MARVEL TALES - VOL.2, NO.1 (MAY, 1940)
Chicago: Western Fiction Pub. Co., Inc., 1940. First Edition. Item #9064
Quarto (25cm); original pictorial wrappers; [2],3-114,[2]pp; illus. Spine ends gently nudged, light wear to extremities, with a few tiny tears to upper and lower wrapper edges; text is creamy and supple, clean throughout, but for a hint of foxing to the deckled edges at right edge of text; Near Fine.
Second of two issues of this short-lived weird menace pulp, the successor to similarly short-lived (5 issues) Marvel Science Stories. Their hope was that by reducing the scientific elements and replacing them with elements that were more erotic and more brutal, that this would drum up readership. "While even the first five numbers had included a substantial proportion of female characters whose principal function seems to have been to allow their clothes to be ripped away or shredded, the potential for maltreatment jumpted notably in the two numbers called Marvel Tales" (Tymn & Ashley, p.398). This issue includes George E. Clark's novelette "Test Tube Monster," "Mistress of Machine-Made Madness" by Nils O. Sonderlund, "Princess of Power" by Frederick A. Kummer, Jr., Russell Gray's "Fresh Fiances for the Devil's Daughter," and "World Without Sex" by Robert O. Wentworth. The cover features superb bondage art by New Jersey artist John Walter Scott (1907-1987). High-grade copies are uncommon. 9064.
Price: $2,500.00