I like this KNOCKOUT cover because of the cover story on Joe Louis. And HEY, I know that KNOCKOUT might not be considered officially a pulp because it has true stories, but give me a break, will ya?
KNOCKOUT, May-June, 1937
LEADING WESTERN, August 1948
LIFE'S ROMANCES, June 1941
LIVE GIRL STORIES, November 1928
And I know LOVE STORY is not even close to being an obscure pulp, but I thought this cover to be very significant, as this is an issue after Street & Smith sold the magazine to Popular and is one of the very last issues of this most popular of all pulps.LOVE STORY, February 1954
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6 comments:
You think K and L are tough, just wait until X,Y and Z. Just kidding.
As far as Knockout is concerned, don't sweat it. I have had copies over the years and they sure looked liked pulps to me. Just checked and there are actually some very scarce titles at the end of the alphabet.
I think all pulp collectors consider KNOCKOUT to be a pulp magazine. Factual articles were used by pulps and sometimes the articles were really fiction in disguise. For instance GHOST STORIES was really a fiction magazine despite all the claims about so called "true stories".
Ah, "true stories"... the source of so many stories and legends...
The one-shot LIFE'S ROMANCES was a pretty rare pulp until a half-dozen years ago. That's when somebody in the midwest (Ohio, I think) found a cache of uncirculated copies in the basement of what used to be a five-and-dime store. (This, apparently, was one of the magazines intended for sale primarily in such venues.) The mint copies made their way to a dealer who sold them on eBay -- one at a time, every four or six weeks -- for several years. He always offered them at low opening bids ($3.99, I think), so they always sold. The first few copies fetched fairly high prices for a romance pulp, based on the title's rarity. But once everybody realized the seller had a large supply, the prices dropped precipitously and I believe the last several copies offered didn't get any bids at all.
I did pretty well with these early on, buying a handful of copies at five bucks or less and selling them at pulp conventions for $25 each. I thought about keeping one until I made the mistake of reading it. The stories were reprints from woman-oriented slicks. One of them was by former detective-pulp stalwart Frederick Nebel. It was the worst sort of pap you could imagine, almost unreadable drivel. That he stopped writing the Cardigan, Donahue, and Kennedy-MacBride stories in favor of such dreck is lamentable, to say the least.
The funny thing about Nebel, he actually thought his slick fiction was better than his pulp work. When Joe Shaw wanted permission to include a Nebel story in the BLACK MASK collection, Nebel refused because the pulp stories were not as good as his slick stuff.
Matt Moring of Altus Press will be publishing several collections of the Donahue, Cardigan, and Kennedy-McBride stories.
I really like that Life's romances cover.
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