Avon T-135 (1956)

Title : The Moon Pool
Author : A. Merritt
Cover art : Art Sussmann
  [N. Y. : Avon, 1956. No. T-135. 'Compete and unabridged.']


style ***
substance **
collectibility **

Art Sussman’s cover art for Avon T-135 is a good example of the stylized, collage-like, and vaguely expressionistic aesthetic favored by cover artists and art directors in the mid and late 1950s. If the present cover doesn’t quite have the Good Girl Art panache of the earlier Avon #370, it nonetheless can be appreciated as a well-heeled representative of the late vintage style. The cover of Avon T-135 also scores points by sneaking into the design a fully unclothed naked woman [1], which was pretty risqué for the 1950s, even within the science fiction context. At this late date Avon was still pushing the envelope! [2]


  [1] To be precise, and though the image is hazy, she seems to be wearing high heels, a curious adornment given the science fiction setting.


  [2] Avon Books always liked to test the limits of cover art decorum. Science fiction, and the Merritt novels in particular, gave them some of their best vehicles to do so. Along with Moon Pool, in the 1950s they published a series of Merritt sci-fi/fantasy novels which featured covers with scantily-clad or fully-unclad [if slightly obscured] heroines in peril -- The Ship of Ishtar, Dwellers in the Mirage, Metal Monster, and, perhaps most memorable of all, Seven Footprints to Satan. 

Avon 126 (1947)

Title[s] : Cold-Blooded Murder
Author[s] : Freeman Wills Crofts
Cover art : Ann Cantor
  [New York, Avon Paperback, 1947. No. 126. Original title: Man Overboard (Dodd, Mead, 1936). “An Inspector French mystery.” – cover].

style ***
substance ***
collectibility ***

This is one of my all-time favorite vintage paperback covers. Ann Cantor's design is over-the-top even by the standards of one of vintagedom's most sensationalist practitioners, Avon Books. The lighting and content – dead man’s [severed?] head, redheaded woman in low-cut red dress, and the bit of blood on cover – are reminiscent of those great Hammer horror films of the 1950s and 1960s, though in this case the book beats them to the punch by at least a decade.

I must confess that I never heard of Freeman Wills Crofts before I came across this book. My research reveals that he was pretty big in the UK in the between-the-wars group of mystery writers. One of his more unlikely admirers was Raymond Chandler. 

Avon Books 47 (1944)

Title : Shoe the Wild Mare
Author : Gene Fowler  
Cover art : uncredited


style *
substance **
collectibility **

Continuing with mare-titled books, we offer Gene Fowler's Shoe the Wild Mare, a rare instance in which the cover stands out not for its beauty or outrageousness, but rather for its singularly dull and unattractive qualities. All the more unfortunate in that this aesthetics-of-the-ugly entry represents an early Avon release and as such is at least marginally collectible. But nothing about this cover works, from the unfortunate color combination of yellow, black and purple to the man’s floating head between two women's heads facing each other. I can’t comment on the literary qualities of the book – for all I know it’s Faulkner in disguise – but with a cover like this I’m not really interested. 

Avon Books No. 159, 1948

Title : This is murder, Mr. Herbert, and other stories
Author : Day Keene
Cover art : Ann Cantor
  [One of Keene’s first books, this is a collection of four hardboiled stories drawn from the pulp magazines. Includes title story plus : With Blood In His Eye; Sweet Tooth Of Murder; If A Body Meet A Body].

style ***
substance ***
collectibility ***

Avon 159 benefits from terrific bondage-style front cover art : a guy brandishes a pistol and terrorizes a tied-up woman in red dress, while a hand grips the Venetian blind in background. I always thought the guy on the front cover of This is Murder was one of the creepiest looking villains in vintage paperback history. He’s not really sinister, but instead repellant in a geeky sort of way – pudgy, with unkempt hair and a deviant look in his eyes, holding a gun in his left hand held against the girl’s neck. His right hand appears to have a grip on the shoulder strap of her dress, pulling it down in most sleazy fashion [1]; the poor woman in red dress has every right to look a little uncomfortable! And what a great touch, the hand slithering through the blinds! It’s all done with the gaudy colors and over-the-top panache typical of Avon Books in their glory years.

 [1] But is he really pulling on her dress, or rather holding the lamp which is inserted in the cover a bit clumsily? Whatever. It’s still a bold, eye-catching cover design.