PulpFest is not only lauded for its fine programming but also for its very substantial dealers’ room.
Beginning on Thursday, August 3, the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Pittsburgh – Cranberry will be home to thousands of collectible pulp magazines and digests, vintage paperbacks, first-edition hardcovers and series books, original art, genre fiction, B-movies and serials, collectible comic books, and much more.
What dealers are we expecting at PulpFest 2023? For the next three days, we’ll be profiling our dealers, telling you a little bit about each of them so you get to know them.
Hailing from Ohio, Mark Hickman will be offering a variety of science-fiction magazines and hero pulps, as well as comic books and original artwork from the pulps, comics, digests, and paperbacks. Mark will also be selling copies of The Collected Pulp Era, a two-volume set reprinting the complete run of his father Lynn Hickman’s classic pulp fanzine. Both volumes are very highly recommended.
It’s particularly fitting in the year we celebrate the Great Pulp Heroes that we welcome artist Doug Klauba to his first PulpFest. The acclaimed artist has painted The Avenger, Batman, Doc Savage, The Domino Lady, Flash Gordon, The Green Hornet, The Phantom, The Shadow, The Spider, Zorro, and many other heroes. We’ll have Doug’s table right near writer Craig McDonald. Doug has painted the covers for Craig’s The Blood Ogre and The Mothman Menace, the first two books in the series, The Adventures of Zana O’Savin. He has also painted for Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc., Meteor House, and John Bruening’s Midnight Guardian novels for Flinch! Books.
Please welcome Tim Kupin of Koops Comics to his first PulpFest. Tim (aka Koop) was born and raised in Pittsburgh and was the only former employee to have shopped and worked in the original Eide’s Comics location in Etna. He began working at Eide’s in December 1975 and continued to work there until he shipped out with the USAF. Since 1992, he has been setting up at comic cons both large and small all over our great country. Tim is actively attempting to exhibit at a comic con in all fifty states, having exhibited in 34 different states as well as the District of Columbia and Toronto. An Overstreet Price Guide advisor, Tim owns and operates Koops Comics, a brick-and-mortar shop located in Lawton, Oklahoma. Koop will have pulps, science fiction and fantasy books, and comic books, including foreign editions.
Please welcome Franz Kraljic to his first PulpFest as a dealer. He’ll have a mix of pulps, comics, and other showcase material — including premiums — on display. Franz has been an avid and experienced collector and dealer for several decades. You’ll find him to be among the most knowledgeable and congenial specialists on the con floor. You’ll find Franz set up near Jim Steranko’s table.
2018 Munsey Award winner William Lampkin is the advertising director for PulpFest as well as the editor and designer of The Pulpster, the convention’s award-winning program book. He’s also the guy who designs all the great banners you’ll find around the convention. Bill will have a tempting selection of pulp fanzines and other collectibles for sale at his table. He attended his first Pulpcon in 2006 and his first PulpFest in 2014.
Author of the Edgar-nominated “Hector Lassiter” historical crime series, Craig McDonald is an award-winning novelist, journalist, and editor. The “Lassiter” series chronicles the exploits of a fictional Black Mask author and his encounters with such notable figures as Ernest Hemingway, Orson Welles, Ian Fleming, and Lester Dent. McDonald’s internationally acclaimed works have found a global audience and have also been adapted to the graphic novel format. His works have been published by Simon & Schuster and Macmillan Press. Craig — who writes regularly for pulpfest.com — is also the author of The Adventures of Zana O’Savin. He’ll be part of our panel, “Doc Savage and His Offspring,” moderated by Jennifer DiGiacomo. And don’t forget to check out Craig’s great videos on our YouTube Channel.
Please welcome Bob McGeeney back to his second PulpFest as a dealer. Bob formerly served as the Official Editor of the Edgar Rice Burroughs Amateur Press Association (ERBapa). He specializes in ERB, vintage science fiction paperbacks, pulps, and big little books. Introduce yourself to Bob at PulpFest 2023 and pick yourself up a treasure.
John McMahan sells collectibles on ebay as mybckpages. He comes to us from Oklahoma, where he has long been active as a fan and dealer. At PulpFest 2023, John will be selling pulps, books, comics, original art, movie posters, and more. He will also have copies of Hard-Boiled Christmas Stories, the anthology he edited with 2006 Lamont Award winner John Wooley. Check out our profile of the latter by reading “PulpFest Profile: Seven Senses of John Wooley” on our website.
Peter Macuga will be selling at PulpFest for the fifth time. He’ll have many boxes of pulps and books to sell, including early issues of Astounding Stories, up through the late 1940s. Peter will also have collectible hardcovers from Gnome Press and other publishers.
From Buffalo, New York, Bill Mann returns as a dealer to PulpFest. One of the founders and a former editor at Age of Aces Books, Bill will be selling a variety of aviation pulps and books. Welcome back, Bill. So parachute over to his table and see what he’s flying.
Emanuel ‘Manny’ Maris is a lifelong fan and collector of hero, crime, and fantasy pulp fiction, as well as pre-1970 comic books, and other pop culture collectibles. He has been doing mail order and convention tables for over fifty years. He has run film shows and dealers’ rooms and published program books for various conventions. Since retiring, he sells through eBay and elsewhere as Manny’s Vintage Mintage, and occasionally takes tables at various conventions to sell the extras and second copies from his 45,000 book and magazine collection. This will be his first table at PulpFest.
