Tom Roberts [ed.] - Windy City Pulp Stories #9

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Tom Roberts [ed.] - Windy City Pulp Stories #9 (Black Dog, April 2009)

Back cover montage: Tom Roberts: Front: H.J. Ward

THE SPICY MAGAZINES

Will Murray - An Informal History of the the Spicy Pulp
Alfred Jan - From Spicy to Bland
Will Murray - The Spicy Adventurers.
Morgan Holmes - The Saga of Wild Bill Clanton and Two Gun Bob
Will Murray - The Spicy Westerners
Will Murray - The Spicy Sleuths

THE SPICY ARTISTS

David Saunders - A Profile of Alan Anderson
Neil Mechem - Damsels in Distress: The Art of H.J. Ward; including a gallery of pulp cover art by H.J. Ward
Wilton E. Matthews - A Profile of Howard Parkhurst: reprinted from Super Detective, April 1935.
Tom Roberts - A Short Look at the Career of Howard Parkhurst; including a gallery of art by H. Parkhurst

Of Other Interest

2008 Lamont Award Recognition
1939 Letter from Frank Armer to Howard Wandrei
Anonymous - Close Up: Frank Armer - Pulp Potentate; reprinted from Independent News, vol.1, 1944
Frank Armer - The Five C's of Detective Writing: reprinted from Writer's Review, June 1934
O. Foerster Schully - Markets in False Face: reprinted from Author & Journalist, Nov. 1935 and Jan. 1936; an article complaining about the Spicy chain of magazines with a response by the editor of Spicy Detective, and subsequent responses from three Spicy authors.
Gene Christie - More from Writer's magazines - Spicy tips

Guest of Honour Focus

Robert Weinberg - Hubert Rogers: A Brief Appreciation
John Bell - Hubert Rogers in the Pulps, 1926-1956.
Tom Roberts - A Bibliography of Pulp Illustrations by Hubert Rogers: including a gallery of pulp cover art by Hubert Rogers

Film Focus

Ed Hulse - Pulp to the Silver Screen.

Spicy Mystery. Lawrence Cadman, Editor. 900 Market St., Wilmington, Delaware. Mystery shorts with sex interest; the special slant requires close study of the magazine. The sex must be soundly motivated; can't be dragged in. 2,500 to 5,500. Up to 1c, acc.

******

For writers who like to handle the really sexy stuff, Culture Magazines offer the four "Spicy" markets: Spicy Adventure, Spicy Detective, and Spicy Western . These are all edited here in New York, but because of the prejudice of the metropolitan police, etc., the editors prefer that manuscripts be addressed to 900 Market Street, Wilmington, Delaware. These magazines pay one cent a word, on acceptance. And reports are made promptly within a week to ten days. All four are open to new writers. They use only shorts under 5,500 words.

— Writer's Digest, March 1938

A Spicy special affording 100+ pages to the joys of Culture-Trojan's "sexy" publications. Includes Alfred Jan on the self-censorship of Spicy Detective and Spicy Adventure under threat of prosecution from the mayor of New York and clean-up campaigners. Will Murray ponders Spicy Western's late arrival to the party, the adventures of E. Hoffman Price's "coffin-faced" Simon Bolivar Grimes, and an unhealthy obsession with Mexican bandits cattle-branding the buxom breasts of hog-tied dancehall gals. Neil Mechem lauds the "racy" cover art of nice-girls-in-peril specialist, H.J. Ward, while David Saunders of Pulp Artist repute contributes a short biography of Ward's equally giftedSpicy/ Speed Western equivalent, Alan Anderson. Morgan Holmes documents Robert E. Howard's relatively well-paid surrogate career as pseudonymous spicy western author, and his attempt to persuade a name pen-pal to follow suit.

Howard's sales to Spicy-Adventure Stories resulted in one of the most hilarious high points in his correspondence with H. P. Lovecraft, when in a letter dated December 5, 1935 Howard encouraged his staid correspondent to try his hand at the spicy market:

Why don't you give it a whirl? You can use a pen name if you like; I did, and I think most of its contributors do... They like good strong plots, but the sex element is a cinch; any man can write that part of it. Just write up one of your own sex adventures, altered to fit the plot. That's the way I did with the yarn I sold them.

The non-Spicy content sees Rob Weinberg, John Bell and Tom Roberts pay tribute to Hubert Rogers, whom they regard "one of the most important science fiction artists of the 40s," and Ed Satan Lives for My Love! Hulse on the movies they'll be screening at that year's Windy City Pulp fest. The only slight disappointment - at least, it is for we wretched ones who crave only the morbid, the macabre, the miserable - no single article devoted to Spicy Mystery