 Hersey 's idea was to have a pulp magazine about comic strip characters ; he hoped that there would be sufficient overlap between pulp readers and comics fans to make the magazine successful . The presentation was like that of a typical pulp , but with eight full page color illustrations , all by Fred <unk> , who had previously illustrated Westerns . Bleiler describes the artwork as crude and " far inferior to the sometimes elegant work " of Alex Raymond , the creator of Flash Gordon . 
