September 7, 2025

SENSATION Vol. 1, No. 1, November 1939: The First Hit

Jack Hammer02 mins
Gritty, black-and-white pulp noir illustration of a man with a smoking gun in a rainy alley and a woman looking over her shoulder.
This entry is part 4 of 6 in the series The Newz Stand

Some magazines, they start with a bang. This one, Sensation, from November 1939, is the kind of first issue you dream of. It’s a fat volume for a dime, 132 pages of raw pulp, with stories from the likes of Walter B. Gibson. A man who knows how to put words on paper. This ain’t no cheap reprint from overseas; this is the real deal, straight from the U.S. of A.

The cover is a work of art, with a dame in a red dress and a fella with a smoking gun, a classic pulp scene that tells you everything you need to know. Inside, the stories are just as hardboiled as you’d hope, full of sharp dialogue and even sharper dames. These aren’t just mysteries; they’re stories about greed, betrayal, and the kind of bad choices that put a man in a pine box.

This issue is a good reminder that the best stuff, the real stuff, was born in these pages. Before the glossy magazines and the paperbacks, there was the pulp. It was a place where the truth was ugly, the heroes were cynical, and the endings weren’t always happy. This here is a classic, a testament to a time when a dime could buy you a ticket to a world of vice and violence.

Jack Hammer. Keeping an eye on the pages. Sources

Series Navigation<< Gripping Detective Stories 1954-03IT’S A MAN’S WORLD: The Raw, The Real, and The Red >>

The Newz Stand

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