Above: a very nice Tom Miller cover for Stuart Friedman's novel Irina, from Monarch Books, copyright 1963. The maxim, “Don't ask don't tell,” would seem to apply here. 

Below you see covers featuring characters who came to bad ends—of ropes. Were they suicides? Murder victims? Hint: the books wouldn't be very interesting if they were suicides. There are others we could share, but thirty feet sounded nicer than thirty six or thirty eight. Maybe we'll add more later. For now see two in the same style here and here.

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.

Sleaze fiction is rife with novels about dodgy doctors and here’s another one from Stuart Friedman, succinctly titled The Surgeons, from Monarch Books, 1962, with cover art from Harry Schaare. This is the second Friedman/Schaare pairing we’ve posted. The other is the infamous Fathers and Daughters, which you can see here. Actually, while we’re on the subject, maybe check out a few of our other bad doctor novels here, here, and here. Oh, and here too. 

Above is a cover for 1963’s Fathers and Daughters by Stuart Friedman for Monarch Books. You get the gist from the art. It’s the story of Brad Latham and his daughter Barbara, who were always very close (sharing innocent father-daughter kisses which seemed to banish the worries of the day, we’re informed) but eventually get a little too close. The artist here, Harry Schaare, was born in New York in 1922, and studied architecture and had a stint in the army before establishing himself as a pulp illustrator. He was most active during the 1960s, and eventually moved into fine art, whereupon he diversified into all kinds of subject matter, from sports to western-themed art to portraiture. If you’re interested, there’s a Flickr gallery of some of his paperback covers here.