remarkable luck. There were no letters published in the magazine, so we cannot judge reader reaction, and the fact that it survived for only three quarterly issues may suggest that it was a failure. It certainly had limited potential, but it might have lasted longer had not the president of the company, Bernard Davis,moved on to start his own new business.The management at Ziff-Davis decided to curtail any

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62 | Dream World new fiction magazines. The last issue of Dream World was dated August, 1957.Any remaining stories of “incredible powers” were absorbed back into Fantastic, such as “The Wife Factory” by Clyde Mitchell (another house name, with this story by Harlan Ellison). Within a year Paul Fairman had also moved on to new pastures and Fantastic, under its new editor Cele Goldsmith, began the long climb away from its formulaic stories toward establishing a reputation as one of the best fantasy magazines of the early 1960s. Dream World remains a brief and perhaps surprising experiment by ZiffDavis to create a magazine of mild erotica.—MA

E EERIE MYSTERIES see Secret Agent X ELVIS PRESLEY The Beatlemania that rocked the world in the 1960s had at least one major competitor when it came to one-shot magazines: The King himself, Elvis Aaron Presley. By 1960, fourteen Elvis Presley one-shots had appeared. An early one-shot was marvelously successful. Simply titled Elvis Presley, it was published by Macfadden Publications in 1956, under their Bartholomew House imprint.This magazine had four printings and sold 800,000 copies at retail and an additional 40,000 copies by mail order. Following is a partial list of the Presley magazine titles: Elvis Answers Back, Elvis Presley, The Amazing Elvis Presley, Elvis Photo Album, Elvis Presley Speaks, Elvis Presley in Hollywood, Elvis Presley: Hero or Heel, Elvis Presley:The Intimate Story, Elvis: His Loves and Marriage, Elvis in the Army, Elvis the King Returns, Elvis Vs. the Beatles, ElvisYearbook, and Official Elvis Presley Album.—JH

EROS Eros was a magazine of sexually oriented writing and art, published in an elegant, slick format between hard covers. Only four issues (now collectors’ items) were published before it was closed down by federal prosecution, which led to a brief prison sentence for publisher Ralph Ginzburg. In the early 1960s, the pornography laws were in flux, with a number of court decisions permitting the publication and sale of formerly banned works. Ralph Ginzburg (1929-2006), a skilled self-promoter, saw a chance to profit from the changes. Ginzburg had already made money with the self-published An Unhurried View of Erotica (1958), a historical survey of sexually themed writing and art, and now he sent out flyers advertising Eros as a source of intellectual as well as sexual excitement, emphasizing the new “candor” made possible by changes in the law.The strategy was to distance the magazine from the cheapness and sleaziness associated with porn in the public eye, so it was elegantly designed by art director Herb Lubalin. It would be sold only by subscription, for the then unheard-of price of $25 for four issues, thus keeping it out of the hands of the presumably more corruptible lower classes. But while the publication itself was classy, the advertising for it seemed vulgar to many, and that proved Ginzburg’s undoing. The first issue featured a new, “uncensored” translation of Guy de Maupassant’s “Madame Tellier’s Brothel,” some lewd poems by the seventeenth-century British poet John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (already available in a book published by Princeton University Press), and excerpts from the Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, as well as moderately erotic paintings. The second issue included a photo essay of women gazing enraptured at President John F. Kennedy,portrayals of Parisian prostitutes and erotic Indian temple art, and perhaps the first open publication of 1601, Mark Twain’s bawdy reconstruction of a conversation including William Shakespeare, Queen Elizabeth I, and Sir Francis

Eros | Bacon, a work clearly intended to appeal to the sense of humor, rather than to carnal desires. It concluded with a selection of replies to the original brochure, ranging from the heights of theological condemnation to “It bored me to tears.” The third issue included what may be the most famous feature Eros ever ran: an 18-page portfolio of photographs of Marilyn Monroe that had been taken late in her life by Bert Stern. There were also excerpts from Fanny Hill, John Cleland’s eighteenth-century tale of a “woman of pleasure,” then going through the courts; and a biographical article, by Robert Antrim, on Samuel Roth, a spiritual ancestor of Ginzburg’s who had faced charges for publishing James Joyce’s Ulysses, dirty books, and books that he falsely claimed were dirty. The fourth, and as it turned out, last, issue began with a photo essay on “Love in the Bible” and also included obscene limericks, an encouraging letter from Allan Ginsberg, a biography of Frank Harris, author of the far more dishonest than lewd memoir My Life and Loves, a discussion of the then-unmentionable question of whether Shakespeare was gay, and some sensual descriptions by an unnamed novelist (who turned out to be Anaïs Nin; the excerpts were from the then unpublished Delta of Venus). Its most controversial feature, however, was “Black and White in Color,” a photo essay by Ralph M. Hattersley Jr. in which a nude black man and a white woman, shown from the waist up, embrace and kiss. The article suggested something not merely offensive to many people, but actually illegal in many states. It would not be until 1967, with the appropriately named case of Loving v.Virginia, that the Supreme Court would rule anti-miscegenation laws unconstitutional. Before long,Eros would seem downright tame. Pictures showing actual, unmistakable intercourse

would be available over the counter in a few years. Fanny Hill would be published, unabridged, in Modern Library and Penguin Classics.At the time of its publication, however, it aroused non-sexual passions. Rev. Morton J. Hill, S.J., the founder of Morality in Media, Inc., demanded action, and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy obtained indictments against Ginzburg for using the mails to distribute obscene matter, to wit, the first issue of Eros, a newsletter called Liaison, and a mildly titillating memoir entitled The Housewife’s Handbook on Selective Promiscuity. In June, 1963 Ginzburg appeared before Judge Ralph J. Body in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.An ambitious young federal prosecutor named Arlen Specter, making his first appearance in the national spotlight, convinced Judge Body not only that Eros itself was obscene but that Ginzburg had pandered to prurient interests in his promotions for the material, including a sophomoric effort to have it mailed from the Pennsylvania towns of Intercourse and Blue Ball. Ginzburg was sentenced to five years in prison and fined $42,000. The case was appealed and went to the Supreme Court. On March 23, 1966, the Supreme Court announced a five-to-four decision allowing Fanny Hill to be published because it was not “utterly without redeeming social importance,” and by the same margin it affirmed Ginsberg’s conviction. Novelist Sloan Wilson led a protest campaign, obtaining support from Arthur Miller, Nat Hentoff, I.F. Stone, and other intellectuals and celebrities. There followed six years of appeals (the process dragged on so long that Paul Krassner called it a “travesty of injustice”) while far more salacious material was being openly published and sold, and on March 9, 1972, Ginzburg went to the federal penitentiary at

PG 62, L to R, Top to Bot – DREAM WORLD, Aug. 1957 (© Ziff-Davis);FANTASTIC, Oct. 1957 (© Ziff-Davis); b&w illustration from DREAM WORLD (© Ziff-Davis); DREAM WORLD, May 1957 (© Ziff-Davis); PG 63, Top to Bot – DOC SAVAGE, Sept. 1937 (© Street & Smith Publications); DOC SAVAGE, Sept. 1937 (© Street & Smith Publications).

Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, serving eight months. In January, 1964, while battling the Eros conviction, Ginzburg launched a new publication: Fact, a news magazine advertised with Ginzburg’s usual overheated rhetoric as more shocking and revealing than any other publication, filled with information THEY don’t want you to know. Fact put Ralph Nader (then a Harvard undergrad) in print for the first time, and featured writings by the then-unknown Robert Anton Wilson,but attained the most fame, and trouble, with an article for the 1964 presidential election, in which Ginzburg got 139 psychiatrists to say that they considered Senator Barry Goldwater psychologically unfit to serve. Goldwater sued, eventually obtaining a judgment for $1 in compensatory damages and $75,000 in punitive damages, and some felt that the article did more harm to the psychiatric profession, showing that many of its practitioners were willing to diagnose someone they had never met, let alone seen in their professional capacity, on such grounds as the alleged homosexual symbolism in Goldwater’s statement that he wanted the military to have missiles accurate enough to “lob one into the men’s room at the Kremlin.” Fact ceased operations in September, 1967, and the following year Ginsberg launched AvantGarde, another attempt to peddle elegance, this time with less sexual content. Ginzburg’s bad luck with politics continued; his first issue included a celebration of the utter political demise of Richard Nixon, who would be elected president later that year. Avant-Garde is perhaps best known for introducing Herb Lubalin’s typeface of the same name, characterized by its geometrically perfect round strokes; its short, straight lines; and its many ligatures. Emerging from prison in 1973, Ginzburg published a brief memoir of his experiences there, entitled Castrated (his way of saying that he had been denied conjugal privileges while incarcerated). He made one more publishing effort, in an area some find even more fascinating than sex, but Moneysworth failed as its predecessors had done. He spent his last years as a photographer,

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64 | Eros publishing a collection of work entitled I Shot New York in 1999. He died on July 6, 2006. —ADH

EVERGREEN REVIEW Evergreen Review was founded in 1957 by Barney Rosset, the owner of Grove Press. Barney had acquired the small firm in 1951, when he was 29, and turned it into the leading American avantgarde and counter-culture publishing house. Grove Press brought American recognition to European literary luminaries such as Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco, Jean Genet, and Harold Pinter, as well as promoting home-grown “beat” writers such as William Burroughs,Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and Gary Snyder. Grove fought several successful legal battles over censorship arising from the explicit sexual content of their publications, most notably the unexpurgated edition of D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover in 1959, and Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer in 1964. Evergreen Review was launched into a political and social climate that writer Ken Jordan described thus: “A gray-suited calm dominated the cultural landscape of the United States. Often the 1950s are recalled as a kind of never-never land of unprecedented material prosperity, the reassuring, fatherly sobriety of the Cold War. Of course, this nostalgic vision of easygoing stability looks around the presence of Joseph McCarthy and the balance of terror, and of a repressive, reactionary hypocrisy that ruled much of the public discourse. But there were voices of dissent to be heard — every so often, from far and disparate outposts.” The first issue was co-edited by Rosset and Donald Allen, who was later replaced by Fred Jordan and Richard Seaver. It appeared in a trade paperback format containing fiction, poems, essays, and reviews. It featured Jean-Paul Sartre on the Russian invasion of Hungary, the great New Orleans jazz drummer Baby Dodd narrating his life story, and Samuel Beckett’s story “Dante and

the Lobster,” which had originally appeared in his collection, More Pricks Than Kicks, banned in Ireland in 1934. Beckett was to become one of the magazine’s most regular contributors. Issue #2, with Donald Allen as its primary editor, brought it all back home with the entire magazine devoted to the San Francisco “beat” scene.The editors sought the advice of Kenneth Rexroth, who in turn sought the advice of Allen Ginsberg, whose landmark poem “Howl” was reprinted minus the “obscene” footnote (The world is holy! The soul is holy! The skin is holy! The nose is holy! The tongue and cock and hand and asshole holy!...). This, and the seizure and obscenity trial in 1957, made the City Lights Books edition a best seller. Also in this legendary issue were Jack Kerouac, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Michael McClure, then relative unknowns who would become key figures in the “beat generation” and frequent Evergreen contributors. Barney Rosset’s crusading zeal against censorship made an early appearance in Issue #4 with the publication of Ferlinghetti’s “Horn on Howl,” dealing with the United States Customs’ seizure and trial of the City Lights edition of “Howl,” and Judge Clayton Horn’s historic ruling that it was not obscene. Indeed, the learned judge in his summing-up appears to have “dug it”: “I do not believe that ‘Howl’ is without even ‘the slightest redeeming social importance.’ The first part of ‘Howl’ presents a picture of a nightmare world; the second is an indictment of those elements in modern society destructive of the best qualities of human nature. Such elements are predominantly identified as materialism, conformity, and mechanization, leading toward war.The third part presents a picture of an individual who is a specific representation of what the author conceives as a general condition…. ‘Footnote to Howl’ seems to be a declamation that everything in the world is holy, including parts of the body by name. It ends in a plea for holy living.” The advertisements in a typical Evergreen in the late 1950s give a good idea of its perceived readership: Blue Note Records, Vanguard

Evergreen Review | Records, Folkways Records, Olympia Press,The Viking Press, and Mad Magazine. In 1964 (Issue #32),Evergreen’s format changed to a large glossy magazine size featuring more graphics and advertisements. Copies of this issue were seized by the Nassau County Vice Squad because it contained a portfolio of nude photographs by Emil J. Cadoo. Rosset fought back by publishing further Cadoo nudes in the following two issues. Despite the new format, the literary content remained, with Burroughs, Beckett, Mailer,Kerouac,and other regular contributors remaining faithful to Evergreen until its demise. With the new format, erotic photographs, illustrations, and cartoons began to appear, which were frequently of a soft-porn nature (although as early as Issue #9 in 1959, there was a photographic feature on the erotic sculptures of Konarak). Issue #37 (September 1965) saw the first appearance in an American magazine of Jean-Claude Forrest’s French comic strip heroine Barbarella with her Jane Fonda features and a disdain for clothes. Barbarella encounters sex-machine robots, a lesbian queen, and various monsters, and falls in love with Pygar, a winged angel.The strip formed the basis of Roger Vadim’s 1968 film starring Jane Fonda, his wife at the time. The following issue, November, 1965, introduced the erotic sado-masochistic strip “The Adventures of Phoebe Zeit-Geist,” written by Michael O’Donoghue and drawn by Frank Springer. Phoebe was a frequently dishabille debutant who was variously kidnapped and rescued by a series of bizarre characters, such as Eskimos, Nazis, Chinese foot fetishists, and lesbian assassins. Appearing as characters in the strip are barely disguised members of the counterculture such as Norman Mailer. In 1968, Grove Press marked the decade of the magazine by publishing the massive, 800-page Evergreen Review Reader: A Ten-year Anthology of

America’s Leading Literary Magazine, edited by Barney Rosset. Legal actions were the least of Evergreen’s tribulations. In 1968, it faced a more dangerous foe, as Rosset later recalled: “A fragmentation grenade hurled early one morning into the empty University Place offices of Grove/Evergreen provided an unsettling reminder that some of our enemies preferred a different means of dissent. A band of anti-Castro Cubans left over from the Bay of Pigs soon claimed responsibility for it. Not so surprising, since one month earlier Fred Jordan and I had flown to Bolivia in an attempt to secure the diaries of Che Guevara. We couldn’t get the complete diaries, but we were able to publish portions in Evergreen.The bombing was another, if somewhat more dramatic, response to Evergreen’s outspoken and activist voice.” Rosset believed that the attack and subsequent bomb threat by the anti-Castro group the Movimiento Nacional de Coalición Cubano was supported or at least encouraged by the CIA, with the possible tacit approval of the FBI, who turned a blind eye. Despite the disruption, excerpts from Che’s Bolivian Diaries appeared in Issue #57. Rosset faced another threat the following year from Valerie Solanis, who had recently been released from prison, after serving a sentence for having shot Andy Warhol. She was author of a book, S.C.U.M. (Society for Cutting up Men), and she had been spotted on several occasions lurking outside Grove’s offices with an ice pick, waiting for Barney.When warned of this, he said,“If I ran away from everybody who was going to kill me with an ice pick or some other thing, I’d never go to lunch at all. I’m going at one o’clock.” In 1970, Grove Press was hit by political and economic attacks from the Left (of which Evergreen had been a champion) and the rising feminist movement. This was triggered when Grove

PG 64 – EERIE MYSTERIES, Aug. 1938, art by Norman Saunders (© Magazine Publishers); PG 65, Top to Bot – Illustration from ESCAPADE, Dec. 1956(©respective copyright holder); FEAR!, July 1960 (© Great American Publications).

dismissed nine of its staff, including the militant feminist Robin Morgan. Morgan and eight other women, not more than two of whom, including Morgan, had worked for Grove, occupied Grove’s New York executive offices and demanded that the publisher create a child care crèche for its employees, that profits from the Autobiography of Malcolm X be given to the black community, and that profits from Grove’s erotica go to “women who are the special victims of this propaganda.” The group accused the publisher of “earning millions off the basic theme of humiliating, degrading, and dehumanizing women through sadomasochistic literature, pornographic films, and oppressive and exploitative practices against its own female employees.” The group’s manifesto had little subtlety: No more business as usual for Grove Press and Evergreen Magazine! No more using of women’s bodies as filth-objects (both black and white) to sell a phony radicalism-for-profit to the middle-American-white-male! No more using of women’s bodies to rip off enormous profits for a few wealthy capitalist dirty old straight white men, such as Barney Rosset. No more union busting by richman Rosset! No more mansions on Long Island for boss-man Rosset and his executive yes-men flunkie; segregated mansions built with extortionist profits from selling The Autobiography of Malcolm X, a best-seller — and not one black welfare mother a penny better off after millions of copies made Rosset rich! No more, no more, no more. Shut it down. Close it up.We want reparations! The women were arrested for vandalizing Grove’s offices and, ironically, the publishers’ lawyers fought to free them while the protesters wanted the maximum penalty so they could be

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66 | Evergreen Review martyrs to the cause. The left-libertarianism and anti-censorship stance of Grove Press was now under attack from repressive leftists and feminists. Rosset defended his position in a letter to the New York Times journalist Seymour Hersh, making points which could stand as an epitaph for the political agenda of Grove Press and Evergreen Review: Grove Press and the magazine it published, Evergreen Review, were among the first in the United States to take a determined stand against the war in Vietnam. Grove Press published many of the original texts of such third world authors as Frantz Fanon and Regis Debray, which became handbooks for the anti-colonialist movement in Asia, South America, and Africa, and had an incalculable effect on the black movement as well as the radical movement in the United States. Grove Press was the publisher of many of the rebellious voices of the black movement in the United States, including Malcolm X, Imamu Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones), and others. Grove Press and Evergreen Review were among the first to publish reports of the CIA involvement in the military operations in Bolivia against Che Guevara, and Grove Press was among the first to publish the writings of Che Guevara in the United States. Evergreen Review was one of the most outspoken critics of the government’s prosecution of the Chicago Seven and one of its reports on the tampering of the government with the Chicago Seven jury became a cornerstone in the appeal of the sentence that was finally overturned. Grove Press and Evergreen Review were among the first to publish the writings of Fidel Castro in the United States, and to report on the accomplishments of the revolution in Cuba. In 1973, the magazine the Chicago Tribune had once called “one of the most provocative of

avant-garde journals” (but later accused of having “degenerated into a commercial format devoted to frivolous erotica.”) ceased publication with Issue #97, devoted to Last Tango in Paris in newspaper tabloid format. Rosset sold Grove Press to Ann Getty and British publisher George Weidenfeld in 1985 and they removed him from his editorial job a year later. Now in his 80s, Rosset revived Evergreen Review in 1998 as an online magazine and continues to campaign for freedom of expression.—JL

EXPLORING THE UNKNOWN see Health Knowledge Magazines

PG 66, Lt to R – EROS (©respective copyright holder); ERO, summer 1962(© respective copyright holder); PG 67, Top to Bot – EVERGREEN, #8 (© Evergreen Review Inc.); EVERGREEN, #76, Mar. 1970 (© Evergreen Review Inc.).

Exposé/The Independent |

EXPOSÉ/THE INDEPENDENT Lyle Stuart Lyle Stuart, who passed away on June 24, 2006, at age 83, was as independent and progressive a journalist as America has produced.At the start of his journalistic career, he broke a story about a bill sponsored by the brewing industry that would fleece the people of Ohio, thus alerting the governor of the price he would pay if he did not veto the bill. Stuart worked for Variety for a period in the late 1940s, but left disillusioned by the trade paper’s connections with insiders in Hollywood and its too-friendly relations with key advertisers. From that point on, Lyle Stuart became a maverick in the tradition of George Seldes.As a young book publisher (Lyle Stuart, Inc., begun in 1959), he was the only person who dared publish a book by Castro, and a study of American covert influence on Central American governments and economies (both in 1961). He issued early exposés of the power of the DuPont family, of the FBI and its domestic spying, and of the intractable gulf between the wealth of the “super rich” and the resources of the rest of the population.A book by pioneer sex therapist Albert Ellis was instrumental in ending the Post Office ban on birth control. The marketing of the best-selling The Sensuous Woman was one of the first examples of the mainstreaming of sexually explicit material. Stuart imported a book of nude photographs that successfully challenged Customs and Justice Department bans on such material. In 1959, he reissued Dalton Trumbo’s Johnny Got His Gun with an introduction by the blacklisted author, at a time when the book had fallen out of print due to the anti-Communist demagoguery. It was during this period of the 1950s and 1960s that he published a “press newsletter” (Seldes’s term) that filled the gap between Seldes’s newsletter and those of Paul Krassner and I.F. Stone. Krassner was a reporter for Stuart,and picked by him to carry on Stuart’s work when the latter stopped publishing his own peri-

odical in 1969. Incredibly, the standard histories of American radical periodicals hardly mention Lyle Stuart’s work. It is an injustice as well as a blunder. Lyle Stuart was an American Mahatma, a rational and principled, not a mercenary or knee-jerk, patriot; he had unflagging heart, shrewdness, courage, and loyalty both to people and to an absolutely pure sense of justice. He was my friend and I dedicate this essay to his memory. American radical journalism after World War II was maintained by papers such as PM, The Catholic Worker, The National Guardian, The New York Star, The New York Daily Compass, and US Week. George Seldes’s monthly tabloid-format In Fact began in 1940, and in its most popular years could claim 176,000 subscribers. By 1950 it had lost most of its readership. Its focus on social justice had been supplanted by concerns about the Cold War and McCarthyism. Seldes had been a critic of what he called the “press lords,” the boycott and censorship power of the Catholic Church, the repressiveness of the Jim Crow laws, and the liaison between the American Legion and Big Business. In Fact was the unique non-partisan muckraking newspaper of its time. Seldes was the first to make the connection between cigarette smoking and cancer, and excoriated the New York Times for refusing to bring the issue to its readership. His last words before closing In Fact were “the enemy is fascism.The curse is apathy.” Lyle Stuart published Seldes’s autobiography, Never Tire of Protesting, in 1968. When Stuart, his first wife Mary Louise, and free-lance reporter Joe Whalen established their monthly Exposé in late 1951, they saw as potential subscribers the 50,000 readers Seldes’ In Fact had, and some of the 14,000 readers that Emmanuel Haldeman-Julius had for The American Freeman (“Devoted to Social Justice and Industrial Sanity”) when he passed away in 1950. Exposé would not make anyone rich. In fact, Lyle never drew a salary from the paper.Aware from their own print media experience of the imbalance that corporate advertisers had created in print media,Whalen and the Stuarts were determined that Exposé would fea-

ture stories major newspapers would not touch due to fear of advertisers’ cancellations or pressure groups’ influence on subscribers or newsstand purchasers. Advertisements do exist in Exposé, mostly for books, but the editors never solicited them. Its founders determined never to reveal a confidential source, and, so that no filaments of private wealth (even so-called “philanthropy”) ever entangled them, never to request a donation. The format was, and remained, tabloid, which was inexpensive to produce, provided compact page layout, accommodated newsstand display, and could be mailed at bulk rate. Pre-publication solicitations were directed to journalists, politicians, business executives, students, and housewives. The editors were able to raise $1,400, enough to cover expenses for two issues in tabloid format.The first issue in October, 1951 had a circulation of 20,000 copies. At that time, 478 subscriptions had been ordered. The second issue was the turning point. It contained eight articles by Stuart on Walter Winchell, the pre-eminent gossip columnist of the Hearst newspaper chain. A liberal under FDR, Winchell had become an ardent Commie hunter; prominent people were so afraid of him that they crossed the street to avoid coming under his gaze. His innuendos could kill reputations, and his personal truculence was deeply resented. In October, 1951 he become embroiled in a nasty contretemps with dancer Josephine Baker about her claim that she, as a black woman, had received poor service in The Stork Club.Winchell was mentioned in her complaint to the NAACP; she accused him of blatantly snubbing her. As Neal Gabler shows, it was the club’s owner, not Winchell, who was discriminating against Baker. Winchell could have avoided the “pub-lousity” that followed by apologizing or downplaying the NAACP criticism, but that was not his manner. He wrote many self-justifying columns, ruining his reputation as a supporter of African-American causes. Knowing the potential of a Winchell exposé with smoke from The Stork Club firestorm still in the air, Stuart quickly re-edited his November

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68 | Exposé/The Independent Exposé and had the staff hand-distribute copies to Times Square newsstands. He had been disappointed with the way the distributor failed to get his first issue displayed, and now offered dealers “twice the usual commission,” as Gabler reports, for displaying copies of the second issue. Within an hour he received calls for more. Eventually, 91,000 copies were sold. After the November Exposé,Winchell’s enemies got their guns sighted, especially the New York Post, the editor of which started by conferring with Lyle Stuart. Winchell had many detractors in his profession; Ed Sullivan, an early Exposé subscriber, was one. Partly for this reason, an independent distributor approached Stuart and asked to distribute future issues of his now-on-the-horizon political tabloid. By December, 1953 Exposé could rely on mail subscriptions. Four years later, it stopped its newsstand distribution because expenses of doing so were draining. Only three “special cases” (either because the stand prominently displayed the paper or because of it was advantageously located) continued to receive copies. In 1959, Stuart proudly wrote that the publication’s stockholders had received a 14% dividend. Exposé had a few regular and very important columnists. One specialized in Jim Crow atrocities, another in money management, and another in current newspaper policies. In 1956, Paul Krassner began doing satirical essays on his generation’s eccentricities. Lawyer Albert Gerber wrote on contemporary First Amendment issues, and Albert Ellis has a monthly essay on how Americans might liberate their sexual desires from taboos. Other publishers had considered Ellis’s sex-related essays too offensive to religious authorities to publish. Lyle Stuart, Inc., later published them in book form. There were, in addition, a few top-flight writers whose work Stuart especially championed. One was Paul Blanchard, whose books on the power of the Catholic hierarchy to censor popular entertainment made him one of Lyle’s favorite advocates for First Amendment issues. Another was Drew Pearson, fearless investigator of Washington power brokers.

The April 1953 Exposé described Pearson’s firing by ABC, which the paper attributed to the network’s merging with Paramount Theaters.The latter owed Richard Nixon a favor, Exposé opined, and Pearson’s advertisers at ABC did nothing to prevent his firing. Because Jack Anderson was Pearson’s right hand man and successor, the story has a quite recent resonance. In late 2005, after Anderson’s papers had been posthumously donated to George Washington University, the FBI requested that the Bush Administration be allowed to review all documents, so that it could classify, and remove, any of them that it considered sensitive to national security. Its explanation had to do with possible conversation between a suspected foreign agent and defendants in a case involving the American Israel Political Action Committee. Whether that was the real reason, or whether older files on Bush family members were at issue, the request was clearly an intrusion on the First Amendment and academic freedom. As one Information Science professor at Cornell put it,“Once you begin taking records out of library archives that researchers rely on for free inquiry and research purposes, it would be very difficult not to see it as a slippery slope toward government controlling research in higher education and our collective understanding of American history.” It is the kind of threat to press integrity and freedom of information that Lyle Stuart fought against his entire life – one that he would have gone to any length to expose. Ironically, he might have had a harder task in 2006 than in 1953. But whether or not today’s internet bloggers are able to reach more of the general public, as opposed to those whose belief system parallels their own, than was Lyle is an imponderable. His tabloidformat political newsletter could boast subscribers from all walks of life. They included William O. Douglas, Arthur Miller, Oscar Hammerstein, Arthur Schlesinger, Ed Sullivan, Upton Sinclair, Drew Pearson, Norman Mailer, Willard Motley, and George Seldes, as well as people assumed to be white- and blue-collar workers

and suburban breadwinners. With its April, 1956 issue, Exposé became The Independent. Lyle Stuart insisted on the change, despite considerable subscriber pressure to retain the original name. Scandal magazines imitating Confidential after 1954 made it necessary to distinguish between what Exposé had been doing and slick periodicals that appealed to curiosity about the sensational aberrations of movie and TV stars.“Gossip sheet” was an intolerable epithet to associate with Exposé. So were “hate-monger”

Exposé/The Independent | and “Commie-coddler;” Lyle Stuart won a $9,000 settlement from Confidential in 1956 for these characterizations. From the beginning until The Independent ceased publication in 1969 (it had an afterlife during the 1970s, issued less often and in a more cost-effective format), Stuart took on every kind of powerful organization and individual throughout the country and the world.The drug industry was excoriated for driving prices up by colluding with the federal medical regulatory agency. Television networks were abandoning their responsibility to inform people about national and international affairs because major advertisers wanted programming with which they could integrate their products. Boys’ Town was quietly discriminating on the basis of applicants’ race and religion. Former Nazis were prominent in the West German armed forces and in East German politics. Eisenhower was accused of allowing the consumer protection laws to be weakened, and of employing as close advisors a spokesman for the Rockefellers and the chair of the Chase National Bank.The Army loyalty oath included a list of hundreds of suspected subversive organizations that the inductee was to swear he had not joined; so much for freedom of assembly. The March of Dimes campaigns obscured the impending dangers of various killer diseases.The abortion laws condemned poor women to dangerous medical procedures while wealthy ones had easy access. The regulations against sex in prison institutionalized homosexuality and nurtured shame, violence, and recidivism, since inmates lost self-respect and confidence to face an impersonal, non-predatory world. Lyndon Johnson was subverting the Dominican Revolution and sending troops to back Trujillo. The Independent was a vocal critic of Johnson’s Vietnam policy. On this and other issues it paralleled I.F.

Stone’s thinking and reporting. Lyle Stuart was an ardent supporter of the Cuban Revolution.The first relevant story was in the June, 1960 issue. Articles on Cuba’s culture, economy, and political institutions followed. Editorials called the American press to account for not addressing the issue except through the communiqués of the State Department.A major 1966 piece on “The Political Left in Latin America” stands almost alone as debunking claims of Communist influence there. Stuart was the first journalist to visit Castro in 1960, and he made several visits thereafter. (When he first approached the State Department to attain a visa, he was rebuffed, but that decision was reversed upon appeal.) Photos show him with Che Guevarra and with Castro. (Lyle’s custom New Jersey license plate bore the logo “Che.”) One of his most dramatic stories is about his treatment at a Senate Internal Security Subcommittee in February, 1963. Senators questioned him with thinly veiled contempt. Keeping his composure was difficult, which may have been what the senators wanted. One brought up the issue of a communist plot to destroy American morale by flooding the country with pornography, citing books published by Lyle Stuart, Inc. Remarking that none of his publications had had any trouble from postal authorities, he opined that the subcommittee must have subpoenaed the wrong person, and offered to leave.That elicited, as Lyle put it, a left-handed apology. Exposé and The Independent, since they embody responsible and independent journalism, are an accurate mirror of American political and social issues in the earlier Cold War period. In addition, many of the reports mentioned above concern issues endemic to American culture, politics, and corporate acquisitiveness.They are especially familiar to today’s citizens. Three subjects that Lyle Stuart brought into sharp focus were the

PG 68, Top to Bot, L to R – LUNATICKLE, #1, 1955 (© Whitestone Publications ); Fawcett Publications house ad circa 1936 (© respective copyright holder); PG 69 – Phoebe Zeitgeist comic strip from EVERGREEN, June. 1967 (© Evergreen Review Inc.).

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70 | Exposé/The Independent human rights advocacy organization The AntiDefamation League, cancer research and advertising, and the Catholic Church as cultural arbiter. Each subject was difficult for magazines and newspapers dependent on advertisement and their readership’s credulity to approach critically. Exposé’s criticism made its editor a target for much vilification. To the attacks he responded with increased conviction and stinging wit. One of Lyle’s favorite stories in his fight against censorship was about the Anti-Defamation League using a local supporter to pressure the mayor of North Bergen, New Jersey, to remove him from the board of directors of the Bergen County library.The June, 1952 Exposé had carried a headline “Inside the Anti-Defamation League.” The story appeared under Stuart’s byline. It detailed the arguments of a recent book regarding the ADL’s giving funds to minor but persistent anti-Semitic groups, so that the ADL’s own advertising campaigns would be increasingly successful in its own solicitations for funds. The ADL’s defense was that they were infiltrating the antiSemites to spy on them. Exposé’s criticism of these procedures was threefold. First, they changed the ADL from an information gathering to a politically active organization using its growing membership to speak for American Jewry generally. Concurrently, ADL’s policies indirectly provided an increase in the ability of anti-Semitic hate groups to reach supporters. Third, the ADL fed information it had surreptitiously acquired to the wrong kind of journalists: sensation seeking gossip- and scandal-mongers, and political opportunists, instead of responsible journalists whose further research would put the information in proper perspective. Stuart concluded that the ADL’s fund-raising efforts and the growth of its popularity had trumped its dedication to fighting racial and religious prejudice in general. He published the names of three ADL agents and detailed the methods of one, who arranged guest lectures as a way of making contacts with representatives of anti-Semitic organizations and getting access to their offices, often at night, to copy files.

PG 70, Top to Bot – ELVIS YEARBOOK, 1960 (© respective copyright holder); EERIE MYSTERIES, Feb. 1939 (© Ace Publications); PG 71 Bot Band L to R – ON THE SCENE PRESENTS: FREAK OUT, #2, 1967 (© Warren Publications); FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND, #27 (© Warren Publications); FAMOUS FILMS: HORROR OF PARTY BEACH, (© Warren Publications).

An even stronger criticism concerned the ADL’s dealings with Sen. Joseph McCarthy. A poker party attended by the senator and ADL officials was one example of the liaison.The reason for the ADL’s allying itself with McCarthy’s attempts to purge the government of suspected anti-Americans was to distance itself from leftwing critics who were both Jewish and critics of Cold War era foreign policy. In March, 1952 Exposé published a derogatory article on columnist George E. Sokolsky, whom, it reported, had arranged meetings between the ADL and both McCarthy and William Randolph Hearst. Sokolsky, Jewish himself, Exposé described as an abject appeaser of prominent officials who could use their power to hurt his career if he did not show his usefulness to them.The ADL’s further interest in McCarthy, and its courting of Hearst, can be explained as an attempt to prevent them from indulging in the “Jew-Communist-Atheist” conflation which marked mass prejudice of the preWorld War II era.That strategy is much less worthy of reproach than the ADL’s distancing itself from Jewish leftist critics of McCarthyism. For Lyle Stuart, however, the Jewish organization’s alliance with pro-business, anti-union, anti-New Deal and pro-Catholic censorship interests was an abomination. By allying itself with people whose sense of Americanism depended on giving African-American and Jewish people a place of little importance, it was engaging in a self-defeating procedure. As a powerful supporter of racial equality, Stuart deplored the ADL’s failure to censure forcefully the lack of justice given to southern blacks. Further, he was also irate when the organization gave Kate Smith, a singer on record as having anti-Semitic views, an award. In addition to trying to have Stuart removed from the Board of the Bergen library, a Catholic

priest, whom Stuart felt was connected to ADL, threatened Stuart’s printer with excommunication if he continued to publish Exposé. Rumors were circulated that the paper’s financial backing came from anti-Semites. The owner of Exposé’s mailing service, citing loss of reputation with fellow Jews, canceled his contract. A journalist surreptitiously working as an ADL undercover agent gave Stuart false information, hoping to catch Exposé in a libel suit. Jewish advocacy groups, especially the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the ADL, are still controversial today.They have built multi-million-dollar budgets, and have been active in suppressing films, art gallery displays, live dramas, and books they see as anti-Semitic and/or pro-Palestinian. Tabloid Press Lord Rupert Murdoch has been a speaker at both organizations’ banner events. The ADL, in 2003, presented an achievement award to Italian prime minister and media mogul Silvio Berlusconi, while its West Coast counterpart, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, honored Ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick, major player in the Reagan Administration’s Iran-Contra policy, when she was ambassador to the U.N. Both organizations have responded to events in the Middle East by promoting the justness of the Israeli military incursions in the same disingenuous language that the Bush Administration has used in justifying its invasion of Iraq.They do not have to exaggerate Arab anti-Semitism today, but their single-minded stridency, for example in stating that Islamic terrorist groups have the resources to “make the Middle East Judenrein,” would be just as offensive to Lyle Stuart now as the ADL’s quite apparent support of hate groups and McCarthy was in 1952. In making its readership aware of the state of cancer research in the 1950s, Exposé continued the work of its predecessor, George Seldes’s In Fact.

Exposé/The Independent | During the 1940s, that publication offered over 100 stories, including research studies, showing the relationship between tobacco and cancer. In 1939, the Secretary of the Interior had stated during a radio debate that recent news about cigarettes and cancer had not reached the public, possibly because “tobacco companies are such large advertisers.” Editors and publishers roared their indignation, but their behavior proved the secretary was right. Major newspapers from coast to coast eschewed printing the warnings about lung cancer that Seldes did, even when the AP or other agencies had not quashed the information themselves. The reason clearly was the extensive revenues from Big Tobacco’s advertising. Exposé ran stories on that subject, displaying various companies’ claims that their brand was less irritating or “the best made” and pointing out that all ciga-

rettes came from the same leaf tobacco. It criticized the AMA for dragging its feet. As evidence that smoking caused lung cancer rose, the Association continued to state that for healthy people, smoking did not “appreciatively” shorten life. Stuart also wrote of the American Cancer Society’s decision to fund only research studies that the AMA had judged to be valid. He complained that the Damon Runyon Cancer Fund (much to Walter Winchell’s chagrin, as he and Runyon had been close) had the same recalcitrant strategy One of Exposé’s most controversial stances was its approval of unconventional cures for cancer. Unfortunately, one of these methods, the drug Krebiosen, turned out to have excellent shortterm effects but did not shrink tumors or lengthen life. On the other hand, Stuart’s conviction that cancer relief might come from procedures other

than surgical, and that more creative research needed funding and encouragement, might have been correct. Ever the iconoclast, he was one of the few journalists ready to suggest that the AMA might be motivated more by perpetrating its own pre-eminence in the fight against cancer than by considering new directions in its cure. The aforementioned Paul Blanchard was one of Lyle’s favorite writers for his willingness to delineate the power of the Catholic Church in censoring literature and ideas.A lawyer and onetime State Department member, he wrote of the hierarchy’s repression of controversial ideas regarding abortion, divorce, sex education, and birth control. He attacked the Catholic-founded National Organization for Decent Literature (NODL) for its pressure on newsstand operators, store owners, and small publishers in keeping

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“offensive” books and magazines from accessing various points of sale. Blanchard’s own book, American Freedom and Catholic Power, was not published in paperback because of anticipated NODL suppression of newsstand and neighborhood bookstore sales. In 1952, Exposé described an overflow crowd gathered at churches in Los Angeles and New York to hear Blanchard speak. He was on a countrywide tour sponsored by Americans United for Separation of Church and State. None of the five L.A. dailies mentioned that he was speaking, or offered any coverage of the event. In New York, only two of the eight dailies carried announcements of the speech, and none covered it.A major reason was print media’s fear of lost revenue from offended readers, and the consequent boycotting of the offending magazine’s or newspaper’s adver-

WARREN PUBLICATIONS

72 | Exposé/The Independent tisers.The power of the NODL to control behavior of both Catholics and non-Catholics concerned Stuart deeply. Church doctrine included the banning of books “opposed to faith or morals;” through the NODL this doctrine had been applied to Americans of all, or no, religious preference. Print and TV journalism aided and abetted this kind of censorship. Stuart, Blanchard, and the ACLU publicized this as best they could. Exposé accused The New York Times of refusing to accept advertising for American Freedom and Catholic Power, and also for Upton Sinclair’s A Personal Jesus, and Kinsey’s Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. Exposé released the facts as the ACLU and Blanchard reported them: adoption by local police of NODL blacklists (including books by Steinbeck, Farrell, Algren, Mailer, Hemingway, Faulkner, etc.). Mayors delegated responsibility for interdicting “objectionable” literature to publicity-minded police commissioners; prior restraint occurred through the pressuring of publishers to delay publication of books already printed and by getting local police to clear books and magazines prior to their distribution. Neighborhood shop owners and newsstand operators found “certificates of compliance” to be good for business. Note that each of these procedures was clearly injurious to First and Fourth Amendment protections. Note also, as Lyle Stuart, Joe Whalen, and their writers obviously did, that none of them would have been implemented without their being welcomed by a majority of political and civic, as well as religious, authorities. That fact points to a deeper reason than a large and loyal membership for the power of ethnic and religious pressure groups. Exposé’s editors and reporters understood that it was a mistake to focus blame primarily on such groups’ ethnocentric supporters as a root cause for stifling

debate or compromising First Amendment freedoms. In fact, support for these groups came from citizens who, as intelligent Americans, deeply respected the Bill of Rights. As Exposé’s articles on NODL censorship, and media lack of coverage of the Blanchard speeches, indicate, the latter writer spoke in places of worship, and his talks were well attended by Catholic Americans. Similarly, most American Jews, as well as many Catholics, voted Democratic, deplored evangelicism, and held liberal views on social issues. It was not the American people in general who exercised the censorship. Institutional forces, some not identified with conservative politics, governed the flow of information. For example, The New American Library would not publish any book by a Communist. Julian Messner decided in 1953 not to publish Mrs. W.B. DuBois. Little Brown similarly dropped the popular and prolific Howard Fast after he refused to identify his political party when asked by a Senate subcommittee. It was secular and religious institutions, and most likely the wealthiest contributors to pressure groups, for whom repression of dissent was invaluable. Goals of foreign and domestic policy demanded that the country’s economic health and security was the prime objective. That, in turn, hinged on the vast revenues (and jobs and attendant creature comforts) American business produced.These goals were well established, and had been instrumental in making their supporters — lawmakers, media owners, and corporate executives — powerful. Naturally, business leaders wanted to perpetuate these goals, and their own and their companies’ pre-eminence. They were, perhaps without acknowledging it, political and social conservatives. The administrators and lobbyists, if not the general membership, of Catholic and Jewish human rights organizations needed to

PG 72, Top to Bot – EYEFUL, Feb. 1949 (© Eyeful Inc.); FAMOUS MODELS, Sept. 1951 (© Volitant Publishing); PG 73, Bot Band Lt to R – KONG, 1976 (© Countrywide); SHOCK TALES, Jan. 1959 (© respective copyright holder); WEIRD, Feb. 1972 (© Eerie Publications).

appeal to these power brokers by showing their own conservative credentials. The articles in political newsletters of George Seldes, Lyle Stuart, and I.F. Stone were critical of this symbiosis.Their reporting threatened conservative American power, and the foreign and domestic policies undergirding conservative agendas. The targets of leftist thinkers went far beyond human rights pressure groups, of course. One only need reiterate Exposé and The Independent’s investigations: Big Tobacco, unsafe automobiles, the AMA’s drug industry-sanctioned conservatism regarding cures for deadly diseases, censorship of information on abortion and birth control, racism in the workplace and especially in organized labor, the power of the DuPont family in Delaware, or of Big Oil in Middle Eastern or South American diplomacy–all common targets of truly independent, leftist journalism such as that exemplified in Exposé and The Independent. To hell with Kate Smith. God bless Lyle Stuart, even though he lived and died an avowed atheist.—JAG [see I. F. Stone Weekly]

EYE Eye magazine was published by the Hearst Corporation in the 1960s as their take on youth culture. It proved to be a short-lived attempt to create an over-sized magazine like Life. Eye was unintentionally hilarious, with many silly articles such as what car is for you according to your astrological sign. The monthly was aimed at the hip youth culture, with numerous articles on counterculture trends, fashions, and celebrities. Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, the Beatles, Rolling Stones, and Bob Dylan made prominent appearances as did younger figures on the music scene of that day, such as Laura Nyro, Arlo Guthrie, and others. Eye featured interviews with Timothy Leary and Abbie Hoffman, and articles about the draft and the I Ching. The various celebrity pieces included: “Mick Jagger Raps About Politics,

Eye | Movies, and Money,” and “Gracie Slick, Peter Fonda, Julie Nixon, and Frank Zappa Tell What Turns Them On.” Eye magazine coupled some excellent graphics with issue-oriented articles: “The Viet Vet — How Does He Feel?” and “The Blondes of ’68 — Seductive AND Smart.” The first ten issues included a detachable centerfold poster, 19” x 25”, printed with a column entitled “The Electric Last Minute” with the latest news, gossip, and events on one side and a graphic on the other. The subjects of the graphic posters included Aretha Franklin (done by Milton Glaser), the Beatles (Blue Meanies from Yellow Submarine), Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, psychedelic Tarot Cards, and Mick Jagger. The January, 1969 issue came with a record and another, February, 1969, with a comic book.The last three had no inserts.

Altogether the Hearst Corporation produced fifteen issues of Eye, from the premiere issue of March, 1968 until volume 2, number 4, which was the final issue released in May, 1969. Eye provided a revealing glimpse at a particular moment in time, when counterculture icons such as Hendrix and Morrison were just starting to be portrayed as larger-than-life celebrities, and the magazine showed the strange mix of vanity and commitment that characterized a certain portion of the youth culture at that time. An August, 1967 full-page advertisement for Eye magazine said it “will respect, enlighten, titillate, lead, leaven, captivate, iconoclate young America. Eye will roar, jar, warble, throb. Eye will be salubrious, dissatisfied, and groovy just like its young audience.” In small type the ad announced the first issue would appear on February 20, 1968.

On that note, the short-lived magazine proceeded to enter into its first controversy. David H. Hughes, president of the Yale Arts Association, filed a lawsuit against the Hearst magazine, claiming prior right to the name. In June of 1967 the association had just published volume 1, number 1 of its new journal of the visual arts. Its title: Eye. Hughes had noticed a story about the forthcoming youth magazine in a newspaper advertising column in August, 1967, and immediately informed the Hearst Eye through Yale lawyers that his association owned the rights to the name. Apparently all ready to iconoclate and jar, Hearst ignored the notice and proceeded to launch its pre-publication advertising campaign anyway. Eye magazine continued to navigate a perilous course. In the January, 1969 issue it had a twopage feature called “Who I’d Like To Be In My

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Next Life,” which had twelve luminaries in their respective fields give short quotes on exactly that. The twelve included Sly Stone, Peter Townsend, Ravi Shankar,Andy Warhol,Arthur C. Clarke, Roy Lichtenstein, Jacqueline Susann, and Sharon Tate.This was shortly before Tate was sensationally murdered by Charles Manson later that summer of 1969. Tate’s chilling, prophetic response to the query was as follows: “I’d like to be a fairy princess — a little golden doll with gossamer wings, in a voile dress, adorned with bright, shiny things. I see that as something totally pure and beautiful. Everything that’s realistic has some sort of ugliness in it. Even a flower is ugly when it wilts, a bird when it seeks its prey, the ocean when it becomes violent. I’m very sensitive to ugly situations. I’m quick to read people, and I pick up if

MYRON FASS HORROR MAGAZINES

74 | Eye someone’s reacting to me as just a sexy blonde.At times like that, I freeze. I can be very alone at a party, on the set, or in general, if I’m not in harmony with things around me.” The Tate quote was not the strangest thing about Eye magazine. In the final issue, the Hearst hip culture rag tried to match the format of Paris Match by running an article about Dany CohnBendit. Cohn-Bendit was famous for being undesirable to the Gaullist regime.The Eye article profiled Dany the “Red,” “Europe’s Rebel King,” as the “red-haired hero of last spring’s Paris Revolution.” In it Dany tells “about an international organization of rebel students, how the universities ought to be restructured, why Communism is dead, and what students will be up to next fall.”The article makes another chilling footnote in the brief history of the Hearst magazine as Patty Hearst, daughter of the publisher, became involved in murder and mayhem as a wannabe revolutionary in the early 1970s. It is no wonder that Eye magazine failed. It aimed at the pre-adolescent, offering posters and comic books.The February, 1969 issue, the next to last, contained a now much-sought-after Amazing Spider-man half-size giveaway comic attached to the cover, a reprint of issue #42. But throughout the limited fifteen-issue run is an eclectic range of articles about sex, rock, and revolution, clearly meant for a much more sophisticated reader than the intended audience.—AW

EYEFUL see Confidential, Whisper

F FACE AND PHYSIQUE see Health Knowledge Magazines

FAMOUS FANTASTIC MYSTERIES 1939 saw a number of publishers starting new science-fiction pulp magazines in the wake of the success of Marvel Science Stories, which had appeared the year before. Part of this market growth had come from the maturing of Astounding Stories under the editorship of F. Orlin Tremaine and then John W. Campbell, Jr. There were doubtless other factors, such as the success of the hero pulps, the growth in science-fiction comics and the announcement of the first World Science Fiction convention. Whatever the cause, it was sufficient for Munsey Publications to start Famous Fantastic Mysteries (hereafter FFM). Its first issue, dated September/October 1939 appeared in July. Munsey’s magazines, especially The Argosy and AllStory, had been amongst the major sources of the scientific romance before 1926 when Hugo Gernsback launched Amazing Stories. Since Munsey’s usually acquired all serial rights to a story they could reprint these at no additional cost. What’s more, the devotees of science fiction who had discovered the field with Amazing Stories and its rivals had long wished to see these early stories, many of which had become fabled in sf circles. At this time precious little sf from the pulps made it into book form, and although back issues of the Munsey pulps were easy to obtain there was no index to them and so fans had no idea where to look. The editor of FFM, Mary Gnaedinger, had a conduit to knowing what fans desired because her son, Arthur, was an active sf fan. It was also known that one of the most popular contributors to Argosy had been Abraham Merritt. His 1924 novel, “The Ship of Ishtar,” had been voted, by readers in 1938, the most popular story the magazine had published up to that time. It was reprinted in Argosy from October 1938, and this may well have been the catalyst that prompted Munsey’s to start FFM. Merritt would become the star of the magazine, the first issue leading

Famous Fantastic Mysteries |

PG 74 –GAY BROADWAY, vol. 3, #10, 1937 (D. M. Publishing Co); MAGAZINE OF FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION, Oct. 1951 (©Spilogale, Inc.); MAGAZINE OF FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION (©Spilogale, Inc.); MAGAZINE OF FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION, fall 1949 (©Spilogale, Inc.); PG 75 – JACK DEMPSEY’S FIGHT MAGAZINE, Dec. 1936 (© Champion Asso. Inc.).

with his original novelette “The Moon Pool.” The second issue, dated November 1939 (at which point FFM changed to a monthly schedule), began serialization of the sequel,“The Conquest of the Moon Pool.” Over the next few years, FFM would reprint several of Merritt’s stories, including “Three Lines of Old French” (May 1940), “The Face in the Abyss” (October 1940), “Burn, Witch, Burn!” (June 1942), and “Creep, Shadow!” (August 1942). Of special interest was the appearance of “The Metal Monster” (August 1941), which Merritt specially revised for that printing. He had already revised it once before since its original 1920 publication, when it was reprinted by Hugo Gernsback in Science and Invention in 1927, so this second revision is seen by many as the definitive, author-preferred version.This is unusual for FFM since one of the few, or perhaps the only criticism aimed at it was that it frequently abridged the novels and serials. Merritt’s exotic purple-prose stories, full of fabulous creations, were the opposite of the hardsf that Campbell was promoting in Astounding, but they were also the stuff of nostalgia from the days when imagination was young and reckless. Besides, Merritt’s work reintroduced readers to classics by George Allan England, Austin Hall, Garret Smith, Garrett P. Serviss, Philip M. Fisher, Perley Poore Sheehan, Max Brand, Francis Stevens and Charles B. Stilson, writers whose works had stimulated the imagination of readers twenty years or more before, but who had not appeared in the sf magazines. In addition writers known from their work in the sf magazines were also represented by earlier material, including Ray Cummings, Eando Binder and R. F. Starzl. The magic of these stories was that they had an innocence and spirit of endless possibilities that

created that evocative “sense of wonder.” Perhaps even more legendary than Merritt’s stories was “The Blind Spot”, a remarkable borderline sf/fantasy by Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint. FFM began serialization of this with its March 1940 issue but after three episodes dropped it and ran it complete in the new companion magazine Fantastic Novels, first issue dated July 1940. If anything, Fantastic Novels held an even greater aura of magic than FFM, simply because much of the best imaginative work published in Argosy and All-Story had been the serials and there just wasn’t the room in FFM to run them all. FFM continued to run serials, while Fantastic Novels would reprint a complete novel in one issue. Munsey had not acquired all serial rights to the work of Edgar Rice Burroughs and so could not reprint his novels, but they were able to reprint serials by those inspired by Burroughs and who produced imitative novels of his Barsoom or Tarzan series.These included J. U. Giesy, with his series about Jason Croft, Ralph Milne Farley and his Radio Man series, and Charles B. Stilson with Polaris of the Snows. Besides the fiction, both magazines were liberally illustrated and this became one of its most cherished features. Although Frank R. Paul illustrated the early issues, the magazines soon became a regular venue for Virgil Finlay, whose beautiful pen and stipple work admirably captured the magical atmosphere of the stories, often emphasizing the mildly erotic. When Finlay couldn’t meet the demands, the editor called upon Lawrence Stevens, whose work was almost as beautiful as Finlay’s, perhaps more so for the covers where the color sometimes diluted Finlay’s detailed artistry. FFM is perhaps almost as highly collected these days for the work of Finlay and

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76 | Famous Fantastic Mysteries Stevens as it is for its fiction. While both FFM and Fantastic Novels were reprint, they ran some new poems and short articles. Although they were not a market for new fiction, Henry Kuttner’s “Pegasus” somehow found its way into the May 1940 issue. In 1942 the Munsey organization ceased operation and sold the titles in its magazines to Popular Publications. However, Popular ran no reprint magazines and did not have access to Munsey’s archives. Fantastic Novels had already ceased publication in April 1941 and FFM almost stopped with its December 1942 issue. However, the popularity of FFM caused publisher Henry Steeger to find a way around this and the solution was to publish material not previously published in the United States in magazine form or had appeared only in Britain. Popular were thus able to acquire United States serial rights.This also allowed the occasional new story to appear – both Henry Kuttner and his wife C. L. Moore taking advantage of this. Wartime restrictions meant that FFM appeared irregularly during 1943 and then quarterly before becoming bi-monthly after the war in 1946. During this time it ran complete in each issue novels by John Taine,William Hope Hodgson, C.J. Cutcliffe Hyne, H. Rider Haggard, S. Fowler Wright, H. G. Wells, Edison Marshall, Jack London, E. CharlesVivian and others.It broadened FFM’s base to include stories of more disciplined science as well as making available novels that, for the most part, were uncommon and not necessarily easily available to readers.This was the period when the charge of abridging novels stuck because Popular had to shoehorn often long novels into the magazine’s limited wordage. Readers rarely complained because the material was welcome. The evident popularity of FFM was clear when, at the start of 1948, Fantastic Novels was revived but this time, regardless of any policy at FFM, Popular went back to raiding the Munsey archives, which they were able to do by reprinting material which had already appeared in the original Munsey FFM, though there were exceptions. Merritt’s “The Ship of Ishtar” now saw a

new outing as did work by George Allan England,Victor Rousseau,Arthur Leo Zagat and Fred MacIsaac, among others. FFM and Fantastic Novels were a winning combination. However for some strange reason Popular decided to over-capitalize and at the end of 1949 launched A. Merritt’s Fantasy Magazine, with Harry Widmer as editor. Once again this reprinted Merritt material, which by now was becoming all too easily available elsewhere, and although it unearthed yet more material from the Munsey archives it was a case of going to the well once too often. AMF lasted only five issues. Fantastic Novels survived it by a few months, its last issue dated June 1951. FFM continued for another two years, by which time the emergence of the digest magazines and paperbacks as well as specialist fan presses were making the material easily available. FFM had served its purpose and slipped into the night. The magazine would soon acquire a legendary status of its own and before long was as avidly collected as the early pulps from which it had reprinted.A complete set of FFM and Fantastic Novels is still as much a collector’s desire as Weird Tales and Unknown with the added bonus of a journey into nostalgia.— MA

FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND The creation of this cultural classic began in 1957, after a fateful trip to London to attend the World Science Fiction Convention that year. During an aimless trek around Europe, Forrest J(ames; no period) Ackerman, or “Mr. Science Fiction,” ended up in Paris in front of a newsstand.A chance glance at a local motion picture magazine and an amazing journey that lasted nearly 25 years had begun. Attracted to the cover photo of Henry Hull as The Werewolf of London,Ackerman had to buy a copy for his fabulous collection.With the French magazine still clutched in his hand, he had lunch

Famous Monsters of Filmland |

PG 76, L to R – FATE, May 1953 (© respective copyright holder); OTHER WORLDS, Dec. 1952 (© respective copyright holder); FATE, Feb. 1955 (© respective copyright holder); OTHER WORLDS SCIENCE STORIES, Nov. 1950 (© respective copyright holder); PG 77 – FATE, May-June 1951 (© respective copyright holder); FANTASTIC NOVELS MAGAZINE, Nov. 1949 (©Popular Publications).

with James Warren in New York on his way back to California.Ackerman was working as a literary agent at the time, specializing in selling science fiction, and often sold stories to Warren.At lunch, Forry had something else in mind as he began pitching Warren, who edited and published After Hours, a poor man’s Playboy, his idea for a new type of magazine. Ackerman had been watching those fantastic movies ever since he was five years old, beginning back in 1922. Over the last 30 years he had amassed a collection of over 35,000 movie stills. He convinced James Warren that he was capable of putting together this new type of magazine. The next thing he knew he was back home in California sitting in front of his old mechanical typewriter, opposite James Warren, writing the first issue of Famous Monsters of Filmland. As a gag, Warren held up a sign that read,“I’m 11 years old and I am your reader. Forry Ackerman, make me laugh!” And he did; Forry went on to make several generations of fans laugh, chuckle, and gasp with delight. Originally Famous Monsters of Filmland was conceived as a one-shot publication. Forry had planned to produce a 100-page magazine, a serious publication containing definitive stills of famous monsters, or fantasy films, with an explanation on how the public reacted to that film at the time, his own thoughts about seeing the film, and a summary of its plot.The project might have ended at that point, but Life magazine had just published an issue with a feature on the runaway success of teen-age monster movies such as I Was a Teenage Werewolf and I Was a Teenage Frankenstein. On the strength of the successful issue, and the concurrent successful packaging of old horror movies syndicated to American television in 1957, Warren was able to find a distributor for

their fledgling magazine. The first issue was just a try-out, circulated only in New York and Philadelphia in February, 1958. It was an instant success despite a terrible snowstorm on the day it appeared in New York. It received over 50 fan letters a day, 200 just from New York and Philadelphia. It was so successful that it required a second printing just to fulfill public demand.Ackerman and Warren decided to squeeze out one more issue. The rest is history. Famous Monsters of Filmland became so successful it eventually prompted several spin-off magazines such as Spacemen, Famous Westerns of Filmland, Screen Thrills Illustrated, Creepy, Eerie, and Vampirella. The articles in Famous Monsters of Filmland were written more for entertainment than pure journalism, as Forry rarely strayed from his fanfriendly style. By mutual agreement with publisher Warren, Ackerman aimed his text at late preadolescents and young teenagers. Forry never forgot his audience. FM (as it began to be known) offered brief articles, well illustrated with publicity stills and graphic artwork, on horror movies from the silent era to the date of publication, with special emphasis on their stars and filmmakers. Anyone who has ever read a copy of FM will agree that it was the endless supply of photos that made the magazine so popular. Ackerman also made accessible the silent movie works of such legendary film stars as Lon Chaney, Sr., and others of that generation, who were often beyond the reach and experience of the young readership. Forry would go on to introduce film fans to science fiction fandom through direct references, first-person experiences, and adoption of fandom terms and customs. The original Famous Monsters of Filmland would end its fantastic run in 1983 after 191 issues.The most memorable stretch of its run was

in the peak years from its first issue through the late 1960s. The disappearance of the older films from television and the notable decline of talent in the imaginative film industry would usher in the decline of the magazine in the early 1970s. This would force the magazine to begin to rely heavily on reprints of earlier articles from the 1960s, a fact that would not go unnoticed by its readers. By the mid-1970s, the writing was on the wall, and the magazine had only a short while to go before its demise. By 1976 the relationship between Forry and James Warren had become strained to the breaking point.They were barely on speaking terms, using intermediaries to communicate. Warren, with offices in New York, would complain about the smallest details, such as Forry using the phrase “GAL-axy of my Dreams,” which upset Forry and forced the two creative forces even further apart. Eventually it would be economics that would bring Ackerman to quit the magazine he had helped create. Even after the skyrocketing success of the magazine, Forry had never been paid a fabulous sum of money for his work, and it never got any bigger. Rampant inflation took a larger and larger hit on the unchanging sum Forry received for each issue. Four years before he resigned as editor,Warren agreed (in principle) with increasing his payment, but year after year went by without any increase. Finally, after four years of waiting, the 200th issue was coming up and Forry wanted to give the readers a 200-page special in celebration. He wrote to Warren, pitching his celebration idea, and got no response. So he resigned after issue 190. The magazine went on for only one more issue, unable to continue without the guiding genius of the man who had made it all not only possible, but great. To add insult to injury, Forry wrote a onepage resignation letter, first asking for more money and more control over the magazine, then saying, in essence, that he had had enough, and quit. It was to be printed in the next issue of FM, but, James Warren, on the New York end, had his staff pen a “Farewell Forry” letter that stated he

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78 | Famous Monsters of Filmland was no longer editor and that he would be missed. That letter and the issue it appeared in became the very last FM, on the eve of its 25th anniversary. The evidence of Forrest J Ackerman’s genius abounds in the pages of Famous Monsters and elsewhere.A few years before he resigned, James Warren was going to create a comic book about “a mod witch” and Forry went on to name one of the most famous female comic book characters in history. The movie Barbarella was very big at the time. The idea for the name “Vampirella” leapt into his mind. Ackerman would even write the story of her origin. She, along with her twin sister, Drakulina, lived on the planet Drakulon, where the rivers flowed with blood instead of water. His name for the character was an instant hit, and the character an instant success. Within the pages of Famous Monsters of Filmland, a reader could find those movie monsters that, at one time, were only seen at Saturday matinees or later on late-night television. Stars such as Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Lon Chaney, Jr., and the stop-motion models of Ray Harryhausen became recognizable heroes of a new generation. Many readers would eventually seek their own film careers after being inspired by FM. Author Stephen King has acknowledged the contribution that FM made in his life. He sent his first horror story to them. Copies of Famous Monsters of Filmland leapt off the newsstands into fans’ and collectors’ hands due in large part to the striking cover paintings by Basil Gogos, possibly the world’s greatest movie monster artist. His stylish portraits of horror film characters and film stars appeared like a Bizarro world Norman Rockwell from the Superman comic books. Gogos’s legendary artwork, seen on FM magazine covers throughout the 1960s and 1970s, pictured movie monsters like Frankenstein, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, and the Phantom of the Opera. His amazing use of color and bold, impressionistic brushwork breathed new life into the old black and white images from the movies, giving his paintings a sense of excitement and unequalled sophistication.

PG 78 – Top to Bot – FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND, #17 (© Warren Publications); FANTASTIC STORY MAGAZINE, (© Thrilling Publications); PG 79 – AMAZING STORIES, Mar. 1945 (© Ziff-Davis); SHAVER MYSTERY MAGAZINE, vol. 1, #1, 1947 (© The Shaver Mystery Club).

After a decade languishing in the shadows, sought after only by fans and collectors, the unforgettable magazine was resurrected in 1993 by Ray Ferry. Ackerman was brought in to help re-launch the magazine, but after only ten issues he quit his association with it. As a sad final note to a great publication, in 1997 Forry Ackerman filed a civil lawsuit against Ray Ferry for libel, breach of contract, and misrepresentation. Ferry claimed that Forry was merely a hired hand and he had to fire him. Ferry also claimed rights to pen names and other personal properties of Ackerman’s. In May 2000, the Los Angeles Superior Court decided in Ackerman’s favor, awarding him over half a million dollars in damages. It has been rumored that Ackerman gave up most of his famed collection and “Ackermansion” in a sale attributed to massive accumulated legal bills stemming from the extended court case. Famous Monsters has gone through many changes over the years and the legal issues have made it a shadow of its former self. However, both collectors and fans continue to immerse themselves in the world created by Forry Ackerman and James Warren. The two men created a magazine that was the first to take a chance on an often ridiculed audience and will always hold a special place in the hearts of those readers, and in memories of their misspent youth. Ackerman is also noted for having coined the term “sci-fi” by analogy with “hi-fi”. Although many serious, early, science fiction fans hated the phrase, it gained universal usage by the early 1960s, helped along by its liberal use in Famous Monsters. During Ackerman’s long sojourn as editor of Famous Monsters of Filmland, he continued his activities as a literary agent. One of his most famous, or infamous, clients and associates of the

mid-1960s was Ed Wood. Forry occasionally used stills from Bride of the Monster and Plan 9 From Outer Space, both produced by Ed Wood, in his magazine. Forry called the latter “one of the unbest movies ever made.” The Wood movie that got the most coverage in the adult slicks and girlie magazines of the time was Orgy of the Dead, probably due to the fact that it had a pressbook that was widely disseminated and used by different publishers for the ad art, photos, cast listing, and synopsis. Forry Ackerman, acting as literary agent, submitted a package that eventually wound up published by Greenleaf Classics (GC 205), labeled Orgy of the Dead, and containing a special introduction written by Forrest J Ackerman. It was three-quarters photographs and one-quarter text. The whole thing was built around Ed Wood’s and A.C. Stevens’s current in-progress movie. There was nothing anywhere resembling an orgy about the whole project. The erotic parts of the book were all gratuitously added by Ed Wood to please the editor and, as usual, bore little resemblance to the original effort. Ed Wood received $500 for his efforts, a great sum of money at the time. Forrest J Ackerman will remain best known for his efforts producing Famous Monsters of Filmland. His magazine introduced a generation of young readers to the history of the science fiction, fantasy, and horror film genres. At a time when most movie-related publications focused on the stars in front of the lens,“Uncle Forry,” as he was referred to by many of his fans, promoted the behind-the-scenes artists involved in the magic of movies. Ackerman inspired many to become successful artists in their own right, including Steven Spielberg, Ed Wood, Tim Burton, Charles Nuetzel, Stephen King, and George Lucas, and countless other writers, directors, editors, artists, and craftsmen.

Fate | Ackerman died of a heart attack in his hometown of Los Angeles on December 6, 2008. He was 92.—FJ [ see Castle of Frankenstein]

FANTASTIC ADVENTURES See Amazing Stories FATE Ray Palmer was an unprepossessing man. At the age of seven he was hit by a truck, which broke his back.A semi-successful operation on his spine stunted his growth (he stood about four feet tall), and left him with a hunchback. As an escape from the world, Palmer found refuge in science fiction. He was a voracious reader and early fan. He is credited with publishing the first science fiction fanzine, The Comet, in 1930. In 1938 he replaced Ziff-Davis editor T. O’Conor Sloane at Amazing Stories. Palmer’s tenure at Amazing Stories is most notable for his purchase of Isaac Asimov’s first professional story, “Marooned Off Vesta,” and the promoting of the controversial “Shaver Mystery.” The “Shaver Mystery” began in 1945 with the publication of “I Remember Lemuria” in the March issue of Amazing Stories. These were a series of stories and articles which might have been an amusing and ingenious piece of fantasy as written by Richard Shaver, but Ray Palmer, editor of Amazing Stories, decided to publish it as fact. Palmer’s support of Shaver’s stories (which maintained that the world is dominated by insane inhabitants of the hollow earth) caused him to be shunned by many in the science fiction community. It is unclear how much Palmer believed of his own propaganda, or to what extent he was just pandering to the desires of his readership. Fans, as might be expected, rebelled against any such “true and factual” claim, seeing in it the completion of Palmer’s shift from science fiction to superstition. In February, 1946 Palmer wrote to the Fanta-

sy News claiming that fandom had missed a great opportunity by failing to embrace the “Shaver Mystery.” This was followed, in June, 1946, by assistant editor Bill Hamling announcing that Palmer had cracked up and was confined in an asylum. Ziff-Davis confirmed that Palmer was “seriously ill” and Hamling was doing his job. In the same issue of Fantasy Times, Palmer denounced Hamling as perpetrating a hoax, while Hamling wrote that it had all been a deliberate trick on his part. Due to fans’ considerable ill-feeling toward the “Shaver Mystery,” in particular a boycott of Amazing Stories urged by Forry Ackerman, in late 1947 editor Ray Palmer instituted a column of fan news and fanzine reviews in Amazing called “The Club House,” written by Rog Phillips.This precipitated one of the more fascinating feuds in science fiction fandom, the Graham-Ackerman Feud. The well known science fiction writer Roger Phillips Graham was really Phillips. Ackerman, leading the fan opposition to the “Shaver Mystery,” accused Phillips of being an agent of Palmer, attempting to seduce the fans by “drowning them in butter.” The feud didn’t last very long. It all blew over when Rog walked into a LASFS (Los Angeles Science Fiction Society) meeting one evening and the fans there discovered that Rog was just another fan. This period saw the ending of the “Shaver Mystery” with its ejection from Amazing. Also, perhaps the most significant event of this period, it brought the resignation of Ray Palmer as editor, and his subsequent replacement by Bill Hamling, a former Amazing writer and assistant editor. Bill Hamling would later become a major publisher in his own right with Rogue magazine. As an enduring tribute to the influence that Ray Palmer had on the entire industry, the secret identity of DC Comics superhero “The Atom” — introduced by science fiction writer Gardner Fox in 1961 — is named after Palmer. During this period Ray Palmer started Fate, devoted to the “true” side of fantastic events. Fate first hit newsstands in the spring of 1948. Co-

founded by Ray Palmer, editor of the venerable Amazing Stories magazine, and Ziff-Davis alumnus Curtis Fuller, an accomplished editor in his own right, the magazine’s inaugural edition featured an article by Kenneth Arnold, in which he recounted his amazing UFO encounter in 1947.Arnold’s sighting marked the beginning of the modern UFO era, and his story propelled the fledgling Fate to national recognition. Another notable feature in the first issue was an article “I did see the flying disks!” written by old-time friend and fellow staffer at Amazing Stories, Roger Phillips Graham. In this issue he used his real name and not his pseudonym (Rog Phillips), a rare occurrence. Back in 1949, Palmer was getting ready to leave Amazing Stories, Fantastic Adventures, and Ziff-Davis, so he set up a pseudonymous publishing company and editor for another a new fiction magazine, Other Worlds — until he had officially left Ziff-Davis and could put his own name on the magazine. Palmer was Other Worlds’ only publisher throughout the 1950s, and rode the magazine down into a subscription-sales-only publication largely devoted to UFOs (it became Flying Saucers from Other Worlds) and the “Shaver Mystery.” None of the many Palmer publications lived up to the success of Amazing Stories during his reign. He ended up publishing Space World magazine until his death. Fate’s editors envisioned it as a new kind of magazine.They dedicated it to the earnest, thinking people of all races and walks of life; a magazine “devoted to the defense of reason.” They hoped to be able to use the magazine as a forum for the scientific method, for calm analysis of the known and unknown. The broad scope of their vision was the desire to bring out into the open the real kinship between fate and free will. The editors called Fate a “cosmic reporter,” and went on to state that the “real purpose” of the magazine “is reporting the unbiased truth.” All these claims and hopes became the foundation for the longest-running publication of its kind. Published continuously since 1948, Fate has

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80 | Fate been supplying its readership with an array of “true” accounts of the strange and unknown for over 60 years. Currently Fate is published as a fullcolor, 130-page monthly magazine. Fate still provides an editorial range from psychics and spiritualists, archaeological hotspots and fringe science, to authoritative UFO and paranormal investigations, and readers’ personal mystic experiences. Fate has never backed off from the claim that the articles are factual. They certainly are entertaining, but whether the articles are informative, and also true, remains to be decided by Fate’s growing audience of people seeking both answers and entertainment. Since its creation, Fate catered to an audience eager for the paranormal — readers Palmer had discovered while promoting the “Shaver Mystery.” There were other things he wanted to do, though, so he went into business as “Palmer Publications.” His various publications were like nothing else in American publishing — scrappy, chatty, and unpredictable. Palmer kept them going for years, despite physical hardship (he was partially paralyzed and often in pain), changing postal regulations (a frequent complaint in his editorials), and lack of money. He cut corners wherever possible, using irregular paper stock, filling pages with letters or his own ramblings when he couldn’t afford writers. He saved a few dollars every month by not filing copyrights.And he ran ads for whatever he could sell — packets of chili seasoning, a local PTA cookbook, a prayer plaque, tiki mugs, etc. He peddled the only dandruff shampoo endorsed by a UFO celebrity (Kenneth Arnold).At times, he seems to have kept the business afloat by the sheer force of his personality, which was, admittedly, considerable. Fate magazine is one of the first periodicals published in the United States about paranormal and supernatural events and people, and is commonly the primary reference source for many a later author of books on the weird. Many anomalous stories that are now considered common knowledge, and often used as the basis for astoundingly complex theories about paranormal

PG 80, L to R, Top to Bot – FATE, Jan. 1957 (© respective copyright holder); FAMOUS FANTASTIC MYSTERIES, with Virgil Finlay cover art(© respective copyright holder); PG 81, Bot band, L to R – UNKNOWN, Mar. 1939 (© Street & Smith); EXPLORING THE UNKNOWN, Feb. 1962 (©Health Knowledge Inc.); STRANGE MAGAZINE, Mar. 1952 (© respective copyright holder).

events, were first published for popular reading in this simple magazine. Fate carried a tremendous amount of ground-breaking UFO stories, many now oft-reprinted. Nowadays, however, Fate is mainly an entertainment-oriented magazine, and the articles are largely sensational, but it remains a good starting point for finding more information about current paranormal studies, and especially about current popular trends in the world of the strange. The best of Fate was certainly the first decade, which contained the best covers, and the weirdest articles.For the first five years Fate stumbled along, slowly gaining a readership, going from 3 issues in both 1948 and 1949 to 4 issues in 1950, and then 5 in 1951. 1952 marked the first year where it could be said to have become established, with 8 issues produced that year. Finally, 1954 brought the advent of a regular monthly issue. Curtis Fuller and his wife Mary took full control of Fate in 1955, when Palmer sold his interest in the publication.The Fullers expanded the magazine’s focus, and increased readership to well over 100,000 subscribers.They continued to publish Fate until 1988, when the magazine was sold to Llewellyn Publications. In his farewell column, Curtis Fuller wrote,“Our purpose throughout this long time has been to explore ,and to report honestly the strangest facts of this strange world — the ones that don’t fit into the general belief of the way things are.” One of the most notable series of articles was by Lloyd Auerbach, who wrote the long-running column “Psychic Frontiers” from 1991 through the end of 2004. Fate underwent a facelift in 1994, when Llewellyn decided to change it from digest size to a full-size, full-color magazine. Four years later in 1998, the magazine celebrated its 50th year of publication. When asked to com-

ment on how a magazine like Fate had beaten the odds and survived through five decades, Carl Llewellyn Weschcke restated in part the original Ray Palmer editorial regarding the purpose of the magazine when he said, “No product, especially a magazine, can stay around for fifty years unless it meets a need. Fate recognizes that the impossible can be possible; we explore the unknown so that it can be known.” September of 2001 marked the beginning of a new era for the long-running magazine, as Editor-in-Chief Phyllis Galde took over publication rights from Llewellyn. Galde has continued Fate’s fine traditions of objective reporting of unusual events and active reader involvement in shaping the content of the magazine.And in this spirit of continuing Fate’s long-standing traditions, in May 2003 Fate returned to its original digest size. Finally, in the early summer of 2004, Galde bought Fate outright from Llewellyn. Regarding her acquisition of Fate, she said: “I look forward with enthusiasm to carrying on the great traditions of Fate. I am truly humbled, grateful, and indescribably excited for the opportunity to assemble Fate for our loyal readers, and I eagerly anticipate exploring the strange and unknown side by side with them for years to come.” Once again Galde rededicated Fate to the original direction created by Ray Palmer, maintaining the magazine as a forum for the scientific method, for calm analysis of the known and unknown, and to always looking around the edges of phenomena. Fate has continued with a focus on UFOs and ghosts. With the advent of computers, Fate launched its own website, which features a “Strange and Unknown” blog. Fate has also established a foothold in the multi-media market by airing the “Hilly Rose Radio Show,” a verbal

Film Culture | Fate magazine with emphasis on interviews. Ray Palmer has left the world an enduring legacy. The man with the vision of Other Worlds would be hard-pressed to believe that his creation, Fate, has become an “Amazing Story” in its own right, and a lasting icon of American culture.—ETK

FEAR! see Stephen King Horror Mag FILM CULTURE Jonas Mekas once referred to himself as a “raving maniac of the cinema.” Born in 1922, in Lithuania, he arrived in New York on October 29, 1949,

with his brother Adolfas, from a displaced persons’ camp in Germany. On their first night in the city, the pair visited 42nd Street’s movie-house strip. Jonas wanted to catch up on everything he had missed during the war. “I had to see – and did – everything that was screened in New York, and I had to read everything that had been published on cinema in English.” Jonas had been a poet in his homeland; in America he found work as a tailor’s assistant and a Manhattan messenger. Throughout the early 1950s Jonas could be found at 5:30 screenings at the Museum of Modern Art, or at the New York Film Society in Greenwich Village, or other Manhattan movie venues. But Jonas and Adolfas’s favorite film haunt was Cinema 16, the film society started by Amos Vogel and his wife Macia, in imitation of the French Cinémathèque. Between 1947 and

1963, Cinema 16 was New York’s main showcase for avant-garde and experimental films of all themes and orientations. “My brother and I attended every single Cinema 16 program. It was one of our schools,” Jonas recalled later. Macia, handling the box-office, would take pity on the impoverished brothers when they appeared at the theater without passes, and let them in. At this time, Jonas admired the neo-realism of Rossellini, De Sica, and Fellini, and believed that much of the American avant-garde films he saw were pale reminders of pre-war European surrealism at best, and adolescent or incomprehensible at worst. He also harped on “the conspiracy of homosexuality” that he saw in some of the underground films of Kenneth Anger and Gregory Markopoulos. Not many people cared about his private views until he began publishing Film

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Culture late in 1954 and publicly presented his opinions in cold type. Avant-garde filmmakers were up in arms when the third issue of the magazine carried an article, written by Jonas, about the foibles of American independent filmmakers. Avant-garde leading light Maya Deren attempted to enlist other filmmakers, including Stan Brakhage, into a libel lawsuit against the fledgling magazine. They thought that it must have a deep-pocket publisher behind it, and they could use any money collected in a settlement to finance new films. Deren did not know that most of Film Culture’s backing came from Jonas’s weekly paycheck, earned doing camera work for the international edition of Life at Lenard Perskie’s Graphic Studios on West 22nd Street. The Mekases had gotten some of their (mostly European exile) friends to act as sponsors for

FORTEAN MAGAZINES

82 | Film Culture PG 82 – 15 MYSTERY STORIES, Apr. 1950 (© Popular Publications); PG 83, Bot band, L to R – REAL FRENCH CAPERS, #5, Feb. 1935, (© Nudeal Company); FRENCH SCANDALS, Nov. 1936 (© respective copyright holder); PARIS NIGHTS, June 1930 (© Red Top Publications).

and contributors to the magazine and Jonas talked members of the Lithuanian branch of Franciscan Brothers, who had their own Brooklyn print shop, into putting out the first issue in December, 1954. The Mekases threw a launch party at the Waldorf-Astoria — without spending a dime. A friend working for the hotel made the arrangements. Even with all their penny pinching, the brothers still had no money to pay the print bill, and scrambled to find another printer for the second issue, who they were also unable to pay. With lawsuits from creditors looming, a savior appeared at the Mekases’ Lower East Side doorstep. Harry Gantt, a businessman with magazine printing interests, believed in what the brothers were doing and offered to put up the $1,200$1,500 needed to print each issue of Film Culture. Film Culture went from a bimonthly to a monthly. Early on it could be seen as an American Cahiers du Cinéma with its coverage of American and European studio films (the first issue had Orson Welles as Othello on its cover).The magazine also reflected some of Jonas’s Marxist thinking at the time, but he soon began defending independent filmmakers attacked by mainstream critics. Maya Deren was one of the first to welcome him into the avant-garde fold. A young, early contributor, discovered by Jonas, was Andrew Sarris, who would later become the movie reviewer for the Village Voice on Mekas’s recommendation. Sarris remembers, “The first issue [of Film Culture] had already come out. There were a lot of big names, sponsors, people like Agee, documentarians, the usual fringe people in New York. He had manuscripts, from Europe and elsewhere.They were in different stages of erudition. But their English, their syntax was not too good. He wanted to turn them into reasonable English. I said, I’ll do it if you let me review movies.” Sarris went on to

develop his controversial Americanized “auteur theory” of film criticism in Film Culture. By the late 1950s commercial films had become anathema to Jonas, who saw films like John Cassavetes’s improvised Shadows, shot in New York during 1958, as a break-through in filmmaking. Jonas became an advocate of what he called New American Cinema and Film Culture took on a new persona. Jonas could sense that a new, more subjective cinema was crystallizing around the country, “rough, maybe badly made, but alive,” and this “new sensibility” was being overlooked by mainstream movie magazines. In the first issue of Film Culture, Mekas’s article, “The Experimental Film in America,” called for the development of an audience for this kind of film through the “growing film society movement.” Jonas did his part by helping to push Jack Smith’s film, Flaming Creatures, a cinematic cross between a shooting gallery of male genitalia and a deviant Grade B Hollywood feature. He called Creatures a great film.This was a far cry from his “conspiracy of homosexuality” comment. Jonas would be arrested many times for screenings of Smith’s film under the aegis of the Filmmakers’ Cooperative, a group he helped form in 1962 to distribute films that Cinema 16 wouldn’t touch. Jonas saw at once that through Creatures he could bring attention to underground films while also fighting censorship. By the mid-1960s, Film Culture was seen as an unabashed propaganda organ for the American avant-garde film movement. No single person before this had been so headstrong in the cultivation of a category of film. Mekas was never afraid of looking foolish or changing his mind.With Film Culture, and his many sponsored screenings around New York City, he helped to legitimize avantgarde filmmaking and helped to create new cultural stars like Andy Warhol. It’s sometimes hard to tell

Fizz | what Mekas loved more, films or filmmakers. Film Culture’s sixth annual Independent Filmmaker’s Award was presented to Warhol in December, 1964. This prompted underground filmmaker Stan Brakhage to resign from Mekas’s Film-Makers’ Co-op. Brakhage wrote to Mekas, “I cannot in good conscience continue to accept the help of institutions which have come to propagate advertisements for forces which I recognize as among the most destructive in the world today: ‘dope,’ self-centered love, unqualified hatred, nihilism, violence to self and society.” Mekas would receive much backlash for his advocacy of Warhol’s early films in Film Culture and his weekly “Movie Journal” column at the Village Voice. As the interval between issues lengthened during the 1970s, and Hollywood assimilated avant garde techniques and themes, Film Culture

lost some of its cachet and limped on until the last issue appeared in 2003. Film Culture ran special issues on Stan Brakhage, D.W. Griffith,Andy Warhol, the Hollywood Blacklist, Leni Riefenstahl, and Maya Deren. Contributors include Orson Welles, Hans Richter, Stan Brakhage, Erich von Stroheim, Jean-Luc Goddard, Peter Bogdanovich, Lotte Eisner, George Kuchar, Joseph von Sternberg, Luis Buñuel, Jean-Luc Godard, Michael Antonioni, and Anaïs Nin.“Mr. Fluxus” (George Maciunas, a fellow Lithuanian) designed a few issues, using a typical Fluxus minimal, anti-art sensibility.—LO

FILM FUN see Ballyhoo

FILM THREAT Film Threat began as a fanzine based in Detroit and put out by Chris Gore while he was a college student during the late 1980s. The second newsstand series restarted in 1991, after Gore relocated to Los Angeles and hooked up with co-editor David Williams and publisher Larry Flynt of Hustler fame. Film Threat Video covered cult and underground films with a mixture of seriousness, irreverence, and self-serving hipness; indeed, it referred to itself at “Hollywood’s Voice of Treason.” It was one of the first national magazines to cover the early career of Quentin Tarantino. Some typical pieces include: “Dial-aDate with Mr. Spock,” “Mr. T Directs Shakespeare,” and “Celebrity Scandal Calendar.” Subject matter could range from Kitten Natividad to

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Karen Carpenter — in the same issue. Gore left FTV with the 26th issue to develop video games in San Francisco. Four more issues of the newsstand FTV appeared through 1997 before the magazine moved to the internet. Gore also edited Wild Cartoon Kingdom as a FTV offshoot for the same publisher beginning in 1993.—LO

FIZZ Fizz was a tabloid sized musiczine that began as Fiz in 1992.Originally founded by Cathy Rundell and Wendy McConnell in Los Angeles, Fiz published 13 issues before the two friends parted and Rundell moved to Seattle,WA, in 1994. She then added an extra “z” to the title, became its sole publisher, and picked up a lot of contributors in the

AMERICAN “FRENCH” MAGAZINES

84 | Fizz grunge rock capital of the world. Fizz went on to publish 10 more issues from 1994-1998. Both incarnations of Fiz/Fizz were printed on newsprint with a glossy color cover and some spot color inside. Each issue featured lots of rock and punk band interviews, art, columns and features, often with a humorous angle. One of the highlights of each issue was Rundell’s pre-teen daughter Vivien interviewing various musicians, including Billy Idol, the Ramones, Mudhoney and Lemmy from Motorhead (she asked him if he liked toy trolls). Contributors included Carolyn Kellogg, Jen Dalton, Dave McConnell, Jill Jones, Randy Horton, Nick Scott (of the band Popdefect),Debbie Patino,Falling James (of the band The Leaving Trains), Gabe Soria, Naomi Shapiro, Leigh Pendergrass, Natasha Avery, Josh Mills, Stephanie Bartron, Jenny Boe, Carl Drunko, John Dunn (of the band Iron Cross), Ean Hernandez (of the band Sicko), Tracey Hartle (of the band Shugg), Dan Halligan, Jula Bell (of the band Bobsled), artists Van Arno, Paul Friedrich, cartoonists Peter Bagge and Pat Moriarty, and photographers Alice Wheeler, Don Lewis, Robbie Busch, Shawn Scallen, Jim Thompson, Eric Nakamura, and Curt Doughty. —LO

FLIRT see Confidential, Whisper FOCUS see Zest FORTEAN TIMES Charles Fort For the first half of his life, Charles Fort was a bel-

ligerent, angry young man who frustrated his father and was never able to secure a job. For the second half of his life, Fort tried to sell his stories, unsuccessfully for the most part, and spent much of his time sitting in libraries – in Britain as well as the United States – reading newspapers and magazines.Yet his name, in the adjective Fortean, has been absorbed into the English language, used to describe any form of unexplained or anomalous phenomenon, especially where that phenomenon seems to defy orthodox beliefs. He achieved this because all the time he sat in libraries, reading until he almost went blind, he was also copying down details of any unusual event, and he collected these news items into seven books, only four of which were published: The Book of the Damned (1919) – “damned” applying to any event that was disregarded by science, New Lands (1923), Lo! (1931), and the posthumous Wild Talents (1932). Fort really only served as a gatherer and cataloguer of facts. He used these facts to refute conventional science and to argue that people should always keep an open mind. He had challenged authority ever since his childhood. and continued to be a rebel all his life. Even when the Fortean Society was founded in 1931 by Tiffany Thayer, Fort refused to join it. He chose to believe nothing that had been conceived by the human mind, even to the point of not believing any of his own writings. He simply presented the facts and let others make up their own minds.That did not stop him from interpreting some of the data, often with wild speculation. He suggested that the earth was surrounded by some form of shield that protected us from beyond, that the planets were only a short distance away, and the stars were simply holes in the shield, the space beyond being white. He also suggested that aliens had reared us like cattle and looked after us for their own benefit; people who disappeared had been collected up by these aliens.

