Magazine Cover Comics: Lucky Lady

King Features Syndicate's magazine covers for 1934 might have been subtitled "The Held and Barclay Show", since the syndicate managed to give those two artists practically every cover for the whole year. McClelland Barclay's series, Glamorous Girls, consisted of highly sophisticated glamor pusses, which made for quite the counterpoint to the other series, John Held Jr.'s Lucky Lady. Held, of course, went for his stable type, the skinny and coltish little minx whose clothes form only the very slightest veneer for her body. Anything but glamorous, Held's girls exude a naive sexuality that contrasts sharply with Barclay's sophisticated and highly coiffed cover girls.

Lucky Lady's star is an ultra-rich young deb, and the story, what little there was, concerned her activities, which consisted mainly of buying things, flirting, and having a very good time while usually showing off her underthings. The series was presented in groups of 2-4 covers with long pauses in which Barclay's covers held sway. The specific dates of the Lucky Lady series are:

January 14 - February 4 1934

March 25 - April 8 1934

June 24 - July 8 1934

December 2 - December 16 1934

January 13 - January 20 1935

The series came to no particular conclusion, but the plot was so gossamer-thin that there may or may not have been additional installments planned.

Thanks to Cole Johnson for the sample scan (note that the New York Journal ran the King magazine covers on the Saturday after the official Sunday release dates).