Pulp Covers and Artists

A very appealing and important part of these novels are the pulp covers. We are specifically referring to the illustrations on the cover of the novels. Those pictures were made by different artists to express the main topic of the story and worked as a visual aid for the readers to get a little bit closer and more identified with the characters of the story. In fact, in a metaphoric way, the illustration on the cover was the Viagra of the pulp novel as it worked to raise the interest on the novel.

It is well known that the pulp novels were printed on a very cheap paper made from wood pulp but the covers were printed on a better quality paper to make its visual appealing even higher. The illustrations were based on the main story discussed on that specific issue but it was very common to include a damsel in distress waiting for her hero to come to the rescue.

Some cover illustrations for pulp novels, specially on the early beginnings, were made by distinguished American artists; for example "The Popular Magazine" had covers by N.C. Wyeth, and Edgar Franklin Wittmack made cover art to Argosy and Short Stories. Later, a lot of artists started to specialized on just creating the pulp covers for the pulp novels; by consequence of that, some cover artists became just as popular as the authors of the novels. Among the most famous pulp artists were Walter Baumhofer, Earle K. Bergey, Margaret Brundage, Edd Cartier, Virgil Finlay, Earl Mayan, Frank R. Paul, Norman Saunders, Nick Eggenhofer, (who specialized in Western illustrations), Rudolph Belarski and Sidney Riesenberg.

The covers were important enough to sales that sometimes they would be designed first; authors would then be shown the cover art and asked to write a story to match.