We all know Chicago politics can be rough, but artist Emmett Watson has taken it to the extreme for this cover of Detective Fiction Weekly from Sept. 21, 1940.
This is one of those covers that always makes me smile. It’s so outrageous.
Watson was a regular contributor to the pulps in the 1930s and into the ’40s, with covers for DFW, Argosy, The Phantom Detective and others.
His cover painting illustrates the story “Death Elects a Governor” by pulp stalwart Frank Gruber. I don’t have this pulp and haven’t read the story, so I can’t say how accurately Watson’s cover depicts what’s in the story.
But it sure looks like a surprising campaign speech.
