First published back in October of 2023, Shane P.D. Agnew’s book ‘John Spencer & Co (Badger Books) Illustrated Bibliography Volume 2: War, Westerns and Foreign Legion’ is an oversized (8.5” x 11”) bibliography providing a catalogue of the War, Westerns and Foreign Legion pulp books from the John Spencer & Co publishers.
As with the first volume in this series of three volumes, such a comprehensive bibliography, with colour cover artwork accompanying each publication, has never previously been compiled to such a degree. The research and dedication to documenting this pulp history is again quite simply phenomenal. The book is the second volume in the set of three and covers the digests from the early 1950s all the way to the 1970s.
If you’ve already picked up a copy of Agnew’s ‘John Spencer & Co (Badger Books) Illustrated Bibliography Volume 1: Comics, Science Fiction and Supernatural’ (2020), or indeed his ‘Guy N Smith: Illustrated Bibliography’ (2018), then you probably know what to expect with the level of obsessive detail Agnew goes into in order to provide a full documentation of the history of the publications. This is yet another pulp collector’s slice of heaven.
The book starts off with another one-page introduction from Agnew, where he talks further about the creation and compiling of the bibliography, the continued labour of love involved with such a project, and aspects where there could be potential inaccuracies due to the difficulties he encountered with tracking down some of the information. In particular, Agnew talks about the judgements he had to make with who to credit with art artwork for many of the books – carefully analysing the artwork side-by-side alongside producing the statistics and timelines for each artist to help define the likely creator.
Following this Agnew provides another wonderfully insightful four-page overview of the history of Samuel Assael and the formation of John Spencer & Co publications, through the evolution of the publishers, and the varying titles and series’ these pulp digests extended to. This second volume now focuses this potted history on the war, western and foreign legion books, starting in 1955 when the first WWII series were published.
Agnew talks us through the WW2 series, to the Giant War and True War books. We then move on through the Blazing Western books and onto the Lariat Western books, then covering the Brad Lando series.
Finally, we finish up covering the Foreign Legion and Bengal Lancers which has collectively taken us through a publication history spanning from 1954 all the way to 1967.
As with the aforementioned previous illustrated bibliographies already under Agnew’s belt, one of the absolute key strengths with this second volume is with its layout. Agnew has utilised the same format as the first John Spencer & Co volume, no doubt having built the comprehensive catalogue using the exact same database model. Indeed, once again, Agnew has provided us with a database-style visual chart of the history of the publications covered within this second volume. Here we have spreadsheet-like visuals showing us which artists provided cover artwork, over which years this entailed, and the number of covers they produced. We then have the same for the different authors, the different pseudonyms authors went under, and finally a list of the different series the books belonged to (with their respective code identifiers and number of known editions).
Obviously, the main bulk of the book is once again taken up by the illustrated bibliography section. This is where each title is catalogued via the series and genre they fell within. Within the overarching ‘Fiction’ part of the book, you first have the numerous ‘War’ books that were published, (covering 43 pages). This is broken down into the subsections: ‘Giant War’, ‘True War’ and ‘World War 2’.
After those we have the ‘Westerns’ (covering 35 pages), which are broken down into the subsections: ‘Blazing Westerns’, ‘Brad Lando’ and ‘Lariat Westerns’.
Finally, we have the ‘Foreign Legion’ section (covering 7 pages), broken down into ‘Bengal Lancers’ and ‘Foreign Legion’.
Each section and subsection has again been presented in the exact same format, identical to that of Agnew’s first volume. Here we have a 3.5cm x 5.5cm full-colour reproduction of each book accompanying the listings, along with the series number & title; year of publication; imprint (i.e. John Spencer/Badger/Cobra); the name of the cover artist, the book’s content, and a ‘Notes’ section (which often includes the month in which the title was published). Unlike the first volume, there’s no ‘Unverified’ section within this second volume.
Once again, the sheer scale of all this collecting, cataloguing and researching should not be underestimated. We’re talking over 330 different titles, each with their respective publication details documented and provided for any collector to now lookup with ease. In fact, one of the absolute joys this book provides is to simply flick through the pages, basking in the cover artwork, and following the glorious evolution of the books.
As with volume one, the final sections in the book are the ‘Checklists’. This is where Agnew’s bibliographies really excel. It’s how user-friendly they are for collectors to use as a reference guide. These two checklists collate and list the data which was within the preceding pages, in two easy to find indexes. We have an alphabetical list of all the ‘Stories By Title’ and a second alphabetical list of the ‘Stories By Author’. These lists then detail the publication, date, series and colour-coded section within the book to navigate to.
For collectors of John Spencer & Co. books, or indeed fans of these pulp genres, these illustrated bibliographies really are essential to own. Each volume is designed for use. Not just to be flicked through, but to be used as a reference guide. As with the first volume, each title listed within the book has a small ‘Collected’ box accompanying the listing, so that the user can tick off when they have a copy of the book in their collection.
If you have a passion for Badger Books, for early war, western or foreign legion fiction, or for the glorious artwork of such pulp offerings spanning the 1950’s to the 1970’s, then this second volume in the series is once again an absolute essential bibliography and reference guide for you.
The bibliography runs for a total of 106 pages.
© DLS Reviews
Other ‘John Spencer & Co Bibliography’ instalments:
