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Henry "Harry" Steeger founded Popular Publications Inc. in 1930. The company went on to become one of the three top pulp publishers, with such titles as Dusty Ayres and His Battle Birds, Operator #5, The Spider, G-8 and His Battle Aces, Dime Detective and Dime Mystery Magazine.

Background

Henry Steeger, an editor at Dell Publishing Co., and partner Harold Goldsmith, of Ace Publications, put up $5,000 each and founded Popular Publications in 1930.

Steeger took the reins as editor, while Goldsmith handled the business end of Popular.

By fall of that year, Popular had four titles on the newsstands: Battle Aces, Detective Action Stories, Gang World and Western Rangers. A year later, Popular introduced its Black Mask clone, Dime Detective. Sales of Dime Detective took off.

Within five years, Popular was among the top pulp magazine publishers, with hits that included G-8 and His Battle Aces, Operator #5, The Spider, Dime Mystery, Horror Stories, Terror Tales, and Dime Western.

Acquisitions provided Popular with several key magazines. In 1934, Popular purchased Adventure from Ridgway. In 1940, Black Mask joined the Popular lineup. In ’43, Popular bought Argosy from Munsey. In 1949, Street and Smith canceled its pulp line and by 1952 had sold Detective Story Magazine and Western Story Magazine to Popular.

But like Street, Popular found itself succumbing to the fading pulp market and halted its pulp publications in the mid-’50s. Argosy and Adventure remained on the newsstands but in substantially different formats than their all-fiction past.

Divisions

Popular published pulp magazines under its Popular Publications imprint, as well as these:

Selected publications

Among the pulps published by Popular Publications, or its subsidiaries, were (with their debut dates):


Categories
PulpPublishers

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