I may have a problem. Everyone knows I love old pulp magazines, especially the cover art, but I REALLY love the old spicy pulps!
What were the spicy pulps? While most pulp magazines could be read by younger readers despite the lurid cover art and the promise of salacious titillation within, most of the general pulps were pretty harmless in that regard.
But not the Spicy Pulps. Those delivered stories of two fisted heroes faced with deadly decisions and surrounded by beautiful, scantily clad women hanging in the balance for the victor. Although tame by today’s standards, this sub genre of the pulp era was considered to be most risque. Pulp magazines like Spicy Detective, Spicy Mystery and Spicy Adventure provided some of the most eye-catching covers, many of which contributed to the pulps’ bad reputation in many circles
Though the contents of the magazines may be tame by today’s standards the covers were lurid, risque and, above all tasteless! These were the NSFW images from back in the day. And a perusal of any selection of these spicy covers are bound to turn up something to offend from the casual racism of the soft, alabaster skinned heroine being menaced by various POC’s to depictions of violence that verge on the worst kind of torture porn.
Well, there’s your trigger warning, folks. What follows is a slightly curated selection of some of the best (and by that I mean, some of the worst) of the spicy pulp covers. Avert your eyes, you faint of heart! For these images are only for those with the strongest of constitutions!
Jack Mackenzie: Writer 
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