Tom Martin has been a longtime collector of pulps, digests, vintage paperbacks, golden age comics, and many related items. Located in southwestern Ohio, Tom has attended many pulp conventions since the late 1970s, sometimes as a collector and other times as a dealer. He will be offering a diverse selection of items from all areas of our collecting interests, including a few surprises that are rarely offered. Be sure to visit his tables at PulpFest 2023.
Collecting since the early days of pulp fandom, legend has it that Walker Martin has owned practically every pulp at least once! A resident of New Jersey, he’ll be selling a variety of pulp magazines, original artwork, one-of-a-kind canceled checks from the files of Munsey and Popular Publications, and more at PulpFest 2023. Walker contributes a regular column on pulp collecting to Steve Lewis’ Mystery*File blog.
William Patrick Maynard is the author of the first authorized Fu Manchu thrillers in over thirty years. He will be signing and selling copies of his books, including the Flinch! Books anthology, Occupied Pulp. Bill will also have a selection of material from his own collection to sell. He’ll be exhibiting outside our dealers’ room on Saturday only.
A hearty welcome to Stephen & Rosemary Nagy of Mechyu Publications. Stephen and Rosemary are the co-creators of the Poster Smash series, a space opera yarn about a power struggle between two hostile empires attempting to dominate the universe. Hailing from Dunbar, Pennsylvania, this will be Rosemary’s and Stephen’s first PulpFest. They’ll be selling and signing their books at this year’s convention. To learn more about these two creators and their exciting series, click the “About” button on their website.
After attending PulpFest — as well as Windy City and Pulpcon — for many years as a general member, Terry Meister will also be selling at our 2023 convention. He’ll be bringing some pulps, pulp excerpts, and pulp-related hardbacks — including material by Burroughs, Cummings, England, Giesy, Howard, Lovecraft, and Merritt — and perhaps some comics and movie material. Whatever he ends up bringing to Mars, it will be new to PulpFest.
Fantasy and science fiction publisher Meteor House will be returning to PulpFest and FarmerCon. Pick up your copy of the first hardcover publication of Philip José Farmer’s Jesus on Mars or the Deluxe Limited 50th Anniversary Edition of the science fiction Grand Master’s Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life. These new Meteor House editions will debut at this year’s PulpFest/FarmerCon. Michael Croteau, Win Scott Eckert, and Paul Spiteri will also be selling items from their back catalog as well as works created by attendees of FarmerCon. We hope you’ll also join us for our FarmerCon XVIII panel on Friday afternoon, August 4, “Doc Savage — The Man and Myth of Bronze.”
If you would like to register as a dealer at this year’s PulpFest, we’ve run out of tables. Please contact Jack Cullers to be added to our waiting list. You can reach him at jack@pulpfest.com.
To wander through our dealers’ room, click the Registration button at the top of this page to join PulpFest. And don’t forget to book a room at the DoubleTree by Hilton Pittsburgh — Cranberry in Mars, Pennsylvania. And don’t forget to book a room at the DoubleTree by Hilton Pittsburgh — Cranberry in Mars, Pennsylvania. Click our link. You can also reserve a room by calling 800.222.8733 or 724.776.6900. Be sure to mention PulpFest to get the special convention rate. Currently, there are only a few rooms left at the convention rate. Click here for other options.
We’ll be profiling more of our PulpFest 2023 dealers through Friday, July 14. Please visit our site on Thursday for our next segment.
Our featured image is excerpted from Wayne Francis Woodard’s cover art for the March 1942 issue of Weird Tales. Far better known by his pseudonym, Hannes Bok, Woodard was both a leading cover artist and interior artist for “The Unique Magazine.” He’ll be one of the artists that Sara Light-Waller would have profiled during her presentation, “Inside Weird Tales.” It was planned as part of our salute to the magazine during its centennial year.
Our lead image was adapted by PulpFest advertising director William Lampkin from Lee Brown Coye’s “Weirdisms“ for March 1949, an illustrated article about wizards that appeared in that issue of Weird Tales.
With cover art by Douglas C. Klauba, The Blood Ogre was the first of Craig McDonald’s The Adventures of Zana O’Savin, a pastiche of Pat Savage and the other great pulp heroes of 1933. Pat debuted in the story, “Brand of the Werewolf,” the lead novel in the January 1934 issue of Street & Smith’s Doc Savage Magazine. The pulp would have appeared on newsstands in the last month of December 1933.
We’ll be celebrating the 90th anniversary of Pat and other great pulp heroes at PulpFest 2023. We hope you’ll join us for “Chilling Sports and Pulp Heroes” at this summer’s convention.
Closing out our post is a Virgil Finlay interior illustration for “Hellsgarde,” a Jirel of Joiry story written by C. L. Moore that appeared in the April 1939 issue of Weird Tales. Join PulpFest on Thursday evening, August 3, for “Sword and Sorcery in “The Unique Magazine,” part of our celebrations of both Weird Tales and Robert E. Howard’s Conan.
