The Rediscovered 20th Century Boy Scout Dust Jacket Artwork of New Jersey Pulp Artist Chris Schaare

Abstract

Christian Richard “Dick” Schaare Jr. (pronounced Shar) was arguably New Jersey’s most prolific and perhaps greatest pulp artist of the 20th century. His iconic artwork would grace hundreds of book covers, dust jackets, comic books, magazines, cigar boxes, calendars, milk cartons, and advertisements for more than 40 years from the 1920s to the 1960s. His pulp fiction artwork is well-known except for 18 dust jackets commissioned by the A. L. Burt Company for their Boy Scout fiction series books published in the mid to late 1920s. That he illustrated these dust jackets, brimming with action, adventure, and drama, has been largely forgotten by time, but they highlight his iconic pulp fiction style early in his career.