PG 84 – THE FEDS, Mar. 1937 (© respective copyright holder); PG 85 – G-8 AND HIS BATTLE ACES, Jan. 1935 (© Popular Publications).

Fortean Times | Occasionally they would throw things back, which accounted for all the mysterious downfalls of frogs or coins or other oddities. His most quoted conclusion is “I think we’re property.” Fort was thus the first to assemble and present compendia of the unexplained, and generated an industry that has grown hugely since his death in 1932, at the age of 57. His examples and ideas have contributed to a wealth of popular literature, primarily in the fields of fantasy and science fiction, but also in books of secret histories. His legacy is continued today by the Fortean Times. Fort’s early life is quickly summarized. He was born in Albany, New York, on August 6, 1874. His mother died soon after the birth of her last son in 1878. His father, who ran a profitable family grocery business, mistreated Charles, who became rebellious and was raised by his mother’s family. He developed a bizarre sense of humor for the absurd that never deserted him, and probably prompted his interest in the unexplained. He became a journalist and reporter, though earned most of his income, such as it was, by writing fillers for local newspapers. A small family legacy allowed him to travel the world during 1893-4, and he married soon after his return. He continued to sell fillers, jokes, and anecdotes to papers, but this provided insufficient income, so he tried to sell short stories. He was helped in this respect by Theodore Dreiser, who became his life-long friend and champion. Dreiser recommended several stories to his fellow editors and for a brief period, during 1905 and 1906, Fort sold some 22 stories.They were all humorous, “mental clowning,” as Dreiser described them, and showed potential, but Fort’s idiosyncratic jesting had limited appeal and, when Dreiser and the other editors moved on, Fort’s markets dried up. Only one of these stories might seem to hold some inkling of Fort’s later ideas. “The Radical Corpuscle” (Tom Watson’s Magazine, March 1906) is a satire where the red and white corpuscles in our blood are sentient and philosophize on the nature of their host and, by extension, man’s relationship to the earth and so on. Fort may well

have come across this idea in the writings of Gustav Fechner who, in Nanna, or on the Soul-Life of Plants (1848), believed that all living things had souls, including plants and the constituent cells of plants, and, by extension, the earth itself.This was the start of the Gaia principal, which resurfaced in the writings of James Lovelock in the mid-1960s, but which had formed part of the pantheism movement of the 1890s.Through his voluminous reading, Fort is bound to have encountered this, and the idea that humans are not the sole controlling intelligence on the planet would have appealed to him. At the same time there was growing speculation about the possibility of life on Mars, fuelled by the observations and theories of Giovanni Schiaparelli and Percival Lowell. These various theories, along with rapid technological advance, was contributing to a rapid growth in speculative fiction which Fort doubtless enjoyed as he worked through the magazines. He even turned his own hand to it. According to Dreiser, Fort had completed ten or more novels between 1908 and 1917. Only one of these, the satirical The Outcast Manufacturers (1909), was published. He destroyed all the rest. Yet, from what Dreiser recalled of them, at least two were science fiction, built on the ideas he would later develop in his compendia of the unexplained. These books are known now only by the titles X and Y. X explored the idea that life on earth was created by the Martians, who thereafter have treated us as some form of cattle. Y suggested that there was a civilization hidden away at the South Pole and that the mysterious Kaspar Hauser, who had appeared out of nowhere in Germany in 1828, was an emissary from there. These two books were probably written around 1914-15 and Sam Moskowitz has suggested that they may have been inspired not only by Fort’s researches, but by stories appearing in the popular magazines of that time.These include “Up Above” (Pearson’s Magazine, December 1912) adapted by John N. Raphael from the 1911 French novel Le Péril Bleu by Maurice Renard, and “The Horror of the Heights” (Everybody’s

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86 | Fortean Times PG 86 – FURY, Feb. 1957 (© Weider Publications); PG 87, Lt to R, Top to Bot – G-8 AND HIS BATTLE ACES, (© Popular Publications); MURDER TALES, Jan. 1971 (World Famous Publications); G-8 AND HIS BATTLE ACES, Feb. 1934 (© Popular Publications); interior page from EYEFUL, June 1951 (Eyeful Magazine, Inc.).

Magazine, November 1913) by Arthur Conan Doyle. Both of these stories propose that there are life forms in the upper atmosphere that may prey upon humankind, just as we do upon the fish in the sea, and may account for disappearances and sightings of what became known as UFOs. Tired of attempting works of fiction, Fort turned to assembling his research into some cohesive form and, with Dreiser’s help, the first volume, The Book of the Damned, was published in December, 1919. It immediately attracted interest. Ben Hecht, then writing his “Afternoons in Chicago” column for the Chicago Daily News, was apparently inspired to write a new story and claimed he was “the first disciple of Charles Fort,” calling himself a Fortean: he may even have coined the term.When Hecht reviewed The Book of the Damned, he said that “For every five people who read this book, four will go insane.” When Fort later heard this, he retorted that that’s impossible as “five out of every five persons are crazy in the first place.” Booth Tarkington also wrote a rave review, believing that Fort’s head must “emit noises and explosions” as he walked along, so full was he of strange ideas. Tarkington wrote the introduction for Fort’s next book, New Lands, in 1923. Fort rapidly became something of a celebrity and he was even writing letters to the New York Times, citing strange events and seeking corroboration from readers. There were also converts among the science fiction fraternity. Perhaps the earliest was George Allan England who wrote an effective horror story, “The Thing from — Outside” (Science and Invention, April 1923) set in the Arctic, where a party of travelers find themselves possessed by some intangible being. Though the story may owe much to Algernon Blackwood’s “The Wendigo,” England was clearly aware of Fort’s work as he refers to him in the story, calling him

“the greatest authority in the world on unexplained phenomena.” Hugo Gernsback reprinted that story in the first issue of Amazing Stories in April, 1926 and if sf devotees had not heard of Fort before then, they had now. Although H.P. Lovecraft was condescending toward Fort’s unscientific approach, he was nevertheless fascinated by the data he amassed, and particularly the idea of life somehow crossing space, a concept he used in “The Colour Out of Space,” also published in Amazing Stories (September 1927). Clark Ashton Smith found Fort’s books equally inspirational and it’s possible that “The City of the Singing Flame” (Wonder Stories, July 1931) owes something to Fort’s notes on unexplained disappearances. Edmond Hamilton, a regular contributor to both Amazing Stories and Weird Tales, corresponded with Fort, exchanging data. He wrote two Fortean-inspired stories:“The Space Visitors” (Air Wonder Stories, March 1930), in which vast alien scoops appear from the upper atmosphere and grab samples of the Earth, regardless of content, and “The Earth Owners” (Weird Tales, August 1931), where our alien protectors save the earth from other visitors. Jack Williamson combined Fortean ideas with those of Fechner in “Born of the Sun” (Astounding Stories, March 1934), where scientists discover that the planets are really eggs of vast space dragons. F. Orlin Tremaine, who had become the editor of the recently rescued Astounding Stories, reprinted Lo! in eight installments from April to November, 1934. Tremaine had instigated a policy of running “thought variant” stories, encouraging authors to develop original ideas and he hoped that Fort’s data might be inspiring. Among the results were “Set Your Course by the Stars” by Eando Binder (May 1935), wherein space travelers break through the membrane surrounding Earth to discover space is

Fortean Times | entirely white, and “Exiles of the Stratosphere” by Frank Belknap Long, Jr. (July 1935), wherein aliens living in the upper atmosphere occasionally send humanity their discards. The author most closely associated with popularizing Fort’s ideas, though, was Eric Frank Russell. His novel, Sinister Barrier, run complete in the first issue of Unknown (March 1939), built on the “we are property” idea used by Hamilton in “The Earth Owners.” Russell’s story tells of the battle against the alien overlords for humans to gain control of Earth. Russell used Fortean ideas in several of his stories. “Hobbyist” (Astounding, September 1947), for example, considers who watches the watchers, when a vastly superior intelligence makes notes of a human intelligence keeping track of alien life on another planet. Similarly, in his novel Dreadful Sanctuary (Astounding, June-August 1948), earth is a dumping ground for mad racial rejects who are monitored by a secret society of Martians, which regards itself as the only sane lifeform on earth, but who are in reality the true psychotics who foment all of earth’s troubles. Russell remained a disciple of Fort all of his life, and wrote several articles about Fort’s work as well as collecting details on unusual phenomena himself, which he published in the book Great World Mysteries (1957). Fort’s greatest legacy is probably not so much in inspiring fiction as in inspiring others to explore the unexplained. Those who have taken up Fort’s lines of research to develop further understanding include Vincent H. Gaddis, Ivan T. Sanderson, Jerome Clark, William R. Corliss, Loren Coleman, and Mike Dash. Corliss went back over and extended Fort’s original research identifying areas that he had either missed or only partially covered and, since 1978, has published over 25 books in what he calls his “Sourcebook Project.”Vincent H. Gaddis was one of Fort’s earliest disciples. He has compiled many books on strange phenomena, and is probably best known for having coined the phrase “The Bermuda Triangle” in an article in Argosy for February, 1964. Gaddis’s early writings appeared in Amazing

Stories under the editorship of Raymond A. Palmer. Palmer, thanks to the eccentric writings of Richard S. Shaver, had discovered the benefits of pandering to a cult readership. Shaver’s work, based on his idea that Earth had seen prior superior civilizations in Lemuria and Atlantis, and that evil survivors from those days live on, deep underground, and are the cause of all ills on earth, was not specifically Fortean, although appealed to some of the same followers. The publication of Shaver’s stories, starting with “I Remember Lemuria” in Amazing (March 1945), were presented as if they were true and attracted a huge readership. Gaddis began to contribute articles that explored issues raised by Shaver’s theories such as “Giants on the Earth” (December 1945), “Energy From Beyond” (May 1946),“New Evidence for Atlantis” (August 1946), and “Notes on Subterranean Shafts” (June 1947). No sooner had the Shaver mythos grabbed the readers of Amazing than Palmer became involved in the flying-saucer phenomenon following reports of strange sightings by Kenneth Arnold at Mount Baker, Washington, in June, 1947. If anything, this created an even greater stir than the Shaver Mystery. Sales of Amazing Stories skyrocketed and Palmer realized the size of a significant market. As a consequence, he set up his own publishing company to issue a magazine devoted to unexplained phenomena, Fate. Its first issue, dated Spring, 1948, appeared in January. Gaddis was among the regular contributors and it was not long before Fort was honored with an article in the third issue (Fall 1948), “Charles Fort, Apostle of the Impossible,” by Frederick Clouser. Assessing the value of Fort’s work, Clouser commented: The value of his work lies in its catalytic quality. It induces thinking — comprehensive thinking — and this must eventuate in progress. Fate, which survives to this day, was a genuine Fortean magazine, and spawned many imitators including Strange (1952), Exploring the Unknown (1960-1971), The Fortean Times (1973-current) and, more recently, The Anomalist (1994-current).

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88 | Fortean Times Unfortunately, Fort did not live long enough to see this growth in Fortean research. He died on May 3, 1932.Yet Fort may have had an inkling that his work would not be forgotten. Even before his death,Tiffany Thayer had founded the Fortean Society, which first met on January 26, 1931, a gathering that included Ben Hecht, Booth Tarkington, John Cowper Powys, Alexander Woollcott, and Harry Leon Wilson. Fort was lured to the meeting by subterfuge. Thayer remained the main driving force in the Society and was granted Fort’s papers after his death, much to the annoyance of Theodore Dreiser, who had been Fort’s main support during his working life.The Society met annually and in September 1937 Thayer produced the first issue of The Fortean Society Magazine. This ran no fiction, but consisted chiefly of news about Society members, though Thayer took on the task of transcribing all of Fort’s original notes, a mammoth undertaking. The magazine, which was retitled Doubt from issue #11 (Winter 1944-5) on, appeared when Thayer had time and it was really dominated by his own ideas and theories, which became crankier as he grew older.The Society and Doubt died with him in August, 1959, by which time Doubt had run for 61 issues. Six years later, Ronald and Paul Willis founded the International Fortean Organization, which publishes the magazine INFO Journal, which continues to this day. Its website is www.forteans.com. There has also been, since 1998, the Charles Fort Institute, founded by Bob Rickard, with its website at www.forteana.org. Rickard is today’s true champion of Fort. He founded the magazine The Fortean Times in November, 1973 (it was called The News until issue #16, June 1976), assisted by Paul Sieveking, and remained editor until 2002. The magazine continues the true spirit of Fort’s researches, reporting news of odd phenomena, questioning the unusual, and presenting strange facts to allow people to take matters further and draw their own conclusions. It also provides articles about Fort, his work, and the original Forteans, plus interviews with present-day researchers. Since

PG 88, Top to Bot – FOCUS, Aug. 1950 (© Leading Magazines, Corp.); FOLLIES, 1933 (© Robert E. Baker); PG 89, Bot band, L to R – FAMOUS DETECTIVE STORIES, June 1950 (© respective copyright holder); STARTLING DETECTIVE , July 1951 (© Fawcett Pubs.); BEST TRUE FACT DETECTIVE , July 1948 (© Newsbook, Publishers).

1995, the early issues have been reissued in a series of books, starting with Yesterday’s News Tomorrow, and there have been many spin-off books such as The World’s Most Incredible Stories (1998) and The Fortean Times Book of Life’s Losers (1996). The magazine even prompted a British television series, Fortean TV, hosted by Lionel Fanthorpe, running for two seasons in 1997-8. Fort’s work continues to have an influence on more recent generations of novelists and fictioneers. Robert Anton Wilson has probably done most among recent writers to bring the ideas of Fort, and fellow theorists, into the public consciousness, principally through the Illuminatus trilogy, written with Robert Shea, but also in The Masks of the Illuminati (1981) and The New Inquisition (1986). This brings Fort’s work into the realm of the conspiracy theorists, though Fort was no active supporter of conspiracies as such. He simply believed that all things were in some way connected, famously stating that “you can start anywhere on a circle.” Caitlin R. Kiernan has collected several stories inspired by Fortean experiences, To Charles Fort,With Love (2005). The conclusions that Fort drew may not have been very scientific, fascinating though they were, but that was not really the point.Fort’s strength was in highlighting the unusual and showing trends and circumstances that challenged orthodox thinking.As such, he was one of the first to pursue alternative philosophies. When reviewing Lo! in the New York Times in 1931, Maynard Shipley called Fort the “Enfant Terrible of Science” but he recognized the service Fort was providing, concluding, “…he is perhaps the enzyme orthodox science most needs.” There is no doubt that Fort started something that the world continues to demand, and it has manifested in all manner of books, magazines, websites, and television series.The irony is that Fort himself would probably have had no part

in any of these offshoots of his books as he refused to believe even his own writings and remained skeptical of everything. It’s what makes him and his work so refreshing.—MA [see Fate]

FRENCH HUMOR see Sexology FU MANCHU see Yellow Peril FURY see True Strange FUTURE SEX In the fourth issue of Future Sex editor Lisa Palac wrote,“The obstacles to creating quality porn are daunting. Printers won’t print it. Distributors decline to carry it. Artists refuse to help create it, fearing it will taint their career…. Even the most creative and original ideas end up thwarted by archaic laws, unwritten rules, and the overall stigma associated with pornography.” The editorial was in response to the reception received by an article on computer bulletin board sex titled “Getting it Online” by Gary Wolf that appeared in the second issue of the magazine. The article showed exactly what high-tech computer porn looked like and problems cropped up immediately when the printer objected to the pictures illustrating the article and offered to fix things by covering offending parts with geometric black shapes such as hearts. Palac talked the printer into doing the magazine sans black shapes; when it came out, their biggest distributor dropped them.

G-8 And His Battle Aces | National distributors, to this day, have an unwritten rule of not allowing the showing of penetration, bodily fluids, and even, at times, frontal nudity. Palac wrote about how hardcore magazines can get away with what they print because they own printing presses, run their own distribution, and wrap everything in plastic. It was obvious after this episode that FS was pulling some punches in later issues. FS was an attempt to bring sex and cutting edge technology together in a four-color glossy format, or as one reader called it,“Wired as edited by Camille Paglia.” The first issue appeared in 1992, and was edited by John Shirley, who was primarily know as a science fiction and cyberpunk writer, and Richard Kadrey. By the second issue, Palac (a photogenic writer, barely out of her twenties, who had worked at the lesbian sex jour-

nal On Our Backs), was in place as editor and brought more male nudity to the magazine. FS shared its San Francisco editorial offices with The Nose, and many of that magazine’s staff remember the distractions of sex toys and sex paraphernalia delivered daily to the office.Topics covered in the first issue included Lucid Sex Dreaming, Cyborg Love Slaves, and Intro to VR Sex; the second issue had Cybersex Suits, and the Mind Behind Virtual Valerie. Later issues included interviews with Susie Bright,Annie Sprinkle, and William Gibson. Taste of Latex editor Lily Burana, who worked for several years as a stripper, took over the helm after Palac for one print issue that never made it to newsstands as the magazine transitioned to the internet.—LO [see bOING bOING]

G GASM see Lunatickle G-8 AND HIS BATTLE ACES In 1933. the publishing company of Street & Smith launched one of the most successful pulp heroes with the introduction of the character Doc Savage. Rival publishing company Popular Publications jumped into the character pulp field that fall with G-8 and His Battle Aces. Princeton graduate Henry Steeger created Popular Publications in 1930. The publisher and

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later civil-rights leader became well known for his pulp titles such as Dime Detective and The Spider, and successful for the general audience appeal of his Theatre Arts and Tennis U.S.A. magazines. With the growing success of Dime Detective, first issued in 1931, Popular Publications wanted to produce another moneymaking title. The talented Harry Steeger, along with his partner Harold Goldsmith, selected Robert J. Hogan as the author to write the copy for their newlydesigned air war pulp. It was a masterful choice. G-8 and His Battle Aces was an instant success. During the years of the Great Depression, Popular Publications limped into the marketplace and onto the newsstands. Only able to pay a cent a word, the company required the productive ability of capable writers like Hogan to stay afloat. Hogan, a WWI veteran, was up to the task.

POST WWII MYSTERY MAGAZINES

90 | G-8 And His Battle Aces PG 90 – LIBERTY, Nov. 16, 1940 (© MacFadden); PG 91, L to R, Top to Bot – FUTURE SEX, #2 (© respective copyright holder); FUTURE SEX, #4 (© respective copyright holder); TALES OF THE KILLERS vol. 1, #11, Feb. 1971 (World Famous Publications).

His experiences during the Great War provided him with the basis for realistic action adventure stories. Hogan had honed his talent writing for other aviation pulps like War Birds. His highly romanticized tales of high-flying heroics would have a lasting appeal for generations. All of the G-8 title stories, as well as most of the shorter pieces, would be written by Hogan. His successful efforts would inspire Popular Publications to premiere another action adventure pulp starring a central heroic character,The Spider, that same year. It would be another very lucrative decision on the part of the company. The first issue of G-8 and His Battle Birds would appear in October, 1933. Paul Hogan came up with just the right blend of horror, suspense, and breathtaking adventure for his mysterious hero, G-8. The blend would keep G-8 on the newsstands, a central feature of the genre, for more than a decade. The talented and creative Hogan would go on to write two other character-based pulps for Popular Publications, The Mysterious Wu Fang and The Secret 6. However, it was G-8 and His Battle Aces that would remain the most popular, successful moneymaker for the company. It would last until June, 1944, when worsening World War II paper shortages forced Popular to cancel some of its most successful and long-running titles. The cancellation of all of its best titles effectively removed the company from the roster of publishers doing such material. G-8 and His Battle Aces is a remarkable blending of two pulp magazine genres — aviation and science fantasy. In the pages of his pulp magazine, G-8 battled the Central Powers (Germany), mutants, aliens, ghouls, and other supernatural creatures. America’s Flying Spy would be the Allied forces’ first line of defense against mad scientists, zombies, martians, beast-men, voodoo

priests, and even against thawed out Vikings. G-8 is a captain in the American Air Service. Throughout the entire series, his real name is never revealed. But the reader knows he is an expert fighter, a master of disguise, and, of course, the finest pilot that ever flew the skies during the Great War. Most of the stories let G-8 display both skills, as aerial action frequently led to a disguised G-8 operating undercover in enemy country. G-8 is aided in his fight by a group of friends and associates. There is his manservant, Battle, a former gentleman’s gentleman to a British actor. Battle aids G-8 in developing his various disguises.The deadpan English butler is known for the excellent meals he cooks at the Battle Aces’ hangar at Le Bourget Field outside Paris. Battle is also a master forger, a very helpful skill put to good use by G-8. G-8, the master spy, often retires to the end hangar at Le Bourget, listening to his favorite recording of “Ragging the Scale.” But the music cannot keep the war out, and even Battle is drawn into the continuing adventures, finally trading in his hefty rolling pin for an airplane, becoming a competent pilot. Along with his butler, Battle, G-8 is aided by his two able lieutenants, Bull Martin and Nippy Weston.The two Battle Aces, unlike their leader, have normal names, and are the classic bantering sidekicks of the pulps. Bull, like his name implies, is big, strong, and a bit dimwitted. Nippy, also like his name suggests, is a brainy little guy who is just happy to be a part of the team, square in the center of action with G-8. The two sidekicks are opposites, a trait writer Hogan emphasized by having Weston fly Spad #13, and Martin #7. The small and wiry First Lieutenant Nippy Weston is equally quick with his fists and his wits, earning himself the nickname “the terrier Ace.” During his downtime at Le Bourget airfield, he

Galaxy Science Fiction |

practices magic tricks. His lifelong love of magic enables him to remain grounded and fearless in the face of endless supernatural offensives. And there is agent R-1. Like G-8, her real name is never revealed.The reader knows she is a stunning blonde. R-1 is the only woman in G-8’s life. Although never romantically linked, they do express a “fondness” for working together. The Intelligence agent R-1 is adept in disguise, just like G-8, and is also a trained nurse, which she often uses as her best cover. Bull Martin sums her up pretty well when he says, admiringly, “She’s a regular guy.” Herr Doktor Krueger, an insane German scientist, appears in the first G-8 novel, “The Bat Staffel” (October 1933). This well-dressed, wiry little man will become the most durable of the series villains, appearing in more than 25 of the following issues. Germany’s maddest scientist will go on to menace the free world with one superweapon after another. In the October, 1933 issue, he uses his bat-plane. In the next issue, “Purple

Aces” (November 1933), he comes up with a chemical weapon. In the ongoing battle of wits, G-8 always manages to defeat Krueger, but not without severe losses on the Allied side. Herr Doktor develops an overwhelming hatred for the American spy. He lives for the destruction of G-8. Over the years, throughout the series, Herr Doktor Krueger developed an endless array of weapons; the bat-plane appears in the first issue. He tried giant skeletons in “The Skeleton Patrol” (March 1934), giant tentacle creatures in “The Death Monster” (March 1935), and walking skeletons in “Skeleton of the Black Cross” (February 1936). He would also try death rays, reanimated corpses, dissolving gas, and huge magnets; all attempts would fail. Herr Doktor Krueger would meet his doom in the June, 1943 issue,“Scourge of the Sky Monster.” Krueger’s last attempt would be using a heavily armed giant zeppelin against G-8. The super-dreadnaught would fail, like all the other attempts. Although Krueger, “the little giant of science,” was the most-used evil villain to appear during the early years of G-8, Hogan eventually began to develop other fiends to combat the Battle Aces. One of the most sinister of the other villains, Herr Stahlmaske, first appeared in the January, 1937 issue,“Scourge of the Steel Mask.” The true name of Herr Stahlmaske remains unknown, his identity shrouded behind an iron helmet that disguises his facial disfigurement.The destruction of his face was caused by burning debris from his smashed hot air balloon, obliterated during an offensive against the Allies. G-8 is the cause of his defeat and scarred face.The villain has sworn everlasting vengeance against the American. Herr Stahlmaske is a powerfully built man from a wealthy family. A mechanical genius, he invents a broad array of super-weapons in order to fight G-8, among them explosives, treadmillfronted troop-scooping tanks and, in the first encounter, a demolishing ray.The weapons, coupled with the villain’s powerful hypnotic abilities,

are not enough to stop G-8 and His Battle Aces. Another major antagonist was Germany’s “Mr. Green,” Herr Grun. He is raised as Rod Santos, not his real name, in Haiti, by his mother, a wealthy socialite. Herr Grun develops a hatred of all things “normal” or “beautiful” due to a rare birth defect that gives him a primitive, apelike appearance and strength. From an early age, a violent nature manifests itself in this throwback. It starts as he begins to torture animals for pleasure, soon moving on to the torture of humans, and then to murder. Santos immerses himself in the study of science and voodoo. Finally, as a teenager, he becomes the leader of a gang of grotesque children.The villain is complete when, at the age of 21, he murders his own mother. At the beginning of World War I, Santos, an American citizen, and his monster-men capture a German submarine. They pilot it back to Germany, to his adopted “home.” There the traitor offers their services to the German High Command. In the May, 1940 issue of G-8,“The Green Scourge of the Sky Raiders,” Herr Grun begins his personal war on everything “normal” — all in the name of the Kaiser — using super-science, Haitian hypnotism, and his own apelike strength. In G-8, Robert J. Hogan created an incredible series of World War I aviation stories, filled with nonstop action and adventure. The heroes and villains appearing in G-8 and His Battle Aces were a different kind of character then we see today. They flew and acted in a grand style for more than a decade in the blood-splattered pages of one pulp thriller after another, entertaining a generation of readers.—RA

GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION Galaxy Science Fiction began publication as a monthly digest-size science fiction magazine. From its premiere issue in 1950, it was considered one of the most influential such magazines on the newsstand. Originally it ran as a monthly

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until 1959, when it alternating on a bi-monthly schedule with companion magazine Worlds of If. In its final years it became an irregularly issued magazine. Galaxy was the creation of noted editor Horace Leonard Gold (H.L. Gold).With Gold at the helm it soon became known that the stories Galaxy published were a source of literate, witty science fiction. The stories, editorials, and columns often contained a note of social and political satire. During the early 1950s, Italian publishing company Edizioni Mondiale (World Editions), was trying to get a foothold in the American magazine marketplace. After failing once with their first major effort in the United States, Fascination (a magazine devoted to romantic fumetti), they approached H.L. Gold for ideas. Without hesitation, he suggested they publish a science fiction magazine.They accepted the idea, made him the editor, and the rest is history.

Begun in October, 1950 the first issue introduced a book review column by celebrated anthologist Groff Conklin, which continued until 1955. Another original column celebrated in that first issue was a science column by noted rocket scientist Willy Ley. Ley continued to write the column until his death in 1969. Sadly, he died shortly before the Apollo 11 moon landing; he had spent a lifetime nurturing and predicting the event. Spanning three decades, Galaxy published award-winning science fiction under various editors. Its success was emulated in 1953 by a French edition, Galaxie, and in 1957 by a German edition, Galaxis. From Galaxy’s inception, H.L. Gold intended to make it a different kind of science fiction magazine by focusing more on speculative stories and articles involving satire and sociology. It did not hurt that he also paid more than was common at the time for this kind of story. Gold also capitalized on the fact that many well-known writers of the time had become alienated from

John W. Campbell, Jr., who edited the acknowledged leader in the industry, Astounding. Campbell had let himself become too deeply involved in promoting L. Ron Hubbard’s Dianetics and other fringe scientific theories in his magazine, opening the way for a savvy competitor to take over the marketplace. H.L. Gold was that competitor. Beginning with its very first issue in 1950, Galaxy was a contender in the top rank of science fiction magazines, easily surpassing John W. Campbell’s Astounding. Campbell had done the same thing a generation earlier when he had replaced Hugo Gernsback, and his Amazing Stories, as the leader of the industry.With Gold at the helm, Galaxy produced superior fiction, artwork, and even used a higher quality of cover stock to sell the magazine. Gold published stories by the best writers in the business,Asimov, Simak, Sturgeon, Leiber, Phil ip K. Dick, Robert Sheckley, Frederik Pohl, C. M. Kornbluth, and, like both Campbell and Gernsback, he developed new authors. But Gold was not content to allow Galaxy to appear to be merely a superior imitation of Campbell’s Astounding, he had his own unique ideas to bring to his magazine. He insisted that there be fewer super-scientific heroes and more normal human beings, and the occasional anti-hero, in his stories. If Gernsback had insisted on a technological emphasis and Campbell on how that technology would change society, then Gold asked how those subsequent social changes would affect ordinary people. During the mid-1950s, at the peak of Gold’s influence as editor of Galaxy, stories that appeared in the magazine found their way onto the NBC radio show, X-Minus-One. He was able to publish the best because he matched or bettered the rates paid by the competition. Of lasting importance, Gold opted for Galaxy’s

L-shaped cover design. This well-known cover style was brought to the peak of popular success by such pioneering illustrators and artists as Ed Emshwiller and Don Sibley, whose cover paintings were enhanced by the high-quality printing on lowacid pulp paper with expensive but gorgeous high-gloss Kromekote cover stock. However brilliant H.L. Gold was, he was never able to overcome his agoraphobia, a warinduced trauma. His mental disease caused him to edit Galaxy from behind the closed door of his apartment. This produced many difficulties among his staff and writers. He required them to slip manuscripts under his door, and pick them up the same way, rarely meeting face to face, and would make revisions to manuscripts or demand major rewrites that sometimes improved a story and sometimes led writers to take their stories elsewhere. He asked Daniel Keyes to change the ending of his classic story “Flowers for Algernon” to a happy one. Keyes refused and published his story intact in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Gold’s heavy-handed editing style made writers appreciate John W. Campbell’s eccentric behavior at Astounding. When Gold was finally persuaded to leave his apartment, he was injured in an automobile accident. This resulted in further-declining mental health, and he was forced away from the magazine, leaving Galaxy for good in 1961. He lived the rest of his life more or less in seclusion and died in 1996. H.L. Gold will always be remembered as one of the “Big Three” editors of the Silver Age of science fiction — along with John W. Campbell, Jr., and Anthony Boucher. During his tenure, Gold recast the space opera leanings of the genre into “social science fiction” and far-reaching satire. David Rosheim, in his book Galaxy: The Dark and the Light Years (Advent Publishers, Inc. 1986), quotes Gold, stat-

PG 92 – interior pages from DUDE, May 1959 (© respective copyright holder); PG 93, Bot band, L to R – TAB, Bettie Page on cover, vol. 4, #6 (© Carnival Magazine, Corp.); FOTO-RAMA, Brigitte Bardot on cover, Mar. 1959 (© respective copyright holder); INSIDE STORY, Lili St. Cyr on cover, May 1960 (© American Periodicals Corp.).

Galaxy Science Fiction | ing “that he would not anthologize;” that is, he would not let his personal taste dictate the kind of stories he would print. Gold operated on a less personal level and would only choose a story on the basis of how well it worked, if it “clicked” along and got the reader somewhere. Among the many famous, award-winning novels that “clicked” and were serialized in Galaxy in the 1950s were The Demolished Man, by Alfred Bester; The Space Merchants, by Frederik Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth; and The Caves of Steel, by Isaac Asimov.The magazine also published stories by these writers, as well as science fiction by Robert Sheckley, Theodore Sturgeon, Philip K. Dick, and William Tenn. Gold did several anthology collections related to the magazine before health concerns began to overwhelm him. Under his direction anthologies

were compiled into the highly-readable, and collectible, Galaxy Reader of Science Fiction series. Due to H.L. Gold’s progressively debilitating emotional state, Frederik Pohl became more involved in the running of the magazine, officially becoming editor in 1961. Actually, Gold was hospitalized in 1959, but Pohl left him on the masthead until the December, 1961 issue. Pohl would continue the high literary level of the magazine. When Robert Silverberg was finally considering a return to writing science fiction, Pohl, as editor of Galaxy, gave him carte blanche to write whatever he wanted. Pohl would publish the Silverberg stories that became “To Open the Sky” and “The World Inside,” as well as serializing Downward to the Earth and the Nebula awardwinning A Time of Changes. Frederik Pohl would remain editor until May, 1969, when Ejler Jakob-

sson (July 1969-May 1974) took over. During Pohl’s stay as editor of Galaxy and its sister magazine, Worlds of If, he would win the Hugo award for If three years in a row. Galaxy fell on hard times in the 1970s, as editors Ejler Jakobsson, Jim Baen (June 1974-October 1977), and John J. Pierce (November 1977April 1979) were unable to overcome the lack of financial support from the publishers. With the January, 1975 issue, Galaxy merged with its sister magazine, Worlds of if.The latter had been founded in March, 1952 and shared editors with Galaxy after its purchase from publisher James Quinn in the late 1950s. Galaxy changed editorship a number of times before its demise in 1980, when it was purchased by E.J. Gold, son of the founding editor, who briefly revived it in 1994. E.J. Gold managed to publish eight issues before

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Galaxy foundered and died once again. Galaxy was known for the high quality of its book reviewing. The first reviewer, Groff Conklin, wrote “Galaxy’s Five-Star Shelf,” from its premiere issue until October, 1955. Groff Conklin was replaced by H.L. Gold’s brother, Floyd C. “Gale.” In February, 1965 Pohl replaced Gale with Algis Budrys, a reviewer whose thoughtful discussions were collected as Benchmarks. Sometime before 1972, he was subsequently replaced by Theodore Sturgeon, who passed the job on to Spider Robinson in 1975; Robinson offered enthusiastic if not very discriminating discussions of new science fiction. During the 1970s, cartoon artist Vaughn Bodé contributed a comic strip, Sunspot, to the magazine. Noted science fiction writer Jerry Pournelle served as science columnist under Baen, and

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94 | Galaxy Science Fiction famous science fiction fan and professional erotica writer Richard E. Geis wrote a fan-oriented commentary column,“The Alien Viewpoint.” E.J. Gold’s further plans to continue the Galaxy title online did not develop after the 1995 demise of his short-lived print publication effort, although the former editor/publisher still maintains a scattering of Galaxy-related web pages. Galaxy Science Fiction will always be remembered for the spectacular quality of its finest era, the 1950s. Not only are the early issues sought after by readers and collectors,but the Galaxy Novels, a digest-size line of reprints (often abridged), which ran from 1950-1958, are also highly prized and well regarded. The line was sold to Beacon Books, which kept the name but changed the format to a small paperback size,thus helping to usher in the science fiction paperback era. With the advent of the paperback, a new marketplace was created for science fiction writers and the high point of the sf magazine era ended.—WU

GHOST STORIES Inspired by a postwar resurgence of interest in spiritualism, and possibly by the appearance of Weird Tales in 1923, Bernarr Macfadden floated the first issue of Ghost Stories in July, 1926 under his Constructive Publishing Corp. imprint. Modeled after his pioneering confession title, True Stories, Ghost Stories was a rotogravure magazine illustrated by posed photographs mirroring the supposedly true memoirs contained within.After the standard confession-story model, the narratives were told in the first person, and bylines followed the convention of “X as told to Y.” Ghost Stories struck a resonating chord. The public enjoyed the vicarious thrill of supernatural accounts mixed with plaintive emotional confessions. The early contributors included Lyon Mearson, Robert W. Sneddon, Paul R. Milton, Victor Rousseau Emmanuel, and editor W. Adolphe Roberts. The posed photographic tableaux (which included a very young Boris

Karloff) employing double-exposures to simulate apparitions added a strange verisimilitude to the otherwise-ridiculous proceedings. Painted covers invariably depicted surprised mortals confronting ethereal spirits of the no longer living.Titles ran from the evocative “How I Got Back my Soul” to the absurd “The Thing That Paid the Rent.” The ironclad confession formula of sin, suffer, and repent was modified to die, dematerialize, and haunt. Love, both romantic and familial, was the constant underlying theme. Unrequited love from the Great Beyond was the most popular variation on that theme. Since the target audience was bored girls and housewives, forbidden marriage between the living and the dead was explored in stories like “Married After Death,” “Husband or Ghost?” and “Our Astral Honeymoon.” Happy endings were mandatory. The “He-didn’t-know-he-was-dead” premise revived so successfully by M. Night Shyamalan in The Sixth Sense was another old chestnut Ghost Stories repeated endlessly. The shades who inhabited Ghost Stories’ pages were usually beneficial spirits, seldom frightening apparitions, spectral covers notwithstanding. Haunted house yarns were virtually taboo. Ghost Stories was calculated to reassure its credulous readers about the hereafter, not disturb them with vampires and other undead creatures — although such spooks did sometimes appear for variety’s sake. This, and its limited themes, distinguished Ghost Stories from the often-morbid Weird Tales. Spiritualistic phenomena like mediumship, automatic writing, and Ouija boards remained the most popular story devices. Psychic sleuths like Robert W. Sneddon’s Mark Shadow, Ghost Detective, Victor Rousseau’s Dr. Martinus, Occultist, and Carol Lansing’s Karamahati the Medium appeared frequently, as did Harold Standish Corbin’s Henry Jenkins, a friendly disem-

bodied spirit who helped earthly mortals with their mundane problems. Serials such as Urann Thayer’s “A Soul with Two Bodies” usually took on more challenging otherworldly themes. Readers were invited to contribute their own personal experiences, gratis, which appeared in two regular features, “The Meeting Place” and “Spirit Talk” by “Count Cagliostro.”The famous seer Cheiro (William John Warner) offered “How I Foretold the Fates of Great Men.” Harry A. Keller (1926-28) was Ghost Stories’ inaugural editor, followed by W.Adolphe Roberts (1928), Henry Bond (1929), and D.[an] E.Wheeler (1930).Wheeler best described what Ghost Stories offered in one of his market notices: “We use fiction and fact stuff of supernatural or psychic character, and are in need of true fact stories of any length from 1,500 to 5,000 words. Especially looking for occult or ghost theme serials of from 30,000 to 50,000 words in length. Desire American settings and modern people. Action and thrills indispensable. Photographs from which drawings can be made are acceptable.”With the August, 1928 issue, the roto format was abandoned, and Ghost Stories became a standard-sized pulp magazine. Line drawings supplanted the quaint sepia-tinted photo spreads. Editor W.Adolphe Roberts retained much of the original editorial policy. Then, in 1930, Macfadden sold the title to Harold Hersey’s Good Story Magazine Company. Beginning with the June issue, Hersey and Arthur H. Rowland shared the editorial responsibilities. Later contributors included Weird Tales refugees such as Nictzin Dyalhis, Frank Belknap Long, Paul Ernst, Hugh B. Cave, Carl Jacobi, Jack D’Arcy, Robert E. Howard (writing as “John Taveral”), and sundry others.Walter B. Gibson wrote as Thomas Windsor, and himself, producing “The Witch in the Next Room” and “Can a Dog Have a Soul?”

PG 94, Top to Bot – GALAXY, Apr. 1959 (© Galaxy Publishing, Corp.); GALAXY, Oct. 1956 (© Galaxy Publishing, Corp.); PG 95, L to R – MAGAZINE OF HORROR, #16 (© Health Knowledge Inc.); GASM, Nov. 1977 (© Story, Layout); STARTLING MYSTERY STORIES, #12 (© Health Knowledge Inc.); SPACE WARS, June 1978 (© respective copyright holder).

Health Knowledge Magazines | Agatha Christie was responsible for “The Woman Who Stole a Ghost” in 1926. H.G.Wells’s oft-plagiarized “The Red Room” was reprinted, inspiring countless hacks to try to resell it back to Ghost Stories under numerous titles and variations. Near the end, the bland covers copied from silent movie stills, with misty spirits and ectoplasmic hands painted in, gave way to the Halloween-themed images of Stuart Leach and others. But the stark Art Deco facelift was not enough to keep Ghost Stories earthbound. The final issue was dated December, 1931January, 1932.At the last, Ghost Stories was an early casualty of the great magazine die-off of the Depression. Nothing quite like it was ever seen again.—WM [see Tales of Magic and Mystery, True Strange Stories, and Physical Culture]

H THE HEALTH KNOWLEDGE MAGAZINES Although a low-budget publisher for all its fourteen dubious years, the New York firm of Health Knowledge, Inc., managed to publish not just one group of cult magazines, but at least three, maybe four, depending on how diverse and extreme your tastes. They range from the bodybuilding/gay magazines with which it started, through sex guides and fetish magazines, to a group of weird-fiction titles that have long become collectors’ items. Health Knowledge, Inc., came into being at the close of 1956. It was owned by the Acme News Company, which both printed and distributed magazines. Health Knowledge was set up to publish Popular Man, an American edition of the British physical-culture magazine Man’s World.The first issue was dated January, 1957, published in small digest format, almost pocketbook size, with

64 pages, many with photographs of muscular men dressed in little more than shorts or posing pouches. It was the first of several such “beefcake” magazines, as they became known, that the firm would publish.These included Model Man (Spring 1959-Winter 1960), an American edition of another British “physique” magazine and, more significantly, Tomorrow’s Man. The latter had been started in 1952 by Irvin Johnson, who ran a gymnasium in Chicago. However, in 1955 a disagreement arose between Johnson and his assistant, Paul Lange, and Lange took over the magazine, moving it to New York.At that time it was distributed by the American News Company, which ceased operations in 1957, and Tomorrow’s Man was taken over by Acme from the February, 1958 issue. At this same time, the offices of Health Knowledge and Tomorrow’s Man (as a separate imprint, but to all other intents the same organization) relocated to 119 Fifth Avenue in New York. Tomorrow’s Man would remain with Acme/Health Knowledge until the bitter end, in August, 1971. Health Knowledge was run by Louis C. Elson, who developed several new titles. Although the “beefcake” magazines primarily concerned physical culture, this incorporated a range of sexual matters,and also appealed to gay men.Elson introduced another magazine intended to be a general sex-health guide for all adults. Realife Guide, as it was initially called (a confusing title that was subsequently changed to Real Life Guide), appeared in June, 1957. The initial editor was David Huntly, though Leonard Worth also served as editor for a while, whilst the medical consulting editor went by the name of Dr. John Watson. It was largely an imitation of Hugo Gernsback’s long-running magazine, Sexology, though it never quite captured much of a market. It nevertheless survived for nearly ten years, first as a quarterly and then bimonthly, reaching 54 issues.The emphasis was on medical articles, such as “Can Sex be Predetermined,” “Our Worsening V.D. Problem,” and “Young Doctors Look at Abortion,” and though it published the occasional sensationalized piece, such as “The World of Sexual Deviation” or “Sex

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96 | Health Knowledge Magazines and the Whip,” on the whole the magazine did not appeal to the fetishist readership. Elson also experimented with a short-lived humor magazine, Nuts, in February, 1958, but of more lasting value was his detour into the realms of the psychic. Exploring the Unknown began in January 1960. It was in the same digest form as the other magazines, though with minimal illustrations.The emphasis was on psychic and unexplained phenomena, similar to the long-running Fate, and immediately attracted a significant readership. Its circulation was amongst the best of all the Health Knowledge magazines, peaking at around 40,000. Unlike Fate, it never attracted any major cult following, such as UFOlogists or spiritualists, but it remained popular and reliable, surviving for 60 issues until Health Knowledge’s demise. Its initial editor was Stewart Robb, a trained musician with a fascination for the unexplained, who became best known for his studies of the prophecies of Nostradamus. Unfortunately, after a few months Elson and Robb had a disagreement. Elson had recently had discussions with Robert A.W. Lowndes, who had been the editor at Columbia Publications for 18 years, working on its pulp and digest fiction magazines, including Crack Detective and Future Science Fiction. He edited the last-ever science-fiction pulp magazine, Science Fiction Quarterly. Columbia Publications had ceased operations in February, 1960 when their distributor pulled out. Lowndes had tried freelancing for a few months without much success but, following placing an ad in the trade press, he met Louis Elson in October, 1960, and was offered the editorship of both Real Life Guide and Exploring the Unknown. Several issues were already in the pipeline, so the first that Lowndes had responsibility for was the April, 1961 Exploring the Unknown and the June 1961 Real Life Guide.

Elson had noticed the success of the British paperback series, Pan Book of Horror Stories, which had significant American distribution.The series had started in 1959 and was a factor in the revival of interest in supernatural horror fiction, which had been in the wilderness during the 1950s. Several anthologies of weird fiction started to appear and Elson decided to launch a new periodical, Magazine of Horror, with Lowndes as editor.The budget per issue was minimal ($250), which meant that he had to rely on reprints, with just an occasional new story, but this ultimately worked in its favor. With so little weird fiction having been published in recent years, fans of the genre had no easy access to classic material, and even less to stories from the old pulps. Lowndes had been a reader and collector of the science fiction and supernatural-fiction magazines virtually from the start and had a long run of the legendary Weird Tales. Although the first few issues played it relatively safe, reprinting out-of-copyright material by Mark Twain, Ambrose Bierce, Robert W. Chambers, and Mary Wilkins-Freeman (little of which was readily available at that time), he introduced some material by Weird Tales authors. Notable amongst these was Frank Belknap Long, who revised his early stories,“The Man With a Thousand Legs” and “The Space Eaters,” for the first two issues. Long had been a close friend of H.P. Lovecraft, and his stories formed part of Lovecraft’s growing Cthulhu cycle of stories. Lovecraft was an obvious name to run in the magazine, but rights were tied up with Arkham House, run by August Derleth. However, Derleth was highly supportive of Lowndes’ venture and Lowndes was able to negotiate a decent rate. Lovecraft’s “The Dreams in the Witch House” (issue #4, May 1964) was the first of eleven pieces Lowndes would reprint over the next few years. Lowndes

PG 96,L to R – WEIRD TERROR TALES, vol. 1, #1, art by Virgil Finlay (© Health Knowledge Inc.); STRANGE TALES, Mar. 1932 (© Clayton Magazines); PG 97, Bot band, L to R – JUNGLE STORIES, summer 1942 (© Fiction House); PLANET STORIES, (© Fiction House); JUNGLE STORIES, fall 1944 (© Fiction House).

also reprinted several of Derleth’s stories, including his posthumous collaboration with Lovecraft “The Shuttered Room” (issue #7, January 1965). Lowndes steadily introduced more of the leading Weird Tales writers, including Henry S. Whitehead, Clark Ashton Smith, and Robert E. Howard. Joseph Payne Brennan, who had appeared in Weird Tales in its final days, contributed a couple of new stories. Lowndes also used some stories that had either been rejected by Weird Tales as too gruesome (“A Thing of Beauty” by Wallace West), or bought by Weird Tales’s editor Farnsworth Wright and then rejected by his successor (“Sacrilege” by Wallace West), or bought by Weird Tales but remained unpublished when the magazine folded (“The Life-AfterDeath of Mr. Thaddeus Warde” by Robert Barbour Johnson). This and other material gave the magazine a strong atmosphere, one redolent of the old pulps, allowing readers something of a belief that Weird Tales was being reborn. Wherever possible, Lowndes tried to reprint forgotten stories by forgotten writers, ideally ones that were in the public domain, and his tastes in this respect were impeccable. For instance, in the fifth issue (September 1964) he ran “The House of the Worm” by Mearle Prout, which had not been reprinted since the October, 1933 Weird Tales. The story had obvious Lovecraftian overtones and not only proved the most popular story in the issue, but was the subject of discussion in the magazine’s vibrant letter column for some while. Lowndes also discovered that the copyright had not been renewed on the issues of Strange Tales, the legendary companion to Astounding Stories, and the closest rival Weird Tales had had during its heyday. Lowndes set himself the task of reprinting as much of the contents of Strange Tales as he could, and since that magazine frequently ran long lead novellas, Lowndes was able to reprint some substantial stories, virtually none of which had been reprinted in the last 30 or so years. Occasionally Lowndes dipped into the science fiction magazines, reprinting, amongst oth-

Health Knowledge Magazines | ers, several of Laurence Manning’s “Stranger Club” stories from Wonder Stories, but he restricted his choices to stories that fell within the “horror and strange stories” remit – although Strange Stories was dropped from the magazine’s title after the fifth issue. Lowndes had a personal touch to his editing, writing informative and welcoming editorials and encouraging feedback through letters and votes on stories, which he usually published with his own additional comments.This gave the magazine the feeling of a fan club, and because Lowndes was also finding rare and unusual stories to reprint, the magazine took on the aura of something special, a treat for afficionados. The closeknit affinity between editor and reader was almost palpable and never deserted the magazine. It is no surprise that amongst the letter writers were both well known collectors and dealers like

Richard Kyle, Dick Minter, and Glenn Lord, plus new devotees who would soon establish themselves in the field, including Stuart Schiff, Robert Weinberg, and Stephen King. Unfortunately, Health Knowledge operated on a shoestring budget, not helped by a lack of data from Acme’s poor accounting department and slipshod distribution.While Lowndes’s magazines did not operate at a loss, such profit was so fragile that any other problems within the company could spell disaster. They had already suffered the problem of the crime-fiction magazine, Chase, which was edited long distance from California by Jack Matcha. The magazine itself was competent enough, comprised mostly of suspense stories by Matcha’s circle of Hollywood writers including William F. Nolan, George Clayton Johnson, and Robert Bloch. It also included some non-fiction. The first issue (January 1964), had a feature about

Mickey Spillane and the second (May 1964), an interview with Ian Fleming, both of which make the magazines collectors’ items now. But at the time Chase struggled to find a readership, not helped again by Acme’s patchy distribution and Matcha delivering it over budget.After two issues, Elson cancelled the deal with Matcha and asked Lowndes to complete the third issue, which appeared in September, 1964. Costs were still too high and sales too poor to continue, so the magazine was scrapped. Then there was the problem of Shriek,Acme’s attempt to enter the horror film market that had been trail-blazed by Famous Monsters of Filmland and was now burgeoning. Shriek, which first appeared in May, 1965, should have been a success, but it did nothing to rise above its rivals, offering instead the same black-and-white retread of the Hammer horror films and interviews with

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Christopher Lee, Vincent Price, and Boris Karloff. It staggered through four occasional issues and then collapsed. These and other poorly planned projects (like The Vikings, another body-building magazine but clearly aimed at gay men), plus Acme’s general disorganization, nearly put an end to Health Knowledge.As Lowndes called it, Magazine of Horror “had its first encounter with death.” After the November, 1965 issue it almost ceased. It put out just three issues during 1966. Both Exploring the Unknown and Real Life Guide went quarterly and the latter folded in the spring of 1967.What softened the blow a little was that Lowndes talked Elson into experimenting with a different kind of mystery magazine, one that involved weird and unusual crimes, and which would be predominantly reprint. Thus Startling Mystery Stories was born, first issue dated Summer, 1966 but released

FICTION HOUSE

98 | Health Knowledge Magazines in April. It reprinted material by H.P. Lovecraft, Robert Bloch, Edward Hoch, and Seabury Quinn – Quinn’s entry being one of his Jules de Grandin stories, the longest running series from Weird Tales. De Grandin and his colleague Dr. Trowbridge were a blend of Holmes and Watson with Hercule Poirot and Hastings, and the two were always sucked into sinister crimes, frequently involving black magic or Satanism.The stories had not been reprinted in over 30 years and were welcomed by a new generation.The reception of Startling Mystery was encouraging and Elson risked a quarterly schedule.As a result, three issues appeared in 1966 that, along with the three of Magazine of Horror, reduced the disappointment among subscribers. What really saved Health Knowledge was something else entirely. Elson had to produce some cheap but profitable magazines that would increase cash flow, and quickly. Two things happened. First, he released a handful of pin-up magazines that were a mixture of ribald humor and titillating photos. Both Girlie Fun and Comic Cuties appeared in the winter of 1965, followed soon after by Peek-a-Boo, Spicy Fun,Wild Women, French Fun, Pin-up Fun, Sun Strip, Daring Dolls, and Bouncy Babes. Most of the magazines were interchangeable and issues were released roughly one a month with whatever title seemed to suit the moment. Several of the titles saw it into double figures, with Comic Cuties, Girlie Fun, and French Fun the most successful, staying the course until the end. The second approach was something else entirely. Another of the companies whose magazines were distributed by Acme was Selbee Associates.This had been set up by Leonard Burtman in the late 1950s to publish under-the-counter adult books and magazines. The number of magazines increased in 1962/63, following a slight lessening in the control over obscene literature.Titles included Pepper, Nocturne, High Heels, Satana, Female Mim-

ics, Striparama, and Sin-ema,. In the winter of 1965/6, many of these titles passed over to Health Knowledge, who added further titles like Modern Life Illustrated and Girls in Orbit.These were more extreme than the relatively harmless pin-up magazines, with the emphasis on fetishes and s&m in most of the titles, or the thrills of striptease joints and erotic films. Health Knowledge took over two more magazines from other companies, Big and Face and Physique, both physical culture magazines clearly aimed at the gay community.All these magazines sold for the high price of a dollar and, though few of them could be openly distributed, they had significant sales. By the end of 1966 money was becoming less tight at Health Knowledge and Magazine of Horror came back to life, first on a quarterly schedule during 1967 and then bi-monthly from November, 1967 on. Startling Mystery Stories remained quarterly, but it was joined by a succession of companions, starting with Famous Science Fiction in October, 1966 (dated Winter 1966/7), which was quarterly and ran for nine issues until Spring, 1969. It reprinted classic science fiction (that is, pre-1937), mostly from the pulps, but squeezed in the occasional new story, including the very first story by the sixteen-year-old Greg Bear, “Destroyers” (Winter 1967/8). Next came WorldWide Adventure (begun in Winter 1967/8), which survived seven issues until Summer, 1969. This one had to operate on a zero budget, with Lowndes selecting stories from the pulps – mostly Argosy – and some older stories where copyright had not been renewed. They were a good mixture of war stories, sea stories, air stories and other derring-do. A year later came Thrilling Western Magazine (beginning in Winter 1968/9), another zero-budget reprint magazine, which lasted five issues through to Summer 1970. Toward the end of Health Knowledge’s life,

PG 98 – GHOST STORIES, Nov. 1927 (© Macfadden Publications); PG 99, L to R, Top to Bot – HIGH TIMES, # 1, (© TransHigh Corp.); REAL LIFE GUIDE (©Health Knowledge Inc.); LA PAREE STORIES, Apr. 1932 (© Merwil Publications, Com.); HIGH HEEL MAGAZINE, Sept. 1937 (© Lex Publications, Com.).

Health Knowledge Magazines | there were two other titles, more closely related to Magazine of Horror. Weird Terror Tales (Winter 1969/70-Fall 1970; 3 issues) and Bizarre Fantasy Tales (Fall 1970-March 1971; 2 issues) were almost interchangeable with their elder sister, though they published longer stories. But the two primary magazines were Magazine of Horror and Startling Mystery Stories. Lowndes provided some memorable achievements with both magazines. Perhaps most significant was their role in the rediscovery of the works of Robert E. Howard. Howard had yet to receive the posthumous fame that he would achieve with the revived popularity of his Conan stories, which had only just started to be reprinted by Lancer Books. Lowndes ran twelve of his stories, half of them previously unpublished, plus eight poems, mostly in Magazine of Horror. Glenn Lord, the agent for Howard’s estate, had unearthed a trunk load of old unpublished manuscripts, including a new Conan story, “The Vale of Lost Women” (MoH #15, Spring 1967). Lowndes was also offered a story,“King of the Forgotten People,” which Lord believed was a story accepted for Strange Tales and announced as forthcoming under the title “Valley of the Lost” before the magazine folded. Lowndes ran it as “Valley of the Lost” (MoH #13, Summer 1966), but soon after Lord found the true manuscript for that story, which Lowndes also ran, but as “The Secret of Lost Valley” (Startling Mystery Stories #4, Spring 1967). Lowndes tried to do something similar with David H. Keller, whose reputation, unfortunately, never reached the heights of Howard’s or Lovecraft’s. Keller had been a prolific writer who produced far more work than he sought to have published.These included a series of stories, known as “Tales of Cornwall,” which traced the perils of the Hubelaire family through the generations from ancient times. A few had appeared in the pulps, most out of sequence, but many remained unpublished. Lowndes began publishing the series in its proper order, but was not much past halfway when Magazine of Horror folded.

Although Lowndes had little capacity to run new stories, he tried to include one or two per issue and sought to encourage new writers. He published some of the earliest work by Roger Zelazny, including the powerful psychological stories “Divine Madness” (MoH #13, Summer 1966) and “Comes Now the Power” (MoH #14, Winter 1966), but had not been able to schedule the stories for several years after he acquired them, by which time Zelazny was already honored as a startling new talent. No doubt Lowndes’s major discovery was Stephen King, who likewise had waited patiently to see his submissions appear in print. Now “The Glass Floor” (SMS #6, Fall 1967) and “The Reaper’s Image” (SMS #12, Spring 1969) make those two issues of Startling Mystery Stories the two most highly prized of all the Health Knowledge magazines. Other new writers whom Lowndes encouraged included Stephen Goldin, F. Paul Wilson, Janet Fox, and Steffan B. Aletti. Aletti’s stories were in the Lovecraftian mold, one of which, “The Eye of Horus” (MoH #24, November 1968) was the only new story in Magazine of Horror to top any of the reader polls. For the four years from 1967 to 1971, Magazine of Horror and Startling Mystery Stories were the only regular magazines publishing quality new and reprint weird fiction. Lowndes acquainted a whole new generation with the works of G.G. Pendarves, Paul Ernst, Arthur J. Burks, Seabury Quinn, Arlton Eadie, Philip M. Fisher, Francis Flagg, and others whose works had not otherwise been preserved by Arkham House. Both magazines had made their mark and were selling well.There was no commercial reason for them to fold in the spring of 1971, but by then Acme News’s general mismanagement, plus a rise in union power,along with delayed payments from copies distributed abroad, caught up with the company. In September, 1970 it filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy, meaning it could continue to operate and use further income to pay off its debts. Health Knowledge was taken over by Countrywide Publications, run by Myron Fass, who was

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100 | Health Knowledge Magazines chiefly interested in the sex and fetish magazines, though was initially prepared to let Lowndes’s magazines continue if they made a profit. Only Weird Terror Tales was dropped so as to avoid confusion with Fass’s comics with similar titles. However, it was evident from the start that Fass’s intentions were to take over and close down Acme News and so, in February, 1971, Lowndes learned that his four surviving magazines, Exploring the Unknown, Magazine of Horror, Startling Mystery Stories, and Bizarre Fantasy Tales, were to be dropped. It is unfortunate but perhaps pertinent that the time when they folded was just a few months before the death of August Derleth, and these two events seemed to propel others into action, so that during the seventies the weird-fiction field began to recover and prosper, led, to some degree, by disciples of Magazine of Horror W. Paul Ganley with Weirdbook and Stuart D. Schiff with Whispers.—MA

HEAVY METAL The story of one of the best-known cult magazines in American culture began in France in December, 1974 with the first appearance of Métal Hurlant. The French title translates literally as “screaming metal.” A small group of French writers and artists combined their talents to produce a magazine about science fiction and horror comics. Chief among them were cartoonists Bernard Farkas, Philippe Druillet, Jean Giraud (better known as Mœbius), and the very talented writer Jean-Pierre Dionnet. The creative friends struggled with producing the magazine.The first issues appeared every three months in a slim 68-page volume, of which only 18 pages were in color. But it housed famous Mœbius and Druillet cartoon characters such as

Arzach, Gail, and Lone Sloane. Later it would begin to showcase collaborations with foreign cartoonists, most notably Richard Corben. A short list of the artists who would appear in the pages of Métal Hurlant contains the best of that generation and includes Alejandro Jodorowsky, Philippe Caza, Enki Bilal,Alain Voss, and Berni Wrightson. The struggling French magazine would become bi-monthly with issue number seven, and finally monthly with issue number nine. It would expand its content from comics to articles about science fiction books and movies, eventually covering music and video games. Métal Hurlant would become world famous for its complex graphics, cinematic imagery, and surreal storylines. Its influence as the first mature, adult, illustrated graphic magazine cannot be underestimated.Alas, it ceased publication in July, 1987. However, Métal Hurlant did not disappear from the French newsstands before it captured the imagination of a visiting American tourist. In the mid-1970s, publisher Leonard Mogel was in Paris to kick off the first French edition of National Lampoon. He stumbled across a copy of the amazing Métal Hurlant and the rest is history. Mogel, a deft businessman, knew it for a great magazine when he first saw it, and quickly licensed the American version. The first issue of the renamed magazine, Heavy Metal, hit the United States marketplace in April, 1977. Having a larger budget than his French counterparts had originally, Mogel was able to publish a glossy, slick full-color monthly magazine. He also had the luxury of using the original color pages that had already been done in France, thus greatly reducing his initial costs and allowing him to establish a foothold in the American marketplace. Heavy Metal was soon to become the premiere American magazine of science fiction and

PG 100 – HELP, Sept. 1965 (© Warren Publications); PG 101, – L to R – HEAVY METAL, # 16, 1978 (© H. M. Communications); HEAVY METAL, # 2, May 1977 (© H. M. Communications); HEAVY METAL, # 1, May 1977 (© H. M. Communications); HEAVY METAL, summer 1986 (© H. M. Communications).

Heavy Metal |

fantasy comics. This niche was established with translations of the graphic stories originally published in Métal Hurlant. Leonard Mogel introduced American readers to the creative works of the French cartoonists Enki Bilal, Jean Giraud (Mœbius), Philippe Druillet, and Philippe Caza. Later, after the magazine was fully established, it would run Stefano Tamburini and Tanino Liberatore’s ultra-violent “Ranxerox.” The founding editors at the helm of the American edition were Sean Kelly and Valerie Marchant. Under their direction Heavy Metal would become a distinctly different type of magazine than its French counterpart without losing its exotic flavor. Art director and designer John Workman would bring his experience obtained at DC Comics to the magazine, creating startling and memorable effects. After the first two years of publication, Leonard Mogel was still unsatisfied with the magazine.The feedback he received pointed out the lack of text and the emphasis on art. So in 1979

he hired Ted White to replace both Kelly and Marchant. Ted White was a good choice, made at the right time. Starting as a teenager, White had become a prolific contributor to science fiction fanzines. His skill as a writer is evident in his story “The Bet,” an evocative memoir of a tense day in 1960 when a dispute over a record owned by music critic Linda Solomon prompted Harlan Ellison to bet his entire record collection against a single record in White’s collection. In 1968, Ted White deservedly won a Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer, while holding the professional position of assistant editor at The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. It was a post he held from 1963 until October, 1968, when he became editor of Amazing Stories and Fantastic, where he remained until October, 1978. His reputation as an editor of note preceded him, impressing Mogel at Heavy Metal, who hired him to introduce non-fiction and prose fiction writers to the magazine.

White and Workman worked together to change the look of Heavy Metal into a truly American product. White’s solution was simple: he incorporated more stories and strips by American artists. He would leave his mark on the magazine forever with the introduction of columns on various aspects of popular American culture by well-known authorities. Lou Stathis wrote about rock music and Jay Kinney would dig into underground comics. Steve Brown became the Heavy Metal reviewer of new science fiction novels. Bhob Stewart would explore visual media from fantasy films to animation. In 1980, Julie Simmons-Lynch would replace Ted White as editor. Even though his stint at the helm was brief, he had set the stage for a new slant for the magazine, the showcasing of non-fiction by such well-known writers as Robert Silverberg and Harlan Ellison. Simmons-Lynch would introduce interviews of famous media figures such as Roger Corman, Federico Fellini, and John Waters.

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One of the most famous science fiction short stories ever written, Harlan Ellison’s “’Repent, Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman,” was adapted into a graphic story for the January 1980 issue. It was originally written in 1965 in a single six-hour session during a Milford Writer’s Workshop (a conference of science fiction writers held annually), and went on to win the 1965 Nebula Award and the 1966 Hugo Award for best short story. The magazine released an animated feature film in 1981.The movie, Heavy Metal, was adapted from several serials that had appeared in the magazine. Like the magazine, the movie featured graphic nudity and violence, stopping short of the explicit content of the magazine. The film featured the talents of John Candy, Eugene Levy, and Harold Ramis. The movie would go on to gain something of a cult status. Leonard Mogel planned to do a series of films to be promoted under his “Heavy Metal Presents” banner. Scott Roberts did extensive work scripting an adaptation of science fiction writer

102 | Heavy Metal PG 102 – FANTASTIC ADVENTURES, (© Ziff-Davis); PG 103, Bot band, L to R – HELP, # 3, Oct. 1960 (© Warren Publications); HUMBUG, # 10, 1958 (© Humbug); HELP, # 8, Feb. 1961 (© Warren Publications).

