February-March issue of Oriental Stories featuring "Red Blades of Black Cathay."

Previous installments:
Pulp Collecting and REH, Part 1
Pulp Collecting and REH, Part 2
Pulp Collecting and REH, Part 3

The last two installments of this series looked at collecting issues of Weird Tales with Robert E. Howard content. While Weird Tales is the pulp with which Howard is most often associated, his work appeared in a number of other magazines during his lifetime and after his death. This week I am going to discuss some of these other, lesser known pulps from the standpoint of a Howard collector.

First, I should point out that many of these pulps are not as common as Weird Tales and they are, generally speaking, not as sought-after. The boxing and western genres, for example, are simply not collected by as many people as are science fiction and horror. Because of this prices can vary widely on these issues especially in an auction format. If a rare issue comes up for sale two or three collectors could easily run the bidding up quite high. But should only one of those collectors notice that particular auction they could snatch it up at a bargain.

This makes it more difficult to compile accurate, real-time pricing data on these issues, as compared to the much more frequently-traded Weird Tales. For this reason I am going to use the price data in Bookery’s Guide to the Pulps for this discussion as that is considered to be the standard price guide for the hobby.

Howard’s published stories and poems span a number of genres and titles. They even span a number of different bylines as Howard occasionally used pseudonyms as well. I will discuss some of the most significant issues in detail, and others more generally. For a complete listing of all of Howard’s pulp stories and their publication information, HowardWorks.com is of course the best and most thorough reference.

Howard’s first story published outside of Weird Tales appeared in the April 1929 issue of Ghost Stories. The story, written under the pseudonym “John Taverel,” was the Ace Jessel yarn “The Apparition in the Prize Ring” (a.k.a “The Spirit of Tom Molyneaux”). This bedsheet-sized issue is somewhat uncommon and guides at $150 in Very Good.

The boxing genre would continue to be the platform by which Howard would branch out from his supernatural yarns during this early period in his career. In the summer of 1929, his boxing story “Crowd-Horror” was published in the July 20 issue of Argosy All-Story. This was a major accomplishment for the up-and-coming writer – Argosy was one of the premier pulp magazines in the country. It also had a very large print run, which means that it tends to be a very common title as pulps go and usually fairly cheap. This issue, however, commands a higher price than usual as the cover story is the first installment of Otis Adelbert Kline’s best-known novel The Planet of Peril. It guides for $75 in Very Good.

That same month saw Howard place his first Steve Costigan yarn, “The Pit of the Serpent” in Fight Stories, a boxing pulp published by Fiction House. This would prove to be one of his most successful series and Fight Stories would publish eleven more Costigan adventures (along with the non-Costigan tale “The Iron Man”) over the next three years. The issues with Howard stories are easily the most collectible of the title and they are listed for $100 each in Very Good ($150 for the July 1929 issue).

The popularity of the Steve Costigan series led Fiction House to begin publishing his adventures in a second title, Action Stories, beginning with “The TNT Punch” in the January 1931 issue. Four more Costigan yarns would appear in Action Stories during the following year. These issues are fairly uncommon and guide for $150 in Very Good, with the January 1931 issue listed at $200.

In the fall of 1931, Howard had three boxing yarns published in Sport Story Magazine – “College Socks” in the September 25 issue, “Man with the Mystery Mitts” in the October 25 issue, and “The Good Knight” in the December 25 issue. These featured a new character, Kid Allison and all three are listed at $100 in Very Good.

The January 1933 issue of Strange Tales featuring "The Cairn on the Headland" would the be the last.

In the fall of 1930, Farnsworth Wright, editor of Weird Tales, launched a sister publication, Oriental Stories, which featured tales of adventure set in the Near and Far East. This gave Howard a chance to delve into a genre he had always loved – historical fiction. He penned a half a dozen yarns for the magazine, beginning with “Voice of El-Lil” in the debut issue, cover-dated October-November 1930. Howard’s yarn “Red Blades of Black Cathay,” co-written with his close friend Tevis Clyde Smith, was the cover story for the February-March issue. Howard’s two Cormac Fitzgeoffrey yarns, “Hawks of Outremer” and “The Blood of Belshazzar,” appeared in the Spring and Autumn 1931 issues, respectively. Oriental Stories had a smaller print run than its more successful sister publication Weird Tales and is not as common. The first issue lists at $250 in Very Good and the other Howard issues at $200.

Late 1931 also saw a new competitor to Weird Tales appear on the newsstands with the somewhat unimaginative title of Strange Tales. A number of Weird Tales regulars, including Clark Ashton Smith and Frank Belknap Long, began appearing in the pages of this new periodical and Howard soon joined them. “People of the Dark” appeared in the June 1932 issue and “The Cairn of the Headland” appeared in January 1933. This last would be the final issue, however, as the short-lived magazine folded due to financial reasons. Strange Tales is a scarce title and rarely comes up for sale; both the Howard issues are listed at $250 in Very Good.

Unfortunately, Strange Tales was not alone in its fate. By the summer of 1932, the Great Depression was in full swing and the publishing industry was hit hard. Weird Tales managed to limp along, but other publishers and titles were not so fortunate. Oriental Stories was losing money badly for Farnsworth Wright. Fiction House closed its doors in the summer of 1932, which took away Howard’s two main markets for his boxing yarns, Fight Stories and Action Stories.

In January 1933, Wright changed the title of Oriental Stories to The Magic Carpet Magazine in hopes of boosting sales. Howard appeared in the July 1933 issue with “The Lion of Tiberias,” which guides for $200. The January 1934 issue published two of Howard’s yarns, a Dennis Dorgan story, “Alleys of Darkness” (under the pseudonym Patrick Ervin), and “The Shadow of the Vulture,” which featured the first (and only) appearance of Red Sonya. This issue, which guides at $250, would be the last, however, as Wright was finally forced to cancel to the title due to financial reasons.

The loss of several of the primary venues for his yarns must have been a blow to Howard. With Action Stories, Fight Stories, Strange Tales, and Oriental Stories/Magic Carpet cancelled, that left only Weird Tales as a regular market and even that magazine was struggling to pay its writers. This setback, however, simply encouraged Howard to expand his repertoire and explore new genres and new markets. In the next installment I will discuss this transition as Howard began to try his hand at detective and western fiction and even the seedy world of the “Spicies.”

Next Installment:
Pulp Collecting and REH, Part 5