In This Issue: Articles: The Big Book Score.........................................................................8 Gentle Madness, The Collyer Brothers and Me .................................8 I’m Not Langley Collyer, Yet...........................................................12 The Cream of The Crop.................................................................14 Received in Trade...........................................................................16 Believe It Baby, These Books Blow..................................................17 ROCURED P Regular Features: Reading and Rot (recently read books)......................................... 2-5 Pulp Sightings ..................................................................................8 Mailing Comments, mailing 62 & 63.........................................20-22 95404 CA, Santa Rosa, The Men Who Made The Argosy: 1130 Fourth Street, #116 1130 Fourth Street, ASILY Frank L. Packard...............................................................................6 John Kent.........................................................................................6 Chandler Whipple ............................................................................6 E E B AN C UMBERS N ACK B It’s Ruggdly Virile, It’s Karate Quick, It’s: Quick, Karate Ruggdly It’s Virile, It’s Prepared for P.E.A.P.S. mailing #64 Harris Warren for P.E.A.P.S. Prepared July 2003July (707) 577-0522 Issue 7 [email protected] email: Back Numbers again. But I will say that Edson is a terrifi c storyteller. At his best, he quickly sets the stage, gets the heroes involved in a battle and lets it rip from there. At his worst, he’s repetitive and obviously rushed in his writing. I see some parallels between his work and that of Clarence Mulford. Oh, Mulford is clearly the superior writer and Hoppalong is clearly the better character. But Edson, in his “Floating Outfi t” series, has a similar group Warren Harris of cowboys in the quick gunslinger lead and his friends who back his every play. The difference is that Edson is The Ysabel Kid essentially writing the Western equivalent to series pulp The Making of a Lawman hero fi ction. Each character is larger than life and has the The Gentle Giant requisite hero character features. The series is set up to Hell in the Palo Duro allow the main characters to have a sequence of adven- Go Back To Hell tures. Wagons to Backsight The Floating Outfi t is the name of a group of cow- Trail Boss boys led by Dusty Fogg. While the idea behind the Float- .44 Caliber Man ing Outfi t is a group of cowboys who handle range work Gun Wizard away from the main ranch house, the members of the Sidewinder outfi t, in the handful of books I’ve read anyway, never The Wildcats actually do any ranch work. They are too busy saving Troubled Range Texas, going on secret missions for the U.S. government, To Arms! To Arms! In Dixie! tracking down outlaws, aiding the defenseless, taming The South Will Rise Again towns, teaching school, leading wagon trains and meet- The Fast Gun ing aliens from outer space to actually do any ranch The Trigger Master (Master of Triggernometry) work. Occasionally there is a trail drive, but it’s usually By J.T. Edson not stock from the ranch where they are supposed to be working. After running all of the books from the big book Fogg is the brilliant leader score (see feature article on page 8) through every book- of men who knows ju-jitsu store that would look at them, I was still left with boxes and judo, is the fastest gun in and stacks and piles of books that no one wanted. Among the west and an ace lawman. these were a couple of boxes of Westerns and among His companions are the these were a couple dozen by this J.T. Edson guy, 19 of “rangeland Hercules” Mark them were unique titles. Cou lter, who is second on ly to I decided that before I donate these to the local Fogg in gun hand speed, and Friends of the Library group, I should sit down and read The Ysabel Kid, a part Coman- the fi rst chapter in the one that looked most interesting. che expert with a Bowie knife They looked like typical junk Westerns and I’d never and rifl e who is able to read heard of this Edson guy, but I wanted to make sure that I trail sign like no other. They wouldn’t be throwing away something worth keeping. eventually acquire a “Johnny So I read the fi rst chapter of The Making of a Lawman. Nelson” character in Waco I fi nished the book in one sitting. I then read four more who they take under their by Edson in the next fi ve days. I read 16 Edsons in 18 wing. Other regulars include Belle Boyd, the Rebel Spy, days. a beautiful and competent adventuress who is a master of