William Gibson’s short story,“Burning Chrome,” eventually writing a total of six screenplay revisions. However, the project, planned as a liveaction film, was sold by Mogel to Carolco, and the film was never made. In 1986 Heavy Metal began to struggle to keep its foothold in the marketplace, becoming a quarterly, and then a bi-monthly in 1989. Simmons-Lynch would remain editor of magazine until 1991, when Kevin Eastman acquired Heavy Metal, becoming both publisher and editor. Eastman, an American comic book artist, is best known as co-creator (along with Peter Laird), of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Julie Strain, his wife, is perhaps better known as the “Queen of the B-movies.” Strain has over 100 films to her credit. In addition, she was Penthouse Pet of the Month for June 1991, and Penthouse Pet of the Year for 1993. Strain often appears in the magazine in photos or pictures painted by Olivia (De Berardinis) and Simon Bisley. The magazine released another animated feature film in 2000. Heavy Metal 2000 was based on The Melting Pot, a graphic novel written by Kevin Eastman and drawn by artist Simon Bisley. Julie Strain was the voice for the main character as well as the basis for the appearance of the female protagonist drawn by Bisley. She was also the basis for the third person shooter in a spin-off video game spawned by the movie, Heavy Metal: F.A.K.K. Heavy Metal has left a mark on American culture, most notably for the high quality artwork it has published. The illustrated version of Milton’s epic poem “Paradise Lost,” by Terrance Lindalls, which appeared in 1980, is one of the best renditions of the poem done in the 20th century.The Heavy Metal artists today can also be seen as a “New International Surrealist Movement.” There will always be critics who feel Heavy Metal’s style and content is too pornographic and violent.They will ill-advisedly attempt to “protec-

tively” ban its sale to minors, and if possible, to adults as well. But such poorly conceived efforts by conservative elements are doomed to fail in the face of the powerful graphic content produced by the leading edge of American culture.—EVN

HELP! Harvey Kurtzman (1924-1993) was a cartoonist, writer, and editor with enormous influence on several generations of artists and readers. Born on October 3, 1924, in New York City, he grew up rooting through neighborhood trash cans, looking for the full-page Sunday comics his family did not get. His first comic strip, Ikey & Mikey, was drawn with chalk on the sidewalk. By 1939 Kurtzman had moved on to ink on paper. His first amateur contest-winning art page appeared that year in Tip Top Comics; he won $1. In 1942, at the age of 18, fresh out of the High School of Music and Art, Harvey got a job working for Louis Ferstadt, who produced comic features for publishers Prize and Ace. His first assignment was assisting Louis Zansky in the production of Classics Illustrated’s Moby Dick adaptation, his job was to fill in the black to save the “real” artist time. Kurtzman’s first signed effort was the cover of Super-Mystery Comics (volume #3, number #3), as well as the “Mr. Risk” story inside.Another was the “Lash Lightning” strip for Ace, Four Favorites #9 (February 1943). It was at this time that World War Two interrupted his fledgling career. It was after the war that his distinctive style began to emerge while freelancing for Stan Lee at Timely Comics (later Marvel comics), in such series as “Hey Look!,” a one-page filler in Marvel comics, which he wrote and drew, and “Pot Shot Pete,” the first multi-page series he both wrote and drew. For three years, with no editorial input

Help! | from Lee, he produced one page a week as he continued to hone his cartooning and gag-telling ability. The comic industry changed in the late 1940s, so Kurtzman started the “Charles William Harvey” commercial art studio with his friends, Charlie Stern and Music and Art classmate Will Elder. Elder would remain a collaborator with Kurtzman for decades. Lengthy professional associations would become a pattern for Kurtzman and include John Severin (best known for western and war comics, and a very long stay at Cracked magazine) and Dave Berg (whose “Lighter Side” series appeared in Mad magazine for decades). While making the rounds of comic publishers in 1949, Kurtzman’s rise to fame began when he chanced upon the office of Bill Gaines, publisher of EC Comics. Gaines hired him after laughing at his humorous artwork and sent the

young cartoonist to his uncle, David Gaines, a packager of non-newsstand educational comics. Kurtzman’s first job there was to illustrate a western-themed anti-syphilis tale about “That Ignorant, Ignorant Cowboy.” But it was not long before he had his own titles when Gaines put him to work editing and writing a pair of comics in a genre new to EC — war stories. Kurtzman showed a flair for writing and scripting the two anti-war comics, Two-Fisted Tales and Frontline Combat, so that a Kurtzman story tended to look like his, no matter who drew it. Kurtzman’s style and perfectionism gave his stories impact and verisimilitude, but also slowed up his output, which was how he was paid at EC. So in 1952, Harvey talked Gaines into launching a new title based on the humorous material Kurtzman could so readily supply.Thus, Tales Calculated to Drive You Mad was born, and issue #1 hit the

newsstands in October.The 23 issues of the comic book and first five issues of Mad as a magazine reflect Kurtzman’s sensibilities and sense of humor. The showdown between Gaines and Kurtzman came in 1957 when EC cancelled all its other titles, banking on the economic success of Mad to sustain the company. Kurtzman demanded a 51% share, so Gaines fired him. Kurtzman was gone after issue 29 appeared in September, 1956. Kurtzman went on to join Hugh Hefner, publisher of Playboy, launching what was hoped to be an even better production. Hefner, who had run an interview with Kurtzman several months earlier, bankrolled Trump, and the first issue appeared in January 1957. Quite literally a trump card, it was the best of the Mad sensibilities and the best of the Mad artists (Will Elder, Wally Wood, and Jack Davis) presented in a slick magazine format that even boasted a foldout, just like

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Playboy. Lacking any real commitment from Hefner, it lasted only two issues. Kurtzman and his gang of loyal peers,an artists’ collective of himself,Will Elder, Jack Davis,Al Jaffee, and Arnold Roth, then pooled their money to finance the publication of their own magazine. Aptly named Humbug, it debuted in August, 1957. It was comic book size, but black and white and too heavily text-laden to appeal to the average comic book reader. Despite their efforts, and those of business manager Harry Chester, and an 11thhour shift to magazine format with issue ten, it only lasted eleven issues, failing to overcome distribution and financial problems. It was at this point in his career that Harvey rolled up his sleeves, threw up his hands, and reached for his destiny one more time, starting over with the aptly named, Help!. During 1959 and 1960, Kurtzman had worked steadily as a free-

HARVEY KURTZMAN MAGAZINES

104 | Help! lance writer and artist for Esquire, The Saturday Evening Post, Madison Avenue, TV Guide, Pageant, and Playboy magazines. By 1960 he was employed by Jim Warren, whose Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine spawned a publishing empire of horrorrelated titles. Kurtzman edited a Warren magazine on movie westerns. Not satisfied, he convinced Warren to bankroll yet another satire magazine. Help! would prove to be the longest-lived of Kurtzman’s satire efforts, and introduced a number of young “underground” cartoonists to mainstream America. Help! relied heavily on photography. Old movie stills were fitted out with hip new captions and complex, often crazy, scenarios were depicted with photos in a comic-book-like format called “fumetti” by the Italians. Help! was a great deal more successful than his past efforts, lasting from 1960 until 1965, 26 issues in all. It was at Help! that Kurtzman would achieve his last regular editorial position of note, becoming the first editor to publish the work of certain artists and writers who would dominate underground comix later on, such as R. Crumb (Fritz the Cat), Gilbert Shelton (Wonder Warthog) and Jay Lynch (Nard & Pat), besides introducing the works of future Monty Python members Terry Gilliam and John Cleese. During the run of Help!, Kurtzman showed his greatest influence on the humor/satire scene of the day. Chronically underfunded, he was still able to attract an impressive array of stars and future stars to his magazine. The very first issue featured a cover of Sid Ceasar, a major TV comedy star of the time. Inside was a short story by Rod Serling, whose Twilight Zone was a current TV success story. The covers of the next ten issues read like a Who’s Who of contemporary comedy: Ernie Kovacs, Jerry Lewis, Mort Sahl, Dave Garroway, Jonathan Winters, Tom Poston, Hugh Downs, and Jackie Gleason. Using impressive cover stars and movie stills, and the aforementioned fumettis, Kurtzman was able to gradually build a magazine to rival the longevity of his original success with Mad. For over five years, from the first issue in

PG 104, Top to Bot – KNIGHT MAGAZINE, Nov. 1962 (© Knight Publications); HUSH-HUSH, 1957 (© Charlton ); PG 105, Bot band, L to R – THE WIT AND WISDOM OF WATERGATE, 1975 (© respective copyright holder); 3 DIMENSION PIN-UPS, 1953 (© Motion Picture Magazine); SPIRIT WORLD, #1, 1971 (© Hampshire Distributors, Ltd.); IAN FLEMING’S JAMES BOND 007, 1964 (© Dell/United Artists).

August, 1960 to the last in September, 1965, Kurtzman received help with appearances from writers and comedians Dick Van Dyke, Gloria Steinem, Roger Price, Sylvia Miles, Orson Bean, Algis Budrys, Ed Fisher, Phil Ford, Mimi Hines, Henny Youngman, Jack Carter, Jean Shepherd, Bernard Shir-Cliff, Russ Heath, Woody Allen, John Cleese, and many others. A couple of Kurtzman’s assistants, Terry Gilliam and a young Gloria Steinem, would go on to fantastic careers of their own. Steinem was instrumental in gathering the celebrity comedians who would appear on the covers of each issue, as well as appearing in the fumetti strips. Gilliam, aside from meeting Cleese for the first time years before their work together in Monty Python’s Flying Circus, was also instrumental in gathering the best younger talents such as R. Crumb, Gilbert Shelton, and Jay Lynch. Science fiction writers such as Algis Budrys, Ray Bradbury, and Arthur C. Clarke were regular contributors of prose and scripts. With the input from all this varied talent, Help! became a somewhat more adult and risqué publication than Mad. Not as sexually explicit or taboobreaking as the comix, the contemporaneous The Realist, or the later National Lampoon were or would become, it served as an original locus for a wide range of talent. The greatest article to appear in Help! was the comic strip “Goodman Beaver Goes Playboy!”, a ribald parody of Archie Comics, created with the inspired help of Kurtzman’s collaborator, Will Elder. The mordant fables of Goodman Beaver pitted the Candide-like Goodman against the stark hypocrisies of life.The Archie parody

invoked the wrath of publisher John Goldwater and resulted in a lawsuit. Despite a talented roster of friends and contributors, including Gahan Wilson, Ed Fisher, Paul Coker, Jr., Phil Interlandi, Arnold Roth, Jack Davis, and Al Jaffee, the magazine folded after 26 issues.The untimely demise of Help! led directly into the underground comix movement. Kurtzman was the inspiration for many of the seminal cartoonists of the movement. They followed his work in Mad, Trump, Humbug, and many contributed to the “Public Gallery” in Help!, for which Kurtzman paid $5 for each piece he used.

Hit Parader | First appearances include Skip Williamson, Dennis Ellefson, Don Edwing, Stew Schwartzberg, Gilbert Shelton, and R. Crumb. In the middle of the Help! run, Kurtzman began the most lucrative production of his fabled career with the production of a color strip in the pages of Hugh Hefner’s Playboy. Titled “Little Annie Fanny,” it would become a formulaic parody of the “hip” type of sex carried in that magazine. With Elder’s help, the two- to seven-page strips began to appear in 1962 and continued erratically until 1988. Harvey Kurtzman died on February 21, 1993, his illustrious career finally over. In his 68 years, he had gone from chalk on the sidewalk to the heights of the publishing industry. Routinely celebrated for his visual verve and artistic successes, his critical reputation will outlast his career valleys and formulaic and disappointing projects.—EVN

THE HIDDEN WORLD The Hidden World appeared in early 1961 and ran through 1964, publishing 16 issues. It was one of Raymond Palmer’s stable of magazines dealing with the Shaver Mystery, a weird series of stories and articles that began in the March, 1945 issue of Amazing Stories, and was supposedly based on the true experiences of Richard S. Shaver. Shaver claimed to have discovered remnants of a vast subterranean civilization that came to earth from another world in prehistoric times. The descendants of this early alien invasion still lived underground. Shaver called them Teros and Deros, the Deros being deranged robotic entities responsible for much of modern-day human suffering through the use of advanced machines that they used to beam negative thoughts into human minds. Shaver’s variation of the “hollow earth” theo-

ry was rewritten by Palmer and appeared as “I Remember Lemuria” in 1945.The issue sold out and began such a deluge of Shaver material over the next few years that some sf fans started a revolt. Palmer and Shaver claimed that all of the stories and articles were based on facts.The Shaver material led to Palmer leaving Amazing and starting up his own business in order to publish Other Worlds, Fate, Mystic, and Flying Saucers from Other Worlds. Palmer also appeared to have taken part in The Shaver Mystery Magazine (1948), which was sent to members of the Shaver Mystery Club and was mostly made up of “fact-fiction stories” written by Shaver. The Hidden World recycled Shaver and UFO material from earlier Palmer publications, and including original letters and Shaver’s artwork.—LO [see Fate,Amazing Stories]

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HIT PARADER Charlton Publishing Charlton Publishing began when John Santangelo, an Italian immigrant, met Edward Levy, a disbarred lawyer, in prison. Santangelo had gone to jail for selling bootleg song sheets without paying the necessary licensing fees to ASCAP. Getting out of jail in the mid-1930s the pair decided to become business partners and bought a marginal little publication called Hit Parader and Song Hits, which published the lyrics to popular songs. Santangelo now had Levy to negotiate usage rights to songs with ASCAP and past indiscretions were forgotten. In 1945, the company took on the name Charlton Publishing, derived from the two partners’ sons having the same name: Charles. Little by little they began adding features to the Hit Parader

FADS & ONE-SHOTS

106 | Hit Parader to make it more appealing to readers and by the early 1950s the magazine was carrying a cover blurb that read: “Largest circulation of any song magazine.” Charlton published other song magazines as musical taste changed over the years: Country Song Round-Up, Best Songs and Popular Songs, Hillbilly and Cowboy Hit Parade, Rock & Soul, Rock and Roll Songs Magazine, and Song Hits Magazine. By the late 1940s they had set up an all-inone operation in Derby, Connecticut, which included a typesetting shop, printing, distribution with railroad siding coming right up to the warehouse loading docks, and editorial offices. Having a press in-house meant that Charlton had to keep it running all the time to justify its overhead.This translated into a flood of comic books, one-shots (covering everything from astrology to crossword puzzles), scandal sheets (Hush Hush and Top Secret), exploitative magazines (Picture Detective

and Actual Confessions), pin-up (Peep Show), movie monsters (Werewoves & Vampires, Horror Monsters Presents Black Zoo, and Mad Monsters), and unclassifiable titles (Adventures in Horror, Horror Stories, Tales of Terror, and Psychic Dimensions). Charlton became a paragon of low-budget publishing. Their comic book line was mainly noted for having talented people producing mediocre work. It did not help that the company’s main printing press was antiquated, and originally manufactured to print cardboard packaging. It was common knowledge among kids that Charlton comics looked “bad.” Hush-Hush and Top Secret were bona fide competitors to Confidential, often breaking new stories and scandals that other scandal magazines missed, and is a prime example of the life of a scandal magazine from modest beginnings to success to fading with the times. Peep Show and Paris

Life were pin-up magazines that imitated Robert Harrison’s Beauty Parade and Eyeful by showing lots of pictures of women in lingerie. Beatles Story with news, lyrics, and pictures of the group appeared between 1964 and 1966. Charlton went out of business in 1991. One of the last magazines left at the end was the one that had started it all, Hit Parader.—JH

ALFRED HITCHCOCK’S MYSTERY MAGAZINE AHMM is the only survivor of a plethora of digest-size crime and mystery magazines that first appeared in the mid-1950s. Many were in imitation of Manhunt, the most successful of the 1950s’ digests, which had emphasized violence and sex in its fiction. AHMM had the distinction that

while not an imitation of Manhunt, it ran fiction by many of the same writers, and it came from Manhunt’s publisher, Michael St. John. St. John had only recently taken over the company, following the death of his father, and was still experimenting with various crime magazines, hoping to find the same successful formula as Manhunt. During 1956 he launched three such titles: Mantrap, Murder, and Verdict, but none survived for more than three issues. AHMM was a much safer option. It not only had the bonus of being able to use the Hitchcock name and display his face on the cover, but the television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents had aired to considerable success in October, 1955. Although the magazine, which first appeared in November, 1956 (cover date December), ran all new stories, there was a likely affinity in the public’s mind between the TV series and the maga-

MACFADDEN PUBLICATIONS

Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine |

PG 106, Bot band, L to R – MIDNIGHT, Oct. 7, 1922 (© Macfadden Publications); MASTER DETECTIVE, Jan. 1942 (© Macfadden Publications); GHOST STORIES, May 1930(© Macfadden Publications); PG 107, L to R – ALFRED HITCHCOCK’S MYSTERY MAGAZINE, Nov. 1957 (© respective copyright holder); ALFRED HITCHCOCK’S MYSTERY MAGAZINE, Aug. 1960 (© respective copyright holder); ALFRED HITCHCOCK’S MYSTERY MAGAZINE, Nov. 1960 (© respective copyright holder); ALFRED HITCHCOCK’S MYSTERY MAGAZINE, Sept. 1963 (© respective copyright holder).

zine. It was also agreed that stories published in the magazine could be optioned for the TV series, thus attracting major writers and adding kudos to the magazine. Borden Deal’s story of a judge seeking retribution for his wife’s infidelity, “A Bottle of Wine,” from the first issue, became the first to be picked for the TV series and was broadcast in February, 1957. A separate imprint was set up to run the magazine, H.S.D. Publications, on Fifth Avenue in New York, the initials purportedly standing for Hitchcock, St. John, and Richard E. Decker (St. John’s general manager). Once the magazine was up and running, St. John decided to split his organization. He continued with Manhunt and the Playboy-style Nugget, while AHMM was taken by Decker.The editor was author and former professional boxer William Manners, who had achieved some recognition with his novel of a writer struggling against a terminal illness, One is a Lonesome Number (1950), and who had edited Manhunt. Although Hitchcock lent his name to the magazine, he wrote nothing for it directly (unlike Frederick Dannay of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine), but his daughter was involved.Actress Patricia Hitchcock was one of the associate editors under her married name, Pat O’Connell. She remained in Hollywood, but was sent, and commented upon, all the proofs, and visited the offices from time to time. Hitchcock’s presence was felt in other ways. Not only was his image always shown on the cover, there was also always a message purportedly by Hitchcock at the start of each issue, plus his comments opened each story.They were probably written in-house by one of the editorial staff – perhaps even advised by Patricia – but they sharply reflected Hitchcock’s style of dark humor.

Because of his introductions to the TV series, you could almost hear him talking to you from the magazine. Finally, but most importantly, the stories had to reflect the style most associated with Hitchcock and the TV series, namely cleverly constructed stories of growing suspense, often with a surprise ending.There was no direct violence, no sex or gore, although it might be implied, but rather occasional sardonic humor, ingenious plots, and characters with whom readers could easily identify. Moreover, they tended not to be detective stories, but rather stories of how crime or mystery affected everyday people, and were often deeply psychological.They were generally stories of smalltown or suburban America.There were no British writers and no classic stories. The authors who soon became regulars were those able to produce such sharp, clever stories, including Henry Slesar, Robert Arthur, Fletcher Flora, C.B. Gilford,Talmage Powell, Jack Ritchie, Lawrence Treat, and Bryce Walton.The magazine became known for its coterie of regular writers, who, though they sold elsewhere, soon made AHMM their primary market and thus molded it to their style. At the outset there were a few special names. C.L. Moore, usually better known for her weird tales, led the first issue with “Here Lies…,” a twisted tale of suicide and revenge. Jim Thompson contributed two stories featuring hustler Mitch Allison, “The Cellini Chalice” in the first issue, and “The Frightening Frammis” in the third.William Campbell Gault also made a couple of appearances in the early issues, but nothing thereafter.Thompson and Gault were also writing for St. John’s other magazines and their stories here were probably a consequence of shuffling

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108 | Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine the inventory to see what best fitted where.These authors never reappeared in the magazine. Manners simply cultivated a key coterie of writers and let them develop the magazine. Surprisingly, one group of authors whose work was ideal for AHMM was rarely seen, namely those closely associated with Ray Bradbury and the Weird Tales school. Bradbury’s stories are arguably definitive Hitchcock material, but he never contributed a single story, though “The October Game” was reprinted in the June, 1957 issue. Robert Bloch contributed only two new stories in the days before his novel Psycho was turned into Hitchcock’s most famous film. Charles Beaumont never appeared, William F. Nolan had just one story, in the first issue, and Richard Matheson two, both in the March, 1957 issue. In fact, of the Weird Tales school, only Joseph Payne Brennan became a regular contributor, and that was not until 1965. At the outset the magazine had several anomalies. Collectors noticed that although the first issue was clearly identified as the first issue from Hitchcock’s introduction, it was labelled number 12. It has been suggested that this was because the number reflected the month when the issue was published, which may explain another anomaly. After just four issues, the magazine was switched from the digest-size to the large-flat format in common with the men’s magazines. The same happened with Manhunt. In the case of AHMM, it missed an issue in the process. In his introduction, Hitchcock related that he’d been told paper for that issue had been hijacked while en route from Canada. The fifth issue, which would have been dated April, 1957, was delayed, so when it did appear, in the large format, it was dated May and was catalogued as Volume 2, Issue 5, even though the previous issue had been Vol., 2, #3. The large format AHMM looked good, but apparently did not sell well – probably because it was not stacked among the other mystery digest magazines. After just ten issues – the hardest ten to find of all the early copies – it reverted to the digest format and has stayed that way ever since.

PG 108, Top to Bot – HIT PARADER, Apr. 1967 (©Charlton Publications); CINEMAGIC, #19, 1983 (© Starlog Publications); PG 109, Bot band, L to R – THE MYSTERIOUS WU FANG, Nov. 1935 (© Popular Publications); DR. YEN SIN, July-Aug. 1936 (© Popular Publications); THE MYSTERIOUS WU FANG, Mar. 1936 (© Popular Publications).

As AHMM continued, several new names appeared. Among them were William Link and Richard Levinson, best known for their TV work, especially Columbo. They contributed fifteen stories including “Dear Corpus Delecti” (March 1960) which, like the later Columbo stories, has a man believe he has committed the perfect murder only to be caught out by one small clue. Charles Willeford appeared just three times, starting with a voodoo story, “The Alectryomancer” (February 1959). Arthur Porges began his long association with the magazine with “Sheep Among Wolves” (June 1959). His many contributions included a number of locked-room stories, starting with “Dead Drunk” (December 1959). Donald E.Westlake put in his first AHMM appearance in June, 1959 with “One on a Desert Island,” and was soon contributing regularly, including the series featuring New York police detective Abe Levine, who first appeared in “The Best-Friend Murder” (December 1959). Richard Deming had contributed just one story in 1957 and another in both 1961 and 1962, but became a regular from November, 1963. It was a while before Lawrence Block included AHMM among his markets, with “If This be Madness” (January 1963), seen through the eyes of a psychopath. Edward D. Hoch opened up his batting at AHMM just before he stormed Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine (EQMM)’s battlements with “Twilight Thunder” (January 1962). He developed very few series in AHMM, although occasionally one of his series from EQMM would stray across, such as the Captain Leopold story, “The Vanishing of Velma” (August 1969). In its first decade, AHMM ran very few series, and one of the most surprising was August Derleth’s Solar Pons stories, which found a home there starting in February ,1961. They were the only period pieces AHMM ran at that time, and included

some of the few supernatural stories in the magazine. Although AHMM ran occasional weird tales, such as Joseph Payne Brennan’s Lucius Leffing stories, they were the exception, the editors preferring stories of suspense and the macabre. Few of the stories from AHMM were singled out for award nominations that, at that time, were dominated by more traditional crime stories. Only two were nominated for the Edgar Award and both were from the same issue, October, 1960. Even more remarkable was that both stories,“Summer Evil” by Nora Caplan and “A Real Live Murderer” by Donald Honig, concerned children and crime. There were a number of changes during this period. In the summer of 1960, Richard Decker moved his operations to Palm Beach, Florida. Manners remained as editor for a year,but resigned in July, 1961. He was replaced, briefly, by Lisa Belknap, before Decker took over editorial duties himself. Finally, in October, 1964, Decker’s wife, Gladys, who had been the managing editor since June, 1959, became the full editor, initially under her maiden name of G.F. Foster. Gladys Decker was further elevated to editorial director in June, 1967 and Ernest Hutter became the new editor. This team, of the Deckers and Hutter, remained stable for the next nine years.These changes had been scarcely noticeable in the magazine content, so disciplined were its contributors. If there was one thing most noticeable about AHMM during its first 20 years, it was its consistency, almost to a fault. Despite the continued ability of the authors to produce clever and entertaining stories, the magazine became almost predictable. Yet it continued to prosper even beyond the end of the Hitchcock TV series that, in its extended form as The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, had ceased in June, 1965. Circulation rose slowly but steadily, perhaps because the absence of new TV episodes

Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine | sent devotees in search of a substitute. If anything, the mid-1960s was when AHMM took on that cult aura. It was the only magazine providing regular stories of suspense and trickery, rather than straight crime and detection, and it had a coterie of writers whose work, by and large, was highly individual. Further new names appeared. John Lutz debuted in the December, 1966 issue with “Thieves’ Honor.” Bill Pronzini put in his first appearance in December, 1967 and introduced the first of his Nameless Detective stories,“Sometimes There is Justice,” in the August, 1968 issue. The inimitable George C. Chesbro first appeared in the March, 1969 issue with the grotesque “Snake in the Tower” and, onward from March, 1972, his stories about Mongo the Magnificent, the dwarf criminologist, became regular fare. Toward the end of 1975, Decker decided to sell AHMM. Circulation data is not available for

that period, but there is no reason to believe that it had fallen significantly. It is more likely that Decker wished to retire. Learning the title was up for sale, Joel Davis, the publisher of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, acquired it.The handover came with the March, 1976 issue. Because the two magazines used the same printer, Davis was able to keep AHMM in exactly the same format and,apart from a few minor changes, it is unlikely many noticed the change of ownership. Davis kept the same cover style, the same print format, even the same font size and the same weak, sketchy story illustrations that had given the magazine a distinctly cheap appearance for the previous 20 years. The contributors also stayed the same. This was a remarkable feat by Eleanor Sullivan, who had only recently become editor of EQMM. Now she was endeavoring to compile another magazine that was utterly different in content. She was helped to

some degree by Frederick Dannay, the half of the Ellery Queen writing team who was the editorial director of EQMM, but sustaining AHMM in its style and form was still a singular achievement. Inevitably changes did occur and they began to accumulate by 1979.The most noticeable was the inclusion of more stories with a historical setting such as one of Barry Perowne’s Raffles stories, “Raffles and Operation Handcuffs” (February 1979). The series had been running in EQMM for several years and was far adrift from anything AHMM had previously published. S.S. Rafferty’s Captain Cork series, set during the Revolutionary War, also slipped across from EQMM. Also against the grain were stories set outside America, especially one set at a public school in England, as in “Trial by Fury” by Caryl Brahms and Ned Sherrin (April 1979), while Charles Sheffield’s “The Lambeth Immortal”

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(June 1979), combined the two transgressions by featuring Erasmus Darwin (Charles Darwin’s grandfather) investigating a bizarre mystery in eighteenth-century Britain. Regardless of the quality of the stories, these were totally at odds with all that AHMM had represented. While some of the regular writers continued to contribute – Lawrence Block, John Lutz, Bill Pronzini, Lawrence Treat, Stephen Wasylyk, plus a few new ones, notably Loren Estleman and Barry Malzberg – the changes piled up rapidly. A nonfiction column was introduced, the first ever in the magazine,“Crime on Screen,” and soon after, a letter column. Along with EQMM, the magazine went four-weekly at the start of 1980. Then came the inevitable. Alfred Hitchcock died on April 29,1980.There was no major recognition of his passing in the magazine, but his “signed” introductions ceased after the issue for

YELLOW PERIL PULPS

110 | Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine June 18, and his picture was dropped from the cover on April 1, 1981, the first time in nearly 25 years. It provided an opportunity for a complete break with the past. Davis did not rush into it, but rather than provide extra work for Eleanor Sullivan, he brought in a new editor, Cathleen Jordan, who formally took up post from the December 9, 1981 issue. She gave considerable thought to the changes, partly so that the magazine retained something of the past in its stories of suspense and the macabre, but primarily so that it complemented EQMM.This would prove the most significant shift.Whereas EQMM concentrated on the traditional mystery and crime story, AHMM shifted toward the hard-boiled private-eye story and the unconventional. Also, while Edward D. Hoch tended to have the monopoly on impossiblecrime stories in EQMM, it was open house in AHMM, and a wide range of puzzling tales emerged. AHMM also included more stories with historical or international settings, running several stories by or set in the Far East. The changes took full effect starting with the August, 1982 issue.The magazine had a complete face-lift, a new cover design (into which a small photograph of Hitchcock was once again inserted, rather like his brief walk-on moments in his films), improved interior illustrations, and a wide range of new features, including an expanded letter column, puzzle contests, book reviews, and a “mystery classic” reprint, starting with Daphne du Maurier’s original story behind the film,“The Birds.” There was a column on unsolved crimes and a further feature, “Off the Record,” with authors chatting about the mystery genre, was added in August, 1983. From there on, there was no doubt that AHMM was a totally different magazine. It neither looked nor felt like the original, and there was scarcely even a token nod to the Deckers’ approach, although a few of the original authors occasionally appeared. Whether the magazine was better was for the reader to judge, and the selection of approving letters may not be entirely unbiased. Certainly the number of stories from AHMM nominated for an

Edgar Award increased – there had only been eight in the 25 years before Jordan took over, and there were fourteen in the next 20 years, including three that won the award:“Ride the Lightning” (January 1985) by John Lutz,“Flicks” (August 1988) by Bill Crenshaw, and “The Dancing Bear” (March 1994) by Doug Allyn. Other new awards were instigated alongside the Edgar and, with the shift to privateeye stories, AHMM fared especially well with the Shamus Award presented by the Private Eye Writers of America. Over 20 stories were nominated during Jordan’s editorship, four of which won.Ten stories won the Robert L. Fish award for Best First Short Story. Jordan did a fine job of encouraging new writers among whom were Bill Crenshaw, Doug Allyn, and Mary Kittredge. Another sign of the magazine’s popularity was the dramatic rise in sales. Joel Davis was a wizard at promoting magazines and developing subscription drives and special deals. Within five years of taking the magazine over from Decker, subscriptions for AHMM alone had risen, on average, from 16,000 to 118,000. In the next ten years under Jordan they would more than double to 245,300. In fact, by 1986 AHMM was outselling EQMM. Between them, Davis and Jordan had not only captured a new readership, they had, more importantly, retained it. Clearly the new AHMM was a more popular magazine than the old. In recognition of this, in 2002 Cathleen Jordan was awarded the Ellery Queen Award, presented “to honor outstanding people in the mystery publishing industry.” Alas, she did not live long enough to receive the award, as she died on the January 31, 2002. She had made AHMM the most popular mystery magazine in the world, but it was at the cost of losing the old, eccentric, but highly distinctive original.

There has never been another magazine like Decker’s AHMM, and while its current incarnation continues under a new editor in the same vein developed by Cathleen Jordan, there are probably some readers who remember the original, with its idiosyncratic stories of surprise, devilment and small-town intrigue, who may well reflect and say,“those were the days.”—MA

HORROR STORIES (Popular) see Terror Tales HORROR STORIES (Charlton) see Hit Parader HUMBUG see Help! HUMORAMA The Humorama line of cartoon panels were used in a variety of men’s magazines from the mid1950s to the mid-1960s.The titles of those men’s magazines included: Breezy, Cartoon Parade, Comedy, Eyeful of Fun, Fun House, Gaze, Gee-Whiz, Humorama, Instant Laughs, Laugh It Off!, Jest, Joker, Laugh Circus, Laugh Digest, Laugh Riot, Popular Cartoons, Popular Jokes, Romp, Stare, Snappy, and Zip. The Humorama line was the creation of Martin Goodman, an American publisher noted for his diverse enterprises such as paperback books (under the Lion imprint), men’s adventure magazines, and for his major contribution to the field of comic book publishing. Goodman is best

PG 110, Top to Bot – MAGAZINE OF HORROR, #23, art by Virgil Finlay (© Health Knowledge Inc.); STARTLING MYSTERY STORIES, #6 (© Health Knowledge Inc.); PG 111, L to R [Humorana magazines] – JOKER, May 1966 (© Humorama); SNAPPY, No. 1959 (© Humorama); LAUGH DIGEST, Feb. 1962 (© Humorama); POPULAR JOKES, Aug. 1964 (© Humorama); Bottom tier: GEE-WHIZ! (© Humorama); HUMORAMA, May 1962 (© Humorama); JEST, May 1955 (© Humorama); BREEZY, Feb. 1957 (© Humorama).

Humorama magazines |

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112 | Humorama remembered for launching the company that would become Marvel Comics. In 1939, Martin Goodman and Louis Silberkleit joined John L. Goldwater to found the company that became Archie Comics. Goodman, the mastermind of the group, employed several different corporate names for their various publishing ventures. Red Circle was the company name for their pulp magazines, which included the science fiction magazine Marvel Science Stories, the weird menace Uncanny Tales and Real Mystery, and the Tarzan-like Ka-Zar. That same year, Marvel Comics #1 debuted under Goodman’s umbrella title of Timely Comics. It featured the first appearance of Carl Burgos’s Human Torch and reprinted Bill Everett’s Namor the Sub-Mariner. In the 1950s, Timely Comics would become Atlas Comics, eventually evolving into Marvel Comics. Men’s adventure magazines such as For Men Only, Male, Man’s World,True Action,Action for Men, and the popular Stag, edited during the 1950s and 1960s by Noah Sarlat and Bruce Jay Friedman, would be published under the umbrella of Goodman’s Magazine Management Company. Beginning in the early-to-mid-1950s, Goodman also published many other general interest magazines (romance, film and television, and sports) as well as men’s adventure magazines and Humorama. Among these were such male oriented 5”x7” digests as Focus, Photo, and Eye, which were part of the evolutionary development into Humorama. From the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s, another division,Humorama,headed by Abe Goodman, Martin’s brother, published digest-sized magazines of girlie cartoons by such well-known cartoon artists as Bill Ward, Bill Wenzel, and Archie Comics great Dan De Carlo.These magazines would also feature black-and-white photos of pin-up models Bettie Page, Eve Meyer, stripper Lili St. Cyr, and actresses Joi Lansing, Tina Louise, Irish McCalla, Julie Newmar, and others.Titles included: Breezy, Gaze, Gee-Whiz, Joker, Stare, and Snappy. For nearly 50 years, Dan DeCarlo was the principal artist at Archie Comics, not only work-

PG 112, Top to Bot – METROPOLITAN JAYBIRD (© Jaybird Enterprises); MODERN SUNBATHING, Sept. 1951 (© respective copyright holder); PG 113, Top to Bot – PHYSICAL CULTURE, July 1939 (© Macfadden Publications); SUPER8 FILMAKER, vol. 5, #6, 1977 (P. M. S. Publishing Com.).

ing on the company’s title character and his friends, but also credited with co-creating Josie and the Pussycats and Sabrina, the Teenage Witch.Within the innocent context of these comics for juveniles, DeCarlo is best known for defining the look of every adolescent boy’s wet dream, Betty and Veronica, with their trademark upturned noses, tight sweaters, and barely-there mini-skirts. His heroines had a surprising degree of sex appeal, and they influenced the work of younger cartoonists from the Batman cartoon’s Bruce Timm to Jaime Hernandez of Love and Rockets fame. DeCarlo’s rendition of Riverdale’s teenage populace entertained and influenced generations of young people. Next to the innocence that was Riverdale, and unknown by many, DeCarlo also populated another world, one filled with his cartoons featuring girls in lingerie and often less, based on the perennial blonde next door and rich-bitch socialite. From 1956 to 1963, DeCarlo produced hundreds of pin-up cartoons for the Humorama line of girlie digests. His line drawings and ink-wash paintings shared the pages with contributors Jack Cole, Bill Ward, and Bill Wenzel, and photos featuring Bettie Page and other cheesecake models. DeCarlo’s gag cartoons for the Humorama line of men’s magazines seemed out of place in that blatantly risqué world of girlie pictures. His cheery caricatures are unable to match the erotic appeal of more illustrative pin-up artists of the time. They depict a dated, pre-feminist world where young, buxom women make themselves available to men who often look less attractive, much older, and smug. Intended, in their day, to be adult and sophisticated, these cartoons now reveal the sexual underside of the repressed 1950s. Jack Cole was another of the great Humorama cartoonists. Cole, justly celebrated as the creator of Plastic Man, was an innovative comic

book artist of the 1940s. Cole had sold a handful of cartoons to Boy’s Life, Colliers, and Judge in the 1930s and 1940s, but after finishing his 14-year run on Plastic Man, he found himself starting over in the mid 1950s. According to Cole, it was the Humorama line of down-market digest magazines that saved his career.The girls and gags magazine circuit proved to be the perfect training ground for him to regain his footing and develop his craft at single panel gag cartoons. In the pages of the Humorama line, Cole began to hone his skills as a gag writer. In comparison to his contemporaries, however, Cole was probably Humorama’s least prolific artist. Even though his drawings were frequently used for covers, Cole’s gag cartoons were few and far between, with scarcely a single drawing appearing every five issues. Cole’s exquisite line drawings and masterful use of ink-wash led to the artist’s final gig, as Playboy’s first star cartoonist. Under publisher Hugh Hefner’s guiding hand, Cole’s quirky line drawings and sensual watercolors catapulted him to stardom in the 1950s as Playboy’s marquee cartoonist, a position he held until his untimely suicide at the age of 43. The Humorama line marks a narrow chapter in the history of magazines.The sexy gag cartoon, now dated, has been replaced by much more graphic representations of human sexual interactions. Those archaic Humorama drawings now inhabit a small niche between nostalgia and the collectors’ auction. In 1961, Atlas Comics’s editor-in-chief Stan Lee and freelance artist Jack Kirby created and launched The Fantastic Four #1, the first hit of what would later become Marvel Comics. This would usher in a new type of superhero, who behaved like an ordinary person rather than the traditional noble archetypes. The comic books

Jaybird | side of the business was a small part of Goodman’s publishing enterprise, accounting for 25%–30% of income until the 1960s. The range of these publications included the black-and-white “nudie cutie” comic, The Adventures of Pussycat (October 1968), a sexy, tongue-incheek secret-agent strip. Marvel/Atlas writers Stan Lee, Larry Lieber, and Ernie Hart, and artists Wally Wood,Al Hartley, Jim Mooney, Bill Everett, and cartoonist Bill Ward contributed to all these other ventures. Goodman sold Magazine Management to the Perfect Film and Chemical Corporation in 1968, which was later brought out by Cadence Industries, and he remained on as publisher until retiring in 1972, leaving his son Chip to run things. Cadence Industries kicked out Chip Goodman before long, and his father set him up in a new comic book publishing entity,Atlas/Seaboard that failed to produce books that anyone wanted to buy. Subsequently, father and son were behind relaunches of Stag and Swank as slick men’s magazines. Today Magazine Management is long gone and Marvel Comics dominates the comic and graphic novel marketplace.—RA

I IMAGINATION see Rogue

J JACK DEMPSEY’S FIGHT MAGAZINE see Stephen King’s Horror Magazine

JAGUAR see Sunshine & Health JAYBIRD Milton Luros was born in 1911 in New York. As a young man he worked as a commercial artist and art director for a variety of pulp magazines with titles like Dynamic Science Fiction, DoubleAction Western, and Real Men. Luros’ art appeared on covers for magazines like Men’s Life and Dynamic Science Fiction. Toiling as a freelancer in the declining years of the pulps must have been a frustrating experience for a creative and ambitious young man. If Luros harbored dreams of mastering his own destiny in the pulp jungle, they were fast fading – for no longer did the pulps rule the newsstands. By the early 1950s, the pulps’ own distribution system was given over to circulating the better-selling paperbacks and girlie magazines – the latter’s nearly nude cover models easily quashing any competition from even the most seductive of girlie-art pulp covers. In mid-life, at 44 years of age, he had already formed the company by which his empire would later be known, and boldly named it The American Art Agency. In 1958, with the collapse of the giant American News Company distribution network and the general upheaval in the magazine publishing world, Luros took his family and “American Art” to California. Luros was soft spoken and unassuming.There were always hints of a crooked little smile tormenting his lips and, with special friends, he could communicate extensively with the twinkle in his eyes. Colleagues who knew him well enough to become friends loved him. He was a proud, one-of-a-kind man who knew who he was and what he wanted. Once relocated in Los Angeles, Luros began producing a variety of uniquely quirky, highquality printed men’s periodicals, with thick

glossy pages, that showcased the crisp photography of near fetishistic posed nudes. They were a smash. Leaving Hugh Hefner and his competitors to duke it out for newsstand dominance, Luros found distribution exclusively through liquor stores, smoke shops, and other primarily male venues. In those dank dens of manliness, his magazines sold like hotcakes with syrup. Building upon their success, he linked up with nudist magazine veterans Stan Sohler and Ed Lange to form Sun-Era, which quickly became a leading force in nudist magazines, pushing the line past the legal display of nudists to the legal display of housewives, students, and models who liked to be naked as a jaybird. But it was Jaybird, the magazine and its whole nest of spin-off titles, which became the sensational seller for Luros.These titles were a natural result of many years of legal and cultural advances.They followed the lead, publication, and courtroom battles, of Bernarr Macfadden (Physical Culture), Hugo Gernsback (Sexology), and Reverend Ilsley Boone (Sunshine & Health), each in his own way fighting against legislation prohibiting First Amendment rights. In his quest to serve his readership with access to quality pop-erotica (paying special attention to quirks and fetishes), Luros had to push at the barriers of what was then legally acceptable in literary and visual terms. With the charismatic First Amendment rights lawyer Stanley Fleishman by his side, Luros skillfully navigated through the obscenity courts and triumphed in nearly all of his court cases. Though showing pubic hair was definitely illegal for men’s magazines, the courts had granted legal dispensation to traditional nudist magazines in 1958. Luros’s artistic sensibilities orchestrated an alliance with some of the leading photographers of the traditional nudist movement. With official sanction of some of the nudist groups, Luros founded a new venture known as Sun-Era – which, as a nudist magazine, was free to publish pubic hair. But, in order to properly market his coup, he

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114 | Jaybird needed to get his nudist magazines onto the same racks as his men’s magazines.Thus he established his own distribution company, Parliament News, cutting his overhead and ensuring each of his quirk, fetish, and nudist publications would have a place in the ideal sales milieu – the liquor stores, smoke shops, and adult bookstores that had become his most effective sales venues. Capitalizing on his solid sales relationships with retailers, Luros set up the periodical distribution network that would be the key to his empire-building success, Parliament News. Once the pipeline had been built, it was only a question of how to fill it and keep it flowing and here Luros was more than able. Truly relishing the human form in all its aesthetic wonder was only one aspect of Milton Luros’s strengths as a publisher. He was committed to producing magazines of superior quality both in form and content, as evidenced by the bright glossy paper stock that pristinely preserves his sumptuous photo spreads to the present day. The little initials “PN” on the cover of certain 1960s magazines mean more than “Parliament News,” the company that distributed them.“PN” stood for high-quality quirkiness during the flowering of the sexual revolution, and the blossoming of a new world largely without censorship. As friendly fetish erotica on thick glossy paper, as opposed to the darker East Coast sex journals, Luros’s magazines offered high heels, hosiery, lingerie, lace, fringe, eyewear, feathers, dolls, you name it, all presented alongside the prevalent body fetishes – breasts, buttocks, legs, feet, and hair. Cleverly, Luros made props, settings, and adornments appear as erotically charged as the boobs, plump rumps, and luscious leggy ladies he presented in his magazines. The Luros touch was that of a creative child at play with the biggest box of crayons and all the sketch pads in the world. Rather than simply creating one magazine and fulfilling a monthly issue, year after year Luros spawned dozens and dozens of magazine series, new ones popping up every few months.

PG 114, Top to Bot – interior illustration from MANHUNT, May 1953 (© Flying Eagle); MANHUNT, #1 (© Eagle Publications); PG 115, L to R – SUNBATHING AND HEALTH MAGAZINE, June 1942 (© respective copyright holder); AMERICAN SUNBATHER, Aug. 1963 (© respective copyright holder); HEALTH & EFFICIENCY, Oct. 1946 (© respective copyright holder); SUN, Dec. 1961 (© Nudist Digest).

From the beginning, Luros’s magazines were united by their look, which included doublethick glossy cover stock and a glossy heavyweight interior page stock. While the use of slick paper might lead one to imagine a cavalcade of richly reproduced color imagery, instead Luros presented predominantly black-and-white nudes, with only 4-8 color pages per issue. However, there was something unique in the way Luros prepared his B&W nude images. First, there was the use of color tinting, wherein the entire image was bathed in a particular hue – golden yellow, purple, or something similarly vibrant. This simple creative decision lent the Luros men’s magazines continuity with the earliest roots of commercial erotic photography, the French postcards. Those illicitly sold snapshots were often hand-tinted to enhance the verisimilitude of the image.The tinting was one aspect of an “old-timey” personality that helped lend the Luros magazines an aura of the erotic, as opposed to the all-American sex appeal of the Playboy universe. Another element of the Luros look was the specific manner of airbrush retouching as a means of enhancing his magazines’ nude imagery. The Luros B&W nudes were given another dimension through highly detailed airbrushing, which accentuated the roundness of the models, often giving their proportions a distinctive slippery sleekness as well as a “bursting-out” quality.While other magazines used airbrushing to erase blemishes and smooth over imperfections both physical and photographic, Luros’s artists, at his direction, wielded the airbrush as a tool to plump up and voluptuize his ladies, to create a shimmering sensuality with light and dark. So, rather than the “Playmate of the Month,” Luros conjured a “playmate of the mind,” an erotic dream that hovered between the realistic and the abstract through use of artful black and

white reproduction. Indeed, Luros was stretching to create a new “American Art.” In contrast to the Playboy photo shoots, which often captured the “Playmate” in a high-end bachelor’s den or her own girly boudoir, the American Art/Parliament magazine models were shot in more common “real-life” settings (often masculine in nature), such as mechanic’s garages, stock rooms, printing factories, back offices, apartment bathrooms, kitchens, living rooms, or outside in Everyman’s woods, back yard, or beach. In many cases, Luros personally supervised the photo shoots, pored over the contact sheets, ordered retouches, and demanded specific color saturation balances in the printing process itself. The last element was made easier when, after a few years of success, Luros set up his own printing operation that he elegantly dubbed London Press. It must be mentioned that the purchase of the printing plant was an expensive move, whose financing may have proved more costly than he imagined, as it is rumored Luros contracting with a Brooklyn-based Mafia loan shark for the sum of $10,000. Throughout his entire Los Angeles career, Milton Luros was continuously besieged by two extremely ruthless and illegal major crime syndicates, the law-enforcement community, especially at the United States federal level, and the Mafia. It was almost impossible to tell them apart and they were both after the same thing: Luros’s accounts receivable — in cash — no receipt, no records. Life under a microscope is hardly life at all. Luros was under total surveillance 24/7 — wiretaps, microphones, recorders, transmitters, cameras. It must be very difficult trying to live when your every action, however intimate or personal, is heavily scrutinized. And it continued, all the stalking, the following, the watching, and listen-

Jungle Stories |

ing, and the squeeze from the Mafia continuously pressing…. Yet Luros never lost his flair. Although he was close to selling his empire in 1972, he supervised the launch of one final magazine that stands among his finest creations. Returning to the avowed sensuality of his early nudist magazines, Luros presented Sensuous Living. This clever magazine promotes nudism and sensual beauty with almost none of the sneaky feeling of exploitation that was hard to ignore in the nudist and Jaybird efforts. Sensuous Living is thoughtful. It is full of instruction and exploration toward becoming a more sensual person, not just for sexual pleasure, but for the inherent rewards of more greatly appreciating ourselves and the world around us It presented a sincere case for loving all the shapes, smells, feelings, and experiences of life itself. Luros aligns his form with the content, printing the magazine not on the signature Parliament high gloss stock, but alternating the stocks throughout the magazine; rough (but acid-free) paper for

pieces on tactile experiences (bananas, watermelon, home-made clothing) and high-gloss for visual explorations (which were actually some earlier color spreads from Line and Form). This was Luros’s last hurrah, for within a few months, under mounting pressures, he would “sell” his Parliament magazine, book, and distribution empire to the Cleveland-based adult-distribution mogul, Reuben Sturman, and fade away into quiet retirement. Other nudist titles include: Jaybird Journal, Jaybird Safari, Campus Jaybird, International Jaybird, Metropolitan Jaybird, and Urban Jaybird.—TJ [see Modern Sunbathing]

JUNGLE STORIES Fiction House, Inc. was one of the early pulp publishing companies. It got its start in the 1920s with aviation and western titles such as Air Stories, Black Aces, North-West Stories, and North-West Romances, as well as several different sports titles.

By the 1930s, Fiction House had entered the detective genre with the popular pulp, Detective Book Magazine. Two of their most popular titles were Jungle Stories, which ran for 59 issues, and featured KiGor, a Tarzan-like jungle hero.And, of course, the science fiction great, Planet Stories, which ran for 71 issues. There was an earlier series of Jungle Stories. This first series, published by Clayton Magazines and edited by H.A. McComas out of New York, started in 1931 and ran for three bi-monthly issues, August, October, and December, before it folded. At 25 cents and a whopping 160 pages, it was a pricey purchase and failed to maintain the reading public’s interest. The great authors, good stories, and wonderful cover were not enough, even though the first issue featured a stunning cover by Domingo F. Periconi, a great cover story, “Sangroo the SunGod,” by J. Irving Crump, and a short story,“The Man Who Went Black,” written by Will F. Jenkins, who would become better known in science

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fiction circles by his pseudonym Murray Leinster. The first issue of the second series of Jungle Stories hit the newsstands with the Winter, 1938 issue, featuring a cover story,“Ki-Gor — King of the Jungle,” by John Murray Reynolds. The 20cent pulp was significantly smaller than the first series version; each issue was a compact 128-page pulp filled with action and adventure.The remaining 58 title stories in the total of 59 issues would all be written by John P. Drummond, a house name used by the magazine. The authors that wrote as Drummond would fill the series with stories of voodoo, terror, devils, witches, cannibals, and, of course, lost cities. With the Spring, 1954 issue, the last title by Drummond appeared, “White Cannibal,” and then the line folded, unable to compete in the growing marketplace of comics, paperbacks, and slick magazines. The continued success of Jungle Stories was due to the title character, Ki-Gor, who was one of the most popular of the Tarzan imitations. KiGor was actually Robert Kilgour, the son of a Scottish missionary who was killed in the jungles

116 | Jungle Stories of Africa. Much like Tarzan, the blond, gray-eyed, darkly tanned Ki-Gor lived alone in the jungle, but unlike Tarzan, he raised himself.And also like Edgar Rice Burroughs’s creation, Ki-Gor has his very own Jane. In the first novel in the series written by John Reynolds, a rich young society girl, Helen Vaughn, crash lands in his jungle territory. He rescues and saves the beautiful redhead, and after many adventures together, helps her to return to civilization. Helen is, of course, very grateful, and marries KiGor. Eventually, they return to his jungle home together to try and keep the peace between the various warring tribes that inhabit the wild lands. Ki-Gor lives for adventure, the stranger the better, as he fights hostile natives, giant sea serpents, talking gorillas,Arab slavers, and zombies.As an aid in his many adventures, he has two close friends besides the luscious Helen. The first one was Timbu George, aka George Spelvin, an enormous African-American who was a former ship’s cook, but ended up becoming the chief of the M’Bala tribe in the “East Congo.” Ki-Gor’s other friend and aide is N’Geeso, chief of the “Kamazila Pigmies, only four feet tall but a fierce fighter, is Jungle Stories was essentially a character pulp and each issue featured a lead novel about KiGor. Because he was clearly an imitation of Tarzan, the pulp was both very successful in its time and is still ardently collected by some Burroughs fans. However, Ki-Gor was not able to communicate with animals like Tarzan did, making the series somewhat more realistic.The novels do contain some fantasy elements, but as a whole are not fantasy. In January, 1940 Fiction House created a spinoff comic book, Jungle Comics, in an effort to duplicate the success of their pulp line in the new medium. Kaanga was the name of the new character, a derivative of Ki-Gor, and remained the title character throughout the run of the comic.The writer who wrote Kaanga is unknown, but the artist was Alex Blum, who also worked for Fox Feature Syndicate, where he co-created their Samson. He also drew quite a few issues of Classics Illustrated.

Eventually Kaanga would appear in his own comic book, but nearly a decade later, in Kaanga Comics, which first came out in spring 1949. It lasted 20 issues; the last was dated Summer, 1954.That was also the date of the final issue of Jungle Comics (163 issues). The pulp magazine Jungle Stories also ceased publication at that time. In fact, that’s when the company itself got out of the comic book business, responding to the recent formation of The Comics Code Authority, which frowned on its extensive use of half-naked women. For some reason, though, the Kaanga-like character Ki-Gor was a huge hit in the Fiction House pulps, the now much-better-known Sheena, Queen of the Jungle barely made a blip on the pulp scene, especially considering her impact on the comics. Ki-Gor appeared in 59 consecutive quarterly issues of Jungle Stories, but Sheena’s only pulp stories were published in a one-shot Sheena pulp in 1951 (three stories) and in the final issues of Jungle Stories. Now, almost forgotten, there was a time when Ki-Gor reigned supreme as King of the Jungle, a mighty competitor of Tarzan, the Lord of the Jungle. For nearly a decade the quarterly pulp fascinated and delighted readers with fantastic cover art and heroic stories about lost empires and far horizons.Today’s reader can still find much pleasure in re-examining these pulp epics about a time when the world’s frontiers were still unknown.—WU

K - L STEPHEN KING’S MAGAZINE OF HORROR Celebrity writers magazines There is no Stephen King’s Magazine of Horror or J. K. Rowling’s Fantasy Magazine because these authors do not want such a publication in the marketplace. But there have been many other writers that were not so recalcitrant. It is likely today that only a handful of people remember the fantasy writer Abe Merritt, but he was once an author popular enough to have a pulp magazine named after him. Of course, there is a long history of magazines named after real people. The practice started in the 19th century when publishers used their names for magazines (Scribner’s, Munsey’s, Lesley’s, MacFadden’s, Pearson’s), but this was more of a brand title — or publisher’s conceit — and not something to be counted on to aid in building circulation. There were also dime novel fictional characters, such as Nick Carter, that became popular and had their exploits written up as true stories of real people. Frank Reade Weekly Magazine ran from 1902-1904. During the 1930s, pulp publishers began originating character-centered magazines like The Spider, Doc Savage, and The Shadow, licensing characters from other media, like Flash Gordon Strange Adventure Magazine (1936), or using real-life figures like Jack Dempsey’s Fight Magazine (1936), “edited by Jack Dempsey,” or the 64 page one-shot, Blackstone’s Magic, produced by Walter B. Gibson, writer of the The Shadow. Even Nick Carter returned in Nick Carter Detective Magazine (1933). It did not take long before publishers realized

PG 116 – inhouse ad for JAYBIRD magazines (© Jaybird Enterprises); PG 117, L to R – A. MERRITT’S FANTASY MAGAZINE, July, 1949 (© Popular Publications); MECHANIX ILLUSTRATED, Oct. 1954 (© respective copyright holder); LAFF ANNUAL, Winter 1956 (© Volitant Publications); MECHANIX ILLUSTRATED, May 1956 (© respective copyright holder).

Lunatickle/Myron Fass | that the name of a hugely popular writer might be a better way to sell magazines. Edgar Wallace came close to having a magazine named after him when he was listed on the cover of the British Hush (1930), as editor, in type almost as big as the masthead. Edgar Wallace Mystery Magazine had to wait until 1964 to reach newsstands, long after the author’s death. Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine (1941) appears to be the first true author-named magazine on newsstands. Rex Stout’s Mystery Monthly and Craig Rice Mystery both appeared in 1945, followed by Zane Grey’s Western Magazine in 1946. Popular Publication followed with A. Merritt Fantasy Magazine (1949), Max Brand’s Western (1949), and Wash Coburn Western (1949). In the 1950s, the mystery field burgeoned, with Hank Janson Detective (1951), Nero Wolfe Mystery Magazine (1954), Jack London’s Adventure Magazine (1958), Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine (1957), and Ed McBain Mystery Book (1959). Although he was not a writer, Alfred Hitchcock’s TV show was popular in the late 1950s and his droll personality was a perfect branding element for Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. In 1960, Great American Publications was prepared to bring out a monthly Boris Karloff fiction magazine similar to their The Saint Mystery Magazine. At the time Karloff was hosting Thriller, an anthology TV program featuring a different suspense story every week, and the show already used stories from genre fiction magazines. The Karloff fiction magazine never materialized, but Great American did publish Fear! later that summer. A Gold Key comic book, Boris Karloff: Thriller, appeared a few years later. Some latecomers to this field include Isaac Asimov Science Fiction Magazine (1977), Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone (1981), Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy Magazine (1988), Louis L’Amour Western Magazine (1994), and H.P. Lovecraft’s Magazine of Horror (2001).—LO [see Famous Fantastic Mysteries,Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, and Zane Grey’s Western Magazine]

KNIGHT MAGAZINE see Adam LAFF see Volitant Publishing LUNATICKLE Myron Fass Sales reports from magazine distributors were the only real reading that publisher Myron Fass ever did. He would crow when one of his slapdash, one-shot magazines, rushed out at the last minute to take advantage of some cultural zeitgeist, hit the jackpot. In the 1960s the Beatles, JFK’s assassination, and Jackie Kennedy were favorite subjects (Myron declared “…[Jackie] sells because primarily she is a heroine figure.”).When celebrity interest flagged, he was fully capable of making up events to sell magazines, such as the destruction of a whole town by UFOs. In the office Fass was droll, efficient, and recognized by underlings as a semi-crazed monarch who would at times clock in workers while holding a loaded handgun. All of Myron’s publishing concerns were partially staffed by family, including his brothers, Irving and Jeff, and son David. Myron had started out as a comic book artist during the 1950s, specializing, oddly enough, in romance and horror comics. His first publishing ventures appear to be the Mad magazine knockoff Lunatickle, which managed two issues in 1956, and True Problems (June, 1956) a riff on the pictofiction magazines being put out by Entertaining Creations (the new name of EC horror comics). In 1957 he was the editor of Foto-rama, a pin-up “girlie” magazine. A single issue of Shock Tales appeared in January, 1959, and managed to be a slightly more adult looking version of Famous Monsters of Filmland. Eventually he would branch out to comic books in the mid-1960s: Captain Marvel (not the 1940s superhero), Henry Brewster

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118 | Lunatickle/Myron Fass (an Archie rip-off), and a western comic titled Great West. From there he moved into pop celebrity exposés, gun aficionados, UFOs, and lowbrow girlie magazines. One can gauge Fass’s attitude toward publishing by the name of one of his erotic movie magazines: FLICK (1975), a word long forbidden, in uppercase print due to the eye’s tendency to read the side-by-side combination of L and I as a U. In 1960, Myron hired William Harris, a printer and print broker, as a production manager for his company Countrywide Publications and began printing his magazines in Texas and St Louis on large color Web presses, which were only economical on print-runs over 100,000 copies. This figure became the base number of copies printed; distribution and shipping cost were also cheaper from these regions. Harris was well into his sixties and brought his son Stanley into the company to help him. By the early 1970s Stanley was a 50% stockholder in Countrywide, along with Myron. The partnership would last until the two had a fistfight in the office around 1977 – some witnesses called it a beating – with Stanley Harris the loser.This was not long after Myron fired one of his firearms through an office wall, almost killing Harris. The magazine market had greatly expanded during the 1960s’ free love movement and the falling away of censorship. Myron was one of many publishers, some enlightened, some crooked, some benighted, driving the nationwide promulgation of exploitative periodicals. As one consultant in the magazine field put it in 1966: “All you need is a line of credit.” Al Goldstein, fresh out of Pace University, got his start in publishing at Countrywide before starting Screw: The Sex Review in late 1968 (it would later carry the motto “Best in the Field It Created”). Screw was just a hardcore version of the Fass tabloid Hush-Hush News, where Goldstein had worked writing fake news stories. Goldstein called them “sexo-sado-pseudo-mash.” In the 1960s, Fass’s Eerie Publications printed refurbished horror comics from 1950s pre-comic

code comic books (from magazines put out by Ajax-Farrell, Harvey, and Quality, and refurbished for Fass by Dick Ayers, Chic Stone,and A. Reynos) and sold them under new titles (Tales from the Crypt,Witches’Tales) as kid fare. Mom & Pop-run stores wouldn’t touch any of the Eerie Publications; nonetheless the magazines appealed to kids enticed by the terrifying pleasures promised by “R” rated covers that included splattered blood, guts, exposed bones, dangling eye-balls, and decapitations.This was a slightly different audience from the one that Jim Warren was catering to with bare breasted wenches drawn by Richard Corben and Wally Wood in Vampirella,or werewolves and vampires in Creepy and Eerie. One always got the sense that bullies read Eerie Publications’ more nihilistic magazines and their victims read Warren’s books. Official UFO (April 1978) reported the destruction of the town of Chester, Illinois, by aliens in flying saucers. Fass told a reporter calling for more information that he had obtained a dozen photographs, taken by a Chester resident on the night of the attack, showing the town burning. Fass also had evidence of “mutated grass” from a flying saucer landing site.When asked if Fass had checked the accuracy of the story he said, “We don’t look for exact proof. If I started to look for exact proof I don’t think I’d be doing my job.” Myron’s son David edited most of the rock magazines, including Fever, Punk Rock, Acid Rock, Hard Rock, and something called Groupie Rock. David looked the part of a rock star, and had dreams of becoming one, but only got as far as having a substance abuse problem. He died in 2000. What made Myron a paragon of late-twentieth-century exploitation publishing, besides the sub-basement themes he exploited, was the sweatshop labor that went into each of his gaudy magazines. Editors and writers came and went. (In many cases the editor was a magazine’s whole staff of writers, under various assumed pen names.) Copy editing was non-existent. Still, Myron referred to his magazines as “masterpieces on cheap paper.” By the late 1970s (after buying

out all the sex magazines from bankrupt Acme News Company), Fass was the number one purveyor of magazines on American newsstands with close to fifty different periodicals published every month. These covered every imaginable subject from guns to dogs, rock stars to muscle cars, and naked girls to aliens from other worlds. Jeff Goodman, the editor of Gasm (a Heavy Metal copycat) gave an idea of the behind-thescenes working of Fass’s company in a 1978 editorial: “In case you contributors are under the delusion that when you send artwork to Gasm, it reaches an orderly, businesslike office, you are sadly mistaken. Let me tell you that we are a staff of illiterates, incompetents, and infants, and worse. We put out 50 other magazines besides Gasm (no lie) for an immense magazine corporation, and there are only six or seven imbeciles here to do it.... Even if we don’t lose your artwork, your chances of getting paid for it are slim since we always lose all your bills.” With Countrywide’s aggregate production, all a magazine needed to survive to a next issue was a newsstand sell-through of at least 35% of copies printed. Subscriptions were rarely offered. But Countrywide’s real bread and butter was always one-shots, with the newsstand life of a mayfly, tied to a big movie, such as Star Wars and Jaws, or a newsworthy event or crime. Some ephemeral bestsellers in this category included Son of Sam Caught!, Led Zep vs. KISS, and Ancient Astronauts (using Erich von Däniken’s Chariots of the Gods as its inspiration), and any topic that Myron termed “fun death.”The latter seemed to cover everything from mob wars to Elvis and Jaws. One-shots built around conspiracy theories surrounding the assassination or love life of JFK were proven moneymakers for Fass. Over the years Fass formed many publishing companies (Tempest Publications, MF Enterprise, Countrywide Publications, Eerie Publications, National Mirror, Inc., Jaguar Publications, Stories, Layouts & Press, Inc., and Creative Arts) to bypass legal problems and creditors. In the early 1990s he moved his operation to Ocala, Florida, and was

Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction |

PG 118, Top to Bot – JAGUAR, #1, 1961 (© American Art Agency, Inc.); RANCH ROMANCES, April 1957 (© Thrilling Publications); PG 119 – SUNBATHING REVIEW, fall 1958 (© respective copyright holder).

concentrating primarily on gun magazines, which had a strong market in the south, while running a gun shop in Florida — a sideline he shared with his friend Al Goldstein. Myron Fass died on September 14, 2006; he was 80. A few of Fass’s magazines include: Screen Monsters,True War, Movie TV Secrets, Homicide Detective, Space Wars, UFO Confidential, Photoland, Beatles Film Festival, .44 Magnum,Terror Tales, Horror Tales, Gasm,Witches’Tales, Space Trek, JFK’s Love Affairs, Jaws of Horror, Confidential Report: Jackie Onassis, Tales from the Tomb, Poorboy, Stud, Buccaneer, Hall of Fame Wrestling, Strange Galaxy, Close Encounters with Space Aliens, Weird Vampire Tales, Space War Heroes, Jaguar, Erotica, He & She,Weird Worlds, Confidential Sex Report,Weird,Terrors of Dracula, Clones, Rock's Nova Bowie, Shock Tales, Shotgun Journal, Sea Monsters, Murder Squad Detective, Dracula Classic, Strange Unknown, Mobs and Their Gangs, Star Wars Magazine, Space Wars, and Tales of the Killers.—LO

M THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION The primary publication of Mercury Press was American Mercury, a magazine started by H. L Mencken and George Jean Nathan in 1924. In 1941, Mercury Press publisher, Lawrence Spivak, added Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. In 1949 Spivak brought out the first issue of The Magazine of Fantasy. The timing could not have been better. Sales of the two other major science fiction magazines of the time, Amazing Stories and Astounding, had been sagging. Amazing had become embroiled in the “Shaver Mystery” and

Astounding was becoming sidelined by a growing interest in “fringe science.”Anthony Boucher and J. Francis McComas, as co-founding editors, had the right idea: to produce a magazine fusing together literary quality and fantastic fiction. With the second issue, they made only one change, adding “and Science Fiction” to the title. (The magazine is often referred to as F&SF.) Otherwise, the exact same digest-size publication would be produced year after year to this day. Initially, it was published as a quarterly periodical, then bi-monthly, and eventually monthly, for decades. In 2009 it became a bi-monthly and the extended “anniversary double issue” every October has been dropped. It continues to print the best literary science fiction, fantasy, and horror stories in the marketplace. All the people at the helm of this magazine have been talented, creative writers or editors. Anthony Boucher was the first English translator of Jorge Luís Borges, translating “El Jardín de Senderos que se Bifurcan” for Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. He would go on to help found the Mystery Writers of America in 1946. Later in that year he would become one of the first winners of the MWA’s Edgar Award for his mystery reviews in the San Francisco Chronicle. McComas was a similarly talented individual. Along with Raymond J. Healy, he was one of the co-editors of the early science fiction anthology Adventures in Time and Space (1946). He would remain as co-editor of F&SF until 1954, when he left the position of active editor, although he continued in the role of advisory editor until 1962. McComas wrote several stories during the 1950s using both his own name and the pseudonym Webb Marlowe. Many of the original principals involved with the operation of the magazine would end up changing roles and levels of involvement over the following years. In 1954, Lawrence Spivak

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120 | Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction resigned to pursue his interest in the television series Meet the Press, and Joseph Ferman became the magazine’s publisher. Robert P. Mills was then managing editor of the magazine, becoming editor in 1958 when Boucher resigned. Mills would go on to win two Hugo Awards for best magazine (1959 and 1960). He was succeeded as editor in 1962 by Avram Davidson. Avram Davidson was a noted author in his own right. Many of his unforgettable stories are hard to classify, but won him a Hugo Award and made him three-time winner of the World Fantasy Award in science fiction and fantasy. He also won a Queen’s Award and an Edgar Award in the mystery genre. Davidson would remain as editor of F&SF until 1964. In September,1962,coinciding with the World Science Fiction Convention in Chicago, where Theodore Sturgeon was guest of honor, F&SF would inaugurate the first of the “special authors” series. May, 1963 would feature Ray Bradbury. Next, Edward Ferman took over as editor. Avram Davidson, due to his residence in various Latin American locales, could no longer practically continue editing. Postal delivery was, at best, unreliable. For his first two years his father, Joseph Ferman, was listed on the masthead of the publication as both editor and publisher. Edward gradually took over the role of publisher as his father retired, finally becoming publisher in his own right in 1970, and Joseph took on the title of “Chairman of the Board” of what had clearly become a family business. Edward Ferman received the Hugo Award for Best Professional Editor three years in a row (1981 through 1983). Previously, F&SF had won several other Hugo Awards under his leadership.

Edward had become famous for conducting, at least in the last decade of his tenure, the family business from a table in his Connecticut house. The magazine that had become well noted for the longevity of its editors would also feature long-standing contributors like Isaac Asimov who wrote a science fiction column for the magazine that ran for 399 monthly issues without a break. Robert Bloch wrote a notable series of essays on fandom in the 1950s. The artist Gahan Wilson would go on to contribute a cartoon to every issue for more than fifteen years. Ed Emshwiller would become the most prolific cover artist for the magazine, producing 71 covers out of 633. Edward Ferman remained as editor until 1991, when he hired his replacement, Kristine Kathryn Rusch. While Ferman was the editor, many other magazines in the field began to fold or were short-lived. F&SF was one of the few that maintained a regular schedule and sustained critical appreciation for its contents while doing so. Kristine Kathryn Rusch is also a well-known writer who won the Hugo Award for Best Novelette in 2001 for her story “Millennium Babies.” She also wrote a mainstream novel, Hitler’s Angel, as Kris Rusch. She would edit F&SF from mid1991 through mid-1997, winning one Hugo Award as Best Professional Editor. Among other activities, Rusch and her husband, fellow writer Dean Wesley Smith, would operate Pulphouse Press for many years. Edward Ferman remained as publisher of the magazine until he sold it to Gordon Van Gelder in October, 2000.Van Gelder had a long-term relationship with the magazine beginning in January, 1997 when he became editor upon the resignation of Kristine Kathryn Rusch. During his tenure at the helm of F&SF,it became the second most pro-

PG 120 – MAGAZINE OF FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION, July 1953, art by Ed Emshwiller (©Spilogale, Inc.); PG 121, Lt to R, Top to Bot – MAGAZINE OF FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION, fall 1950 (©Spilogale, Inc.); MAGAZINE OF FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION, Oct. 1951 (©Spilogale, Inc.); MAGAZINE OF FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION (©Spilogale, Inc.); MAGAZINE OF FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION, fall 1949 (©Spilogale, Inc.); PG 75 – JACK DEMPSEY’S FIGHT MAGAZINE, Dec. 1936 (© Champion Asso. Inc.).

Manhunt | lific science fiction magazine in existence, finally surpassing Amazing Stories in total number of issues published. Only Analog has remained to overshadow its performance.Van Gelder has changed the focus of the publication of themed anthologies from the best-of annuals published during Edward Ferman’s heyday, drawing instead on the massive backlist that the magazine has accumulated. Van Gelder worked two other notable changes on F&SF. First, he founded his own press, Spilogale Inc., named for a genus of spotted skunk, in order to continue publishing the magazine. Second, he also moved the editorial offices from New York City to Jersey City, New Jersey. F&SF has been incredibly successful. It has won the Hugo Award for Best Magazine in 1958 and Best Professional Magazine an astounding seven times, in 1959, 1960, 1963, 1969, 1970, 1971 and 1972, the last year in which an award was made in this category. Isaac Asimov won a special award in 1963 for his long-running series of fact articles in F&SF. Kristine Kathryn Rusch won a Hugo Award for Best Professional Editor in 1994 during her tenure as editor of F&SF. Many of the exceptionally fine stories that first appeared in the pages of F&SF have gone on to win many awards.The list of notable works that first appeared in the magazine reads like a list of the best fantasy and science fiction ever written. Among these works are: “Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut; “One Ordinary Day, with Peanuts” by Shirley Jackson; “Born of Man and Woman” by Richard Matheson; “A Rose for Ecclesiastes” by Roger Zelazny; “Jefty if Five” by Harlan Ellison;“Born with the Dead” by Robert Silverberg; “All You Zombies” by Robert Heinlein;“The Women Men Don’t See” by James Tiptree; “The Brave Little Toaster” by Thomas M. Disch; “Flowers for Algernon” by Daniel Keyes; “Mythago Wood” by Robert Holdstock; “The Martian Child” by David Gerrold; and “A Canticle for Leibowitz” by Walter M. Miller, Jr. Through diligence and persistence, F&SF has become the queen of science fiction magazines, a well deserved reputation.The quality and consis-

tency of the magazine has made it one of the preeminent magazines ever published. F&SF was especially noted for its breadth of vision and willingness to publish challenging material.—RA

MAGAZINE OF HORROR see Health Knowledge Magazines THE MALE FIGURE Bruce Bellas (1909-1974), better known as Bruce of Los Angeles, launched The Male Figure in 1956. He was already known for his photography for Weider muscle magazines. Postal regulators prohibited Bellas from sending his publication through the mail, so he traveled across the country selling magazines to the few vendors who were willing to take on male erotica. Bellas would photograph some of the most important bodybuilders of the era for The Male Figure, including Steve Reeves, Bob McCune, Joe Dallesandro, and George Eiferman. He helped to develop a style of male body photography that influenced later photographers Herb Ritts, Bruce Weber, and Robert Mapplethorpe.—LO [see True Strange]

MANHUNT Although the leading hard-boiled crime-fiction magazines are generally regarded as the pulps Black Mask and Dime Detective, one of the most influential was the digest magazine Manhunt. Whereas Black Mask and Dime Detective led the way, their contributors were the prime writers of the 1920s and 1930s. Manhunt reveled in the new post-war generation, with stories by Lawrence Block, Evan Hunter, Jack Ritchie, Donald Westlake, and Mickey Spillane. The first issue is dated January, 1953, but appeared on the newsstands a month earlier. It was priced at 35 cents for 144 pages and was generally unillustrated apart from brief sketches at the

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122 | Manhunt start of several stories, some by comic-book artist Matt Baker. It was published by Eagle Publications (later Flying Eagle) on New York’s Fifth Avenue.This was an imprint of the comic book publisher St. John Publishing, headed by Archer St. John, whose main claim to fame, previously, was that in 1925, when only 20, he had been abducted by Al Capone’s hoodlums for threatening to expose Capone’s plans to manipulate a local election. St. John had launched his own publishing company in 1947 and though he initially published such harmless comics as Mighty Mouse and The Three Stooges, he later issued the shock-horror comics Strange Terrors and Weird Horrors. These would fall foul of the Comics Code introduced in October, 1954 following a report by Dr Fredric Wertham that claimed that many of the crime and horror comics were having an adverse affect on the morals of the young. Spillane led the first issue with his serial, “Everybody’s Watching Me,” where a young boy is caught up in a vendetta between a professional killer and a series of racketeers and thugs. It was the only time Manhunt ran a serial, but it was worth it. Spillane’s sales in those days were in the millions, and his new novel, spread over four issues and splashed across the covers (adorned with suitably voluptuous damsels in distress), gave Manhunt the start it needed.Also in that first issue was Richard S. Prather, second only to Spillane as the most popular writer of private-eye fiction in the 1950s. He was best known for his detective Shell Scott, present in that first issue with “The Best Motive.”Although the stories drew upon the Chandler formula, their fun is in Prather’s eccentric and often ingenious imagery, more from the Robert Leslie Bellem school of writing. He describes the girl in trouble in the story as having “a shape like a mating pretzel.” These two alone were sufficient for Manhunt’s impressive sales. Its initial print run of 600,000 sold out within five days and it was soon proclaiming itself the “World’s Best-Selling CrimeFiction Magazine.” Manhunt had pitched itself at the other end

of the spectrum from Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, previously the most popular genre magazine specializing in the traditional mystery. Manhunt aimed at a market that wanted gritty realism and hard-hitting crime with an emphasis on sex and violence, as depicted on the lurid covers. Other significant contributors in the first few issues were Kenneth Millar, Evan Hunter, Jonathan Craig, Richard Deming, and Frank Kane. Kane’s story featured his private eye, Johnny Liddell, whose books were also then selling in the millions. Liddell, who was a methodical gumshoe, became a regular in Manhunt over the next three years. Kenneth Millar was the real name of Ross Macdonald. Millar was also in the second issue, this time under the confusing name John Ross Macdonald, with a Lew Archer story,“The Imaginary Blond.” Howard Browne, who was at that time editing Amazing Stories and Fantastic Adventures, and would doubtless have given his right arm to have edited Manhunt, was also in the second issue under his alias John Evans with a Paul Pine story, “So Dark for April.” Evan Hunter later became better known as Ed McBain, but for the time being his stories appeared either as Hunter or under the aliases Hunt Collins or Richard Marsten. Jonathan Craig could always be relied upon for the unusual. His story, “Dirge for a Nude,”in the second issue,must be unique among the annals of hard-boiled crime, as it opens with the main protagonist playing a spinet. During the first two years Manhunt also ran a new Saint story, “The Loaded Tourist,” by Leslie Charteris (March 1953), “The Wench is Dead,” by Fredric Brown (July 1953), several stories by Craig Rice, including ones featuring her lawyer John J. Malone, and contributions by David Goodis and William P. McGivern. For fans of hard-hitting private-eye stories, Manhunt delivered what it promised. There was also fiction by William Irish, the alias of Cornell Woolrich. Woolrich upset the magazine editor, John McCloud, when he discovered that Woolrich’s story, “The Hunted,” in the first issue, was the same as “Death in Yoshi-

Manhunt | wara” from a 1938 Argosy. Manhunt promised all new stories and readers were quick to point out the deception. Although Woolrich was reprimanded, he did not change, later selling them his 1942 Dime Detective story, “The Hopeless Defence of Mrs. Dellford” as “The Town Says Murder” (January 1958). This time the editor demanded the money back and Woolrich was obliged to pay.Thereafter there was nothing more by Woolrich in Manhunt, a sad loss, as the magazine was an obvious market. The success of Manhunt had several repercussions. First it acquired a number of companions: Verdict (from June 1953), Menace (from November 1954), Mantrap (from July 1956), Murder (from September 1956), and the western magazine Gunsmoke (from June 1953). It’s best-known companion, though, and the only one to survive from the 1950s, was Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, issued under an affiliated imprint, H.S.D. Publications, in December, 1956. Manhunt also had a British edition, which began in August, 1953, reprinting the original United States sequence. That ran until September, 1954. A later British magazine, Bloodhound, which began in May, 1961, was also a reprint of those same early issues. Second, it was honored by imitation. There were soon plenty of Manhunt look-alikes from rival publishers, such as Private Eye from John Raymond’s publishing empire, which saw only two issues (July and December 1953) and Pursuit and Hunted, twin sisters from Star Publications that ran (alternate months) from September, 1953 to November, 1956. Finally, the demand for back issues was so great that Flying Eagle reissued the first four issues, which contained the Spillane serial, in one bumper volume called Giant Manhunt. That also sold so well that they continued to issue them over the next four years. Yet despite the success of Manhunt, St. John

was having financial difficulties. In July, 1953 he had published the first ever three-dimensional comic that had sold over a million copies. Flushed with this success, St. John had decided to switch all of his comics to 3-D, at an enormous cost, only to discover the public’s fascination had been a flash in the pan. Hard on the tail of this came a second whammy.At the end of 1953, Dr. Fredric Wertham had issued his report linking juvenile delinquency with the horror comics and a Senate sub-committee was set up in early 1954. Recognizing the likely outcome, some publishers cut back and St. John Publishing dropped its weird-horror titles, at a considerable loss of income.The expense of the 3-D experiment coupled with a loss of crucial revenue had the inevitable affect, and St. John cut back on all his publications. Manhunt missed the March and April, 1954 issues and when it re-emerged in May, its covers were no less violent or sexy. It continued to publish the same kind of material.Among the formulaic hard-edged private-eye stories were some surprises.The enigmatic B.Traven, best known for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, had stories in the August and September, 1954 issues. James T. Farrell and Erskine Caldwell made rare appearances. John D. MacDonald began to contribute in January, 1955. The magazine began to tone down slightly.The April, 1955 issue included an Inspector Schmidt story by George Bagby, an Alphabet Hicks story by Rex Stout, and a rare early story by Ira Levin,“Sylvia.” Anthony Boucher began a book review column under his alias H.H. Holmes.Vincent H. Gaddis, in the days before he created the phrase ‘the Bermuda Triangle,’ ran a series of short real-crime anecdotes while Fred Anderson ran a series of puzzle stories.The variety gave these issues a more comprehensive feel, but to many readers Manhunt had lost some of its gritty edge and its circulation began to suffer.

