{"id":11010,"date":"2021-03-01T10:00:19","date_gmt":"2021-03-01T15:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/?p=11010"},"modified":"2025-10-10T14:41:04","modified_gmt":"2025-10-10T18:41:04","slug":"the-argosy-library-series-viii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/2021\/03\/01\/the-argosy-library-series-viii\/","title":{"rendered":"The Argosy Library, Series VIII"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On Black Friday 2020 weekend, <a href=\"https:\/\/steegerbooks.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Steeger Books<\/a> put out the next set of its &#8220;Argosy Library&#8221; volumes, making up Series VIII. As always, we get 10 books of great, and sometimes overlooked, fiction that appeared in the early pulps. We get some stand-alone works, as well as volumes of various sub-series.<\/p>\n<p>As always, most are taken from the pulps started by <strong>Frank A. Munsey<\/strong>, who converted his fiction magazines to pulp paper and reduced their price, making them more profitable. He published the well-known <em>Argosy<\/em> magazine, which got its start in the late 1800s, and several other popular magazines, such as <em>The All-Story<\/em> and <em>Flynn\u2019s Detective Fiction Weekly<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/files\/2021\/02\/satans-vengeance.jpg\" rel=\"lightbox[11010]\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-11273\" src=\"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/files\/2021\/02\/satans-vengeance-200x300.jpg\" alt=\"&quot;Satan\u2019s Vengeance&quot;\" width=\"200\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/files\/2021\/02\/satans-vengeance-200x300.jpg 200w, https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/files\/2021\/02\/satans-vengeance-684x1024.jpg 684w, https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/files\/2021\/02\/satans-vengeance-768x1150.jpg 768w, https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/files\/2021\/02\/satans-vengeance.jpg 1002w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\" \/><\/a>Series VIII consists of:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>Satan\u2019s Vengeance<\/em> by <strong>Carroll John Daly<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><em>The Viper: The Complete Cases of Madame Storey, Volume 2<\/em> by <strong>Hulbert Footner<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><em>The Sapphire Smile: The Adventures of Peter the Brazen, Volume 4<\/em> by <strong>Loring Brent<\/strong> (<strong>George F. Worts<\/strong>)<\/li>\n<li><em>The Curse of Capistrano and Other Adventures: The Johnston McCulley Omnibus, Volume 2<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>The Man Who Mastered Time and Other Adventures: The Ray Cummings Omnibus<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>The Guns of the American: The Adventures of Norcross, Volume 2<\/em> by <strong>W. Wirt<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><em>Trailin\u2019<\/em> by <strong>Max Brand<\/strong> (<strong>Frederick Faust<\/strong>)<\/li>\n<li><em>War Declared!<\/em> by <strong>Theodore Roscoe<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><em>The Return of the Night Wind<\/em> by <strong>Varick Vanardy<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><em>The Fetish Fighters and Other Adventures: The F.V.W. Mason Foreign Legion Stories Omnibus<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So what do we get?<\/p>\n<p>Carroll John Daly is known as the creator of the hard-boiled detective in <em>Black Mask<\/em>, and of <strong>Race Williams<\/strong> and several other detective characters, which Steeger Books has been reprinting. <strong>Satan Hall<\/strong> was a long-running detective who appeared mainly in <em>Detective Fiction Weekly<\/em> in two dozen stories. He has a pronounced widow&#8217;s peak and slightly pointed ears and eyebrows, and is willing to give as good as he gets from criminals, a clear forerunner to characters like <strong>Dirty Harry<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>This volume is the first of what hopefully will be a complete reprint of this character. This one has <em>Satan&#8217;s Vengeance<\/em>, a eight-part serial from 1936, as is billed as the fourth volume in the complete reprinting. I think there will be a total of six volumes.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Madame Rozika Story<\/strong> was a popular female detective in <em>Argosy<\/em> from the 1920s and &#8217;30s, with about 30 stories by Hulbert Footner. This second volume gives us the next three stories of this character.<\/p>\n<p>George F. Worts most popular character is <strong>Peter the Brazen<\/strong>, who appeared under his &#8220;Loring Brent&#8221; pseudonym. The character&#8217;s previous appearance was in <em>Argosy<\/em> in 1919. In 1930, he was brought back, I believe, as an attempt to help sales of the magazine that saw several serial characters returning. This volume has the next four stories. Peter is a ship-board radio operator working in the Orient and getting into all kinds of action. So should be another great volume.