Fifty years ago, there were no organized gatherings specifically geared toward pulp fiction and the magazines in which it appeared. That all changed when Ed Kessell, Earl Kussman, and Nils Hardin founded Pulpcon in 1972. This year we salute the fiftieth anniversary of that first pulp con — the convention now called PulpFest.
Wyatt: Thanks to my dad, I grew up listening to LPs and tapes of vintage radio shows. We were big fans of The Shadow, and my introduction to actual pulp fiction came with the mid-’70s Dover reprint pairing The Crime Oracle and The Teeth of the Dragon, with its startling George Rozen cover art depicting The Shadow — .45 in his right fist and a goggle-eyed severed head clenched in his left. It made quite an impression! Not long after, I stumbled across Tony Goodstone’s Chelsea House anthology The Pulps, and I soon began snapping up what then seemed an inexhaustible supply of previously read Bantam Doc Savage paperbacks at library sales and thrift shops.
Bob: I actually got into pulps via men’s adventure magazines (aka MAMs). I first started collecting and studying MAMs and writing about them on my MensPulpMags.com blog. I soon found out that many artists and writers who worked for MAMs had previously worked for pulps. So, I became increasingly interested in the links between those two related realms, and in how some of the top pulps morphed into MAMs in the early 1950s.
Wyatt: Bob and I met online via Harlan Ellison’s website, where he’d shared his discoveries of Harlan’s early work for MAMs. Bob was uncovering Ellison stories in his vast collection that even Harlan didn’t have copies of!
Bob asked if I would be interested in co-editing and publishing a MAM project, and we welcomed collaboration with Josh Alan Friedman, who I was already publishing. The project would be the first installment of the Men’s Adventure Library, our anthology Weasels Ripped My Flesh!
Josh Alan Friedman was an ideal collaborator, with an impressive blood link to the MAM era. In the years before his success as a novelist, playwright, and screenwriter, Josh Alan’s father, Bruce Jay Friedman, had been an editor for Martin Goodman’s Magazine Management Company, the birthplace of Marvel Comics. Goodman’s Atlas/Diamond line of MAMs are today recognized as among the very best in their class. Josh Alan opened his archives to share his vintage interviews with MAM talent that he’d conducted years earlier.
As our series progressed, we began appearing at events, where we enjoyed warm responses, both to our books and panel appearances. PulpFest appeared to be a natural fit. However, we had long heard rumblings via social media, etc. that die-hard fans of classic pulps actually disliked MAMs, and resented any association. Now our own interests are broad, with room on our plates for all kinds of fiction in all kinds of formats, from just about any era. This narrow view we’d been cautioned about was at odds with our feelings, as well as the attitudes of readers we were meeting. But what did we know about pulp purists? We figured the larger pulp community must be real hardliners and probably not all that interested in what we had to offer, and we more or less left it at that.
Bob: This is why for me, the first answer to the question “Why PulpFest?” that comes to my mind is Mike Chomko. In addition to being the longtime marketing and programming director for PulpFest, Mike is the proprietor of Mike Chomko Books. Back in 2016, when the Men’s Adventure Library was only four books in, Wyatt and I became acquainted with Mike via Facebook groups where people interested in pulps, MAMs, and vintage paperbacks compared collections, shared information, and hang out. Many posts showed those realms share many things in common, including writers, artists, and publishers involved in all three, as well as common story topics, including action, adventure, crime, and war.
Mike liked our books and asked if we’d be open to his selling them at PulpFest 2016. We took him up on his kind offer, and they sold well. He represented us again in 2017. The next year, Mike asked if we’d be interested in making a presentation at PulpFest about MAMs and having a table. We said yes.
In 2018, PulpFest was saluting the centennial of the armistice that ended the First World War. We developed a slide presentation and talk that showed the clear links between the pre-WWII war pulps and the post-WWII MAMs. Our presentation was well attended and well received. (You can read an online version of it on my blog here.)
We also sold some books, bought a bunch, and enjoyed the other presentations at the convention. Perhaps most importantly, we made a lot of new friends. They included other book creators with whom we compared tips on marketing and selling books, amazingly knowledgeable collectors and sellers of vintage magazines, paperbacks, and illustration art, and PulpFest visitors who we enjoyed talking with.
Wyatt: We experienced none of the anti-MAM sentiment we’d been cautioned to expect. The exact opposite, in fact. We met attendees who turned out to be quite versed in MAM titles, writers, and artists, as well as many interested newcomers with interests as broad as ours who were very open to what we had to offer. The PulpFest crowd proved to be knowledgeable, curious, and supportive. We saw it in the questions and comments following our presentation, on the convention floor, and in post-event bull sessions in the hotel lounge that lasted into the night.
And believe it or not, that first PulpFest marked the first occasion Bob and I met in person! Though we already had a hefty shelf of books we’d created together and our friendship had been established, our collaborations had been entirely online and by telephone. To finally share a handshake after years of working together was another memorable PulpFest first for us.
Bob: We did notice that there were many fans of pulp magazines who knew little about MAMs, and were unaware of the links between them and pulps. So we looked for ways to increase awareness of those links.
Wyatt: We’ve presented at every PulpFest since, and each year’s PulpFest experience seems to top the previous one. We look forward to meeting new readers and reconnecting with what’s become the old gang. Now it feels as if like it wouldn’t be summer without chatting with Mike, enjoying Jack Cullers’ bone-dry sense of humor, and savoring Bill Lampkin’s fantastic work on each new issue of The Pulpster. What these guys manage to pull off every year for all of us is just incredible. The kind of support and assistance they’ve provided to us specifically is, in my experience, unique. And very much appreciated.
Bob: That initial visit to PulpFest was the first time I experienced the warm, enjoyable camaraderie that exists among people who attend pulp conventions. Wyatt and I both loved it, and we now look forward to going every year. And, that, of course, is our answer to “Why PulpFest?” We hope you’ll join us at PulpFest 50 to celebrate “A Half-Century of Pulp Cons.”
PulpFest 50 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, try calling 800.222.8733 or 724.776.6900. Perhaps some rooms at the DoubleTree have opened up.
Robert Deis is a leading men’s adventure magazine collector and historian. Wyatt Doyle is a writer and designer, and ringmaster of the New Texture imprint. Together, the duo co-edit the Men’s Adventure Library series of MAM-focused books, designed by Wyatt and published by New Texture. They will be debuting two new titles at PulpFest 50 this year: Samson Pollen’s Pollen in Print and George Gross: Covered. Mort Künstler, a friend and protégé of George Gross, painted the cover for the December 1965 issue of Stag.
Our postcard image has been adapted by PulpFest advertising director William Lampkin from George Gross’s cover for the Fall 1946 issue of Wings. The Fiction House pulp debuted in January 1928 and originally featured general aviation fiction. It became an air-war title during the summer of 1931. Its pilots would fight in both World Wars as well as the Korean War and in a variety of settings during the early days of the Cold War.
Wings would run for 133 issues. Its final number was dated Summer 1953. To learn more about the magazine and Fiction House’s other aviation pulps, read “Happy Memorial Day from PulpFest!”
