We love pulp covers featuring armed women. But we especially love them when the women are directing their attention toward the viewer. Since pulp is read primarily by men, such illustrations speak implicitly about a man’s thwarted expectations, and conversely of threatened women turning the tables to become empowered. We see this above, where a beleaguered woman defends her helpless man against an enemy we can't see because we're living inside his body. Below are thirteen more examples of women menacing you the viewer, with art by James Avanti, Robert Maguire, Harry Schaare, Rudolph Belaski, Harry Barton, and others. Thanks to flickr.com for some of these. 

Above is an excellent Barye Phillips cover for Carter Brown’s 1961 thriller The Ever-Loving Blues, which is a re-write of Brown’s 1956 novel Death of a Doll. The re-work made a few plot changes, and replaced a main character named Barney Slade with the running Brown character Danny Boyd. We can’t be certain why that happened, but since Brown wrote and published in Australia, perhaps when U.S.-based Signet acquired the rights to Death of a Doll for its first American printing the company urged Brown to make it more commercial by folding it into the Danny Boyd oeuvre. Three-plus years working on this site and we finally get to use the word “oeuvre”. We feel so complete now. 

Above are two covers for Carter Brown’s, aka Alan G. Yates’ thriller Who Killed Dr. Sex? Robert McGinnis painted the cover art at top in 1964 for the Signet paperback, and in 1965 another artist painted a dupe of the cover for Horwitz International’s release. You probably shouldn’t get any credit for copying work, but we have to confess we like the second version quite a bit. McGinnis is a master figure painter, of course, and his reclining woman beats the dupe, but the second version’s wall filigrees and iridescent green bed are nice additions. The other main difference is the direction of the woman’s gaze. McGinnis painted her looking slightly away, while the copycat painted her looking directly at the viewer. It’s a major shift in mood, and an interesting choice. We discussed this copying practice in relation to Carter Brown’s paperbacks before, and we assume it has to do with rights issues between the American and Australian publishers, and Robert McGinnis, but we’d love to know the details. Hopefully, more information will become available down the line. 

Novelist Carter Brown was from Australia and illustrator Robert McGinnis was from the U.S., so it’s unclear whether the two ever met, but that didn’t stop them from becoming a dream team. Together, they produced some of the most pleasing novels/covers of the late pulp era. Below are fifteen Brown-written/McGinnis-illustrated Signet mysteries, circa 1950s and 1960s. You can read more about McGinnis (who by the way is still working at age 85) at the website American Art Archives. 

Cover art for Dutch language pulp novel The Hellcat, circa 1962, part of the Al Wheeler series written by Carter Brown, aka Alan G. Yates. Interestingly, “hellcat” in Dutch would actually be something like “helkat”. “De helle” means “the whole” and “veeg” means "sweep". At least, that’s what Babelfish tells us. 

Below we have four Robert McGinnis-painted covers for mysteries by Australian author Carter Brown, paired with versions created for later editions of the same books. We think all of the later, mostly uncredited, pieces are good, but that they still pale in comparison to the originals. But art appreciation is subjective, and no single opinion—most certainly not ours—is truly more valid than another. So take a look and see which ones you like better. 

This Dutch issue Carter Brown novel may look like it’s about either getting paralyzingly baked, or testing the effectiveness of various upskirt angles, but no, it’s actually the detective thriller The Lady Is Available, retitled to Death Modeled because, well, we don’t know why. We’ll have to consult our Dutch friends on that question and get back to you. The cover subject here is supposed to be dead, but since he was so rude as to croak with his eyes open someone will have to shake him, then see if he steams up a spoon, maybe even give him CPR. Anyway, the novel is one of Australian author Carter Brown’s, aka Alan G. Yates’, bestselling Al Wheeler thrillers. When we say bestselling, we mean they spread like brush fire. Certain sources credit him selling an astounding fifty million novels. So maybe the dood here isn’t dead, just stund by Carter’s good fortune.

La Ciociara aka Two Women is another film that isn’t pulp or noir, but whose poster art is everything pulp aficionados love. It would fit perfectly on the cover of a Carter Brown book. If you’re a film lover you know director Vittorio de Sica made The Bicycle Thief, which makes this WWII drama based on a novel by Alberto Moravia well worth a screening. Sophia Loren and Jean-Paul Belmondo starred, and it opened today in Italy in 1960.

He was born Alan G. Yates in Australia, but as Carter Brown he published 150 crime stories, starting in 1953 with The Mermaid Murmurs Murder and continuing until 1981 when he published The Wicked Widow. All his tales were set in the Unites States (including these four with Robert McGinnis cover art), but strangely, American readers never embraced him. Instead, it was in Europe that he made his mark, where his noir plots filled with classic twists and hard-boiled dialogue did as much for international pulp as any figure who ever lived.