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From the Thrilling Days of Yester Year show us your WESTERN Pulps!
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30 posts in this topic

Popular pulps seem plentiful but after all they put out a ton of material. In March 1942, they had 32 different titles out on the racks (second only to Standard with 34 titles). Of those, a full 25% or 8 were Western pulps:

.44 Western

10 Story Western Magazine

Ace-High Western Stories

Big-Book Western Magazine

Dime Western Magazine

New Western Magazine

Star Western

Western Tales

and that's not counting Rangeland Romances!

People get surprised that comics went all in with Western comics in the late '40's. I always wonder why it took so long.

Here's Dime Western - March 1942 -

732871051_DimeWestern-March1942.thumb.jpg.e0db770f5e7b2f5d6e27c7568a2589d3.jpg

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I never really thought about it before, but yes, it does seem it took a long time for comics to embrace westerns.  Westerns had been big in the pulps not just since the early 40s, but in the 20s and 30s as well.  The king of the western pulps, Western Story Magazine, was so popular it ran weekly for most of the period between 1919 and 1943!

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Even the BLB series, out of 550 BLB (give or take), 97 were Westerns or 18%.

Here's "Popular" 's Ace-High Western Stories from the same month - March 1942 - love the logo.

Notice that this one has the F of Fictioneers, Inc. which … let's Wikipedia tell the story -

"In the late 1930s Steeger was under pressure to lower his rate of pay to below one cent a word, which he felt was the minimum decent rate he could offer. He didn't want to have Popular pay less than one cent per word, so a new company, Fictioneers, was started; it was essentially a fictional company, with an address (205 East 42nd St) that corresponded to the rear entrance of Popular's offices at 210 East 43rd St. It was given a separate phone number, and the switchboard girl was instructed to put calls through to staff working on Fictioneers titles only if the calls came to the Fictioneers number. Many staff were working on magazines for both companies at the same time, which made it difficult to maintain the pretense of separation."

1647900909_Ace-HighWestern-March1942.thumb.jpg.45094d5e940b2998687953aa4deca50a.jpg

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Not quite sure why I have this one. Maybe I got it thinking it was from an earlier year (shrug)

Star Western - Dec. 1948 -

1415987248_StarWestern-Dec1948.thumb.jpg.be1c1ab6eb27f39895f6f83e0c6882e0.jpg

However, as a bonus, this is a limited edition since little Bobby colored all the gals in the interior illos :D

1408924952_StarWestern-Dec1948-Illo.thumb.jpg.bd160d0fcd4fb4e49439cc58dca7b5e8.jpg

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Stumbled into these out in the wild today. Normally don’t buy many western pulps lately but these were way to cheap, to leave behind. Maybe the best bone white pages and full, bright tight spines I have seen  

B75DF654-0BE8-464E-A70D-F7CE96FE8911.jpeg

4D97DF1A-0C5F-4ADF-83DF-B7C0534560A1.jpeg

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80156DAD-DC19-46B0-8CD9-259516DD8EC4.jpeg

Edited by Robot Man
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10 hours ago, Robot Man said:

Stumbled into these out in the wild today. Normally don’t buy many western pulps lately but these were way to cheap, to leave behind. Maybe the best bone white pages and full, bright tight spines I have seen  

B75DF654-0BE8-464E-A70D-F7CE96FE8911.jpeg

4D97DF1A-0C5F-4ADF-83DF-B7C0534560A1.jpeg

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If you want a quick flip, I'm your guy for the two poker covers ...  GOD BLESS ... 

-jimbo (a friend of Jesus)(thumbsu

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