The best of the Encyclopedia of Pulp Heroes: Captain Stinky

Captain Stinky. Captain Stinky was created by “Gerald Vance,” the pseudonym of William McGivern (Philip Poincare, Tink), and appeared in “Captain Stinky” (Amazing Stories, June 1942) and “Captain Stinky’s Luck” (Amazing Stories, Sept 1942). Captain Ebenezer Scragg is the Captain and Master of the spaceship Sweet Pea. But the Sweet Pea is “the dirtiest, stinkingest garbage scow between here and Earth,” and because of this Captain Scragg is known as “Captain Stinky.” Scragg deeply resents the nickname, and drinks and brawls with “huge-shouldered” Martians and “slight” Venusians (not to mention humans) if any of them should call him by that name. Scragg does a necessary job—“the garbage scows that met the great space liners and removed the accumulation of refuse the liners collected on their three and four week trips”—but the scows are “regarded as beneath the dignity of any respectable space tar,” and that galls Scragg. But not so much that he can’t do his duty and capture Martian spies, deal with Mono, his alcoholic Venusian navigator and deckhand, and handle a swindling human Femme Fatale.