Today, it’s hard to believe that fifty years ago, there were no organized gatherings specifically geared toward pulp fiction and the magazines in which it appeared. After all, we have a number of annual pulp conventions across North America in our day and age. But that was not the case when three St. Louis pulp fans — Ed Kessell, Earl Kussman, and Nils Hardin — founded Pulpcon in 1972.
Held in Clayton, Missouri over a June weekend in 1972, the first Pulpcon was a rousing success. As the convention was drawing to a close, people began to ask for an encore. And so was born the first convention meant to specifically honor pulp magazines.
In the years that followed, the well-known science-fiction fan, James “Rusty” Hevelin, became the guiding light of Pulpcon. Generally held each summer, there were Pulpcons in Dayton and other Ohio cities, along with gatherings in Arizona, California, Missouri, New Jersey, and North Carolina. All told, a total of thirty-nine Pulpcon conferences took place. In 2009, PulpFest — the successor to Pulpcon — was founded on the premise that the pulps had a profound effect on popular culture.
Like many second-generation pulp enthusiasts, I discovered the pulps through Bantam Books’ Doc Savage paperbacks. I found them in a local department store while shopping for school clothes with my parents in 1966. I was eleven years old.
With the few dollars that my parents had allowed me to keep from my recent birthday, I purchased Brand of the Werewolf, The Land of Terror, and Quest of Qui. After all, how can an eleven-year-old boy resist werewolves, dinosaurs, and Vikings?
It didn’t take me long to become a fan of Lester Dent’s “Man of Bronze.” Before long, I was thumbing through the spinner rack at my hometown drugstore, buying every Doc Savage paperback as soon as it appeared. After a genuine bookstore opened in my area, I discovered Barsoom, Tarzan, Conan, The Spider, and more. Weinberg Books’ mail-order catalog led me to H. P. Lovecraft and his Weird Tales cohorts, as well as Tom and Ginger Johnson’s fabulous pulp fanzine, Echoes. Through the Johnsons and Echoes writers such as Nick Carr and Albert Tonik — both dear friends, now passed — I learned about Pulpcon.
I attended my first Pulpcon in 1990 and was hooked. Before long, I was helping with the convention’s auctions, becoming part of the “crew” that organized each summer’s Pulpcon. I bonded with my auction cohorts, Jack Cullers and J. Barry Traylor, and pulp collectors such as John DeWalt and Bob Flowers. Later came my own pulp fanzine, Purple Prose, and Mike Chomko, Books. With Jack, Barry, and Ed Hulse, I founded PulpFest.
Way back in August 2014, pulpfest.com shared a short essay that longtime reader and collector Walker Martin had originally posted on the Pulpmags newsgroup. We called Walker’s post, “Why PulpFest?“
During the seventies, eighties, and nineties, it was called Pulpcon and every year I would see fellow pulp collectors, most of them gone now, damn it. Magazine collectors many of you may still remember. Great guys like Rusty Hevelin, Jack Deveny, Richard Minter, Bob Sampson, Bob Weinberg . . . Sheldon Jaffery, Harry Noble, Darrell Richardson, Frank Robinson, Mike Avallone, and such amazing guests like pulp artists Norman Saunders, Walter Baumhofer, Rafael Desoto, and so many more.
Why PulpFest? You can buy pulps through eBay, Heritage Auctions, and internet dealers such as Adventure House, Fantasy Illustrated, and Heartwood Books and Art. But PulpFest is so much more than a dealers’ room full of pulp magazines, vintage paperbacks, digests, genre books, original art, first edition hardcovers, and other collectibles.
PulpFest is people . . . great folks like those listed above. Great folks who love the pulps and celebrate their “profound effect on popular culture.” That’s “Why PulpFest?”
We hope you’ll join us to celebrate “A Half-Century of Pulp Cons” at PulpFest 50. It will take place from August 4 – 7 at the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Pittsburgh – Cranberry in Mars, PA. You can become a member of the convention by clicking the Registration button on our website. If you need lodging, you can also book a room on our site.
Mike Chomko is the co-author — with the late George Evans — of “With Wings I Soared,” and — with the late Steve Young — of “Fighting Aces of War Skies: Fiction House’s Premier Air Pulp — Wings.” Hence, our featured image is a postcard adapted by PulpFest advertising director William Lampkin from Norman Saunders‘ cover for the Summer 1949 Wings. Our second image is James Bama’s cover art for Lester Dent’s Quest of Qui, published in 1966 by Bantam Books. Dent’s story originally ran in Doc Savage Magazine for July 1935.
The winner of the 2010 Munsey Award, Mike is the marketing and programming director for PulpFest. A registered nurse, he sells books on a part-time basis, operating as Mike Chomko, Books. His specialty is pulp-related material.
Join pulpfest.com on January 31 when professional journalist and illustrator Sara Light-Waller answers the question, “Why PulpFest?”
