Friday 16 May 2014

The Detective Tales cover for May

This is time again in the month when I upload and comment a cover from Detective Tales. I might try to find other pulp magazines to do the same thing at some point, because the choice from some months is starting to run thin. I hesitated to upload this one because, well, it is racist, like unfortunately many pulp stories were back then. It is the cover from May 1939. All prejudice against China aside, it is quite a good cover, ridiculously dramatic. So you have both the squared jaw hero and the heroin, a damsel in distress, in a very tight spot. The hero, maybe a private eye, is shooting at an unseen enemy off frame, holding with his free hand his bloodied upper arm, while the blonde is being held by... the mechanical arm of a metallic Buddha.And she is crying on top of her lungs for his attention, as a Fu Manchu looking Chinese (he is probably Chinese, although I guess he could of any Asian denomination) is about to strike him with a hatchet. The villain is bald and has long thin mustaches. And he is emerging from a secret passage or a tunnel, or some arched alcove. What more can I say? I don't think the story can be nearly as good as the cover.

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