Paperback 998: Mig Alley / Robert Eunson (Ace D-365)

Paperback 998: Ace D-365 (PBO, 1959)

Title: Mig Alley
Author: Robert Eunson
Cover artist: Verne Tossey

Condition: 7/10
Estimated value: $8-10

Best things about this cover:

• That is the face of a man of literally insane confidence: "I will die and be reborn and rule the heavens. Yes, this is a good death."
• There are a lot of planes in this shot, all of them like three yards from each other. Is this normal / physically possible?
• The way you know this cover was designed exclusively for straight dudes is that she looks fantastic whereas he looks like what would happen if the contents of a vacuum bag suddenly came to life and took the form of a remarkably graceless vampire.

Best things about this back cover:

• MIGs crossing the YALU! This scratches all of my crossword itches!
• I find the motion lines on MIG ALLEY adorable.
• On the Sexy-Name-O-Meter, I gotta believe Homer McCullough registers pretty low.

Page 123~

"Let's get ourselves attached to a couple of these Chinese doll-babies and see what happens."
The waitress was back with our drinks so I said, "Bring two hostesses, please."
"Whach [sic!] kind you like? Tall, skinny, fatso?" She laughed.
"A short one," Mac said, "just like you."

Yes. Yes, I do believe the guy on the front cover would do / say all of this. Yes. On-brand.

[The Orientalism goes to 11 over the course of the next few pages, to the point of incoherence: "Her hips, however, bulged to the seams of the dress, giving the sultry hint of the East." Why Does That Last Phrase Even Exist?! I mean, you were doing so well, right up to "dress," and then, like those MIGs on the front cover ... !?!?]

~RP

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Paperback 696: Assignment—Lili Lamaris / Edward S. Aarons (Gold Medal s911)

Paperback 696: Gold Medal s911 (PBO, 1959)

Title: Assignment—Lili Lamaris
Author: Edward S. Aarons
Cover artist: Barye Phillips

Yours for: $7


Best things about this cover:

• Cover would be So Hot if it were less smudgy and closer-up. PAN IN!
• This is somewhere between super-sexy and "help me, I've fallen."
• She appears to be wearing ... mist. How convenient.
• I like how she just jams her right leg into the text, like "Don't look at those stupid words! Why are you looking down there when I'm up here!?"

Best things about this back cover:

• I like the attitude suggested by his face, i.e. "whatever, sketch me or don't sketch me, I don't give a fuck."
• Since "the enemy" is unnamed, I'm gonna go ahead and assume it's "lizard people."
• "Tenth book"?! He wrote 42 novels in this series! (This has been your "holy crap" literary moment of the day.)

Page 123~

He paused, listening to the silence here that was not quite a silence, but like the deep, patient breathing of a waiting animal. 

That's just Lili. She breathes funny when she's naked-crawling.

~RP

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Paperback 615: Death Is My Comrade / Stephen Marlowe (Gold Medal 986)

Paperback 615: Gold Medal 986 (PBO, 1960)

Title: Death Is My Comrade
Author: Stephen Marlowe
Cover artist: Uncredited (Barye Phillips?)

Yours for: $10


Best things about this cover:

• "You must be this tall to ride this comrade."
• Mad Maxine in "Beyond Oniondome"!
• Not a fan of Gold Medal's late-50s/early-60s "Don't-Finish-The-Painiting" phase.

Best things about this back cover:

• Generic Detective Head Shot!
• "Tune in" — ha ha. It thinks it's TV.
• Hmmm, I'm no Chet Drum, but 'Rodzianko' and 'Rodin' sound awfully similar.
• Ooh, ripe *and* luscious *AND* underage! Just like Chet likes 'em.

Page 123~

Gone was the hail-fellow-well-met attitude, gone the booming voice. The big, shaggy man slouched slowly and wearily across the room. I gave him a cigarette. His big hand shook as he cupped the flame I offered. "For some of us dialectic reasoning makes the difference," he said. 

