G-8 and His Battle Aces

In the summer of 1927, Aviation Stories and Mechanics was launched. It was the first magazine to specialize in fiction about flying, and pulp historian Robert Sampson suggests that Charles Lindbergh's recent flight across the Atlantic was part of the reason for public interest in aviation. A number of similarly formatted titles focused on flying appeared soon after, including Air Stories and Wings. In 1930 Popular Publications was started by Harry Steeger and Harold Goldsmith; they launched four pulp magazines that year, one of which was Battle Aces, with the first issue dated October 1930. It published stories about war in the air: in a contemporary writers' magazine, Steeger declared the requirements for submissions were "scorching action, close plot, and dramatic situations. Dogfights and binges are good color, but don't rely on them to sell the story". Pulp historian Ed Hulse comments that Steeger's earlier experience as a pulp editor with Dell Magazines "had not gone to waste", and lists Battle Aces as "[one of] the most enjoyable air-war pulps of the Thirties". In 1931, rival publisher Street & Smith launched The Shadow, a hero pulp magazine featuring a lead novel in every issue about The Shadow, a mysterious crimefighter. Battle Aces ceased publication in December 1932, Steeger relaunched Battle Aces, under the new title G-8 and His Battle Aces, with the first issue dated October 1933. The magazine changed to bimonthly publication in early 1941 and ceased in 1944, with the last issue dated June of that year. By that time World War II's aircraft were far more advanced than the ones Hogan and Blakeslee were depicting, and pulp historian Lee Server comments that it was only because of Hogan's "readable prose and great imagination" that G-8 and His Battle Aces lasted as long as it did. During its last year of publication, a few issues were published as a special British edition. == Contents and reception ==

priest. Many of the plots involved science fiction or the supernatural: in the first issue, for example, the Germans have discovered a species of giant bat with poisonous breath, and Herr Doktor Krueger, another of G-8's antagonists, is planning to attack the Allies with the deadly essence of their poison. The cover, by Frederick Blakeslee, shows G-8 riding one of the giant bats. Other plots featured rockets, beast-men, wolf-men, zombies, mummies, and Martians. There are many similarities between the series and the plots of stories by Donald E. Keyhoe about Captain Philip Strange, which appeared in the rival magazine Flying Aces; Hulse comments that "it is very difficult to believe that Robert J. Hogan wasn't directed to plagiarize the series for his G-8 and His Battle Aces novels", though Hulse adds that Hogan's work is not as strong as Keyhoe's. Hogan was paid between $700 and $1,000 for each novel; he was also selling stories to other magazines at the same time, and between late 1935 and early 1936 also wrote seven novels for The Mysterious Wu Fang, another Popular title. At Hogan's peak he was writing about two million words per year, or perhaps more—a greater output than any other pulp author. == Bibliographic details ==

Battle Aces published 27 issues on a regular monthly schedule between October 1930 and December 1932. Each issue was pulp format, 128 pages, and priced at 20 cents. There were six volumes of four numbers each and a final seventh volume of three numbers. When the title changed to G-8 and His Battle Aces, the volume numbering restarted at 1/1; this sequence ran to 27 volumes of four issues with a final volume of two issues. The new version of the magazine was published on a regular monthly schedule from its first issue in October 1933 until April 1941, after which it became bimonthly until the final issue in June 1944. The price was cut to 15 cents when the title changed, and to 10 cents with the March 1936 issue; the page count dropped from 128 to 112 pages in October 1935, rising to 114 pages in August 1941 before dropping again towards the end of the run, with the final issues being only 82 pages long. Although Hulse writes that Steeger edited Battle Aces, the bibliographer Phil Stephensen-Payne records Eugene A. Clancy as the editor. Both agree that Steeger was the editor after the title changed to G-8 and His Battle Aces.'''' == References ==