March 1936

John A. Coughlin was born in Chicago in 1885 and was educated at Notre Dame and the Art Institute of Chicago.  Like many of the artists of the pulp era, he got his start in advertising.  He first started painting covers in 1913 and, for the next thirty years, he was a busy illustrator.  Among his credits: The Popular and Detective Story, Argosy, Complete Stories, Detective Fiction Weekly, Detective Tales, Real Western, Short Stories, Top-Notch, and Wild West Weekly.  He was only 58 when he died in 1943 but he left behind a long legacy of pulp art.

Here is a sampling of Coughlin’s work.

September, 1924

September, 1926

May, 1929

April, 1931

May, 1931

September, 1931

October, 1932

August, 1933

October, 1933

August, 1934

February, 1936

October, 1937

August, 1938