Fantasy Tales vs Startling Detective - First Fall

At the End of the Road by Patrick Connolly
Fantasy Tales Vol 2 No 3 Summer 1978

A young woman and her subtextual predatory lesbian roommate leave the small town behind to broaden their horizons in London. She hooks up with the landlady's son who ends up being dead and the landlady's dead and that means everybody's dead, me, you, everyone died already.

The Phantom in the House of Oesterreich by Don Nachaidh
Startling Detective Adventures Vol 5 No 26, July 1930

This one's wild. Years after a rich man was murdered while his wife was locked in a closet, it's revealed that she had been keeping her young lover as a sex slave in the attic, slipping him food and publishing the pulp fiction he wrote by candlelight (I looked and couldn't find what he published). The lover killed the husband after the couple argued, then later faked amnesia and started a new life. The wife's multiple affairs eventually uncovered the plot, though neither were ever convicted. This was made into three films, including one with Neal Patrick Harris.

An absolute squash. One of the most intriguing true crime stories against... well let's just say this was Raven/Canyon on Villano IV all over again.

Tag Team Elimination Tournament Final Round

Startling Detective Adventures (December 1937, v19n113)

Double Death: Trapping New Jersey's Elusive Cop Killer by Tom Bailey

Cops are shot while serving a warrant on an eccentric bail bondman.

Teen-Age Gangsters (1957)

Sex and Liquor

Stories of "non-virgin clubs", with games like seven minutes in heaven, pretty much the stuff of 80s teen comedies. Tame for this title.

Battered and bloodied, these two true crime titles barely stumbled through the last round, but Startling Detective Adventures makes the pin, and is your new Tag Team Champion!

NRV: Tag Team Elimination Tournament Round Six

Startling Detective Adventures (December 1937, v19n113)

Murder in the Model's Boudoir by Lawrence Flick Jr.

A good time girl with a black book filled with influential names is murdered. 

Savage Realms Monthly Volume 2 (February 2021)

Titan's Thirst by Alexander S. Karcher

Quick, poetic piece about a primitive man hunting a man-eating lion.

Teen-Age Gangsters (1957)

Teen-Agers in Jail

Teen-Age Gangsters crawls deeper in the gutter with sexual sadism in girls' juvenile detention.

Savage Realms succumbs to the shadows.

NRV: Tag Team Elimination Tournament Round Five

Street & Smith's Mystery Magazine (May 1940, v06n01)

No Profit in Murder by Alan Hathway

The Keyhole is a mysterious columnist crime solver. This case involves a slain mail carrier, an Inca curse, and a murdered inventor. The premise is still being set up as the Keyhole smashes and shoots his way out of it.

Savage Realms Monthly Volume 2 (February 2021)

In the Cove of the Apostate by B. Harlan Crawford

Barbarian nomad Seanai takes refuge in a cursed temple of a city that was driven into the sea for worshipping dark gods. The spirits of the apostates animate statues held together with possessed sea-life.

Teen-Age Gangsters (1957)

Gang Wars

Yikes! Strong stuff here from Teen-Age Gangsters. After the introduction of an ex-gang member being beaten and outraged, more general information about New York's juvenile gangs and the lax criminal justice system that doesn't strip search teenage girls enough. Surprisingly, neither parents nor comic books were blamed.

Startling Detective Adventures (December 1937, v19n113)

The Man Who Turned Monster by Dean S Jennings

The story of Roy Righthouse, obsessed killer and necrophile who strangled a nurse before turning himself in. One of these true crime stories which took some narrative liberties, complete with internal monologues of the characters. More florid than most, Jennings tries to go full Dostoyevsky.

Mystery Magazine had that sub-genre of mystery that introduced bizarre elements in the beginning, hoping to explain everything in the resolution. It almost never works, and you're better off depending on action than the whodunit. A whole magazine of this format is a bit much. Street & Smith Mystery Magazine is eliminated!

