Sinful Saturday: A Celebration of Pulp Fiction Art

(Image from the Flickr account: Vintageillu's Photostream)

The cover art of these old pulp fiction/paperback originals makes the books quite collectible and hard to find these days - especially in anything approaching decent condition.  They were never a very high quality product - and that includes both the stories and the paper and cardboard upon which they were printed.  But it is great fun to look back on them some sixty or so years later.

The Lustful Ape was written in 1950 by Bruno Fischer (not a bad writer) but here he used the pen name Russell Gray which he had already been using for several years.  It is a 65,000 word novel that Mr. Fischer completed in a mere 18 days and, as you can see from the cover, it sold for a whopping 25 cents in 1950. The cover art was produced by Julian Paul.  From what I can gather, the "ape" was a menacing musclebound character, probably the villain of the piece.  Bruno Fischer is also known as one of the earliest writers to produce work for the "paperback originals" market.