Strange adventures on other worlds. Above and below are ten covers of Planet Stories that appeared between 1948 and 1952, with beautiful, lurid, pulp art from Allen Anderson. The magazine published only interplanetary adventures, and its mix of rocket ships, swashbuckling heroes, space princesses, and hideous aliens proved extremely popular. Some of the many writers whose work graced its pages include Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Leigh Brackett, John D. McDonald, Philip K. Dick, and Clifford D. Simak. Planet Stories ran seventy-one glorious issues, from 1939 to 1955. How could you not be excited to read when this is what awaited you on the newsstands?
Devil in a red dress. The above cover of Private Detective Stories from October 1943 features art from Allen Anderson illustrating Roger Torrey’s short story “Marriage Means Murder.” Anderson worked most actively during the 1940s for a long list of pulp magazines, including Spicy Mystery, Planet Stories, and others. His saturated colors, heavy shadows, and crowded visuals have a strong visceral impact, and, overall, his work is exactly what we always imagine when we think of pulp. This particular cover appears elsewhere on the internet, but our scan is a different one. In any case, we’ll have more from Anderson later, and in the meantime you can see a brilliant selection of fourteen of his pieces here.
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1939—Batman Debuts
In Detective Comics #27, DC Comics publishes its second major superhero, Batman, who becomes one of the most popular comic book characters of all time, and then a popular camp television series starring Adam West, and lastly a multi-million dollar movie franchise starring Michael Keaton, then George Clooney, and finally Christian Bale. 1953—Crick and Watson Publish DNA Results
British scientists James D Watson and Francis Crick publish an article detailing their discovery of the existence and structure of deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA, in Nature magazine. Their findings answer one of the oldest and most fundamental questions of biology, that of how living things reproduce themselves. 1967—First Space Program Casualty Occurs
Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov dies in Soyuz 1 when, during re-entry into Earth's atmosphere after more than ten successful orbits, the capsule's main parachute fails to deploy properly, and the backup chute becomes entangled in the first. The capsule's descent is slowed, but it still hits the ground at about 90 mph, at which point it bursts into flames. Komarov is the first human to die during a space mission. 1986—Otto Preminger Dies
Austro–Hungarian film director Otto Preminger, who directed such eternal classics as Laura, Anatomy of a Murder, Carmen Jones, The Man with the Golden Arm, and Stalag 17, and for his efforts earned a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame, dies in New York City, aged 80, from cancer and Alzheimer's disease. 1998—James Earl Ray Dies
The convicted assassin of American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., petty criminal James Earl Ray, dies in prison of hepatitis aged 70, protesting his innocence as he had for decades. Members of the King family who supported Ray's fight to clear his name believed the U.S. Government had been involved in Dr. King's killing, but with Ray's death such questions became moot.
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