Sultry Sunday #7 - The weekly "Pop Sensation" crossover

I passed up a few space-age and western paperbacks to find one perfectly suited for ... Sultry Sunday (the weekly "Pop Sensation" crossover)! Enjoy!
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Paperback 155: Phantom Books 509 (PBO, 1952)

Title: Naked Fury
Author: Day Keene
Cover artist: sadly, uncredited



Best things about this cover:

• Angry mob!
  
• "I'm gonna beat him with this coffee table leg!"
  
• "I'm gonna pull my pants up to my rib cage and burn the town down with a troupe of my pasty-faced brethren!"
• The title is pure pulp - fantastic!
• One of the greatest pieces of Girl Art I own - her face looks insane, but that dressing gown is gorgeous and the way she's captured in crazy panicked motion is very believable.
• She is giving us some kind of sign with her right hand: "C" ... Uh, Call the Cops? Crazy people are trying to kill me? C-cup!?
• I thought the big palooka with the awesome left Fist of Fury was wearing some kind of jacket and open-collared shirt ... but then I noticed the length of that jacket, which appears actually to be some kind of robe. At night, it seems, he likes to dress up like Joan Crawford. Is that why the mob is chasing him? Hate crime!
• "Revenge" is one of my very favorite words / topics.

Best things about this back cover:

• Too much Fury, not enough Naked, frankly

Page 123~

Malloy speaking:

"You're not tough. You only think you are. If you guys hadn't been chicken, you'd have let me have it out in Reardon's garage. But killing a two hundred pound man who's willing to fight for his life is a hell of a lot different than shooting a drunken cop from a fire escape or strangling a ten dollar tart."

Mmmm, ten dollar tart ...

~RP

John Ringo - Who Knew?

"Few names in the lore of western gunmen are as recognizable. Few lives of the most notorious are as little known. Romanticized and made legendary, John Ringo fought and killed for what he believed was right. ... In this charnel house Ringo gained a reputation as a dangerous gunfighter and man killer. He was proclaimed throughout the state as a daring leader, a desperate man, and a champion of the feud. ... In the end, Ringo died mysteriously in the Arizona desert, his death welcomed by some, mourned by others, wrongly claimed by a few."

From the synopsis of John Ringo, King of the Cowboys by David Johnson.

How often do we get to snark about something from a university press?  Is JaBbiC favorite John Ringo named after the Cowboy King?   Does he give mustache rides?

Good Books, Lousy Covers

So there's been some call for me to stop picking easy targets (romance novels, Baen sci-fi covers, Christian chick lit) and profile some good books. *Sigh* You people demand so much from me! I hesitate to do this because sometimes it's hard to disassociate covers from novels, but here goes:

Billy Budd -- Good Book, Bad Cover

"Check me out, ladies. I've got a mullet, a pornstache*, and a rakishly-tilted kerchief round my neck...I'm ready for action!"

"No, no! Look at me, baby! I've got a tattoo! My kerchief is bigger, too! Of course, I've got this creepy guy staring over my shoulder..."

The Natural -- Good Book, Bad Cover

Clockwise from top:

• Creepy Clown
• Mysterious Ghostly Gypsy
• Basketball Players from a Different Book
• Ollie North
• Vampy Transvestite

And a host of others, all surrounding Dick Tracy at bat with a HUGE...peni...ummm...right thigh.


Anything by Anthony Trollope -- Good Book, Bad Cover

Drawn in ink and dipped in urine for your reading pleasure.

And finally, Good Book about Jesus -- Bad Cover

Jesus' disembodied head is staring at you!

Okay, confession time. I thought long and hard about this book 'cause it's written by my advisor from grad school, and she's super scary. But nowhere in the book does it say "Thanks to Maughta, without whom my life would have no meaning," so I feel justified in this scurrilous attack. Hell hath no fury like a graduate student scorned. A-J, if you're reading this, please don't hunt me down and kill me, but seriously, couldn't you have picked a better picture of Jesus?! Maybe one that looked Jewish? (Yeah, you'd maybe have to draw that yourself, but surely it'd be better!) Jesus's aquiline nose is frightening the bejeebus out of me. Amazingly good book, though.

In other news, just got a link in my e-mail from Pistil Books that you've got the check out: The Museum of Weird Books. I think you'll enjoy it!


*MaughtaMom and other easily confused people: pornstache means a mustache that looks like it should be on a porn star