PG 122, — MOVIE ACTION MAGAZINE, Jan. 1936 (© respective copyright holder); PG 123 – MOBSTERS, vol. 1, #2, Feb. 1953 (© Standard Magazines).

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124 | Manhunt It may be that the sudden loss of revenue among his comics and the inevitable knock-on effect tipped the edge for Archer St. John. He was found dead from an overdose of sleeping pills in a New York apartment in August, 1955, though whether by suicide or accident was never fully resolved.The company passed to his son, Michael St. John, then aged 25, who began to pump life back into Manhunt. New names and contributors appeared during 1956. Both Herbert D. Kastle and Robert Bloch were in the February, 1956 issue; Harlan Ellison appeared with “Rat Hater” (August 1956), followed by William Campbell Gault in October. Evan Hunter made his debut as Ed McBain in February, 1957 with an 87th Precinct story, “The ‘H’ Killer.”This marked the first appearance of the McBain name in any crime-fiction magazine. From March, 1957 on there was a major change.The market for Manhunt almost certainly overlapped with some of the leading men’s magazines such as Argosy, For Men Only, or Stag. St. John decided to aim directly at that market and switched the magazine from the digest format to the full flat format. Along with this, the magazine again placed greater emphasis on sex and sadism. Unfortunately for St. John and Flying Eagle, the change was noticed in other quarters and the April, 1957 issue was withdrawn from sale by authorities in New Hampshire (where the magazine was printed and distributed) on the grounds of publishing indecent material. It resulted in an important trial where the question of what constituted “obscene” material was explored. Although St. John, along with his general manager and art director, were found guilty, the original judgment failed to specify what it was in the April issue that was regarded as obscene.There was an appeal that was not resolved until January 1961.The original judgment was upheld even though the only items now specified as “obscene” were one illustration plus Al James’s story “Body on a White Carpet.” The illustration, by Jack Coughlin, for the vignette “Object of Desire” by Paul G. Swope, was clearly obscene, as what might have been intended to be

PG 124, Top to Bot – HORROR STORIES, Apr. 1971 (© Charlton); MYSTERY ADVENTURES MAGAZINE (© Fiction Magazines, Inc.); PG 125, Bot band, L to R – EXCLUSIVE DETECTIVE, Nov. 1942, with Peter Driben cover art (© respective copyright holder); WEIRD TALES, Oct. 1933, with M. Brundage cover art (© respective copyright holder); THRILLING MYSTERY, Sept. 1936, with Belarski art (© Beacon).

a fold in a man’s trousers is far more evidently an erect penis.Al James’s story, though, is nothing out of the ordinary for Manhunt (a woman uses sex to lure a man into disposing of a dead body). Nevertheless, both were regarded as sufficient to declare the whole magazine obscene,the judge commenting:“An obscene picture of a Roman orgy would be no less so because accompanied by an account of a Sunday school picnic which omitted the offensive details.” (United States Court of Appeals 285 F.2d 307, January 10, 1961) Flying Eagle was forced to pay the fine. Manhunt had already switched back to the digest format in June, 1958, and had gone bimonthly from the previous issue, always a sign of financial trouble.The experiment had not been a success. A new editor, John Underwood, was installed, and with this change there is a sense that some of the fight had been knocked out of the magazine. During the period of the court case, Manhunt had continued to run provocative covers, but after the final judgment they became milder and the stories less hard-boiled. Sales continued to fall. The reported figure for 1961/2 was just over 178,000, impressive by today’s standards, but less than a third of sales only six years earlier. Some of the market was being siphoned away by paperbacks and the growth in television, but it is also clear that Manhunt had lost much of its original bite. Yet, in hindsight, these mid-period issues have much in their favor. Donald E.Westlake had made the first of several appearances in the January, 1958 large-size issue with “The Arrest,” his third or fourth published story. Avram Davidson first appeared in the same issue, and Lawrence Block turned up with his very first story sale,“You Can’t Lose” in the February, 1958 issue. Block became a regular for the next few years. Nelson Algren

put in a surprise appearance with “Say a Prayer for the Guy” (June 1958). Joe Gores was also now a regular.The February, 1960, issue carried a Raymond Chandler story,“Wrong Pigeon,” previously published only in Britain. Other contributors included Jack Ritchie, James M. Reasoner (who slyly contributed under the alias M.R. James), and Robert Turner, but by the early 1960s most of the contributors were little-known writers. The last issue of any note is probably that for April, 1963, which had both a Joe Gores novelette and Westlake, writing as Richard Stark, with “The Outfit.” Thereafter any remaining luster faded away. The magazine started to reprint material from its early issues, including the Spillane serial as one complete novel (in fact, it reprinted that twice, having already re-run it in a bumper issue in June 1955). There’s almost nothing of interest in the last two years besides the reprints. Manhunt’s final number was dated April/May, 1967, making a total of 114 issues. Its declared circulation at the end was just over 74,000. Manhunt’s final days may have been ignominious, but for a brief period of three or four years, it erupted like a volcano, spewing red-hot fiction across the newsstands of America and searing life back into the hard-boiled genre.That eruption was eventually quelled by a mixture of over-ambition and the courts, in a country where free speech is fine, provided you don’t shout too loudly.—MA

MECHANIX ILLUSTRATED Throughout the 1920s and 1930s the United States was largely rural. The Great Depression caused a shift from the farm to the urban life of the city. These new urbanites were still farmers, and from families of farmers who were used to

Mechanix Illustrated | making their own goods and repairing their own equipment.The internal combustion engine and the radio were core technologies of that period, and both were relatively simple to build and maintain. If you could build a boat, you probably thought you could build a car, or an airplane. If you were one of those types of people, then Modern Mechanics and Inventions, which debuted in 1928, was the magazine for you. Originally this magazine was for the home tinkerer. It was full of designs for little devices, bigger devices, and even cars, boats, and airplanes. Billed as “The How-ToDo Magazine,” Modern Mechanics aimed to guide readers through various projects from home improvements and advice on repairs to “buildyour-own (sports car, telescope, helicopter, etc.).” Modern Mechanics became the flagship of the Fawcett publishing company. Wilford Hamilton “Captain Billy” Fawcett founded the company in

1919, after returning from service in World War I. While serving as an Army captain, Fawcett gained experience with the publishing world through the Army publication Stars and Stripes, That gave him the notion to start his own similar publication after the war. His bawdy cartoon and joke magazine, Captain Billy’s Whiz Bang, became the launch pad for a vast publishing empire. Fawcett began publishing Captain Billy’s Whiz Bang in October 1919, and by 1921 he was on the way to becoming a millionaire. By 1923, the magazine had a circulation of 425,000 with $500,000 in annual profits. During the late 1920s and early 1930s, Fawcett and his sons established a line of magazines that eventually reached a combined circulation of ten million a month in newsstand sales. Modern Mechanics and Inventions was their premier publication throughout the 1930s and into the late 1940s, until it was eclipsed in sales by

Woman’s Day, added to the line-up in 1948 and reaching a circulation of 6,500,000 by 1965. From its debut in 1928, Modern Mechanics and Inventions went through a number of permutations. In August, 1932 the title was changed to Modern Mechanix and Inventions, and changed again in 1937 to the shorter Modern Mechanix, and finally to Mechanix Illustrated in 1938. In 1984 it was once again retitled to Home Mechanix.When the magazine was acquired by Time, Inc., in 1993, the title was changed to Today’s Homeowner, severing any noticeable connection with the original. From its beginning until the late 1930s, the magazine sported wonderful futuristic covers and similar articles, showcasing amazing, impossible, and unlikely machines, like the spinning top airplane, the great wheeled ocean liner, or the dirigible airfield. Covers were mostly done by the illustrator Norman Saunders, who became a

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Fawcett staffer in 1927 after doing some spot illustrations for editor Weston “Westy” Farmer. Saunders’s first cover illustration was for the August, 1929, issue of Modern Mechanics and Inventions.The art on his covers, with its bright palette of orange and red contraptions against green and purple, hazy backdrops, caught the eye of readers and home inventors, who were also reading the adventures of Buck Rogers on Sundays. Saunders continued to do covers for Fawcett Publications until 1934, when he moved to New York. He worked in almost all genres — westerns, weird menace, detective, sports, and the “Spicy” magazines — producing 100 paintings a year, two a week from 1935 through 1942. Larry Eisinger, the workshop and science editor of Mechanix Illustrated, began the national “doit-yourself ” craze as the editor-in-chief of Fawcett’s How-To book series and special interest

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126 | Mechanix Illustrated magazines. He created Fawcett’s Mechanix Illustrated Do-It-Yourself Encyclopedia and The Practical Handyman’s Encyclopedia, which had combined sales of almost 20 million copies. After an incredible growth spurt in the early 1930s, Fawcett Publications relocated to both New York City and Greenwich, Connecticut, in the mid-1930s. Of note, the same year that founder “Captain Billy” Fawcett died (1940), the company launched Fawcett Comics, creating the character Captain Marvel. The World War II paper shortage saw Fawcett terminating many of its magazines and shifting to both comic books and paperback publishing. Modern Mechanix endured both the corporate shake-up and the shift in culture caused by the war, and became a more mainstream magazine, less focused on “How-To” and more on articles about existing technology. Beginning in the mid-1940s, the most eagerly-awaited and read features were Tom McCahill’s monthly automobile tests, which ran until the early 1970s. McCahill’s feisty opinions were delivered in a prose laced with similes that are still quoted today among car enthusiasts: “As anyone brighter than a rusty spike must know…;” flooring the accelerator pedal on a certain car is “…like stepping on a wet sponge….” McCahill died in 1974.Three years later, CBS bought Fawcett Publications. Tom McCahill first began selling his articles to Mechanix Illustrated in February 1946, reporting on his own 1946 Ford. His opinions were fearless and this endeared him to some in the automotive world, but created his share of enemies, too. He became a personal friend of Walter P. Chrysler, due to his ardent appreciation of the handling and performance characteristics of the late 1950s and early 1960s Chrysler automobiles. McCahill did not pull any punches, reporting in a 1949 road test that the new Dodge was a “dog.” He considered the early 1950s Chevrolets mundane. His wife, Cynthia, acted as his photographer on his early road tests, and would accompany him, usually with their black Labrador

retriever. His later assistant was the professional driver and photographer Jim McMichael, who became known as the trunk tester, as he was often photographed, sitting or lying, in every trunk of every make tested. McCahill made more enemies by demanding that the United States stop accepting imports in lieu of war reparations; this led to England, Canada, and France (where one could purchase an English or German car, but no United States models) having to accept the forced sale of hundreds of thousands of used United States cars. After his death, the magazine was never the same. In 1984, the renamed magazine, Home Mechanix, featured more home repair, remodel, and woodworking projects, while featuring fewer articles on general technology and automotive subjects. A memorable, long-running feature of Mechanix Illustrated was “MI MI,” a shapely young woman dressed in skimpy overalls with blue and white vertical stripes. She was in a picture holding, standing beside, sitting on, laying on, or just in the picture with, a new product each month. Each “MI MI” held the job for a year. Their names were never given except for the announcement of a new “MI MI” in the January issue.“MI MI” was discontinued with the change to Home Mechanix.—AW

MEDICAL HORRORS Harold Hersey Harold Brainerd Hersey (1894-1956) was the publisher or editor of some of the weirdest magazines ever produced, and a few were even surprisingly successful, like Ranch Romances, created during a short stint with Clayton Publications, but

most of his oddities ultimately failed to find readers. Prison Stories (1930), Fact Spy Stories (1939), Mobs (1930),The American Autopsy (1932), Famous Lives (1929), Miracle Fantasy & Science Stories (1931), Lucky Stories, Thrills of the Jungle (1929), Strange Suicides (1932), and Pictorial Detective are only a few of his misses. Medical Horror (January 1932) is an example of one of Hersey’s many esoteric magazines published during the Great Depression, and came about when, as Hersey tells it: “A friend of mine had ached to take a crack at medical frauds and malpractice. He said he would finance a publication that hotfooted it after quackery and chicanery among doctors if I would supervise its publication. I was to have a share of the profits as a reward for my labors. I formed a company separate and distinct from those associated with the fifty-odd magazines I was publishing or distributing at the time, taking care to keep my name off the indicia on the contents page. I was so effective in hiding my identity that it took almost twenty-four hours for the entire trade to learn my secret!...” The first issue carried the following cover stories: “Confessions of a Nurse,” “76 Babies Murdered,” “Did She Pass Her Examination?” and “The Drug Racket,” all presented as behindthe-scenes exposes.The cover stated in large type that $1000 would be paid for the best original stories of actual experiences with doctors – and Hersey was not looking for syrupy scenes of genial doctors handing out lollipops to children as smiling mothers looked on. By Hersey’s own account, the title was an “instantaneous success,” but he had overlooked something. “… No one knew better than I did that drugstores constituted a large percentage of the retail outlets for magazines, especially in smaller towns where the druggist uses his fully-returnable magazines as a constantly changing library for

PG 126, Top to Bot – REAL CONFESSIONS, vol. 1, #1, Mar. 1937 (© Red Circle); THE PHANTOM DETECTIVE (© Phantom Detective Inc.); PG 127, Top to Bot – NEW DETECTIVE (© Popular Publications); THE PHANTOM DETECTIVE, Nov. 1940 (© Phantom Detective Inc.).

Monsters & Heroes | his customers. I could not afford to lose these outlets. Once the manufacturers passed the word along the line that I was responsible for Medical Horrors … my goose was cooked.”To avoid a backlash against his other magazines, Hersey pulled the plug on Medical Horrors.After this he found it much easier, and more profitable, publishing pulp fiction. Other Hersey publications were Slapstick, Sky Birds, The Underworld, Speakeasy Stories, Harlem Nights, and Headquarters Stories. As editor, Hersey worked on Burton’s Follies, Screen Humor, Mystery Adventures, and Strange Suicides. Of the latter magazine Hersey once said, “If I grow to be a hundred I will never live down Strange Suicides.” Hersey’s ex-wife Merle Williams Hersey was the editor for Irving and Harry Donenfeld’s Merwil Publishing Co., which was named after her. She began with them in 1929 and by 1933 was the editor of Pep, La Paree, Spicy Stories, Gay Parisienne, Snappy, and The Police Gazette, the latter newly revived in 1933 by the Donenfelds. Ms. Hersey was not what one expected to see as the guiding personage behind these magazines. Daughter of a Methodist minister, she had worked previously as a secretary to a congressman, and was the mother of a teenage daughter who she said was a fan of her publications.When the revived Police Gazette was announced, Ms. Hersey said that it will contain: “Lots of sex, underworld stuff with a sex angle, and plenty of semi-nude nightclub girls.”— LO

MIDNIGHT MAGAZINE Midnight Magazine was one of Bernarr Macfadden’s more unusual magazines. It began as a weekly over-sized bedsheet that featured fiction and non-fiction crime, true confessions, and exposés. MM ran from August 19, 1922, through February 3, 1923, changing its name along the way, first to Midnight Mysteries, then Midnight Mystery Stories. It ran into trouble when one issue was deemed too risqué and most of the print run was destroyed by court order. Macfadden later tried to corner the

market for magazines using” true” in the title: True Experiences,True Story,True Romance, and True Detective Mysteries.—LO [see Physical Culture]

MOBSTER TIMES Al Goldstein and Jim Buckley were the publishers of Screw: The Sex Review and brought out Mobster Times in 1972 as a satirical forum to attack FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, President Nixon, and their ilk.The simulated bullet-hole-spattered mug shot of Al Capone gracing the cover of the first issue exhibited a fuhgeddaboutit, what-me-worry look worthy of Mad Magazine’s Alfred E. Neuman. In the war between the bad guys and the good guys it was oblivious whose side Goldstein and Buckley were on.The tabloid (10.5” x 13.25”) had Joseph “Crazy Joey” Gallo as a film critic. He gave his review of The Godfather in an interview with Goldstein. Crazy or not, Gallo proved to be articulate and knowledgeable. Features in the first issue were “Murder as a Career” and “How to StartYour Own Racket.” The subtitle of the magazine “Crime Does Pay” said it all. Later issues included a crime calendar, a story on fake nuns in New York City subway stations grubbing for handouts, and an exposé on industrial spying. The tone of the magazine was one of admiration for crooks and enterprising underdogs illegally ripping off the gullible. Mobster Times was the opposite of standard pro-law-enforcement-glorifying publications like Feds and Mobsters; the latter subtitled “Stories of the Fight Against the Underworld.” Mobster Times seemed like the right idea at the right time, but only lasted three issues. From the beginning the magazine had trouble reaching its intended audience — readers of the National Lampoon. It also didn’t help that the publishers used the same mob controlled printer that was printing Screw to do Mobster Times. Watergate was just around the corner and Gallo was shot in a gang style hit on April 7, 1972, in Umberto’s Clam House, a Little Italy eatery, before the first issue appeared on newsstands. A very young wise guy

named Steven Heller was the art director, and artist Brad Holland (better known for his Playboy work at the time) did the cover art for the second issue. Heller was the gunman behind the bullet-holeridden photo of Capone. Heller would go on to art direct Evergreen Review and the New York Times Book Review. Jim Buckley was listed through the run of the magazine as the editor.— LO

MONSTERS & HEROES Larry Ivie was a jack-of-all-trades in the New York world of comic books, science fiction, and monster magazines throughout much of the 1960s. He was involved in early issues of Calvin Beck’s Castle of Frankenstein as writer and cover artist, was an assistant to artist Wally Wood, did illustrations for Galaxy Science Fiction, and almost became the first editor of James Warren’s Creepy. (In later interviews Warren spoke of Ivie as someone who had an apparently inexhaustible supply of publishing ideas.) Ivie wrote the story for the last comic story drawn by Frank Frazetta,“Werewolf,” which appeared in Creepy #1. Ivie had the idea for a pictorial magazine of imagination for a long time before he began shopping the project around to various publishers and distributors. At one appointment with a DC Comics editor, he was ready to present a mock-up of his magazine.According to Ivie, before he could start his presentation, the DC person excused himself from the meeting and never returned. Ivie took the mock-up of Monsters and Heroes to a long list of New York distributors before Acme News Company,a regional distributor and quasi-publisher that handled second tier magazines, took it on. The first issue appeared in early 1967. It was Ivie’s plan to do a magazine that covered “the entire range of imagination.”To Ivie, this meant mythology, Edgar Rice Burroughs, movie serials, comic books, and classic terror and fantasy films. Monsters and Heroes was to be a “magic carpet.” The full name on the cover was Larry Ivie’s Monsters and Heroes, and the magazine was just

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128 | Monsters & Heroes PG 128, L to R – MOBSTER TIMES, #1, Aug. 1972 (© Friday 13th Publishing); MONSTERS AND HEROES, #3, 1967 (© Larry Ivie); interior pages from BACHELOR, June 1961 (© respective copyright holder); PG 129, L to R – interior pages from JAGUAR, #1, 1961 (© respective copyright holder).

about all Ivie – he wrote all the articles, did the layout, supplied the story and art for each chapter of his original superhero Anton Boy (issue number 2 did carry an early comic strip, “Dragon Slayer,” by Jeff Jones), and painted all of the covers for the seven-issue run of the magazine. (Anton Boy first appeared in Castle of Frankenstein.) This egocentric fanzine attitude worked against M&H, and gave the magazine an insular and limited viewpoint.The magazine would have been better if Ivie had used more outside contributions; he had many connections in the comic and fantastic magazine field. Of course, there was little money to pay contributors, but some publishers, like Calvin Beck of Castle of Frankenstein, thrived on limited resources.—LO

THE MONSTER TIMES During the first half of the 1970s, an unusual monthly fan magazine, The Monster Times, appeared, published from 1972 through 1976. Unlike other fanzines and magazines of the period, it was printed on newspaper stock, making it the world’s first monster newspaper. Due to its excellent writing and editing, The Monster Times developed a cult following. Readers were attracted to each issue’s take on current and classic horror and science fiction movies, and news of upcoming comics and books in the genre. The Monster Times always contained a lot of comic-related material by popular comic book writers and artists.The talented contributions of these noted artists could be seen in the various covers and pull-out posters. Often labeled as “The World’s First Newspaper of Horror, Science Fiction, and Fantasy” during its four-year publishing run, The Monster Times began as an ambitious bi-monthly publication. Sadly, the publication’s schedule and page count

dropped off in latter issues. The Monster Times lasted as long as it did mostly due to the persistence and vision of Joe (“Phantom of the Movies”) Kane, who became editor beginning with issue Number 11 and lasted through issue Number 48, the last issue published. The short publishing run of The Monster Times included 48 issues and three special issues: “Star Trek Lives #1” which was billed as a “SciFi Super TV Special Issue,” released in 1972 with a cover price of a whopping $1; “Star Trek Lives #2,” distributed at the 1974 Star Trek Convention at 75 cents (for collectors, it is well worth noting that this issue came with either a blue or gray background); and The Monster Times Special Issue #3, the “All Giant Monster Posters” issue (the rarest of all The Monster Times published). The first issue of The Monster Times appeared on the newsstands on January 26, 1972.A few of the people behind the scene had work at Al Goldstein’s Screw magazine previously. (Goldstein may have been mocking the startup when he published Mobster Times later in the year.) The Monster Times lasted as a bi-monthly until issue number 14, published on July 31, 1972. The struggling magazine missed all of the August publication dates and reappeared as a monthly with issue number 15, released on September 6, 1972. In spite of its ever-changing publication schedule, The Monster Times managed to retain a consistent cost per issue over its short lifetime, beginning at 50 cents for issues 1 through 18, and then a modest price hike to 60 cents from issue 19 through issue 34. July, 1974, with the release of issue 35, brought its biggest price hike (to 75 cents) which lasted through issue 48.The release of issue 35 also brought a major change in its publication schedule: from this point forward The Monster Times would appear every other month, with a few attempts at a return to a monthly

Movie Action | a description. Even now, these lists are still viable. The Monster Times also filled other apparent gaps in its publishing niche. From the late 1950s throughout the 1960s, and even for a few years into the 1970s, Godzilla and his fellow (Japanesecreated) monsters were nowhere to be seen on any monster magazine cover that didn’t specialize in covering giant monsters or Japanese sf films. Godzilla appeared on many early issues of The Monster Times, providing a much-needed focus on Godzilla, Gamera, and other giant monsters, while also including information on other horror and science fiction sub-genres. This was the very inverse of the sub-genre focus maintained by Famous Monsters, which preferred to center its information on the likes of Frankenstein’s Monster,Dracula,cinematic werewolves,and the Phantom of the Opera. The Monster Times briefly held onto its publishing niche, catering to a specialized faction of monster fans, unlike the general focus of more mainstream horror movie magazines, until the schedule, but the writing was already on the wall. The Monster Times released two issues in 1976, and then quietly folded. In the early 1970s Famous Monsters of Filmland had reached a low point in its history and for a time it appeared as if The Monster Times would fill in the void. Every issue of TMT contained a feature article describing a horror or science fiction movie in detail. Often the descriptions were less than complimentary. In February, 1974 The Monster Times released a memorable issue called “The Worst Issue.”This release had an article on the worst in mainstream comic books, an article on the spoof Schlock (1971), a blow-by-blow description of Horror of Party Beach (1964), and an exhaustive story about the teen monster genre of the 1950s. Continuing its theme of the “worst,” it had interviews with Dennis Steckler, the person behind Incredibly Strange Creatures (1963), and William Grefe, who wrote and directed Wild Rebels (1967) and Death Curse of Tartu (1966).

The capstone in this “worst” issue was a pair of lists, the worst in horror movies list, and a runnersup list. Jason Thomas, a writer for The Monster Times, and Joe Kane, editor-in-chief, started out with a list of over 100 movies which they considered to be the worst in horror. They carefully purged any film from the list which had even a single good thing about it,tossing out most foreign films (on the off chance that a bad dub could have caused the impression that it was “worse” than it might really have been), and then they arbitrarily eliminated the majority of gore movies of the late 1960s and early 1970s because they were clearly dominating the list. Finally they removed entries they thought might be too obscure for even their cult-oriented fan base of readers. The list was presented in alphabetical order with no ranking; Kane considered all these movies equally bad. Each “winner” was listed with its director, a synopsis, and “stars.” Closely following this list were the “Dishonorable Mentions,” those movies that were close, but no prize, listed without

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niche proved to be too limited and not self-sustaining, in spite of the quality of writing and production that The Monster Times maintained until its demise.—ETK [see Famous Monsters of Filmland]

MOVIE ACTION The first issue of Movie Action appeared on newsstands at the end of 1935, and it was sort of a pulp for motion pictures. Street & Smith thought that moviegoers might want to read condensed story adaptations of movie scripts before actually going to the theater.An earlier attempt at this category, Motion Picture Story Magazine (later renamed Motion Picture) appeared in 1911 with adaptations of silent movies, but quickly abandoned that formula and branched out into general coverage of film personalities. All issues of Movie Action carried painted covers and were put together by Street & Smith’s

130 | Movie Action PG 130, L to R, Top to Bot – THE MONSTER TIMES, #19 (© respective copyright holder); THE MONSTER TIMES, #28 (© respective copyright holder); THE MONSTER TIMES, #14 (© respective copyright holder); THE MONSTER TIMES, #11, 1972 (© respective copyright holder); PG 131, Bot band, L to R – THE SPIDER, (© Popular Publications); THRILLING WONDER STORIES, June 1949 (© Standard Magazines); FANTASTIC ADVENTURES QUARTERLY, summer 1948 (© Ziff-Davis).

pulp editor John L. Nanovic.The magazine used the standard pulp format and read as a pulp due to its many adaptations of low budget adventure, horror, and swashbuckling films such as Darkest Africa,The Invisible Ray, China Seas, and The Walking Dead. Movie Action lasted less than a year.Today a magazine like Script, which prints and emphasized the nuts and bolts of screenplays, has found an audience that aspires to write for the movies.— LO

MR. AMERICA see True Strange MURDER see Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery THE MYSTERIOUS WU FANG Popular Pulps Oriental Menace The Mysterious Wu Fang was a character pulp launched in September, 1935 by Popular Publications. It only lasted seven issues, but it achieved a following of devoted readers. This was mostly due to the lead story usually being science fiction in nature, though the back-up stories almost never were. Descendants of the Victorian era “dime novels,” the pulps enjoyed their heyday in the 1930s and 1940s.Their readers plunked down more than a million dollars a month in small change to follow the adventures of Doc Savage,The Shadow,The Mysterious Wu Fang, G-8 and His Battle Aces, or Captain Satan, King of Detectives. There were sci-

ence fiction pulps, crime pulps, aerial-combat pulps, westerns, jungle adventures, and more. Americans were eager for cheap escapist entertainment during the Depression and the war years that followed, and the pulps delivered. In 1935, Dell entered the marketplace, replacing All Detective with the first anti-hero pulp, Dr. Death. War Birds became Terence X. O’Leary’s War Birds. Both titles failed after three issues. At the end of the year, Dell put out their short-lived Public Enemy, a G-man pulp. It came out only two months after Standard’s G-Men, which was the first and longest-running G-Man pulp. Popular Publications attempted to compete with Dr. Death by bringing out their own anti-hero pulp, The Mysterious Wu Fang. Seven issues later Wu Fang was replaced by Dr.Yen Sin, but with no better success. It was a small wonder that Popular Publications’ first all-villain pulp should be titled The Mysterious Wu Fang. In September, 1935 when The Mysterious Wu Fang magazine made its debut, the name of Fu Manchu was already a household word; the Fu Manchu books were bestsellers and they were usually serialized in such prestigious slick magazines as Colliers and Liberty. If the public confused one character with the other, the confusion could only aid the sales of the humble pulp magazine. During its existence, Popular Publications was the largest publisher of pulp magazines in the country. The company was formed in 1930 by Henry “Harry” Steeger. It published titles in every genre, but they were best known for their several “weird menace” titles, such as Dime Mystery and Terror Tales. The ten-cent, 128-page monthly was edited by Edith Seims and all of the title stories were

The Mysterious Wu Fang | written by Robert J. Hogan. In their hands, Wu Fang became the “most diabolical of all the genius Orientals.” In many ways a Fu Manchu copy, Wu Fang is still fondly remembered by his devotees for the story and character twists that made him unique. Wu Fang was a scientist, of course, capable of breeding monstrous new species of poisonous insects and snakes. He also made use of spiders, bats, and lizards.The genius Wu Fang was capable of creating new species that combined the worst parts of the rat, the lizard, and the toad. More sinister than that, though, was his affection for pain and torture — other people’s pain via torture.Wu Fang was headquartered in Limehouse, London, but his war on good spread across the entire world.Wu Fang was not alone in his war of terror, he had a number of aides, including Zaru, the part-ape beast-man, but Wu Fang’s main helper

was his daughter, Mohra. Fighting against the villain Wu Fang was Val Kildare, the former “number one investigator of the United States Secret Service.” Kildare is assisted by his best friend and sidekick, Jerry Hazzard, a newspaper reporter, but Hazzard is eventually crippled at Wu Fang’s hands and is replaced by Rod Carson. Kildare and his friends managed to stop Wu Fang’s plots on several occasions, although not without being tortured or badly beaten. Eventually, Mohra fell in love with Hazzard, escaped from Wu Fang, and married him.Wu, after being killed and resurrected many times, was finally captured. Robert Jasper Hogan wrote all of the title stories:“The Case of the Six Coffins” (September 1935), “The Case of the Scarlet Feather” (October 1935), “The Case of the Yellow Mask” (November 1935), “The Case of the Suicide

Tomb” (December 1935), “The Case of the Green Death” (January 1936), “The Case of the Black Lotus” (February 1936), and “The Case of the Hidden Scourge” (March 1936). However, Hogan’s literary efforts were not enough for the magazine to establish a significant foothold in the marketplace. Dr. Yen Sin was a short-lived pulp magazine published by Popular Publications in 1936. It was used to replace The Mysterious Wu Fang magazine from the same publisher after it ceased publication in March, 1936, another attempt to break into the Oriental villain niche.The title characters in both magazines,Wu Fang and Dr. Yen Sin, were pointedly “Yellow Peril” villains in the mold of Fu Manchu. Only three issues of Dr.Yen Sin appeared, with cover dates of May/June, 1936, July/August, 1936, and September/October, 1936, before it also folded due to a lack of popular support. Each issue

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contained a lead story written by Donald E. Keyhoe. Keyhoe later became famous as the author of Flying Saucers Are Real.The titles of the three novels, in chronological order, are: “The Mystery of the Dragon’s Shadow,”“The Mystery of the Golden Skull,” and “The Mystery of the Singing Mummies.” The title stories are set in a dark, fog-shrouded version of Washington, D.C., that resembles the Limehouse of Hogan’s Wu Fang novels. Dr. Yen Sin, described as the “Yellow Doctor” and the “Invisible Emperor,” combines the mysticism of the East with the latest devices of the West, with diabolical results. He uses blowguns, Dacoit stranglers, death rays, and science laboratories to achieve his evil ends. He is opposed by Michael Traile, a man who is incapable of natural sleep due to a bungled brain operation, and who uses yogalike relaxation sessions to recharge his vitality.

SNAKEBIT

132 | The Mysterious Wu Fang Popular Publications would continue to produce pulp magazines for decades to come in spite of the failure of their “Yellow Peril” line. In 1942, the firm acquired the properties of the Frank A. Munsey, Co., most notably Argosy magazine. In 1972, the company’s rights were sold to Blazing Publications, but not before they had created an admirable legacy in a highly competitive arena.— RA [see Yellow Peril]

MYSTIC see Other Worlds

N NEMESIS see Doctor Death THE NOSE The Nose began in 1989 as a San Francisco black and white journal focused on local Bay Area doings. The magazine’s co-founders David Latimer and Jack Boulware, a former stand-up comic, were fascinated by odd human behavior and saw the magazine’s audience as the same sort of weird people it covered. The Nose was at first seen as a left coast version of Spy magazine that explored bizarre news surrounding sex, crime, drugs and outlandish human behavior west of the Mississippi. If Spy can be said to be the ungrateful, silver-spoon-fed child of the greedy 1980s, then The Nose is the nose-picking foster child that eats with its fingers. Some issue topics: Genital piercing (#3); Smelly-shoe fetishism (#11); Foreskin restoration (#9); Hunter S. Thompson write-alike contest; and The Evil Cult of Rush Limbaugh.— LO [see Spy, Future Sex]

PG 132, Top to Bot – MEN, Sept. 1964 (© respective copyright holder); FRENCH MODELS, #4, July 1935 (© respective copyright holder); PG 133, Bot band, L to R – OPERATOR #5, Sept. 1938 (© Popular Publications); OPERATOR #5, Feb. 1937 (© Popular Publications); OPERATOR #5, May 1934 (© Popular Publications).

O OPERATOR #5 Americans were deeply shattered by the Great Depression of the 1930s. The nightmares of the Great War,World War One, were still fresh in their memories. Americans had begun to see new threats and new potential nightmares developing around them that would soon plunge the whole world into another great war. These fears found root in their imaginations as possible acts of espionage and terrorism on American soil. It was clear that America was not beyond the reach of tyranny, invasion, and occupation. In April, 1934 Americans began to find renewed hope in a new fictional character, Jimmy Christopher, America’s Undercover Ace, also known to all as Operator #5. He made his first appearance in that April issue in the self-titled Operator #5 magazine published by Popular Publications. Operator #5 was ready to face the threat of United States invasion and lead Americans out of the gloom of the Great Depression into glorious victory. Operator #5 was a ten-cent pulp that ran for a total of 48 issues, ending in November, 1939. In the pages of the magazine, Jimmy Christopher fought against dire enemies and led the United States forces into victorious battle against the evils that threatened this great land. Operator #5 was an American spy at a time when there was no agency for secret agents in existence.The enemy, saboteurs, and foreign menaces knew him by his trademark skull ring, and feared the sharp rapier

curled inside his belt. The amazing adventures of the pulp hero Jimmy Christopher were written by Curtis Steele, a house name used by Popular Publications, but it was Frederick C. Davis who wrote issues one through 20. Emile C. Tepperman followed Davis, writing issues 21 through 39.Wayne Rogers finished the run of Operator #5 by writing issues 40 through 48. There were also short back-up stories written by other authors throughout the series, just like all the other pulps published during this era. A final, unpublished story, “Hell’s Lost Battalion,” was written by Wayne Rogers. Formed in 1930 by Henry “Harry” Steeger, Popular Publications magazines included detective, adventure, romance, and Western fiction. Most notably, they published The Spider, and Dime Detective. In 1942, Steeger bought out the properties of Frank A. Munsey Co., which published the famous Argosy magazine. The company was sold in turn to Blazing Publications in 1972, which renamed itself Argosy Communications in 1988. During the Great Depression it was the patriot James “Jimmy” Christopher, the secret agent, who covertly defended America. He was described as a young man in his early 20s, strong and clean-shaven, bright blue eyes alert, chin determined, possessed of a poise beyond his years. On the back of his right hand was his only distinguishing mark, a peculiar scar, a spread-winged American eagle, straining to take flight. Hidden by a mask of black velvet, a rapier concealed in his belt, and a death’s head ring bearing the number “5,” and containing a powerful explosive in the hollow top, he was the very epitome of a true hero.The enemies of America would learn to fear him, and his small, secret, gold skull, ruby-eyed, filled with a silver ball of Diphenolchlorasine, a death-dealing poison gas.

Operator #5 | Operator #5 was aided in his fight to protect America by a number of friends.There was Tim Donovan, a young shoeshine boy, who had saved Jimmy’s life when a gangster went gunning for him. Adopted by Jimmy, he became his assistant and sidekick, the only other character to appear in every novel. Later the two-fisted young man would enter the Service, where his street smarts and young appearance allowed him to go unnoticed and undetected in the face of the enemy. Another agent of the Service was Jimmy’s girlfriend, Diana Elliot, an ace reporter for Amalgamated Press. After a big scoop, she frequently needed to be rescued by Operator #5.The Chief of Intelligence of the Service was Z-7, garbed in gray, hair raven-black, eyes shining with the deep brilliance of black diamonds, eventually replaced as the leader by Jimmy. During times of danger, he delegated all operational control to Operator

#5, acting as liaison to the White House. Then there was John, Jimmy’s father, a former Service Operator, Operator Q-6.A bullet near his heart had forced him to retire, but he still managed to help Jimmy, along with Nan Christopher, Jimmy’s twin sister, who often impersonated Operator #5 in order to mislead the enemy. Not to be forgotten was his friend “Slips” McGuire. However, it was the Hidden Hundred, a group of 100 men, former members of the Secret Service, who were the most help. Dismissed by a stupid Secretary of State, the Hidden Hundred continued to fight for America, and Operator #5 was their leader. The most famous story line in the entire run is the thirteen inter-connected novels, written by Emile Tepperman, that make up “The Purple Invasion.” In this series, the Purple Empire, an unnamed European power that is a thinly veiled

Germany, conquers the United States and the world. Operator #5 leads the insurgency against them. The series really came alive with issue 26, “Death’s Ragged Army” (June 1936). Until then the enemies had been many, often from countries with fictional names. In issue number three, Operator #5 fought against “The Yellow Scourge” (June 1934), but everyone knew it was the Chinese. Issue 20, “Scourge of the Invisible Death” (November 1935), was a fight against a British secret society using cosmic rays from space. Issue 21, the first written by Emile Tepperman, “Raiders of the Red Death” (December 1935), was a fight against Montezuma the Third who was trying to establish an Aztec empire using a weapon that caused people to explode. With issue 26, the single-issue wars ceased. “Death’s Ragged Army” begins on the 22nd day

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of the invasion of America by the Purple Empire. Emperor Maximilian I of Balkaria, who had planned the invasion and a reign of slaughter, is killed by a bomb thrown by Plugger Dugan.This gives his bloodthirsty son, Rudolph, an excuse to take over. He blames Operator #5 for the death of his father, and the invasion begins. As the story starts, the invaders from the Central Empire (Germany) hold all New England and most of the Eastern Seaboard. In the last scene of the first installment, the President, hiding in a temporary headquarters in Jacksonville, Florida, appoints Operator #5 to take charge of the fight. Thus begins the battle that will be fought across America, and that will last until the end of issue 38. Operator #5 leads a rag-tag army of Americans in those battles. Fighting in towns across the country, in the sky, and at sea, they all face great

OPERATOR #5

134 | Operator #5 danger. Operator #5, as a master of disguise, learns the secrets of the invaders as whole populations are massacred.The evil enemy chops heads off at whim, bayonets helpless women and babies, and uses poison gas on whole towns. The Warlord of the World, and his gray-clad hordes, sweeps across America, marching down from Canada, flanking the last, desperate army of Americans. By issue 29,“America’s Plague Battalions” (December 1936), the Purple Forces have conquered Europe, Asia, and most of the United States. Rudolph begins to release cholera bombs on the remaining fighters standing against him. San Francisco is beset by an immense foreign fleet of super-dreadnoughts. The fight continues against secret weapons from a final stronghold in the Rockies. Issue 33, “Revolt of the Lost Legions” (May 1937), finds America beaten and its people in chains, laboring for a blood-maddened dictator. The few defiant patriots are caught and beheaded, but Operator #5 fights on. The goose-stepping armies of the Purple Emperor mass in the passes of the Continental Divide, ready to destroy the last American defenders. Rudolph threatens to kill every eldest son in the occupied territories if they do not surrender, but the defenders continue to fight, even when they find the Purple Army hiding behind a wall of helpless Americans.The Purple forces are defeated. However, the war is not over. Mongol hordes have also invaded America, marching through Pennsylvania, and a Purple fleet is sailing to destroy New York. A small band of gallant patriots waits at Valley Forge to try to stop them.The thin line holds against the Mongols.The Emperor releases the Black Death in a last-ditch effort to defeat the American forces. Issue 38, “The Siege that Brought the Black Death” (March 1938), the final issue in the series, ends with the cowardly Purple Emperor, Rudolph, at the mercy of Operator #5. But he is shot by one of his own men instead.The Purple Invasion is over, and the defeated force sails off. The breathtaking, realistic invasion of America

has reached its climax. Operator #5 and his ragtag warriors are victorious…for now. In a clever twist, rarely pursued in pulp magazines,America was not fully recovered by the time of the first new novel that followed the end of the Purple Invasion series. Still reeling from the bloody war, America is vulnerable to another would-be conqueror, an oriental power, obviously Japan, led by the “Yellow Vulture.”This powerful new sequence started in issue 45, “Winged Hordes of theYellowVulture” (May 1939), but was never finished, as the magazine ceased publication. The last issue, “The Army from Underground” (November 1939), has the oriental (Japanese) warlord Moto Taronago still undefeated. Finally, the adventures of Operator #5 had reached the point where they were on the verge of becoming real as the advent of the next world war began in September, 1939. In 1966, at the height of the camp craze brought about by the success of the Doc Savage reprints, Corinth Press issued eight Operator #5 adventures in paperback, including such titles as: Legions of the Death Master (July 1935); The Invisible Empire (May 1934); Blood Reign of the Dictator (May 1935); and Invasion of the Yellow Warlords (June 1935). Due to their fine efforts, yet another generation of readers would be privileged to experience the realistic adventures of Operator #5. Due to their great cover art, low production numbers, and light distribution, they almost immediately became collector’s items.—ETK

THE ORGAN It was 1970, the 1960s were nominally, if not actually, over, and “Hey Kids, Let’s Put on a Show (I know someone with a garage)” had been replaced by “Hey Kids, Let’s Start a Magazine (I know someone with money.)”Printing presses were running, the tabloid fold periodical was cheap to produce, and San Francisco was the place. Cartoonists and poets and misfits of all sorts had fled their inland tortures for the more refined

The Organ |

PG 134 – THE PHANTOM DETECTIVE, Jan. 1934 (©Phantom Detective Inc ); PG 135 – L to R – THE ORGAN, #1, July 1970 (© respective copyright holder);THE ORGAN, #5, Mar. 1971 (© respective copyright holder);THE ORGAN, #3, 1970 (© respective copyright holder).

pains, including their disappointment at learning that they were the 11,032,087th person to show up thinking that San Francisco had been holding its breath for just that one more person looking to get his/her Hip Card punched. Some of them had talents, but were without outlets. America was not only rejecting the drugged and stupid, those who actually believed that San Francisco nights were warm and that wearing flowers in your hair wouldn’t just mark you as potential for fleecing in the same way the green hat had marked newbies just off of Ellis Island 5060 years before; America was also rejecting those who understood that a brave new world of crew

cuts and panty girdles was not the most desirable future that could be imagined. Sex was no longer taboo. Pornography was not only legal, but had become somewhat fashionable.The First International Erotic Film Festival, attended by the Pacific Heights society crowd, had just taken place in San Francisco. Mary Rexroth, the daughter of Poet Kenneth Rexroth, the icon of the San Francisco Poetry Renaissance, had starred in a Triple-XXX-rated metaphysical mind-scrambler titled Intersection. Porn wasn’t fashionable in all circles, though. Dianne Feinstein, head of the city’s Board of Supervisors, decided she had to protect the

morals of her constituents and went to see for herself. Her conclusion: ”What we found was total degradation of the human spirit.…” The fact that she had gone to the Three Street Peerless Theater to watch the long-running Danish film,“Animal Lover,” may have had something to do with her revulsion. Arlene Elster, proprietress of the New Age Triple XXX Sutter Street Cinema, wondered why she hadn’t gone to see a movie in which humans have sex with other humans, while a member of Ms. Elster’s staff suggested that since Ms. Feinstein was Jewish, perhaps the scene in which the Danish farm girl star had sex with a pig might have been offensive on religious as well as sexual grounds. Into this zeitgeist came almost everyone who wanted to start a magazine. San Francisco had long been the printing center of the west and keeping those presses busy allowed opportunities

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for creating the internationally celebrated, visually radical rock posters and what seemed like countless newsprint publications featuring musicians, armadillos, and hippie chicks. Rolling Stone, of course, Berkeley Barb, Rags, The Maverick, and The Oracle – those were just some of the start-ups in the San Francisco Bay Area; add in Ramparts, Scanlan’s, Good Times, Rags,Tribe,Aquarian Age, and Freedom News. And then along came The Organ, unlike any of the others and, in many ways – its brashness, achievements of outrageousness and crudeness, artistic merit and intellectual seriousness, its perceptions of popular culture as it went by, and all of that in each individual issue – unlike anything anyone had ever seen before. (Something like the old Vanity Fair of the 1930s inseminated by Snatch Comix and giving birth to Ludwig Wittgenstein singing dirty sailor song duets with Oscar Brand.)

ORGAN

136 | The Organ The Organ was the love child of publisher Christopher Weills and editor Gerard van der Leun. Weills was a San Francisco native from a political family, who had worked with Ramparts, and who had found a financial backer for a new magazine. Gerard van der Leun had been making films at USC and came north to become editorin-chief in order to do something new and amazing with that money. Van der Leun was a literate and educated fellow of some genius, and he and Weills decided that what the world needed now was a socially subversive, objectively erotic monthly. Stevie Lipney, a San Francisco State University veteran who had left for LA a while before, came back to the City by the Bay to be art director. Jon Stewart showed up and started writing some excellent journalism, and The Organ was born. As with every publication of the time, a variety of writers and photographers and artists wandered in, and some were talented. The letter O of The Organ logo, incorporating both male and female sigils, made it clear the subject was sex. The picture of Rrose Sélavy (Marcel Duchamp’s drag persona) saying “Loving You has Made Me Bananas” gave the Mission Statement. Their first offices were literally underground, in the basement of the Firehouse at 451 Pacific Avenue, downstairs from Scanlan’s. They soon moved to a former poultry processing plant at the foot of Telegraph Hill known as “The Chicken Factory.” The thickness of the walls made the place virtually soundproof and it attracted artists and musicians. Organ offices were just inside the front door, in a two-room former freezer, each room being large, perhaps 30 feet square. Just about everyone there dreamed of greatness in one form or another, including a modest young guitarist named Carlos Santana, who waved a hello on his way to his studio on the second floor. The cover of the first issue had a black and white photograph by Walter Chappell, one of the great local outlaws of the camera. It was a photograph of a naked couple tongue kissing beneath a

waterfall, their genital areas in shadow except for a bright willy-tip that caused a great deal of consternation among newsstands and distributors. It was only fitting that that first “Hey Kids, Let’s Make a Magazine” issue should have devoted a large amount of space to the last of the “Hey Kids, Let’s Put on a Show” people, the Cockettes, an all-singing, all-dancing ensemble of drag queens, some with full beards sparkling with glitter.The group included women pretending to be men in drag. Also in the first issue was an interview with Allen Ginsberg talking about the character assassination and persecution of Timothy Francis Leary and how whatever happened to Tim Leary, would happen to America, plus a full page of S. Clay Wilson’s “Suds Smut” poly-sexual biker/biker chick/biker’s gay neighbor porn, and poetry and photography and a Tarot column, too. For the next issue the question,“Okay, good, but we don’t have to just keep on doing sex stuff, do we?” arose. Hey, it was 1970, so no one had to do anything they didn’t want, other than beat the draft and not get caught with drugs. The second issues of The Organ continued with Robert Crumb’s Notebooks, collage by Satty, an article on Taos communes, the History of Snatch Comix, art reviews, and Kenneth Anger and his Demon Brother, a review article by Steve Schneck (author of the award-winning Grove press novel, The Nightclerk) of the porn film made by Jack Ruby’s girlfriend, Candy Barr; a wild Scream of Consciousness on the war by Ed Sanders that read like a Dr. Bronner’s Soap Label written on good coke and bad acid; an interview with Warhol director Paul Morrissey by Scott Winokur, and reviews of films like Jon Avildsen’s first major breakthrough film starring Peter Boyle in the title role of Joe. The introduction of Stevie Lipney’s little monkey obviated Rrose Selavy as the magazine’s mascot and indicated a change – the little cartoon monkey drawn by Ms. Lipney, rubbing its hands together and pondering the great fundamental question of civilization:“Do we bomb it

The Organ | or kiss its ass?” Then Gerard van der Leun introduced himself to me, your humble author, and asked if I wanted in, quite possibly because he knew I had just finished assembling the above-mentioned First International Erotic Film Festival. I joined the staff as associate and review editor. And for my sins in the world of advertising, I was able to bring along Paul Bianchi, a genuine print production person whose lack of neuroses enabled him to act and work as a true professional and ramrod the endless production process without drama or hysteria. (This was the Rubylithic Era when print-medium dinosaurs crashed through paper swamps cutting rubylith overlays, doing razor-blade edits on sheets from the typesetter, using manual typewriters, carbon paper, and white-out).A little later, I found a genuine former copy editor from a national NewYork-based major weekly, one Karen (later Kayla) Sussell. Why would these consummate professionals be willing to work for what was essentially an insanely amateur operation for almost no money? Simple. Because we had all worked at straight jobs that paid a lot and took their pound of flesh in sanity and integrity. That word “amateur,” from the root meaning “to love.” It was an act of love.And, mirabile dictu, something within general shouting distance of professionalism started to emerge. And here we need a drum roll announcing impending BIG TIME. The New York Times people showed up, one of their writers having convinced editorial management they should pay for him to go to San Francisco and watch porn films, nice work if you can get it.The article, titled “The Porn Capital of America,” ran in the NY Times Sunday magazine on January 3, 1971. Our staff meeting was photographed and printed over the heading:“Porn Publishers.” (A personal aside: that’s when I got the first phone call from my father in many,

many months. All his friends had seen the picture and called him to tell him his son was infamous. I told him it wasn’t really porn. He was generous: “That’s okay. Pornography is important.” I told him I’d send him a copy, but he’d be disappointed.) With the magazine finally appearing above the radar, it was fitting to run another article on the Cockettes, who were also becoming recognized, nationally, even if primarily for their enthusiastic lack of talent (so said Gore Vidal). People loved it, and universal approval also came for a fine article by Dick Lupoff about the Comics and the Comics Code of the 1950s, titled “Is this Good-bye Captain Bright-Tights?” It was the first public recognition that “comix” were not a momentary fluke. People loved the article about John Lennon’s primal therapy with Dr. Arthur Janov. A little more to the edge was Tom Veitch’s “Mick Jagger Story,” about a groupie doing a razor-blade edit of the singer’s jib-jobs, and that castration resulting in a weight gain to 300 pounds. Neither here nor there was an article about Rossmoor, the newly-established Senior Citizen Community in Walnut Creek, titled “The 45-Year-Old and Over Plastic Marsupial Pouch: What to Do till the Reaper Comes.” But that issue also featured a historical and excellent (and even important) section, looking in the opposite direction from the mainstream media, who were all agog about “The New Left.” Organ ran a section titled “The New Right,” focusing on authoritarian organizations – Scientology, The Process, Krishna Consciousness, Synanon, and Ayn Rand followers – all of whom were represented in a wonderful Greg Irons fullpage cartoon on the opening fold. Uh-oh. I happened to be the only editor in the office when the Church of Scientology duo showed up with libel on their minds. I had not edited the

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article, I hadn’t even read it. Opening the issue while they were there, and looking at the illustration of L. Ron Hubbard with a box of soapsuds pouring over his head and a sub-head that mentioned both the annual gross of the church and comparing his science fiction to his religion, I realized there was no way in hell I was going to be able to imply it was all in their imagination. They were there to double-team me, a man in black priest garb with a gold sunburst chain where a gold cross would be in some other religion, representing the AUTHORITY that was supposed to make me nervous, and a toothsome bit of Scientological pulchritude in a jersey top with a cardigan, pressing her blouse bunnies in my direction to add distraction. Amazing how obvious the tactic was. Well, after having spent three weeks sitting in a darkened room with Bruce Conner and Paul Lawrence the year before, watching porn films for the Erotic Film Festival, I had lost some shyness, and was the only person I knew who really did read Playboy for the articles. So, to simplify things, and reduce my focus to one person, I ogled her beautiful bumps until she shrank back, put her shoulders forward and pulled the cardigan tight around her, crossing her arms in front and pulling out of the conversation. (Who knows what might have happened had she offered more than just a “Hey, look at these?”) Okay, now down to Father Flotski:“What do you want?” He wanted a retraction, of course, and as they talked and I read, I realized our reporter had quoted bizarre claims he said had been made by recruiters, such as how joining Scientology would enable a woman with a hysterectomy to re-grow her uterus. Whether it had really been said by a recruiter or it was a rumor someone had told him was irrelevant — neither he nor we could ever substantiate it in a court of law. I took down the list of seven or eight items they wanted retracted, including misspellings of official Scientological words. And yet, the magazine went on and got bet-

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138 | The Organ ter: a long article/interview with a pre-op transsexual and his/her community, articles on The Battle of Berkeley, a hoax about three young men who had constructed a giant raisin of papiermâché to take to Mount Rushmore and stuff up George Washington’s nose in protest of the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention. And it got better still: Jerry Lee Lewis, articles by William Burroughs and Robert Anton Wilson, an interview with Melvin van Peebles on “Decolonization of the Mind” (referring to his intention in “Sweet Sweetback’s Badass Song”), William Wiley’s Art, and then a major journalistic coup — the “Heroin in the Military” issue. The government had insisted everyone returning from Vietnam had been detoxed. So writer Jon Stewart and photographer Robert Footherap drove over to Treasure Island, the open Navy base in the middle of San Francisco Bay, and asked the Marine at the gate “Where’s the dopers’ barracks?” “Down that way and take a right and you’ll see it on your left, sir.” And there it was, doors wide open, men shooting up and smoking dope, graffiti saying “The Navy is like a joint – the more you suck the higher you get.” Stewart and Footherap were arrested and held until no one could actually say what law they’d broken.T.I. was an open base, etc., etc. It was a rare thing for a monthly to break a story that is then picked up by the dailies.That issue also included a report from an army officer serving in Vietnam attached to the detox program, an article by Michael Rossman on the drug plague back here in the world, and a full page of Greg Irons’s wonderful “Adventures of Sergeant Smack and Easy Co.” The same issue included an interview with John Waters’ Divine and Stan Cotton, a mayoral candidate of extraordinary vision. But we were pretty sure it was the drugs that brought strange retribution. Small squirrelly-looking men in black raincoats would open the freezer door to the office and just stand there, expressionless, looking at us. “Can we help you?”

“No.” Ahh, paranoia is its own reward. We decided to do the retraction for the Scientologists, but in our own fashion, as a contest to write the most libelous retraction.Winner to get a free one-year subscription. But it was not to be. It was over. The internal dynamics had changed. Up through Issue #9, each issue had been assembled with hard decisions as to what we needed to leave out (we only had 36 pages, including the cover).And now we had come to a time when we were wondering what we could get to put in. Painful though it was, especially for Gerard and Christopher, who’d put more blood and sweat and suffering into it than any of us, we decided to let it be done, let it remain as a period of time that we left without holding onto it and dragging it into ordinariness. Our exit from the world of publishing was also helped by the results of mocking both the Scientologists for their pretensions and the government for its lies about heroin addicts not detoxed in Vietnam; threat and pressure and sabotage were brought to bear. Someone, whether Scientological or military or what, had dumped the entire New York distribution (3/4 of the press run) into the East River. That helped make that decision a bit less conflicted, if no less painful. It made it a bit easier to allow The Organ to finish its arc, like a dolphin, disappearing beneath the waves, leaving behind just a bit of a splash in the memory.—HP

P PEARSON’S MAGAZINE The original Pearson’s Magazine was British. It began in January 1896, published by C. Arthur Pearson (1866-1921), who had founded Pearson’s Weekly in 1890 and would later launch the Daily Express newspaper in 1900. Pearson had previously worked for George Newnes, whose weekly magazine Tit-Bits had revolutionized the popular paper. Pearson’s Magazine was created in imitation of Newnes’s popular Strand Magazine, which had started in January 1891, itself inspired by the heavily illustrated American general interest magazines The Century and Scribner’s. Newnes had priced The Strand at sixpence, then the equivalent of about ten cents, and this had instigated a price war, not only in Britain, but also in America, where the ten-cent magazine emerged in 1893 with McClure’s and Munsey’s. Pearson’s was a similar general interest magazine, one of many that proliferated in Britain at the end of the 1890s, and it had little to distinguish it from its rivals except that it liked to promote the warning or disaster story, best exemplified by H.G.Wells’s The War of the Worlds (April-December 1897). It also liked to present some of its fiction as fact, as in the series “Real Ghost Stories” by E. & H. Heron, starting in January, 1898, which introduced the occult investigator Flaxman Low.And it liked to explore secret histories: the series “Historical Mysteries” by Allen Upward, which began in January, 1900, was one of the most popular the magazine ran. Its most popular series character, almost rivaling Sherlock Holmes, was Captain Kettle, an irascible, jingoistic merchant seaman with a boat for hire who ends up in all manner of nefarious international adventures.

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Pearson’s Magazine | Pearson’s had been distributed in the United States from its first issue, but in March, 1899 a separate American edition was printed and published in New York.To promote this, Pearson sold the magazine at just eight cents, undercutting its rivals, though it reverted to ten cents after six issues. It helped to establish a reasonable sales figure of around 100,000, though this fell far short of the field leader, Munsey’s, at 700,000, or McClure’s and Cosmopolitan, both in excess of 300,000. Its contents were still primarily from the British edition, but a few original items appeared, including articles by Theodore Dreiser, stories by Jack London, and a series, “The Story of the States,” by various contributors, which began in the February 1901 issue. Sales remained static, however, and in 1902 Pearson sold the magazine to its printer, Joseph J. Little. Little, who had set up a printing business in 1867, had served as a Congressman from 1891-93, and as a Commissioner of Education, and held strong political views. Both he and his son,Arthur, wanted the magazine to be representative of American news and opinion, as well as reflect their socialist views.They had already tried to encourage new contributions and the changes became evident with the magazine receiving a facelift and new promotion in January 1903. For a few more years, it still drew upon fiction from the British Pearson’s, but increasingly the content was original. In the words of Arthur Little, who became the editor, it was “an American magazine, for Americans.” As if to celebrate, from February, 1903 on, Pearson’s began a new series by Gelett Burgess, “The Picaroon,” written with Will Irwin. It was subtitled “A San Francisco Night’s Entertainment,” and each story looked at a scam perpetrated by a rogue or charlatan. It suited the mood of the moment. The first decade of the twentieth century was the era of what became called “muckraking” by Theodore Roosevelt. It was the dawn of the investigative journalist, whose delvings into social, political, and financial injustice began a decade of reform.The major “muckraking” magazines were Collier’s, McClure’s, Cos-

mopolitan, American, and later Hampton’s, and the Littles wanted Pearson’s to play a part in this action. They would eventually inherit several of the major investigative journalists from these other magazines, especially Arthur Henry Lewis, David Graham Phillips, and Charles Edward Russell, but that was later. Pearson’s began in a small way and with more focused material, usually reporting on the nature of the reforms rather than exposing the corruption. Starting in April, 1903 they ran a three-part article looking at the work of the crusading district attorney, William Travers Jerome, who was spearheading a campaign against political corruption. Social and political injustice was also reflected in the fiction.Albert Bigelow Paine, who went on to become the literary executive and biographer of Mark Twain, was one of Pearson’s leading contributors at this time. Among his many items, which included a study of the nineteenth century political cartoonist, Thomas Nast (AprilNovember 1904), was the controversial story, “The Black Hands” (August 1903), where, as the result of an accident during an operation, a white man becomes black and experiences prejudice and injustice.Another regular was Owen Kildare, who had been raised in the Bowery slums in New York, had run with a street gang, and had written about his life in My Mamie Rose (1903, subsequently adapted for the stage [1908] and cinema [1915] as The Regeneration). He wrote several stories for Pearson’s which none of the other leading magazines would touch because they were too true to life. One of these was “The Level of the Sodden” (March 1905), which looked at how the lives of the poor were ruined further by drink. It was that level of realism that distinguished Pearson’s from its rivals. Pearson’s only steadily moved toward the exposés, preferring informative articles to sensationalism, and seeing its role as advising the public. One such series was “The Profession of Getting Hurt” (June-October 1905), by Theodore Waters, which looked at the growing number of bogus insurance claims and the resultant consider-

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140 | Pearson’s Magazine able rise in insurance premiums.The issues raised by the series led to the creation of a monitoring agency, the Alliance Against Accident Fraud. Otherwise, the emphasis during 1904/05 was on articles exploring the history of the United States. These included “Indian Fights and Fighters” (March-November 1904), by Cyrus Townsend Brady, which looked at the relationship between the American government and the native Americans over the last 40 years, and “The Romance of Aaron Burr” (June 1906-May 1907), by Alfred Henry Lewis, which painted a rather more positive picture than most of the enigmatic revolutionary. Lewis, who had been a cowboy in his youth, and a lawyer, and wrote one of the earliest volumes of western fiction,Wolfville (1897), did not regard himself as a “muckraker,” but did like to expose growing problems. Although he continued to contribute articles delving into the

underbelly of American politics to the Saturday Evening Post and Cosmopolitan, where he had established his reputation, he also built a following in Pearson’s, investigating financial institutions and risks such as gambling and the Stock Exchange. In later years, he studied crime and criminals, resulting in perhaps his most popular series for the magazine,“The Apaches of New York” (February 1911-April 1912), which brought alive the world of petty criminals, and which may have influenced Damon Runyon, who was soon contributing to Pearson’s. Another of Hearst’s journalists who was attracted to Pearson’s was James Creelman, the noted war reporter. Although his first contribution, “Who Makes the Spirit of War?” (April 1906), was on his chosen subject, he soon moved on to other matters: championing the need for innovators in “The Cry for ‘Brains’” (August

1906), tackling political issues, most notably his tirade against Theodore Roosevelt in “Theodore the Meddler” (January 1907), and his study of the then Secretary of War ,“The Mystery of Mr.Taft” (May 1907). His contributions continued on a near-monthly basis for three years, covering a wide range of subjects. Fiction was never as dominant in the American Pearson’s as in the British, though the magazine ran some fine stories including the Kid Brady boxing stories by P.G.Wodehouse (begun in September 1905), “The Corrector of Destinies” series by Melville Davisson Post (February 1907-May 1908), several Hopalong Cassidy stories by Clarence E. Mulford and various mystery and espionage series by E. Phillips Oppenheim. The combination of investigative articles and interesting fiction caused Pearson’s sales to treble, hitting 300,000 during 1906, and sales did not

falter when the cover price rose to 15 cents in August, 1906. Apart from a slight diversion during 1908, when book publisher Edward J. Clode served as editor, and re-introduced a number of British authors, including M.P. Shiel, Louis Tracy, and H.G. Wells, the magazine continued in a similar vein until 1912.Among its more prominent government exposés were “The Looting of New York” (May 1909), by William J. Gaynor, Justice of the Supreme Court, about the financial disaster of the construction of the New York street railway, and “The Plunderers of Washington” (November 1909), by Robert Wickliffe Woolley, about the misappropriation of central funds. During all these years, Pearson’s remained popular,but could scarcely be called a “cult”magazine. However, in April, 1912 all that changed. With that issue Arthur Little switched the magazine

DEATH THEME

Pearson’s Magazine |

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from its standard glossy format, printed on quality coated stock, fully illustrated and supported by over 40 pages of advertising, to a pulp magazine with scarcely any advertising and no illustrations. Little argued that he did not want to be beholden to advertisers, whose presence might inhibit the investigative articles that he could publish. Little had seen the success Frank Munsey had achieved with The Argosy and his other pulps, which survived by sales revenue alone and, with a circulation of around 250,000, he believed he could do the same. The lack of advertising meant that not only could Pearson’s be totally independent, but it could also push a stronger left-wing message. Pearson’s had always supported a socialist outlook, but this had been softened by the broader crusading issues and general interest articles. These now shifted to blatant socialist propaganda, virtually becoming the unofficial organ of the Socialist Party of America. The trend had been noticeable since late 1909, when journalist and former newspaper editor Allan L. Benson became their new lead writer, contributing articles on food prices, income tax, and the excessive power of the courts.The latter articles were reprinted as a pamphlet in 1911 and sold over a million copies. Another Pearson’s article, “The Growing Grocery Bill” (January 1912), was also released as a booklet and sold nearly two million copies.This convinced Little that there was a market for an independent socialist magazine. Thereafter, Pearson’s ceased to be a popular general-interest magazine and became an overtly political one. Significantly, this change happened at a time when the “muckraking” articles in other magazines had become milder, leaving Pearson’s as the most prominent voice of the masses against injustice. The magazine immediately found itself in trouble. Dealers were uncertain about stocking it and it soon fell foul of the reactionary attitude of

the new all-powerful Postmaster-General, Albert S. Burleson, when he took office in March, 1913. Ironically, Burleson did institute some of the policies that Pearson’s had called for, such as a national parcel post, but Burleson believed that the provocative socialist articles by Benson, Charles Edward Russell, Eugene V. Debs, and others, were not in the interests of the State and did all in his power to thwart the magazine. Pearson’s sales plummeted and Arthur Little instigated a subscription drive that, over the next few years, achieved remarkable results, eventually accounting for about half the magazine’s sales. However, just at this time, in February, 1913, Joseph Little died.While Little’s estate was worth over a half million dollars, the holdings of Pearson Publishing were treated as of no value. It was revealed that Pearson’s had been operating at a loss since 1910. The fact that the magazine survived until 1925 and managed to rebuild its circulation demonstrated that there was a need for a magazine that was not afraid to speak its mind, and it was this that gave it a cult status. Indeed, that status rose when, in September, 1916, Little brought Frank Harris on board as the new editor. Harris’s reputation was well known, much of it spread by himself. Though born in Ireland, Harris had completed his education in America, where he qualified as an attorney at the University of Kansas. He traveled extensively, undertaking further studies in Germany. He was extremely well read, with a passion for the works of Shakespeare and Goethe.Today, Harris is remembered chiefly for his sexual adventures, related in his notorious My Life and Loves (4 volumes, 192227), but the extent to which he was a philanderer has been exaggerated over the years, impelled by Harris’s own braggadocio. At the core, Harris was an excellent journalist, a brave editor, and very faithful to his friends. He did his best to save

Oscar Wilde from his self-destructive attitudes during his notorious trial. Harris was the first to publish the stories and articles of Max Beerbohm and H.G. Wells, and encouraged the work of George Bernard Shaw. In the 1890s, he made the Saturday Review the foremost political and literary weekly of its day. He had similar plans for Pearson’s, bringing to the magazine not only his strong views on injustice, but also a wide understanding of art and literature and an ability to talk (his bombastic editorials and essays always read like he is talking straight to you) endlessly on almost any subject. The many celebrities that he had met over the years formed the basis for a series of character sketches that he wrote, later collected in one of his volumes of Contemporary Portraits, among them George Bernard Shaw, General Haig, Sidney Sime, George Moore, Algernon Swinburne, and Winston Churchill. Harris filled at least half the magazine with his own material, writing about the life of Edward VII, then Prince of Wales, the Russian Revolution, atrocities in Ireland and, of course, scandals in New York. Perhaps his biggest crusade was against the judgments in the Night Courts.These had been set up by Theodore Roosevelt with the aim of controlling prostitution, but Harris discovered that many of the judges running the courts took the word of the police for granted and gave little chance for the defendants to argue their case. He believed that many innocent people were wrongly sentenced, with many arrested falsely following entrapment. His transcriptions of the proceedings led to him being summoned to court for publishing “an alleged obscene article” in the May, 1917 Pearson’s, even though this was simply a verbatim report. The most contentious articles Harris published featured his views on the war in Europe and the Irish Revolution. Harris was strongly anti-war, but often pro-revolutionary, if the cause was just. He thus supported the activities of the Irish Republicans, but condemned many of the actions of the British generals in the war. He was against conscription and supported conscientious objectors.

