PulpFest 2016 is still six months away, but the first pulp show of the year arrives in just over four weeks. The second annual Pulp AdventureCon is Saturday, February 20th, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
The one-day show will convert the Universal Palms Hotel into a collector’s mecca of rare magazines, movie posters, vintage paperbacks, golden age comics and other pulp-paper memorabilia. Until last year, collectors had to travel to the Midwest for pulp-related events in Columbus, Ohio, and Chicago.
Daniel Judson Philips, the son of author Judson P. Philips, will be special guest at AdventureCon. He will be at the show from 11AM until 2PM. Philips and the show’s co-organizer Audrey Parente have been working on a biography, “Once a Pulp Man: The Secret Life of Judson Philips (as Hugh Pentecost),” which will be released at the show.
Also debuting at the show will be a reissue of “Cancelled in Red,” the first novel the elder Philips wrote as Hugh Pentecost. It features Inspector Luke Bradley, and was the “Red Badge” prize-winner of 1939. It originally appeared in ARGOSY.
Also, Allen Koszowski, illustrator and publisher of INHUMAN (a digest magazine inspired by UNKNOWN), will have a table and be displaying artwork.
While this is the second AdventureCon in Florida, the show has a northern sibling that has run for over 15 years in New Jersey. Now, like a pair of bookends, the pulp show season starts with AdventureCon in Florida and ends with AdventureCon in autumn in New Jersey.
“In their heyday, before television, comics or graphic novels existed, characters like The Shadow, Tarzan, and Zorro prospered in the pulps,” said show co-organizer Rich Harvey of Sunrise, FL. “Authors like Erle Stanley Gardner and Edgar Rice Burroughs started their careers in these rough-edged old magazines, before moving into books and the lucrative Hollywood realm.”
Most superheroes, from Superman to the X-Men are rooted in the old magazines. Captain Future appears weekly on a background poster in the situation comedy The Big Bang Theory. Writers like Dashiell Hammett, L. Ron Hubbard and Ray Bradbury filled the pulps with inexpensive entertainment in a world before the Internet and television. Western writers Max Brand and Zane Grey also wrote for the pulps.
Pulp AdventureCon will be held Saturday, February 20th, 2016, at the Universal Palms Hotel, 4900 N. Powerline Road, Fort Lauderdale, FL 33309. The show runs from 10AM to 5PM. Admission is $5. For more information, please visit pulpadventure.com.
(The Pulp AdventureCon banner features the artwork of the incomparable Norman Saunders. The painting originally appeared as the cover for the December 1952 issue of DETECTIVE TALES. The career of Saunders (1907-1989) spanned pulp magazines, comic books, paperbacks, men’s magazines, trading cards, and advertising.)
