WEIRD TALES 28, 29 & 30 (1926)

The first 27 WEIRD TALES covers are HERE.

Poster Gallery: Adventures of Philo Vance

 1947

 1940

1947

Forgotten Books: THE BRAVOS by Brian Wynne Garfield (1966)

Many Brian Garfield westerns feature a world-weary gunfighter with a bad reputation. Everyone expects the worst of him, and - while no candidate for sainthood - he is partially redeemed by demonstrating a sense of honor lesser badmen could never understand.

The first two Jeremy Six books, Mr. Sixgun (reviewed HERE) and The Night it Rained Bullets (HERE) sported such characters, and if memory serves they are not the last. But The Bravos, the third book in the Six series, offers something different. In this one, Jeremy Six plays that role himself. 

When the citizens of Spanish Flat form a lynch mob, overpower Marshal Six and throw a necktie party for his prisoner, Jeremy resigns in disgust and hits the trail. He’s been deluding himself, he believes, in thinking that human beings even want justice - let alone deserve it.

Arriving in another town, he proceeds to drink and feel sorry for himself, trying not to care as he watches the citizens of this new burg prove themselves every bit as human as those he left behind. Will he eventually shake his funk and save these folks from themselves? What do you think?

Yeah, its predictable, but along the way we learn a little of Jeremy’s past. He once had a wife, but while he was out of town selling horses, Mrs. Six was unlucky enough to be trampled by a lynch mob. When Jeremy returned, he tracked down the leader of the mob and killed him in a fair fight. He then went on the gambling circuit, becoming known as “a wild man” with a reputation for quick shooting. When he finally slowed down enough to accept the job of Marshal, the citizens of Spanish Flat (as his Miss Kitty stand-in describes it), tamed him as much as he tamed them.

As a novel, The Bravos dished up a healthy serving of badmen, gunplay and tough Garfield prose, but I’ll be glad to see Six return to marshaling in the next book, The Proud Riders.

Forgotten Books is a pattinase production.

DOC SAVAGE Returns in the The Miracle Menace - by Will Murray AND Lester Dent!

While reading The Miracle Menace, I knew it was a different kind of Doc Savage novel, but I didn’t know how different until I heard Will Murray on a podcast interview (link below), where he spilled the beans.

This new WILD adventure of Doc Savage is actually two stories in one, and those stories alternate chapters, moving gradually on a converging course. One storyline has Doc and his pals investigating and old house that won’t stay put; one moment it’s there, the next it’s gone, and next thing you know it’s back again. The other story involves an out of work magician and his assistant in La Plata, Missouri, where people keep telling them that Christopher Columbus is alive and living in the 20th Century.

It happened like this: Among Lester Dent’s papers, Will Murray found an unpublished novelette called “Spook,” set in Dent’s home town of La Plata. The novelette involved that temporarily-retired magician, Gulliver Greene, and his near-identical assistant Spook Davis. And, as I mentioned, Christopher Columbus. Will liked the story, and got the idea of incorporating it into a Doc Savage novel.

His solution was to collaborate with Dent in a way he’d never done before. Chapter 1 is all Dent, introducing Gulliver Greene, and Chapter 2 is all Murray, involving Monk, Ham and Doc. The novel follows that pattern for the first thirty-nine chapters, when Doc and Gulliver finally put their heads together and charge into the climax. As Will describes it in the podcast, “All the Doc Savage chapters are mine, all the non-Doc Savage chapters are Lester Dent’s, and near the last third of the book we start to converge.”

I knew none of this until I’d finished the book, and it came as quite a surprise. It’s a tribute to Will’s skill as a writer that the story flows seamlessly from one chapter the next, offering no hint of this tag-team approach. Makes me want to read the whole novel again, just to admire how it was done.

The Miracle Menace is probably the most complex Doc novel ever written, but it all comes together nicely, leaving no loose ends, and even ties in elements from a couple of Dent’s classic Doc adventures. In short, it’s great entertainment, and it’s obvious Will had as much fun writing it as I did reading it.