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142 | Pearson’s Magazine His comments, right from his first issue, led to the magazine being blacklisted in Britain and banned in Canada. The Federal authorities were directed to various statements in the January, 1917 issue that were seen as sympathetic both to Germany and to the Russian Bolshevists. Harris was never one to be muffled and he continued his protestations, becoming even more vociferous after America entered the World War I in April,1917.At that time the public sentiment was against being involved, and so supported Harris, but the sinking of the troopship Tuscania in February 1918 saw the tide of opinion shift and, by May, 1918,Pearson’s was taking a pro-war stance, arguing that the war had now become a fight for democracy. The notoriety of Pearson’s attracted public attention and sales rose, but Harris also had to face the tactics of Postmaster-General Burleson, who delayed issues in the mail,which had an increasingly deleterious effect. Despite the public support for Pearson’s, a combination of these tactics, increased wartime restrictions, and the debts inherited following Joseph Little’s death, meant that by the spring of 1917 the company was in financial difficulties.To save costs, the magazine changed to the large, flat, side-stapled format in July, 1917, but it looked increasingly beleaguered. Although pleas for contributions to a special fund were met with a flurry of interest, Pearson’s remained in financial straits,and in September 1917 the publishing company went into receivership. The title and circulation list of Pearson’s Magazine was auctioned and acquired by the publisher and fellow socialist Allan W. Ricker. Harris continued to write the majority of the contents, including his autobiographical western novel, On the Trail (May-November 1917). He was assisted by his mistress, Helen O’Hara, and the noted bohemian Guido Bruno, along with occasional contributions by Aleister Crowley and Upton Sinclair. These gave the magazine an idiosyncratic flavor, which was an allure for the curious, but did little to sustain circulation.A new company was established to run the magazine and from July, 1918 on, Harris took on the role of publisher as well as editor. It

was a huge drain on his time and resources and though Harris told Whit Burnett in 1926 that he had made “lots of money” from Pearson’s, the truth is it virtually bankrupted him and by the autumn of 1921 he put the magazine up for sale. He took on a new managing editor, Alexander Marky, and Harris left America for the south of France,though he continued to write for the magazine. It took Marky a year to find the funds, but in October, 1922 he took over as publisher. The magazine instantly looked better, with internal artwork returning and an improvement in paper quality, but the contents were of less interest. Support for socialism had waned in America after the Russian revolution, and Marky was unable to inject the enthusiasm and sparkle into the magazine that Harris had made. The magazine had become more of a literary review. Marky damaged his reputation by his support for the fraudulent claims of Dr. Albert Abrams, who maintained he could cure most ailments through electronic impulses. Abrams was later discredited, though not before he had become a millionaire. The American Pearson’s eventually folded in April, 1925 after some 313 issues. The British Pearson’s continued for another fourteen years.Yet the British Pearson’s never achieved the notoriety of the American edition, especially during the editorship of Frank Harris. Harris was the kind of editor who made people take notice and, because of him, the name of Pearson’s became synonymous with those who champion the underdog and human rights.—MA

PEEK-A-BOO see Health Knowledge Magazines THE PHANTOM DETECTIVE The Phantom Detective was the Sherlock Holmes of the pulps. He was a truly American creation, originated as Standart Publications’ response to the successful Shadow, which had just hit the

newsstands. The Phantom Detective was thus the second such pulp hero to appear, coming only a month before Doc Savage, another memorable adventure character, which appeared in March, 1933. The Phantom Detective was first published under the imprint of Phantom Detective Publishing, a subsidiary of Standard Publications. Beginning with its February, 1933 issue, it ran for 170 issues: far fewer than the longer-running Shadow, and less than the Doc Savage run of 181 issues. Oddly enough, its less frequent schedule meant that at its end, with its Fall, 1953 final issue, The Phantom Detective would hold the record for the longest-running single-character pulp magazine, lasting for over 20 years. The publisher was Ned Pines. His company was generally known as “the Thrilling group” because of editor Leo Margulies’ insistence on sticking “thrilling” onto the names of the magazines they published such as Thrilling Mystery and Thrilling Adventure. Ned Pines also had a comic book imprint, which most collectors usually refer to as Nedor Comics. The Phantom Detective had a series under their title Thrilling Comics. The Phantom Detective should not be confused with the much later comic strip creation The Phantom by Lee Falk. For The Phantom Detective, Margulies would use a wide variety of short stories, both in the hero and crook pattern, averaging up to 6,000 words. In all of them, the story excitement usually began with the first sentence and moved steadily toward a smashing climax. Margulies insisted that his writers avoid mechanical plot construction and steer clear of super-sensational murder methods, such as death rays, unknown poisons, and Rube Goldberg-type murder devices. He believed that in the detective story it was better to keep the identity of the criminal hidden until the end, leaving a trail of convincing clues by which the criminal was finally revealed. Of the 170 Phantom adventures, the first eleven were published under the house pseudonym of “G.Wayman Jones,” though they were all

Phantom Detective | probably written by D.L. Champion. The rest were written, under the pseudonym of “Robert Wallace,” by Edwin Burkhilder, Norman Daniels (36-plus), Jack D’Arcy, Anatole F. Feldman, Charles Green,W.T. Ballard, Laurence Donovan, and Ralph Oppenheim. Noted science fiction writers Henry Kuttner and Ray Cummings also contributed to the long-running series, as well as Fredric Brown, who wrote “Client Unknown” for the April, 1941 issue under his pseudonym of Carey Rix. Since no accurate records were kept by the Thrilling group editors, no one knows who wrote which stories, though Ryerson Johnson is credited with #46,“The Silent Death.” With the success of The Shadow and the growing popularity of The Phantom Detective, Street & Smith decided to create a totally different kind of character to help them compete against the Better Publications master sleuth. Instead of generating another cheap imitation, Henry Ralston, their chief of circulation, and John Nanovic, an editor for Street & Smith, succeeded admirably with the inception of the third great pulp adventure hero, Doc Savage. Instead of another mysterious night-time avenger, they chose to cultivate a hero who cooperated with authorities, a believable superman who was the epitome of human perfection in mind and body. Doc Savage debuted in March, 1933 in the story “The Man of Bronze.” Most of his 183 adventures were written by Lester Dent, under the pen name Kenneth Robeson. The Phantom, as he was called, never the Phantom Detective, was never outdone by Doc Savage.A mere mortal, not a superman, the Phantom was Richard Curtis Van Loan, a wealthy playboy who thought crime was evil.Van Loan had become an orphan at an early age, but inherited vast wealth. Before the Great War, he had been an idle playboy. During the war he became an ace

pilot, shooting down many German planes. Van Loan had gained a taste for adventure during the Great War, WWI. When he returned to the big city he had quickly grown bored with society life. Having a difficult time returning to the arduous life of an idle playboy, his best friend, Frank Havens, publisher of the local tabloid the New York Clarion, challenged Van Loan to solve an interesting case the police were having difficulties with. To his amazement, Van Loan did solve the case, and while doing so, discovered he had a talent for detection and fighting crime. He decided he had found his calling, where he could have a life of adventure and danger. Thus the Phantom Detective was born, but he did not appear overnight.Van Loan did not put on his Phantom trademark tuxedo and mask immediately. He began by first learning everything he could, training himself to be an expert in crime detection and forensics. He became a master of disguise and escape, of criminal psychology, hand-to-hand combat, and everything that could help him against the bad guys. Tall, tanned, and powerfully built, the Phantom was a veritable chameleon when it came to disguise. His mastery was so complete, he could imitate anyone, as far as personal and physical traits were concerned, with the utmost success. In order to keep his alter ego a secret, Van Loan built a hidden crime laboratory that he would use as his headquarters in the war against crime.The Phantom, ready at last, went to work. Eventually the Phantom would become known throughout the world, respected by law enforcement agencies and feared by all criminals. Among the Phantom’s confederates in his war against evil were publisher Frank Havens and his sister Muriel, who he was in love with, but could not get involved with because of the unrelenting danger he faced in his life as the Phantom; Clari-

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on ace reporter Steve Huston; and the closest thing the Phantom had to a kid sidekick, Chip Doren.The Phantom faced only one villain (Clifford Boniface) twice, he was that good a villain. Eventually the Phantom started solving crimes the police could not, and they soon called upon him for even more help. Only one man, Frank Havens, knew his secret identity.The police would approach Havens about contacting the Phantom.The playboy-turned-crime-fighter was called into action by using a red beacon atop New York City’s tallest skyscraper, the Clarion building.This device predates Bob Kane’s comic creation Batman and his Gotham City bat-signal. Many a brutal killer or criminal mastermind met swift justice at the hands of the Phantom during the magazine’s run. In the initial stories, he was less of a detective and more of an adventurer, using disguise and pure luck in order to escape and conclude his cases. Later he tackled the unusual and the eerie, and exposed those living and preying in the darkness to the cold naked light of day. His encounters included one with a vampire, fittingly enough titled,“The Vampire Murders.” A typical Phantom Detective adventure, “The Vampire Murders” begins with two fear-stricken hunters running back to their lodge.They have just witnessed the impossible, the notorious Count Mattopikyi rising from his tomb in the dead of night. The count curses them and the three remaining members of their hunting lodge. His curse comes true as all die amid chilling screams. The Phantom tracks down the count, discovering the ancient legend associated with Vampire Mountain, upon which the hunting lodge is built. During the Revolutionary War, Hungarian cavalry officer Count Mattopikyi built a fortress on the mountain. Soon local children began to disappear at night.The villagers raided the fortress and found it empty, as though unoccupied for years. All that remained was a tomb with a cryptic inscription. The action becomes more mysterious as the novel progresses. Bodies lie scattered everywhere. The Phantom finds the bloody pieces of the vampire puzzle, but is nearly killed along the way by a

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144 | Phantom Detective starved lynx, a gang of criminals, and the vampire. A great novel, the vampire has a totally logical explanation., and like many of the Phantom’s incredible adventures, it ends in a climactic finale. The pulp hero wins, of course, surviving to be ready for the next month’s installment. The unforgettable adventures of The Phantom Detective thrilled a generation. Due to several reprinted stories over the years, additional generations have been likewise entertained. The most notable reprints were done by Corinth Books, which printed about 20 titles. There were also at least two different British reprints, one under the title Phantom Mystery Magazine, as well as a Canadian reprint edition. —ETK

PHYSICAL CULTURE Bernarr Macfadden started Physical Culture in March 1899 as a slim pamphlet designed to promote his bodybuilding and exercise equipment, but it soon grew into an all-around magazine of physical health. Born in 1868, his real name was Bernard McFadden, but he changed the spelling to give it a rougher sound and more distinctive look. He had a difficult, unhealthy childhood, shifted from home to home, sometimes starved, and developing tubercular problems, but this gave him both the resolve to be fit and healthy as well as a strong will and independence. He undertook fitness and strength exercises during his teens and opened a keep-fit studio when he was 18, subsequently becoming a fitness coach. He began the magazine after a visit to England. He had become friends with the renowned international strongman Eugene Sandow, who had started his own magazine called Physical Cul-

ture in April, 1898. Macfadden was impressed not only at how it provided an opportunity to promote his work, but also by how much revenue it could gain from advertising.When he returned to America, he promptly began his own magazine, co-opting Sandow’s title, which had not been registered in the United States. Somewhat piqued, Sandow changed his magazine’s name to Sandow’s Magazine. Sandow had run fiction from the earliest issue, none of which had anything to do with health or fitness, and Macfadden did the same. He serialized his own short novel, “The Athlete’s Conquest,” which he had privately published in 1892. Macfadden was no writer and the story was crudely written, but Macfadden did not feel he was writing for an elite readership, but for those who wanted to improve themselves. He felt that the magazine could become the conduit for his views and opinions, of which he had many. “The Athlete’s Conquest,” for example, though it does deal with fitness, was really a crusade against the corset, a garment that Macfadden believed was harmful and unhealthy. The magazine consisted chiefly of articles, many written by Macfadden himself, until the magazine’s sales were sufficient for him to be able to pay contributors.They covered a wide range of material on medicines, healthy minds, diet, and fasting, but what attracted readers most were the articles and photographs on sexual matters. Macfadden liked to publish photographs, mostly of himself in various poses, sometimes nude, and he also included photographs of women in minimal attire. Macfadden even started a companion magazine, Woman’s Physical Development, in October, 1900, though he soon changed the title to Beauty and Health. The circulation of Physical Culture rose dramatically, hitting 40,000 in 1901 and 100,000 by

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1903. It drew attention from the authorities, particularly the Society for the Suppression of Vice run by Anthony Comstock. In October, 1905 Physical Culture sponsored a contest for the world’s most physically well-developed man and woman – to some extent the first “Mr. Universe” and “Miss World” competitions. Comstock was appalled at the sight of scantily clad men and women parading in Madison Square Garden and alerted the police, who raided the magazine’s offices. Photographs were impounded including, bizarrely, one of the Venus de Milo. The story made the headlines, the New York Times evaluating the collision of “Comstockery vs. Macfaddenism,” and Macfadden was arrested and tried and,though found guilty of promoting indecency, his sentence was suspended, much to the ire of Comstock. Macfadden continued his activities, founding a utopian-style Physical Culture City in Helmetta, New Jersey. The basic idea was of a health farm, with people exercising and undertaking a healthy diet. However, another of Macfadden’s crusades was against any tight-fitting clothing, which he believed was unhealthy and, as a consequence, both men and women would exercise either partially or completely in the nude. The local postmaster informed the police whenever men or women from the farm came to the local village loosely dressed.The newspapers picked up the story and soon Macfadden was being highlighted both as someone encouraging lewdness and also as a fraud, because Macfadden claimed that his health regimen could cure anything. One newspaper, the New York World, made various allegations about sexual freedom at the site, and Macfadden, fearful of a scandal, sued the newspaper, but lost. To overcome these allegations, Macfadden argued that his health regimen also included sexual education, and chose to pursue this by running a specially commissioned story in Physical Culture. This was the notorious “Wild Oats,” written by dime novelist John R. Coryell under the alias “Robert H. Welford, M.D.,” serialized during 1906. The story concerns an ill-educated youth

Physical Culture | who had inherited venereal disease and was further corrupted by lewd books. His profligate activities ruin the lives of various girls until eventually he goes insane and orders his own cremation. Macfadden intended for this story to alert readers to the problems of sexual diseases, but Comstock saw it differently. He charged Macfadden with sending obscene material through the mail. Macfadden was arrested, tried, found guilty, fined $2,000, and sentenced to two years in jail. Macfadden was appalled, as were many health faddists, and a major appeal was launched. Eventually, thanks to the intervention of the new president, William Howard Taft, Macfadden’s sentence was suspended, but he was not formally pardoned and he still had to pay the fine. The scandal had been the death knell for Physical Culture City, which closed down in 1909. Macfadden had lost a small fortune over the venture and now attempted to regain that through a chain of restaurants offering his health foods, which proved a success. However, Macfadden’s views were soon to get him in trouble again, and once more it was through fiction published in Physical Culture. Macfadden was of the view that the nation needed strong guidance and that he ought to hold political office as a Secretary of Public Health. He commissioned Milo Hastings, one of his staff writers, to produce a novel that showed how physically and morally degraded America had become, and how easily it could be dominated by a healthy race. The result was a science fiction novel,“In the Clutch of the War-God,” serialized from July to September, 1911. Set in 1958, it shows how easily America is conquered by the Japanese, who have superior health, leading to superior minds and advanced science. Japan’s only problem is that it cannot grow enough food for its near-perfect race and so invades the United States for more land. Hastings made some remarkable predictions in this serial, including sea-going aircraft carriers.Although the first flight from a ship had been made just a few months before, in November, 1910, there were no true

aircraft carriers until 1922, and none like Hastings predicted until the 1930s. Hastings also made some remarkable predictions about the growth in obesity because of “artificial” foods. The authorities believed this story was antiAmerican and that Macfadden was a dangerous radical. Macfadden discovered that even if he was not charged with un-American activities, the earlier suspended sentences might now be enforced. As a result, Macfadden signed over Physical Culture to his manager, Charles Desgrey, packed his bags, and fled to England, not returning until 1914, just before the outbreak of war in Europe. Before he went, preparations were well in hand for Macfadden’s massive Encyclopaedia of Physical Culture, which ran to five volumes and almost 3,000 pages, and which was issued between 1911 and 1914. It was a major undertaking and proved, regardless of the view of the police and courts, that Macfadden had a considerable understanding of health matters and that the nation could learn from him. While in Britain, he ran another beauty contest with none of the acrimony he had experienced in America, and ended up marrying the winner, Mary Williamson, his second wife.When they returned to the States, Mary, who had a fascination for scientific romances, became first reader and assistant on Physical Culture. She would bear seven children in the next twelve years and the strain must have told, as they separated in 1932 and divorced in 1946. Macfadden, though, always liked to give the impression they were a happy family. Macfadden had also written My Life Story while in Britain and was still working on it when they returned. It was serialized in Physical Culture starting in March, 1914. Once he was back in America, Macfadden could not resist attacking his old enemy Anthony Comstock. Through John Coryell, Macfadden composed two stories dubbed “A Modern Gulliver’s Travels.” In the first, “A Voyage to Purora” (Physical Culture, August 1915), an unnamed descendant of Gulliver, who is on a crusade against slack morals, finds himself on an unknown

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146 | Physical Culture island where everyone is naked. His attempts to reform them are met by resistance from the islanders, who regard him as having a lewd mind. He is sent packing in his boat. In “A Voyage to Babyland” (October 1915), the modern-day Gulliver seeks the help of the “Antonius Cornstalk Society” for upholding morals, and they charter a ship to return to Purora. It is wrecked in a storm and all are lost except Gulliver, who is washed up on another island inhabited almost solely by children. He learns that mothers practice free love and birth control. He is so horrified that he flees the island. Comstock may well have read these two stories, but whether knowledge of them contributed to his final decline is not recorded, for he died on September 21, 1915. Although Comstock’s successor, John Sumner, was as virulent in his hounding of anything he judged obscene, Macfadden found that Physical Culture was gaining in reputation. It was now running material by several major writers. Upton Sinclair had been a regular contributor since 1909, and during 1913 Physical Culture serialized Sinclair’s novelization of the stage play Damaged Goods by the French dramatist Eugene Brieux. This play had succeeded where Macfadden had previously failed in exposing both the social and medical matters related to venereal disease and highlighting the responsible manner in which it should be addressed.The producer of the American version of the play had the sense to provide an advance performance in April, 1913 solely for Congressmen, the Supreme Court, clergymen, the Diplomatic Corps, and other distinguished officials.They fully endorsed the play and its production, and Macfadden found he could run Sinclair’s adaptation without fear of reprisal. Macfadden also secured reprint rights to Jack London’s 1910 novel of the benefits of returning to nature and the homely life, Burning Daylight, serialized during 1914. George Bernard Shaw, whom Macfadden had visited in England, and in whom he saw a fellow health faddist, had allowed Macfadden to reprint certain of his works free of charge. His amusing 1908 play about the nature

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of marriage, Getting Married, was serialized during 1915, ahead of its first American production in November, 1916. Starting in September, 1915 Macfadden serialized the remarkable novel, “The Man Who Never Died” by Robert Alexander Wason. This concerns the physician and pioneer anatomist Andreas Vesalius, who, historically, perished in a shipwreck in 1564, aged 50. Wason, though, explains how Vesalius survived and made his way to India and Tibet. On his travels he discovered new substances that helped regenerate cells and learned how to improve the body’s health and thereby develop longevity. He gathered about him a group of children on whom he could experiment, and traveled with them to Africa, where he established a colony aimed at prolonging life and, through a form of genetic manipulation, create the perfect being, which is where the novel starts, 350 years later. For a brief period in 1916, Macfadden secured the services of John Brisben Walker as editor, but Walker disliked the constant interference from Macfadden and resigned after only five issues. He went on to edit Metropolitan Magazine which, by one of those twists of fate, he subsequently sold to Macfadden in 1924, and that survived for two more years as Macfadden’s Fiction Lovers Magazine. Throughout most of the nineteen-teens, Physical Culture was edited by John Brennan, who had a remarkable capacity for satisfying Macfadden and the readers. He managed to attract contributions by or about famous personalities of the day, from screen idols like Douglas Fairbanks to top baseball player and evangelist Billy Sunday, Willie Hoppe, and former president Theodore Roosevelt. Sales were constantly improving, and from February, 1919 Physical Culture switched from the standard magazine size to the larger flat format of the growing market of slick magazines.

1919 was a major year for Macfadden, as in May, urged by his wife Mary, he launched True Story. He had been uncertain about the idea of a magazine devoted to true stories submitted by readers (and usually rewritten or embellished by Macfadden’s staff writers), but the idea was an instant success. Sales of True Story skyrocketed to such an extent that Macfadden had problems keeping up the production. He had to raise a loan to improve his publishing enterprise, but True Story repaid that in no time at all. By 1926, when sales hit two million, the magazine was apparently earning $10,000 a day in advertising revenue alone. Its success gave Macfadden the financial wherewithal and the confidence to launch a publishing empire, going public with the Macfadden Publishing Co. in 1924. This included several magazines in imitation of True Story, such as True Experiences (begun 1922), Love and Romance (1923), True Love Stories (1924) and True Detective Mysteries (1924), plus the short-lived exposé magazine Midnight (1922), the even more sensational newspaper The New York Evening Graphic (first issue September 15, 1924), and such specialist magazines as Brain Power (1921-1924), Ghost Stories (1926-1931), and Dance (1925-1931). By the late 1920s, aggregate sales of Macfadden’s magazines exceeded those of all other publishers. The expanding empire also needed more staff and although Macfadden remained intimately involved with all of his magazines, the real guiding hand from 1922 onwards was Fulton Oursler. Oursler was originally employed in June, 1922,to oversee the rising number of specialist magazines, but he soon became Macfadden’s deputy and was also the man chiefly responsible for Ghost Stories. Learning from the past, Macfadden had established a panel of “censors” for True Story and its sister titles, mostly clergymen, who advised on what was admissible. They were surprisingly acquies-

Physical Culture | cent, perhaps recognizing what Macfadden was trying to achieve in creating awareness among the masses to the perils of life and how improved morals would also improve health.Although Macfadden would continue to clash with John Sumner of the Society for the Suppression of Vice on the extreme items he published in Midnight and the Evening Graphic, there were little if any problems with True Story and Physical Culture. Through all this change Physical Culture continued unabated, boosted by the financial strength of the company and further encouraged by the comparative social freedom of the “roaring twenties.” Its circulation was around half a million by 1920. By comparison with the more extreme contents of Midnight and the Evening Graphic, Physical Culture’s contents seemed tame, almost normal. It continued to run some items of wider interest beyond the usual health and fitness arti-

cles. In 1931, Zane Grey contributed a series about his expedition to Tahiti in “Tales of the South Seas.”The July, 1931 issue ran “the literary sensation of 1931,” Jack London’s hitherto unpublished story,“Poppy Cargo.” In fact, this was a variant draft of his published story “The Captain of Susan Drew” (1912). By the end of the 1920s, the magazine had taken a decided shift away from body building to general family health and issues of interest to women.The February, 1929 issue, for instance, ran the banner headline “What Makes a Girl Attractive,” along with a feature article, “A Wife Tells How to Keep a Husband Fit,” and other items on “Is Woman’s Love Life Over at Forty?” and “How to Build a Beautiful Figure.” Physical Culture, despite the title, was directing itself more to the Good Housekeeping readership, with obvious – though short-lived – results. It continued to run

short stories and serials by Faith Baldwin,Warwick Deeping, Gouverneur Morris, Nina Wilcox Putnam, Achmed Abdullah, even Edgar Wallace,, but by the mid-1930s. even these had faded away. From December, 1933 on, it became subtitled “The Personal Problem Magazine,” and ran pieces that would have been equally at home in True Story or its companion titles. Physical Culture had become simply another confessions magazine and had nothing new to offer. Although Macfadden continued to be featured in the magazine with occasional articles and cover stories, his interests had moved elsewhere. With his publishing empire amassing a small fortune, Macfadden believed he could finance his way into the White House. He had long held beliefs that the only way he could influence the nation to follow his healthy living was by becoming president, but nobody wanted him. He was

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blind to his megalomania and throughout the thirties he tried time and again to obtain public office. He eventually ran for the office of governor of Florida and again failed, but this time shareholders in Macfadden questioned where the money was coming from. Macfadden was indeed drawing upon company funds to finance his campaigns, and though he argued that maintaining a high public profile was to the benefit of the magazines, the shareholders held a different view. One stockholder took Macfadden to court over the misappropriation of funds and this led to Macfadden resigning as company president in February, 1941. He asked only that he be allowed to continue with Physical Culture as his own magazine. By then the title was suffering from a misguided effort to turn it into a beauty magazine and it was sold to Macfadden in 1943. He got it back on the road again as New Physical Culture,

CELEBRITY

148 | Physical Culture but wartime paper restrictions meant it appeared in the less attractive digest format, limiting his scope for effective illustrations.The magazine was a shadow of its former self, though he did manage to push the circulation back to around 100,000. However, the magazine then went through a series of title changes, first National Hygiene, then Health Review, before returning to Physical Culture in its final year. By then newsstand sales had slumped so much that after the January, 1952, issue it was available by subscription only. It survived until Macfadden’s death, a tribute issue being published in December, 1955. Macfadden’s influence on the magazine field cannot be underestimated.Although his main triumph was with True Story, it was Physical Culture that paved that route, and it was with Physical Culture that he fought the battles that enabled him to create the market and conditions that favored True Story.What’s more, many of the health ideas that he proposed in the magazine have since been proved effective. He was a pioneer in more ways than one.—MA [see Midnight Magazine]

PLANET STORIES Planet Stories was a science fiction pulp magazine published by Fiction House, Inc., one of the early pulp publishing companies. Fiction House was started in the early 1920s by publisher Thurman T. Scott, whose pulp imprints included Glen-Kel and Real Adventures Publishing Co. Publisher Scott began with aviation and Western titles such as Air Stories, Black Aces, North-West Stories & NorthWest Romances, as well as several sports titles. Fiction House entered the detective genre with the popular pulp, Detective Book Magazine, in the early 1930s. The company expanded into comic books in the late 1930s when that emerging medium began to seem a viable adjunct to the fading pulps. Like most pulp publishing houses of that period, they struggled through the war years, hanging on until the death of the pulps in the early 1950s.

Two of their most popular titles were Jungle Stories, which ran for 59 issues, and featured KiGor, a Tarzan-like jungle hero.The other title was the science fiction great, Planet Stories, which ran for 71 issues, beginning with its premiere issue in the winter of 1939 until its last issue in the summer of 1955. Planet Stories featured a particular kind of romantic, swashbuckling adventure in a science fiction context. Originally subtitled “Strange Adventures on Other Worlds — The Universe of Future Centuries,” it quickly developed a reputation for publishing space-opera. The most noted writers who contributed to the magazine were Poul Anderson, Philip K. Dick, Fredric Brown, Ray Bradbury, and Leigh Brackett. Many of Bradbury’s most famous science fiction stories were published in Planet Stories, as well as Brackett’s more colorful adventures set on other planets. The covers of the 71 issues were garish in the extreme. Its interior art was crude and lurid, but not without a certain appeal.The covers typically featured a damsel in distress, while some covers featured the iconic, and presumably impossible, image of a woman in space, wearing a bikini and space helmet. In this it was following the lead of its competitor, Startling Stories, whose frequent cover artist Earle Bergey pioneered this imagery and is often cited as the inspiration for Princess Leia’s slave girl costume in Return of the Jedi. The covers of Planet Stories promised action, adventure and, more often than not, a definite hint of sexuality.The publisher,Thurman T. Scott, knew that on a newsstand, covers sold magazines. He had no qualms whatsoever about pushing the boundaries of what was socially acceptable.While the pulp publishing industry was mostly located in New York, Scott seldom ever set foot inside his New York-based studios. Instead, he lived in Georgia.This does not mean he was not directly

involved in the business. Scott’s personal standards for art were one of the driving aspects of the company. He was a detail-oriented fanatic regarding the covers his company put out. It was his solid belief that these particular covers sold his books.The proposed cover art for each issue was sent to his home in Georgia and he would send back detailed suggestions and changes. Most of the covers were painted by lesserknown artists, though several well-known artists did at least one cover each:Virgil Finlay painted the Summer, 1941 issue; Frank R. Paul painted the Fall, 1941 issue; Hannes Bok painted the winter 1941 issue and Norman Saunders painted the Summer, 1942 cover. After World War II, Allen Anderson painted most of the covers, beginning with the spring 1947 cover, until he was replaced by the famous science fiction and fantasy illustrator Kelly Freas, beginning with the July, 1953 issue, and continuing until the magazine folded. Malcolm Reiss was the overall editor-in-chief and had several sub-editors running the magazine — each left a different imprint on the direction Planet Stories followed: Malcolm Reiss, Winter, 1939-Summer, 1942; Malcolm Reiss and Wilbur S. Peacock, Fall, 1942-Fall, 1945; Chester Whitehorn,Winter, 1945-Summer, 1946; Paul Lawrence Payne, Fall, 1946-Spring, 1950; Jerome Bixby, Summer, 1950-July, 1951; and Jack O’Sullivan, September, 1951-Summer, 1955. Planet Stories published its best stories under Paul Payne, but Drexel Jerome Lewis Bixby was the most noted editor of Planet Stories. Bixby was also the editor of the companion magazine, Two Complete Science Adventure Novels, from the Winter, 1950 issue until July, 1951. At the same time, Jack O’Sullivan began the reprint magazine Tops in Science Fiction, selecting material from early issues of Planet Stories. Probably Bixby’s best known work today is

PG 148, Top to Bot – RAW, #3, 1981 (© Raw); RAW, #1, 1980 (© Raw); PG 149, L to R – PLANET STORIES (© Fiction House); PLANET STORIES (© Fiction House); PLANET STORIES (© Fiction House); PLANET STORIES, vol. 1, #11, 1942 (© Fiction House).

Planet Stories | the Star Trek episode “Mirror, Mirror” and the short story “It’s a Good Life,” adapted as a teleplay for the Twilight Zone show by Rod Serling and revisited several times by that franchise. Bixby also conceived and co-wrote the 1966 film Fantastic Voyage, later novelized by Isaac Asimov. In the late 1930s,Will Eisner and S.M.“Jerry” Iger, prominent “packagers” of that time who produced complete comic books on demand for publishers looking to enter the field, struck a deal with Scott and Fiction House, releasing Jumbo Comics #1 in September, 1938. The comic division of Fiction House would become best known for its pinup-style good girl art, as epitomized by the company’s most popular character, Sheena, Queen of the Jungle. Sheena, the much-imitated “female Tarzan,” became famous when writer “William Thomas,” a joint pseudonym for Eisner and Iger, and artist Mort Meskin featured her exploits in the first issue of Jumbo Comics. Jumbo Comics proved a big hit, and Fiction House would go on to publish Jungle Comics, the aviation-themed Wings Comics, the science fiction title Planet Comics, Rangers Comics, and Fight Comics during the early 1940s — most of these series taking their titles and themes from the Fiction House pulps. Fiction House referred to these titles in its regular house ads as “The Big Six,” but the company also published several others, among them Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, and five issues of Eisner’s The Spirit. Planet Comics was a science fiction comicbook imprint of Fiction House that ran from 1944 until 1951. It was a spin-off of Planet Stories. The comics were first produced in the latter part of WWII when a growing interest in the exploration of outer space had begun due to technological advances in America, Britain, and Russia. The space adventures in Planet Comics often featured muscular, Flash Gordon-style astronauts saving attractive female assistants from bug-eyed monsters, although several space heroines appeared after 1945. When the superhero genre began to dominate most comics, Planet Comics

stopped production in 1951. From 1945 until it folded, Gale Allen, female astronaut, was the main heroine of the series. She led her feminist “girls’ squadron” on adventures. Gale Allen also broke the mold of the “damsels in distress” syndrome typical of science fiction comics in this era. During WWII, many of the finest female artists of the day came on board.The draft had decimated the ranks of available male artists and Fiction House brought Ann Brewster, Marcia Snyder, Ruth Atkinson, and many others on board to fill the empty chairs. Much of the work they did equaled or excelled what the men had been doing. Many of Fiction House’s pulp-style action stories either starred or featured strong, beautiful, competent heroines.They were war nurses, aviatrixes, girl detectives, counter-spies, and animalskin-clad jungle queens, and they were in command.And they did not need rescuing. Even with an early pre-feminist pedigree, Fiction House became the target of conservative right-wing politics. In psychiatrist Dr. Frederic Wertham’s infamous book Seduction of the Innocent (1954), comic books were blamed for an increase in juvenile delinquency. Fiction House was held up to public scrutiny for its use of sexy, pneumatic heroines.A Senate subcommittee investigation, coupled with an outcry from parents, created a downturn in comic sales.The various pulp publications had never recovered from WWII paper shortages, and had faced increasing competition for readers and leisure time by the new, booming, paperback industry and television. Fiction House shortly met its end and closed shop.—FJ

POLICE GAZETTE see Medical Horrors PRIVATE DETECTIVE STORIES see Spicy Adventure Stories

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150 | Psychotronic PSYCHOTRONIC In June of 1981 a b&w, Xeroxed fanzine, looking very much like another D.I.Y. punk zine, began appearing in head shops and independent bookstores around Greenwich Village, Soho, and downtown Manhattan. Psychotronic was a weekly hand-lettered zine pointing out the most interesting old movies airing that week — usually in the middle of the night — on New York’s seven TV stations. (Tom Allen also performed a similar service, covering mainstream movies, during the early 1980s at the Village Voice.) The person behind Psychotronic, Michael Weldon, was an obsessive movie addict from Cleveland who loved offbeat genres: no-budget horror and sci-fi films, Mexican monsters and wrestling, beach party romps, mad scientists (especially when played by the likes of Lionel Atwill or Bela Lugosi), blaxploitation, bikers, rock

‘n’ roll, zombies, and all bizarre movie obscurities. These were the kind of movies that regular film critics usually avoided. Psychotronic was “printed” on an “at-work” copy machine.The distinctive logo was hand-lettered by Sally Eckoff, who also did much of the interior lettering.The only typesetting seen in the zine was from movie ad-clippings taken from a fifty year run of the Ohio newspaper Middletown News. Weldon had acquired the movie pages from a friend who only wanted the comics from the newspaper.The fanzine version ran 47 issues, each averaging 6 sheets stapled together. The last Xeroxed issue appeared in May, 1982. There was also a tabloid newsprint version that came out in June of that year and lasted another six issues. Psychotronic became known in New York for its pithy movie reviews full of obsessive details about storyline, actors, production crews, settings, and

behind-the-scenes gossip.As a one-time drummer in a rock band, Weldon always noted obscure bands in any 1950s/1960s rock films. Lester Bangs became a contributor late into the run of the fanzine version, and Bob Martin, the editor of Fangoria, contributed a column in trade for one by Weldon for Fangoria.An editor at Ballantine, who was a fan of the zine, approached Weldon about putting out a book edition of the zine, and the Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film appeared in 1984. It was always Weldon’s plan to do a real print magazine. During the late 1980s, Weldon had been doing reviews for High Times, Gorezone, and Video Review, and in 1989 he found a cheap printer in Hoboken, New Jersey, whose expertise was doing penny-savers, and put out the first issue of Psychotronic Video. The newsprint paper and shoddy printing was perfect for a magazine about trash movies.

And there was always Weldon’s idiosyncratic writing, which often seemed to include references to 1960s minor music hits “Surfer Bird” or its “Papa-Ooh-Maw-Maw” refrain, and just about any film made in Cleveland. Reading Psychotronic Video, one had the feeling that they had come across a secret society with its own buzzwords and convoluted handshake. Weldon may have been the first to write semi-seriously about such films as Bloodsucking Pharaohs In Pittsburgh, The Lost Skeleton Of Cadavra, and The Adventures of Rat Pfink and Boo Boo. Psychotronic Video carried on some of fanzine version’s unkempt ethos, this time typeset, but still using images from Weldon’s vast collection of newspaper movie-clippings, in some cases now brightly day-glo-colored, for covers. PV still covered drive-ins and grindhouse movies, even though the original venues for these films were

PLAYBOY’S OFF-SPRING

Punk |

PG 150, Bot band, L to R – MYSTIQUE, #1, 1961 (© respective copyright holder); TOPPER, Nov. 1964 (© respective copyright holder); RASCAL, #12, Mar. 1965 (© respective copyright holder); PG 151 – RAY GUN, #4, Apr. 1993 (© Ray Gun Publishing, Inc.); SCIENCE FICTION EYE, #2, 1987 (© Til You Go Blind Co-op).

fast becoming extinct. A lot of these films were now finding their way onto video from smalltime operators and movie bootleggers. PV finally expired in 2001, when it ran into trouble with distributors making payments. PV was the precursor of other movie zines that reached the newsstands during the 1990s including Charles Kilgore’s Ecco, and Steve Puchalski’s Shock Cinema.—LO

PUNK New York City, New Year’s Eve, 1975: It is a very different New York City from the one we know today.The “I Love New York” campaign has yet to begin. Crime is rampant. A little while in the future, a nerdy software engineer will shoot four young men on the subway who were acting in a threatening manner, and many people will understand why. Life is cheap — relatively cheap, anyway. Storefronts at 30th Street and Tenth Avenue can be rented for $195 a month, which is precisely what Ged Dunn and John Holmstrom have done in order to start Punk magazine. Further south in Manhattan, an underground music scene is brewing, centered around a Bowery dive called CBGB-OMFUG, which stands for Country, Blue Grass, Blues, and Other Music For Uplifting Gourmandizers. This is the period of disco and live music venues are rare.CBGB’s provides one of the few places for unsigned bands to perform and a substantial number of bands, mostly falling into the “Other Music” category, are taking advantage of the opportunity, and a fan base is growing. Punk magazine will be a monthly chronicle of this scene, its influences, its antecedents, and its attitude, as it moves out of lower Manhattan and into the larger world, eventually dominating commercial rock music and making its publisher, Ged

Dunn, editor John Holmstrom, and resident punk, Eddie ‘Legs’ McNeil, internationally famous and wealthy moguls like Jann Wenner. “Three of us (Ged, Legs, and I) grew up in Cheshire, Connecticut, and knew each other from high school, but were not close friends.We got together in the summer of 1975 to help Eddie (aka Legs) make a comedy film called The Unthinkable. Eddie and I moved into a storefront in November, 1975 and talked Ged into joining us. “Ged put up the money, I put up the sweat equity. Legs hung out and became famous because of his name and title (Resident Punk).” The first issue of Punk appeared in January 1976, having gone to press on New Year’s Eve at Peruse Printing.The cover featured a cartoon by Holmstrom, of Lou Reed looking a bit like Frankenstein’s Monster. In addition to Lou Reed, the cover promises “Brando … Ramones … Girls … Legs,” all for only 50 cents.The interview with Lou Reed, “Rock and Roll Vegetable,” immediately established Punk as a rock and roll magazine with a new, different, and fresh approach to its subject. The interview combines hand-lettered questions and answers, photo cartoons, and cartoons by editor and interviewer Holmstrom. It’s a tour-de-force. Reed says little of consequence, but the illustrations make it all fascinating: Lou as a devil complaining about the sloppiness of the Ramones set, while a quivering Holmstrom grits his teeth nervously in the background. A quick series of panels as they discuss comics with Holmstrom emulates the styles of Robert Crumb, S. Clay Wilson,Wally Wood, and Bill Elder.The interview unveiled Punk as a magazine with its own style and attitude fully formed. Holmstrom says, “I knew that this interview would put Punk on the map. …he gave me exactly the kind of interview I needed so I could make

a funny comic strip out of it — I was, like, writing it in my mind as we talked.” Punk #1 also started the legend of Legs McNeil. Punk’s resident punk was generally portrayed drinking, trying (unsuccessfully) to pick up girls, and hanging out at all the coolest spots.The issue features a “Legs McNeil Famous Person Interview of Sluggo,” the friend from the wrong side of the tracks in Ernie Bushmiller’s popular and long-running comic strip, “Nancy.” The embittered, middle-aged, comic strip icon, forced by his contract to act as a child and friend of the star he can no longer stomach, dishes dirt about Nancy and many of the comic strip characters of the day. Legs McNeil is also featured in a photocomic, or fumetti, showing him failing to pick up girls while hanging out on the Bowery. From its very first issue, Punk had a look and an attitude that was unique among magazines of the time. The template included hand-lettering most, if not all, articles; combining text, cartoons, and fumetti in a seamless flow in interviews; interviews with fictional characters; and coverage of little-known, or well-known, pop culture figures from the past who had what might be termed a “punk persona:” independent minded and willing to stick with their own personal vision regardless of commercial pressures. Punk #3 featured a change in format and a price increase to 85 cents. The first two issues were printed on tabloid-sized newsprint, folded in half to present a standard-sized cover.The third issue was a slick-covered magazine format that still featured the superb Holmstrom cartoon cover (this one of Joey Ramone, for the feature article on The Ramones, who had just released their first album), hand lettering, fumetti, and interviews that mixed cartoons and photos (this time of David Johansen, former lead singer of The New York Dolls). Boris and Natasha Badanov of “The Bullwinkle Show” were interviewed, and one of the earliest appreciations of the movies of Sam Fuller helped round out the issue. In addition to format and price changes, Punk #3 also featured changes to the masthead. Rober-

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152 | Punk ta Bayley joined the group as photo editor and the list of contributors grew. Clearly the magazine was attracting the talent it needed to produce on a monthly schedule, but advertising was still sparse and almost entirely for local New York businesses in the East Village.With issue number four, however, national advertisers began to make their presence felt, with ads from Columbia Records, Sire Records, and Epic Records. The regular fumetti features combined with Legs McNeil’s interest in filmmaking resulted in a special feature file fumetti for Punk #6. “The Legend of Nick Detroit” starred Richard Hell as “Nick Detroit, former top international agent and super-killer now become world-weary mercenary battling the infamous Nazi Dykes and their schemes for world domination.” The evil Nazi Dykes were beautifully led by Deborah Harry. The cast included half of the New York punk scene of the late 1970s, including members of Television, Talking Heads, and Blondie. Even the ill-fated Nancy Spungen (girlfriend of the Sex Pistols’ bassist Sid Vicious, who was charged with his murder) makes a cameo appearance. Financial problems, always present when trying to run an independent magazine, became critical when the ninth issue disappeared amid the bankruptcy of the printer. Fortunately, the groups that had always been championed, by the magazine and the club where many of them had played their first shows before an audience, were happy to return the favor ,and a benefit was held on May 4th and 5th, 1977, at CBGB. By this time, many of these groups had major record deals and international followings, so it really shows the genuine affection that was felt for Punk magazine when The Dead Boys, Patti Smith, Blondie, Suicide, Richard Hell, and the Voidoids, the Cramps, and more, all performed in a benefit to get the magazine solvent once again. The benefit was successful, and issue 10, back on tabloid newsprint like the first two issues, was released under new publisher Tom Katz. By 1977, punk rock had become an international phenomenon, with the mainstream press

PG 152, – Top to Bot – SPEED DETECTIVE, Feb. 1943 (© Trojan Magazines); SUPER-DETECTIVE, Feb. 1945 (© Trojan Magazines); PG 153, Bot band, L to R – PUNK, #4, (© respective copyright holder); PUNK, #5, (© respective copyright holder); PUNK, #7, (© respective copyright holder).

declaring it a British invention and a further example of the decline of Western civilization.The perceived wisdom was that punk was all about angry working class youth, who liked violence for its own sake, and were all anarchists at the least, and probably nihilists, too. Despite being uninterested in developing grandiose sociopolitical justifications for punk rock, and generally believing the British branch to be composed primarily of trendy fashionistas, Punk magazine covered this new British invasion, too.This resulted in John Holmstrom and Legs McNeil chronicling the Sex Pistols’ disastrous United States tour in issue 14 (“There is no Punk #13 because we are very superstitious.”).This bizarre tour kept the band far away from the large coastal cities where they had a true fan base, and had them scheduled to play deep in the heart of the Bible Belt where they were seen mostly as a freak show.The tour culminated with a show in San Francisco (the only town they played where they probably had a reasonable fan base) at a sold-out Winterland Arena. Despite playing before their largest audience ever, the internal tensions led to an immediate post-concert break-up, all covered by Punk magazine. For the mainstream media, this was evidence that punk was dead and it immediately began saying so. Punk may have been officially dead (it wasn’t, merely returning to the underground from whence it came, with occasional eruptions into commercial success over the next 25 years), but Punk magazine soldiered on for three more issues. Punk #15 is another fumetti issue starring Joey Ramone and Deborah Harry in “Mutant Monster Beach Party.” In a very funny twist, the appalling mutant monster turns out to be cute British rock star Peter Frampton (his live album was absurdly popular at the time). But the writing was on the wall for Punk magazine. Neither the music it had so assiduous-

ly and cleverly championed, nor the magazine itself, had reached large-scale commercial success. The magazine published its final issue, number 17, in May, 1979. As with punk rock, though, Punk magazine maintained an underground reputation. In 1996, the High Times Press published a collection taken from the magazine and in 2000, John Holmstrom left his job with High Times magazine to try and revive Punk. A substantial amount of the original series is available on the internet at .punkmagazine.com. So what is the legacy of Punk magazine besides fifteen issues produced over three years? It was the first, and really the only, magazine to truly capture the music, the personalities, the inventiveness, creativity, and especially the humor that pervaded the early days of punk rock, well before it was codified and placed in a pigeonhole of being a very narrow commingling of music, politics, and fashion. John Holmstrom continued to produce excellent cartoons, all too infrequently. After Punk, he moved to High Times as an editor and publisher, and also edited the humor magazine Stop! with cartoonist J. D. King. Legs McNeil has become a successful author (“Please Kill Me,” “The Other Hollywood”). Roberta Bayley’s photos have appeared on albums, in magazines, and in galleries. Not a bad legacy for an operation run on a shoestring by a few young folks with nothing but talent and ambition to help them along.—RC

Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine |

Q ELLERY QUEEN’S MYSTERY MAGAZINE EQMM wasn’t a cult magazine from the start, but there is no denying that it was elite, and it was through that elitism that it developed a cult status. Frederic Dannay, the half of the Ellery Queen writing team who was the force behind the magazine, was well versed in the history of crime fiction and had built up his own extensive library. Dannay and his partner, Manfred Lee, had edited an earlier magazine, Mystery League, but it was under-financed and failed after four issues (October 1933-January 1934). Dannay, when not writing the Ellery Queen novels and radio series with

Lee, turned his expertise to anthologies: first a rather curious item, Challenge to the Reader (1938), where readers were asked to identify the great detectives in each story where the names had been changed; and then a mammoth volume, 101 Years’ Entertainment (1941), a selection of the best detective stories of the previous century. Compiling this served to emphasize how much good but neglected crime fiction had been published, and which Dannay could not cram into the anthology. So he approached Lawrence Spivak, the publisher of the American Mercury, to see if he’d be interested in an occasional anthology of crime fiction. The result is an interesting hybrid. Although Dannay believed the title, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine,“rolls easily off the tongue,” he made it clear in his editorial that “we are publishing a book rather than a magazine.” Moreover, it was

issued in the digest-sized format, published on book paper, and sold for the relatively high price of 25 cents, compared to 15 cents for most pulps. It was unillustrated, other than minimal cover art. Dannay wanted to project a sophisticated image. He made this emphatic in his editorial: “…we have for many years shouted need for — and deplored the lack of — a quality publication devoted exclusively to the printing of the best in detective-crime short-story literature.” There was good crime fiction appearing in both the slick magazines and the pulps, but the readership seldom overlapped. Moreover, the pulps tended to focus on particular modes of fiction: Black Mask and Dime Detective on the tough, hard-boiled style, while Detective Fiction Weekly and Clues ran a highly Americanized traditional form.There was little common ground between them, and minimal crossover. Dannay wanted to

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bring the best of all these forms and other material, especially the classic British crime story, together in one volume, emphasizing quality, style, and originality over formula and image. “No matter what their source, they will be superior stories,” he promised, whether by big-name writers or lesser-known or forgotten names. The first volume (which is what it was specifically called, as a book; not “issue”) was a showcase of what he meant. All the stories had previously appeared in print, but only two in book form in America, and in both cases they were in hardcover. Curiously, one of those was Queen’s own “The Adventure of the Treasure Hunt.” The volume opened with a Sam Spade story by Dashiell Hammett, “Too Many Have Lived,” which had previously appeared in The American Magazine in 1932, but would not be collected in book form until 1944. Similarly, Cornell Woolrich’s “Dime a

PUNK MAG

154 | Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Dance,” from Black Mask, would not appear in a collection until 1946, while neither T.S. Stribling’s Poggioli story, “The Cablegram,” nor Frederick Hazlitt Brennan’s “Wild Onions,” had appeared (or would ever appear) in any story collection, and might not otherwise have been seen by mystery buffs, the stories having appeared in Adventure and Collier’s respectively. This was Dannay’s strength. He knew how to find rare and quality stories, unlikely to have been read before by anyone other than the most die-hard collector, which were by both major writers and others not immediately associated with the field. Dannay was also on the lookout for new stories, but did not encourage submissions until the series had settled onto a firm footing. Nevertheless, for the second volume he acquired a previously unpublished story by Frederick Irving Anderson, “The Phantom Guest,” featuring his detective-story writer Oliver Armiston and Detective Parr. The previous stories about their investigations had run in the Saturday Evening Post in the 1920s, and were collected in two volumes, but this story had not previously appeared and, indeed, was never collected in any of Anderson’s books, its only subsequent book appearance being in a fiftieth-anniversary anthology selecting from EQMM. EQMM soon made its mark. If the Ellery Queen name had not already been a sufficient attraction, Dannay’s abilities as an anthologist and editor added to the lure.The first three volumes appeared on a quarterly basis, but sales were sufficient that with the fourth issue, dated May, 1942, it went bi-monthly.Wartime paper restrictions limited any further expansion, but it went monthly at the first opportunity in January, 1946. Even though the fourth issue took a further concession to magazine status, being the second number of volume three, the book pretence remained, with the cover bearing the slogan,“An Anthology of the Best Detective Stories, New and Old.”This remained a tagline until 1954. With the switch to bi-monthly, Dannay could introduce more regular features, starting with

“The League of Forgotten Men” (or “Women”), in July, 1942, selecting lesser -known fictional detectives.Then came “Curiosities in Detection” (July 1943) or “Curiosities in Deception” as it became known, which covered more unusual mysteries, and started that series with what would become another feature, “The Department of Impossible Crimes,” the first story by James Yaffe. Dannay had a penchant for impossible crimes – EQMM had already run one before this, “The Diary of Death” by Martin Cumberland (January 1943) – and they have remained a feature ever since, especially with the work of Edward D. Hoch.With “Speaking of Crime” in June, 1946, Howard Haycraft began an occasional column of comment. Haycraft was a noted critic and expert on crime fiction, author of Murder for Pleasure (1941), the first serious study of detective fiction as a literary form.The column won him an Edgar Award for Outstanding Mystery Criticism in 1948.Anthony Boucher took over the column in February, 1949 and he, too, went on to win an Edgar in 1950. Dannay also won an Edgar in 1948 for his work on EQMM. Dannay prided himself on how many authors sold their first stories to EQMM, making a list of them as early as the July, 1944 issue, by which time it already included Craig Rice, James Yaffe, and Lillian de la Torre. Jack Finney’s first story sale was also to EQMM, “The Widow’s Walk” (July 1947), while Stanley Ellin debuted the next year with the now classic “The Specialty of the House” (May 1948). Eventually this became a firm feature, with the “Department of First Stories” inaugurated in the May, 1949 issue. De la Torre’s debut (November 1943) was with the first of her Sam Johnson: Detector, series, which while not the earliest historical mystery EQMM had run (that was another first, “The Bow-Street Runner” by Samuel Duff (November 1942)), it was a distinctive series that set principles for the genre over 30 years before Ellis Peters’s Brother Cadfael stories created the marketing phenomenon. Another historical mystery, “The Problem of the Emperor’s Mushrooms” (Septem-

Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine | ber 1945), arose as a challenge to James Yaffe to redeem himself after a major error arose in his story “Cul de Sac” (March 1945), and the result became a minor classic. Dannay also had the temerity to reprint the scripts of radio plays, something no other editor would consider, but one that readers of EQMM more than welcomed, especially when these were by John Dickson Carr and Queen himself. What established EQMM as a magazine to collect (and everyone else did regard it as a magazine rather than a book), were the rare and unusual stories that Dannay discovered by writers of significance – few, if any, of which would be familiar to American readers. Issues would boast names like Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Vincent Starrett, Edgar Wallace, G.K. Chesterton, John Dickson Carr, Arnold Bennett, R. Austin Freeman, Ellis Parker Butler, Freeman Wills Croft, James M. Cain, P.C. Wren, Ernest Bramah, C.S. Forester, Stuart Palmer, Fredric Brown and, thanks to Anthony Boucher, the very first translations into English of stories by Georges Simenon. Even A.A. Milne and P.G. Wodehouse would join the throng. Stories were augmented by Dannay’s encyclopedic knowledge of the field in an introduction about the author or a related subject that could be over a page long, a miniessay in its own right. He called them a “ratiocinative rubric.” In the February, 1949 issue Dannay began his own column on the pleasures of collecting crime fiction,“Leaves from the Editor’s Notebook,” and this included (from June 1949 on), serialization of an updated version of “Queen’s Quorum,” a chronological guide to the most important detective books ever published. It was this combination that gave EQMM its elitism – quality, rarity, and specialty. A further element of this drive for quality was

the inauguration of an annual short-story contest in June, 1945. It was open to all comers, with a first prize of $2,000 (today worth over $20,000,) and six runner-up prizes of $500. Dannay reported that there were 838 submissions. The hard work of sifting through the bulk of the submissions fell to Dannay’s managing editor, Mildred Falk, before a short list was handed to the judging panel of Christopher Morley, Howard Haycraft, Dannay, and Lee. The results were announced in the April, 1946 issue.The first prize went to Manly Wade Wellman for his story featuring an American Indian detective, “A Star for a Warrior.” It beat stories by no lesser writers than William Faulkner,T.S. Stribling, Philip MacDonald, Ngaio Marsh, Michael Innes, and Craig Rice. The stories were all published in EQMM and subsequently included in the anthology The Queen’s Awards, 1946. The contest continued annually for twelve years, and subsequent winners included H.F. Heard, Georges Simenon, John Dickson Carr, Charlotte Armstrong, Stanley Ellin, and Avram Davidson. Dannay had a particular penchant for series, and these have remained a strong feature of the magazine ever since. He managed to coax new Poggioli stories from T.S. Stribling, many new “Department of Dead Ends” stories from Roy Vickers, and liked to encourage writers, old and new, to submit further stories about their characters, such as the Samuel Johnson stories by Lillian de la Torre, or the Thubway Tham ones by Johnston McCulley. Even among the reprints, he managed to find hitherto uncollected stories by G.K. Chesterton featuring his various detectives, un-reprinted Continental Op stories by Hammett, and the otherwise forgotten Barnabas Hildreth stories by Vincent Cornier. Often the series character was featured on the contents page

PG 154, Top to Bot – L to R – ELLERY QUEEN’S MYSTERY MAGAZINE, winter 1942 (© respective copyright holder); ELLERY QUEEN’S MYSTERY MAG., July 1957 (© respective copyright holder); ELLERY QUEEN’S MYSTERY MAG., Oct. 1957 (© respective copyright holder); ELLERY QUEEN’S MYSTERY MAG., Nov. 1951 (© respective copyright holder) PG 155 – SINISTER STORIES, Mar. 1940 (© respective copyright holder).

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156 | Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine alongside the story title. This all gave the reader a sense that they belonged to a special club, one designed uniquely for them in sharing all that was rare and special in the world of crime fiction. It was an atmosphere that Dannay managed to sustain for at least a decade. The period of 1943 to 1952 saw EQMM at its best, at least as far as the mystery afficianado was concerned. However, despite Dannay’s constant enthusiasm, there is a limit to the time and effort he could spare for the magazine,and to the number of quality, rare reprints he could find. February, 1954 saw the first issue featuring all new stories.These happened sporadically – the next wasn’t until March, 1957 – but the number of reprints per issue dropped dramatically. In 1953, Mercury Press also acquired the title to the venerable Black Mask magazine, which had ceased publication in July 1951. It was incorporated into EQMM in May, 1953 and a section within the magazine was dedicated to what were classified as “Black Mask” stories.These were all hard-boiled or gangster stories and a number were reprints from Black Mask itself. It was a section that sat uneasily in the magazine, because Black Mask had stood for an entirely different set of values than EQMM. The section remained a regular feature until March, 1958, and thereafter was sporadic, and often seemed forgotten, though it dragged on until it was surreptitiously dropped after the November, 1968 issue, and then revived with the January 2008 issue. In August, 1954 Joseph Ferman took over from Lawrence Spivak as the magazine’s publisher, and instigated further changes. Robert P. Mills, who had been managing editor since June, 1948, took a more active role, and from then on EQMM developed a more clinical appearance. Although Dannay remained the editor, restraints upon his time meant he could rarely write his long story introductions and these virtually ceased after September, 1955, being replaced by a formal “Editor’s File Card,” compiled by Mills, which presented basic facts about the story, but had none of the appeal of Dannay’s ramblings.

The big change came in October, 1957, when Bernard Davis, formerly a partner in ZiffDavis Publishing, and who had responsibility for Amazing Stories and Fantastic, set up his own Davis Publications and took over the publication of EQMM. The most obvious change was in the covers. Hitherto George Salter had been art director and had also provided most of the covers. His work tended to be subdued, unsensational, though always with a hint of violence without any graphic details. These covers had started to change during the mid-1950s under Ferman’s control, to the point when EQMM had two covers – one for subscribers, which bore minimal cover art, and one for the newsstands, which had more lurid pictures.These increased under Davis, making EQMM look similar to the other digestsized mystery magazines that flourished on the newsstands at that time, in particular Manhunt. During this period EQMM was in danger of losing its individuality. It recovered some of this under its new managing editor, Paul W. Fairman, who took over with the November, 1959 issue and remained in the post until August, 1963. Although Fairman has long been regarded as a hack writer and a very poor editor at Amazing, where he had previously worked under Davis, he was more in tune with Dannay’s original intentions at EQMM. More balance was achieved in the fiction between old and new material, and traditional and modern approaches. Several new writers emerged through the “Department of First Stories,” who would go on to make names for themselves, including Robert L. Fish, J.N.Williamson, and future literary agent Richard Curtis. Lilian Jackson Braun appeared with her first cat stories (starting in June 1962). Edward D. Hoch made his first EQMM appearance in the December, 1962 issue, and

would soon become a regular, running several popular series contemporaneously. Hoch has since established the remarkable record of appearing in every issue of EQMM since May 1973, and the magazine has acquired a cult following for his work alone. Hoch died in January 2008. His last story appeared in the November 2008 issue. However, Fairman began to claim that he was the primary editor of the magazine and was dismissed. Clayton Rawson took over in September, 1963. He was even more in tune with Dannay’s philosophy and, despite the poor appearance of the magazine, the type of content returned closer to EQMM’s early days. Even some of Dannay’s lengthy introductions returned. Under Rawson, other new names who would become regulars appeared, including James Powell, Jon L. Breen, Josh Pachter, and William Brittain. Both Powell and Brittain contributed heavily to EQMM, Powell with over 100 stories, yet neither have had their work collected into book form. Both, like Hoch, are examples of a particular breed of EQMM contributor, able to produce an infinite variety of clever, entertaining stories which are more puzzles and challenges than hard-hitting action stories, yet who are not desirous of a wider market. It is their type of work that attracts and sustains the core of the magazine’s readership, providing clever, sharp, and thoughtful stories. EQMM always was a cerebral magazine, and Rawson turned on the brainpower. In May, 1966 Dannay was elevated to the role of editor-in-chief, though he retained a passionate interest in, and still vetted, all short-listed contributions. Bernard Davis effectively retired in 1969, and his son, Joel Davis, became the publisher of record. Soon after, Rawson stepped down due to ill health and Eleanor Sullivan became managing editor. Sullivan had no prior experience of maga-

PG 156, T to B – SPICY ADVENTURE STORIES, July 1940 (© respective copyright holder); SUPER SCIENCE STORIES, Feb. 1943 (Popular Publications); PG 157, L to R– WONDER STORIES, (© Gernsback Publications); ROGUE FOR MEN, Dec. 1956 (© Greenleaf Publishing Com.); TEMPO, Oct. 25, 1954 (© respective copyright holder); ROGUE FOR MEN, Feb. 1957 (© Greenleaf Publishing Com.).

Ray Gun | zine editing, or much knowledge of the mystery field, but she learned fast under Dannay’s paternal guidance and the two became an excellent team. The seventies saw some of that glow and sophistication of the early Golden Age return.The magazine had dropped all cover art in February, 1968 and when it did return, occasionally, after October, 1974, it was unobtrusive. It featured a couple of series, one with illustrations depicting famous detectives and the other with photographs of leading writers. During all this time, it finely honed the formula that Dannay had developed, continuing to reprint, sparingly, rare and classic fiction, introducing new authors, and publishing the work of major new writers.There was scarcely a leading author whom the magazine did not feature during these years: Isaac Asimov, Robert Bloch, Lawrence Blochman, Christianna Brand, Avram Davidson, David Ely, Nicolas Freeling, Celia Fremlin, Joe Gores, Ron Goulart, Davis Grubb, Michael Harrison, Patricia Highsmith, H.R.F. Keating, Richard Laymon, Barry Malzberg, Richard Matheson, Hugh Pentecost, Barry Perowne, Joyce Porter, Henry Slesar, Julian Symons, and Cornell Woolrich, to name just a few. And that’s just among the new stories. It is a list that shows how EQMM continued to blend the old with the new and the traditional with the modern. Although Dannay contributed little by way of his detailed introductions, there were other informative pieces. John Dickson Carr became the book reviewer in January, 1969, a column continued by Jon L. Breen after Carr’s death; and Otto Penzler and Chris Steinbrunner began a “Mystery Newsletter” in December, 1975, which included brief interviews with major writers. The seventies saw EQMM’s average annual circulation peak at over 337,000 in 1978, more than double its original sales. Remarkably, over 80% of those sales were by subscription rather than newsstand. Newsstand sales had been steadily falling since 1966, but EQMM managed to increase its subscription levels over threefold during the same period. So while the high level of circulation suggests a populist rather than elitist magazine, the

degree to which these were direct subscriptions shows how personal the magazine was to its readers, and how loyal they were over the years. Unfortunately, as with all magazines, sales rapidly declined after the 1980s,and even subscription levels dropped after 2000. For a period from 1979 to 1995, the magazine was on a four-weekly schedule, but has since dropped to ten issues a year, including two “double” issues. The double issues are treated as two issues for subscription purposes, so according to those, EQMM reached it 800th issue in March/April 2008, but the actual physical 800th issue is in December, 2010. It is the thirdlongest-running crime-fiction magazine after Detective Story Magazine (1,057 issues) and Flynn’s/Detective Fiction Weekly (929 issues). Frederick Dannay died on September 3, 1982. The last issue bearing the name Ellery Queen as editor-in-chief was December 2. Thereafter, Eleanor Sullivan took over as full Editor and she in turn was succeeded by Janet Hutchings in 1991, who continued through the change in publisher to Dell Magazines in September, 1992. Both continued the legacy established by Dannay, and though the magazine ceased to be “Ellery Queen’s” in actuality after 1982, it has always remained his in spirit. –MA

R RANCH ROMANCES see Medical Horrors RAY GUN In the late 1970s Search & Destroy, Sniffin’ Glue and other punk rock fanzines trashed conventional print design by displaying a do-it-yourself, mishmash of typography and defiled images in their zines. By the 1980s Neville Brody, in Eng-

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158 | Ray Gun PG 158 – SCIENCE AND INVENTION (© respective copyright holder); PG 159, Bot band L to R– SCIENTIFIC DETECTIVE MONTHLY, (© Gernsback Publications); SEXOLOGY, Feb. 1961 (© respective copyright holder); THE ELECTRICAL EXPERIMENTER, Dec. 1915 (© respective copyright holder).

land, art directed The Face using a postmodernistic sensibility.The appearance of Ray Gun on newsstands in the late summer of 1992 was a refreshing juxtaposition of the Northwest grunge spirit and music magazine design evolution. Parts of Ray Gun were illegible, but the package as a whole was hard to dismiss. Art director David Carson arbitrarily cropped photos, over-lapped type, and ran articles made up of black type over dark images as if he was challenging the reader. Carson presumed that the audience for Ray Gun was not too preoccupied with words. Instead of a reading experience he offered a striking visual encounter, like street graffiti. Some critic called this all flash. There remains, however, something viscerally appealing about a publication that honors our craving for the excitement and progress that rock has always managed to engender. You might pick up Ray Gun once and never again, but if you were enticed by the intense look and feel of the magazine in the first place — and it was street music for the eyes — you were hooked. Before Ray Gun, Carson had work as the art director of Bikini and Beach Culture. His involvement in the latter came about from his status as profession surfer as much as his graphic talents. Marvin Scott Jarrett, the founding publisher of Ray Gun, had been the publisher of the late-1980s version of Creem magazine. That first issue of Ray Gun tagged itself “the bible of the music + style”, and eschewed the usual premiere issue puff-manifesto. The thing that set Ray Gun apart from Rolling Stone and Spin was the artwork.The cover art to the first issue was suppose to be a painting done by Henrik Drescher, but this piece of art appeared too tame when the time came to use it. Instead, Carson ripped-up a photo of Rollins by Larry Carroll, photocopied it and then scribbled all

over the photocopy to get the look he wanted for the cover. The second issue contained more mainstream music coverage on REM and Suzanne Vega, and appeared a bit more readable, though there were reports that some confused store clerks set out rack copies upside-down. Readers wrote in to complain about the legible coverage of bands better left to Rolling Stone, but the magazine was back to form by the next issue with articles on the Flaming Lips and Chainsaw Kittens, and more copy typeset to look like black ants on a pavement dropped Snickers’ bar. One reader praised the first three issues of Ray Gun as a “vomitrium of music + style”. Carson left Ray Gun in 1995 to start his own New York design studio. Ray Gun ran 71 issues through 2000, but was never really the same after Carson left.—LO [see Search & Destroy]

RAVE The 1950s were particularly scandal-ridden as far as magazines were concerned. When Rave entered the marketplace in April, 1953, it specialized in intense behind-the-scenes scandal and gossip (some even originated by the staff), and seemed to complement Confidential in creativity; they were certainly the two standout scandal magazines of the era. And, along with Confidential, Rave was one of the only two significant scandal magazines ever sued for libel. Rave used innuendo and implication to the extreme, routinely featuring headlines like “Liberace, Don’t Call Him Mister” with a stock photo of a male model, or “Grace Kelly, She-Wolf Deluxe.” Rave, uniquely, seemed to appeal to everyone and every taste, and was presented in such a wild and wacky manner that it attracted many younger

Raw | readers as well.The last issue was published in January, 1958. Without exception, those who cherished Rave thought of it as being a great magazine with a one-of-a-kind attitude that couldn’t be duplicated.—JH

RAW Between 1975 and 1976,Art Spiegelman and Bill Griffith edited seven issues of Arcade, a quarterly comics anthology published in San Francisco.Art Spiegelman is an American comics artist, editor, and advocate for the medium of comics, best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning comic memoir, Maus (1992). In 1975, Spiegelman moved to New York, and co-edited Arcade until the magazine ceased publication in late 1976. He started working for

the Topps Company, as a consultant, and began to prepare an anthology , Breakdowns, for publication. Françoise Mouly first encountered Spiegelman’s work while seeking reading material to improve her English language skills. In the early-to-mid-1970s, Mouly was an architecture student at the Beaux-Arts in Paris,but had grown disenchanted with her studies. Mouly left Paris and arrived in New York in 1974, intending to spend a year traveling throughout the United States Within four months, she occupied the some Soho building where Art Spiegelman, lived. She went through a succession of small jobs until, in 1977, she began doing freelance coloring work for Marvel Comics, thus beginning a lifelong interest in comics. Mouly did not go back to Paris, or BeauxArts. She went to a vocational school where she learned printing, and bought a Multilith press. In

late 1977, she published the first of what would become an annual project: The Streets of Soho Map and Guide.The project would support Mouly and fund her various self-published projects. The 1978 map was published under the name Crass Publication, but every subsequent edition would be a production of Raw Books and Graphics. Mouly would publish the Map annually through 1990, devoting the last three months of every year to the project’s assembly. By then she had met Art and in the spring of 1978 they traveled together to Europe, visiting cartoonists, editors, publishers, and comic book shops in major European cities including Amsterdam, Paris, Brussels, Barcelona, and Milan.The basis for Raw was originated during the trip. In Europe, Art would meet Casterman, who had just started A Suivre, a monthly graphic magazine.A friend, Jacques Tardi, an artist, introduced

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Spiegelman to Jean-Paul Mougin, the editor, and Art talked about doing Maus. It was the first time that Spiegelman wrote an outline for his signature masterpiece, providing structure, chapters, and narrative. Nothing would happen with A Suivre, but his work would not be wasted, Maus would soon appear in the pages of Raw. In late 1978, after returning from Europe, Mouly began publishing projects on her Multilith press under the Raw name, including prints, stationery, postcards, and a series of eight-page “mailbooks,” primarily featuring new work by American and European cartoonists. The living European artists were all future Raw contributors, who Mouly and Spiegelman had encountered during their 1978 tour of Europe. Mouly’s interest in comics and publishing was sufficiently piqued by these experiences that she began to entertain the idea of publishing a comics

HUGO GERNSBACK

160 | Raw magazine. At the time there were quite a few magazines in France publishing the work of French artists, such as A Suivre, L’Echo des Savanes, and Métal Hurlant. The American version, Heavy Metal, had not appeared yet, and there was nothing in the United States showcasing the talent of the amazing French artists. Mouly wanted to publish their work, but Art was reluctant after his experience with Arcade. According to the introduction to Read Yourself Raw, by Spiegelman and Mouly, they finally agreed to publish a magazine at a 1980 New Year’s Eve party. The magazine’s first issue was funded by the Soho Map and Guide. Budgets for subsequent issues would be determined by the previous issue’s profits. The original idea for Raw was a small press book. The idea came as an outgrowth of Art’s frustrations as a consultant for magazines like High Times and Playboy, whose interest in comics was completely modular: “Well great, if it’s got tits!” Spiegelman was despairing that adult comics might disappear for good and was determined to make Raw look the way he thought a comics magazine should. The couple, now married, became determined to create a magazine of comics and graphics in the broadest sense, containing narrative pictures and text pieces.They would fight the deeply ingrained prejudices against comics as a kind of toilet literature that should only be printed on newsprint and be disposable. There was a contemporary aesthetic at that time, epitomized by such American cartoonists as R. Crumb in his visceral Weirdo, of “Aw, shucks, it’s only lines on paper, and don’t take yourself too seriously, and this is all, like, disposable.” Mouly and Spiegelman decided to print on a large size, with good paper, and produce a nonreturnable product, in order to force people to see how beautiful, how moving, this type of work could be.They would fill the pages with the work of Europeans, Americans, and people from all over the world.That was their intent. The first issue of Raw, published in July, 1980,

“The Graphix Magazine of Postponed Suicides,” featured a full-color “tipped-on” image, glued by hand onto the black and white cover. A copy of Spiegelman’s small format, full-color “Two Fisted Painters” was bound into each issue.According to a 1985 Village Voice article, “Raw #1 was printed three times before [Mouly] found it acceptable.” Out of roughly 5,000 printed copies, the official print run comprised 3,500 copies that met Mouly’s approval. Several of Raw’s initial contributors, such as Heinz Emigholz and Patricia Caire, were associated with a filmmakers’ collective that Mouly and Spiegelman had interacted with during their European trip. Kaz, Mark Newgarden, and Drew Friedman were among Spiegelman’s students at the School of Visual Arts, where he taught classes in cartooning and comics. In 1980, Spiegelman and Mouly saw the first seven finished pages of Jerry Moriarty’s “Jack Survives.” He needed to know if they were just the delusions of a comics fan. Raw #1 was in the works, and they invited him to be in it. Mouly and Spiegelman were facing an uphill battle. They had assumed that there would be many artists who were doing comics, but were just not finding places to publish them. Instead, they found very few cartoonists doing comics at all. They began to solicit work from friends and acquaintances, but there was a rub: they could not afford to pay anything. Issue number one appeared, the first of a “new wave.” Raw was meant from the very beginning to be more artistic and experimental than Arcade, which had been entertainment-oriented in the tradition of the underground comix Zap. “Two-Fisted Painters” was something that Art did for Raw because he was reluctant to get started on Maus.“Two-Fisted Painters” was done specifically for Raw because they could not afford to color the entire production; it was tipped-in for special effect.

Raw’s second issue included a package containing six out of eight possible bubble gum cards (drawn by Mark Beyer) and an actual stick of bubble gum.The cards’ contents tied into a two-page spread developed by Beyer to provide context for the insert.The issue also included the first chapter of Spiegelman’s Maus, incorporated as a small-format booklet attached to the magazine’s inside back cover. Each subsequent issue would contain a similarly formatted chapter from Spiegelman’s book-in-progress. Joost Swarte provided the issue’s cover, along with color separations for the cover’s border design. Swarte indicated a monochromatic tone for the image area, but Mouly instead elaborately hand-cut full-color separations. The issue included two consecutive pages by Drew Friedman. The first, “Comic Strip,” includes stereotypical images of African-Americans similar to R. Crumb’s “Anglefood McSpade.” The second page depicts Spiegelman and Mouly taking Friedman to task over his uncritical use of racist imagery; meanwhile, the Freidman character’s coat is stolen by an AfricanAmerican character. After it was clear that A Suivre was not going to print Maus, Raw provided Art with the rigorous deadline he needed, but with less demanding constraints to complete it. Art divided his time between working on the next issue of Raw, working as a consultant at Topps, and creating Maus, often just finishing the next chapter when needed. Raw #2, December, 1980, “The Graphix Magazine for Damned Intellectuals,” included contributions by Ben Katchor and Charles Burns. Raw #3, July, 1981, “The Graphix Magazine That Lost Its Faith in Nihilism,” introduced Gary Panter with a cover and an interior “Jimbo” story. The cover image was adapted from a Panter comic called “Okupant X,” after Mouly and Spiegelman considered and then rejected Panter’s original cover design (a version of which would later be

PG 160, Top to Bot – DARE, Oct. 1954(© Fiction/You Publications); REAL MYSTERY, July 1940 (© Red Circle); PG 161, – RAW, #4, Feb. 1982 (© Raw).

Raw | used for the cover of Raw volume 2, number 1). The cover’s final coloring and design by Mouly and Spiegelman won a 1981 Print Magazine design certificate.The issue also included a second chapter of Maus and a long story by Muñoz and Sampayo, printed on gray paper stock. Jimbo was the first “Raw One Shot,” a dedicated artists’ book of comics, published by Raw Books and Graphics. The book’s interiors were printed on newsprint and the cover was constructed of corrugated cardboard. Black binding tape and a two-color “Jimbo” sticker were applied by hand. Greil Marcus contributed the book’s introduction. Raw #4, March, 1982, “The Graphix Magazine for Your Bomb Shelter’s Coffee Table,” featured a die-cut Charles Burns cover with a second, full-color cover beneath, and a bound-in flexi-disc recording of “Reagan Speaks for Himself,” a Ronald Reagan audio-collage by Doug Kahn.A thematically related full-page illustration, by Sue Coe, appeared alongside the flexi-disc. The issue’s editorial matter warned that the following issue’s Pascal Doury story may invite censorship, and solicits subscriptions.With this issue, Paul Karasik joined the staff as an associate editor. The issue includes Maus’s chapter three. Raw #5, March, 1983, “The Graphix Magazine of Abstract Depressionism,” bears a cover by Ever Meulen and features “Theodore DeathHead,” a long story by Pascal Doury that displays, in its unexpurgated version, rampant phalluses. The issue’s editorial text reads:“To avoid offending the aforementioned jerk, we’ve taken it upon ourselves to block out the ‘private parts’ of Theodore Death-Head…So as a public service, Raw offers the genitalia as a sheet of stickers for readers to clip and stick in the privacy of their own homes.” Interested parties were asked to submit proof of age and a self-addressed stamped envelope. The issue also included a full-color, newsprint signature, which showcased Fletcher Hanks’s “Stardust,” a late-1930s comic book series discovered by Jerry Moriarty, as well as a series of short strips billed as the “Raw Comic Supple-

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ment.”The issue included Maus’s chapter four. Raw #6, May, 1984,“The Graphix Magazine That Overestimates the Taste of the American Public,” included a two-color newsprint signature — which included a center spread by Ever Meulen — and Maus’s chapter five. The upper right hand corner of each copy of Raw #7, May, 1985, “The Torn-Again Graphix Magazine,” was torn off by hand; an irregularly sized corner from a different copy was then taped onto each copy’s table of contents.The issue also featured “Tokyo Raw,” a section of work by Japanese artists, many of whom Mouly and Spiegelman met when visiting Japan in 1983 for an exhibition of work by Raw artists. In addition to the sixth chapter of Maus, the issue included a separate, two-color booklet, reprinting Yoshiharu Tsuge’s twelve-page story, “Red Flowers.” The issue also included a long story by R. Crumb, drawn especially for publication in Raw. In 1986, Pantheon Books published the first volume of Spiegelman’s Maus, compiling chapters one through six. The editor of Pantheon at the time said to Art, right before they published Maus, “I just want you to be prepared, maybe we’ll only sell 30,000 copies of this. But that’s okay; it’s a good book, that’s all that matters.” Raw #8, September, 1986, “The Graphix Aspirin for War Fever,” appeared with a cover by Kaz, and was the magazine’s first square bound issue.The issue also included a newsprint section printed with green ink.This section included “By the Bomb’s Early Light,” a text about nuclear politics by Paul Boyet; a long, thematically related “Jimbo” sequence; and a “RAW GAGZ” humor section.There was also a long story that was Kim Deitch’s first major Raw appearance (he had previously drawn a short strip for issue five’s “Raw Comic Supplement”). The Maus chapter seven insert was the first appearance of new Maus material since the Pantheon publication. “RAW GAGZ” was a section of gag cartoons cobbled together from disparate sources (often featuring images, new and old, with captions written by an individual other than the artist).

162 | Raw Following the publication of Maus, Spiegelman and Mouly began publishing in association with Pantheon Books. Read Yourself Raw, 1987, published by Pantheon, collected nearly all of the material from the magazine’s first three issues, including bound-in reproductions of Beyer’s “City of Terror” bubble gum cards and Spiegelman’s “Two Fisted Painters.” In 1988, Spiegelman and Mouly began soliciting material for Raw #9, 1989, “Open Wounds from the Cutting Edge of Commix.”Volume 2, number 1, would be a 200-page, 6”x 9” paperback, in both 4-color and 2-color. R. Sikoryak would serve as associate editor for all three issues of Raw’s second volume. In addition to collaborations between Muñoz and Sampayo, and between Kim and Simon Deitch, the issue included two collaborations organized specifically for Raw: “Proxy,” by Tom DeHaven and Richard Sala, and “The Bowing Machine,” by Alan Moore and Mark Beyer. The second issue,“Required Reading for the Post-Literate,” would follow in 1990, and the third,“High Culture for Lowbrows,” in 1991. After publishing three issues in the same format for volume two, Mouly and Spiegelman determined that Raw should stop.Their first contract with Penguin was over. Penguin had started by printing 40,000 copies, for the second book they did only 30,000, and for the third book just 20,000 copies. Penguin was planning on printing fewer than 15,000 copies for any future Raw publications. So after all was said and done, Mouly and Spiegelman were back where they started, at a point they were able to do the entire print run themselves. In the years following the magazine’s retirement, the Raw name was applied to “The Narrative Corpse,” a collaborative chain comic co-edited by Spiegelman and Sikoryak ,originally intended as a piece of Raw volume 2, number 3. Mouly and Spiegelman’s “Little Lit” series of children’s comics anthologies, with three volumes published by Joanna Cotler Books (an imprint of HarperCollins) between 2000 and 2003, are

labeled “RAW Junior Books.” In a December, 2004 interview,Art Spiegelman said that Raw was “basically in deep sleep because it’s not needed…As soon as other things started happening, it was a relief not to have to do it any more.” The American comics scene has been broadened by the impact of Maus, and everything Mouly and Spiegelman did together. Things would have been different if they had only produced Maus, but there was something more to be gained by adding in people from different cultures, or with different stylistic approaches. Raw was great because it was an assemblage, a collage, of diverse pieces, where every single piece was perfect. It is not likely that such a polished gem of creativity will ever be produced again.The American comics scene owes a deep, heartfelt, debt to Françoise Mouly and Art Spiegelman for their dynamic burst of artistic brilliance.—HW

REAL LIFE GUIDE see Health Knowledge Magazines RED CHANNELS a.k.a. Counterattack American Business Consultants, Inc., was formed in 1947 by several former agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. This organization established itself as a source of information regarding allegedly subversive organizations and individuals, particularly those suspected of affiliation with the Communist Party. In May, 1947 A.B.C. began publishing Counterattack, a weekly “newsletter of facts to combat Communism.” Its self-declared purpose was to

“expose the most important aspects of Communist activity in America each week.” A.B.C. was one of a number of research enterprises that amassed information regarding Communistrelated organizations, but it was also an entrepreneurial enterprise which sought to turn a profit. The founders of Counterattack, including former FBI agent John G. Keenan, who became Counterattack’s president, solicited subscriptions from “security officers, personnel directors, employment managers, and all sorts of people whose business requires them to know the facts about the background of organizations and/or individuals.” Headquartered in New York, Counterattack’s orientation was primarily, though not entirely, New York-based, reflecting the geographical concentration of the CPUSA. By 1950, only three of the founders remained: John G. Keenan, company president and the businessman of the trio; Kenneth M. Bierly, who would later become a consultant to Columbia Pictures; and, best known, Theodore C. Kirkpatrick, officially Counterattack’s managing editor and the group’s chief spokesman. Francis J. McNamara, a former Army intelligence major, was the primary editor of Counterattack. Counterattack attempted to elucidate examples of Communist activity within the United States, failures of the government to protect against Communists, and to rally troops against Communism. Publications such as Counterattack can be viewed as products of the domestic ramifications of the Cold War era. American Business Consultants formed one segment of a larger network, which included the House Un-American Activities Committee, involved in research into allegedly Communist-related activities of individuals and organizations. Since its membership was

PG 162, Top to Bot – TALES FROM THE CRYPT, #1, 1968 (© Eerie Publications); TOPS, Jan. 1956 (© respective copyright holder); PG 163, L to R – HOLLYWOOD CONFIDENTIAL (© Dramatic Pub. Com.); EXPOSÉ, Feb. 1960 (© Whitestone Publications). THE LOWDOWN, Nov. 1956 (© Beacon Publications); TOP SECRET, Aug. 1958 (© Charlton); Bottom tier: UNCENSORED, Oct. 1954 (© Feature Story Corp.); CONFIDENTIAL, Mar. 1957 (© Confidential Inc.); RAVE, Aug. 1955 (© Rave Publishing Corp.);SUPRESSED, July. 1954 (© Suppressed, Inc.).

1950s Scandal magazines |

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164 | Red Channels composed of former FBI agents, not only did A.B.C. possess information obtained by this agency, but it also had access to the files of the HUAC.The most significant action of Counterattack was the publication of Red Channels, a report on purported Communist control in the media. The connection between HUAC, the FBI, and Counterattack was made manifest in 1950, when the booklet Red Channels was published. The booklet listed possible “subversives” in the world of radio and television. Addressing itself to radio and television company executives already embattled by recent HUAC investigations, Red Channels simply listed a series of names of persons in show business, and the number of times each person had been cited by the FBI or HUAC, without making any specific accusations against any given person. The potential of “guilt by association” involved in this technique resulted in a series of libel suits filed against Counterattack by various film and radio personalities. Although Counterattack eventually defended itself against these libel suits, settling some out of court while winning others on appeal in 1956, the financial cost of litigation proved hazardous to Counterattack.As a result, John Keenan, in a 1963 memorandum, affirmed a “hands-off policy” regarding Communism on the part of the publication.The organization officially disbanded in 1968. Red Channels was published on June 22, 1950, running just over six pages; it was written by Vincent Hartnett, an employee of the Phillips H. Lord agency, an independent radio-program production house, or “packager.” Hartnett would later assemble and distribute File 13, a more comprehensive sequel to Red Channels, and also found the anti-Communist organization AWARE, Inc., which published a series of bulletins that were distributed to industry executives. Other private individuals who tried to influence industry blacklisting decisions included Rabbi Benjamin Schultz, who directed the American Jewish League Against Communism, and Laurence A. Johnson, a Syracuse businessman.

