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Saturday 5 April 2025

Joe Saines Here's Joe taking with a potential customer. Joe specializes in toy soldiers at his store but to Pulpfest and this show he only brings pulps, paperbacks and hardcover books and other pop culture collectibles. At Pulpfest in 2022 I was pleased to buy from Joe the hardcover book Horror Comics Of The 1950s which was a collection of EC comic book reprints. I had wanted one for many years after seeing it advertised in the late 1960s in the comic book fanzine The Rockets Blast Comicollector.

Joe Saines Joe with three original Bill Ward drawings for the Humorama line of digest magazines published by Martin Goodman, best known as the publisher of Marvel Comics. He's holding the first Avon paperback edition of Seven Footprints To Satan, 1943 by the popular fantasy writer Abraham Merritt. I don't have that one but I do have the Avon 1950 paperback because it has a much more eye-catching cover; I probably think that because the cover has a naked woman on it. The Dark Man And Others is a first edition from Arkham House, 1963. It seems to contain only Robert E. Howard horror stories and not his more famous sword & sorcery characters like Conan, Bran Mak Morn, Solomn Kane.

Timothy Kupin Veteran comic book dealer Timothy Kupin aka Koop talking with Joe Saines.

Timothy Kupin Koop with two hardcover books on Frank Frazetta and a hardcover book with all of the stories drawn by Wally Wood for his 1960s fanzine Witzend. I last saw Koop at Pulpfest 2024 and expect to see him there again this coming August.

Donna Rankin Donna Rankin of Tall Stories Books. I have met Ashley and Ben Rankin at previous shows. Here's Donna with an expensive copy of Astounding Science Fiction August 1938 with the famous story "Who Goes There" by John W. Campbell. This story was adapted into the popular movie The Thing From Another World, 1951 and remade as The Thing, 1982. Since this pulp magazine is too expensive for most people to afford I asked Ashley Rankin at HeroesCon last year to show us the opening pages of the story as a public service, shown here. Donna is also holding the Ace Double paperback of Conan The Conqueror, 1953 published long before the Lancer paperbacks in the late 1960s made Conan more known to the general public. The cover art is by one of the best pulp artist, Norman Saunders. Apparently Mr. Saunders didn't have time to read the book since he drew Conan like a Roman soldier instead of the way author Robert E. Howard described him.

Keith Dilbone Keith had a nice selection of rare paperback books with several by noted authors Harlan Ellison, Sax Rohmer, Charles Willeford (Cockfighter.) If I had been caught by my teachers reading any of these lurid, subversive paperbacks in school in my hometown of Savannah, GA in the 1960s I would most likely gotten into trouble.

Rick Santman Rick is another dealer I've seen at Pulpfest the last few years. Here he is presiding calmly over his vast empire of original art, pulps and nice condition science fiction hardcover and paperback books.

Rick Santman Rick with a high grade and therefore expensive Weird Tales pulp from 1936. The cover is painted by top pulp illustrator Margaret Brundage and three big name writers are noted on the cover: Seabury Quinn, Robert Bloch, Robert E. Howard.

Bill Thade I've been seeing Bill at HeroesCon and Pulpfest the last few years. He always has an excellent inventory of Silver Age comic books. The Marvel comic Journey Into Mystery #56, 1960 is more accurately a "Pre-Marvel" which is the period after the Atlas Implosion of 1957 and the start of the Marvel Age of Comics in 1961 with the publication of The Fantastic Four #1. This comic figures very prominently in my life long infatuation with the Pre-Marvels as chronicled here. This Charlton comic The Thing #15, 1954`is a real treat for Steve Ditko art collectors. The cover is by Ditko and all five stories are drawn by him.

Jim Emerson Jim Emerson of Futures Past is involved in the monumental project of writing the history of science fiction with a book devoted to each year. The first book covers the year 1926 which saw the beginning of modern science fiction with the publication of the first science fiction magazine Amazing Stories published by Hugo Gernsback. Two years ago at Pulpfest I bought from Jim the first three volumes 1926, 1927, 1928. This year at Windy City he gave me his new 1929 volume for photographic services rendered. Thanks Jim! The production values in these books are really splendid with crisp photos printed on quality paper. Keep up the good work Jim.

Jim Emerson Jim with his 1927 volume and just released 1929 volume.

Henry Franke Edgar Rice Burroughs expert Henry Franke is a permanent fixture at Pulpfest but he doesn't always attend this Windy City show. He came this year at the request of the show's promoter Doug Ellis because Henry was needed to moderate a panel discussion on Burroughs in one of the evening seminars. Wherever Henry goes something pertaining to ERB can't be far behind, thus the poster behind Henry features two of Burroughs most famous characters, John Carter of Mars and Dejah Thoris.

