 Who needs a man when you have technology? 
Éditions R.R. specialized in beautiful covers, and this one continues the trend. The art is by Jef de Wulf, and it fronts Dit oui, Madame by René Roques. You can't tell, but this is about a woman who falls in love with a robot. And he's a French robot, so he shares his feelings, which is more than you do. Roques actually got racy enough here that the book was banned shortly after publication in 1957. Still, we bet it wasn't as wild as this mechanical lover novel. Or for that matter this one. They say robots are going to take all our jobs. Add sex to the list.
 Lady, if you don't stop blocking my view I'm going to strangle you and leave you buried with the pharaohs. 
We never go long without sharing art from French illustrator Jef de Wulf, and here he is again doing cover work for publisher Éditions de la Flamme d'Or and author Jacques Destier, whose Egyptian adventure Nioussia l'insaisissable was published in 1954. Destier was a pseudonym used by Jacques Thinus. If your French is rusty, Nioussia, l'insaisissable means “Nioussia, the elusive.” See de Wulf at his best here and here, and we'll have more from him a bit later.
 This bikini is about as plein as they come. 
The word “plein” means “full” in French, and indeed when looking at this cover the female figure's bikini is not only nicely full, but looks like it's strained to the point of breaking. Plein son bikini was written by Jean Normand, aka Raoul Lematte, Fernand Petit, Jacques Lienart, et al, and it appeared in 1954 from Éditions Roger Seban for its Pigall collection. Really, we're just interested in the art here, which is by the always adept Jef de Wulf. We have numerous entries on him, including this winner. Click his keywords below if you want to see more.
 Traffic mishaps reach an all-time high.
Below, assorted paperback covers pairing mortal danger and automobiles, including many examples from France, where the theme was particularly popular. Thanks to all the original uploaders on these.
 Ready for some stimulating reading? 
Above, a beautiful pin-up style cover painted by Jef de Wulf for Tania et le démon by Yvan Nikitine, published by Brussels based Éditions Aphrodite. This is a collection of romantic verse from the Russian poet Yvan Nikitine, not to be confused with the famous 19th century Russian poet Ivan Nikitine, nor the 17th century Russian painter and author Ivan Nikitin. We had trouble figuring all this out, because apparently Nikitine/Nikitin is like Johnson or Jones in Russia, but we think our Nikitine wrote eighteen volumes of poetry over the years, was made a knight of L'Ordre des Palmes Académiques, and is alive and retired in Agen, France. Maybe we should just just focus on the art. Nice, yeah? 1959 copyright.
 This next drink is going right to his head. 
Above, a cover for Un Cinzano pour l'ange noir, aka A Cinzano for the Black Angel, written by Frédéric Dard in 1953 for Éditions de la Pensée Moderne's collection Les confessions de l'ange noir. The series comprised four books, with this one being the last. Plotwise, the Black Angel gets involved with an heiress who is intent on robbing her industrialist father's vault, which is presumably filled with riches. He does actually get hit over the head with a bottle of Cinzano, which makes for a hell of a hangover. You may not know Frédéric Dard, but he was one of France's most successful authors, publishing more than 300 novels and selling 250 million copies. 173 of those books starred his signature creation Detective Superintendent Antoine San-Antonio. The above novel is not considered one of his best, but when you write books faster than Taco Bell churns out crunchy cheese core burritos there will be a few duds. The cover art is by the always reliable Jef de Wulf.
 Nobody’s Faut but her own. 
Above is a great piece of Jef de Wulf art of an amorous sailor and an interested woman for Jacques Marlène’s Faut que tu y passes, cheri!. The book appeared in 1952 from Lutécia Editions à Lyon as part of their Pour lire la nuit collection. We gather the novel was censored in France in 1955. The title Faut que tu y passes, cheri! translates to something like “You have to pass it, darling.” Here again we have a French phrase that doesn’t quite translate into English. Usually we get e-mailed about these, but our e-mailer is down, and we’re well aware of it. We’ll get to fixing that soonish, along with the pulp uploader. In the meantime, you can still contact us at editor@pulpinternational.com if you care to explain this title more fully. Update: So we got several reponses to this question. From the blog oncle-archibald.blogspot.com we learned that the title translates roughly to, "I will have my wicked way with you, darling!" This is in reference to the French expression "passer a la casserole ," which has a sexual interpretation and translates, "to have his wicked way with you." From our friend Jo B. we get a similar interpretation. He says it's a way of saying, "You’ve got to make love with me, you’ve got no way to escape this... (faut que tu y passes). He explains further: In French, they also say, “Il faut que tu passes à la casserole,” which means, "You’ve got to go in the saucepan." Strange, ain’t it ? Sometimes, we also say that for people who want to get a job (at the television, for example or in a company). So there you go. We're giving serious thought to learning this language. There are thousands of French speakers around here anyway, and it would come in handy. Oncle Archibald has lots of similar book covers, by the way, and we recommend clicking over there for a look.
 What’s in a name? Everything, if it’s the title of a vintage paperback.  
Above and below you will find a large collection of pulp, post-pulp, and sleaze paperback fronts that have as their titles a character’s first name. There are hundreds of examples of these but we stopped at thirty-two. The collection really highlights, more than others we’ve put together, how rarely vintage paperback art focuses on male characters. The prose is virtually all male-centered and male-driven, of course, but because the mid-century paperback market was male-driven too, that meant putting women on the covers to attract the male eye. We tell our girlfriends this all the time, but they still think we just don’t bother looking for male-oriented vintage art. But we do. For this collection we found two novels that have male characters’ names as their titles, and we looked pretty hard. If we had to guess, we’d say less than 5% of all pulp art is male-oriented. In any case, the illustrations come from the usual suspects—Barye Phillips, Robert McGinnis, Jef de Wulf, Paul Rader, et al., plus less recognized artists like Doug Weaver. Thanks to all the original uploaders for these.                                
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1916—Paris Is Bombed by German Zeppelins
During World War I, German zeppelins conduct a bombing raid on Paris. Such raids were rare, because the ships had to fly hundreds of miles over French territory to reach their target, making them vulnerable to attack. Reaching London, conversely, was much easier, because the approach was over German territory and water. The results of these raids were generally not good, but the use of zeppelins as bombers would continue until the end of the war. 1964—Soviets Shoot Down U.S. Plane
A U.S. Air Force training jet is shot down by Soviet fighters after straying into East German airspace. All 3 crew men are killed. U.S forces then clandestinely enter East Germany in an attempt to reach the crash but are thwarted by Soviet forces. In the end, the U.S. approaches the Soviets through diplomatic channels and on January 31 the wreckage of the aircraft is loaded onto trucks with the assistance of Soviet troops, and returned to West Germany. 1967—Apollo Fire Kills Three Astronauts
Astronauts Gus Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee are killed in a fire during a test of the Apollo 1 spacecraft at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Although the ignition source of the fire is never conclusively identified, the astronauts' deaths are attributed to a wide range of design hazards in the early Apollo command module, including the use of a high-pressure 100 percent-oxygen atmosphere for the test, wiring and plumbing flaws, flammable materials in the cockpit, an inward-opening hatch, and the flight suits worn by the astronauts.
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