Black Mask (magazine): Difference between revisions
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*[http://www.detnovel.com/Black%20Mask.html History of ''Black Mask''] |
*[http://www.detnovel.com/Black%20Mask.html History of ''Black Mask''] |
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*[http://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=4623 Collecting ''Black Mask''] by Walker Martin. |
*[http://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=4623 Collecting ''Black Mask''] by Walker Martin. |
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*[http://teachinghistory.org/history-content/website-reviews/23828 Teachinghistory.org review of website ''Black Mask Magazine''] |
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Revision as of 17:09, 30 June 2011
| File:BlackMaskFalcon2.jpg Cover of September 1929 issue, featuring part 1 of Black Mask's serialization of The Maltese Falcon, by Dashiell Hammett. Illustration of private eye Sam Spade by Henry C. Murphy, Jr. | |
| Editor | H. L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan; later Joseph Shaw |
|---|---|
| Categories | Hardboiled |
| Publisher | Popular Publications |
| Founded | 1920 |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
Black Mask was a pulp magazine launched in 1920 by journalist H. L. Mencken and drama critic George Jean Nathan as one of a number of money-making publishing ventures to support the prestigious literary magazine The Smart Set, which Mencken edited, and which operated at a loss. Under their editorial hand, Black Mask was not exclusively a publisher of crime fiction, offering, according to the magazine, "the best stories available of adventure, the best mystery and detective stories, the best romances, the best love stories, and the best stories of the occult." The first Black Mask editor was F.M. Osborne.
Editorial control
After eight issues, Mencken and Nathan considered their initial $500 investment to have been sufficiently profitable, and they sold the magazine to its publishers, Eltinge Warner and Eugene Crow for $12,500. The magazine was then edited by George W. Sutton (1922–24), followed by Philip C. Cody.[1] In 1926, Joseph Shaw took over the editorship.
Contributing authors
Early Black Mask contributors of note included J. S. Fletcher, Vincent Starrett and Herman Petersen. [2] Shaw, following up on a promising lead from one of the early issues, promptly turned Black Mask into an outlet for the growing school of naturalistic crime writers led by Carroll John Daly. Daly's private detective Race Williams was a rough and ready character with a sharp tongue, and established the model for many later acerbic private eyes. In Black Mask, author George Harmon Coxe created Casey, Crime Photographer which became a media franchise with novels, films, radio, comic book tie-ins, television, and legitimate theatre.[3]
Black Mask later published the profoundly influential Dashiell Hammett, creator of Sam Spade and The Continental Op, and other hardboiled writers who came in his wake, such as Raymond Chandler, Erle Stanley Gardner, Paul Cain, Frederic Nebel, Frederic C. Davis,and Raoul F. Whitfield.[2] The magazine was hugely successful, and many of the writers, such as Hugh B. Cave, who appeared in its pages went onto greater commercial and critical success.
Decline and revival
Black Mask reached a sales peak in the early 1930s, but then interest began to wane under increasing pressure from the comic book market, cheap paperback books, radio and the cinema. In 1936, refusing to cut writers' already meager pay, Shaw resigned, and many of the high-profile authors abandoned the magazine with him. From this point onward, Black Mask was in decline,despite the efforts of Shaw's successors, Fanny Ellsworth (1936–40),and Kenneth S. White (1940–48). Henry Steeger then edited Black Mask anonymously until it eventually ceased publication in 1951. [1]
In 1985, the magazine was revived as The New Black Mask, and featured noted crime writers James Ellroy, Michael Collins (author), Sara Paretsky and Bill Pronzini, as well as Chandler and Hammett reprints. Edward D. Hoch praised the revived Black Mask, stating in the book Encyclopedia Mysteriosa that "it came close to reviving the excitement and storytelling pleasure of the great old pulp magazines". Due to a legal dispute over the rights to Black Mask name, the magazine ceased publication in 1987. It was revived as a short-lived magazine titled A Matter of Crime.[4]
In popular culture
Black Mask magazine was the specific pulp fiction magazine that inspired the 1994 Quentin Tarantino film Pulp Fiction. Originally, the title of the film was Black Mask, before being changed.
An issue of Black Mask magazine features as a (planted) clue in the 1927 murder mystery novel Unnatural Death by Dorothy L. Sayers.
References
- ^ a b Hagemann,Edward R. A Comprehensive Index to Black Mask, 1920-1951. Popular Press, 1982. ISBN 0879722029 .
- ^ a b Encyclopedia Mysteriosa, edited by William L. DeAndrea. MacMillan, 1994, ISBN 0028616782 (p.287-9).
- ^ Cox, J. Randolph. Flashgun Casey, Crime Photographer: From the Pulps to Radio And Beyond. David S. Siegel, William F Nolan. Yorktown Heights, NY: Book Hunter Press. ISBN 1891379054.
- ^ Encyclopedia Mysteriosa, (p.256).