David Schmidt I was pleased to meet this veteran comic book dealer David Schmidt for the first time. At left is the pulp Blue Book from 1929 with a story featuring Tanar by "the author of Tarzan" Edgar Rice Burroughs. It was customary to serialize a new novel in a few issues of a pulp magazine before the novel ever saw print in hardcover. I wasn't around in 1929 to read this early Tanar story. But I was around in the 1960s to read the Burroughs novels then being reprinted in the Ace paperback books. One of these Ace books was Tanar Of Pellucidar. The Analog magazine is from 1964. For a few years in the 1960s Analog went from its digest size to this full magazine size before switching back to digest size where it remains today. Some of these larger size 1960s Analog magazines are a little pricey since they serialized Frank Herbert's popular novel Dune before the book came out. Analog inherited the prestigious mantle of the legendary pulp magazine Astounding Science Fiction when it changed its name to Analog and went from regular pulp size to digest size in the late 1940s. The 1920s Amazing Stories has a cover by famous pulp artist Frank R. Paul. The early issues of Amazing Stories are known as "bedsheets" since they were larger than the standard size most pulps had in the 1930s - 1940s. Many of these 1920s Amazing Stories featured the big name science fiction writers H.G. Wells and Jules Verne on their covers but be assured the Verne stories are all reprints since he died in 1905. H.G. Wells was still alive in the 1920s but I assume all his stories in Amazing Stories are reprints also. A famous writer like Wells would have better things to do than write for a penny a word pulp magazine.

Jeff Gaynor I enjoyed talking with this dealer I had never seen before. Jeff told me he used to live several years ago in my current town of Virginia Beach, VA. I told him he wouldn't recognize the place now. Jeff had a nice selection of esoteric paperbacks many of which would have gotten me into trouble with my High School teachers back in Savannah, GA in the 1960s. The Secret People on his display wall has a cover by Frank Frazetta. Also note the rare sex infused paperbacks by science fiction writer Philip Jose Farmer. The Stag magazine is a typical example of Martin Goodman's Men's Adventure magazines. The Movieland Pin-Ups has a photo of Anita Ekberg on the cover. Jeff is holding a movie-tie-in paperback of the movie Orgy Of The Dead, 1965 written by the movie's director the anti-genius Edward D. Wood, Jr. Jeff told me the movie was really bad, even by Ed Wood standards. The introduction is by Famous Monsters Of Filmland editor Forrest J. Ackerman. If Forry featured this movie in Famous Monsters somebody please tell me which issue. I'd like to see how he did it without showing any nudity which permeates the movie.

Jeff Gaynor Since most people can't afford Jeff's asking price, as another public service from your Humble Narrator here is a closeup of the cover. Also, this link is to photos featured in a review of the movie in the tawdry girle magazine High Time V.6 #2 that I sold on ebay several years ago. You didn't expect this movie to be reviewed by The New York Times did you?

John Cosgriff John Cosgriff was another dealer I hadn't seen before. He had a nice selection of original art like this painting likely for a vintage paperback cover. A good title for this painting would be "Young Woman's Eternal Dilemma" or more bluntly "Will She Or Won't She." That black & white art in the lower right corner seems to have a familiar style. Let's take a closer look at it in the next photo at right.

John Cosgriff Why this pencil art is by the most famous comic book artist in the world, Jack Kirby! The descriptive writing is in Kirby's all capital letters style which he used in the margin notes for his comic book work. After he was done working at Marvel and DC Kirby in the 1980s worked in the TV cartoon animation field, most notably for the company Ruby-Spears. This drawing of Kirby characters is a "concept" drawing showing the characters that could be used for a proposed cartoon series.

Rommin Adl Aside from the pulp The Secret 6 all of these magazines are Men's Adventure aka "sweat magazines." All of these covers have the theme of animals attacking people which is as good a theme to collect as any I suppose. This market was dominated by Marvel comic book publisher Martin Goodman with titles like Stag, Men, Male, For Men Only etc...Goodman was infatuated with male pronouns in his comic books and magazines. A few comic book collectors have some interest in these magazines as there was some cross-overs between these magazines and the comics by some of Marvel's comic book artists and also the 1950s magazines carried Goodman's Atlas Globe insignia like the comics. The Men's Adventure magazines flourished from the early 1950s through the mid 1970s. They catered to a working class / blue collar male readership who liked to read stories about tough, daring men having adventures in far away exotic places. Killing boat loads of German and Japanese soldiers single handedly by American soldiers in World War II was also a popular theme. Circulation was also boosted by having lots of beautiful women around who needed to be rescued or seduced.

Tim Paxton Tim Paxton at far right. I see Tim each year at Pulpfest. At that show last year I bought from him a hardcover anthology of horror stories by Manly Wade Wellman Worse Things Waiting that I haven't had time to read yet. In the foreground at left are books by three famous authors two of whom still resonate with me today. I discovered Arthur C. Clarke when I checked out of my White Bluff Elementary School library in Savannah, GA in the early 1960s one of his anthologies Across The Sea Of Stars. I've been reading him off and on since then and after Clifford D. Simak, he is my favorite science fiction writer. (If Simak had never written City Clarke would have the top spot.) I especially like his Childhood's End and Against The Fall Of Night. I started reading Richard Matheson in the late 1970s when I discovered his horror anthologies like Shock and Third From The Sun. Matheson along with Robert Bloch are my favorite horror writers. I never read any Andre Norton novels until a few years ago when I read Quest Crosstime. It was ok but not good enough time to draw me into reading any more of her books.	David Kreydich, Peter Hebein, Tim Paxton Tim and his crew showing off some of Tim's collectible paperbacks. The most famous one is The Woman Chaser by noted hardboiled crime writer Charles Willeford. Yes, that's another book I would have had to hide from my school teachers.	Lewis Forro & Gene Carpenter Saturday evening when the dealers' room was closed I took some photos of the Windy City show banner outside the auction preview room held in the Magnolia Ballroom. Afterwards I was breaking down my photo equipment when Gene Carpenter came by for a chat. While Gene and I were sitting there Bill Thade came by and snapped this photo of us. Thanks Bill!

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