“You’ve done it! You’ve shot her to Venus!”

Some good postwar Erotic Mad Science pulp
I am programmed to demand you dance for your robot overlord

A pretty remarkable example of male cluelessness here on the November 1940 cover of Marvel Stories (later Marvel Science Stories). It was painted by James W. Scott (1907-1987) whose long career began in pulps and trekked through men’s adventure magazines before doing murals and western art, with a stint as a World War II combat engineer in there somewhere.

The real eye-catcher here, though, is another one of those frustratingly uncredited interior pieces, an early example of tube-girl art. As with other pieces, I’ve stitched it together as it was spread across pages.

“Weird mechanisms stirred the projectile, suddenly sent trembling through the aperture. ‘You’ve done it!’ Hils cried. ‘You’ve shot her to Venus!'”

Hat tip for finding this one goes to Pulp Covers:

This issue of Marvel Stories is available to read and download at the Internet Archive.