Uncle Tubby (Washington Blythe)

He may have been best known for his “groundbreaking” science fiction work, but prolific Ray Cummings was a regular in the crime and detective pulps as well, popping up with a staggering frequency, it seemed. He was a mainstay in Popular Publications in the mid-1930s, where he cranked out ten stories featuring chubby, middle-aged gumshoe UNCLE TUBBY, a decidedly soft-boiled kinda detective, for Detective Tales.

Yeah, yeah. “Uncle Tubby” seems like a rather mean-spirited example of 1930s-style fat-shaming (kids can be so mean), but given that Tubby’s real name was Washington Blythe, you have to consider whether the nieces and nephews were doing him a favour.

Coincidentally, Cummings wrote about another, apparently less avuncular Tubby about a decade earlier, whose presumably more sci-fi leaning adventures were chronicled mostly in the pages of Thrilling Wonder Stories.