#mexican pulp art

[k-i-l-l-e-r-b-e-e-6-9]

[kekwcomics]

AVENTURA #909 (Editorial Novaro. 1979)

Art uncredited.

[spacenoirdetective]

Mexican pulp art, 1960s, artist unknown

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[paintermagazine]

‘There she blows!’

‘Burrerias’ (1970)

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[jlb1982]

Mexican horror pulp art

more at Monster Brains

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Mexican pulp art - Hector Resendiz, Guillermo Peimbert

[uwmspeccoll]

Steamy Saturday

"Love and fear -- there was too much of both. . . ."

"She . . . was on her way to Orestes Island . . . of the handsome and powerful Ramon Orestes."

". . . Sunny's arms went around her and his lips pressed against hers."

". . . her treacherous mouth kissed him in return with an ardor that surprised her."

"She hardly expected to become the fiancee of two men and find herself in love with a third. . . ."

"Avril Andrews was forced to make the most difficult decision of her young life."

"She hardly expected. . . . to face the terror which gripped the entire population of the island."

"She found herself being drawn into web of fear. . . ."

The fiancé of two men, with another guy on the side?! This nurse needs some serious self-control. But then again, the nurse does live on TERROR ISLAND!!!

I chose this book, Nurse on Terror Island by the absurdly prolific romance novelist Doris Knight (b. 1897), published sometime in the 1960s by Modern Promotions, mainly for its bizarre cover art. In the midst of hurricane winds and impending disaster, a couple, with nurse in full regalia, calmly smooch on slippery coastal rocks. Don't they understand the danger? Then again, why should such mundane things bother them. After all, they live on TERROR ISLAND!!!

The story centers on young nurse Avril Andrews who is on residency in Mexico, leaving her fiancé Derek back in England. He is opposed to her leaving and "tired of playing second fiddle to her nursing career" (yeah, time to dump that guy). While there, she gets an opportunity to care for the young ward of rich island landowner Ramon Orestes. The child, an adorable stock-character Mexican boy with zero agency, is fawned over by everyone like an injured puppy, and Orestes, of course, is an oligarchical bastard. Despite Orestes being an overbearing tyrant, the real power on the island rests with his ancient great-great-grandmother Donna Santos, the wealthiest woman on the island who is feared by the locals as a witch as she is constantly casting vindictive supernatural curses on everyone.

Nurse Avril befriends a few locals and begins to fall for the newly-arrived, handsome pop singer Sunny Martin. As Nurse Avril gets closer to Sunny, she learns that he is actually the long-lost brother of one of her local friends, to whom she remarks in disbelief: "But your brother! Sunny is so fair and blue-eyed. You are so -- so Spanish." As a Latino myself, with a grandmother who had fair skin and pale-blue eyes, I take serious issue with this response. Then again, the novel is replete with racial and ethnic stereotypes.

But trouble soon brews over the custody of the hapless "little Domingo," and Donna Santos forces Avril into a marriage with Orestes to give the boy legitimate parents, or else she will take the boy herself and raise him as a witch. Then, when it looks like Avril and Sunny are about to undermine the impending marriage, Witch Santos curses the entire island with destruction by an oncoming hurricane.

Will Nurse Avril forsake Sunny to marry Orestes in order to rescue the island and save little Domingo from a life of evil? Will Donna Santos continue her iron grip and reign of terror on Orestes Island? I'll never tell, especially as this post is already over-long.

View other nurse romance novels.

View other pulp fiction posts.

-- MAX, head of Special Collections

[mudwerks]

Everett Raymond Kinstler - Pancho Villa Illustration Original Art (undated)

E. R. Kinstler was a successful comic book and pulp illustrator, who later established a career in painting society and celebrities as seen here with 1900s Mexican revolutionary and guerrilla leader, Pancho Villa in front of his own "wanted poster".

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[paintermagazine]

‘KAPOW!’

‘Adelita’ (1953)

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