Every year, PulpFest invests a lot of time, thought, and effort to come up with a top-notch programming schedule. We think 2015 was one of our best yet. Our celebration of Standard Magazines had presentations on a wide range of topics, including looks at sports and western pulps, once popular genres that are little explored. We even touched on Standard’s line of Golden Age comic books. Of course, the highlight of our “Thrilling” salute was Philip Sherman’s intimate presentation on his uncle, Leo Margulies, the managing editor of the Standard line of pulp magazines.
This year also marked the 125th birthday of H. P. Lovecraft, the master of cosmic horror. PulpFest celebrated this important anniversary with panels on the author’s so-called “Cthulhu Mythos” and WEIRD TALES, the pulp magazine where the bulk of his work appeared. We also featured films that were inspired by Lovecraft’s fiction as well as presentations featuring WEIRD TALES artists and authors inspired by his tales.
We kept you apprised about all these exciting topics through our website and social media sites and we’ll continue to do so as we plan for our 2016 convention, scheduled to take place from July 21 – 24 at the Hyatt Regency Columbus and The Greater Columbus Convention Center. But such things cost money and we have site sponsors such as PureCostumes.com to thank for their help to defray such costs.
The PulpFest organizing committee is now hard at work, planning for next year’s convention. In the months ahead, we’ll be redesigning our website for another go-round and announcing our plans right here, thanks to PureCostumes.com and our other site sponsors. So please bookmark pulpcon.org or follow us on RSS. You’ll also be able to find information at our Facebook site and through our Twitter account. Additionally, we’re in the process of adding Instagram and Tumblr accounts and reviving our email update list. All aboard!!!
(Although John A. Coughlin’s depiction of the grim reaper appeared on the February 7, 1931 issue of Street & Smith’s DETECTIVE STORY MAGAZINE, we could not resist using it for this year’s Halloween post. It’s a good one, don’t you think? Notice the blurb for the contest to describe The Shadow who, at the time, was the announcer for the CBS radio series, DETECTIVE STORY HOUR. The direct result of this advertising campaign was the first of the single-character pulp magazines, THE SHADOW DETECTIVE MAGAZINE. Its success would lead to the hero pulp explosion of 1933 and all of the great character pulps to follow.)