NRV: Tag Team Elimination Tournament Round Four

Street & Smith's Mystery Magazine (May 1940,v06n01)

Death Lights a Candle by Theodore Tinsley

The Cash & Carrie detective agency is run by Carrie Cashin, but her assistant Aleck poses as the owner Remington Steele style. They are called in to solve a case involving a man repeatedly lighting a candle on a street corner and robbers who hold up a bank to make a deposit. The resolution made no sense and required extensive knowledge on Cashin's part not revealed until the end.

Complete Man (February, 1967, v7n01)

4-Day Pacific Nightmare: Downed Navy Ace Who Survived Typhoon Louise by Ed Hyde

What it says on the tin.

Savage Realms Monthly Volume 1 (January 2021)

Serpent Lord of Bryson Metals by Kell Myers

Fun short set in post-apocalyptic Florida, as a sword wielding Army soldier fights a burnout magician to keep an artifact out of the hands of the reptilian Krunts.

Teen-Age Gangsters (1957)

Prostitution

A couple of case studies of child prostitution rings bookend social hygiene statistics.

Startling Detective Adventures (December 1937, v19n113)

Sex Slaves of the Pacific by Jack Dewitt

Women are promised jobs in Hawaii only to be forced into prostitution. Most true crime, from the 20s to today, let's the crime speak for itself, but there's always the occasional author who does some editorializing.

I was never too fond of the respectable side of men's adventure magazines, preferring the trashy stuff over realistic stories of war and survival. Complete Man is fed to the sharks and eliminated.

NRV: Tag Team Elimination Tournament Round Two

Soldier of Fortune (March 1985, v10n03)

From Wailing Wall to Hallowed Ground by Jim Graves

Learned a lot about the Vietnam Veterans Memorial - I didn't realize there were objections at the time to the bleakness of the Memorial Wall, as well as to the architect Maya Yin Ling for being born in Ohio. I tease, it was from racism, with Ross Perot calling her an "egg roll". They added a statute and a flagpole as part of a compromise, and it's questionable how much of the controversy was from veterans as a whole as opposed to some financial backers. This article is about the inauguration of the Three Soldiers statue.

Complete Man (February, 1967, v7n01)

Vietnam's Life-or-Death Rescue Daredevils by Emile C. Schurmacher

Quick handful of pages on helicopter rescues, evacuating wounded from fire zones.

Teen-Age Gangsters (1957)

Thrill Pills

Straight talk about goofballs. As silly as the parodies are, 1950s drug warnings are way sillier. Teens using barbiturates constantly get laid which somehow leads to car theft.

Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine (March 1983, v28n03)

Professor Kreller's Secret by Ingram Meyer

A romance author hires a pair of private detectives, one a grandma, to investigate her professor neighbor, who has guest visit but never leave. The professor drops dead on campus, they find newspaper clippings that the visitors are criminals who escaped justice, and they think the professor turned them into cats. This is introduced as a second act red herring, but the story just kinda ends with a "maybe he did turn them into cats...somehow". Feels like it was written for children.

Street & Smith's Mystery Magazine (May 1940,v06n01)

Too Many Ghosts by Maxwell Grant

Norgil the Magician investigates a murder in a haunted theater. Usual convoluted Scooby-Doo stuff.

Startling Detective Adventures (December 1937, v19n113)

Milwaukee's Passion Slayers and the Missing Schoolgirl

Two drifters rape and kill a teenage girl. Interesting to see some basic profiling, which was probably as effective as it is now. After conviction, the judge gives a speech about sterilization, which I'm sure has nothing to do with the culprits being Eastern European.

Savage Realms Monthly Volume 1 (January 2021)

The Festival of the Bull by Steve Dilks

Bohun, a warrior from an Africa stand-in, escapes a slave ship and lands in a Greco-Roman stand in, where he his captured, forced to fight a jaguar, and escapes. Solid enough, but after reading 70s historical fiction the recent stuff feels a bit PG-13 to me.

A couple of snoozers in this round, but Professor Kreller's Secret is giving me second thoughts about the entire shelf of AHMMs I've collected. Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine is eliminated.