Silly commies, no longer hailing your well-met fellows. Chet Drum scoffs at you!

~RP

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Paperback 577: Club Tycoon Sends Man to Moon / Felix Mendelsohn Jr. (Book Co. of America 13)

Paperback 577: Book Co. of America 13 (PBO, 1965)

Title: Club Tycoon Sends Man to Moon
Author: Felix Mendelsohn Jr.
Cover artist: [signature illegible] [Brennan? Boorman? Boron?]

Yours for: $20

Best things about this cover:

• That! That is what I want to look like when I'm 75. Like an old Greek rap star supervillain. If I don't end up with a Money Throne, a Soviet missile, and a real-life Modigliani model in my house by the time I die, I will consider my life wasted.
• I assume that throne is also some kind of hovercraft. I mean, why would you go through the trouble of building something that awesome if it couldn't fly?
• I bought this book because it is insane-looking. A silly-sounding title from a very minor press, written by a guy with a ludicrous pseudonym. If I had a "Kabinet of Kooky Kuriosities," I'd put this book there.

Best things about this back cover:

• You have no idea how much I *don't* want to know what "built-in stump" means.
• You can get your "World's Greatest Lecher" mug at CreepyChristmasGifts.com
• I love how "wonderfully gay" is echoed further down the page by "a bachelor by choice" (and, possibly, "Cryptanalyst").
• According to that final sentence, the author and I are 80% alike. This worries me.
• Publishers were correct in their prediction that this would not be Felix Mendelsohn Jr's last novel. He seems to have written one other, "Superbaby," which I Must Acquire:

Page 23~ (the book is exactly 122 pages long)

Wayne: "What's your line, Mr. Dormin?"
Dormin: "Laxatives."

Sure. Why not?

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

P.S. Hope my east coast readers weathered Sandy successfully. We had a state of emergency up here, but nothing happened. Still, I was prepared:


P.P.S. I've been meaning to post this pic of a sign for a local deli — in Endwell (!) NY — just 'cause. I haven't been in yet, but I am ... curious:

Paperback 417: The Day Khrushchev Panicked / George B. Mair (MacFadden Books 50-183)

Paperback 417: MacFadden Books 50-183 (1st ptg, 1963)

Title: The Day Khrushchev Panicked
Author: George B. Mair
Cover artist: Stan Borack

Yours for: $13


Best things about this cover:

• Unless she is about to devour his man parts with razor-sharp teeth, this might be the widest gap I've seen between text and picture. Unless half-naked, chair-averse redheads were used for calming agents during the Cold War. "Ah, a cigarette and a subservient redhead ... I feel refreshed and ready to battle Communism once again!"
• Text says "As Exciting as 'Fail-Safe'," but the downward-facing red arrow subliminally suggests otherwise.
• Has anyone seen my bejabbers? They were here a minute ago...
• The U.S. eventually won the Cold War, due in no small part to the fact that they had Jabbers Christ on their side.
• I insist that everyone reading this post use "bejabbers" at least once today. Let me know how it goes.

Best things about this back cover:

• Well that's the last time I make my hammer-and-sickle insignia out of pie pastry.
• It's true, you know: you cannot deny the terrifying *possibility* of its truth. This book essentially anticipates 95% of 21st-century journalism.

Page 123~

"Perhaps after all," said Trudie thoughtfully, "we only feel self-conscious because we are amateurs."

~RP

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Paperback 311: Who? / Algis Budrys (Pyramid G339)

Paperback 311: Pyramid G339 (1st ptg, 1958)

Title: Who?
Author: Algis Budrys
Cover artist: Robert V. Engel

Yours for: $10


Best things about this cover:

• Hard to snark — this is one of my favorite scifi covers of all time. That creeptastic design on the robot face is fantastic. Looks like Crow from "MST3K," but way more disturbing.
• The hands on this thing are probably the second-most striking element — they look remarkably alike; very expressive. Amazing articulation in that prosthetic hand. Looks like he might have a large sausage or loaf of bread in those clown trousers of his. Very alarming — and he's coming Right At You — into the heart of the "Allied Sphere." Searchlight + barbed wire completes the dystopic effect. Great design all around.

