Black Mask

Launched in 1920 by journalist Henry L. Mencken and drama critic George Jean Nathan, Black Mask Magazine was the leading pulp magazine in the mystery genre of its time. Some of the greatest hardboiled crime authors of all time launched their careers through the pages of Black Mask. Authors such as Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and Erle Stanley Gardner contributed stories to the magazine.

It wasn't until 1922 under the editorship of George W. Sutton that the magazine started to focus almost exclusively on tough detectives. When Joseph T. "Cap" Shaw took over as editor in 1926 he pushed the magazine so that it would become the premier detective magazine of the time. He had definite ideas of what the reading public were craving and delivered the kinds of stories that today are considered classic hardboiled fiction.

Black Mask consists of 350 issues spanning the period 1920 - 1951. It was revived as Black Mask Detective, a quarterly publication in 1985 and was published in this format until 1987.