http://www.oocities.org/jjnevins/pulpss.html
Six-Gun Gorilla. Perhaps my favorite entry in this site, the Six-Gun Gorilla appeared in Adventure and Wizard in 1926 (I think). I do not know who created him. O’Neil was an actual gorilla, who had been trapped as a baby, brought to the States, and sold to Johnson, a Colorado prospector.
Johnson, a kind man, treated O’Neil very well. He also taught O’Neil how to dig, fetch firewood, haul up buckets of water, cook, clean, and (oh dear) load and fire a revolver. Naturally, when Johnson is murdered for what he knows about “the great motherlode,” O’Neil ooks revenge.
He straps on a bandolier and two six-shooters and begins tracking the thieves across a hundred miles of Colorado mountains and badlands. He picks them off one by one, meanwhile discovering a talent for holding up stagecoaches and using them to chase fleeing gunmen. It’s all great fun, really.
You can read the entire “weird west” saga of the Six-Gun Gorilla here. It turns out he’s actually from 1939, and his adventures only appeared in The Wizard rather than two different magazines.
I don’t remember where I originally got the image from.
Elektro and his dog, Sparko, at the 1939 World’s Fair. According to Wikipedia, he later starred in a movie with Mamie van Doren and Tuesday Weld called Sex Kittens Go to College.
Scan from The Great Robot Book.
Huh. Surprisingly pleasant background music… wait, this is from 1936? Wow. I mean, it’s not like I’m mentally unaware that recording technology existed even further back than that, but the realization that one is listening to commercially available music from before the outbreak of the second World War is still a little startling.
Jess Stacy - “In The Dark - Flashes” - 1936 78rpm.
William Van Alen, architect of New York City’s Chrysler Building, in costume as the skyscraper to attend a ball where other architects also dressed as the buildings they designed. A friend of mine once pointed out a similar event occurred in an Ayn Rand novel, but I couldn’t say what one.
Don’t remember what I scanned this from.
“SIR. SIR, I FOUND YOUR LOST DOG. SIR… SCRAP, WHY DOES THIS ALWAYS HAPPEN…”
Eando Binder was a writing pseudonym shared by the brothers Earl and Otto Binder; the latter is known in comic book circles for penning many Captain Marvel and Superman stories during the 1940s and 1950s. The “I, Robot” story here is entirely unrelated to the later Isaac Asimov work.
January, 1939.
A set of images drawn by Chester Gould for the 25th anniversary of Dick Tracy in 1956. Peas!
I like how calmly Dick Tracy is asking the Mole drop his gun as he holds him under some water. I’m pretty sure Mole actually survived his encounter with Tracy, though, unlike the Brow. Or Flattop. Or Mumbles. Or Pruneface. Or… well, you get the idea.
Scans from Dick Tracy: America’s Most Famous Detective.
