Pulp Gallery: SPICY MYSTERY (1938)

More Spicy Mystery HERE.

SHADOW COMICS 46, 47 & 48 (1945)

The first 45 covers are HERE.

Overlooked Films: PHILIP MARLOWE - "The Ugly Duckling" (1959)

The first episode from the 1959 TV series starring Philip Carey and guest-starring Barbara Bain.

Cap Gun Monday: George Schmidt RANGE RIDER

Was this gun marketed as a tie-in to the Range Rider TV series starring Jock Mahoney? I don't know, but it would be nice to think so. It's 10 inches long, all metal (including the grip) and very similar to the Schmidt-made Roy Rogers pistol I featured HERE.



More Cap Guns HERE.

Pulp Gallery: Belarski on ACES (1931)

Toy Soldier Saturday: Marx 6-inch Pioneers

Most of these 6-inch pioneers look like Davy Crockett to me, but Marx apparently thought they looked like Daniel Boone. They were based on much smaller poses from the 54mm Daniel Boone, Wilderness Scout playsets. 

More Toy Soldiers HERE.

Forgotten Spicy Western Stories: TOO MANY MAVERICKS by James A. Lawson

When I reviewed the Black Dog Books collection Hard Guy here last month (HERE), I threatened to post "Too Many Mavericks" by the same author, a guy calling himself James A. Lawson. At the time, I wondered who Lawson might really be, and Mr. James Reasoner wrote with the dope: Lawson was actually western writer James P. Olsen. 

Now, I have just learned, Black Dog is preparing to release the complete adventures of Hard Guy, complete with a an all-new introduction by Mr. Reasoner himself. While Hard Guy had a mere five stories, Dying Comes Hard will have twenty! Publisher Tom Roberts hopes to unleash this fistful of dynamite upon the world no later than April. More details on that book are HERE. Meanwhile, here's a sample of Mr. Lawson/Olsen's work, from the August 1941 issue of Spicy Western. Great title. Do you suppose he was a Nero Wolfe fan?

 

Our thrilling tale continues at the bottom of the following page.

Your headquarters for Friday's Forgotten Books (and sometimes stories) is pattinase.

BLAZE! by Stephen Mertz: The Review

After mentioning this book last week, I plunked down my $2.99 (cheap), had it delivered via lightning bolt to my iPad, and dived in. And damn, I had a rollicking good time.

J.D. Blaze and his wife Kate are just possibly the Old West’s first husband-and-wife team of gunfighters. J.D. was first to take up the trade, and had already earned a deadly reputation when he met Kate, a roving gambler who perfected her craft on the Mississippi riverboats.

We meet the Blazes five years into their marriage, fighting for their lives against a horde of hostile Apaches. They escape, just barely, and just in time to go up against two of the baddest outlaws in the territory: bandito leader Luis Paco and Rosa Diablo, the self-styled “Queen Bitch of border.” Rosa’s favorite hobby is carving her initials into the backs of other women, and leaving them alive and suffering for the terrification of civilized folk. But is she as tough as Kate Blaze? Read the book and see.

As the cover proclaims, this is an “adult” Western, meaning there’s plenty of explicit this and that going on. Since this is a PG-rated blog, I’ll skip the details, but rest assured they’re enough to put hair on your chest.

Most of the action takes place in and around Whiskey Bend, a town just half an hour out of Tombstone. Whether or not that town really existed, you can be sure it’s true to life, because Southeastern Arizona is Mertz Country. Steve has spent most of his life in that neck of the desert, and even served time reenacting gunfights in Tombstone.

This is not Steve’s first Western. His website reveals he also authored Trailsman no. 243 West Texas Uprising, and 250, Arizona Ambush. Those books are now on my want list, along with Steve’s next Blaze! adventure.

Meanwhile, Books 2 and 3, by Bob Randisi and Wayne Dundee, are already available from Rough Edges Press. It looks like Kate and J.D. are going to have a wild ride.