Best things about this back cover:

• See, this designer knew what the real money shot was on that front cover — The Hand!
• Seriously, I have to give it to Pyramid on this one. The blurbs are gripping and unhilarious. This book may actually go onto my "Read It Someday, You Lazy Oaf" pile.

Page 123~

"But I'll tell you something, Mr. Rogers—" He turned suddenly and faced across the barn. The light was behind him and Rogers saw only his silhouette—the body lost in the shapeless, angular drape of the coveralls, the shoulders square, and the head round and featureless. "Even so, people don't like machines. Machines don't talk and tell you their troubles. Machines don't do anything but what they're made for. They sit there, doing their jobs, and one looks like another—but it may be breaking up inside. It may be getting ready to not plow your field, or not pump your water, or throw a piston into your lap. It might be getting ready to do anything—so people are afraid of them, a little bit, and won't take the trouble to understand them, and they treat them badly. So the machines break down more quickly, and people trust them less, and mistreat them more. So the manufacturers say, 'What's the use of building good machines? The clucks'll only wreck 'em anyway,' and build flimsy stuff, so there're very few good machines being made any more. And that's a shame."

Possibly the best "Page 123" excerpt I've ever offered up. Congrats to Algis Budrys for bringing class and dignity to this blog. Next week, more boobs and bad writing, I promise!

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

Paperback 308: A Room on the Route / Godfrey Blunden (Bantam 947)

Paperback 308: Bantam 947 (1st ptg, 1951)

Title: A Room on the Route
Author: Godfrey Blunden
Cover artist: Uncredited [Schaare???]

Yours for: $17


Best thing about this cover:

• Soviet singing sensation "Drago" was in constant danger of being mauled by his overzealous, sex-crazed fanbase of lonely Nanas. Here, security moves in quickly to save him.
• This book was apparently published in that narrow window of time when "Soviet" had not yet found a "Union" to modify.
• This guy's like a Soviet Jesus. Look at his beatific face, the halo of light around his head, the way he's being mistreated, the way he appears to be looking plaintively at us, admonishing us to give up our sinful ways... you've got Mary there in foreground, Mary Magdalen in background, Roman centurions coming to take him away ...

Best things about this back cover:

• N.K.V.D. — secret police organization that preceded K.G.B.; not, as I'd originally hoped, the shortened name of 90's boy band New Kids with Venereal Diseases.
• Every book should come with "mounting action."

Page 123~

The men in the factory felt they had made a victory.

The men in the factory then headed to their ESL class to learn more about how to make a sentence that sounds right in English.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

Paperback 305: Air Bridge / Hammond Innes (Bantam 1125)

Paperback 305: Bantam 1125 (1st ptg, 1953)

Title: Air Bridge
Author: Hammond Innes
Cover artist: Al Rossi

Yours for: $17


Best things about this cover:

• Looks like the final frame in a Douglas Sirk melodrama. "We'll follow that Air Bridge, darling ... follow it ... to Freedom!" [cue music ... and cue credits]
• That is a *lot* of coat he's wearing. Note that it's enveloping not just him, but the adoring, beret-wearing lady he's got his arm around as well — the one who looks like she's thinking: "Forget the airplanes for one second and kiss me, you gorgeous slab of a man!"
• Check out Heckle and Jeckle conspiring in the shadowy background. "To be continued ... ?"

Best things about this back cover:

• Why does all the danger in paperback cover copy descriptions come in "web" form?
• SAETON? ELSE!?!? What, are you using a Ouija Board to name your characters?
• "DIANA, who wanted Saeton with the hard passion of a man..." Hot girl-on- ... whatever SAETON is ... action!

Page 123~

His voice had risen and there was a wild look in his eyes. "Forget about yourself. Forget about me. Won't you do this for your country?"
"No," I said.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]