Tag Archives: Walter M. Baumhofer

Dime Mystery Meme #6: Consigned to the flames II

More horrible burning, but in this version of the meme, our pretty woman is in the process or on the brink of being put in the flames. One might be lowered into the flames by cultists, as in this April 1935 cover by Walter M. Baumhofer… (issue ISFDB entry here)

…tossed into what appears to be a flaming grave (?) on this unattributed November 1934 cover… (issue ISFDB entry here.)

…or hurled into a volcano while your would be rescuer/hero guy apparently gets distracted by a piece of hardware as on this September 1934 cover (issue ISFDB entry here.)

In some instances, the villain might even enter the flames with you, albeit hardly on equal terms. This villain is managing to carry his blonde victim over a brick furnace threshold and shoot the hero at the same time, all the while wearing what looks like a really bulky fireproof suit. The cover is from July 1939 and lacks an ISFDB entry.

Serious points for dexterity, if not for ethics.

Dime Mystery Meme #5: Consigned to the flames I

Fire is a fearsome thing when you’re in it or might be, and so unsurprisingly there are a lot of Dime Mystery Magazine covers showing pretty women facing the hideous prospect of being burned alive. Indeed, there are so many that I had to break the meme into two separate posts. For want of a better concept, I’ve divided them into stationary and moving examples. Stationary means being fixed in a place and having the fire being brought to one, like being burned at the stake. An example of moving would be being about to be hurled into a volcano as a human sacrifice. So stationary first, beginning with this example from August 1936, painted by Tom Lovell.

It look like our hero is willing to take on some serious hurt in hopes of rescuing this poor girl, and Mr. Nero is amused. A similar risk is posed on the unattributed July 1937 cover.

1937 must have been a big year for setting women on fire at Dime Mystery, because the December cover, which is full of peril, showing a hero not only willing to risk being burned, but also apparently being shot by an assailant behind a picture.

I don’t know who painted that cover, but there’s an interesting art-historical detail if you look at the faces of the women here, you notice that instead of being filled with panic, they seem to be calm and have their eyes cast upward, as if this is a painting of Christian martyrs. As such, this pulp painting participates in an unusually deep artistic tradition!

Felice Ficherelli, (1605 – 1660, Italian)


The Martyrdom Of St. Agatha

Source here.

Finally, there’s some real crazy going on in this meme from time to time. Take, for example, October 1935, painted by Walter M. Baumhofer.

“May you burn. You and the horse you rode in on.”

Pulp Parade #203: Master of Men!

The Spider was one of the most prolific of the pulps, running for 118 issues between October 1933 and December 1943, consisting of pulp novels centered on the single dark-hero figure of Richard Wentworth. It seems appropriate to cover here, for as the Galactic Central Index notes, [m]ost of the novels have a macabre tone that matches that of the horror pulps; many have actual SF/fantasy elements.” A well-suited tonal match for Erotic Mad Science! I don’t intend to cover this pulp comprehensively, but I’ll pick some of my favorite covers for this series. (Completists can refer to the Galactic Central index page to pick their own favorites.) Here is the cover of the first issue, from October 1933.

This is the image from the Galactic Central index page. (Internet searches found possible larger versions, but their links all seem to have died, sadly.) Some pages suggest that the illustrator might be Walter M. Baumhofer (1904-1987).