J. Randolph Cox has been named the winner of the 2014 Munsey Award. Nominated by the general pulp community, Randy was selected through a vote by all the living Lamont, Munsey, and Rusty Award winners. The award is a fine art print by Dan Zimmer of a painting by David Saunders and is presented annually to a person who has worked for the betterment of the pulp community.
For more than 45 years, Randy Cox has conducted research into pulp magazines and dime novels. He served as the editor-publisher of Dime Novel Round-Up for over twenty years. His bibliography, Man of Magic & Mystery: A Guide to the Work of Walter B. Gibson, is an excellent resource for those seeking greater understanding of the work of the man who created The Shadow. With David S. Siegel, Randy authored Flashgun Casey: Crime Photographer, a book-length study of the character originally created for Black Mask by George Harmon Coxe. Other books he has authored include Masters of Mystery and Detective Fiction: An Annotated Bibliography and The Dime Novel Companion: A Source Book. Randy recently donated his collection of comic books and newspaper strips fanzines, pulps, series books, story papers, and other materials to the University of Minnesota Libraries and his extensive collection of Walter Gibson books and Shadow pulps and comics to Gibson’s alma mater, Colgate University.
Other nominees for this year’s Munsey Award included Brian Earl Brown, Stephen Haffner, William Lampkin, Stephen T. Miller, Laurie Powers, George Vanderburgh, and Dan Zimmer. William G. Contento, Chris Kalb, Richard Meli, Phil Stephensen-Payne, Shelby Vick, and Howard Wright also received nominations.
A second award was also presented at PulpFest 2014. J. Barry Traylor was named the recipient of the Rusty Award. Designed to recognize those individuals who have worked long and hard for the pulp community with little thought for individual recognition, it is meant to reward especially good works and is thus reserved for those individuals who are most deserving. The award is a fine art print by Dan Zimmer of a painting by David Saunders.
Richard Wentworth, AKA The Spider, had his Ram Singh; G-8 turned to Nippy Weston and Bull Martin for help; and Doc Savage had Monk, Ham, and three other geniuses to lend a hand. But who does a pulp con organizer turn to for assistance? None other than J. Barry Traylor! For over twenty-five years, Barry has been organizing convention auctions, almost single-handedly pulling together a couple hundred lots for a Saturday auction. In 2008, Barry quickly mastered the art of digital photography and stunned the convention crowd with his wonderful images of pulps ranging from rarities like Far East Adventure Stories to more common titles such as Amazing Stories. He’s also the person most often performing the “grunt work” that goes into organizing a convention–contacting comic shops and book stores to help with promotion activities; managing the links on the PulpFest website; hunting down extension cords for use in the dealers’ room and programming area; and much more. A longtime contributor to letter columns–you can find his comments in Age of the Unicorn, Echoes, Xenophile, and other classic fanzines–this unsung hero is a devoted fan of Weird Tales. Barry learned about giving back to the pulp community from his pulp mentor, the late Richard Minter, co-winner of the 1993 Lamont Award.
Congratulations to Randy and Barry.
Nominations are now being accepted for the 2015 Munsey and/or Rusty Awards. If you have someone in mind that you feel worthy of either award, please send the person’s name and a brief paragraph describing why you feel that person should be honored to Mike Chomko, 2217 W. Fairview Street, Allentown, PA 18104-6542 or to mike@pulpfest.com. Previous winners of the Lamont, Munsey, or Rusty Award are not eligible for the award. The deadline for nominations is May 31, 2015. Please click here for additional details. Thanks for your help.
To learn more about the image used in this post, click on the illustration.
