Pulp Gallery: ARGOSY Goes Native

Westerns You MAY Have Missed (1923)

Dan Turner, HOLLYWOOD DETECTIVE in Color! "The Poisoned Puppet" (1953)

Sadly, this is likely the last in our Dan Turner in Color series. This one appeared in Crime Smashers #15, from March 1953, which was the final issue of that mag (uploaded to comicbookplus, I should add, by "narfstar"), with the art attributed to Tony Tallarico.  One more story appeared, we are told, in Crime Mysteries #8, but that one does not appear on the site, and it ain't likely I'll be able to find (or afford) a copy of my own.  If anyone out there has that one, and would care to scan it for us, legions of Turner fans would be mighty thankful!

Meanwhile, I still have many more issues of Hollywood Detective, and will be posting more of Dan's black & white adventures as time rambles on.

Forgotten Stories: Dan Turner in BULLET FROM NOWHERE by Robert Leslie Bellem (1935)

A few days back I found a great surprise in my mailbox (and by this I mean the old-fashioned, nearly-defunct kind that hangs on the front of my house): This premier issue of Dan Turner, Hollywood Detective, published way back in January 1942. It was sent, I learned, by a generous gent named Dale Goble, a frequent peruser of this humble blog. Thanks, Gobe!

In honor of the occassion, I'm posting the cover attraction here for all the world to enjoy. "Bullet from Nowhere," like five of other stories in this mag, was reprinted from Spicy Detective (in this case from April 1935). The remaining story, also a Dan Turner yarn, appeared in a 1937 issue of Private Detective Stories.

Our Man Dan, I may have mentioned in past posts, was a very busy fellow. Debuting in February 1934, in the second issue of Spicy Detective, he appeared in the next 102 issues of that mag. In 1943 the title was changed to Speed Detective, where he starred in 28 more issues. 

Dan Turner, Hollywood Detective ran ten issues, each of which contained between six and eight Dan stories. Some of those were reprints from Spicy, but most were new. That title changed to just plain Hollywood Detective, running another 49 issues and finally bowing out as a digest in 1950. Most of those 49 contained between two and five Dan stories, and most also sported an eight-page comic book adventure of Dan. 

How many stories does that make? I don't know. It almost broke my brain figuring how many mags he appeared in. I don't know if anyone's ever come up with a definitve number, but it's a big one.

And Dan refuses to die. Since 1981, his tales have been reprinted in hardcover, trade paperback, oversized trade paperback, tiny paperback, chapbook, pulp facsimile and ebook formats. Some of the comic book adventures were reprinted in regular comic books in the '50s, and later in other editions. Eternity comics issued a run of new black and white mags in the '90s. A crummy movie called "Blackmail" was released in 1947, and another film, "The Raven Red Kiss-Off"(which I've yet to see) in 1990.

Shockingly, Dan never had a radio show, and he's yet to have his own TV series. But give him time.

Further reading:

Another Dan Turner story, "Shakedown Sham," is HERE.

I posted a few black and white comic stories HERE.

I've been posting the color comic book stories HERE.

I'll now shut my yap and let you read your Forgotten Story:  

LONE RANGER Gum Cards Ride Again! (1940)