Edited by Malcolm Reiss
132 pages
Published 1940
Read February 5
Rating: 1 out of 5
I’m reading this for one reason and one reason only: the cover art for “Exiles of the Dawn World.” I have no illusions that anything here will live up to the pure pulp silliness promised by that cover. You can pretty much guarantee that the cover will be the best part of a magazine like this, anyway.
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“Ghost-Brand Maverick” by Jay Karth. The title is the best thing about this paint-by-numbers western, which has nothing to do with ghosts. Our hero, Ed Flane, has “opaque” blue eyes and no personality beyond stoic manliness. He arrives in town, supposedly fresh out of prison on a governor’s pardon; Ed had been locked up for killing his own father, but was let go on “insufficient evidence.” Naturally, the moment he sets foot in town, manly honor demands he fistfight a dude named Rick, who promptly dies. Ed Flane knows it’s a setup by local bigwigs hoping to take over his ranch and cover up who actually killed Ed’s dad (and not, like, Ed’s responsibility whatsoever for fighting Rick or anything). There’s also a gray-eyed waif who’s in love with Ed, but her father wants to shoot him; then her father ends up dead, etc. There’s even a twist reveal of lookalikes, assumed identities, and a second Ed Flane. It feels like a pressed and shaped chicken patty of a story, a product squirted out for rapid consumption and immediate digestion. I suppose it could have been worse? If I had to say something positive about it, “Maverick” does a decent job at escalation, adding fresh complications to Ed Flane’s situation. D
“Exiles of the Dawn World” by Nelson S. Bond. Stage magician and sometime ghost-exorcist Jeff thinks he’s investigating a standard haunted house in upstate New York; city reporter Beth thinks she’s exposing Jeff as the con he is. Instead, through a hidden passageway in a bookshelf, they discover Dr. Franz von Torp and his secret time-travel laboratory. Von Torp, to preserve his secrets, orders them into his time-machine; in the struggle, all three end up “a million years ago,” which turns out to be a pulpy mishmash of cavemen times and dinosaur swamps. Jeff’s magician coat comes in handy when befriending the local Cro-Magnons. Most of the fauna is a smattering of Cenozoic beasties — Dinoceras and Coryphodon get name-checked — but dinosaurs finally appear in the climax, specifically tyrannosaurs ridden by war bands of Neanderthals under the mad scientist’s command. Like “Maverick” above, this story is a checklist of pulp tropes run through with abandon. Weirdly, “Exiles” shows its age worse than the western does, particularly in its general attitude toward women. Still, it has cavemen fighting tyrannosaurs with fire arrows, which is exactly what I came here for. D-
Content warning for two next stories: sui ideation.
“Boothill Bait” by Tom J. Hopkins. Back in the saddle with another western, this time following Joe Fergus, a steely, stoic man with an actual character trait: he wants to die, but can’t seem to make it happen, not even in shootouts with bandits. When Fergus finds a town, nicknamed The Graveyard, where marshaling is a sure ticket to six feet under, he rushes to volunteer. That’s the only interesting wrinkle to this dud. Despite that setup, Fergus lights out for an even deadlier town down in Mexico the moment someone tells him about it, chasing another man who just wants to die. “Boothill” is trying so hard to be brooding and fatalistic, but it’s just silly. (And ultimately racist.) F
“The Devil’s Sink Hole” by Albert Richard Wetjen. I was premature when I said a suicidal hero was an interesting wrinkle, because we got another one: Stinger Seave, a former South Seas “trader” who has gone back to ruthless adventuring in his old age, after a bank collapse erases most of his colonialist wealth. Seave is frail, his mustache white, and he’s clean out of fucks to give. So the governor of colonial New Guinea offers to make him a magistrate on the frontier. Stinger could have been an interesting character, but this story is an exercise in colonialist bullshit. It’s just an especially vile western with palm trees. F
Clearly we peaked with the first two stories. We’ve long since reached the point of diminishing returns.
“The Rider of Lost Range” by Bart Cassidy. Another western. Two bygone “pards,” Buck and Rooney, grew up and got ranches next to each other, but now they suspect each other of rustling their calves, because it’s manlier to stew in unfounded suspicion than to have an open and honest communication. You’d never guess, but a third man is behind it all, putting them against each another while he steals their cattle! (I sussed out the twist by page two.) The one redeeming feature of this tale is its depiction of high park and mountain scenery. There’s also a secret cave behind a thundering waterfall, leading to a grassy range open to the air, which is implausible but fun. Maybe F+
“Murder Sands” by John Starr. A tale of two men in the French Foreign Legion: a standup American sergeant, and a vicious bully of a Dutch lieutenant. The American noncom punches the Dutch officer, gets only light punishment due to past heroism, and now the Dutchman plots vengeance. Consistently uninteresting tale from the desert frontiers of colonialism. F
“Tejano!” by Harry F. Olmsted. All about some “loco” white dudes cow-punching in the Big Bend country. Murders and rustling and revenge get rattled off at breakneck pace, with all the standard racist western tropes. I almost wonder if this was some awkward attempt at a satire of pulpy westerns. No thanks, either way. F
“Fate Fans a .45” by Walt Coburn. Jack Badger, cowpoke turned investigator, traipses down to Mexico about a train robbery, following a hunch it was set up by someone on the inside. (Turns out Jack’s dad was killed in the robbery. It’s a vengeance story, because of course it is.) Insipid stuff, and excessively long, to boot. Didn’t expect much from this one, but what a flat way to end this issue. F
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For a moment there at the start, I had thought this magazine might have been more than meets the eye — only a little, maybe 5%, but still, more interesting than it would seem. But no, they merely front-loaded it with the best stories, and even those two were marginal at best. The rest was pure pulp filler. Not surprising, just disappointing.
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