One technique anti-Communist groups used effectively to ensure that the radio and television industries would comply with the blacklists was to threaten boycotts of the sponsoring companies’ products when a show featured someone who appeared on one of the lists. Rabbi Schultz used this technique with considerable success. Laurence Johnson, who owned a chain of grocery stores, also employed another effective strategy. He would send letters informing sponsors of the performer’s alleged Communist affiliations and then threaten to place a questionnaire next to the company’s products in his grocery stores asking the consumer if they wanted any part of their purchase price to be used to hire “Communist Front talent.” Fearful of this kind of adverse publicity, the sponsors would pressure broadcast companies to fire the performer. These private individuals and citizen groups, in turn, relied on various public documents that identified individuals and alleged Communist and Communist-front organizations. The most frequently cited government sources used for documenting Communist affiliation were Attorney General Tom Clark’s letters to the Loyalty Review Board, released in 1947 and 1948, which identified subversive and Communist front organizations; reports from the 1938 Massachusetts House Committee on Un-American Activities; the 1947 and 1948 reports from the California Committee on Un-American Activities chaired by Senator Jack Tenney; and, of course, the United States House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC), an on-going Congressional committee that conducted hearings concerning the Hollywood film industry in 1947 and 1951-54, as well as additional hearings concerning the entertainment industry throughout the 1950s. In 1944, J.B. Matthews and Benjamin Mandel prepared Appendix 9 for the Costello subcommittee of HUAC. It was a seven-volume compilation

of some 2,000 pages listing names of thousands of people who participated in alleged Communistfront organizations between 1930 and 1944. When the full committee learned of the report, it ordered Appendix 9 restricted and all existing copies destroyed. Consequently, no copies resided, during the Red Scare, in the Library of Congress or other public repositories. However, prior to the committee’s order, several of the 7,000 copies had been distributed to private people or organizations, including the editors of Red Channels and such government agencies as the FBI, the State Department, and Army and Navy Intelligence. Thus, in most instances, people cited for inclusion in Appendix 9 did not have access to it in order even to verify that they were, in fact, listed in the document or to review the source behind the accusation. Red Channels, released three years after HUAC began investigating Communist Party influence in the entertainment field, claims to expose the spread of that influence, most specifically in the radio and television business. Referring to current television programming, the Red Channels introduction declares that several commercially sponsored dramatic series are used as sounding boards, particularly with reference to current issues in which the Party is critically interested: “academic freedom,” “civil rights,” “peace,” “the H-bomb,” etc.With radios in most American homes, and with approximately 5,000,000 TV sets in use, the Cominform (the Information Bureau of the Communist) and Workers' Parties, and the Communist Party U.S.A. now rely more on radio and TV than on the press and motion pictures as “belts” to transmit pro-Sovietism to the American public. Red Channels:The Report of Communist Influence in Radio and Television named 151 actors, writers, musicians, broadcast journalists, and others in the context of purported Communist manipulation of

PG 164, Top to Bot – MONSTERMANIA, #2, Jan. 1967, art by Frank Frazetta (© respective copyright holder); TRUE STRANGE STORIES, July 1929 (© Macfadden Publications) PG 165 – STARTLING STORIES, (© Standard Magazines).

Red Channels | the entertainment industry. Some of the 151 were already being denied employment because of their political beliefs, history, or mere association with suspected “subversives;” Red Channels effectively placed the rest on the industry blacklist. Red Channels provides little that may be construed as evidence for its assertions that Communists “dominate”American television and radio. It relies on nonspecific declarations from such sources as FBI director J. Edgar Hoover and an editorial in Broadcasting magazine; provocative quotes from former Soviet premier V. I. Lenin, at that point deceased for over 26 years; and blind items of a style familiar from tabloid gossip columns: “a prominent entertainer has recently confided that whenever a certain critic…” While Red Channels would serve as a vehicle for the expansion of the entertainment industry blacklist that, since 1947, had denied employment in the field to a host of artists deemed to be sympathetic to “subversive” causes, the pamphlet argues that a Communist-organized “blacklist” is actually in effect in the industry. The party, it claims, sees to it that articulate anti-Communists are blacklisted and smeared with that venomous intensity which is characteristic of Red Fascists alone. Without making any blatant, potentially libelous accusations, Red Channels lists 151 professionals in entertainment and on-air journalism who it clearly implies are among “the Red Fascists and their sympathizers” in the broadcasting field. Each of the names is followed by a raw list of putatively telling data, with the sources of evidence varying from FBI and HUAC citations to newspaper articles culled from the mainstream press, industry trade sheets, and such Communist publications as the Daily Worker. Many well-known artists were named, ranging from Hollywood stars such as Burgess Meredith, Edward G. Robinson, and Orson Welles (who had already left the country), to literary figures such as Dorothy Parker and Lillian Hellman, to musicians such as Pete Seeger and Leonard Bernstein. Ex-leftist and HUAC informant J.B.

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Matthews claimed responsibility for providing the listings; he would later work for Senator Joseph McCarthy. By 1951, those identified in Red Channels were blacklisted across much or all of the movie and broadcast industries unless and until they cleared their names, the customary requirement being that they testify before HUAC. Because of HUAC’s inability to locate Communist influence in Hollywood films in these hearings, subsequent hearings changed their focus to the prestige, position, and money that the Communist Party acquired in Hollywood. By arousing popular awareness, Counterattack attempted to influence politics by uniting antiCommunists in letter-writing campaigns, counter-protests against Communists, and supporting legislation such as the Nixon-Mundt Bill. Throughout its storied career, Counterattack was itself constantly on the defensive against accusations of libel after the publication of Red Channels. As former FBI agents, the staff of Counterattack had access to FBI files on potential subversive activity and the files of HUAC. With this material, they published the names of members of the media who appeared and the number of times that they appeared, without accusations. Through such tactics, the publication gained attention and notoriety. As an example of how corrupt and evil the people who published Counterattack were, Ken Bierly, a former editor of Counterattack, became a public relations consultant who cleared people, thus allowing them to return to work after being removed from the Red Channels blacklist. First, he earned money by causing people to be blacklisted and then again by “clearing” them.Among his clients was Judy Holliday, who was blacklisted in Counterattack’s Red Channels. In June, 1992 the Tamiment Library received 36 linear feet of research files compiled by Counterattack, including an important series on Communist-influenced labor unions. The documents span the years 1932 to 1968, although approximately 80% are from 1946-56, with most of these from the years 1948-52. From the time of Coun-

166 | Red Channels terattack’s dissolution in 1968 until the transfer of the files to Liberty University in Lynchburg,Virginia, in 1985, the Counterattack collection was retained by the Church League of America (193784), an organization that also maintained records regarding allegedly subversive Communist activities and organizations. The Counterattack collection contains many noteworthy research items, some of which were of an undercover nature, such as an index of 3,500 photographs in the Daily Worker from February 2, 1922 to December, 1942, compiled by Benjamin Mandel, for the Special Committee on Un-American Activities, extraordinary details about how unions coped with the attacks on their loyalties. The files on the American Communication Association and the American Radio Association describe how the Marine Division of the ACA left that Communist-influenced union, moving first to the Marine Engineers Beneficial Association before setting itself up as the ARA. Other union files, such as the Transport Workers Union files, contain information on the pre-war period, with several testimonials by exmembers, as well as reports from “informants” during the post-war period. The United Electricians, Radio, and Machine Workers Union files include several right-wing reports on the Communist leaders of the union. One report focusing on Minnesota includes an in-depth description of the Communist Party apparatus in that region. The files on the United Office and Professional Workers of America discuss attempts to organize workers on Wall Street,and include union financial reports that Counterattack used to trace payments to Communist front organizations.The most alarming files are on over 200 individuals, including leading and rank and file Communists, progressives, fellow travelers, and liberals, leading figures in the arts, sciences, and professions. The highlight of the secret files kept by Counterattack are four fat folders on the Communist Party in Illinois, 1948-49, including the correspondence and reports of a highly-placed

PG 166, Top to Bot – TALES OF MAGIC AND MYSTERY, Jan. 1927 (© Personal Arts Com.); TALES OF MAGIC AND MYSTERY, Apr. 1927 (© Personal Arts Com.); PG 167, Bot band, L to r – POLICE DETECTIVE, June 1953 (© respective copyright holder); DETECTIVE WORLD, Sept. 1950 (© respective copyright holder); HEADQUARTERS DETECTIVE, May 1956 (© Headquarters Detective, Inc.); MANHUNT DETECTIVE STORY MONTHLY, May 1954 (© Flying Eagle ).

informant who apparently had access to the state chairperson, Gil Green. This horror in the United States and abrogation of individual freedom ended in 1960 when Kirk Douglas, the movie star and executive producer of Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus, credited blacklist writer Dalton Trumbo, of the famous Hollywood Ten, as the movie’s writer, using Trumbo’s real name. President-elect John Kennedy crossed American Legion picket lines to view the movie, thereby lending the credibility of the nation’s highest office to the effort to end blacklisting. In 1970, Trumbo, who had vehemently attacked HUAC and blacklisting in his 1949 pamphlet “Time of the Toad,” received the Screen Writers Guild’s highest honor,The Laurel Award. In his acceptance speech he addressed those who were not yet born or who were too young to remember the Red Scare. “To them I would say only this: that the blacklist was a time of evil, and that no one on either side who survived it came through untouched by evil…none of us — right, left, or center — emerged from that long nightmare without sin.”—RY

ROGUE William Lawrence Hamling was awarded The First Fandom Hall of Fame award by First Fandom at the World Science Fiction Convention in 2004. It was no wonder, considering his lifetime contribution to the field. His innovations expanded the possible literary fields in which science fiction writers, editors, and artists could

make a living selling their work. The whole story of Hamling’s various enterprises didn’t end in 2004, but had reached their capstone in the late 1960s and early 1970s when he litigated his First Amendment rights before the Supreme Court of the United States, more than once. He was a true original. His fight for freedom of speech and freedom of the press paved the way for today’s multi-billion dollar industry in all the fields of endeavor he touched upon. As a young science fiction fan, Hamling produced a fine high-class pre-war amateur magazine named Stardust (March-November 1940). His first professional writing appearance was in

Rogue | Amazing Stories, collaborating with Mark Reinsberg on “War With Jupiter” (May 1939). Mark Reinsberg and Erle Melvin Korshak, both highschool friends of Hamling, would go on to found Shasta Publishers, the pre-eminent 1950s science fiction publishing company. During World War II, Hamling was a lieutenant in the infantry. Upon his return he set up a writing office in Chicago with his friend Chet Geier and began his writing and publishing career in earnest. An eighteen-year-old Frank Morrison Robinson would often stop by their office to sell his WWII cigarette rations to the two men. It was then that Robinson decided he wanted to be a science fiction writer like Bill Hamling. Robinson would remain associated with Hamling, and work with him in different capacities in various enterprises, for the next 20 years. In mid-1946, after having some of his stories

published in the various Ziff-Davis magazines, Hamling joined their staff as an associate editor. There he worked with fellow editors like Howard Browne, LeRoy Yerxa, and Raymond A. Palmer (Frank M. Robinson was the office boy). Palmer later became publisher of Other Worlds. Hamling became managing editor of Fantastic Adventures for three years from November, 1947 until February, 1951. Eventually Hamling would marry Frances Yerxa, the widow of science fiction writer and fellow editor LeRoy Yerxa. In 1949, Ziff-Davis began a slow move from Chicago to New York. Only a few of the employees would move with the company. Palmer, knowing he would have to leave Amazing Stories, Fantastic Adventures, and Ziff-Davis, set up his own magazine, Other Worlds. Palmer was Other Worlds’ only publisher throughout the 1950s. However, he rode the magazine down into a subscriptionsales-only publication, largely devoted to UFOs

(it became Flying Saucers from Other Worlds) and the Shaver Mystery. After leaving Ziff-Davis, Hamling worked for a time at a small Chicago-based magazine named Today’s Man (with a co-worker named Hugh Marston Hefner). Early in 1951, Hamling revealed Imagination (October 1950-October 1958, 63 issues) as his magazine, having persuaded good friend Ray A. Palmer to front the money for him before actually severing ties with ZiffDavis.The first issue of Imagination was ‘published’ by Palmer and looked like a sister to Other Worlds. The name of Hamling’s publishing company came from the telephone exchange (GReenleaf) where he was living at the time in Evanston, Illinois. Operating as Greenleaf Publishing Co., he published Imagination until September, 1958 and its later companion, Imaginative Tales (September 1954-May 1958, 26 issues), retitled Space Travel (July-November 1958). Neither survived the

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decade nor the death of their distribution company,American News. In October, 1955 Hamling began the nonscience fiction men’s magazine Rogue, an imitation of Playboy. In the early 1950s, a young Hugh Heffner sought out the experienced publisher, his fellow ex-editor, and offered him a significant stake (50%) to partner with him on a new idea he had for a magazine for men, to be called Playboy. Hamling turned him down — and kicked himself for doing so for years thereafter. Under the watchful eye of managing editor Frank M. Robinson, Rogue became a close competitor of Playboy and had a long run for a men’s magazine, from December, 1955 until December, 1967. Rogue was well known for its racy cartoons and was always filled with plenty of provocative semi-nude photos.What set Rogue apart from all other competitors were the great authors who contributed stories.

1950S DETECTIVE MAGAZINES

168 | Rogue After Rogue became established, Hamling hired Harlan Ellison as and editor.When Ellison segued into other areas of the various Hamling enterprises in 1959, Frank Robinson ended up as editor of Rogue. In the 1960s, Rogue became a de facto writers’ colony for science fiction and fantasy writers. Like Playboy, it published a disproportionate amount of science-fiction-related material, including Fred Pohl’s award-winning “Day Million” (February 1966). The influence of Rogue has had a powerful affect on American culture due to the broad editorial, artistic, and writing talent it utilized. The Oxford English Dictionary has even determined that Pohl’s original story, “Day Million,” is especially worthy of citation for its first-time use of a new phrase: “They met cute,” which appears in the middle of the story. Editors at Greenleaf Publishing included A.J. Budrys, Larry Shaw, and Bruce Elliot. Writers, mainly of science fiction, included Robert Bloch, Alfred Bester, and Mack Reynolds. Hunter S. Thompson, Lenny Bruce, Charles Beaumont, William F. Nolan, Mack Renolds, and Robert Silverberg also popped up sometimes. Many of these authors worked for Playboy, and the Rogue editors got a lot of submissions with Hugh Hefner’s fingerprints on them. It ran some hard-boiled crime fiction like Bill McGivern’s “The Walking Corpse” (Dec 1958) and Paul Fairman’s “A Grave for Rachel” (March 1959). No other men’s magazine had this much editorial talent. Rogue might have been a Playboy imitator, but so were 90% of all girlie magazines that started in the latter half of the 1950s. Rogue had higherthan-average production standards and the early covers, painted by Lester Bentley, Hans Zoff, and Lloyd Rognan, with the libidinous Wolf mascot, were quite eye-catching. In 1950, Lloyd Rognan returned to the United States from Europe to polish his skills a bit more at the Chicago Art Institute, which he attended from 1951 to 1953. From 1953 to early 1955, he worked for the advertising agency of Jahn Ollier. By late 1955 he was married, living in

Glenview, Illinois, and a full-time freelance artist. Glenview was near Evanston, the home of Bill Hamling’s Greenleaf Publishing Company. Time and again, Lloyd’s work appears on many covers from Greenleaf including Rogue for Men, Imaginative Tales, and Imagination. All of Bill Hamling’s publications are as noteworthy for the entertaining characters involved in their publication as they are as magazines. Hamling not only founded Rogue, but also went on to develop a soft porn publishing empire that eventually ran afoul of President Nixon and the FBI in the 1970s and landed Hamling in jail along with Greenleaf ’s vice-president Earl Kemp, his long-time friend and editorial director. In New York City, popular young science fiction writer Robert Silverberg discovered the world of softcore sex paperbacks when he came across Bedside Books.At that time (1959), Silverberg was writing prolifically and looking for new markets to conquer. In short order, he was selling Bedside Books manuscripts that appeared under the bylines of David Challon and Mark Ryan. Silverberg realized the new market direction could be the answer to many writers’ wildest dreams in the very near future. Harlan Ellison, along with his wife Charlotte, was preparing to move to Evanston, Illinois, to work for William Hamling. Silverberg explained to Ellison the glorious possibilities in softcore paperback publishing and had him all primed and ready for William Hamling. Hamling liked the idea of the proposed book publishing entity and sent Ellison back to New York City to get the operation in motion. Harlan Ellison went straight to Robert Silverberg to report on his success with Hamling but, it was Silverberg, not Ellison, who took the proposal to the literary agent Scott Meredith. This eventually opened the door to the clandestine black box enterprise that virtually flooded the country with soft-core pornography during the early 1960s. Thus, Hamling began publishing Nightstand Books, virtually all of whose book submissions were fed to it via black boxes (nor-

mal submissions were in gray boxes) sent to a Grand Central Station post office box. The books not only fetched an immediate $1,000 in payment, they earned royalties that Hamling paid promptly. In 1960 and 1961, Silverberg was writing a book every other week for this series, many of them published under the Don Elliott pseudonym. Others writing these books included Lawrence Block and Donald Westlake. William Hamling was taking Ellison’s proposition literally and setting him up to be the king of pornography, right down the hall from Rogue magazine, under Hamling’s watchful eye.All Harlan had to do was figure out how to make it all work, locate the pieces, grease up the machine, and get it running. It wasn’t easy being the king of pornography. In the beginning, Nightstand Books were produced by a corporation named Freedom Publishing Company. Illinois corporate law at the time required three legal Illinois residents to become a corporation. Freedom Publishing’s three were ex-co-workers William L. Hamling, Raymond A. Palmer, and Richard S. Shaver, but as the latter two were Wisconsin residents, Freedom Publishing was closed. Hamling bought a defunct corporation at a bargain rate to replace it. That corporation was Blake Pharmaceuticals. Once re-incorporated, Hamling re-directed Blake to publish pornography and had Harlan Ellison run the whole show while seemingly running Rogue. In those days, in spite of the popular acceptance of soft-core pornography in movie theaters across the country, an operation like Blake Pharmaceuticals was still frowned upon and was kept, as much as possible, under cover. Producing Nightstand Books turned out to be more work than Harlan Ellison had originally expected that in early 1960, he quit. He returned to New York City where he stayed with Ted White, a jazz reviewer for Rogue. Harlan continued to write cover blurbs for the books at $45 apiece. Back home at Blake Pharmaceuticals, Frank M.Robinson,under orders from Hamling,filled in as editor of Nightstand Books. Frank didn’t like

Science Fiction Eye |

S SATANA see Health Knowledge Magazines SCIENCE FICTION EYE

being forced to help with the operation and felt he had his hands full being the real editor of Rogue. Hamling, Ellison, Robinson, and Kemp tried, but neither Rogue nor their book business could really compete with Playboy, and Rogue was eventually sold to Douglas Publishing Company, Inc., in Cleveland, Ohio. The last Greenleaf issue was published in December, 1965 and Hamling moved all of his remaining enterprises to San Diego, California, the same year. Douglas Publishing Company continued to produce the magazine.; they managed 10 issues before they folded.The last Rogue was published in January, 1967, a little over a year after the sale.—ETK

Science Fiction Eye was a small-press magazine of science fiction criticism and review that ran for fifteen issues between Winter (January) 1987 and Fall 1997. At the outset, it rode the coat-tails of the cyberpunk movement and, as a consequence, became closely associated with it, but in fact it was a magazine that explored and analyzed all areas of non-conformist science fiction, delighting in fiction that rebelled. The magazine was produced by Stephen Brown and Dan Steffan out of Washington, D.C. Although they served as co-editors, Steffan’s main interest was in the format and production of the magazine, seeking to experiment with layout and design. It replicated the size of Time and similar slick magazines, measuring 11 x 8.375 inches and side-stapled, running three columns a page. The first issue was still set from typed sheets but became fully typeset thereafter.The first two issues ran to 68 pages, but later issues grew to 112 pages, and even 120, causing one reviewer to claim that SF Eye had too much content for its money – in excess of 100,000 words per issue. It held its price to $3.50 for the first eleven issues and was never a money-earner, though once circulation peaked at around 5,000 copies, this was sufficient to break even. It never sought paid advertising and did little to promote itself in other magazines. It was never able to pay contributors, but still attracted many major names because it was one of the few

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forums for free expression among the science fiction small press in the pre-internet days.The magazine continued to grow in both production value and content, even after Steffan opted out after issue #5 (July 1989). The magazine relocated to Asheville, N,C., with issue #9 (November 1991), following Brown’s move. SF Eye stepped into the shoes left empty with the folding of Dick Geis’s Science Fiction Review in 1986, and though Doug Fratz’s Quantum continued to appear, that focused on science fiction in the round. Brown was dissatisfied with much current science fiction, feeling that it had become moribund and too self-centered. He wanted to rattle a few cages, and achieved this resoundingly with the first issue, which provided a thorough exploration – or “autopsy,” as the magazine called it – of the cyberpunk movement. Brown was able to call upon his long-time friends, which included Bruce Sterling and John Shirley, for material. There were interviews with William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, plus a transcription of a volatile panel discussion, “Cyberpunk or Cyberjunk?”, held at the Science Fiction Research Association meeting in June, 1986, with contributions from Greg Benford, John Shirley, and Norman Spinrad, among others. The general view was that the cyberpunk movement, such as it was, had almost certainly been misunderstood and mislabeled, but that its main adherents had already broadened their scope into new visions and ideas. It was a view that had its polarized camps, and led to a rousing discussion in the magazine’s letter column for several issues to come. It was this initial concentration on cyberpunk that caused SF Eye to be labelled as the “flagship of the cyberpunk movement,” which it never was, and which tended to overshadow its wider purpose. SF Eye was really a magazine for science fiction radicals, and since these certainly included Bruce Sterling, John Shirley and John Kessel – all of whom were regular contributors – it was all too easy to label it a cyberpunk magazine. One other factor that added to this view is that several of the contributors, especially Sterling in his “Catscan”

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170 | Science Fiction Eye column, and Charles Platt in his occasional contributions,looked at the implications to society of the rapid changes in technology.This is something that all sf writers should do, but the changes had been so vast and far-reaching by the start of the 1980s, especially with the possibilities of nanotechnology, that it required a new generation of writers to appreciate and understand the full potential. SF Eye became a focus for considering those changes and thereby created a cauldron of ideas for writers. It was not SF Eye’s intention to publish fiction, but because it received contributions, it devoted its third issue to publishing a selection. This included challenging work by Richard A. Lupoff, John Shirley, Ian Watson, Charles Sheffield, and Paul Di Filippo, plus the very first story by Kathe Koja. This issue was exceptional not only for its content, but for its format. Dan Steffan decided that the issue should be in large

tabloid size, measuring almost 14 x 11 inches, meaning it could not stand on the shelves alongside other issues.The experiment was not repeated, and SF Eye ran only one other story, the metafictional “Brothers,” by Tony Daniels, an introspective and probably autobiographical piece, about the travails of a science-fiction writer. Otherwise, the emphasis remained on criticism and review. SF Eye considered many matters besides cyberpunk. Philip K. Dick was the subject of a special section in issue #2 (August 1987), which also featured an extensive interview with Lucius Shepard.There were features on J. G. Ballard, Ian McEwan, Connie Willis, Samuel Delany, Richard Calder, David Wingrove, Thomas M. Disch, Iain Banks, Christopher Priest, and Jack Womack – all authors who might be regarded as the renegades of the field. Paul Di Filippo provided a regular column looking at the borderlands

PG 170, Bot banc, L to R – THE JAYNE MANSFIELD PIN-UP BOOK, 1957 (© Standard Magazines); PIN-UP PHOTOGRAPHY, #1, 1956 (© Charlton Publications); GLAMOROUS MODELS, 1951 (© Models Publishing); GLAMOR PARADE, Feb. 1957 (© Actual Publishing Com.); PG 171, Top to Bot – SHOCK, vol. 3#4, 1971 (© Stanley Publishing); THRILLING WONDER STORIES, June 1948 (© Standard Magazines).

and more obscure avenues of science fiction. Elizabeth Hand became a regular reviewer and columnist. There were several articles on feminism in sf. A few subjects came in for a vitriolic assassination, most notably Scientology, Craig Strete, and Orson Scott Card, the latter primarily because of his story “Lost Boys.” What also showed SF Eye’s greater understanding of the ramifications of science fiction was the space it gave to such subjects as drugs, music, and other societies, especially the Soviet Union (as it still was at that time) and Japan. From the start, SF Eye had incorporated a Japanese per-

spective on science fiction, with contributions by Takayuki Tatsumi. At least 10% of its print run was sold in Japan, and from the first issue it included a Japanese cover price (600 yen).Tatsumi strongly believed that SF Eye was instrumental in both promoting cyberpunk and avant-pop literature and culture in Japan, and in giving professional editors a greater awareness of works suitable for translation into Japanese. In both Japan and the western world, SF Eye helped fuel a debate about the generic boundary between science fiction and postmodernist literature, and thus aided the growth and expansion

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Search & Destroy | of science fiction beyond traditional borders. Although originally planned to appear three times a year, it was all Brown and Steffan could do to produce it twice a year, and the burden became harder when Steffan left. Only four issues appeared in its last five years, though all were still of an exceptionally high quality and, if anything, covered more diverse subjects than before. Gary Westfahl looked at the problems of teaching science fiction. Bruce Sterling considered the French romantics. Paul Di Filippo studied the writings of Ishmael Reed, while Stepan Chapman looked at artist John R. Neill’s role in creating Oz. Part of this diversity was because from issue #12 (Summer 1993) on, SF Eye incorporated Quantum, but although Doug Fratz came on board as contributing editor, the name never featured in the title and little of Quantum’s character came through. Nevertheless, SF Eye had become

pre-eminent among the magazines of sf criticism. It never won a Hugo Award, arguably because it defied the various categories, but it did win three Small Press Awards, given by Readercon, run by the Small Press Writers and Artists Organization. Although a sixteenth issue was promised,in the end Brown found the production of the magazine all too time-consuming and he stopped.To some extent, the cause it had been championing had moved on and, in many ways, been achieved. Science fiction had become more diverse,more aware of cultural and social issues, and had caught up with technology. SF Eye could rest happily.—MA

SCIENCE FICTION QUARTERLY see Health Knowledge SEARCH & DESTROY RE/Search RE/Search Publications is a United States magazine and book publisher, based in San Francisco, founded and edited by V.Vale in 1980, as the successor to his earlier punk rock fanzine, Search & Destroy (1977-1979). By the mid-1970s, the punk aesthetic had spread out from England to the United States.The American punk scene soon developed an energy and talent of its own, which was documented in the homegrown, heavily illustrated magazine, Search & Destroy. Started in 1977 when Vale received a $200 donation from Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, he began publication of Search & Destroy as a fanzine documenting the then-current punk subculture. Although it only lasted eleven issues, Search & Destroy captured the rage, riots, and revelations of an

extraordinary period. Innovators such as Devo, Iggy Pop, Dead Kennedys, and the Ramones were featured alongside William Burroughs, J.G. Ballard, John Waters, Russ Meyer, and David Lynch. Search & Destroy was the real thing, written when punk was first inventing itself. The eleven issues of Search & Destroy were filled with incendiary interviews, passionate photographs, and brutal art. It is best characterized as corrosive minimalist documentation of the only youth rebellion of the 1970s, punk rock. Each issue was crammed with information and inspiration. Numerous books look back nostalgically at the late 1970s punk scene. Search & Destroy was a pioneering fanzine of the time. By discussing “ideas and culture,” instead of “personal biography,” with the Ramones, Buzzcocks, and others, Vale (and such contributors as Jon Savage) created fresh, thoughtful material. And along the way they discovered surprising tidbits (who’d have pegged Nico as an Yma Sumac fan?). Instead of looking back at wild times, compartmentalizing them as “history,” editor/publisher V. Vale presented unaltered interviews with famous and infamous punk figures. His work remains surprisingly vital after nearly 30 years. The hype surrounding Search & Destroy is truly deserved.The original eleven issue run has reached near legendary status among those of us who still care about overlooked cultural icons like Frankie Fix or Jennifer Miro, and who are actually interested to learn that the Nuns’ guitarist considered Jackson Pollack one of his prime influences. By 1980 the hard-core punk scene had faded, and Vale began publication of RE/Search, originally a tabloid-sized magazine. Vale started his new publication with financial help from Geoff Travis of Rough Trade Records, and actress/film director Betty Thomas. Betty Thomas, born Betty Thomas Nienhauser, is an American actress and director in television and motion pictures.Thomas joined The Second City comedy group and appeared in the

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172 | Search & Destroy films Tunnel Vision (1975), Chesty Anderson, USN (1976), Used Cars (1980), and Loose Shoes (1980), and on the TV series The Fun Factory (1976). Moving from comedy to dramatic roles, her breakthrough as an actress came when she was cast in the dramatic role of police officer Lucille Bates on the TV series Hill Street Blues (19811987). She was nominated for six Emmy awards for this role, and won one for Best Supporting Actress in 1985. After the series ended,Thomas moved on to directing, winning an Emmy for her direction of Dream On in 1990. She went on to Only You in 1992, after which she directed several highly successful films, including 28 Days (2000) and I Spy (2002).Among her diverse interests is the support of the leading edge of underground reporting. Geoff Travis, the other financial contributor to RE/Search, founded Rough Trade Records in west London in 1978. It grew out of his Rough Trade Shop, becoming independent from the shop in 1982. It folded in 1991, but was relaunched in 2000. It was only natural for Travis to help Vale. Rough Trade specialized primarily in European post-punk and other alternative rock of the late 1970s and early 1980s. In the late 1980s, Rough Trade branched out by issuing an (eponymous) album by Lucinda Williams. Other early signings included Young Marble Giants and Scritti Politti (the latter re-signed to the label in the mid-2000s). Geoff Travis later launched Blanco y Negro Records in partnership with Warner Brothers Records. Of note, Rough Trade handled the career of The Smiths, who subsequently inspired a mass independent movement in the mid-1980s. RE/Search picked up where Vale’s punk fanzine Search & Destroy left off, focusing on various counterculture and underground topics. Following the third issue, issues four and five were collected as a single volume, a “special book issue.” Subsequent issues all retained the book format. RE/Search has also published books on various underground topics. Titles include Pranks, Incredibly Strange Films, and Modern Primitives, and

the subject matter includes profiles of William S. Burroughs and J.G. Ballard, among others.V.Vale is both the publisher and the primary contributor to all the books and magazines published by his company, RE/Search Publications. At the same time he started his publishing company,Vale also started his own typesetting business, allowing for a day job to fund his publishing exploits and guaranteeing high quality typography and design for his magazines and books. The 1980s saw the expansion of RE/Search from a tabloid format fanzine to a publisher of books. Vale published and contributed to many books on the subjects of pranks, obscure music and films, industrial culture, and other underground topics. Finally solvent, in 1991 Vale sold his typography business to focus on his publishing efforts full time. RE/Search is dedicated to the exploration of marginalized culture. RE/Search Publications probes modern alienation with a sense of irony, sophistication, and respect that makes the reader feel like they are among friends. RE/Search’s serial “issues” are good reference works, serving as thorough introductions to their subject matter. The books are often annotated with reference sections and ample lists (bibliography, biography, filmography, discography, relevant/obscure quotes). They are beautifully designed and illustrated.The RE/Search staff is about as rigorous as this level of the subculture gets. They also carry additional books, videos, and T-shirts, which are just more icing on the cake. RE/Search’s point of view is clear, but for the most part editors Andrea Juno and V.Vale allow their subjects to speak for themselves.The common form of discourse is the interview, with an emphasis on charismatic leaders. Since the individual voices remain unique, room is left for the reader to draw their own conclusions about the subject interviewed. They concentrate on real alternative systems — a RE/Search issue gives the sense that there is a set of interlocking subcultures with a cohesive ideology. No matter how far out, you never feel

Secret Agent X |

PG 172 – TRUE STRANGE, Oct.1957 (© Weider Publications); PG 173, Top to Bot – TRUE STRANGE, (© Weider Publications ); TRUE CRIME EXPOSÉ, #1, Mar. 1943 (© respective copyright holder).

that anyone is an isolated nut. RE/Search helps create room for the reader’s ideas, to expand the notions of acceptable behavior and acceptable means of reform (“PRANKS!” especially seems necessary, in light of how “acceptable” typical leftist strategies have become — and how unsuccessful they are!). One gets the impression that the subjects of these books have found ways out of our mainstream culture, real actions and ideas outside the bummers and the 9-to-5, outside of any kind of obligation, and beyond the boundaries of good taste. For this, RE/Search is truly inspiring. The books remind one that options exist outside the acceptable, that all culture has its origins in dreams — which are uncontrollable, subconscious, limitless, and frequently disturbing. In “Incredibly Strange Films,” the editors express their feeling that good taste often “functions as a filter to block out…areas of experience.” As our culture insists on ignoring its “dark side,” this is the side often utilized as creative fodder by the side-stream art and culture that RE/Search explores. This dark side spans from magic and ritual to sadism, body modification, dreadful movies, subversive humor, and hardboiled crime novels (“The Willeford Trilogy”). Throughout their work, the publishers do tend to emphasize the most graphic and extreme elements of underground culture, but they only cover activities between consenting adults. In documenting and disseminating information, RE/Search has actually been integral in the popularization of industrial/post-industrial culture. Their “Modern Primitives” issue sold out quickly and resulted in a lot of new interest in tattooing and body piercing. RE/Search is a sort of subversive artist’s directory, profiling an inter-related group of violently imaginative creators/performers whose works blend sex, viscera, machines, crimes, and noise.

The unusually slick and professionally produced publications focus on post-punk “industrial” performers whose work comprises a biting critique of contemporary culture. Read them you must, to be aware, but readers beware!—AW

SECRET AGENT “X” Aaron A. Wyn (born Aaron Weinstein) began editing pulp magazines in 1926. Wyn formed A.A. Wyn Magazine Publishers in the 1930s, eventually branching out into book publishing in 1945. Of all his publications and efforts, Wyn is best remembered for founding Ace Books in 1952, which specialized in genre paperbacks. Wyn magazines included Ace Mystery, Ace Sports, Sky Birds, Flying Aces, Eerie Mysteries, Gold Seal Detectives,Ten Detective Aces, and Secret Agent “X.” Under the auspices of Periodical House, an affiliate of Magazine Publishers,Wyn began publishing Secret Agent “X” in February, 1934. The dime pulp would remain 128 pages until near the end of its run in March 1939, when it reduced its size to 96 pages. The nameless Secret Agent “X” was created by Paul Chadwick, who would write fifteen novels in the series, beginning with “The Torture Trust” (February 1934). In May, 1935, with “The Corpse Cavalcade,” G.T. Fleming-Roberts picked up where Chadwick left off, writing 20 of the 41 Secret Agent “X” pulps. Chadwick would be entirely replaced by Fleming-Roberts as the main writer for the ongoing series.The last Paul Chadwick story,“Curse of the Crimson Horde” (September 1938), would appear after Chadwick’s absence of over two years from the magazine. His prior story, “The Fear Merchants,” appeared in the March, 1936 issue, just before an editorial shake-up and change in publication from monthly to bi-monthly.

Emile C.Tepperman wrote four of the early entries: “Hand of Horror” (August 1934); “Servants of the Skull” (November 1934); “The Murder Monsters” (December 1934); and “Talons of Terror” (April 1935). Wayne Rogers wrote one, “Plague of the Golden Death” (December 1937). However, all of the Secret Agent “X” pulps were published under the house pseudonym of “Brant House.” In 1934, at the height of the Great Depression, several competing pulp publishers jumped into the marketplace. Popular created Operator #5 and Dusty Ayres and His Battle Birds. Ranger Publications premiered The Masked Rider. Secret Agent “X” would become the only successful heroic title in Wyn’s stable of magazines. Secret Agent “X” was an operative for the American government. Assignments were issued by his handler K-9, located in the heart of Washington,D.C.The real identity of “X”was unknown to almost everyone, including K-9.As an operative for the government,“X” always chose to go under deep cover for his assignments.“X” was a master of disguise, a “man of a thousand faces.” His disguises while on the job were always perfect. “X” operated entirely on his own. His freedom to act independently came from the funds he received from a special account in Washington. The success he had as an operative was not only due to his expert disguises, but also to the various languages he knew. There was not a code or cipher that “X,” the world’s best cryptographer, could not crack.“X” was also an ace pilot, a skill that saved his life many times, as did his skill using jujitsu in a fight. A crack shot, he carried automatics as well as his secret weapons designed to deliver anesthetic gas concealed in pens, guns, and shoes. He also drove a heavily armed car. Secret Agent “X” developed his mastery of concealment from his experiences “in the war.” Only one person knew his true face, his girlfriend, the spunky journalist Betty Dale, who was also the woman he had to rescue regularly. His other friend, the brutish Harvey Bates, who helped him on certain cases, came close to being

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174 | Secret Agent X his sidekick. There were other minor assistants, Jim Hobart and Thomas McCarthy. Secret Agent “X” ran into a rough patch, going from a monthly to a bi-monthly after the April, 1936 issue, which carried the cover story “Faceless Fury.” In 1937, Wyn replaced the editor, his wife Rose Wyn, with Harry Widmer, in an attempt to turn the pulp prospects around. G.T. Fleming-Roberts is probably the better known of the Secret Agent “X” writers. He was another 1930s pulp writer who specialized in weird menace tales. His best-known work,“Sleep No More, My Lovely,” was sold to Dime Detective magazine in 1943. It was not in the private eye mode, but rather was a suspense-oriented mystery. His writing was distinctly opposite from the urban underworld scene commonly used in many of the Dime Detective or Black Mask stories. His story emphasized the distinct differences in the pulp tra-

ditions of hard-boiled detective and weird menace. As can be seen in his work in Secret Agent “X,” as well as other, later, efforts, personal relationships were most important to Fleming-Roberts. His characters needed a social support network, one that involved both friends and family. Issues of trust form important elements of his plots, as well as sympathy for the handicapped and minority groups. In the use of these plot elements, Fleming-Roberts was clearly ahead of his time. In 1939, unable to continue in a crowded marketplace, Operator #5 and Secret Agent “X” were both cancelled by their publishers. Bantam Books had the bright idea to reprint the Doc Savage pulps in 1964, with updated covers by James Bama, which led to the rediscovery of the hero pulp genre. In 1966, Corinth Regency reprinted Operator #5 (eight titles), The Phantom Detective (22 titles), Dusty Ayres and His

Battle Birds (five titles), Doctor Death (four titles), and Secret Agent “X” (seven titles). In 1969, Berkley Medallion jumped in with Popular’s G-8 and His Battle Aces, following it two months later with The Spider.These reprints brought all those great titles to a new generation of readers. Wyn was a notorious cheapskate, famous for paying his authors as little as he could. David McDaniel, who wrote The Man from U.N.C.L.E. series during the 1960s, went so far as to encode a comment in regard to that well-known fact into the title of The Monster Wheel Affair. The first letters of each chapter’s title in the book’s table of contents, when lined up, spell out “A.A.Wyn is a tightwad.” Apparently, the joke went unnoticed by Wyn and his staff, as the book was published as is.—FJ

SEXOLOGY Hugo Gernsback Hugo Gernsback is best remembered as the founder of the first all-science-fiction magazine, Amazing Stories, in 1926, thereby formally creating the science-fiction genre. But he published far more than science fiction magazines. His publishing empire was founded on his fascination with radio. Although he stopped publishing science fiction in 1936 (apart from a brief flirtation in 1953), his involvement with radio and electronics remained, and the number of magazines he produced continued to grow. Gernsback’s publishing empire lasted, in one form or another, from 1908 to 2002, and in that time published a wide range of magazines. Besides science-fiction, radio and electronics,

SPICY DETECTIVE PULPS

Sexology |

PG 174, L to R – SPICY DETECTIVE, vol. 7, #1 (© Culture Inc.); SPICY DETECTIVE, Feb. 1935 (© Culture Inc.); SPICY DETECTIVE, Oct. 1934 (© Culture Inc.); PG 175, Top to Bot – SCIENCE FICTION EYE, #4, 1988 (© Til You Go Blind Co-op); NEW REVIEW: SAY, Dec. 23, 1954 (© respective copyright holder).

titles included Sexology, Your Body, Motor Camper & Tourist, French Humor, and even Pirate Stories. If there was a niche, Gernsback felt an urge to fill it, sometimes profitably, sometimes disastrously, but usually innovatively. Gernsback had come to the United States from his native Luxembourg in 1904, aged 19, hoping to gain backing for his dry-cell battery, an invention he believed held his fortune. He soon discovered his battery cost too much to produce economically, while a cheaper version leaked. Gernsback persevered, and discovered that it was not his battery, but radio, where his success lay. He had built a portable home radio set and when it was advertised in the January, 1906 Scientific American, some skeptical readers argued it could not be produced for the listed price of $7.50. A policeman was dispatched to see a demonstration.The model worked, but the policeman could not understand why the set was called a “wireless” when it was full of wires. It was to counter such ignorance that Gernsback decided to publish a magazine to educate the masses, and in April, 1908 he launched Modern Electrics. Whereas earlier magazines were aimed primarily at the trade, Modern Electrics was targeted to the individual, the hobbyist or home experimenter. Gernsback wanted to encourage people to experiment and think for themselves, and thereby help build the new technological age. He held Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison in high regard as examples to inspire all young inventors. His earliest mission was the development of amateur radio, and in the issue for January, 1909 he started the Wireless Association of America, with none other than Lee De Forest as its president. Gernsback stated that its primary aim was “to bring young experimenters together — not in clubs, but in practical work.” It was similar to the notion he would re-use in 1934 with the Sci-

ence Fiction League. Another reason for creating the Association was to have a position of strength from which to combat potential problems. Since within a year the Association had over 22,000 members, it gave Gernsback a viable platform. The United States Government regarded radio amateurs as a nuisance, interfering with government and commercial wavelengths, and were considering either licensing amateurs or banning them entirely. The Roberts Bill, proposed at the end of 1909, was designed to curtail the amateur. Gernsback fought the bill, and its successors, with Modern Electrics serving as the platform for public opinion. Eventually, Gernsback’s recommendations were incorporated into the Alexander Bill, which became law in May, 1912, and which set limits for the wavelengths amateurs could use. Modern Electrics also ran many speculative articles, usually by Gernsback himself, including “Harnessing the Oceans” (December 1908) and “Television and the Telephot” (December 1909). Gernsback didn’t coin the word “television,” but he was among the first to popularize it. He devised his own method of transmitting images electrically, but believed the technique was so cumbersome that he did not patent it, even though his process was more effective than that proposed by John Logie Baird, the man usually attributed with inventing television. It was also in Modern Electrics that Gernsback serialized Ralph 124C41+, an episodic novel of the future used as a vehicle for exploring the scope of marvelous inventions. It is set in the year 2660, where Ralph is one of ten super-scientists (hence the “+”).At the outset,though based in NewYork, he rescues a girl (Alice) trapped in Switzerland by a storm and threatened by an avalanche, by sending a beam of super-charged energy to her radio mast that disperses the snow.Thereafter most of the story is little more than a catalogue of inventions,

though there is some action when Alice is kidnapped first by an Earthman and then by a Martian.When Ralph finds her she is already dead, but another of his inventions restores her to life. In the episode where Ralph pursues the Martians (December 1911), there is a detailed description of a device identical to radar, another concept that Gernsback did not patent. The serial generated interest from readers and Gernsback encouraged others to write speculative stories about possible inventions.The first to respond was Jacque Morgan with a series of lighthearted stories,“The Scientific Adventures of Mr. Fosdick,” which began in the October, 1912 issue.These were in the current vogue of inventions where something goes humorously wrong, though in Fosdick’s case he was enterprising enough to discover another use for his otherwise failed invention. By now the circulation of Modern Electrics had exceeded 52,000 and Gernsback brought on board a business manager to run the newly established Modern Publishing Company. The result was a greatly expanded Modern Electrics with over forty pages of advertising. Readers complained about this and Gernsback also felt the magazine had become too commercial and shifted away from his hobbyist intent. Its viability allowed Gernsback to sell it at a substantial profit. His last issue was dated March, 1913, and the magazine continued as Modern Electrics and Mechanics before merging with Popular Science Monthly in April, 1915. Gernsback still owned the prosperous Electro-Importing Company, and it was through this that he started The Electrical Experimenter, first issue May, 1913.This was in a larger bedsheet format than Modern Electrics, a size more suited to technical magazines. It was also printed on quality coated stock, allowing the use of photographs. Gernsback continued to be the primary editor, but he was assisted by H.Winfield Secor, who had served as associate editor on Modern Electrics. Secor was one of Gernsback’s regular reliable assistants, who stayed with him for many years, not only editing but also writing many of the fea-

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176 | Sexology ture articles. In 1915, Gernsback established the Experimenter Publishing Company with his brother, Sidney, as treasurer. At the outset The Electrical Experimenter concentrated on hobbyist articles and when fiction did appear, it was under that guise. Gernsback ran a contest for the most original idea on how to recycle old equipment and the winner, Thomas Benson, submitted his suggestion in the form of a story,“Mysterious Night” (June 1914), where a young man reworks equipment to play a trick on his sister’s boyfriend. The man became nicknamed the “Wireless Wizard” and Benson contributed eight more such stories over the next three years. None was classifiable as science fiction, but all fitted into Gernsback’s approach to stimulate thinking among experimenters. Gernsback contributed another of his own serials, “Baron Munchhausen’s New Scientific Adventures,” from the August, 1915 issue. In the same spirit as Raspe’s original stories, Gernsback had his tongue firmly in his cheek. His narrator, “I.M.Alier,” receives wireless messages, apparently from the original Baron Munchhausen, now on the Moon. Each night Munchhausen beams his messages to the narrator, revealing how he had been embalmed while still alive and had returned to life when the embalming fluid had weakened, how he became involved in the World War, and how he had perfected an anti-ether machine which allowed him to travel to the Moon. His travels continue to Mars, where he describes many scientific wonders. As with Ralph 124C41+, the serial was written to demonstrate the potential for experimentation,a subject Gernsback took up in his May,1916, editorial, “What to Invent.” Gernsback ran many speculative articles and every issue was filled with stimulating ideas, bold illustrations, and continued exhortations from Gernsback to his readers. His editorial in the April, 1916 issue was a plea to look to the future. He concluded by saying: A world without imagination is a poor place to live in. No real electrical

experimenter, worthy of the name, will ever amount to much if he has no imagination. He must be visionary to a certain extent, he must be able to look into the future and if he wants fame he must anticipate human wants. It was this crusading zeal that saw the growth of scientific fiction in The Electrical Experimenter and ultimately led to the birth of Amazing Stories. Most of those who contributed stories were unknown and not seen again outside of Gernsback’s magazines. Very few were professional writers, and this was evident from the crudeness of their work, little of which concerned Gernsback, as he was simply harnessing the enthusiasm. Only the first of his regular contributors, George F. Stratton, had any track record, and that was primarily as a writer of boys’ adventures. Gernsback was a great fan of boys’ adventure fiction and the magazine’s stories were slanted toward a younger readership. Stratton’s “Omegon” (September 1915), shows how entrepreneur Ned Cawthorne, who has earned a fortune from investing in new inventions, backs a further plan for submarines equipped with electromagnets that will disable ships with no loss of life. Of the new stories, the best was “At War with the Invisible” (March-April 1918), by the otherwise unknown R. and G.Winthrop. It tells of the Martian invasion of 2011.Their spaceship is invisible and able to destroy major cities undetected. Through careful observation, the narrator discovers how the cloak of invisibility works and, with the help of a scientist friend, is able to counteract the device and reveal the Martians.This was a genuine piece of science-fiction adventure, unlike anything Gernsback had hitherto published. What’s more, it was the first story to be illustrated by Frank R. Paul. Paul had been providing technical illustrations for Gernsback since 1914, but this was the first time he had illustrated the fiction. He would soon become the mainstay story artist. The Electrical Experimenter was moving further

Sexology | toward being a speculative science magazine and away from its hobbyist roots. To fill that gap, Gernsback started two new magazines, Radio Amateur News (from July 1919, soon retitled Radio News) and Practical Electrics (from November 1921). Both these magazines ran fiction, though little of it was speculative. Radio News, which rapidly became Gernsback’s circulation leader, with sales in excess of 100,000, managed to attract stories from a few well-known names, notably Ellis Parker Butler, who began a series of humorous stories with “Mr. Murchison’s Radio Party” (January 1923). Practical Electrics was retitled The Experimenter in November, 1924, when it serialized Victor MacClure’s “The Ark of the Covenant.” This concerns the Robur-like commander of a super-airship, the eponymous Ark that holds the world for ransom to seek peace and harmony; otherwise he will put the human race into a deep sleep. Meanwhile, The Electrical Experimenter was retitled Science and Invention in August, 1920, and the emphasis on scientific fiction increased. In May, 1921, Clement Fezandié began his series, “Dr. Hackensaw’s Secrets,” which were more like lectures than stories, where the prolific inventor spouted forth on each new wonder to his reporter friend. There was a series of scientific detective stories by Charles S.Wolfe, and a number of stand-alone stories by individual writers of more than passable merit. Gernsback was clearly becoming serious about the potential of his scientific stories. He even reprinted two stories by H.G. Wells in the February and March, 1923, issues, “The New Accelerator,” an almost definitive Gernsback invention story, and “The Star.” He included a special “scientific fiction” section in the August, 1923, issue, which sported a beautiful cover by Howard Brown illustrating “The Man from the Atom,” by G. Peyton Wertenbaker. It also featured an episode in the serial “Around

the Universe,” by Ray Cummings, which had started in the previous issue. Cummings was a big name to catch, and was becoming the primary contributor of science fiction to the pulp magazines. Gernsback was intentionally bridging the gap between his own evolution of scientific fiction and the more adventure-oriented pulp variety. Gernsback had considered starting an all-sf magazine, Scientifiction, in 1923, but a lack of response in a subscription drive caused him to bide his time.When Amazing Stories was launched in 1926, it was only after years of experimentation and exploration in his technical magazines. Intriguingly, even after Amazing Stories had appeared, Gernsback continued to run a sciencefiction serial in Science and Invention, and the works were by major names. Ray Cummings appeared with “Tarrano the Conqueror” (July 1925-August 1926) and “Into the Fourth Dimension” (September 1926-May 1927), and no less than Abraham Merritt with “The Metal Emperor” (October 1927-August 1928), a revised version of his Argosy serial,“The Metal Monster.” Gernsback continued to run many speculative articles in Science and Invention, such as “After Television, What?” (June 1927), “Inter-Planetary Communication” (June 1928), and “Cities of Tomorrow.” However, when Gernsback lost control of the Experimenter Publishing Company in February, 1929, thanks to bad debts, he lost all his magazines. They all continued under new management, though in 1931 Science and Invention was sold to, and then merged with, Popular Mechanics. During this period when Gernsback was setting the future alight with his “scientifiction” publications, he also published several other magazines that seemed far removed from the world of technological progress. Money Making, edited by Sidney Gernsback, and launched in October, 1926, might seem appropriate for Gernsback, since he was establishing his own fortune from his

PG 176 – TRUE CRIME MAGAZINE, vol 1, #1, July 1936 (© Red Circle); PG 177 – TRUE MYSTIC CONFESSIONS, #1, 1937 (© respective copyright holder).

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178 | Sexology various enterprises. Television, dated Summer 1927, with a second issue in July, 1928, was also no surprise, given Gernsback’s interests, and the fact that he had been running his own radio station since June, 1925. Your Body, an expensive (50 cents) quarterly started in April, 1928, was a sexhealth magazine seeking to penetrate the market established by Bernarr Macfadden with Physical Culture, and was a forerunner of the more profitable Sexology. But French Humor was pure indulgence. Gernsback had a puckish humor, more French than German, which he had often used in his stories and articles. French Humor was a natural extension of this, though he was also tapping into the lucrative if risky market of the titillating spicy magazines that modeled themselves on such French publications as La Vie Parisienne and Le Sourire. In America, these included The Parisienne, started by H.L. Mencken in July, 1915, and Paris Nights, the first of the “girlie” pulps, started in April, 1925. These magazines tried to reproduce the risqué and salacious content of the French magazines. Gernsback, on the other hand, was happy to include titillating cartoons, but the emphasis was on humor, saucy or otherwise.The cartoons and jokes were selected entirely from French magazines. French Humor was a slim magazine, issued weekly from July 16, 1927, to September 29, 1928, a total of 63 issues, the last twelve of which were entitled Tidbits. Its demise suggests that it was not reaching its intended market. Moreover, by the time of its final issue, Gernsback was running into the financial problems that would see him lose control of Experimenter Publishing and his magazines. Gernsback soon bounced back. This time, though, he based his new publishing company, Stellar, on science fiction, with a whole raft of magazines — Science Wonder Stories (begun June 1929), Air Wonder Stories (July 1929) (the two merged after a year as Wonder Stories), Science Wonder Quarterly (Fall 1929,) and Scientific Detective Monthly (January 1930). He maintained his radio interests with Radio-Craft (from July 1929) and

Short-Wave Craft (June 1930). Recognizing the interest in the conquest of the air, he also started Aviation Mechanics (June 1930) and took over the Chicago-based magazine, Illustrated Science and Mechanics, under the new title Everyday Mechanics (from July 1930). Although some of these titles ran the occasional speculative article, especially the latter (which became Everyday Science and Mechanics in October 1931), they no longer had the crusader zeal of the earlier magazines, and thus none of the cult appeal. Only Wonder Stories had that unique quality. It was here that the phrase “science fiction” was first used as a name for the field.While he was planning the new magazine, Gernsback was advised by his lawyers that he could not use the word “scientifiction,” which he had coined at Amazing, because that word had become a trademark for the magazine and was the property of his old company. Gernsback thus coined “science fiction,” perhaps forgetting that either he or his former editor, T. O’Conor Sloane, had used the phrase once before in the letter column in Amazing (January 1927). “Science fiction” was used throughout Science Wonder Stories from the first issue, and it is a sign of the influence and authority of Gernsback how quickly the term caught on. Wonder Stories had an excellent editor, David Lasser, who published the first book on the possibility of space travel,The Conquest of Space, in 1931. He also organized the American Interplanetary Society and ran many interplanetary stories in both Wonder Stories and the companion Quarterly. He did much to improve the quality of science fiction, which had sunk into a form of wild-west-inspace, thanks chiefly to the appearance of Astounding Stories in January, 1930. Wonder Stories instigated a “new policy,” which demanded a more realistic treatment of science fiction, a drive that was met by such authors as Nathan Schachner, P. Schuyler Miller, Laurence Manning, Frank K. Kelly and, perhaps surprisingly, Clark Ashton Smith. Wonder Stories published science fiction of considerable quality and might have equaled the reborn Astounding Stories in 1933/4 had not

The Shadow Magazine | Gernsback, frustrated at Lasser’s growing interest in trade unionism, fired his editor and employed the teenaged Charles Hornig. Hornig’s one claim to fame is that he was able to publish the first story by Stanley G.Weinbaum, “A Martian Odyssey” (July 1934), though he just as promptly lost Weinbaum’s best fiction to Astounding. Gernsback’s growing tardiness in paying authors drove away most of the best ones to the better paying Astounding. Wonder’s one other significant achievement was in helping organize science fiction fandom. In April, 1934, Gernsback announced the formation of the Science Fiction League, similar to the amateur radio association he had started 25 years before, which provided a focal point for fans and helped coalesce their activities. The Depression had its affect on Gernsback’s magazines – Wonder Stories almost ceased publication in 1931. Even so, he continued to experiment. After a short affair with Technocracy Review, which saw just two issues (February and March 1933) before Gernsback dropped it, fearful that the Technocrats were too radical, he launched what would become one of his most profitable magazines, Sexology, which first appeared in June, 1933. Gernsback ran it under another imprint, Science Publications, to keep its finances separate. It was published in pocketbook format, doubtless for discreet reasons, but, perhaps uncertain of its reception, Gernsback chose not to place his name on the cover. The magazine was intended to disseminate information about sexual health and hygiene. “If you expect to find smut in this magazine you had better not buy it,” Gernsback remonstrated in his editorial. The first issue was edited by Dr Maxwell Vidaver, but David H. Keller became the editor with the second issue and remained until 1938. Keller was renowned for his science fiction in Gernsback’s magazines and had been voted the field’s most popular author.The demand of edit-

ing and writing for Sexology, along with the companion magazines that soon appeared – Popular Medicine (August 1935, retitled Your Body in June 1936) and Facts of Life (January 1937) – meant that Keller had no time to write fiction and no chance to mature as the field developed. In the end, Keller felt he was being overworked and underpaid and resigned in 1938, at which point Your Body and Facts of Life ceased. From the start Sexology dealt with such bold subjects as prostitution, birth control, sexual dreams, links between sex and mental illness, and sexual diseases, subjects which hitherto had been shunned by decent society and only occasionally covered by magazines like Physical Culture. Gernsback’s determination to treat the subject seriously, and with authoritative medical articles, not only helped the magazine avoid attack by the Society for the Suppression of Vice, but also helped promote sexual education. Sexology became one of Gernsback’s most profitable magazines. It allowed him to survive the Depression and it continued, along with Radio-Craft and Everyday Science and Mechanics (soon to lose the “Everyday” part of the title) after he sold Wonder Stories in 1936. In 1959, Sexology came under the auspices of the Sexology Corporation, of which Gernsback was president. By then its subject matter and illustrations had become more daring. It came under fire in 1969 from a fundamentalist religious group, Sword of the Lord, because the magazine’s editor, Isadore Rubin, was also one of the founders of the Sex Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS), which developed a program for sex education in schools. The religious group claimed that school sex education was being developed by men who published pornography. Their charges got nowhere. In fact, Rubin, who edited Sexology from 1956 until his death in 1970, was a

PG 178 – THE SECRET 6, Jan. 1935 (© Popular Publications); PG 179, Top to Bot – SATURN SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY, Mar. 1958 (Candar Publications); SAUCY MOVIE TALES, May 1936 (© Movie Digest).

renowned expert in sexual education, a Fellow of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sex, and the author of a half-dozen books on the subject. In its final years, Sexology did run articles that were erotic and pandered to fetishists and exhibitionists, though this was more through its illustrations than the articles themselves. Sexology stood apart from Gernsback’s other magazines, though, and perhaps remained closest to his own original ideals.While Science and Mechanics and Radio Electronics became trade magazines and moved away from the hobbyist and experimenter, Sexology remained a magazine of education. Science and Mechanics survived until 1975, Sexology until 1978 (retitled Together at the end), and Radio-Craft (retitled Radio Electronics in 1948 and Electronics Now in 1992) survived until the demise of Gernsback Publications at the end of 2002 (last issue dated January 2003), by which time it had been retitled Poptronics. Although Gernsback’s reputation has been sullied in the science fiction field because of his slack payments (and he was guilty as charged although the circumstances have been exaggerated), his name has survived in the Hugo Award presented to the best science fiction published each year. He knew his market and was able to establish a publishing empire that survived his death, in 1967, by 25 years. He pioneered and promoted research into all manner of scientific endeavors and his work will stand the test of time. Characteristically, when he died Gernsback donated his body to medical research.—MA

THE SHADOW MAGAZINE The Great Depression was settling in on July 31, 1930, when the shuddery laugh of The Shadow first rang out over the nation’s airwaves, electrifying listeners of the still-primitive medium with his warning,“The Shadow knows!” Conceived by scriptwriter Harry Engman Charlot, The Shadow was merely a narrative device designed to bring to the life stories he read

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verbatim from the weekly issues of Street & Smith’s Detective Story Magazine. As voiced by James LaCurto, a narrator was all that he remained. But when actor Frank Readick introduced a sneer into the proceedings,The Shadow captured the American imagination. Unfortunately, Readick’s portrayal overwhelmed his message. Listeners flocked to newsstands asking for “that Shadow magazine” instead of Detective Story, which had started a circulationboosting contest to solve the riddle of the mystery man’s true identity. At Street & Smith, canny general manager Henry W. Ralston ordered editor-in-chief Frank Engs Blackwell to put out a one-shot Shadow Magazine in response. Ralston feared a rival publisher stealing the idea and trademarking the title. Both men had cut their editorial teeth on S&S

dime novels. Blackwell could find no writer in his stable willing to take on the thankless task. Enter Walter B. Gibson, a former newspaperman and ghostwriter for professional magicians. He was looking to break into fiction via Detective Story, and was happy for the opportunity. “I wasn’t thinking in terms of fiction when I talked to Blackwell,” Gibson recounted. “But he said,‘Look, we want somebody to create a character called The Shadow, and do it fast.’ He said, ‘I know you’re a fast writer.’And he said he wanted it to sound like he’s real. ‘He’s a master crime fighter, but try to build him up any way you can.’” The first issue, entitled The Shadow — A Detective Magazine, showcased Gibson’s “The Living Shadow.” A combination of Sherlock Holmes, Houdini, and Count Dracula (he classic

PG 180 – interior pages from TRUE STRANGE (© Weider Publications); PG 181 – STRANGE STORIES, June 1939 (© respective copyright holder).

Bela Lugosi film was still in theaters), Gibson’s Shadow was an omniscient force of nature who seemed beyond good or evil as he rescued hapless Harry Vincent from suicide and made him his chief agent, crushing criminals while garbed in a swirling black cloak and old-fashioned slouch hat. Gibson, too, was draped in mystery. He was obliged to write under a fictitious name, concocting “Maxwell Grant” from the names of two magic dealers who specialized in shadow tricks. The first issue, dated April, 1931 sold out. Gibson wrote two sequels, discovering the nebulous character as he went along. “In The Eyes of The Shadow,” he revealed the Dark Avenger to be millionaire Lamont Cranston. Next issue, he changed his mind.“The Shadow Laughs!” depicts the true Cranston surrendering his identity to his unknown imposter. Readers became as hooked on the mystery surrounding The Shadow as they were absorbed into the mysteries he solved through Sherlockian deduction and Hammetesque violence. Sales mandated The Shadow go monthly with the third issue. In the fall of 1932, with Detective Story faltering in frequency as worried Americans held onto their increasingly precious dimes, The Shadow Magazine kicked off an unremitting decade of twice-a-month publication. Gibson buckled down to grow stout and prematurely gray grinding out two and three novels a month. Over time, The Shadow acquired a network of agents who operated under cover, a legion of mystifying alternate identities, and a facility for two-gun marksmanship. After practically decimating the underworlds of NewYork and Chicago in his first year,the master avenger began attracting new challenges. Gibson called them “‘supercrooks.” After defeating a terrorist called The Black Master, he took on the Red Blot, Gray Fist, and The Black Falcon, who had the temerity to kidnap the real Lamont Cranston.These were the forerunners of the comic book supervillains still a decade in the future. Early on, editorial responsibilities fell to a young Notre Dame graduate named John L.

Nanovic. To keep the in-house Hoe presses fed, Nanovic and Ralston evolved plotting sessions with Gibson, wherein stories would be worked out two and three at a time. Soon, Gibson had stockpiled stories nearly a year in advance. Seeking maximum story variety, they evolved several distinct types of Shadow plots. Mysteries set in Chinatown had become a staple since the first novel, which was partially inspired by the re-use of an old pulp cover with a Chinese theme. The Shadow haunted the tri-state area in the main, but excursions to London, Paris, Mexico, Canada, and the Bahamas expanded his scope of operations. Gibson liked to summer in Maine and winter in Florida, and there too went The Shadow. As rivals began to litter the field, Nanovic set out to build up the back-of-the-book matter. He wrote a cryptogram column as Henry Lysing, and inaugurated running heroes to supplement the lead novel.The first of these was girl sleuth Grace Culver, written by Jean Francis Webb as Roswell Brown. A pre-Hollywood Steve Fisher contributed Naval Intelligence investigator Sheridan Doome and Danny Garrett, the Shoeshine Kid. Despite an antipathy for the game, Ed Burkholder was dragooned into writing the exploits of bowling detective “Hook” McGuire as “George Allan Moffatt.” The success of imitators like The Phantom Detective and The Spider, as well as inevitable authorial staleness, triggered a retrenchment in 1935. Gibson was instructed to change his approach and abandon his moody, atmospheric style for a fast-action pulp romp called “The Salamanders”. This led to the return of The Voodoo Master, and a brief wave of recurring villains. But shifting styles slowed down the human writing machine, so Nanovic turned to Black Mask regular and Shadow radio scripter Theodore A. Tinsley to supplement the Gibson prose torrent with four stories a year. Through him, S&S would experiment with a more hardboiled type of criminal and the occasional femme fatale. Tinsley’s first effort, “Partners of Peril,” would be “adapted” as the initial installment of

The Shadow Magazine | Batman by scripter Bill Finger. For over seven years, Gibson tantalized his readers with hints as to The Shadow’s actual identity and motives. Behind a Chinese-box array of other faces, chief among them Cranston and Henry Arnaud, the true Shadow remained a mocking enigma. Was he a World War I aviatorspy known as the Dark Eagle? Had his true visage been destroyed in combat? Was he disfigured? Who was he? Maxwell Grant revealed all in 1937’s “The Shadow Unmasks.” When the Cranston cover identity is compromised, The Shadow reappears in civilization as his true self, aviator-explorer Kent Allard, thought to be lost in the wilds of Guatemala. Accompanied by two faithful Xinca Indian servants,Allard is treated like a conquering hero. Forgotten by Commissioner Ralph Weston is the impossibility of the two Lamont Cranstons. This abrupt revelation seems to have been triggered by the approaching return of The Shadow to the radio airwaves. Up to this time, he had been a narrator. Now, as voiced by Orson Welles, he became an invisible detective aided by a new player, Margot Lane. Radio scripters seeking to translate the character to the still-new medium decided that The Shadow was Lamont Cranston, and that was that. Gibson and his editor fumed. The advertisers would not budge. For several years, two distinctly different Shadows co-existed, but in 1941, Gibson was obliged to drop Margot into his novels. By that time, the Kent Allard incarnation had been relegated to a seldom-used alternative identity. Public expectation was that The Shadow was really Cranston, so under that irresistible pressure the series shifted into a succession of mysteries modeled after Lamont and Margot’s café society encounters with crime, with the magazine’s police commissioner Ralph Weston and Shrevvie the cab driver serving as foils. Radio, with its millions of listeners, had won out. World War II and its paper shortages forced The Shadow to drop to monthly frequency in 1943, and then to digest format at year’s end. John

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Nanovic moved on, as did cover artist George Rozen, who had painted all of the covers except for a three-year hiatus during which Graves Gladney attempted to emulate his poster-style paintings.The new cover artist was a mainstay of Love Story Magazine, and Modest Stein’s somber scenes signaled that pulpy glory days were over. Gibson continued turning out compact and glib stories all through the war, never reaching the imaginative heights of the 1930s. His character had become a multi-media cottage industry, and when Street & Smith attempted to claim creative hegemony over the Master of Darkness in 1946, his creator walked rather than sign a cooked contract. A Gibson protégée and Orson Welles lookalike named Bruce Elliott took over, de-emphasizing The Shadow for a fast-talking Lamont Cranston and updating the character to the cynical post-war world. Editor Babette Rosmond, cultivating the early efforts of John D. MacDonald in the magazine’s back pages, was delighted. Readers were not. Early in 1948, with the magazine shifting back to pulp size, Walter Gibson made a triumphant return, as did cover artist George Rozen.The true authentic Shadow was back. He lasted only a year. Succumbing to internal pressures and distributor demands, Street & Smith folded their pulps in the spring of 1949. An era had ended. Soon, radio’s Shadow would fade into oblivion, too. Which Shadow had the last laugh no longer mattered. Except for one person, the public no longer cared who knew what evil lurked in the hearts of men. “I thoroughly enjoyed writing these stories,”Walter Gibson admitted, after penning nearly 300 of them, “and am pleased to have made a lasting contribution to the evolvement of the super hero in American literature.”—WM

SHRIEK, SIN-EMA see Health Knowledge Magazines

182 | Skeptic SIR! see Volitant Publishing SKEPTIC The Skeptics Society, started by Dr. Michael Shermer, began publishing Skeptic in 1992 as a forum for inquiry into extraordinary claims and revolutionary ideas. Themed issues looked into a wide variety of social, scientific, and paranormal controversies surrounding pseudomedicine, evolutionary ethics, conspiracy theories, and science in society, written by leading experts in their fields. There have been issues covering “Race and Intelligence,” “Cosmology & God,” and “Pseudomedicine.” A few sample articles: Insult to Injury — The Use & Abuse of The Bell Curve; Scientology v. the Internet; Velikovsky Still in Collision; Can Science Prove God?;The Question All Skeptics are Asking: Can a Cat Be Simultaneously Alive and Dead?; Does HIV Really Cause AIDS?; and Is Raw Meat Conscious? Every issues is a fascinating read.—LO

SLAPSTICK see Medical Horrors SPACE WARS see Lunatickle SPICY DETECTIVE STORIES The notorious Spicy chain of pulp magazines emerged from the ashes of Super Magazines Inc.’s

ill-fated attempt to buck the Great Depression by introducing a line of new genre-fiction magazines. Editor Frank Armer launched Super-Detective Stories early in 1934, with Super-Love, Super-Mystery, and Super-Western Stories promised in the ensuing months. The Super line sputtered out almost immediately, a victim of financial woes then pummeling the pulp magazine industry. Only Super-Detective continued, and it was soon eclipsed by a daring idea. Sex fiction had been a staple of a certain type of risqué pulp magazine for decades — including Armer’s own Spicy Stories — but it had never crossed genres. Pulp stories of sex revolved around romantic escapades, and were typically light and frothy. The raw side of sex was never alluded to, much less explored. The traditional genre staples — detective,Western, and fantasy — scrupulously avoided any contact with the earthy passions. Frank Armer overturned that taboo when he issued Spicy Detective Stories a month after the debut of Super-Detective Stories, dated April, 1934. Combining the hardboiled realism of Black Mask with a hot injection of raw sex and sadism, Spicy Detective took college campuses (where they enjoyed their greatest sales) by storm. Sold under the counter, it offered up a salacious slice of life the timid mainstream pulps carefully avoided. Armer edited under the fictitious name of “Lawrence Cadman.”The company, D.M. Magazines, was later dubbed Culture Publications, although it also operated under subsidiaries such as Trojan Publications and Arrow. Norman A. Daniels wrote the first-issue lead story, but embarrassed by the package, concealed his true identity under the pseudonyms of Kirk Rand and Grant Dell in subsequent issues. Robert

PG 182, L to R – interior pages from EVE, vol. 1, #3 (© respective copyright holder); SATELLITE SCIENCE FICTION, Dec. 1957 (© respective copyright holder); PG 183 — L to R – THE SHADOW MAGAZINE, Apr. 15, 1933 (© Street & Smith); THE SHADOW MAGAZINE, Mar. 1, 1936 (© Street & Smith); THE SHADOW MAGAZINE, vol. 1, #2, 1931 (© Street & Smith); THE SHADOW MAGAZINE, Oct. 1, 1941 (© Street & Smith); Bottom tier: THE SHADOW MAGAZINE, July 15, 1942 (© Street & Smith); THE SHADOW MAGAZINE, Nov. 1943 (© Street & Smith); THE SHADOW MAGAZINE, fall 1948 (© Street & Smith); THE SHADOW ANNUAL, 1947 (© Street & Smith).

Leslie Bellem transferred his considerable talent for the risqué romp into the darker world of urban violence and sexual sadism, soon creating the perpetually soused Hollywood sleuth Dan Turner, a comic figure some saw as a parody, and others as simply a pulp cliché magnified beyond all common sense. Under several pen names, Bellem often had multiple stories in any given issue. Disgruntled Weird Tales refugee E. Hoffmann Price quickly joined up, lured by higher word rates and an insatiable editorial demand. Likewise Howard Wandrei, who became H.W. Guernsey and Robert A. Garron. Hugh B. Cave was Justin Case. Black Mask castoffs Roger Torrey and James H.S. Moynihan also took to writing under concealed names. Pseudoscience pioneer Victor Rousseau Emmanuel called himself Clive Trent or Lew Merrill as the occasion demanded. The super-prolific Bud Long’s many bylines remain open to further investigation. Many feminine love-story writers did their Spicy duties masked by male pen names. A group of Philadelphia writers, unable to crack the better pulp markets, settled in to become prolific under variations of their true names. C. Samuel Campbell was Charles S. Campbell. Grant Milton and Milton Grant were variations on actual author Grant Milton Sassaman. The alternate bylines of Saul W. Paul and Charles R.Allen remain unknown. Spicy-Adventure Stories followed in 1935. (The hyphen was to avoid legal challenges from the prestigious superpulp, Adventure.) Then came Spicy Mystery Stories, which mixed the sex-andsadism formula with horror and fantasy already mined by Terror Tales and the like. It was considered a species of pulp paper sacrilege when Spicy Western Stories arrived in 1936.The western field had been held sacrosanct. No longer. In the beginning, the fiction fare offered up by Spicy Detective Stories was sordid and seamy, with frequent scenes of heavy petting and brutality against women. When the situations became really steamy, however, the action invariably trailed off into suggestive ellipses, allowing the

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184 | Spicy Detective Stories reader’s overheated imagination to fill in the rest. “Our stories border on the risqué,” Armer instructed his writers early on,“the situations may be compromising and passionate, but there must be no ‘consummation of love.’”Total nudity was banned, except in the case of female corpses. Men had to keep their clothes on. Sensational story titles like “The Burlesk Murders,” “Passion Killer,” and “Love Ghoul” were concocted to promise more than prevailing mores could ever deliver. Postal service pressure forced the artists to clothe female anatomies with undergarments, and the writers to describe the details of semi-nudity through colorful euphemisms for breasts and nipples.Adolphe Barreaux’s “Sally the Sleuth” comic strip — emphasis on the latter — suffered similar constraints. The longer it ran, the less revealing the undercover detective’s wardrobe became. A cottage industry grew up around filling the pages of the Spicy quartet. Pulp kings like Norvell W. Page and Laurence Donovan soon began moonlighting under tissue-thin aliases like N. Wooten Poge and Larry Dunn. William G. Bogart became Russell Hale. Conan creator Robert E. Howard masked his true identity as Sam Walser. Other notable contributors remain unknown to this day.All learned to step up to the ever-shifting line of indecency without going over, much as 1930s Hollywood fretted under Hays Office restrictions. Covers were the work of Allen Anderson and H.L. Parkhurst. But the king of the Spicy covers was Hugh J.Ward, a slick-cover artist trying to stay solvent in hard times. His portraits of situations simultaneously gruesome and salacious somehow managed to shine with an almost spiritual luminance, like an angel forced to paint purgatory. Frank Armer moved up in the organization as the editorial team of Wilton E. Matthews and Kenneth W. Hutchinson jointly edited the growing line, which ultimately included Private Detective Stories and a revived Super-Detective. In reality, contents and contributors were interchangeable, with series characters like Bellem’s Dan Turner

and Hugh B. Cave’s Runyonesque Eel appearing in multiple venues. Critics of the day complained that the stories all read like the work of one writer. No doubt they were heavily revised by the editors — who also contributed under names unremembered — to ensure the correct proportions of “spice.” Of the group, Spicy Detective Stories met with the greatest acceptance, and attracted the best writers. Hardboiled crime and frank passion were a natural mix. It is known that many uptown pulpsters inserted the required “hotcha” into their rejects, and peddled them to Spicy Detective, secure in the knowledge that their true bylines would forever remain unmasked. Most were. The true power behind the Spicy line was printer and rumored ex-bootlegger Harry Donenfeld. His Donny Press swallowed up many depression-bankrupted risqué pulp houses until he became by default the field’s king. It was said he also printed some of the notorious Tijuana Bibles, and perhaps the Spicy line — all of which carried comic strips — was really a hybrid of the genre pulps and those artifacts of a sleazier time. When Donenfeld fell heir to a faltering line of comic books, he formed DC Comics, and went on to enjoy multi-media successes with Superman and Batman.The Spicys were relegated to a sideline, until, in 1943, were replaced overnight by the new Speed line — finally tamed by a dramatic shift in the national mood and waves of attacks by censorship groups and local legal pressure, most significantly by crusading New York City mayor Fiorello LaGuardia and the Legion of Decency. Dan Turner continued unphased, both in Speed Detective and a spin-off title devoted to his adventures, Hollywood Detective. The company fell into further eclipse when it was discovered that editors Matthews and Hutchinson had for years been reselling old stories back to the company as new, and pocketing the fees. In 1947, both went to prison for five years on embezzlement and tax evasion charges. Speed Detective finally folded that year. Under art director Adolphe Barreaux, a reconstituted line

The Spider | staggered along until 1950, when it expired, a shell of its former self, with the title that started it all, Super-Detective. The cultural impact of the Spicy group is hard to quantify, but who can say that the current acceptance of a sexual dimension in mainstream popular fiction fostered by Hugh Hefner’s Playboy is not the consequence of these off-trail yet trailblazing magazines.—WM

THE SPIDER It did not take long for rival publishers to notice the success of Street & Smith’s The Shadow Magazine. A year after it went twice-monthly, Popular Publications released the first issue of The Spider, dated October, 1933. As publisher Henry Steeger frankly admitted, “The reason we started the title The Spider was because of the success of Street & Smith’s The Shadow. At this point in pulp history, individual titles became very popular, so we decided to try out a few ourselves.” Even Steeger could not clearly recall, decades later, the identity of the author of the first Spider novel, The Spider Strikes! and its sequel The Wheel of Death. Both were bylined R.T.M. Scott, the name of a popular mystery writer of the 1920s. The confusion stemmed from the fact that there were two writers named R.T.M. Scott, father Reginald and son Robert.A Popular associate editor, Robert wrote fiction as Maitland Scott.The character of millionaire Richard Wentworth was modeled after Reginald Scott’s celebrated Aurelius Smith of the Secret Service, while his Hindu servant Ram Singh was a clone of Smith’s Langa Doone. While it has been posited that Senior wrote the debut novel and handed the series off to his

son to continue, no one knows the truth. Nor is it understood why, by issue three, the original byline had been replaced by the house name of Grant Stockbridge — an obvious homage to The Shadow’s Maxwell Grant.The new byline concealed an expatriate Virginian named Norvell Wordsworth Page. Of Richmond, Page was in New York working for the News-Telegram and moonlighting writing pulp detective and horror fiction, while harboring visions of becoming the next Poe. The Spider was soon to end Page’s former career. Beginning with Wings of the Black Death, he pushed Richard Wentworth further and further into a nightmarish maelstrom of “emotional urgency,” to use the operative phrase editor Rogers Terrill insisted all Popular Publications fiction contain. Swiftly, The Spider evolved into a twisted version of The Shadow. Page added a false hunchback, fright wig, and vampire fangs to the black cloak and floppy hat of the standard-issue Shadow imitator. His laugh was similarly debased. Back-of-the-book crime stories gave way to several ongoing series characters after the first year.Arthur Leo Zagat’s crime fighting inner-city druggist Doc Turner, and Emile C. Tepperman’s Ed Race, the Masked Marksman, were the most popular, running until the end of the magazine’s life. Wayne Rogers contributed the Brother Henry series in the late 1930s. Clearly aimed at a more sophisticated audience than read The Shadow,The Spider gave significant attention to the personal travails of Richard Wentworth, troubled scion of the Wentworth millions, and his intense relationship with his fiance Nita van Sloan.Theirs was a true passion, but as Page continually reminded readers, the work of the Spider kept them from consummating it. His faithful Hindu servant Ram Singh sprouted a beard and became a full-blooded Sikh

PG 184 – THE SPIDER, Dec. 1939 (© Popular Publications); PG 185, L to R – THE SPIDER (© Popular Publications); THE SPIDER (© Popular Publications); THE SPIDER, 1937 (© Popular Publications); THE SPIDER, Oct. 1941 (Popular Publications).

