A cowboy in red shirt and hat fires dual revolvers from a galloping horse, dust and urgency animating the composition. This pulp magazine cover exemplifies the action-adventure aesthetic that dominated mid-century fiction magazines. Famous Western was one of hundreds of wood-pulp titles competing for reader attention on newsstands, each featuring painted covers designed to signal genre and promise immediate narrative thrills. The cover advertised ten complete stories—including "Bought by Bullets" by Lee Foren and "Gun Ghost Rider" by C. H. Cogswell—for fifteen cents. These magazines, printed on cheap newsprint and distributed widely, served as the primary vehicle for serialized western, crime, science fiction, and adventure fiction before paperback novels and comic books inherited their audience and storytelling conventions.
About this artifact
- Date
- August 1950
- Rights
- Public domain — free to view, share, and reuse.
- Restoration
- Digitally restored and hosted by comicbooks.com.
Part of our mission to preserve and restore the public-domain heritage of the medium.