Although acclaimed artist Steranko has been attending PulpFest and other pulp conventions for many years, this will be his first PulpFest as a dealer. Best known in pulp circles for the great paperback covers that he painted for The Shadow series — published by Pyramid and Jove — Steranko will be offering a variety of pulp magazines at his table, garnered from his own pulp collection. There will also be a selection of Steranko collectibles at his booth, and he will be autographing throughout the event.
Steranko is one of the most controversial figures in contemporary culture, with careers as a musician, author, carnival fire-eater, publisher, male model, historian, magician, and designer. As an escape artist, his death-defying performances inspired the character Mister Miracle. Stan Lee hailed him as one of the prime Architects of the Marvel Age. As writer-illustrator of X-Men, Captain America, and the co-creator of Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., he rocked the comic world with 150 original storytelling devices and techniques that changed the direction of the narrative medium. In 1975, he created Red Tide, the first modern graphic novel. His work has been celebrated at more than 400 international events, including the Smithsonian in Washington, DC, and the Louvre in Paris; and his two volumes of The History of Comics have sold more than 100,000 copies each. As a filmmaker, he collaborated with Steven Spielberg, George Lucas— for whom he created the look of Indiana Jones — and Francis Ford Coppola on some of their most popular films. His recent covers for Action 1000 and Detective 1000 set sales records. Recent polls cite Steranko as the 5th most influential comics artist in the history of the form. In 2022, the Butler Institute of American Art exhibited 65 of his paintings — “Steranko and the American Hero” — for three months, the first national, major one-man show of its kind honoring a contemporary commercial artist in a fine-art museum. And he’s still deeply devoted to the myth and mystery of the Pulp Universe. Accordingly, Steranko was honored with the Lamont Award at Pulpcon 32 in Dayton, Ohio for his many contributions to the pulp community.
We’re very happy to have Steranko as one of our PulpFest 2023 dealers. If you’d like to meet him in our dealers’ room, click the Registration button at the top of this page to join PulpFest. But hurry! Our advance registrations end on Sunday, July 30, at 10 pm eastern time.
Our featured image is excerpted from Steranko’s cover art for the November 1990 issue of Richard Kyle’s Argosy, illustrating the Philip Wylie story, “The Savage Gentleman.”
In 1990, Steranko had this to say about his Argosy painting:
“Philip Wylie’s hero was the literary model for the pulp era’s two-fisted Man of Bronze. Using the reference as a starting point, I painted the new edition’s cover to reflect that heritage. . . . dressing him in a tuxedo. And instead of painting him in the wilds of Sarajevo, Antarctica, or Timbuktu, I surrounded him with an exotic, sophisticated, ’30s deco Manhattan — and made the cityscape bronze. The gold Inca/Aztec grasped by Stone/Savage fits equally well in either adventurer’s legend. Who is the figure on the cover? ‘You decide!'”
We’ll be celebrating the 90th anniversary of Doc Savage and more at PulpFest 2023. We hope you’ll join us at the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Pittsburgh – Cranberry in Mars, Pennsylvania from August 3 – 6.
Our other images include Steranko’s cover painting for the paperback reprint of Walter B. Gibson’s The Living Shadow, published by Pyramid Books in 1974 as the first entry in their Shadow paperback series. The remaining image is Steranko’s iconic cover art for Strange Tales #167, dated April 1968. Published by Marvel Comics, Steranko’s Strange Tales cover is included on many “top-ten” lists.
Kenneth Grant is a writer and popular culture enthusiast who began writing for our website in 2022. He particularly enjoys the hero pulps and the artwork of Steranko.
