Aaron's Magazine of the Week :: G-8 and His Battle Aces June 1937

The Magazine of the Week is the June 1937 issue of G-8 and His Battle Aces, with cover story "Flight from the Grave" by prolific pulp author Robert J. Hogan. G-8 was an attempt to combine a hero pulp with a war pulp about World War I fighting aces. In order to include the amount of action and intrigue that hero pulp readers expected, G-8 resorted to some of the most bizarre story devices ever seen in the pulps or anywhere else. I love this cover image (by Frederick Blakeslee) of a vampire/zombie emerging from a coffin perched on top of a World War I biplane. Did he nail that thing to the fuselage the night before? Of all the absurd magazine covers that appeared in the pulp era, this one gets my vote as the most outrageous.

G-8 is remembered fondly by science fiction collectors for its wild elements of fantasy and horror. Many other hero pulps also had elements of science fiction and fantasy, particularly Doc Savage and The Secret 6, but there was only one hero pulp that was actually set in the future. You will see this futuristic hero in next week's Magazine of the Week.