The paperback edition is available here:


On the podcast, Will also revealed something about Joe DeVito's cover painting. You can’t miss Ham, Doc and Monk standing there with the dirigible overhead, but I didn’t realize that Renny, Long Tom, Johnny and Habeas Corpus are featured too. Take a hard squint and you’ll spot ’em through the windows of the dirigible. Pretty cool.

You can listen to the podcast interview (which also includes Joe DeVito) HERE.

The Miracle Menace is also available in a deluxe hardcover edition with this extra-cool wraparound cover:

Paperback Gallery: W.T. Ballard's BILL LENNOX

Yesterday, right HERE, I announced the release of the Black Mask eBook "Gamblers Don't Win," featuring Hollywood Troubleshooter Bill Lennox. After his ten-year run in Mask, Lennox was featured in these four novels.

1942 (Signet edition 1945)

 1946 (Graphic edition 1950)

 1948 (Graphic edition 1950)

\

1960 (a Belmont original)

Some sources say there were five Bill Lennox novels, but this appears due to confusion over the retitling of Say Yes to Murder. It was reissued in Canada as Murder in Hollywood, and in the U.S. as The Demise of a Louse. (Every time I glance at this Murder in Hollywood cover I have the impression this babe is holding a fish in her left hand, and have to look twice to be sure she ain't.)

 1951

 1962

this second Graphic edition was published in 1954

A BLACK MASK eBook: "Gambler's Don't Win" by W.T. Ballard

W.T. Ballard was one of Joe Shaw’s second wave of Black Mask boys, along with George Harmon Coxe, Paul Cain, Norbert Davis, Roger Torrey, Theodore Tinsley, Dwight Babcock and Raymond Chandler. Ballard's chief character for the magazine was Bill Lennox, hardboiled troubleshooter for one of Hollywood’s major studios.

Between 1933 and 1942, Lennox appeared in over two dozen stories in Black Mask, then starred in four novels, the last of which was published in 1960. (For a look at those novels, tune in tomorrow.)

Unfortunately, very few Lennox stories have been reprinted. The only collection to date (containing five tales) is Hollywood Troubleshooter, a volume assembled by James L. Traylor back in 1985. So I’m mighty pleased to see “Gambler’s Don’t Win,” a Hollywood Troubleshooter alumnus, making its appearance as a Black Mask eBook.

“Gambler’s Don’t Win,” from the April 1935 issue (right), finds Lennox at the town’s new horse track, looking after the interests of his boss, studio head Sol Spurck. When Lennox spots jockeys deliberately throwing races, he’s embroiled in a web of greed, intimidation, revenge and murder. At the heart of it is the beautiful sister of a dead friend. Though Lennox suspects her, he also feels compelled to protect her - putting himself on the wrong side of the law, and of the lawless.

Ballard tells a tight, tough, and twisty tale, bringing it home with revelations I didn’t see coming, and an ending that put a smile on my face. Here’s hoping there will be many more Lennox adventures coming our way.

Want a sample? Here you go:

"Gambler's Don't Win" is now on sale, right here:


I covered the first round of Black Mask eBooks HERE.

All drawings and paintings from Black Mask Magazine are copyright © 1923 to 1953 by Keith Alan Deutsch as successor-in-interest, and conservator of all copyrights to the original publishers and copyright registrars: Pro-Distributors Publishing Company, Inc, and Popular Publications Inc.  All copyrights © renewed 1951 to 1981.

Overlooked Films: POPEYE Meets SUPERMAN (sort of)

(This week's Overlooked Film comes to you a day early, because tomorrow I'll be celebrating the release of "Gambler's Don't Win" by W.T. Ballard, the latest in the new line of Black Mask eBooks.)



Back in the early '40s, these two heroes were both working out of Paramount Studios. Superman made his last film there in 1943 (reportedly due to high production costs), but his costume (along with some of his sountrack music) resurfaced in this 1944 Popeye cartoon, "She-Sick Sailors." Fun stuff.

Pulp Gallery: SPICY WESTERN (1939)

More Spicy Western HERE!