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186 | The Spider warrior. Chauffeur Ronald Jackson had served with Major Wentworth in the Great War and gradually grew a personality. Professor Brownlee, who inspired Wentworth to become the Master of Men, provided scientific support. But by far the strangest relationship was the ever-shifting armed truce Wentworth enjoyed with Police Commissioner Stanley Kirkpatrick, who had vowed to bring the Spider to justice for his extra-legal depredations.Yet Kirkpatrick all but knew that his close friend was secretly the Spider. Their efforts to remain friends while obedient to their sworn duties provided the greatest scenes of white-heat dramatic tension in the series. For the first three years of the magazine, Page pushed himself and his crew to the brink of human endurance. New York was many times decimated by depraved criminal despots like the Red Mandarin and the Fly. Blood and bullets overflowed in Manhattan’s depression-era gutters. Innocent civilians died in horrific numbers. Wentworth and his allies fought, fell out among themselves, and reconciled numerous times, acting out a violent soap opera of such proportions that it inflamed the imagination of a ten-year-old named Stanley Lieber, who, as the adult Stan Lee, would imbue some of these epic passions into Marvel Comics’ Spider-Man. All through this Wentworth remained driven, arrogant, and emotionally unstable, gyrating between the elation of homicidal triumph and periods of black despair — sometimes only columns apart — that led readers to suspect that both writer and character shared a common affliction in paranoid manic-depression. Indeed, Page was infamous for parading around draped in a black opera cloak and floppy hat, in stark reflection of his alter ego. “Think of me as Richard Wentworth,” he once wrote.“The line between us is not very distinct.” Pushing the pulp envelope with every monthly story, Page gratuitously killed off Professor Brownlee and Nita’s loyal great dane, Apollo. He abruptly hit the wall in 1936. In the middle of the Living Pharaoh multi-novel sequence, he

dropped out, and was replaced by Emile C.Tepperman. Speculation runs from a nervous collapse to a contract dispute in which a younger, cheaper author supplanted the experienced hand. But Tepperman did not last. When Page returned in 1937’s The Man who Ruled in Hell, he very determinedly blows up the reality Tepperman had carefully constructed in his absence. For a time, Page alternated with Wayne Rogers, another strange denizen of the pulp jungle. Formerly a pulp editor named Achibald Bittner, Rogers took his new name after a brush with an embezzlement charge, and became prolific, filling the pages of Terror Tales and Horror Stories with yarns like “Satan Stole my Face.” Together, they took the series into weird menace territory. Story titles screamed hysteria: “The City that Dared Not Eat,”“When Thousands Slept in Hell,” and “Scourge of the Black Legions.” John Newton Howett’s searing covers more and more mimicked those nightmarish oils he painted for Terror Tales and their ilk. (John Fleming-Gould’s interior artwork remained a comforting constant.) Page began repeating plots, and the situations grew ever over-the-top, as if Grant Stockbridge was compelled to recount the great American nightmare over and over ad infinitum. Instability roiled the series in the autumn of 1939, when the story announced for the November issue,“The Spider and the Pain Master,” failed to appear. On doctor’s orders, Page went on a sea cruise for his nerves. A returning Emile Tepperman supplemented his work into 1940, after which Page soldiered on unassisted for the rest of the series. Raphael De Soto replaced Howett as the cover artist, shifting to a simplified movieposter look. All of this coincided with Loring “Dusty” Dowst becoming the latest in a long line of short-term Spider editors. This marked the mystical phase of the series, with its frequent incidents of telepathy, spirit communication, and similar otherworldly manifestations. Wentworth’s marked messianic complex, always lurking in the background, now surged to the forefront. He began consorting

with a Tibetan adept, and Page’s deep Christianity began to assert itself, culminating in the 100th novel, Death and the Spider — possibly the most violent Christmas story ever committed to paper. The Spider had become a vehicle for vigilante justice mixed with abiding faith, and only Norvell Page seemed oblivious to the incongruity of it all. The sudden death of Page’s wife,Audrey, and punishing wartime paper shortages dealt a fatal blow to The Spider in 1943. Near the end, editor Robert Turner had been revising Page’s outdated prose to bring it in line with the prevailing pulp standards. The magazine had lasted exactly ten years, closing with “When Satan Came to Town.” Nothing like it would be seen again until Mickey Spillane and Don Pendelton re-invented the idea of a driven anti-hero willing to kill to uphold civilization for reading generations yet to come.—WM

SPY MAGAZINE Spy (1986-1998) was edited out of the Puck Building in downtown Manhattan, only a few blocks from the original offices of Mad magazine. It can be rightfully called an offspring of that magazine, along with The Realist, another neighbor down on Lafayette Street. Spy is still remembered for its “Twins Separated at Birth” feature, but much of today’s mainstream media in America could benefit from the intense study of Spy as a sort of remedial college-level course in journalism. Spy magazine went beyond satire to report un-reportable truths, especially about New York’s power elite. It had the New York Times reporter Judith Miller pegged as early as October, 1989, with an article titled: “Her List of Republican Power Guys.”The same issue included,“The Sayings of John Gotti,” “The New York Review of Looks: An Analysis of Book Cover Poses (Is the author draining pool water out of her ear?),” and the Twins Separated at Birth were Drew Barrymore and (Bowery Boy) Leo Gorcey. Other early issues’ highlights included Monthly Anagram

I. F. Stone Weekly | Analysis (Ollie North = O, Rot in Hell and Clarence Thomas=Lecher Acts? Moan), “Buy This Magazine or We’ll Burn This Flag,” and “Cold War Nostalgia”. There was a special Washington, D.C. issue in May, 1990, with special reports on the “Capitol Hill Sex Swamp ” and “The DC Who-HatesWho,” but national politics were on display in most issues: “Clinton’s First Hundred Days and First Hundred Lies;”“The President who Couldn’t Say No: The Unbecoming, Very Lucrative Afterlife of Gerald R. Ford;” and Separated at Birth: Barbara Bush and Vincent Gardenia. Then there were the covers with Hillary Clinton’s Head superimposed on a different body, attired in underwear (with a suspicious bulge), or another one where she is wearing dominatrix gear in the White House. Corporate America and Wall Street were also a big targets: Separated at Birth: NY Daily News owner Robert Maxwell and the

Three Stooges’ Shemp Howard;“Splat! Wall Street Goes Wacko! Crowds Roar – Free Mike Milken.” Celebrities were easy fodder for Spy:“Marlon Brando’s Fatherhood Tips;” “Is David Lynch David Byrne?”;Twins Separated at Birth: Arnold Schwarzenegger and Randy Travis; and “Las Aventuras de Woody y Mia,” which presented the couple’s lives as a Spanish soap opera. Every good spy needs an arch-villain and Donald Trump became Spy’s Goldfinger. There was something wickedly cool about Spy.The magazine had panache and an inimitable voice, especially during the early days, no matter whom it was tearing down. Graydon Carter and Kurt Andersen, the initiators and editors of Spy, worked as if they were putting together their own version of Time magazine, but,“fair and balanced” was never Spy’s credo, and the editors encouraged – really demanded – hatchet jobs by their writers. Some of the Spy ethos of subversive, satirical

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journalism continues today on a few progressive Internet blogs and Comedy Central’s The Daily Show.—LO

I.F. STONE’S WEEKLY I.F. Stone’s Weekly was born in the vacuum left by the demise of the liberal/leftist New York newspapers P.M./N.Y. Star and the Daily Compass. In 1952, Isidor Feinstein Stone (1907-1989), a newspaperman better known as Izzy, brought the mailing list from the Daily Compass and solicited subscribers for a new radical publication. Stone wrote, “I am, I suppose, an anachronism. In this age of

corporation men, I am an independent capitalist, the owner of my own enterprise, subject to neither mortgager or broker, factor or patron. In an age when young men, setting out on a career of journalism, must find their niche in some huge newspaper or magazine combine, I am a wholly independent newspaperman, standing alone, without organizational or party backing, beholden to no one but my good readers. I am even one up on Benjamin Franklin — I do not accept advertising.” I.F. Stone’s Weekly was in the black from the beginning, with copies of the first issue going out in January, 1953, to 5,200 subscribers. In autobiographical writings, Stone, the son of Jewish immigrants from Russia, said that he

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188 | I. F. Stone Weekly had done every job on a big city newspaper except run the linotype machine. Stone had published his first homemade, newspaper at the age of fourteen. In his early twenties, he was the rewrite editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer, and would go on to work on the Philadelphia Record and the New York Post (in the 1930s and 1940s an FDR New Deal, liberal leaning paper). As a young man Stone joined the New Jersey branch of the Socialist Party before he could even vote, but soon left:“I felt that party affiliation was incompatible with independent journalism, and I wanted to be free to help the unjustly treated, to defend everyone’s civil liberty and to work for social reform without concern for leftist infighting.”When his paper stopped him from covering the executions of Sacco and Vanzetti, he quit and hitchhiked to Boston During the 1940s, Stone wrote for the trio of liberal New York publications that included The Nation, P.M./N.Y. Star, and The Daily Compass. Stone later noted that this was the greatest onthe-job learning experience for the type of reporting he wanted to do. In describing the early days of the weekly, Stone said,“There was nothing to the left of me but the Daily Worker.” Stone would always be grateful for the support given by charter subscribers to a new radical publication at a time when Joe McCarthy was compiling lists of what he characterized as subversive Americans. The Weekly’s strident anti-McCarthyism was little seen in other American publications of the time. (Although it should be noted that there were a few non-political magazines out there that were running pieces against the Red hunter. These were magazines like Galaxy Science Fiction and the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, which ran stories by Isaac Asimov, Judy Merril, and Fritz Leiber that were thinly veiled attacks on

McCarthyism. Of course, no one outside of the sf readership seemed to notice.) I.F. Stone and his wife Esther ran the Weekly together. As a reporter, Stone was fiercely independent. As his own publisher he was also immune to editorial or political pressures. In appearance, the weekly was a wolf in sheep skin. The conservative format, typography, and tame headlines masked a journal of keenly-written stories digging out truths in official transcripts, government documents, and political dialogues. Stone exhibited a particular knack for Washington, D.C., political archaeology. He knew from experience that reporters assigned to the Washington beat easily fell into a doppelganger mindset, where they took on the attitudes and thinking of the people they were covering. Stone was more likely to dig up information through research and thorough reading of government transcripts, rather than making the rounds of the usual Washington mix-and-mingle scene. He knew that bureaucracies were good at lying, but not so good at keeping secrets, and by crosschecking statements made by functionaries, he could arrive at some sense of the truth. Serving as the antithesis of I.F. Stone’s Weekly during the 1950s was the National Review, run by William F. Buckley Jr.When not championing Joe McCarthy, the National Review was questioning giving voting rights to “Negroes.” In 1941, Stone had resigned from the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., when they did not allow him to bring a black guest into the club. Stone’s blend of moral perspective and humor is evident in the following except from the piece titled “The Wasteland in the White Man’s Heart,” from September, 30, 1963:“Hire a Negro policeman? That was a ‘profoundly difficult,’ ‘almost impossible,’ problem. Just why was never explained; perhaps Negroes do not look good in blue, with brass but-

PG 188, L to R – TRUE WEIRD, vol 1, #1, 1955 (© Weider Publications); MR. AMERICA, Aug. 1953 (© Weider Publications); MAN'S TRUE DANGER, 1963 (Major Magazines, Inc. ); MR. AMERICA, #1, Jan. 1953 (© Weider Publications); PG 189 – TRUE GANG LIFE, Nov. 1934 (© Associated Authors).

Sunshine & Health | tons.” Here Stone was using the friendly image of the black Pullman Porter, familiar to any white person who had ever traveled on a train between 1880 and 1960.The railroads may have been one of the few places in America where blacks and whites mingled without direct animosity. The Weekly was also ahead of the conservative pack-mentality of most newspapers when it came to Vietnam, the covert illegal actions of the FBI and the CIA, the communist falling domino theory, the rights of displaced Palestinians, the Irancontra double-dealing of Washington, D.C. politicians, and the class greed of Reaganomics. In hindsight, I. F. Stone was right more often than not, which gave his detractors fits.The eight-page weekly took nothing for granted. The FBI had a massive file on Izzy (he had been attacking FBI director J. Edgar Hoover since the mid-1930s and called him “the sacred cow”). Years after Stone’s death, neo-cons swiftboated him, making him out as a soviet spy (wisely waiting until he was in the ground to do so).The right had always castigated Izzy on his opinions; if these opinions proved to be right later on, never mind. He has become an icon to internet progressive journalists and is considered, in columnist Dan Froomkin’s words, “The best blogger ever.” I.F. Stone’s Weekly was always questioning government deceptions and the media’s complicity — one of Stone’s favorite sayings was “all governments lie.” Recent history has proven him right.—LO

STOP! see Punk STRANGE SUICIDES see Medical Horrors STRIPARAMA see Acme News Company

SUNSHINE & HEALTH In October, 1964 a UPI wire story appeared in newspapers identifying Milton Luros (1912-1999) as the “Girlie-Book King” — the newsworthy core of the story was the indictment of Luros and his wife, Beatrice, for publishing and distribution of obscene literature through the United States mail.Authorities charged that Parliament Publications and London Press Publishing Company’s nudist magazines were not genuine nudist publications, but girlie magazines that used paid models. “The purpose,” said the Los Angeles D.A.’s office,“was not to foster the nudist movement, but to grind out obscene magazines with an appeal to the lust of their readers, many of whom are minors.”Also indicted was photographer Elmer A. Batters, and writers Sam Merwin and Richard F. Geis. Luros would eventually be sentenced to five years in prison and fined $99,000 in 1967.A United States Court of Appeals reversed the decision and Luros continued his rule in the kingdom of erotic magazines. The organized nudist movement took off in America during the early 1930s. For decades, secrecy and caution cloaked the various associations, made up mostly of German-Americans, after many enthusiastic raids by police egged on by reformers.At this time, a few European nudist magazines like the German Lachendes Leben (Laughing Life), were imported and sold on a few American newsstands. By 1933, nudist movies began appearing at traveling tent-theaters, and a magazine, The Nudist, later Sunshine and finally Sunshine & Health, was founded by the controversial Rev. Ilsley Boone (“Uncle Danny”), a Christian preacher who advocated naturalism as a return to the Garden of Eden. The Nudist was an over-sized magazine that was selling 110,000 copies through newsstands across the country in its first year.The movement always gave sun and health as their raison d’être – and said only dirty minds saw sex as the motive for people frolicking in the natural state that God intended. As long as they kept a

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190 | Sunshine & Health low profile, and on the outskirts of cities, the authorities seemed willing to tolerate private nudist camps, though every once in a while a law-and-order D.A. would create a stir. But, things would settle down in short order. In Germany, Hitler initially banned nudist camps when he came to power in 1933, but changed his mind when the National Socialist Party realized that their ideology of a pure race could be fostered by the movement and its emphasis on sport and physical culture. (The opening sequence in Leni Riefenstahl’s 1938 Nazi-sponsored documentary, Olympiad, is an ode to a healthy and beautiful nude body.) Publication of nudist magazines continued, greatly abating throughout the war years. After the war, with no laws to hinder them, German publishers were ready to resume in full force. Many American soldiers, stationed in postwar Germany, became fans of the magazines. When they returned to the States, they found pin-up magazines, but they had been spoiled. In this climate Hefner’s first issue of Playboy, in 1953, was inevitable. In 1947, postal inspectors barred Sunshine and Health from the mails. Boone responded by publishing two editions of the magazine; the version sent through the mail show nudes wearing diapers. By this time, Boone had begun distributing other nudist magazines. He would continue his court fights, and defended other publications such as the Naturel Herald before the United States Post Office Solicitor’s Office. In 1953, a New York Supreme Court came to an impasse on the issue of the obscenity of nudist magazines Sunshine and Health and Sun after the defense attorney waved the famed nude Marilyn Monroe Calendar before the jury.The calendar was sold all over town.The defense said,“the only difference between this picture and a magazine showing a nudist is that the nudist is sitting on a rock and Marilyn Monroe is sitting on a red plush robe.” Nudist magazines had been ruled off New York newsstands on the flimsy premise that they might excite juveniles to delinquency. Luros had his first obscenity arrest in 1961,

when a New Jersey court indicted him and attempted to extradite him from California. Before becoming a “girlie magazine” publisher Luros was a pulp artist working mainly for science fiction magazines. His earliest-known published artwork appeared in 1937 for Double Action Gang.The young Luros already had the pulp style of over-heated action scenes and garish palette down cold, but his initial entry into the magazine world as an artist only lasted a few years. Luros became an art director in New York City for a while in the late 1940s before returning to the magazine field in 1950, including a stint working for Joe Wieder’s group of muscle and real men’s magazines. By 1959, the magazine illustration field, especially science fiction, was running out of stream, and due to his close association with publishers and editors like Bill Hamling, Luros already had the knowledge necessary to become a publisher. On January 13, 1958, the United States Supreme Court finally agreed that nudist magazines (even those showing full-frontal nudity) were a legitimate form of expression and they could be sent via the United States Post Office. This was a victory for plaintiff Ilsley Boone, but the eventual winners would be people like Luros and other opportunistic magazine publishers. In 1964, a few years after Boone retired from direct management of Sunshine & Health, the magazine declared bankruptcy. By now other magazine publishers had saturated the marketplace with close to fifty nudist titles, and it was hard to tell which were put out by legitimate nudist groups and which were not.Some of the legitimate ones were Eden,The Naturist, Nudist Leader, Sun Magazine, Paradise, Sunbathing, and American Sunbathing. Questionable titles included Urban Nudist, Sun Era, Modern Sunbathing, and Nudist Photo Field Trip. Most of the latter were Luros’s magazines, and there was serious doubt about the bonafides of these as nudist publications.

Luros’s early publications, like Jaguar (1961), used the usual men’s magazine template: fiction, cartoons, and photos of bare breasts and buttocks. The nude photos were as far as commercial publications could go in terms of posed and paid models. Early Luros men’s magazines feature lots of Elmer Batters pictorials, and “Dear Elmer Batters,” a column of letters from readers.The courts were willing to accept the nudist creed and criterion of people engaging in healthy outdoor activities with their clothes off, but some nudist magazines were still playing it safe. As late as 1964, Modern Sunbathing magazine was printing the following disclaimer on its indicia page: It is the publisher’s policy to retouch pubic areas in photographs used in this magazine. This does not imply approval by the American Sunbathing Association. The Association prefers the truthful portrayal of the nude body and will not grant that

Super-8 Filmmaker | any part of it needs concealment or obliteration. In deference to the public mores in some localities, however, the Association grants it Seal of Approval to Modern Sunbathing despite this policy. In the early 1960s Luros met Stanley L. Sohler, a former American Sunbathing Association president, who talked him into publishing some of his photos taken on nudist trips.The field had evolved to the point where men and women could be shown in the same photograph, and Sohler pushed the matter further by showing couples smiling and enjoying themselves without a volleyball in sight. Luros at first found it easier, and cheaper, to get photographs of amateur nudists than to pay professional photographers and models working in a studio. Sun Era Publishing (along with Parliament News) sprang up solely to produce spurious nudist magazines, and was one of many companies Luros established under the umbrella company

American Art Agency. All of Luros’s publishing businesses were soon integrated,with in-house distribution and printing concerns, something even Hefner was unable to accomplish. The various companies were grossing $500,000 a year by the mid-1960s, and Luros became the largest distributor of erotica on the west coast. Traditional nudists were not happy to see the Luros nudist magazines. Some organizations banned Sun Era and Parliament News photographers from their camps. It was only a matter of time before Luros got the idea to stage nudist photo opportunities that appeared to be the real thing, but were far from it. This was full, un-airbrushed, frontal nudity without apologies, and Jaybird, in all its permutations, appeared. (Note: Playboy did not print its first photo of a women’s un-airbrushed pubic hair until 1971, soon after Penthouse began the

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practice.) The many Jaybird publications finally killed traditional nudist magazines. A spate of legal troubles convinced Luros to sell out and retire in 1974. Milton Luros’s publishing companies included Parliament News Co., Parliament Publications, Sun Era Publishing, American Art Agency, Art Agency Magazine, London Press, and representative soft-core magazines are Touch, Jaguar, Cocktail, Candlelight, Pagan, Harem Holiday, Snap, High Time, Nightcap, Tip Top, Nylon Jungle, French Frills, Sun Era, Urban Nudist, Nudist Photo Field Trips, Jaybird, Continental Nudist, Rhapsody,

Matinee,Tonight, Mood, Coquette, Showcase, Pussycat, Champagne, Black Magic,The Body Shop,Affair, Spree, and Trojan.—LO [see Black Silk Stockings, Jaybird]

SUPER-8 FILMMAKER Home Movies — Amateur Filmmakers Magazines On August 12, 1923, the Alexander F. Victor Company introduced their first 16mm movie

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192 | Super-8 Filmmaker camera and projector in full-page newspaper ads with the headline: “Make Your Own Motion Picture”. The Victor camera was the equivalent of the Kodak best-selling Brownie snapshot camera: simple and accessible.A few months later Kodak introduced its own amateur 16mm movie camera, the Cine-Kodak “Model A.” This was another hand-cranked camera directed at the home market. Before 1923, the French company Pathé had introduced a camera using a 9mm gauge film with a price tag low enough that any enthusiast could afford to own it, but the main problem for home use was the highly flammable nitrate film stock available at the time. This was the same film used for commercial movies. Victor understood that film that needed special handling would not work in the home and by convincing the Eastman Kodak Company to adopt and manufacture a stable film (using acetate as its base) which was safe for the home, he can rightfully be called the father of amateur films. In 1928 Eastman Kodak introduced Kodacolor film, in 1932 the 8mm format, in 1935 Kodachrome. Soon other movie camera manufacturers appeared: Bell & Howell, Bolex, Revere. In 1937, one could buy the 8mm Univex camera and projector together for less than $25. By the early 1930s there was a vogue for amateur films, and a small but keen amateur film movement flourished. Magazines soon appeared to cater to these enthusiasts. Amateur Movie Makers (1926-1954) was the club organ of the Amateur Cinema League in New York, and one of the first periodicals out of the gate. In the beginning, AMM was a showcase for experimental movie-making and an advocate for leftist amateur films, but grew more conservative and Hollywood-oriented by the late 1930s. By then, their main reporting had turned to local amateur film clubs. Experimental Cinema was published between 1931 and 1934 and was heavily influenced by Soviet Russian

films, and avant-garde art movement. Home Movies Magazine made its debut in October 1934 as a hobby organ and soon became the most popular magazine catering to amateur moviemakers. They gave readers constructive articles on the use of equipment, reviewed amateur films, and sponsored contests.Their directory of amateur movie clubs around the country helped to get like-minded cineastes together in the same way that science fiction magazines led to the creation of a sf fandom. In August, 1935 the magazine began the popular “Experimental Cine Workshop” column. While other amateur movie magazines concentrated on capturing family moments and public occasions, Home Movies always presented information in terms of what Hollywood was doing on the big screen.The goal was not to create family “home movies” as much as to create little

Super-8 Filmmaker | entertainments that mimicked the big boys and could engage and please an audience outside the immediate family.The “home movies” HM advocated were expected to have titles, be properly lit and edited, and even contain a sense of story.Their motto was,“Hollywood’s Magazine for the Movie Amateur.” Charles J. Ver Halen published Home Movies out of Los Angeles along with the companion magazine Hollywood Motion Picture Review. During WWII Eastman Kodak was giving priority to the army and navy defense industry, and Home Movies introduced a new phase for the home moviemaker with articles on home processing of film. In November, 1941 the winners of their Annual Amateur Film contest were televised over the experimental television station W6XAO to the handful of television sets in the Los Angeles area. After WWII, a school of American filmmak-

ers began creating short, personal films, using war surplus 16mm cameras. These films were filled with new ideas, points-of-view, and avant-garde concepts, and helped to introduce post-war, jaded audiences to a new way of movie making. Filmmakers like Meren Deren, Stan Brakhage, James Broughton, Kenneth Anger, Ed Emshwiller, and Stan Vanderbeck, using 16mm Bolex cameras, generated the same irruptive force as surrealists in Europe, before the war suspended their work.Their little films, full of experimental razzle-dazzle, went on to have an out-sized influence on TV, Hollywood, and world cinema. In many cases, these self-taught filmmakers first learned the nuts-and-bolts of filmmaking from moviemaking magazines. Today, the line between post-World War II avant-garde and home movies is hard to find. Filmmakers on both sides, accidentally or pur-

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posely, embraced non-lineal structures, disjointed juxtapositions in editing, trial-and-error, serendipitous mistakes, and low budgets.The only difference may be that one group was written up in Film Culture, and the other group in Home Movies. The early films of artist/filmmaker Ed Emshwiller are a case in point.These were literally filmed as home movies. In fact, the only difference from a home movie is that Emshwiller’s films were exhibited before art cinema audiences. Hollywood has also come around full circle, with the deliberately flawed “mistakist” cinema of directors like Harmony Korine and Lars von Trier. By the late 1960s, this amateur ethos had

become mainstream and even began to appear in documentaries, television commercials, and shows like Laugh-In, and eventually led to the visual chaos of music videos. The introduction of the expanded Super-8 format in 1965 coincided with the surging interest in personal, underground, experimental, and new cinema, and found an eager new generation of filmmakers (Spielberg, Spike Lee, and James Cameron started out using Super-8 movie cameras). Super-8 Filmmaker ran from 1973 until 1982. It contained pieces on cel and stop-motion animation, special effect modifications to cameras, set designs for filming, getting sound on film,

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194 | Super-8 Filmmaker and creating 3-D film effects. Contributors included Lenny Lipton and Dennis Duggan. In its last year, it changed its name to Moving Images. Today, Super-8 Filmmaker has achieved a legendary status among Hollywood tech-heads who remember searching mailboxes or newsstands for the latest issue when they were kids.The people who put out Starlog Magazine published the special effects-oriented CineMagic in the early 1980s as a guide to fantastic filmmaking. It is hard to believe that there was an audience big enough for this sort of publication, but CineMagic lasted many years.—LO [See Film Culture]

T TALES FROM THE CRYPT (Eerie Pubs.) see Lunatickle TALES OF MAGIC AND MYSTERY A hybrid entry into the field of supposedly true occult stories intermixed with weird fiction, Tales of Magic and Mystery was a bedsheet-sized magazine published by the Personal Arts Company of Camden, New Jersey, apparently in emulation of Macfadden’s Ghost Stories. Years away from writing the adventures of The Shadow,Walter B. Gibson edited the unusual periodical. His assistant was D’Arcy Lyndon Champion, also know as Jack D’Arcy, then years away from ghosting the Shadow imitator known as The Phantom Detective. Gibson outlined his needs in a contemporary market notice:

“We are in the market for short stories of from 1,000 to 3,500 words, touching upon the strange, bizarre, and the unusual ghost stories, horror stories, etc.We also use articles on magic and miracles of the past and present, as well as on spirits and spiritism, etc. One of the regular features is a department on ‘Strange Personalities,’ and we would like to receive brief articles of 200 to 300 words on such people, living or dead. If a photograph or drawing, showing only the head of such a person can be supplied, so much the better.” As editor, Gibson used the magazine to foster his lifelong interest in stage magic and illusion, and incidentally recycle newspaper syndicate material he was simultaneously producing on the subject. He was close to some of the major magical talents of the 1920s, such as Howard Thurston and Joe Dunninger, and employed the new periodical as a platform to promote them to the public. “I ghost-wrote a series for Thurston on some of his adventures,” Gibson recalled.“I had a series of articles on Houdini. I wrote under half a dozen different names. We had some interesting stories that we picked up from various sources, including one by Lovecraft. We also had a section devoted to simple tricks, magic, and so forth.” Gibson penned most of the latter anonymously. Among his bylines were Alfred Maurice, Bernard Perry, and “Astro.” As “Howard Thurston,” in each issue Gibson told a fanciful “autobiographical” story about the famous magician’s adventures in such hotbeds of mysticism as exotic India or among the headhunters of Java. Otherwise the fiction was typical supernatural period fare — as titles like “The Devil’s Darling” and “The Haunts of Ghosts” attest.The Lovecraft tale was “Cool Air.” Other contributors included Miriam Allen De Ford, Frank Owen, and Charlton Lawrence Edholm. Peter Chance’s eerie “The Black Pagoda” ran as a three-part serial. Robert

PG 194, L to R – WHISPER, Mar. 1951 (© Whisper, Inc); SCIENCE FICTION QUARTERLY, #1 (Blue Ribbon); Bot – WHISPER, May 1950, interior spread (© Whisper. Inc); PG 195, Top to Bot – TRUE ADVENTURES, Nov 1955, interior page (© New Pubs); JET, Sept. 25, 1952 (© Johnson Publications).

Terror Tales | Leslie Bellem’s “The Flowers of Enchantment”was another standout story. Bellem recounted composing it while in the thrall of a new minor chord he discovered while plucking on his banjo one day: “Then I quit and just sat there, letting my innards quiver in tune to that funny minor chord, that throbbing, elusive sound.Then I deliberately put the banjo down, went to the type machine, loaded it with paper, and banged out as weird and mysterious a yarn as you’ll want to read. All the time I was writing, shivers were chasing up and down the old pile of vertebrae and you could have hung your hat on any given one of my goose pimples. Meanwhile, somewhere in my mind’s ear was that damned, elusive chord. Believe it or not, when I finished ‘The Flowers of Enchantment,’ it was letter-perfect in its first draft.” Covers and interior art appear to be the work of Erle Bergey, aping the pen-and-ink Art Nouveau style of Aubrey Beardsley. Premiering in December, 1927, Tales of Magic & Mystery ran only five issues, ending with the April, 1928 number.The limitations of its editorial vision might be demonstrated by the fact that the first issue carried a variation of W.W. Jacob’s “The Monkey’s Paw,” titled “The Adventure of the Mummy’s Hand” and the final featured “The Lure of the Shriveled Hand.”Yet the magazine’s collapse led directly to a new incarnation from another publisher, True Strange Stories.–WM [see Ghost Stories,True Strange Stories]

TALES OF THE KILLERS see Myron Fass TAN CONFESSIONS Black publications In 1931 Oriental Stories published a painted cover showing a typical dark skinned Javanese woman with her breast exposed. This was not the first time that mass market, non- “spicy” or “snappy”

type, newsstand fiction magazine had done so. During the Great Depression, when it came to women of color there appeared to be no restrictions on the amount of nudity allowable and Liberty, Ballyhoo, Cosmopolitan, and many other frontof-the-newsstand publications were wont to show dark skinned women in all sorts of undressed states without any real compunction.Yet no masscirculation, openly displayed American magazine would dare to show a white woman’s breast completely bare on its cover. It was as if there was a different physiognomy involved between a white and a dark breast. All of the mass-market publications mentioned previously were mostly marketed and bought by white readers. It is hard to imagine American blacks buying fiction magazines that generally excluded them, but surely some did purchase copies of Oriental Stories, or Liberty, or Ballyhoo. But it was not until 1945 that the first real exploitative magazine directed at African Americans appeared, published by 27-year-old John H. Johnson out of Chicago. This was Ebony, and it flourished at first on a spicy blend of sex and sensationalism. Ebony was the first black magazine to use a full color cover.The March 1946 issue featured Lena Horne. In the early 1950s Johnson added the digests Jet, Tan Confessions, and Hue to his magazine stable. By the mid 1950s Johnson’s magazines began taking serious note of the civil right struggles going on around them.The September 8, 1955 issue of Jet ran a picture of the battered body of Emmett Till, the black teenager who was lynched in Mississippi for supposedly whistling at a white woman. The open-casket photo allowed the nation to see the brutality and injustice happening in the Deep South and helped to galvanize the civil rights movement. Ebony’s main competitor was Bronze Thrills, from Good Publishing Company in Fort Worth, Texas, which started as a tabloid the same year as Ebony. George Levitan, who would go on to publish Hep, Jive, and Sepia, owned Good Publishing. Hep and Sepia were the most sensational of this

bunch, and featured stories ran the gamut from serious issues facing “negros” to typical exploitation:“I Hate You by Archie Moore,”“Harry Belafonte:Why Does He Excite White Women.” By 1957 some of the best magazines imitating Playboy included Nugget, Rogue,Adam, Cabaret, and Caper. In that year Duke join the pack. Duke was aimed at African American men and got off to a fast start with stories by Chester Hines, Ray Bradbury, and James Baldwin. The magazine used a strange bronze colored male manikin as a cover mascot. It appears that advertisers did not feel that African American men were affluent enough and without major advertising support the magazine only lasted six issues.—LO

TERROR TALES Weird-Menace Pulps Dime Mystery, Terror Tales, and Horror Stories were collectively, at the heart – or more appropriately, bowels – of the fad for weird-menace stories that flourished in a number of pulps in the mid-tolate-1930s.The stories all followed a similar pattern: The lead characters are menaced by some strange agency and are inevitably captured, tortured, or threatened in some other sadistic way, and may survive, but not always.The menace may seem to be supernatural, but invariably the solution is discovered to be by human hand. Sadism was central to the plot and was the image projected on the magazine covers. The stories may claim a direct descent from the original gothic novels, especially the more grotesque ones by Matthew Gregory, “Monk” Lewis, or Lorenz Flammenberg, and their natural offspring, the penny dreadful. Thomas Peckett Prest’s “The String of Pearls” (1846), which introduced the demon barber, Sweeney Todd, would have been well at home in the weird-menace pulps.Their more direct inspiration, though, was the Grand Guignol Theater in Paris where there were scenes of simulated torture and murder.

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196 | Terror Tales Henry Steeger, who had just established his own publishing house, Popular Publications, in 1930, believed this was an area to explore, maybe even exploit. Among Steeger’s early pulps were Detective Action (begun in October 1930) and Dime Detective (begun in November 1931).The latter would become one of the company’s most profitable titles as one of the major purveyors of hard-boiled fiction, rivaling Black Mask at its best.To complement Dime Detective, Steeger launched Dime Mystery in December, 1932, but its initial format of a long lead mystery novel – presented as a $2 “book” for a dime – and a handful of short stories failed to find a market, since it offered nothing new. So Steeger and his right-hand-man, editor Rogers Terrill, looked to the Grand Guignol Theatre and decided to change the content from traditional mystery to the story of terror. Terrill defined terror as that bowel-clenching feeling you have when you are sure something awful is about to happen to you, as distinct from “horror,” which is the feeling you have when you witness something awful happening to a third party. Steeger and Terrill wanted the readers to feel both the horror of what they were witnessing and the terror of experiencing it, plus, of course, the mystery of trying to understand what was happening. This change took effect with the October, 1933 issue. The cover illustration, by Walter Baumhofer, set the trend for what would follow. A man is strung up over a pit of liquid in which are already decomposed human skeletons, and a cloaked and masked figure is about to cut the rope while a woman struggles to stop him. It illustrated “Dance of the Skeletons” by Norvell Page, and tells of people who are mysteriously disappearing only to appear as skeletons, disposed of on the streets within a few hours.Also present in that issue were John H. Knox, Hugh B. Cave, and Robert C. Blackmon, all of whom would

become regulars in the weird-menace pulps, to be joined by Wayne Rogers in the November issue and Wyatt Blassingame in December. The titles of their stories give a good idea of what Steeger wanted their readers to anticipate: “The Graveless Dead,” “The Death Beast,” and “They Feed at Midnight.” Here are stories that suggest a non-human evil – maybe vampires or zombies – and the stories lure the reader along such paths until the rather more mundane denouement. The turnabout in Dime Mystery’s sales was almost instant. The prospect of vile horrors and sadistic killers clearly attracted a significant readership. Sales were so promising that Steeger put out two companion magazines, Terror Tales, dated September, 1934, and Horror Stories ,dated January, 1935.These were priced at fifteen cents compared to Dime Mystery’s ten cents, but all three magazines offered 128 standard pulp pages with little difference in the fiction. The magazines were initially monthly, though Horror Stories went bi-monthly from the start of 1936, as did Terror Tales that summer, the two magazines thereafter alternating, operating to all intents as one monthly periodical. With three magazines to fill, the number of regular contributors increased.Arthur Leo Zagat, Arthur J. Burks, Bruno Fischer (writing as Russell Gray), and Henry Treat Sperry all became part of the line-up.All of the regulars churned out formula fiction as required and there is not much distinction between them. Hugh Cave’s work was perhaps the most sinister with a strong atmosphere of doom. Burks was known for spinning stories from almost any simple idea, so his stories can be the most inventive. Zagat embellished the atmosphere to almost Lovecraftian proportions and liked to heighten the terror by telling stories from the heroine’s perspective.Wyatt Blassingame enjoyed the unusual. He was one of the few to appear with a genuine supernatural story, “The Horror at His Heels” (Horror Stories,August/Sep-

PG 196 – ORIENTAL STORIES (© Popular Fiction Com.); PG 197, Top to Bot – YOUNG’S REALISTIC STORIES, May 1941 (© Realistic Stories); DUKE, Nov. 1957 (© respective copyright holder).

Terror Tales | tember 1936). John H. Knox and Wayne Rogers were the ones who used more sadistic scenes, emphasizing the gore over the mystery. All could concoct an effective title which occasionally rose above the formulaic to such poetry as “Master of the Purple Plague,” “The Art That is Learned in Hell,”“The Hunger Without a Name,” or “Kiss of the Flame Blossom,” by Donald Dale. But most titles followed a set formula such as “Brides for the Damned,”“Death is my Servant,”“Satan’s Virgin,” or “Blood for the Cavern Dwellers.” From its second issue, Terror Tales introduced the cover art of John Newton Howitt. He had been an illustrator for the leading slicks, including Saturday Evening Post and The Delineator, and the pulps were a step down for him, occasioned by the pressure of the Depression. Nevertheless he applied himself as meticulously to the pulps as to any of his other work, even though he held them in disdain.The irony today is that the rest of his work, including his landscape paintings, are mostly forgotten, but his pulp art makes those magazines highly collectable. Howitt’s early terror covers emphasized the supernatural.The October, 1934 Terror Tales depicts a giant cloaked skeleton clutching a woman in obvious distress. The December, 1934 issue has a satanic figure appearing from flames to douse its female victim in some molten liquid.The January, 1935 cover has a woman struggling across what appears to be a lake of blood from which hands are trying to pull her down, whilst another cloaked skeleton follows her in a boat. These scenes had nothing to do with the stories. Perhaps concerned that they might mislead readers expecting a more violent form of Weird Tales, the covers soon changed to depict heroines facing more mortal and somehow more frightening foes. Howett and his fellow artists – which included Rudolph Zirn,John Drew,Tom Lovell,and Jerome Rozen – depicted mad scientists, crazed doctors, drooling imbeciles, ape-men, hunchbacks, and any number of cloaked sadists. Increasingly, as the covers grew bolder, women were branded, thrown into vats of acid or burning cauldrons, trapped in

glass domes, electrocuted or chopped by rotating blades.Women were seldom depicted totally nude – there was usually some discreet clothing or wisp of hair to hide their modesty – though on a few occasions the publisher pushed the limits. Howitt’s cover for the August,1937 Horror Stories shows several totally nude women encased in blocks of ice, one in stark close-up. There were some surprise contributors to the weird-menace pulps. Dime Mystery published the first professional short story by John Dickson Carr (or “Dixon” as they insisted on calling him),“The Man Who Was Dead” (May 1935). Carr already had a reputation for his novels, so his name was a selling factor for the magazines. Unusually the story had a supernatural element. A man, who reads of his death in a newspaper, believes he may have become detached from reality, but though his situation is resolved, he still feels he is being pursued by something unreal.“The Door to Doom” (Horror Stories, June 1935) was more in the style of the Grand Guignol, which fascinated Carr. However, after these two stories a contractual problem arose that soured relationships between Carr and Popular and apart from a story in Detective Tales, he sold nothing more to them. Cornell Woolrich, who had found a welcome market in Dime Detective, sold two stories to Dime Mystery, both of which are considered classics. “Dark Melody of Madness” (July 1935), better known as “Papa Benjamin,” and “Graves for the Living” (June 1937) are powerful suspense stories where the protagonist has fallen foul of a religious cult and fears death at any moment. Dime Mystery was an ideal market for Woolrich’s noir stories but, alas, he was selling readily elsewhere and when he returned to the weird-menace market for a third time it was with a dismal flop, “Vampire’s Honeymoon” (Horror Stories, August/September 1939), the title of which tells you all you need to know. Belgian writer Raymond de Kremer, better known under his alias Jean Ray, appeared in translation, with three stories under the name John Flanders, starting with the mundanely enti-

tled “A Night in Camberwell” (Terror Tales, September 1934). His most intriguing story was “If Thy Right Hand Offend Thee” (Terror Tales, November 1934) where a jeweler, who traps a thief in his shuttering but severs the hand, finds himself in a bizarre cycle of events. Dime Mystery also ran a translation of a story by the Austrian fantasist Karl Hans Strobl, “Dead Woman’s Lodger” (December 1935). From 1919 to 1921, Strobl had edited one of the world’s first magazines of fantasy and surreal fiction, Der Orchideengarten,and published several collections of strange tales. Strobl allied himself with the Nazi cause and his work fell out of favor.Very little was translated, so his appearance here is unusual. These, and a few other one-off contributions by Frank Gruber, William G. Bogart, John Hawkins,Thorp McClusky, and the like, though they were the exception rather than the rule, did at least show that the weird-menace pulps were open to submissions from beyond their small circle of contributors. Unfortunately, the diversity was not sufficient.There are only so many variations on a restrictive formula that even the most enterprising of writers can manipulate, and after six years of reasonable success it became evident that the gimmick was tiring, along with the authors and the readers. Terror Tales ceased in March, 1941 after 51 issues and Horror Stories in April, 1941 after 41 issues, and already for the last year or two the stories had dumbed down. Dime Mystery, which had also been moving away from the weird-menace story, became bi-monthly from May, 1941 on, and the menace covers ceased by September, 1941. It continued for another nine years as a fairly traditional mystery magazine, folding in October, 1950, the last six issues retitled 15 Mystery Stories. The brief but meteoric popularity of Dime Mystery and its companions had inevitably seen rival publications such as Thrilling Mystery from Standard Magazines and Uncanny Tales from Marvel’s publisher, Martin Goodman, but none of these delivered the goods or packaged them as well as Steeger’s outfit. Dime Mystery, Horror Sto-

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198 | Terror Tales ries, and especially Terror Tales provided, to adopt the title of one of Zagat’s stories, the true “Revels for the Lusting Dead.”—MA

TIGER BEAT Originated in 1965 by Hollywood deejay Lloyd Thaxton, Tiger Beat quickly became a flashy, pop teenage magazine hit in imitation of 16 magazine. Thaxton’s image appeared on early issues. The magazine gave the new The Monkees tv series continuous coverage after signing an excusive merchandising deal with the show’s producers, and also produced various one-shot of the manufactured rock group.The magazine was positioned to take advantage of tv teen acts, like The Partidge Family and The Osmonds, just down the road. Tiger Beat was generally filled with fluff material about popular music and teen idols, written for a young audience. —JH

TITTER see Confidential, Whisper TRUE CONFESSIONS see Captain Billy’s Whiz Bang TRUE DETECTIVE MYSTERIES, TRUE EXPERIENCES, TRUE LOVE STORIES see Physical Culture TRUE STRANGE STORIES Bernarr Macfadden’s True Strange Stories came about as a direct consequence of the collapse of its predecessor, Tales of Magic and Mystery, which had been edited by Walter B. Gibson, later to create The Shadow. “So when [Tales of Magic and Mystery] folded,”

he recounted, “I went up to [Editor in Chief] Fulton Oursler and said,‘Why doesn’t Macfadden start a magazine like this?’ And he said it didn’t seem the right title for them. But I said,‘Yes, but look at our subtitle — ’Strange Stories.’ So we started a magazine called Strange Stories. That was the inspiration.” Ourlser thought that the new venture should not present itself as a fiction magazine, as had Tales of Magic and Mystery. Thus it became True Strange Stories, a companion title to their popular supernatural confession magazine, Ghost Stories. Like Macfadden’s other titles, True Strange was a rotogravure magazine illustrated by file photographs and dramatized scenes, created in a photographic studio using actors posing as the participants in the alleged events. Commuting from Philadelphia, Gibson helped Oursler assemble the first issue. That accomplished, editorial responsibilities were turned over to Ray Wilson, freeing Gibson up to write for the new venture. Prompted by a witchcraft scare in Pennsylvania Dutch country,Wilson asked Gibson to write a story reflecting the headlines.“Why I am Called a Witch” was set in type as the May, 1929 cover story the same day Gibson submitted it. It was the soon-to-be-prolific novelist’s first fiction sale.The byline ran “by Madeline Grover as told to Walter B. Gibson.” He followed it with “Three Times in the Shadow of the Gallows,” by Major Robert Brannon and “At the Foot of the Gallows” under his solo byline. “Macfadden’s True Stories were supposedly true,” Gibson admitted.“You could develop them as you saw fit…and many of them were true only in the sense that they could have happened and probably had happened.” True Strange’s contents were broadly defined. Gibson penned “Death Valley Scotty’s Dash to Fame,” covering the life and times of Walter Scott,

a promoter who lived in a palatial castle in Death Valley, supposedly supported by the proceeds of a gold mine guarded by Shoshone Indians. H.G. Wells’s account of a clairvoyant,“The Remarkable Case of Davidson’s Eyes”,is reprinted as “The Man who Saw Half-Way Around the World.”“The Boy Who Dropped out of the Sky” recounted the ofttold saga of the enigmatic Kaspar Hauser. There were revelations of contemporary silent film and stage stars, and other notables of that era. “The Mad Mystic and the American Beauty” (as told by Alice Gregory Stafford to Franklin Holt) was a semi-fictionalized serial of Rasputin’s final days.Another serial,“Love Defies the Grave” (by Edmund Earl Wilson, M.D., as told to C.C. Waddell), told of a medical student becoming smitten with the lovely corpse he was assigned to dissect.A fantasy entitled “The Bleeding Mummy” was the work of F.M. Pettee. (Not every story adhered to the standard confessionstyle “X as told to Y” dual byline.) Other contributors included Leslie MacFarlane, George Witherspoon, Howard Booth, Mildred Morris, and Stuart Palmer. Regular features included “The Story that Saved my Life,”“Strange Facts from Life,” and a monthly astrology column by “Stella.” Editorials carried the signature “Webster Scoville.” Painted covers were the work of Hubert Rogers, N.F. Soare, and numerous others. With articles like “He Thought He Killed Lincoln,”“The Man who Fooled Barnum,”“The Machine that Rocked the World,” and “Was it a Man or Only a Head?” True Strange Stories was a clear forerunner of The National Enquirer by way of The Police Gazette. True Strange Stories ran only nine issues, from March to November, 1929, under the True Strange Stories Publishing Co. imprint of Macfadden.The stock market crash of October, 1929, led to its abrupt demise.—WM [see also Ghost Stories,Tales of Magic and Mystery]

PG 198, Top to Bot – WILDCAT ADVENTURES, 1962 (© Candar); SIR!, Nov. 1954 (© Volitant Publishing); PG 199 – SEA MONSTERS, vol. 2, #1, 1978 (© Countrywide).

Unknown |

U, V UNCANNY TALES see Humorama UNCENSORED DETECTIVE, Hillman Periodicals In 1938, Alex L. Hillman (1900-1968) started Hillman Periodicals in response to Macfadden and Fawcett’s success in the “true confessions” and true crime field. Hillman was soon competing, magazine-for-magazine, against the dominant players in the business with titles such as Real Story, Real Confessions, Real Romances, and Crime Confessions (1938).The latter was the first of many lowbrow Hillman detective titles: Crime Detective, Headquarters Detective (1940), Uncensored Detective, and Real Detective. At the end of 1944, Hillman Periodicals killed some of their marginal magazines — mostly comic books — and use their wartime paper allotment to start Pageant, a new 25-cent slickpaper, pocket-sized magazine. Hillman hoped to capture some of Reader’s Digest audience and prestige with his new offering. Pageant did not quite reach the sales level of Reader’s Digest, losing nearly half a million dollars in its first three year, yet it survived until 1977 (being sold to Macfadden in 1961). Fawcett was moving in the opposite direction from Hillman with their expanded comic book line and realized immense profits from various Captain Marvel titles during the 1940s. Hillman’s comic books, in contrast, always fell short with character like Skyboy and the Heap. Both publishers left the comic book field in the mid1950s: Fawcett after a long court battle with the

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publisher of Superman over character infringement, and Hillman over poor sales. Hillman magazines matched their comic books with rather lackluster interiors wrapped in eye-catching covers. Headquarters Detective and Crime Confessions were among their sleaziest and longest-running titles. As a magazine publisher, Hillman always followed trends; when science fiction became hot in the early 1950s, they brought out Worlds Beyond, edited by Damon Knight. Carnival, Exclusive, and People Today (1954) were primarily photo magazines that carried many pin-ups and somewhat interchangeable articles, i.e., “Earnings of Five prostitutes.” They also put out a few oddball items such as Who Goofed? (1956), which was a humor magazine mostly made up of photos of famous people manipulated to look ridiculous. A lame concept, but the pictures showed talent by the (pre-Photoshop) photo manipulators.—LO

UNKNOWN Unknown (retitled Unknown Worlds in October 1941) was the pulp companion to Astounding Science Fiction, and was also edited by John W. Campbell, Jr. Although it ran for only 39 issues, from March, 1939 to October, 1943, it is still regarded as the premiere all-fantasy magazine. Since Campbell had taken over as editor of Astounding at the end of 1937, he had worked hard to rid that magazine of any remaining spaceopera excesses that had given science fiction such a bad image over the previous decade, and to introduce a more mature form of the genre, which he did with remarkable success. Astounding had occasionally published fantasies of the more imaginative kind and though Campbell could find no place for them in his new approach to a science fiction magazine, he did not want to reject them out of hand. Stories such as L. Ron Hubbard’s “The Dangerous Dimension,” which had appeared in the July, 1938, Astounding, had proven popular with readers and Campbell

200 | Unknown PG 200 – UNCANNY TALES, 193 (© Red Circle); PG 201, Bot band, L to R – SPACE SCIENCE FICTION, Aug. 1953 (© respective copyright holder); FLYING SAUCERS FROM OTHER WORLDS, June 1957 (© Palmer Publications); SIR!, Feb. 1955 (© respective copyright holder).

believed there was scope for a companion fantasy magazine. This belief was apparently boosted, according to legend, when he received Eric Frank Russell’s novel,“Sinister Barrier”. Based on Charles Fort’s idea that humans were cattle, protected by aliens, the story has a science fiction setting, but is not bolstered by a scientific rationale. Campbell’s plans for the magazine had certainly become firm by late October, 1938, when he wrote to Robert Swisher, informing him that he was starting a new fantasy magazine. He added: “The material is to be fantasy plus a little weird, supernatural, and horror of the psychology type. NO sex, NO sadism, and NO elementals of a malignant nature with penchants for vivisection, no beauteous and necessarily nude maidens sacrificed to obscene gods.” Campbell’s restrictions were clearly aimed at the weird-menace pulps, such as Terror Tales and Horror Stories, but also at Weird Tales. Campbell did not want the antiquated form of weird tale that had grown out of the tradition of Edgar Allan Poe, or the gothic tale. Nor did he simply want further re-treads of the work of H.P. Lovecraft. “He was immensely liked – by the small clique that read Weird regularly,” he wrote to Jack Williamson on January 6, 1939, but added,“It still wasn’t good writing.” Campbell had contacted many writers whom he believed could write for Unknown – or Strange Worlds, as he was originally going to call it – including L. Ron Hubbard, L. Sprague de Camp, Edmond Hamilton, Clark Ashton Smith, C.L. Moore, Seabury Quinn, and Lester del Rey, though his guidelines at this stage were unhelpful, since he tended to emphasize what he did not want to publish rather than what he did. It was going to be a case of “suck it and see.” Inevitably, this led to problems, because in putting the first issue together, Campbell primarily had material

that was more science fiction-oriented, but not sufficient for Astounding. So when Unknown appeared in February, 1939 (first issue dated March), readers were not entirely clear where the magazine was going. “Sinister Barrier” was a wonderful novel, but it was close enough to the material that had appeared in Astounding to make Unknown look more like a bolt-hole for rejects. The very best story in the first issue was “Trouble with Water,” by H.L. Gold, where a man inadvertently annoys a water gnome and is cursed so that all water avoids him, which begins to ruin his life.The magazine’s letter column shows that readers were uncertain about this story at first, even though today it is regarded as the definitive Unknown-style yarn. It had all the ingredients that Campbell was looking for: a light humorous touch, but with a serious consideration of the fantastic problem that had arisen, but at the time it looked out of place against the other contents. For Astounding, Campbell had encouraged his writers to pursue a scientific premise to a logical conclusion, and he wanted them to do the same with fantasy. He did not want his authors to explain how magic worked, but simply to accept it and explore the consequences. In effect, he wanted fairy tales for adults, but without the moralistic or didactic undertones. He wanted stories where the writer could let loose and the reader could have fun with an idea – even if it was sinister. A good example of the latter was “Strange Gateway,” by E. Hoffmann Price in the second issue (April 1939), where a man witnesses a murder but later discovers that the victim was dead long before. To some extent fantasies like this were already appearing in the slick magazines, such as Saturday Evening Post and Esquire, especially the works of John Collier,Thorne Smith, and Stephen Vincent Benet, but the slick market would not support a magazine of total fantasy and these writers were

Unknown | unlikely to contribute to a pulp market. So Campbell had to find his own writers, just as he had when he revamped Astounding. Thankfully, a number of contributors quickly realized what Campbell wanted and he soon had a stable of regular writers. Not surprisingly, many were Astounding authors, including L. Sprague de Camp, L. Ron Hubbard, Cleve Cartmill, Lester del Rey, Malcolm Jameson, Henry Kuttner, and Theodore Sturgeon. It may be the freedom that the magazine allowed, compared to the scientific regimen of Astounding, but for many of these writers Unknown published some of their best work.This is especially true of L. Ron Hubbard. Elsewhere the majority of Hubbard’s work was little above hack level, but in Unknown his ability to create an enjoyable fantasy adventure shone through. He cornered the market for light tales set in the world of the Arabian Nights with his first contribution,“The Ulti-

mate Adventure” (April 1939), followed by “Slaves of Sleep” (July 1939), and “The Case of the Friendly Corpse” (August 1941).The latter might also be of interest to fans of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld and J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books, as it is set in the College of Unholy Names where wizards learn their craft. Hubbard’s masterpiece is generally considered to be Fear (July 1940), a nightmarish psychological novel about a man who seems to have lost four hours from his life and, as he tries to piece them together, finds himself beset by personal demons. It’s a wonderful evocation of guilt and terror. But an almost equal masterpiece is “Typewriter in the Sky” (November-December 1940), one of Unknown’s occasional serials, which flips the central idea of Fear on its head. Horace, a hack writer, is trying to write a novel into which his roommate, Mike, is projected. Mike finds himself at Horace’s mercy, because

Horace is such a hack writer that Mike is constantly propelled into stock dangerous situations and he has to devise a way to outwit the author. All of these stories were novels or serials and Unknown’s main selling point was its emphasis on longer works.The other main contributor of these was L. Sprague de Camp. In collaboration with Fletcher Pratt, he created the character of Harold Shea, who finds he can access alternate worlds based on mythology by imagining the logic of that world. In the first, “The Roaring Trumpet” (May 1940), he travels to the world of the Norse myths; in “The Mathematics of Magic” (August 1940), it’s the world of Spenser’s Faerie Queen; while in “The Castle of Iron” (April 1941), it’s Coleridge’s Kubla Khan. There was also a nonShea novel, “The Land of Unreason” (October 1941), set in the world of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The fun of these stories isn’t

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simply the recreation of a literary world, but in seeing how the authors explore the basis of that world, making it as real as our own.The authors were effectively applying Campbell’s science fiction principles to fantasy, and the result was compelling. De Camp wrote several other lead novels and stories, a few of which, such as “Lest Darkness Fall” (December 1939), and “The Wheels of If ” (October 1940), are equally enjoyable, but are too emphatic of their science, and thus less representative of Unknown-style fantasy. In contrast, the Harold Shea stories remained popular, and are still remembered as among the author’s best work. One author not usually associated with fantasy, despite a few sales to Weird Tales and Strange Tales, was Jack Williamson, yet he was to appear in Unknown with one of its most powerful novels, “Darker Than You Think” (December 1940). Williamson had arguably produced the ideal syn-

FLYING SAUCERS

202 | Unknown thesis of fantasy and science fiction, creating a scientific premise for the basis of lycanthropy, allowing him to explore the darker side of the human psyche. Others may argue that the ideal synthesis was Robert A. Heinlein’s novel “The Devil Makes the Law!” (September 1940), also known by its book title, Magic, Inc., where he created a world in which magic works as if it were a science, with its own laws and bureaucracy. Heinlein was, to many, a less likely fantasist than Williamson, but to prove it was no flash in the pan, he struck gold twice more, with the short story “They” (April 1941), which questions whether our world is real or an illusion, and the short novel “The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag” (October 1942), which also looks at our world from the outside. Although the powerful lead novels were the backbone of Unknown, the short stories acted like the senses, allowing the reader a wide and diverse experience of the worlds of fantasy. It was here that several writers shone, none brighter than Theodore Sturgeon. He had sixteen stories in Unknown, starting with “A God in a Garden” (October 1939), where a chronic liar discovers a god who grants that everything the liar says will be true, causing him to watch his words very carefully.Although his classic is usually regarded as the slime-monster story “It” (August 1940), it should not overshadow the delights of “Shottle Bop” (February 1941), about a shop that sells magic in bottles where the instructions must be followed precisely and “Yesterday Was Monday” (June 1941), where the protagonist somehow slips out of reality and witnesses the scene-shifters who create each new day. Henry Kuttner, who previously had shown himself as either a Lovecraft-clone in Weird Tales or a sleaze hack in Marvel Science Stories, suddenly revealed his abilities as fantasy’s jester – Unknown’s Thorne Smith. His nine stories take simple ideas and twist them into pantomime. Perhaps the best was “A Gnome There Was” (October 1941), where an attempt to organize a gnome trade union goes horribly wrong, but other favorites

include “The Misguided Halo” (August 1939), where sainthood proves a problem, and “Design for Dreaming” (February 1942), where we are transported to the land where dreams are created. Of the authors who debuted in Unknown, the greatest was Fritz Leiber. Campbell had vowed he would not publish any Conan-like heroic fantasy, but he could not resist the unlikely companions Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, one a barbarian and the other a quick-fingered, nimble rogue. These were not at all Conanesque, but were vulnerable, human, and above all, believable. “Two Sought Adventure” (August 1939), introduced the pair, who would appear in four more stories in Unknown, and continue to entertain for the next 50 years, being the longest running and most popular series that the magazine generated. Leiber was to prove he could do more than outshine Robert E. Howard. In “Smoke Ghost” (October 1941), he created a new form of city ghost, updating M.R. James, while in the novel “Conjure Wife” (April 1943), he updated Abraham Merritt and codified witchcraft as a natural branch of science. The sheer volume of good to excellent stories in Unknown is overwhelming. Campbell had clearly created a market authors loved and which unlocked their creative powers. Almost every author who contributed more than just one or two stories produced at least one of their best works. With “Take My Drum to England” (August 1941), Nelson Bond sought to do for the Second World War what Arthur Machen had with “The Bowmen” in the First World War, and has Sir Francis Drake’s warship assist in the evacuation of Dunkirk. In “Snulbug” (October 1941),Anthony Boucher spoofs the whole wish-granting demon genre and then takes it a step further in “Sriberdegibit” (June 1943), where the protagonist actually outwits the demon. In “Etaoin Shrdlu” (February 1942), Fredric Brown has a printing machine develop intelligence from the books it

prints. Cleve Cartmill’s short novel “Hell Hath Fury” (August 1943), prefigures The Omen with the offspring of a human and demon created to bring misery to the Earth, but Cartmill has the child develop a conscience so that it strives to correct all the problems it has created. In “Hereafter, Inc.” (December 1941), Lester del Rey shows how heaven would be hell for a true ascetic. In “Doubled and Redoubled” (February 1941), Malcolm Jameson established the idea (now known as “groundhog day” after the 1993 movie) of a man constantly reliving the same day over and over again and trying to change it. Freed from the expectations of his Weird Tales readers, Frank Belknap Long came out from under the shadow of H.P. Lovecraft to produce some of his best work, including “The Elemental” (July 1939), a tale of two forms of possession, and the genuinely frightening “Grab Bags are Dangerous” (June 1942). “The Idol of the Flies” (June 1942), which shows how an evil child receives his due punishment, is generally regarded as the best of ten superior stories that Jane Rice contributed. A.E. van Vogt wrote one of his most complex novels in “The Book of Ptath” (October 1943), which deals with a god-like ruler of the distant future gradually rediscovering his identity and trying to regain his power. In “When it was Moonlight” (February 1940), Manly Wade Wellman revisits the life of Edgar Allan Poe, with an experience that might have inspired one of his best-known stories. For a magazine that published less than 250 stories, it is an impressive hit rate and, not surprisingly, it has been constantly mined for anthologies.There are at least five anthologies composed entirely of stories from Unknown: Hell Hath Fury (1963), edited by George Hay; The Unknown (1963) and The Unknown Five (1964), both edited by D.R. Bensen; Unknown (1988), edited by Stanley Schmidt; and Unknown Worlds (1988); by Schmidt with Martin H. Greenberg.

PG 202 – SPICY-ADVENTURE STORIES, Feb. 1937 (© respective copyright holder); WORLD WAR 3, #19, 1993 (© World War 3); PG 203 – SUSPENSE, spring 1951 (© Farell Publishing.

Weider Magazines | What the anthologies lack, though, is Unknown’s artwork. For its first sixteen issues, Unknown bore cover art by H.W. Scott, Graves Gladney, Manuel Isip, and other pulp artists, but from July 1940 on, cover art was discontinued and replaced by only a list of contents. This has perhaps marred part of Unknown’s value, but it was more than compensated for by the contributions of one particular artist whose work was tailor-made for the magazine, namely Edd Cartier. His ability to create mischievous imps and sinister ghouls in his simple but effective line drawings helped create the atmosphere of enjoyment and escapism that Campbell wanted, but even more so, brought the stories and characters alive. It is impossible to separate the memory of Unknown from the imagery of Cartier. In addition to losing its cover art, the magazine went through several changes. The title was changed to Unknown Fantasy Fiction in February, 1940, to avoid any misapprehension that the magazine dealt with psychic and occult matters. It changed again to Unknown Worlds in October, 1941, partly returning to Campbell’s original proposed title of Strange Worlds. These changes also sought to boost sales that were not on a par with Astounding. Signs that all was not well continued when Unknown dropped to a bi-monthly schedule in January, 1941 (cover date February). From October, 1941, along with the title change, the magazine format changed from standard pulp to large flat pulp, sometimes called erroneously “bedsheet” size.This was not a cost-cutting move, but rather intended to capture a wider market. The leading slick magazines were all now in the large flat format, and Street and Smith had entered that market with Mademoiselle in 1935, which, by 1940, was the firm’s top-selling magazine. The publisher wanted to switch all its magazines to the larger format, a trend that was also being explored by the leading men’s adventure magazines Argosy (in January 1941) and Blue Book (in September 1941). Astounding would follow suit in January, 1942. Although it worked for the major pulps, it didn’t work for Astounding or Unknown. Paper and

other forms of rationing arising from America’s entry into the second world war cut deep into Street and Smith’s production. Unknown reverted to standard pulp size in June, 1943, and there were plans to drop it to the smaller digest format in November, 1943, when Astounding changed. At the last minute it was agreed to sacrifice Unknown in order to sustain Astounding as a monthly. Unknown’s final issue was dated October, 1943. Ironically, the British edition of Unknown, which only reprinted partial issues, was able to string out its reprints throughout the War and right up until the end of 1949, a total of 47 issues. A few stories bought for Unknown were used in Astounding, such as Anthony Boucher’s “The Chronokinesis of Jonathan Hull” (June 1946), but most were returned to the author, a few surfacing years later, as with Cleve Cartmill’s “Age Cannot Wither” in the final issue of Beyond (1955). The legacy left by Unknown is immense. It gave the pulp market a sophisticated form of fantasy and weird fiction that it had not previously seen and in that process allowed many writers to mature. It also set a benchmark for quality and in so doing gave fantasy a reputation and status that it had lacked.—MA [see Astounding Science Fiction]

VOLITANT PUBLISHING Most vintage men’s magazine fans remember Robert Harrison’s group of pre-Confidential magazines, Beauty Parade, Eyeful, Whisper, Titter, and Wink, but few recall the publications put out by competitor Adrian Lopez (1906-2004). Lopez’s publishing company was called Volitant (named after a race horse that paid off big for him) and in some ways his publications, especially Sir, were the equal or better of Harrison’s men’s magazines. Lopez was born in Southampton, England, of an Irish mother and a Spanish father. He took a degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Notre Dame, but during the Great Depression turned to writing. He was soon selling

pieces to Black Mask, Dime Detective, Greater Gangsters Stories, and Argosy, and working as a freelance reporter for William Randolph Hearst’s The New York American. Lopez got together with a couple of college friends in 1935 and with the backing of the American News Company, started Satire.This was a hybrid humorous/spoof magazine, similar to the Harvard Lampoon. Satire ran theme issues lampooning movies and crime magazines. At some point around 1939, Lopez got together with Harry Donenfeld, the publisher of National Comics (their best known comic book was Superman),who matched the $3000 that Lopez made on the racehorse, and the two became partners on a host of magazines including Laff, Sensational Detective Cases,True Life Detective,Vital Detective (1944), Hit! (1943), and Sensational True-Crime Detective Cases. Laff (1939) was a humorous copycat of Life and early forerunner to Sir (1943). A pin-up picture magazine Peek appeared in 1940. By the mid1950s Lopez had put together a wide range of magazines that included: Laff, Real Crime, Man to Man,Action (1953), Stock Car Racing, Strange Medical Facts (1953), Famous Models (1950) which became Famous Paris Models in 1951. Sir!:A Magazine for Males, was especially popular and ran for over three decades, from the mid-1940s until the early 1980s (outlasting all of Harrison’s publications). During the 1950s Sir! ran many articles on UFOs. The magazine managed to keep up with trends in the men’s magazine field, and got raunchier with each new decade. During the early 1970s Lopez published a couple of comic humor magazines, Harpoon and Apple Pie. The latter featured lots of nudity and artwork by people working for National Lampoon such as Neal Adams and Russ Heath. Underground comix artists Kim Deitch, Justin Green, and S. Clay Wilson also contributed to Apple Pie.—LO [see Spicey Detective Stories]

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W WEIDER MAGAZINES Joe Weider was born in 1923 in Montreal, Canada. As a skinny teenager he became interested in bodybuilding and nutrition, which led to the publishing of a newsletter called Your Physique. Weider moved to America during the 1940s, where he began organizing bodybuilding contests, started the International Federation of Bodybuilders, and began selling bodybuilding nutritional supplements and mail-order pamphlets through his new magazine, Muscle Builder. The pamphlets included:“Sex Education For The Bodybuilder,”“Special Strongman Stunt Course,” “How To Build Courage And Confidence,” Secrets Of A Healthy Sex Life,” and “Joe Weider’s

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Mr.America Bodybuilding Course.” During the 1950s muscle magazine carried the millstone of public sentiment that bodybuilding led to homosexuality and narcissism. Tomorrow’s Man and The Male Figure, magazines that did not try to minimize the bulge in a bodybuilder’s brief, helped fueled some of this attitude. By the mid-1950s,Weider, in partnership with his brother Ben, was publishing a host of masculine titles with the backing of the American News Company, these including American Manhood,True Adventure, Mr. America, Mr. Universe, True Weird, True Strange, Muscle Builder, and Fury. American Manhood used painted covers and carried the tagline Adventure + Sports + Bodybuilding + Exposé + Crime.A typical issue might have “A Personal Interview With Rocky Marciano,” along with “Add Inches Of Muscles To Your Arms,” and “I Hunt Elephants.” Early 1950s issues of American Manhood carried photos of the Miss Muscle Beach contest, held in California, but these appeared more as eye candy than a sincere look at women’s bodybuilding.The collapse of American News Company in 1957 forced Weider to kill or sell most of his titles, and he concentrated on his last remaining magazine, Muscle Builder, and his bodybuilding products, through most of the 1960s. Weider moved his base of operations from Jersey City, New Jersey, to Los Angeles in the late 1960s. In 1971, the Weider brothers established the Mr. Olympia contest and a year later introduced Arnold Schwarzenegger to America. Schwarzenegger appeared many times on the covers of Weider’s magazines, and this brought him to the attention of Hollywood producers. Weider also began emphasizing women bodybuilders in his glossy Muscle & Fitness, and this led him to launch Shape, in 1981. Weider was a latecomer to female physical

culture. Day & Night magazine held a popular Muscle Queen contest in the mid-1950s that led to admirers of women bodybuilders discovering each other. That magazine’s letter pages were taken over by these fans throughout the run of the contest. One of the people sending pictures to Day & Night was O. J. Heller, a longtime photographer of circus women and female athletes, and contributor during the 1960s to Women’s Physical Culture, which was a precursor to Shape.—LO [see Health Knowledge, Dell vs. American News Company, and The Male Figure]

WEIRD MYSTERIES Jim Warren published Creepy #1 in 1965, which presented black and white horror comics in a magazine format that could safely bypass comic book censors, and it soon begat many imitators: Shock from Stanley Publishing, Terror Tales from Eerie Publications, and Psycho from Skyward Publications. But some years before there had been an attempt at a similar concept titled Weird Mysteries (1959). The contents of the one and only issue of the “monster size” Weird Mysteries was aimed at a more adult audience, even though it is likely that there were a lot of kids picking it up off of newsstands. Some of them might even have been interested in the pin-up photos, or ads for books like An Unhurried View of Erotica, or the Brigitte Bardot stag-movie photos for sale. Like the E.C. Comics that it and the later Creepy were imitating, Weird Mysteries also had a wisecracking horror host, Morgue’n the Morgue Keeper.The magazine contained scripts by Carl Wessler, a one-time E.C. writer, and art by E.C. Comics’ alumni Joe Orlando and Angelo Torres. (To complete the closed loop of imitation, both artists would later create new art for Creepy.)

Weird Tales | The March 1959 Weird Mysteries was the only issue, but some months later Eerie Tales appeared on newsstands from another publisher. Weird Mysteries had been published by Hastings Associates, Eerie Tales by Pastime Publications, but the contents of Eerie Tales were unmistakably from the same outfit that put together the earlier magazine.The only real difference this time were the ads geared to kids.This “second” issue had art by more E.C. people, including Al Williamson. As with Weird Mysteries, there was only the one issue of Eerie Tales. The time was not yet right for a black-and-white-illustrated horror magazine, Weird Mysteries and Eerie Tales were merely placeholders.—LO [see Famous Monsters of Filmland, Lunatickle, and Castle of Frankenstein]

WEIRD TALES “The Unique Magazine” Long before Stephen King became a household name, long before Clive Barker, long before Dean Koontz and Anne Rice, there was Weird Tales. Subtitled “The Unique Magazine,” it was in its pages that modern horror and fantasy were born. Originally published from 1923 through 1954, Weird Tales was one of the most influential fiction magazines ever printed in the United States. For 279 issues, it helped shaped the face of fear for decades to follow. It truly was a unique publication. Founded in March, 1923 Weird Tales was the creation of Jacob Clark Henneberger, the publisher of College Humor magazine. Living in Chicago at the time, Henneberger was close friends with many of the top literary names of the

time, including such writers as Hamlin Garland and Ben Hecht, all of whom complained that there was no market for outré, supernatural, oddball fiction. A lifelong fan of Edgar Allan Poe, Henneberger decided to publish a magazine that would print stories too controversial, too unusual, too bizarre for any conventional publication. Thus was born Weird Tales, “The Unique Magazine.” Unfortunately, with his magazine paying less than a penny a word for rights, Henneberger was never able to attract the big-name authors he wanted to his new magazine. Instead, he discovered a whole new generation of writers who became legends in their own time. Without question, Henneberger’s greatest discovery was H.P. Lovecraft. Up until that time, Lovecraft had been writing for amateur magazines that had little distribution and paid nothing for his fiction. It was in Weird Tales that Lovecraft became

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famous.The magazine published a vast majority of his work, including his story,“The Call of Cthulhu,” the foundation of his acclaimed Cthulhu Mythos. Weird Tales also published unusual verse, and it was in its pages that Lovecraft’s famous poetry cycle,“Fungi from Yuggoth” first appeared. Another major Weird Tales find who made his mark on the world of letters was Robert E. Howard. Howard, the creator of Conan the Barbarian, sold his first story to Weird Tales in 1925, and it was in the pages of that magazine that the Conan series was first published. King Kull, Bran Mak Morn, and Solomon Kane were three other Howard creations who also flourished in the magazine. It’s doubtful that any other magazine of the period would have published either Howard or Lovecraft’s work. Their writings were “unique” and could not be easily defined by any one genre.

