G-Men Detective

 

Originally titled simply G-Men, this pulp was an attempt to cash in on the US public's fascination with the then new and novel FBI, ('G-Men' being a popular nickname for FBI agents, after 'Machine Gun' Kelly had reportedly shouted 'Don't shoot G-Men' when he was arrested by armed FBI men).   When this interest began to fade, the title changed to G-Men Detective and it became more of a standard crime pulp.  This is the Winter 1945 issue, (the magazine started monthly, went bi-monthly with the title change, then went quarterly and staggered to its end in 1953 with a highly erratic schedule), sporting another of those wonderful covers featuring death embodied as a living skeleton.  I think that it is a fair bet that the cover painting is illustrating 'Death Blacks Out' by Henry Kuttner.  Kuttner was a prolific and well respected writer for the pulps, producing stories across multiple genres, although nowadays he is probably best remembered for his science fiction stories.  

The other featured story on the cover is 'One Thousand Suspects' by Norman A Daniels, who, of course, was the creator of The Black Bat for G-Man Detective's  sister pulp Black Book Detective.  The Black Bat has often been cited as an inspiration for the Batman comic strip, (there are certainly a number of similarities, including the costume).  While the Black Bat might have inspired Batman, another character created by Daniels, The Phantom Detective,(who appeared in his own eponymous pulp, also published by Thrilling) was a straightforward knock off of The Shadow.  Like Kuttner, Daniels was a prolific writer for the pulps, particularly those published by Thrilling Publications, which put out a vast array of magazines, covering every genre.  'One Thousand Suspects' is one of a long-running series of stories about 'Dan Fowler' that appeared in G-Men Detective, mainly written by Daniels.  Indeed, his last appearance under Daniels' authorship was in the penultimate issue of the magazine in 1952, (although the character also appeared in the final issue in 1953, under the authorship of Richard Foster, the pen name of Kendall Foster Crossen, another prolific pulp writer).

In total, G-Men ans G-men Detective put out, between them, 112 issues between 1935 and 1953.