SPICY MYSTERY, February 1936

Pulp magazines now are enjoying their greatest flood of popularity since the rediscovery of Edgar Rice Burroughs kick-started the pulp boom of the 1960s. Falling between the pricey original magazines still in existence and the acceptably priced reprint editions are the exact replicas. These match the original mag’s dimensions and page count, and include everything that the first purchaser bought 55-85 years ago: all the ads, the letters to the editor, the not so-inspiring interior art and the hyperbole.

One of the leading producers of pulp replicas is Girasol Collectables, which puts out three replicas every month at a $25 or $35 per. Honestly, that’s a little steep for me, especially since other folks are doing it cheaper. Whining aside, I just finished reading Girasol’s replica of Feb. 1936 issue of Spicy Mystery. Look at the H.J. Ward cover painting of a terrified, gorgeous rehead in a sheer nightgown drawing away from a hanged corpse and tell me that you don’t want to read the stories that lurk behind that cover. It's supposed to illustrate a story called "Batman."  Go on, tell me – I dare you.

The cover story has nothing to do with any other Batmen with whom you may be familiar. In fact, the art has nothing to do with the story, but who the hell cares. The tale, from one of Spicy Mystery’s regular contributors, is about a man who thinks he’s a bat. Hey, you want your fiction to make sense, try something by Henry James.

This issue also contains stories by E. Hoffman Price and Robert Leslie Bellem. Price was a first rate pulp writer who continued publishing fantasy novels into the 1970s. Bellem’s story uses the theme of reincarnation. He is best remembered as the creator of Dan Turner, Hollywood Detective, from the pages of Spicy Detective magazine. Bellem also wrote for Spicy Western and Spicy Adventure. Perhaps you see a pattern.

Now, let’s approach that word “spicy.” The Spicys frequently were sold under the counter – one more glance at that cover art and you can see why – and went for the comparatively high sum of 25 cents. Every story contained several references to female breasts – the size, appearance and feel thereof – but it’s all PG-13 stuff that would make most kids today giggle. Spicy Mystery was a weird menace title and so its tales often would contain a blend of sex and violence that some readers might still feel is objectionable. But not you, you perv.  Weird menace is actually an inbred descendent of the English school of Gothicism

This issue contains no partial stories. Every tale is complete, and even the ones that don’t hold up too well are fun.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to spend some time ogling the hot blonde under attack by what looks like a gigantic grasshopper on the cover of the Feb. 1938 issue. It’s an assignment for my art appreciation class.