Now I’m wondering if I’m going to end up buying disguise, a tough female deputy and an expert gambler. back Edson books that I traded in to bookstores. Sigh, I As Lester Dent would say “Wave Those Tags!” These are knew this was going to happen. extremely competent characters and there is never really I’m not saying that Edson is a great writer or plotter. any point where there is a doubt that they’ll succeed. These aren’t books that I’m going to re-read again and Edson is heavily infl uenced by Phillip Jose Farmer’s Back Numbers Can Be Easily Procured is published whenever Warren Harris gets around to it. Contents copyright 2003 by Warren Harris. All rights revert to creators upon publication. Back Number is prepared for the member- ship of the Pulp Era Amateur Press Society. Copies of all issues in Acrobat PDF format can be found on the web at www.efanzines.com. 2 Back Numbers come home. The Making of a Lawman and Gentle Giant were both about fi ghting crime. The fi rst has the team teaching Waco how to be a good frontier lawman. This training is important we’re told, for Waco is destined to have his own series as a Western lawman. I liked The Making of a Lawman perhaps because it was the fi rst I read, so the series was still fresh for me. Gentle Giant I didn’t much Warren Harris care for. It seemed like a quick adventure wedged in- between some already recorded adventures. I had a hard Wold-Newton theories of the relationship between major time believing the title character was really that dense. series characters. Every Edson book takes place in the With The Wildcats and Troubled Range we get to see same universe, and most of the main characters are Mark Coulter in solo action. He’s often overshadowed related, either by blood or by a web of interconnecting by Fogg and the Kid in the books featuring the entire adventures. Edson has taken the time to link his universe group. The formula for these becomes pretty obvious into that of other popular fi c- after a bit. Coulter comes to town and meets up with tion characters. For example, two hellcat women who end up in a catfi ght. Coulter Cheyenne Bodie, of the TV meets up with, and beds down with, every famous or series Cheyenne, makes a brief semi-famous female outlaw of the old west, including guest appearance in The Ysabel Calamity Jane, Belle Starr, Poker Alice and Madame Kid and Mark Coulter is a Moustache. He even meets up with Cattle Annie and “cousin” of Bret Maverick. In Little Britches, although he considers them too young addition, with the permission to bed. It doesn’t stop them from getting into a catfi ght of the Edgar Wallace estate, over him though. Fogg’s grandson has an adven- Edson seems to have a real ture where he meets Wallace’s weakness for catfi ghts. There J.G. Reeder and other Wal- are quite a few in the 16 books lace characters. Edson also I’ve read so far and frankly, was allowed by the Burroughs I, and the plots of the books, Estate to write a short series could have done without most of adventures about Bunduki, of them. Tarzan’s adopted son who is also a blood descendant of To Arms! To Arms! In Dixie! characters who are part of the Floating Outfi t series. is a Belle Boyd solo adventure This interconnectedness results in one of the annoy- where the former Confeder- ing parts of the books—Lots of footnotes. Sometimes ate rebel spy, now working for the books resemble an old Marvel comic book with the the U.S. Secret Service, must number of footnoted references to other parts of the foil a secret organization that series. (Hey True Believers! Devil Dinosaur fi rst met is trying to start a second Civil Eon the Living Planet waaaay back in Tales to Admonish War. While investigating, she 357–Marvelous Marv) In some of the books, you can’t go fi nds out some information that, while not useful to her, two pages without a footnote directing you to previous is the basis for the next two books in the series Hell in adventures, subsequent adventures, or related series. the Palo Duro and Go Back To Hell. In these, Fogg, The Most of the books I read were pretty good. They Kid and Waco must go undercover as wanted outlaws were short, entertaining and quick to read. to infi ltrate a secret “outlaw town” and bring the inhab- The Ysabel Kid tells the story of how Fogg, the Kid itants to justice. These are followed by The South Will and Coulter fi rst meet up. Fogg is dispatched by his uncle Rise Again which starts out as a Belle Boyd solo story (Ole Devil Hardin, who has his own series of books) as she continues to track the Brotherhood for Southern to Mexico to convince a group of confederate soldiers Freedom, infi ltrating the group disguised as a petty thief.