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Johnston McCulley<\/strong>, while having creating a wide number of serial characters in the pulps, is best known for <strong>Zorro<\/strong>. And this Omnibus gives us the first two Zorro stories. I do have to question why this was done, as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.boldventurepress.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Bold Venture Press<\/a> has already put out the authorized complete Zorro reprints in six volumes, and these stories have been reprinted.<\/p>\n<p>I have posted on overlooked pulp master <strong>Ray Cummings<\/strong>, and noted his &#8220;Matters, Space, and Time&#8221; series of works, not all of which have been reprinted. This one reprints two of those: <em>The Fire People<\/em>, which is part of &#8220;Space,&#8221; and <em>The Man Who Mastered Time<\/em>, which is part of &#8220;Time.&#8221; Will we get more Omnibus volumes reprinting the whole sequence?<\/p>\n<p>W. Wirt maybe best known for his long <strong>Jimmie Cordie<\/strong> series, which I was hoping for a new volume. Wirt also did the short <strong>Captain Norcross<\/strong> series. This series is about a retired U.S. Army captain who takes his unit of black soldiers to the Orient. This volume reprints the final two Norcross stories.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/files\/2021\/02\/war-declared.jpg\" rel=\"lightbox[11010]\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-11274\" src=\"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/files\/2021\/02\/war-declared-201x300.jpg\" alt=\"&quot;War Declared!&quot;\" width=\"201\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/files\/2021\/02\/war-declared-201x300.jpg 201w, https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/files\/2021\/02\/war-declared-685x1024.jpg 685w, https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/files\/2021\/02\/war-declared-768x1149.jpg 768w, https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/files\/2021\/02\/war-declared.jpg 1003w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 201px) 100vw, 201px\" \/><\/a>Western author Max Brand (real name Frederick Faust) is back with another standalone work, <em>Trailin&#8217;<\/em>. This one is from <em>All-Story Weekly<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>It always surprises me the number of stories written in the run up to WWII that forecasted war. But maybe many just felt it was coming. One of those is <em>War Declared!<\/em> by Theodore Roscoe, which tells of an impeding war between a disguised Germany and France.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Night Wind<\/strong> is an interesting early pulp character, who could have been a forerunner of <strong>Superman<\/strong>. He appeared in four novels in the pulps, and <em>The Return of the Night Wind<\/em> by Varick Vanardy, is the second of them. However, <a href=\"https:\/\/wildsidepress.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Wildside Press<\/a> already reprinted this series, along with a new original novel with the character.<\/p>\n<p><strong>F. Van Wyck Mason<\/strong> wrote a lot of fiction works in the pulps, most of a historic nature. This volume reprints his first pulp work along with others all dealing with the Foreign Legion.<\/p>\n<p>As with other Argosy Library offerings, there are several of these that I will be getting shortly, while a few I may obtain at some point. Others I&#8217;m not intereted in. Expect to see more detailed review on several of these works, especially those in series I have interests in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On Black Friday 2020 weekend, Steeger Books put out the next set of its &#8220;Argosy Library&#8221; volumes, making up Series VIII. As always, we get 10 books of great, and sometimes overlooked, fiction that appeared in the early pulps. We get some stand-alone works, as well as volumes of various sub-series. As always, most are [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":11275,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_has_post_settings":[],"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"The Pulp Super-Fan looks at Steeger Books' The Argosy Library, Series VIII. #pulpmags #zorro #hardboiled","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_wp_rev_ctl_limit":""},"categories":[1,135],"tags":[171,443,188,209,702,118,382,609,381,94,939,584,232,234],"hashtags":[],"class_list":["post-11010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pulps","category-reprints","tag-adventure-pulps","tag-argosy","tag-detective-pulps","tag-frank-a-munsey-co","tag-jimmie-cordie","tag-johnston-mcculley","tag-peter-the-brazen","tag-ray-cummings","tag-satan-hall","tag-science-fiction","tag-steeger-books","tag-w-wirt","tag-western-pulps","tag-zorro"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/files\/2021\/02\/satans-vengeance-featured.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3eLo8-2RA","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11010"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11010\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13294,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11010\/revisions\/13294"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11010"},{"taxonomy":"hashtags","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtags?post=11010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}