When the powers at Street & Smith saw what a gold mine they had in The Shadow Magazine, they began laying plans for a raft of companion titles, selecting as their themes four top pulp genres — adventure, detective, aviation, and western. The first two were covered when the publisher released Doc Savage Magazine and Nick Carter Magazine in early 1933. Their aviation title, Bill Barnes, Air Adventurer, was held back until the beginning of the next year. But as soon as circulation figures demonstrated the new single-character titles to be winners, Street & Smith launched its western hero pulp, Pete Rice Magazine. Its first issue was dated November 1933 and featured front cover art by Walter Baumhofer.
Street & Smith Publications, Inc., the oldest and foremost fiction-publishing house in America, take pleasure in presenting this first issue of Pete Rice Magazine to their discriminating readers. It is not “just another magazine,” but a publication which has been a long time in developing, and one which is aimed at the new, modern trend of public taste.
In this magazine, you will feel the real pulse of the great West as it actually exists. The scenes and action will be familiar to all those who know of the West and will be instructive to those who do not. The characters will live and breathe through these pages as no others have, and they will give you more entertainment than you have ever deemed possible from fiction before.
“Pistol Pete” Rice was the sheriff of Buzzard Gap, Arizona — a clean-living, non-swearing, teetotaler. A paragon of frontier virtues and terror to outlaws, Pete still lived with his mother. He was backed by two trusty deputies — the 300-pound giant William Alamo Butler, better known as “Teeny,” and the town’s combination barber and medical man, Lawrence Michael Hicks, informally known as “Misery.” Pete rode a horse named Sonny and was sometimes accompanied by a dog named Vulcan.
Pete and his pards operated in the never-never land of the Pulp West, a vague, undated era in the magazine’s early issues. As the series progressed, the stories took on the qualities of a 1930s Hollywood western, where the sheriff and his posse would start out in an automobile and switch to horseback when the terrain became too rocky. In one story, Pistol Pete even hopped on a plane to Chicago to get his man.
By trying to have the West both ways, the magazine had a relatively short lifespan. It folded in 1936 after just 32 issues. The author of all the original Pete Rice novels was Ben Conlon, writing as Austin Gridley. Afterward, Conlon took the series to Wild West Weekly, where Pete encountered other Street & Smith buckaroos such as Sonny Tabor. Eventually, Pete’s creator was replaced by other writers, still hiding behind the Gridley house name. The series finally petered out in 1939 after some fifty adventures — not counting a short-lived radio program.
Pulp fans best remember Pete Rice Magazine because it shared the same cover artists as Doc Savage. Walter M. Baumhofer painted the cover art for both series until Robert G. Harris took them off his hands, not long before Pete‘s final showdown.
Although Pete Rice Magazine ran for less than three years, it paved the way for other western character pulps, beginning with Ranger Publications’ The Masked Rider Western Magazine in 1934. Later that same year, Popular Publications’ debuted Mavericks.
The longest-lived Western pulp hero, Jim Hatfield, would debut in the October 1936 issue of Texas Rangers. Standard Publications’ “Lone Wolf” hero would ride the range for 206 issues, heading into the sunset with its February 1958 number. Among the hero pulps, only The Shadow Magazine appeared more often.
Pistol Pete was the last of the pulp magazine heroes of 1933 — seven in all. We hope you’ve enjoyed our salute to them over the last year, on the occasion of their 90th anniversary.
Walter M. Baumhofer painted the first cover of Pete Rice Magazine — dated November 1933 — while Robert G. Harris painted the pulp’s final issue. Retitled Pete Rice Western Adventures, the last issue was dated June 1936. Our featured image is also by Harris. It’s excerpted from the May 1936 number of Pete Rice Western Adventures.
Kenneth Grant is a writer and popular culture enthusiast who began writing for our website in 2022. He particularly enjoys the hero pulps and also enjoys reading the latest in pulp-inspired fiction.
You can still catch our video saluting Pete Rice on the PulpFest YouTube Channel. It’s part of our series saluting The Great Pulp Heroes. Produced by Craig McDonald, author of The Mothman Menace, you can find it by clicking here. While you’re there, please subscribe to the channel. Your support is greatly appreciated.