CROOKED DAMES

206 | Weird Tales Weird Tales was never about defining genres, but instead about destroying their boundaries. Defying tradition was another hallmark of Weird Tales. In May, 1924, the magazine published “The Loved Dead,” by C.M. Eddy, a friend of H.P. Lovecraft.The lurid story, written in the first person, told the grisly tale of a man obsessed with the dead, a ghoul. One particular passage described him being discovered one morning in a mortuary, sleeping with his arms wrapped around a female corpse.A shocked reader in Indiana accused Weird Tales of promoting necrophilia, and the cause was taken up by the local branch of the KKK.The furor passed in a few months, but Farnsworth Wright, editor of the magazine, credited the commotion with helping Weird Tales through a difficult financial period. Wright, who headed the magazine from 1924 until the end of 1939, was a top-notch editor who often bought stories he personally didn’t like, but felt sure would appeal to his readers. It was his editorial vision that made Weird Tales one of the few pulp magazines that was regularly read by the editors of the Year’s Best Short Stories and earned a number of stories an honorable mention in that series. After Wright’s departure (he died June 1940) the magazine was edited until its end in 1954 by Dorothy McIlwraith, a fine editor, who published much of Ray Bradbury’s earliest fiction. Robert Bloch, author of Psycho, was another Weird Tales discovery, as were Edmond Hamilton, Frank Belknap Long, C.L. Moore, Henry Kuttner, Donald Wandrei, August Derleth, and many other famous supernatural writers. A number of other authors published their first story elsewhere, but made their reputations in the pages of Weird Tales.These writers included Clark Ashton Smith, Ray Bradbury, Carl Jacobi, Manly Wade

Wellman, Hugh B. Cave, Mary Elizabeth Counselman, Seabury Quinn, and Fritz Leiber. Famed movie director Val Lewton appeared in print in Weird Tales with a short story in 1930, and Tennessee Williams’s first short story was published in Weird Tales in 1928. Under Farnsworth Wright’s guidance, no subject was taboo or too unusual for the pages of Weird Tales. In 1934, Seabury Quinn, the author of a long series of psychic detective adventures featuring a sleuth named Jules de Grandin, penned a tale where a ghost tries without success to break up the marriage of two orphans. De Grandin, always an opportunist, used a vacuum cleaner to suck up the ghost’s ectoplasm. However, it wasn’t until the end of the story that the whole truth about the haunting came out. The two orphans, who had been raised by a villainous old man as distant cousins, were actually brother and sister. By marrying, they had committed incest. The ghost of the old man had returned to reveal the secret, but had been stopped by de Grandin. When the ghost-buster was asked by his friend if he planned to tell the couple the truth, de Grandin said no. He saw no reason to make the happy couple miserable, and that in such an unusual situation, incest was not really a crime. It was an enlightened attitude, not only for the 1930s, but also for today, yet not one reader raised a voice in protest. Not only did Weird Tales publish some of the most unusual and provocative fiction of the period, it also featured some of the most unusual and imaginative artwork ever printed in a magazine. Virgil Finlay and Hannes Bok, two of the greatest names in the fantasy art field, both sold their first work to “The Unique Magazine.” J.Allen St. John did a number of other-worldly cover paintings,and Margaret Brundage’s pastel nudes were among the

PG 208 – WEIRD TALES (© respective copyright holder); PG 209, L to R – WEIRD TALES , #1, Mar. 1923 (© respective copyright holder); WEIRD TALES , #1, Mar. 1923 (© respective copyright holder); WEIRD TALES , Nov. 1935 (© respective copyright holder); Bottom tier: WEIRD TALES (© respective copyright holder); WEIRD TALES , Oct. 1936 (© respective copyright holder); WEIRD TALES , June 1939 (© respective copyright holder); WEIRD TALES , June 1934 (© respective copyright holder).

Weird Tales |

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208 | Weird Tales most famous covers ever to be published in the history of pulp magazines. And in the late 1940s, the grotesque art of Lee Brown Coye set the standard for macabre illustration for years to come. During its 31 years of publication, Weird Tales printed hundreds of classic stories of horror and the supernatural that have since been reprinted in dozens of anthologies throughout the world.Many of the stories published in the magazine were adapted for television and the movies.Among the more notable are Robert Bloch’s “Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper,” as well as H.P. Lovecraft’s “Herbert West: Reanimator” and “From Beyond.” Lovecraft and Howard and Smith; Bloch, Bradbury, and Leiber took horror fiction out of the nineteenth century and firmly placed it in the modern era.With their fellow Weird Tales contributors, they turned dark fantasy away from English manor houses and traditional haunts and aimed it at the much more frightening horrors of the twentieth century, from the blackness of outer space to the eerie recesses of the inner mind. In doing so, these writers brought horror fiction kicking and screaming out of the past into the present and revitalized the entire genre. The original Weird Tales magazine died in 1954, the victim of changing tastes, the growth of modern science fiction, and cold-war paranoia. Nothing in print could match the horror of the Cold War and the atomic bomb. A few of the magazine’s most popular writers, Bradbury, Bloch, and Leiber, made the jump to the science fiction field or mainstream magazines. Horror, except for stray appearances in men’s magazines, took a long vacation. But horror never dies. Much more an emotion than a mere genre, horror returned stronger than ever in the late 1970s and early 1980s with the incredible popularity of King, Koontz, Straub, Barker, and Rice. And, rising out of its unquiet grave, came Weird Tales. In 1973, under the editorial guidance of Sam Moskowitz, Weird Tales was revived for four magazine issues. The publication primarily featured reprints of rare stories from obscure horror books

and magazines. The magazine was most notable for serializing Moskowitz’s biography of William Hope Hodgson, a famous horror author who had died in World War I. Despite a valiant effort, the publication ceased in 1974. In 1979, under the editorial guidance of Lin Carter, Weird Tales returned as a series of four paperbacks published by Zebra Books. The paperbacks were fairly successful, and published work by some of the brightest new writers in the fantasy genre. Unfortunately, due to personal problems, Carter was unable to edit more than four volumes, and Weird Tales folded again. A fourth incarnation of the magazine was published by Brian Forbes, a California fan in the mid-1980s.The first issue of the revived magazine featured new work by Stephen King and Harlan Ellison, however, the publication was underfinanced and a second issue saw only limited distribution. Weird Tales perished yet again. The magazine returned to life in 1988 on the 65th anniversary of its first issue. Now under the banner of the Terminus Publishing Company, it was edited by George Scithers, Darrell Schweitzer, and John Betancourt. The revived magazine featured all new stories by authors such as Stephen King, Brian Lumley, Robert Bloch, Gene Wolfe, Tanith Lee, and many others. New artwork was provided by the top artists in the fantasy and horror fields. Nearly 20 years after its latest resurrection, this new version of Weird Tales continues to haunt the newsstands and magazine shops of America, proving that there will always be a place for “The Unique Magazine.”—RW

WEIRD TERROR TALES see Health Knowledge Magazines WEB DETECTIVE WEB TERROR STORIES Web Detective/Web Terror Stories/Web Terror earned its cult status as much by being one of the most

Web Detective/Web Terror | confusing titles to collect as it was one of the last weird-menace magazines. It was owned and published by Robert C. Sproul, best known as the publisher of the humor magazine Cracked – or Cracked Magazine, as it liked to call itself.That had started in 1958 as a rival to Mad, and came out under Sproul’s Major Magazines imprint, to which he later switched a number of his men’s magazines. But his first imprint was Candar Publishing, which survived well into the 1960s. Robert C. Sproul had been one of the road salesmen for the Ace News Corporation, the holding company for the Ace Fiction Group of magazines and paperbacks, where his father, Joseph Sproul, was general manager. Bob Sproul, as he was always known, was then in his mid-20s and keen to run his own set of magazines.With his father’s help, he launched two humor magazines, College Laughs and French Cartoons, in

October, 1956 and would later publish several men’s magazines, including Man’s Action in September, 1957, and Man’s Daring in June, 1959. But at the outset, he wanted to publish a science fiction magazine, as the boom in such magazines, though fading away, still appeared lucrative.With the help of Donald A.Wollheim, the editor at Ace Books, he published Saturn, the Magazine of Science Fiction, with the first issue dated March, 1957. It was a standard digest-sized magazine, running to 128 pages selling for 35 cents, and boasted on the cover “a new find:” the first English translation of “Eternal Adam” by Jules Verne.This has subsequently proven to be a work by his son, Michel. A story over 50 years old was not exactly at the cutting edge of science fiction, and neither were the other stories, which were bottomdrawer material by Noel Loomis, Robert Silverberg, and John Brunner, acquired primarily

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PG 206 – WONDER STORIES (© respective copyright holder); PG 207, Bot band, L to R – SAUCY MOVIE TALES, Jan. 1936 (© Movie Digest ); TERROR TALES, May 1940 (© Popular Publications); CARTOON HUMOR, spring 1949 (© respective copyright holder).

because the first issue was compiled in a hurry. The second issue, with rather more time, dated May, 1957,was more promising, with some reasonable material by James H. Schmitz, Lloyd Biggle, Jr., and Damon Knight, plus an unusual item by Cordwainer Smith and one of August Derleth’s stories (based on an idea by H.P. Lovecraft), “The Murky Glass.”To allow for the trespass into weird fiction, the magazine was now called Saturn Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. The third issue (July 1957), now called Saturn Science Fiction and Fantasy, had another forgotten story by Jules Verne (and this time it was his work), “The Ordeal of Doctor Trifulgas,” but it

was minor material, as were most of the other contents except for Gordon R. Dickson’s story of artificial intelligence,“Mx Knows Best.” The fourth issue (October 1957) held a major surprise: a new story by Robert A. Heinlein.“The Elephant Circuit” had been written in 1948, but, as an allegorical fantasy, had failed to find a market, and its appearance here was Wollheim’s biggest coup.The issue also ran some good material by Jack Vance, Harlan Ellison, and John Christopher, plus a scare article, “California Will Fall Into the Sea,” by William F. Drummond, Ph.D., which was more in tune with what Sproul would run in his men’s magazines. Overall, it was

MERMAIDS

210 | Web Detective/Web Terror PG 210, Top to Bot – interior illustation from PEPPER, vol. 1, #4 (© respective copyright holder); ZEST, Apr. 1960 (© Bannister Pubs.); PG 211, L to T – A-OK FOR MEN, Apr. 1963 (© respective copyright holder); TERROR TALES, #7, Mar. 1969 (© Eerie Pubs.); TRUE DETECTIVE, Aug. 1963 (© respective copyright holder).

the best issue so far. The fifth issue, delayed until March, 1958 had little to offer, despite the names Lloyd Biggle, Marion Zimmer Bradley, and Robert Silverberg. It did feature a new story by Clark Ashton Smith, “The Powder of Hyperborea,” which makes the issue collectible, and it also ran the very last story by Ray Cummings, “Requiem for a Small Planet.”As with the previous issue, it ran another scare article, “Red Flag Over the Moon,” by Romney Boyd, looking at the coming space race. In all, Saturn was a minor magazine, worthy of little attention, and one that could not compete against the major magazines or the blossoming paperback market. Sproul realized sales would not improve – at least not without substantial funding – and he decided to switch to the detective magazine market that he believed was more promising. However, rather than kill off Saturn and start a new magazine with all the attendant bureaucracy in re-applying for a new mailing permit, he simply amended the title of the next issue (August 1958) to the rather clumsy Saturn Magazine of Web Detective Stories, though the cover design made it clear the title was really Web Detective Stories.Wollheim helped acquire a few of the stories, but from here on the magazine was essentially edited by Sproul alone. The change in content was significant. Having discovered the delights of the men’s magazine field, where he could publish such articles as “Satan’s Pigs Ate Us Alive” and “Sex on Wheels” (both Man’s Action, March 1958) Sproul believed he could run the same material in a cheap digest magazine. So he rounded up a team of writers known for their contributions to crime, action, and men’s magazine fiction, including Art Crockett,Al James, and Bill Ryder, and soon they were churning out stories under such titles as “Blood Bath for the General,” “Short Cut to Hell,” and

“Lust Without Pity.”The stories were in imitation of those appearing in Manhunt and other hardboiled magazines like Trapped and Sure-Fire Detective. Sproul was all for imitation and never had an original idea for a magazine. The magazine occasionally attracted some contributors of interest. Lawrence Block had brief stories in both the April and June, 1959 issues; Robert Silverberg had a tale of revenge in the September, 1959, issue; and Edward D. Hoch had two tales of suspense in the May and August, 1960 issues, and a third in September, 1961. Perhaps the best individual story is “The Triple Cross,” by Richard Deming (October 1960), one of his stories featuring the one-legged PI, Manville Moon. There was also a Chester Drumm, PI, story by Stephen Marlowe in the January, 1961 issue, and Harlan Ellison had a strong crime story,“A Corpse Can Hate,” in September, 1961. The May, 1961 issue may have the best all-around contents, with some solid work by James Holding, Ed Lacy, Frank Kane, and Hal Ellson, the equal of anything in Manhunt and its imitators at that time. These, though, are the exceptions to the usual diet of sex, depravity, and violence. As the magazine progressed,the violence and sadism increased. One such example is “Lust Claims a Bride,” by Bill Ryder (January 1961), in which a frigid wife pleads to her ex-marine husband to give her time to be a true wife. While the husband is gone, a sadistic “sex fiend” who is on the loose breaks in, trusses up the wife, strips her naked, and is whipping her prior to rape when the husband returns and saves her. However, the husband has decided that to bring her around to his way of thinking, his wife needs a good thrashing.The reader would have to decide if that made him no better than the sex fiend or a true he-man. The magazine’s title was steadily metamorphosing. The original clumsy title had become

Saturn Web Detective Stories with the October, 1958 issue (dated December on the cover), and though that title remained on the contents page and indicia, it became simply Web Detective Stories on the cover from the June/July, 1959 issue. Sales, though, continued to be sporadic.The late 1950s and early 1960s was a difficult time for magazines. The field’s biggest distributor, ANC, had ceased operating and though Web was distributed through Ace, dealers were becoming more selective, preferring to display paperbacks rather than digest magazines. Many of the digests were folding and few dealers discriminated between titles. Web Detective almost went the same way. September, 1961, saw its last issue under that title and, for some months, nothing else appeared. Then, in August, 1962, after some corporate reshuffling, and with his Major Magazines line prospering with Cracked and Man’s True Danger, Sproul decided to give Web one more chance. It re-emerged as Web Terror Stories. Now there was no disguising its purpose.With lurid covers of torture and satanic cults, it was a direct throwback to the weird-menace pulps of the thirties, such as Terror Tales and Horror Stories. That first issue carried at least two recognizable names: John Jakes with “My Love, the Monster,” about a dead woman resurrected as a monster, which may well have been written for the defunct Super Science Fiction, and Marion Zimmer Bradley with “Treason of the Blood,” depicting a sympathetic, tortured vampire. Otherwise the names were unique to Web Terror and many were doubtless unidentified pseudonyms. Not everyone could remember their pen names properly. Jason Lamont in the August, 1964, Web Terror became Justin Lamont in the next issue. Freed of the limitations of the detective story – such as it was – Web Terror now sought fear and misery in all situations. “Orbit of the Pain Masters,” by Arthur P. Gordon, involves sadistic aliens, while “Chains of the Conqueror,” by Gary Roberts, features torture in ancient Rome. “Nightmare Hall,” by Cameron Pye, has a woman tortured in her dreams. Such was the diversity of Web Terror. In later

Whisper | issues stories, were set among the Aztecs, ancient (and modern) Egypt, the Arab Caliphate, Sicily and, rather mundanely, the Scottish moors. The last,“Evil is the Night” (August 1964), credited to Clarence O’Connor, reads like a story by someone who has never been to Scotland, and includes people called MacTaggart and Dougal who say things like “a bloomin’ buxom lass” and “’tis no place for a woman.”Authors threw in everything they could to create atmosphere, but it did not stop most stories being none-too-subtle variations on the same basic plot: a woman, usually alone, finds herself in trouble, either of a sadistic nature, or of inexplicable horror. Sometimes she is rescued; as often she is not. As the last of its kind – the terror digest magazine – Web Terror had a special following, but Sproul published the issues erratically and distribution was poor.There were only eight issues in

total: two in 1963, three in 1964 and two in 1965. The last three had an increase from 112 to 160 pages, to offset the price rise from 35 to 50 cents. But as with all erratic magazines, if readers do not know when or where issues might appear, sales will always diminish. Exact sales figures are not known, as Web Terror did not appear frequently enough to require the compulsory statement of ownership and circulation needed for all magazines appearing quarterly or more regularly.Sproul encouraged subscriptions, but few people subscribed, and opportunist sales were insufficient to sustain the magazine. It folded with the June, 1965 issue, the eighth as Web Terror, but the 27th since Saturn had appeared eight years before. Sproul returned to his real money-maker, Cracked, which would support him for the next 40 years.—MA

WHISPER In the early 1940s, Robert Harrison was making quite a name for himself as a publisher (Beauty Parade, Eyeful, Flirt, Titter, and Wink), though not nearly as much as he would shortly, due to his scandal magazine Confidential. In April, 1946 Harrison launched one of his more successful titles, Whisper. It was an oversized magazine for the first issue, and displayed style and attention unseen in the other Harrison sleaze magazines. Much of the success of the magazine was due to the stunning Peter Driben cover paintings. Driben was the perfect choice to portray Harrison’s theme for Whisper, a tendency toward the sordid, the violent, and the blatantly sexual — exactly what the marketplace of the day was looking for. In addition, Whisper featured a huge amount of fetish material, high heels and

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nylons, and bondage and implied S&M, liberally interspersed between photos of pin-up girls and models in kinky lingerie. By the June, 1955 issue, Whisper (with a peak circulation of 600,000) joined its sister title, Confidential, as a straight-out scandal magazine, and Harrison folded all his other girlie magazines. Harrison sold all his titles in 1958, and Whisper continued until 1971 under other ownership and direction.—JH [see also Confidential]

WINK see Confidential, Whisper WONDER STORIES see Sexology

OVER-THE-TOP COVERS

212 | World War 3 Illustrated WORLD WAR 3 ILLUSTRATED Since 1979, Seth Tobocman, along with graphic artists such as Peter Kuper, Sabrina Jones, and Jordan Worley, has edited 37 issues of a relentlessly realistic comic book called World War 3 Illustrated. A semi-annual political comix magazine, World War 3 Illustrated is dedicated by its founders, Tobocman and Kuper, to shine a little reality on the fantasy world of the American kleptocracy. World War 3 Illustrated is a labor of love, run by a collective of artists working with the unified goal of creating a home for political comics, graphics, and stories. Addressing urban and political issues, it seeks to combine unique perspectives with distinct visual images, often influenced by the work of the WPA artists of the 1930s. Over the years, the rotating editorial board, with a clear left-wing political focus, has included Seth and Kuper, Isabella Bannerman, Sue Coe, Sandy Jimenez, Mac McGill, James Romberger, Sabrina Jones, Scott Cunningham, Kevin Pyle, Nicole Schulman, Eric Drooker, Susan Wilmarth, Christopher Cardinale, Ryan Inzana, Paula Hewitt, and Chuck Sperry, among many others. The magazine could never have survived without the collective effort, and the contribution of so many other artists and writers, all who have donated their talents. In the hierarchy of the magazine, editors and contributors receive the same pay — a magazine that they have helped to create. Only the printers and distributors are paid, all the profits go into producing the next issue. Contributors act as subjective documentarians, mixing art and activism while describing scenes they have often participated in: the eviction of a Lower East Side squat, police brutality in the Bronx, or human-rights violations in Bogotá. World War 3 Illustrated has published special issues to chronicle national news stories like the Tompkins Square Park Riot of 1988 and the disruption of the 1999 World Trade Organization meetings in Seattle. After the destruction of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001,Tobocman, Kuper, and

PG 212, to Bot – WEB TERROR STORIES, Nov. 1964 (© respective copyright holder); SHOCK MYSTERY TALES (© respective copyright holder); typical small ads in men’s magazine c. early 1960s.

Worley published a special issue addressing United States foreign policy in the Middle East and their connection to the attack on the towers. Christopher Cardinale, who was riding his bicycle by the World Trade Center when it crumbled, was able to describe the attack in detail from the perspective of someone on the street. Frank Morales, an Episcopal minister, performed last rites over the bodies found at ground zero. World War 3 Illustrated is not about a war that may happen; it is about the ongoing wars our socalled leaders have been waging all our lives, around the world and on our very own doorsteps. World War 3 Illustrated illuminates the war we wage on each other and sometimes the one taking place in our own brains. The unwritten manifesto for World War 3 Illustrated appears to be: If you are going to talk about changing society, a magazine’s not a bad place to start. World War 3 Illustrated has functioned as a microcosm of the kind of society that its creators would like to see.They value content over style, and ideas are not regarded for their popularity, but for their substance. Artists are given a forum to reach an audience with their work, and the opportunity to interact and examine their concepts in a group setting. Co-founder Seth Tobocman is a radical comic artist who has been a fixture of Manhattan’s Lower East Side since 1978. He has also been an influential propagandist for the squatting, anti-globalist, and anti-war movements in the

United States. Seth and Peter Kuper started World War 3 Illustrated because they felt that the United States had been at war for nearly 50 years. At the time, more than a million people in El Salvador had been killed by death squads trained by the United States, but the country still acted as if it was at peace.After September 11, 2001, the entire country knew it was at war because it began to affect the average person in the United States. In 1979, the Shah of Iran had been overthrown and a new regime came in and seized the American embassy and held a number of hostages. Tobocman sees the current situation as the Iran hostage situation times a thousand: it’s not a question of 52 people being held in an embassy, it’s a question of upwards of 3,000 people being murdered on September 11. Long before the Iran hostage crisis, the United States had overthrown the democratically elected government and installed the dictatorship of the Shah. Since then, the people of the Middle East have seen the United States as an aggressor and as the dominant imperialistic power there since World War II. World War 3 Illustrated was started at a time when there were very few adult comics, and fewer places where comic book artists who wanted to deal with serious issues could do so. Contributors to the magazine range from first-timers to veteran activists, and it has launched the careers of many artists whose first

The Yellow Peril |

published pieces appeared in its pages. Numerous contributors return to the magazine to find one of the few uncensored venues for their art. Co-founder Peter Kuper is best known for taking over Spy vs. Spy for MAD Magazine after its creator Antonio Prohias retired. Frequent contributor Sue Coe is an English artist and illustrator noted for her highly political illustrated books and comics, often directed against capitalism and cruelty to animals. Contributor Scott Douglas Cunningham, while alive, made his name synonymous with natural magic and the magical community by writing dozens of popular books on Wicca. American painter and graphic novelist, Eric Drooker, who shared the same political beliefs as Tobocman and Kuper, became one of the magazine’s co-editors and frequent contributors. Eventually he began to sell illustrations to more mainstream publications, and became more widely known as a cartoonist when his short story, “L,” appeared in Heavy Metal. “L,” along with two other stories, made up his first graphic novel, Flood!, a wordless, dream-like narrative of power-

less citizens’ struggles with authority in a rapidly deteriorating New York City. Flood! won an American Book Award. Scouted by artist Eric Drooker, Sandy Jimenez’s work first saw publication in January, 1991, under the editorship of Seth Tobocman and Sabrina Jones. In 2004, his comic book story titled “Skips” was published in issue #31, and was later adapted into a short film that was part of the official competition at the Tribeca Film Festival. World War 3 Illustrated has served as a document of United States history, specializing in those aspects ignored by the mainstream press — from the shadow cast by Ronald Reagan to IranContra the Gulf War, genocide in Bosnia, the invasion of Iraq, and the ongoing corruption of the George W. Bush administration. The magazine has illustrated personal subjects from race to religion to sexual relations, and drawn on the dreams and nightmares, both real and imagined, of its various contributors. Essentially, the contributors to World War 3 Illustrated want to create a dialogue about where

society should go, while inspiring younger people to start thinking about the issues around them, all without trying to convert people to their way of thinking.Their collective stance is that the best art has an active role in society — it isn’t intellectual, it’s a part of life.They want to encourage people who look at the magazine to be not just observers, but participants, too. World War 3 Illustrated has been a collectivelyrun, self-funded publication since 1979, and has succeeded in producing the best hard-hitting, independent comics in the United States.—WU

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X, Y THE YELLOW PERIL Fu Manchu Sax Rohmer will forever be remembered as the creator of that insidious “Yellow Peril,” Fu Manchu. Arthur Henry Ward (Rohmer’s real name), was born in Birmingham, England, of Irish parents. William Ward, his father, was employed as an office manager. Rohmer’s mother, Margaret Mary Furey, was an alcoholic. As a child, Rohmer received no formal schooling until he was nine or ten years old. At the age of 18 he adopted the name Sarsfield, impressed by

MINI & DIGEST PIN-UP MAGS: PG 213, L to R – EYE, vol. 4, #4, Apr. 1954 (© Atlas/Magazine Management); THAT GIRL MARILYN!, 1953 (© Affiliated Magazines, Inc.); DARE, June 1953 (© respective copyright holder); EXCLUSIVE, Apr. 1954 (Hillman Publications).

214 |The Yellow Peril his alcoholic mother’s claims of being descended from the famous 17th century Irish general, Patrick Sarsfield.The pseudonym he adopted and made famous came from “sax” which was Saxon for “blade” and “rohmer” which meant “roamer.” Before settling on his writing career, Rohmer worked briefly as a bank clerk in Threadneedle Street, then as a clerk in a gas company, and a reporter on the weekly Commercial Intelligence. In 1903, at the age of 20, Rohmer had his first short story, “The Mysterious Mummy,” published in Pearson’s Weekly.Thus he began in the major print markets of his day. By 1909, Rohmer had married Rose Elizabeth Knox, daughter of a well-known comedian. She was an actress and a juggler who also claimed some psychic ability. Rohmer, still trying to settle on a profitable career, consulted with his wife, using an Ouija board, as to how he could best make a living. The answer was “C-H-I-NA-M-A-N.” During this time, Rohmer continued to write comedy sketches for entertainers, and to produce stories and serials for the newspaper and magazine markets. Rohmer’s first book, Pause! appeared in 1910. It was followed by the first appearance of Dr. Fu Manchu in “The Zayat Kiss,” in the October, 1912 issue of the British magazine The Story-Teller. This was followed by nine more stories that would appear in every issue through July, 1913, and were eventually combined into the novel, The Mystery of Dr. Fu Manchu, which was published in 1913. So great was the acclaim for the character, and an indication of how far the concept of the “Yellow Peril” had gotten into the public consciousness, that it was released three months later in the United States, between February 15 and June 28, 1913, in Collier’s, and published as a novel under the title, The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu. It was an immediate success. From there Dr. Fu Manchu continued on through thirteen novels, a novelette and some short stories. In the character of the seemingly deathless Dr. Fu Manchu, Rohmer had captured the essence of

the racist fears of his time, the imminent “Yellow Peril.” Fu Manchu was “an emanation of Hell.” For more than a quarter-century, the diabolically ingenious villain was opposed by Commissioner Sir Denis Nayland Smith, spymaster, Burmese commissioner, and a controller of the British Secret Service and the CID. Fu Manchu was also opposed by Dr. Petrie, named after the Egyptologist, Flinders Petrie, who was haunted by the beautiful but evil Kâramanéh, the source of Petrie’s daydreams, whose “eyes held a challenge wholly Oriental in its appeal.” Smith and Petrie were written in the Holmes and Watson tradition, with Dr. Petrie narrating the stories while Smith carried the fight, combating Dr. Fu Manchu more often by doggedness and determination, rather than any intellectual brilliance. Fu Manchu and Nayland Smith developed a grudging respect for each other, as each was from the old school where a man kept his word, even to an enemy.Time and again over several decades they clashed, with Smith’s ingenuity always inevitably thwarting the Devil Doctor’s plans at the last possible moment. Together, Sir Denis Smith and Dr. Petrie faced the worldwide conspiracy of the “Yellow Peril” as represented in the person of Dr. Fu Manchu.According to the racist prejudices of the time, the Chinese were all either mandarin warlords or opium den-keepers in Limehouse, even though the ethnic Chinese population of London’s East End was estimated to be only in the hundreds in the period of 1900 through the end of the Second World War. The majority of England’s Chinese population worked in such professions as cooking and the laundering of clothes. Most of the drugs, such as cocaine, came from Germany, where it was sold almost without restriction. However, Rohmer capitalized on the fears of his time, and his books

were underpinned by three theories: the notion of conspiracy which was based upon a corporate, international secret society acting out of Limehouse, the notion of a parallel supernatural plane of existence, and the notion of eternal recurrence. The first notable “Yellow Peril” character appeared in 1896, when Robert Chambers published a series of stories in The Maker of Moons, about Yue-Laou, the undisputed ruler of an empire in the middle of China as well as a sorcerer of the blackest magic.Yue-Laou was the first “Yellow Peril” sorcerer, a character type that would appear again, as in Robert E. Howard’s “Skull-Face” serial in Weird Tales in 1929. The next significant “Yellow Peril” character was a military leader, reflecting the Western fear of the “limitless hordes” of Chinese overrunning white countries. In 1898, M.P. Shiel wrote The Yellow Danger, which featured the character Dr. Yen How, a half-Japanese, half-Chinese warlord, who connives his way to power in China, unites China and Japan, manipulates the European Great Powers into warring with each other, and then unleashes the armies of the united Japan and China on the West. Naturally, Dr. Yen How is eventually defeated, but through the course of the novel he is presented as a very worthy opponent for the doughty White hero. However, neither Yue-Laou nor Dr.Yen How started the craze of “Yellow Peril” characters. It was Sax Rohmer, via Dr. Fu Manchu himself, who did that.Yue-Laou and Dr.Yen How must be seen as forerunners of the enthusiasm for the “Yellow Peril” stereotype, rather than influences on its use. But it was Dr. Fu Manchu who was immediately popular and spawned numerous imitators, such as The Mysterious Wu Fang and Dr.Yen Sin, characters who did not exist before the insidious Dr. Fu Manchu came along. In biographical writings, Rohmer claimed

PG 214, Top to Bot – WEIRD MYSTERIES. #1, 1959 (Pastime Publications); EERIE, #1, 1959 (Hastings Associates); PG 215 – STRIPARAMA, #1, 1960 (© Selbee); PLAYGIRL, #6, 1957 1953 (© Playgirl Publishing);CAVALCADE OF BURLESQUE, Sept. 1954 (© Burlesque Historical Com.).

The Yellow Peril | that the source of the character of Fu Manchu, the “Yellow Peril” archetype, was born in the years before the Boxer Rebellion. A member of the imperial family who had backed the losing side, he moved his operation to London during the time Rohmer was working as a reporter. Rohmer had a fascination with London’s Chinatown and spent a great deal of time there. Through his contacts, he heard of a mysterious “Mr. King,” who, allegedly, controlled all gambling games, drug traffic, and secret societies in Chinatown.The area police had never seen him and the local Chinese reacted in fear when his name was mentioned. One informant did let it slip, however, that Mr. King had a house on a certain street and that he was in London at the time. Rohmer went to the address one night, a car pulled up and he saw a “tall and very dignified man alight, Chinese, but unlike any Chinese I had ever met.” Whether this was the mysterious Mr. King was never determined, but this viewing

moved Rohmer’s fertile imagination to create, over the course of many months, Dr. Fu Manchu. Dr. Fu Manchu was a master criminal, an Oriental mastermind who worked for the overthrow of all Western civilization and the “White race,” in order to remake it in the glorious image of the East, with him as the absolute ruler. His murderous plots were marked by the extensive use of apparently Oriental methods. He eschewed guns or explosives, preferring dacoits, Thuggees, and members of other secret societies as his agents, all armed with knives, or using “pythons and hamadryads…fungi and my tiny allies, the bacilli…my black spiders” and other peculiar animals or natural chemical weapons. The most prominent of his special agents was the “seductively lovely” Kâramanéh. Dr. Fu Manchu was not the only mastermind. He was opposed by his deadly daughter, Fah Lo Suee, a devious criminal mastermind in her own right, always plotting to take control of the fanatical and loyal Si-Fan, a

Chinese cult, from her father. In the earliest stories, Dr. Fu Manchu is an assassin sent on missions by the Si-Fan, but he quickly rises to become head of that dreaded secret society.At first, the Si-Fan’s goal is to throw the Europeans out of Asia;later,the group attempts to intervene more generally in world politics, while funding itself by more ordinary types of crime. Dr. Fu Manchu is a master of both ancient mystical abilities and modern scientific advances. Utilizing a magic drug called the Elixir Vitae, Fu Manchu has retained his youth and strength despite his advanced age. He is a super-villain who can hypnotize almost anyone he looks in the eyes. In 1915, Rohmer invented the detective character, Gaston Max, who first appeared in The Yellow Claw. The Fu Manchu stories, together with those featuring Gaston Max, made Rohmer one of the most successful, widely read, and wellpaid magazine writers of the 1920s and 1930s. During this time Rohmer’s interest in mysticism

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and the occult increased, and he claimed to havejoined the occult organization of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, thought his name does not appear on any of that membership’s rosters. Its other members included Aleister Crowley and William Butler Yeats. Success brought Rohmer financial security for a short time. He traveled with his wife in the Near East, Jamaica, and in Egypt, but the money went as fast as it had come — Rohmer’s business instincts were not good and he also gambled away much of his earnings at Monte Carlo. In 1955, Rohmer was said to have sold the film, television, and radio rights to his books for more than four million dollars. The second novel in the series was released in 1916 in the United Kingdom as The Devil Doctor and as The Return of Dr. Fu Manchu in the United States.The United States release predated the U.K. release by one month. It was originally serialized in ten chapters between November, 1914

BURLESQUE

216 | The Yellow Peril and December, 1915 in Collier’s. The ten stories that make up The Return of Dr. Fu Manchu are:“The Wire Jacket” (November 21, 1914);“The Cry of the Nighthawk” (December 26, 1914); “The Avenue Mystery” (February 6, 1915);“The White Peacock” (March 6, 1915); “The Coughing Horror” (April 3, 1915); “The Silver Buddha” (May 15, 1915); “Cragmire Tower” (July 17, 1915); “The Fiery Hand” (September 25, 1915); “The Six Gates” (October 23, 1915); and “The Mummy” (December 4, 1915). Between 1913 and 1949, Collier’s Weekly published many of Sax Rohmer’s Fu Manchu serials, illustrated by Joseph Clement Coll and others, and they were hugely popular. The last issue of Collier’s was dated January 4, 1957. During the following years the stories were published in collections, but at the end of the third book, The Si-Fan Mysteries (1917), Fu Manchu is dead, and another villain has taken his place. The third novel in the series was released in May, 1917 in the U.K. as The Si-Fan Mysteries and as The Hand of Fu Manchu in the United States The U.K.release predated the American release by days. It was originally serialized in nine chapters between September, 1916 and December, 1917 in The Story-Teller in the U.K. and between April, 1916 and June, 1917 in Collier’s. The nine stories that make up The Hand of Fu Manchu are:“The Flower of Silence” (April 8, 1916);“Zarmi of the Joy Shop” (May 13, 1916); “The Golden Pomegranates” (June 24, 1916); “Queen of Hearts” (November 25, 1916); “The Zagazig Cryptogram” (January 6, 1917); “The House of Hashish” (February 17, 1917); “KiMing” (March 3, 1917); “Shrine of Seven Lamps” (April 21, 1917); and “The Black Chapel” (June 2, 1917). After years of silence, Rohmer restarted the series in 1930 with Daughter of Fu Manchu, which was originally titled Fu Manchu’s Daughter, and appeared in Collier’s.This was closely followed by The Mask of Fu Manchu, which was serialized in Collier’s throughout the summer of1932. The Mask of Fu Manchu was adapted into a

1932 film and a 1951 Wally Wood comic book, Avon’s one issue, The Mask of Dr. Fu Manchu.The May 7, 1932, issue displayed a memorable cover illustration by famed maskmaker Wladyslaw T. Benda, and his mask design for that cover was repeated by many other illustrators in subsequent adaptations and reprints. The Bride of Fu Manchu appeared in 1933 and was titled Fu Manchu’s Bride in the U.K. It was serialized in ten chapters in Collier’s beginning with the May 6, 1933 issue, and included the May 13, May 20, May 27, June 3, June 10, June 17, June 24, July 1, and July 8, 1933 issues. The Trail of Fu Manchu (1934), also appeared in twelve chapters in the April 28, May 5, May 12, May 19, May 26, June 2, June 9, June 16, June 23, June 30, July 7, and July 14, 1934 issues of Collier’s. President Fu Manchu (1936), which appeared as The Invisible President in twelve chapters beginning in the February 29, 1936, issue, included the March 7, March 14, March 21, March 28,April 4, April 11, April 18, April 25, May 2, May 9, and May 16, 1936 issues of Collier’s. The Drums of Fu Manchu (1939), appeared in ten chapters beginning in the April 1, 1939 issue, and included the April 8, April 15, April 22, April 29, May 6, May 13, May 20, May 27, and June 3, 1939 issues of Collier’s.And The Island of Fu Manchu (1941) appeared as Fu Manchu and the Panama Canal in the November 16, 1940, January 11 and January 25, 1941, issues of Liberty Magazine. In The Island of Fu Manchu, Sir Lionel Barton, the greatest Orientalist in Europe, says that Fu Manchu is “an enemy whose insects, bacteria, stranglers, strange poisons, could do more harm in a week than Hitler’s army could do in a year.” After World War II, the Rohmer family moved to New York City. In 1948, during the Korean War period, The Shadow of Fu Manchu appeared in six chapters beginning in the May 8, 1948, issue, and included the May 15, May 22, May 29, June 5, and June 12, 1948 issues of Collier’s. Rohmer declared that Dr. Fu Manchu was “still an enemy to be reckoned with, and as men-

acing as ever, but he has changed with the times. Now he is against the Chinese Communists and, indeed, Communists everywhere, and a friend of the American people.” In 1957, Re-Enter Fu Manchu appeared as The Eyes of Fu Manchu in This Week in the October 6, 1957, issue. It was retitled Re-Enter Dr. Fu Manchu in the United States Sax Rohmer died from a combination of pneumonia and a stroke on June 1, 1959. His last work of fiction appeared that year, Emperor Fu Manchu.A final novel in the series, The Wrath of Fu Manchu, attributed to Sax Rohmer, was published posthumously in 1973, bringing the total to fourteen novels in the official Fu Manchu canon. The golden age of the Fu Manchu stories — and also the peak of Sax Rohmer’s career — was in the 1930s, although the Chinese super-villain was revived again in 1957.After Rohmer’s death, a hoard of sequels were written, as well as radio adaptations, and a Marvel comic (Shang-Chi, Master of Kung Fu). The thirteen-episode TV series, The Adventures of Fu Manchu (1955-56), starred Glenn Gordon as Fu Manchu and Lester Matthews as Nayland Smith. Rohmer’s villain has inspired several movies, starring, among others, Warner Oland, Boris Karloff, Christopher Lee, and Peter Sellers (The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu in 1980). John Carradine and Sir Cedric Hardwicke played Fu Manchu and Nayland Smith in a television pilot directed by William Cameron Menzies, The Zayat Kiss. Sinister Oriental Fu Manchu stereotypes were feared since the turn of the century, appearing in great numbers in popular fiction. Among the best-known doppelgangers is Dr. No from Ian Fleming’s James Bond novel Dr. No (1958). In the 1920s, Sax Rohmer’s work received mixed reviews.Today, the most fascinating character in Rohmer’s work, the enduring figure of the insidious Dr. Fu Manchu, has achieved literary immortality.—ETK [see Mysterious Wu Fang]

Zane Grey’s Western Magazine |

YOUR BODY see Hugo Gernsback

Z ZANE GREY’S WESTERN MAGAZINE Pearl Zane Gray was born in Zanesville, Ohio. He would become known as Zane Grey,America’s best-remembered writer of the idealized image of the rugged old west in popular adventure novels and pulp fiction. Trained as a dentist at the University of Pennsylvania, he would only sporadically practice the trade before turning his efforts to writing. Supported by his wife, Lina “Dolly” Roth, he borrowed $600 from her to self-publish his first complete novel, Betty Zane. Now writing as Zane Grey, he had become especially interested in the West in 1907, after joining a friend on an expedition to trap mountain lions in Arizona. Grey wrote steadily, but it was only in 1910, and after considerable efforts by his wife, that his first western, Heritage of the Desert, became a bestseller. Still experiencing difficulties with having his work published, he accused publisher Harper of not even reading his 1912 submission, Riders of the Purple Sage. After making an effort to read his novel, Harper snapped it up. It would become his best-known work. From then on it was one success after another, and Zane Grey would become one of the first millionaire American authors. Zane Grey would go on to become famous as one of the America’s pre-eminent writers by

churning out popular novels about manifest destiny and the conquest of the wild west.Wealthy by any standard, in 1919 he formed his own motion picture company, Zane Grey Productions. Two years later, disinterested in the work, which was taking him away from writing, fishing, and adventure, he sold the motion picture company to Jess Lasky. Lasky had a partner, Adolph Zukor, and they would form Paramount Pictures out of the bones of Zane Grey Productions. Eventually, Paramount would make a fortune on a number of movies based on his writings.A total of 46 full-length movies and 31 short subjects were made from Zane Grey’s writings.Already, in 1921, companies were getting rich trademarking his name. As one of the first millionaire authors, Grey would spend part of the year traveling and living an adventurous life, and the rest of it using his adventures as the basis for his writing. Some of that time was spent on the Rogue River in Oregon, where he maintained a cabin he had built on an old mining claim he bought. He also had a cabin on the Mogollon Rim in Arizona that burned down during the Dude Fire of 1991. From 1918 until 1932, he was a regular contributor to Outdoor Life magazine, becoming one of the publication’s first celebrity writers. In the pages of the magazine, he began to popularize his passion, big-game fishing. In his lifetime, Zane Grey would write over 99 formal books, some published posthumously and/or based on 59 of his stories published in the then-popular serial form, and 196 short stories originally published in magazines. One of them, “Tales of the Angler’s El Dorado, New Zealand” helped establish the Bay of Islands in New Zealand as a premiere game fishing area. Zane Grey’s Western Magazine was founded by Dell Magazines in 1946.They hoped to con-

PG 216, Top to Bot – WHO’S WHO IN HOLLYWOOD, 1953 (© Dell);ZING, Sept. 1949 (© respective copyright holder);PG 217, Top to Bot – SUPPRESSED. Jan. 1956 (© Suppressed, Inc.); TIP TOP, #3, 1963 (© Parliament Magazines).

tinue the trend and make a fortune on Grey’s name recognition by reprinting his work for another generation. Grey, who died of a heart attack on October 23, 1939, had nothing to do with the magazine that used his name and writing to get rich. The first series of Zane Grey’s Western Magazine would begin with the appearance of its November/December, 1946 premiere issue, edited by Don Ward.The pulp western would have a long run of 82 issues, lasting until January, 1954. The first issue reprinted both Zane Grey’s “Sunset Pass,” from The American Magazine, March, 1928, issue, and Bret Harte’s “Tennessee’s Partner,” from Overland Monthly (October 1869). Editor Don Ward would continue this pattern of featuring reprinted stories in nearly every issue throughout the magazine’s entire run. A Zane Grey story would be reprinted in the first 44 issues (except for the January, 1950, issue), nearly half the entire run, before a shift in editorial policy occurred in November, 1950. For the next three years, until the magazine folded,Ward would begin showcasing new writers. One of the most famous of these was Elmore Leonard. Leonard. A prolific writer, he is best known, , for a handful of fast-paced crime novels made into films, including Get Shorty, its sequel Be Cool, Rum Punch (turned into the Pam Grier vehicle Jackie Brown), and Out of Sight.Yet his association with Hollywood goes back a long way. Classic western movies such as 3:10 to Yuma, Hombre, and Valdez is Coming were based on his early stories and novels. Leonard embarked on his writing career inspired by the cowboys-and-Indians movies of the 1930s and 1940s.“I looked for a genre where I could learn how to write and be selling at the same time,” he remembers in the introduction to The Complete Western Stories. “I chose westerns because I liked western movies.” Leonard began by submitting stories to pulp periodicals such as Zane Grey’s Western Magazine and Western Story Magazine. The going rate was two cents per word. His first published story,

217

218 | Zane Grey’s Western Magazine “Trail of the Apache,” appeared in Argosy magazine in 1951, and would become a template for the pieces he would write throughout the 1950s. Elmore Leonard was off to a fast start. “The Colonel’s Lady” would be his first sale to Zane Grey’s Western Magazine (November 1952), followed by “Cavalry Boots” in the December, 1952 issue.“The Rustlers” followed in February, 1953, “Long Night” in May, 1953, and “The Hard Way” in August, 1953. Reading these stories, one is struck not only by the young Leonard’s talent for recreating the southwest frontier’s scorching atmosphere, but also by his skill for constructing plot and conveying character with unusual economy. Leonard’s prototypical hero is neither the idealistic officer straight out of West Point nor the wronged and hostile Indian, but the grizzled scout, a white man who knows not only the Indians’ language, but also their wily ways and cunning survival techniques.With some tweaking to allow for different settings and time periods, it is a formula that continues to serve Leonard well half a century later. The great science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon also found a market for his prolific short story writing in Zane Grey’s Western Magazine with his first sale to them, “Well Spiced,” which appeared in the February, 1948 issue, followed by “Scars,” in the May, 1949 issue. Zane Grey’s Western Magazine was also graced by the fabulous cover artwork of such artists as Earl Sherwin, who painted most of the early issues, and Bob Stanley, who did the majority of the later ones. Over the years, the works of Dan Muller,Alden S. McWilliams, Nicholas S. Firfires, George Prout, and Malcolm Smith would appear on the cover. The Zane Grey story does not end here. Ned Pines published the “thrilling” group of pulps during the 1940s and 1950s. After World War II,

many pulps were on the way out, though some would stick around through the early to mid1950s.America was growing up after the war, and the pulps just could not keep pace — as much as they tried. Long-time editor Leo Margulies left in 1952 and Ned Pines brought in newer and younger talent, hoping to give the readers what they wanted. But it was too late. Ned shut his pulp empire down in 1955, and the “thrilling” was over. Leo Margulies had spent his life in the production of pulps.After college, he had been hired by Robert Davis, an editor at Argosy, and eventually became head editor for Ned Pines. He ruled the “thrilling” group editorial staff, directing the path that led to success for the magazines he controlled. Margulies was not ready to retire after he left Ned Pines. Although the pulps were dead, their descendants, the digest magazines, were alive. Leo started his own chain of fiction digests: The Saint Detective Magazine (1953), Fantastic Universe (1953), Satellite SF (1956), Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine (1956), Zane Grey Western Magazine,The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (1966), The Girl From U.N.C.L.E. (1966), Shell Scott Mystery Magazine (1966),and Charlie Chan Mystery Magazine (1973). The second series trading on Zane Grey’s name and fame, Zane Grey Western Magazine, was started by Leo Margulies under his Renown Publications imprint, edited by his wife Cylvia Kleinman. The first issue appeared in October, 1969, the last in September, 1974. No matter how hard Leo fought, the pulps were gone.The glory days of Thrilling Mystery and Thrilling Detective had died, and the second series soon failed, the western genre had run its course.—FJ

PG 218 – MEN TODAY, vol. 2, #6 (© respective copyright holder); TRUE MEN STORIES, Apr. 1969, interior spread (© Feature Pubs); PG 219 — TALES OF VOODOO, Oct. 1973 (© Eerie Pubs.).

Zest |

ZEST Mini pin-up magazines Zest (a continuation of Picture Scope) is representative of the category of digest- and miniaturesized men’s pin-up magazines cheaply produced by various publishers during the 1950s.They covered the usual cheesecake and glamour shots, plus numerous p.r. photos from the entertainment world, including burlesque, as well as sensationalist news reports.The concept sold to readers was that these little publications (7”x5” for digest and 5.5”x4” for mini) could fit in a pocket.Whether the idea was really to make them easier to carry around or hide is anyone’s guess, but they were popular throughout most of the decade. Every publisher, from Hillman (Picture Life, Carnival), to Fawcett, to Atlas/Magazine Management (Focus, Eye, Brief), tried their luck on these diminutive publications. The usual format was a four-color, glossy cover with newsprint interior pages. Favorite subjects included Marilyn Monroe,

Anita Ekberg, and Jayne Mansfield (all typically in bathing suit shots), burlesque strippers, and sexy cartoons. The short articles qualified more as manufactured fluff than actual print-worthy copy: “What Is The Ripe Age For A Beautiful Girl,”“Inside Russia’s Love Spy School,”“Homosexuals Form New Organization for Baseball Stars,” or “Hex a Witch with Voodoo.” A few of the better titles: She,Tempo, Celebrity, Focus, Bold, Slick, People Today, Picture Life, Chicks And Chuckles, Quick, Stare, Pose, He, Eye, Pic, Picture Scope,The Male Point of View, Man’s Way, and Zing!.—LO

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

CONTRIBUTORS

My thanks to Earl Kemp for getting the ball rolling and juggling the whole thing until I was ready to jump in. My thanks also to all the contributors named in the next few columns. I would be remiss if I did not mention Alan Betrock and his pioneering research on cult magazines. He was insufficiently recognized before his untimely death. I would also like to express my deepest appreciation to Mike Ashley for reading and commenting on a pre-publication proof of Cult Magazines: From A to Z. He was unstinting in applying his knowledge and expertise to the task. Any errors that fell through the cracks are strictly my fault. Finally, my thanks and love to Karan for filling in when needed.—LO

Riley Adams (RA) is an astrologer by night and a freelance writer by day, and spends his spare time researching the UFO phenomenon.Taking a skeptical but tongue-in-cheek look at the range of common, and uncommon, events and beliefs, led him to collecting and reading those long-lost articles, fan letters, and editorials held in the pages of the golden age of pulps. It is in from pages that he culls the material for his research and his forthcoming book, Tales of the Lost. In this novel, Adams documents his own journey, through the written word to the world at large, in his quest to find proof of the unknown. Mike Ashley (MA) is a freelance writer and researcher, primarily in the fields of science fiction, fantasy and crime fiction, but generally exploring all avenues of literary and ancient history. His books include Starlight Man, the biography of Algernon Blackwood, The Age of the Storytellers, about British popular fiction magazines, and The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Modern Crime Fiction, which won the MWA's Edgar Award. He has also written books on the British Monarchy and the Seven Wonders of the World. Richard Coad (RC) is a multi-national man of mystery. Jay A Gertzman (JAG) is writing a book on the maverick publisher Samuel Roth, who spent a total of nine years in federal prisons between 1929 and 1961 for various convictions involving publishing and marketing obscene books; he was the first (unauthorized) American publisher of Ulysses and Lady Chatterley's Lover. Gertzman is interested in First Amendment issues and publishing history. In 1999, Gertzman published Bookleggers and Smuthounds: The Trade in Erotica, 19201940. He is prof. emeritus at Mansfield University in Pennsylvania.

220 | contributors Jon Hanlon (JH) was raised in a peculiarly restricted household. By the time he entered his teens, he lived in an unassailable fantasy world of his own creation, populated only by his favorite pulp magazine characters. He was eventually released from his strange world to roam among writers, artists, editors, and publishers who all wanted to do his bidding.The shock of being in charge, from nowhere, of everything, was almost too much for him to endure. Most of the time he considers himself to be a figment of his own imagination. Hanlon is divorced and has five children, not one of whom believes he ever existed. Arthur D. Hlavaty (ADH) comes from the science fiction fanzine subculture. Since 1977, he has published over 100 issues of a zine now known as Nice Distinctions. He is a multiple finalist for the Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer. He also blogs on livejournal as supergee. Frazier Johnson (FJ) As a child, Forry Ackerman gave him a signed copy of the first-ever issue

of Famous Monsters, and Johnson was hooked. Over the passing years, Johnson has collected pulps, with an emphasis on mint condition. He knows that is not really possible, but it gives him an excuse to keep collecting, and reading, them. Always pleased to find various paperback publishers reprinting the better known titles, he looks forward to the day when complete pulp runs will be available online. Until then, he is content to collect, read, and contribute critical articles to, various magazines about his life-long passion. Earl Kemp (EK), a national nuisance, has been known by many guises: adventurer, explorer, lover, beloved, rebel, First Amendment convict savant, and numerous others, almost all bad. Also a Hugo Award-winning editor and SF Worldcon Chair, Kemp is best known as the notorious producer, during the Golden Age of Sleaze Paperbacks, of more than 5,000 novels and half again that many “girly” magazines for Greenleaf Classics, Inc. For the past nine years of his dotage, he has been dribbling salacious memories at efanzines.com/EK/index.html and has become the chronicler of the entire sleaze book and magazine genre. Earl Terry Kemp (ETK) Born into a science fiction publishing family, Advent: Publishers, raised on the pulps, and nursed by Rogue and subsequent Greenleaf publications, it was only natural to write about the era. From ghost-writing, to science fiction fanzine contributions, one of his current on-going projects includes an in-depth look at the works of the original science fiction and fantasy specialty publishers who began it all. The Anthem Series takes a comprehensive look at the famous, well-known titles of Arkham House, Gnome Press, Fantasy Press, Prime Press, FPCI, and Shasta, as well as the lesser-known titles. It is complete with illustrations, cover art, synopses of all the works, including all the short stories, and contains never-before-seen anecdotes and biographical material relating to each imprint, with a critical review of each title.

PG 220 – MAN'S LIFE, Nov1954 (© respective copyright holder); PG 223 — REAL DETECTIVE, Aug. 1942 (Sensation Magazine, Inc).

Jim Linwood (JL) was born in 1940 in Nottingham, England. He left school at the age of 15 and worked as a miner in a local colliery. As a teenager, Linwood discovered Science Fiction Fandom, heard about the Beat Generation in American fanzines, and quickly devoured anything he could find by Kerouac, Burroughs and Ginsberg. In a small, arty bookshop in Leicester, Linwood found imported editions of Evergreen Review and became a regular reader. Kerouac became a major influence on his early life, and Linwood hitch-hiked around Britain and Europe, meeting fellow souls. Will Murray (WM) was born about the time the pulp magazine industry fell into collapse, and so came to them far after the fact. Despite his late start, he has become one of the most knowledable pulp archeologists ever to squander his brain and eyesight on this formerly-disreputable subject.The author of over 50 books and novels (including eight Doc Savage adventures), he currently coedits Nostalgia Ventures’ formidable series of Doc and Shadow reprints. He is the literary agent for the estate of cult pulpsmith Lester Dent, and, with cult artist Steve Ditko, is the proud creator of the cult Marvel Comics character, Squirrel Girl. Murray expects to become a cult figure himself, once he has gone the way of all pulp. Edward von Neumann (EVN) admits to being an oddball, and is proud of it. He denies rumors of his revolutionary anti-war underground activity during the late sixties, but also refuses to be pinned down about any details. Instead, he points to his various contributions to many of the lesser-known cult publications over the subsequent decades, and insists that the reader be the judge. But we are quick to point out to him that since he insists on using a pseudonym at

all times, it will be very hard for the reader to do that. Edward just shrugs his shoulders, smiles knowingly, tells us not to worry, and with his sharp wit retorts that the keen reader will easily identify him and his work. Luis Ortiz (LO) is the author of Emshwiller:Infinity x 2, a Hugo Award nominee. At present he is preparing a biography of the artist Jack Gaughan. Howard Pearlstein (HP) is the editor, with Richard A. Lupoff and Fender Tucker, of The Organ Reader, which contains almost every article, cartoon and diatribe published in the original nine issues of The Organ. William Underwood (WU) A life-long reader of pulps, Underwood began his obsession when he inherited his father’s extensive collection. Haunting used book stores, searching for illusive, long-lost and -forgotten volumes, he has built up this collection to a nearly complete run of the very best. Spending his time still looking for the few rare copies missing from his collection, he has also found time to read these aging gems from the past. Based on his extensive reading, he has become an authority on the subject, and has often been called upon to do research for various writers and fans, as well as generously lend fabulous copies of the beautiful pulp artwork to enhance that research. Henry Watson (HW) works as a graphic illustrator. His work has appeared in several major magazines, and he is currently working on his first exhibition. Photography and computer illustration are his strong points.Watson agrees that his work has been strongly influenced by the contemporary publications of his youth.With any luck, he hopes that his own work will also be looked upon favorably by the next generation.This hope has led him

| to a critical appreciation of the media. Bob Weinberg (BW) is the author of sixteen novels, two short story collections, and more than a dozen non-fiction books. He’s one of only a handful of active writers who have written a million words each of fiction and non-fiction. Bob has also scripted comic books for Marvel, DC, and Moonstone comics. His fiction and non-fiction has been published in fourteen languages and he’s had bestsellers in five different countries. As an editor, Bob has compiled more than 150 anthologies. He is perhaps the only horror writer ever to serve as the Grand Marshall of a rodeo parade. Al Wilson (AW) is a mechanical engineer, and graduate of a top ten university. He has tried to keep abreast of the latest in politic, and culture, as well as maintaining a historical perspective on the evolution of both, and the impact they have on technology. Over the years, he has lent his keen eye and observations to his various essays on a range of contemporary topics. Richard Yanke (RY) traces his interest in obscure political tracts and magazines to his early childhood. As a young child, his parents fled NAZI Germany with him in tow, just ahead of arrest, and this left a deep impression that has stayed with him throughout his life. Recently retired from his career in the CIA, Yanke has obtained an insight into the workings of fledgling political groups, terrorists and anarchists, finding some of their roots in the cult literature of the past and the present.

INDEX A Ackerman, Forrest J. 47, 48, 76, 77, 78, 79, 220 ACLU 25, 72 Adam Bedside Reader 8, 15 Adam Film Quarterly 8 After Hours 47, 77 Amateur Movie Makers 192 Amazing Detective 9, 12, 18 American Art Agency 113, 119, 191 American Autopsy,The 126 American Manhood 16, 204 American News Company 54, 95, 113, 203, 204 Ancient Astronauts 16, 118 Anger, Kenneth 81, 136, 193 Anomalist,The 87 Anthony, Norman Hume 29 Apple Pie 203 Armer , Frank 182, 184 Arno, Peter 30 Asimov , Isaac 22, 79, 93, 117, 120, 121, 149, 157, 188

B Baen, Jim 93 Baker, Josephine 67 Barbarella 65, 78 Barton, Ralph 29 Batters, Elmer A. 32, 37, 38, 189, 190 Baumhofer 12, 57, 196 Beach Culture 158 Beatles,The 8, 32, 35, 53, 62, 72, 73, 117 Beauty Parade 42, 50, 106, 203, 211 Beck, Calvin T. 48, 49, 127, 128 Bedford-Jones, H. 11, 19, 40, 41 Bellas, Bruce 121 Binder, Eando 75, 86 Black Ice 44 Black Silk Stockings 8, 37, 38, 39, 191 Blackstone’s Magic 32, 38, 116 Blackwood, Algernon 86, 219 Blackwood’s Magazine 32 Blaine, Mahlon 16 Bloch, Robert 42, 49, 97, 98, 108, 120, 124, 157, 168, 206, 208 Block, Lawrence 108, 109, 121, 124, 168, 210 Bodé,Vaughn 93 Bok, Hannes 50, 148, 191, 206

Boone, Ilsley 113, 189, 190 Boucher, Anthony 92, 119, 123, 154, 155, 202, 203 Boulware, Jack 132 Bova, Ben 23 Bowen, Robert Sidney 30, 32 Bradbury, Ray 104 Bradbury, Ray 108, 120, 148, 195, 206 Brain Power 45, 61, 146 Brand, Max 19, 41, 56, 75, 117 Bronze Thrills 195 Browne, Howard 15, 60, 122, 167 Buckley Jr.,William F. 188 Buckley, Jim 127 Burana, Lily 89 Burroughs ,William 64, 138, 171 Burroughs, Edgar Rice 13, 18, 40, 75, 116, 127 Burtman, Leonard 7, 98

C Campbell, John W., Jr. 74, 199 Catholic Church 67, 70, 71 Cele Goldsmith 15, 62 Chandler, Raymond 33, 35, 36, 122, 124 Charteris, Leslie 20, 122 Cinéma 57 47 Clarke, Arthur C. 12, 20, 73, 104 Clayton Magazines 21, 24, 96, 115 Clues-Detective 28 Cohen, Sol 15 Cohn, Roy 55 Comic Cuties 98 Comstock, Anthony 144, 145 Cooper, Alice 53 Cracked 51, 52, 79, 103, 209, 210, 211 Crumb, R. 53, 104, 105, 160, 161 Curtis Circulation 55

D Dahl, Roald 26 Dannay, Frederic 153 Daredevil Aces 32 Daring Dolls 98 Davidson, Avram 120, 124,155, 157 Davis, Bernard 61, 156 Davis, Bob 17, 18, 19 Day & Night 204 de Soto, Rafael 12 Deitch, Gene 44 del Rey, Lester 22, 200, 201, 202

221

Deren, Maya 81, 82, 83 Di Filippo, Paul 44, 170, 171 Dick, Philip K. 93, 148, 170 Dime Detective 36, 37, 55, 89, 121, 123, 132, 153, 174, 196, 197, 203, 204 Dime Mystery 32, 52, 130, 195–197, 198 Doubt 22, 32, 42, 88, 99, 110, 184, 190 Dreiser,Theodore 85, 88, 139 Dyalhis, Nictzin 94 Dynamic Detective 46

E Eastman, Kevin 102 Ebony 195 Ecco 144, 151 Edgar Wallace Mystery Magazine 117 Edwin Bower Hesser’s Arts Monthly 21 Eerie Publications 72, 118, 162, 204 Electrical Experimenter,The 158, 175 – 177 Ellison, Harlan 15, 51, 61, 62, 101, 121, 124, 168, 208, 209, 210 Elson, Louis 96 Elvis Presley vs.The Beatles 8 Emshwiller, Ed 50, 92, 120, 144, 193 England, George Allan 39, 75, 76, 86 Ernst, Paul 19, 27, 94, 99 Esquire 24, 45, 104, 200 Everybody’s Magazine 8, 85 Experimental Cinema 192 Exploring the Unknown 7, 66, 80, 87, 96, 97, 100

F Fairman, Paul W. 15, 60, 156 Famous Paris Models 203 Famous Westerns of Filmland 77 Fangoria 150 Fantastic Adventures 14, 15, 18, 79, 102, 122, 130, 167 Fass, Myron 8, 100, 73, 117, 118, 119, 195 Feds 84, 127 Felker, Clay 25 Female Form 21, 61 Female Mimics 7, 98 Ferman, Edward 120, 121 Ferman, Joseph 120, 156 Film Fun 29, 30, 42, 57, 83 Film Threat Video 83 Filmfax 50 Fine Print Distributors 44 Finlay,Virgil 21, 50, 61, 75, 80, 96, 110, 148, 191, 206,

222 | Flagg, James Montgomery 29 Fleming, Ian 12, 20, 42, 97, 104, 216 For Men Only 112, 124 Fort, Charles 17, 21, 84, 86, 87, 88, 200 Fortean Society Magazine,The 88 Fortean Times 84, 85, 86, 87, 88 Frank Tousey’s Mystery Magazine 33 Frazetta, Frank 51, 127, 164, 191 French Humor 88, 175, 178 French Models 21, 132 Fuller, Curtis 79, 80

G Gallo, “Crazy Joey” 127 Gals & Gags 8 Gardner, Erle Stanley 12, 19, 20, 33, 34, 56 Garfinkle, Henry 55 Gasm 89, 94, 118, 119 Gee-Whiz! 110 Gein, Ed 49 Geis, Richard E. 94, 169, 189 Gernsback 12, 13, 14, 21, 22, 74, 75, 86, 92, 95, 113, 156, 158, 159, 169, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 217 Ghost Stories 33, 94, 95, 98, 107, 138, 146, 194, 195, 198 Gibson, Charles Dana 29 Gibson,Walter B. 94, 116, 180, 194, 198 Ginsberg, Allen 25, 64, 136, 171 Ginzburg, Ralph 23, 24, 26, 62 Girlie Fun 8, 9, 98 Girls in Orbit 98 Gnaedinger, Mary 74 Gold, H.L. 92, 93, 200 Golden Argosy,The 16, 17 Goldstein, Al 118, 119, 127, 128 Goldwater, Barry 25, 63 Goldwater, John L. 112 Good Times: A Review of the World of Pleasure 16 Goodman, Jeff 118 Goodman, Martin 55, 110, 112, 197 Grey, Zane 19, 40, 117, 147, 217, 218, 220 Groupie Rock 118 Gruber, Frank 27, 33, 36, 197

Happy Sun-In 7 Harpoon 187, 203 Harris, Frank 63, 141, 142 Harris,William 118 Harrison, Robert 48, 50, 106, 203, 211 Harvard Lampoon 203 Headquarters Detective 166, 193, 199 Hearst, Patty 74 Hearst,William Randolph 40, 70, 203 Hecht, Ben 86, 88, 205 Hefner, Hugh 16, 103, 105, 112, 113, 168, 185 Heinlein, Robert A. 20, 22, 23, 42, 209, 202 Hellzapoppin 30 Hersey, Harold Brainerd 30, 94, 126 Hersey, Merle Williams 127 Hillman, Alex L. 199 Hoch, Edward 98 Hodgson,William Hope 9, 39, 76, 208 Hoffman, Arthur Sullivant 10 Hollywood Motion Picture Review 193 Holmstrom, John 151, 152 Homicide Detective 119 Hoover, J. Edgar 127, 165, 189 Hopalong Cassidy 19, 48, 140 Houdini 20, 194, 180 Howard, Robert E. 20, 51, 94, 99, 96, 184, 205, 202, 214 Hubbard, L. Ron 12, 20, 23, 92, 137, 199, 200, 201 Humbug 102, 103, 104, 110 Hush-Hush 104, 106, 118 Hustler 83, 107

I I Confess 30 INFO Journal 88 Inside Detective 30 Ivie, Larry 49, 50, 127, 128 J Jack Dempsey’s Fight Magazine 75, 116, 120 Jakobsson, Ejler 93 Jones, Russ 50 Journal of Frankenstein,The 7, 48 Joyce, James 16, 63

H H.P. Lovecraft’s Magazine 117 Haggard, H. Rider 11, 40, 76 Hamilton, Edmond 13, 86, 200, 206 Hamling,William Lawrence 16, 79, 166, 167, 168, 190 Hammett, Dashiell 19, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 57, 153, 155

K Kadrey, Richard 44, 89 Karloff, Boris 78, 94, 97, 117, 216 Keller, David H. 13, 99, 179 Kerouac, Jack 64

King, Stephen 38, 78, 81, 97, 99, 113, 116, 205, 208 Kline, Otis Adelbert 19 Krassner, Paul 63, 67, 68 Kurtzman, Harvey 102, 103, 105 Kuttner, Henry 76, 143, 201, 202, 206 L La Vie Parisienne 30, 178 Laff 116, 117, 203 Latimer, David 132 Lee, Stan 102, 112, 113, 186 Lennon, John 25, 26, 53, 137 Lens & Life Study 21 Leonard, Elmore 20, 217, 218 Leroux, Gaston 40 Leslie’s Weekly 29 Lofting, Hugh 11 Lopez, Adrian 203 Lovecraft, H.P. 13, 19, 86, 96, 98, 99, 117, 194, 200, 202, 205, 206, 208, 209 Lowndes, Robert A.W. 96, 97, 98, 99, 100 Lubalin, Herb 24, 62, 63 Luros, Milton 38, 113, 114, 189, 191 M Macdonald , John D. 12, 20, 37, 42, 46, 47, 123, 181 Macdonald, Ross 12, 20, 122 Macfadden Circulation 55 Macfadden, Bernarr 14, 20, 60, 94, 113, 127, 144, 178, 198 Macfadden’s Fiction Lovers Magazine 146 Mad Magazine 7, 65, 103, 117, 127, 186, 213 Mad Monsters 106, 187 Magazine Management 55, 112, 113, 213, 219 Magazine of Horror 7, 94, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 110, 116, 117, 121 Mailer, Norman 12, 26, 65, 68 Malzberg, Barry 15, 109, 157 Man’s Daring 209 Man’s Favorite Pastime 37 Manson, Charles 73 Marvel Science Stories 74, 112, 202 Maupassant, Guy de 62 McBain, Ed 12, 20, 117, 122, 124 McCarthy, Joseph 64, 70, 165 McCarthyism 67, 70, 188 McCoy, Horace 35 McCulley, Johnston 18, 155 McNeil, Legs 151, 152 Meade, Marjorie 50

Medical Horror 126 Mekas, Jonas 81 Mencken, H. L 33, 119, 178 Merritt, Abraham 19, 74, 75, 76, 116, 117, 144, 177, 202 Millar, Pete 50 Miller, Henry 16, 64 Mills, Robert P. 120, 156 Modern Life Illustrated 7, 98 Modern Sunbathing 112, 115, 190, 191 Mogel, Leonard 100, 101 Mondo 2000 44, 45 Monroe, Marilyn 25, 63, 141, 190, 219 Monster Parade 46, 49 Monsters and Things 49 Moorcock, Michael 20 Moore, C. L. 76 Morris, Bentley 8 Mr. Fluxus 83 Muhammad Ali 24 Mundy,Talbot 9, 19 Munsey, Frank A. 16, 32, 54, 132, 141 Muscle Builder 55, 203, 204 N Nader, Ralph 25, 63 Nanovic, John L. 27, 28, 55, 56, 57, 130, 143, 180, 181 Nathan, George Jean 33, 119 National Lampoon 100, 104, 127, 203 Naturel Herald 190 Nero Wolfe Mystery Magazine 117 New Republic,The 55 New Yorker,The 29, 30, 32, 46, 55 Newhouse, Sam 55 Nin, Anaïs 16, 63, 83 Norton, Alden H. 12 Nudist Leader 190 Nudist Photo Field Trip 190 Nugget 107, 195 Nylon Jungle 38, 191 O Other Worlds 14, 77, 79, 81, 105, 118, 132, 148, 167, 200 Oursler, Fulton 42, 146, 198 P Page, Bettie 21, 49, 92, 112 Paizo Publishing 15 Palac, Lisa 88 Palmer, Raymond A. 7, 14, 79, 80, 81, 87, 167, 168

| Paris Nights 30, 82, 178 Parliament News 114, 191 Parliament-Funkadelic 53 Paul, Frank R. 13, 22, 75 143, 148, 176 Peek-a-Boo 98, 142 Peep Show 106 Pepper 98 Phoebe Zeit-Geist 65 Picasso 16, 25, 26 Picture Detective 106 Picture Scope 219 Pierce, John J. 93 Pin-up Fun 7, 98 Playboy 16, 26, 45, 77, 103, 104, 105, 107, 112, 114, 127, 137, 143, 150, 160, 167, 168, 169, 185, 190, 191, 195 Poe, Edgar Allan 13, 32, 200, 202, 205 Pohl, Frederik 92, 93 Police Gazette 127, 149, 169, 198 Poorboy 119 Pop, Iggy 53, 171 Prather, Richard S. 122 Q-R Real Art Studies 12, 21 Real Life Guide 7, 95, 96, 97, 98, 162 Realist,The 104, 186 Reed, Lou 53, 151 Rex Stout’s Mystery Monthly 117 Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone 117 Rogue 9, 16, 79, 113, 138, 139, 156, 166, 167, 168, 169, 195, 202, 217, 220 Rolling Stone 53, 135, 158 Ross, Harold 29, 30 Rosset, Barney 64, 65 Roster, Bill 8 Roth, Ed “Big Daddy” 50 Roth, Samuel 15, 20, 63, 220 Rowling, J. K. 116 Rundell, Cathy 83 Rusch, Kristine Kathryn 120, 121 Russell, Eric Frank 22, 87, 200 S Sacher-Masoch 16 Saint Mystery Magazine,The 117 Santangelo, John 105 Sarris, Andrew 82 Satana 7, 9, 98, 169 Saunders, Norman 12, 18, 46, 65, 125, 148, 191

Scary Monsters 50 Schmidt, Stanley 23, 202 Science and Invention 75, 86, 158, 177 Science Fiction Quarterly 48, 96, 171, 194 Science Wonder Stories 14, 178 Screen Chills 49 Screen Thrills Illustrated 77 Screw:The Sex Review 118, 127 Selbee Associates 7, 98 Seldes, George 67, 68, 70, 72 Sensational True-Crime Detective Cases 203 Serling, Rod 104, 117, 149 Sexology 12, 88, 95, 113, 158, 169, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 211 Shaver Mystery 14, 15, 78, 79, 80, 87, 105, 119, 167 Shaver, Richard S. 87, 105, 168 Shaw, Joseph 34, 37 Sheckley, Robert 42, 92, 93 Sheer Delight 32, 37 Shirley, John 44, 89, 169, 170 Shock Cinema 50, 151 Shriek 7, 9, 97, 181 Silberkleit, Louis 112 Silverberg, Robert 61, 93, 101, 121, 168, 209, 210 Simenon, Georges 42, 155 Sin-ema 98, 181 Siodmak, Curt 37 Sir! 182, 203 Slapstick 28, 30, 127, 182 Sloane,T. O’Connor 14 Smart Set,The 33, 37 Smith, Clark Ashton 86, 96, 178, 200, 206, 210 Smith, E.E. 13 Smokehouse Monthly 45, 46 Snappy Stories 29 Sohler, Stanley L. 191 Spiegelman, Art 159, 162 Sproul, Robert C. 209 St. Cyr, Lili 92, 112 St. John Publishing 122, 123 St. John, Michael 106, 124 Startling Mystery Stories 7, 94, 98, 99, 100, 110 Steeger, Henry 20, 32, 76, 89, 130, 132, 185, 196, 198 Stein, Modest 19, 57, 181 Stevens, Francis 19, 75 Stevens, Lawrence 75 Stewart, Bhob 49, 50, 101 Stone, I.F. 25, 63, 67, 69, 72, 187, 188, 189 Strange Suicides 126, 127, 141, 189

Striparama 7, 9, 98, 189, 214 Stuart, Lyle 67, 68, 69, 70, 72 Sturgeon,Theodore 22, 93, 120, 201, 202, 218 Sullivan, Ed 68 Swank 113 T Tales from the Crypt (Eerie Publs.)118, 162, 194 Tarzan 18, 40, 41, 56, 75, 112, 115, 116, 148, 149 Thompson, Jim 84, 107 Tickle-Me-Too 30 Tip-Top 38 Tobocman, Seth 212, 213 Tomorrow’s Man 7, 95, 204 Top-Notch 56, 206 Traven, B. 123 Tremaine, F. Orlin 21, 22, 23, 74, 86 True Confessions 45, 46, 47, 127, 198, 199 True Detective Mysteries 127, 146, 198 Trumbo, Dalton 67, 166 Two Worlds Monthly 16 U Uncanny Tales 112, 197, 199, 200 Union News Company 55 V Valigursky, Ed 61 Vampirella 77, 78, 118 Van Gelder, Gordon 120 Variety 18 Vogel, Amos 81 Vue — America’s Photo Digest 47 W Wallace, Edgar 11, 19, 40, 117, 147, 155 Warhol, Andy 65, 73, 82, 83, 136 Warren, James 47, 49, 77, 78, 127, 104, 118, 204 Weirdbook 100 Wells, H. G. 76 Werewoves & Vampires 106 Wertham, Dr Fredric 122 Whitestone Publications 47, 69, 162 Wild Cartoon Kingdom 83 Wild Women 98 Wilson, F. Paul 99 Wilson, Robert Anton 25, 44, 63, 88, 138 Winchell,Walter 67, 71 Wired 44, 89

223

Witchcraft And Sorcery 51 Wizards of the Coast 15 Wodehouse 20, 42, 61, 140, 155 Woman’s Physical Development 144 Wonder Stories 14, 22, 86, 97, 130, 156, 170, 178, 179, 193, 209, 211 Wood, Ed 78 Wood,Wally 50, 103, 113, 118, 127, 151, 216 Woolrich, Cornell 19, 36, 122, 154, 157, 197 World Famous Creatures 46, 49 Worlds Beyond 199 Wylie, Philip 41, 42 X-Y Your Physique 203 Z Zelazny, Roger 15, 99, 121 Zilch, Elmer 30

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OTHER SPACES, OTHER TIMES A life spent in the future By Robert Silverberg “For all SF devotees and novelists in training who relished Stephen King’s similarly autobiographical On Writing.” —Libraryjournal.com Robert Silverberg is one of the most important American science fiction writers of the 20th century. He rose to prominence during the 1950s at the end the pulp era and the dawning of a more sophisticated kind of science fiction. One of the most prolific of writers, early on he would routinely crank out a story a day. By the late 1960s he was one of the small group of writers using science fiction as an art form and turning out award-winning stories and novels. In 2004 he was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America. OTHER SPACES, OTHER TIMES:A LIFE SPENT IN THE FUTURE is the first collection of his autobiographical writings. Fully illustrated with many rare photos and ephemera — from Silverberg’s own archives — and also includes a new Silverberg bibliography. ISBN-13 978-1-933065-12-0

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www.nonstop-press.com

Editors Earl Kemp, a national nuisance, has been known by many guises: adventurer, explorer, lover, beloved, rebel, First Amendment convict savant, and numerous others, almost all bad. Also a Hugo Award-winning editor and SF Worldcon Chair, Kemp is best known as the notorious producer, during the Golden Age of Sleaze Paperbacks, of more than 5,000 novels and half again that many “girly” magazines for Greenleaf Classics, Inc. For the past nine years of his dotage, he has been dribbling salacious memories at efanzines.com/EK/index.html and has become the chronicler of the entire sleaze book and magazine genre. Luis Ortiz is the author of Emshwiller: Infinity x 2, a Hugo Award nominee. At present he is preparing a biography of the artist Jack Gaughan.

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ISBN-13: 978-1-933065-14-4

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THE SECRET LIFE of America in the 20th century is displayed in the thousands of specialized magazines produced between 1925 and 1990.This period can be seen as a precursor to the cyberspace age where every fad, taste, obsession, and hush-hush desire is gratified.The list of cult magazines is legion: Black Silk Stockings, Castle of Frankenstein, Gee-Whiz, Jaybird,Amazing Stories, bOING bOING, Bronze Thrills, Ballyhoo, Doctor Death, Dream World, Eyeful, Exposé, Fate, Flying Saucers From Other Worlds, Magazine of Horror, Monster Times, Phantom Detective, Humorama, Psychotronic, Search & Destroy, Satana, Red Channels, Mobster Times, Sexology, Spicy Stories,The Spider,The Nudist,True Thrills, Spy, Sunshine & Health,Tiger Beat,True Strange,Web Terror,Whisper,Weird Tales, and Zest, to name just a few. Nothing was beyond the scope of imaginative publishers and eccentric editors whose main goal was to make a profit by giving their readers the magazines they really wanted to read. In the process they also created exuberant populist art and literature. CULT MAGAZINES: from A to Z is an encyclopedia of mid-century America at its sub-culture best. Illustrated with hundreds of magazine covers.

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