"Oregon Man" - Complete Stories, January 28, 1935

In the category of, “You never know when a pulp painting will wander across your path...”

In 2003, John Gunnison of Adventure House published my book, “Uncovered: The Hidden Art of the Girlie Pulps.” It ended up being nominated for an award by ForeWord Magazine, which was to be presented at the 2004 Book Expo America. Since the BEA that year was being held in Chicago, John decided to come up for it and get a small press publisher’s booth, to try and promote the book. I helped him at the Adventure House booth during the course of the show. The booth was decorated with lots of great reproductions of pulp covers.

One day as we were sitting at the booth, a woman wandered up, clearly attracted by the pulp cover repros. She asked if either of us collected original pulp art. I said that I did, and she said that she had just acquired a western cover, by some guy named Tom Lovell, at an estate sale and she thought it might be a pulp cover. Would I have any interest in seeing it?

Well, that was an easy question to answer! She wouldn’t be able to bring it to the show, and wouldn’t give out her information, but she took my business card. A few weeks later she called me, asking if I was free later that day to take a look at the painting. Needless to say, I said absolutely, and she brought it to my office later that afternoon. It was indeed a Tom Lovell pulp cover, and she walked out with a lot more than the few hundred bucks she’d paid for it at the estate sale. However, I walked out with the painting!

The painting appeared on the January 28, 1935 issue of Complete Stories, for “Oregon Man” by Charles Wesley Sanders.