Robert Sampson (1927-92) was one of the major pulp researchers. His main work is his six-volume “Yesterday’s Faces.” But he has done other works, like the only major work on The Spider and a major work on The Shadow (both promised to be reprinted by Black Dog Books). I expect to do reviews of these other works in the future.
I want to review one of his other works, “Deadly Excitements: Shadows and Phantoms,” published in 1989 by Bowling Green State University’s Popular Press. (The Popular Press was acquired by the University of Wisconsin Press, which still has limited quantities of this book and the “Yesterday’s Faces” series available for sale.) The book is a mainly a collection of short articles, most of them from pulp fanzines that ran from 1972 to 1989.
The book is divided into four sections.
The first section is on “single-character” magazines, with short articles on The Phantom Detective, Captain Future, Green Ghost, The Whisperer, The Spider, and others.
The second section is on odd magazines, with articles on such things as Scotland Yard and Scarlet Adventuress.
The third section is on “mayhem, confusion, and disorder,” and has articles on Senorita Scorpion (recently reprinted by Altus Press and new stories from Pro Se Press), Toffee the dream girl (reprinted recently by Pulpville Press), Erle Stanley Gardner‘s short-lived White Rings, and more.
The fourth section is on “little bits of nothing,” and has more personal articles like adventures in finding pulp magazines, what to do about dud issues, why early issues of Black Mask are peculiar, and why Argosy is better than Fantastic Adventures, and so forth.
This is one of those books you can read cover to cover, or jump around as you have an interest in. There is an index, so if you are looking for stuff on a particular subject, you can find it.
What I do wish is that someone would reprint an expanded volume with any additional articles Sampson wrote. But you can also find used copies of this book (I found mine on Amazon, a former library copy).
Sampson was not only a great researcher but a great writer. It’s always enjoyable to read what he had to say. Though I do own many in the Yesterday’s Faces series, several of these books are *mostly* available at books.google.com
I prefer print to computer screens so enjoy having the real thing. But for those that need to look something up or just want to read, I indexed the googled copies here:
http://thepulpreader.blogspot.com/2010/10/pulp-reference-online.html