NRV: Tag Team Elimination Tournament Round One

No Redeeming Value

Tag Team Elimination Tournament

Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine (March 1983, v28n03)

The Beckoning Eye by Ron Butler

An American businessman on vacation in Japan with a local police inspector evade an assassination attempt by the Yakuza. Mild thriller, no suspense, and no twist.

Teen-Age Gangsters (1957)

What Makes a Teenage Gangster   

Not exactly a research article, but quotes some psychologists. Talks about outdated theories of juvenile crime, like comic books and lack of corporal punishment, and gets closer to modern thinking with lack of group acceptance and household trauma, but then slips back into girls getting hooked at marijuana parties. Manages to slip in some references to infanticide and explicit child torture, in case you were worried this wasn't exploitation.

Soldier of Fortune (March 1985, v10n03)

I Was There: Silhouette Shoot by Uzal W. Ent

One page quickie about calling in a mortar strike during the Korean War.

Grimdark Magazine Issue 3 (March 2015) - Available from Amazon

A Recipe for Corpse Oil by Siobhan Gallagher

A pickpocket is recruited by a potion seller to steal chins to make corpse oil. A light comedy, the grimmest and darkest of fantasies.

Street & Smith's Mystery Magazine (May 1940,v06n01)

The Crack of Doom by Norman A. Daniels

A cop responding to a suicide call finds a series of bodies, heads twisted around following an unholy screeching. Daniels is a master mechanic of action scenes so we get great fist fights, shootouts, and fiery escapes, but the reveal was a letdown.

Complete Man (February, 1967, v7n01)

Come-Across Swinger by Karl Kramer

Sleaze short in the paperback original tradition, in the sub-genre of Private Airport Noir, the only other example of which I can think of is Coleman Francis' Skydivers, though it looks like Kramer had at least a couple novels in the genre. A dirtbag airport owner cheats on his wife, rapes a widow, screws over his partner, beats up an employee, and lives happily ever after.

Savage Realms Monthly Volume 1 (January 2021) - Available from Amazon

God of the Mountain by Willard Black

Redgar the barbarian is hired to rescue a woman from a savage tribe under the shadow of an active volcano. There's a sweet spot for Sword and Sorcery, and this one falls on the short side - the descriptions and actions could use more detail. S&S, like Westerns, tend towards generic templates, and this felt more generic than most - if this is a series character, maybe future installments have more variety.

Startling Detective Adventures (December 1937, v19n113)

Fatal Masquerade of the Midget Gunman by John Shirley (presumable a different John Shirley)

The story goes for the "midget" angle even though the gunman was a full five feet tall. The local press focused on the blackface, calling him the "Mammy Bandit". Pretty standard robbery gang true crime stuff.

A Recipe for Corpse Oil may not have been representative of grimdark, but you can't expect fairness and justice to prevail in this dark and cynical world. Grimdark Magazine is eliminated.

NRV: Tag Team Title Elimination Tournament

Announcing an eight title elimination tournament. A story or feature from each title will compete, with the lowest reviewed title will be eliminated until we crown our first Tag Team Champions.

Brought to you by John Bender's Chainsaw.

"In Chainsaw, Bender delivers a rollercoaster ride of redneck humor and blood-soaked visuals that dives deep into backwoods hilarity while going full-tilt duh in all the right spots. More fun than pass the cousin at a hillbilly reunion, Bender pulls out all the stops and pushes the envelope on toilet jokes, dirt road mentalities, and gory splashes of ineptitude."

Available from Amazon

Four titles were chosen by the commissioner and another four were picked randomly from the Trash Menace collection. In publication order:

Representing True Crime, Startling Detective Adventures

The pulps continue with Street & Smith Mystery Magazine

True Crime goes juvi with Teen-Age Gangsters

Complete Man gets things sweaty

Long time veteran Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine fights for it's spot. Still in print and available from Amazon.

Soldier of Fortune takes the occasional break from firearm accessory ads for features

And representing Fantasy we have a couple of Young Guns, Grimdark Magazine, available from Amazon.

And Savage Realms, also at Amazon

Six decades, eight titles, 35 stories, but only one magazine will bring home the belt as our inaugural Tag Team Champion.