As with items in nature, some Dime Mystery covers defy easy classification and make one wonder just what the artist or editors were thinking, and closing out with two days of posts on them seems as good as any way to finish up this series. In April 1938 someone came up with an imaginative series of tortures, though I cannot figure the rationale for their exact sequencing.

The curators at Pulp Covers provide some example of interior art from this issue, two of which seem to be classic examples of bound damsels being subject to some sort of mad science.

Another of which is an example of the Consigned to the flames trope.

And there’s some good-old-fashioned bondage, in this case with the hint of a cuckolding fantasy. (Bondage Blog kindly take note.)

The good curators at Pulp Covers have made the entire issue available for download.

But real zaniness was coming later in the year with the October 1938 issue.

The Pulp Covers curators were as baffled by this as I am. “Is he using attractive women as clappers in giant church bells which he controls with his Keyboard of Evil? I honestly have no idea what is going on here. None whatsoever.”