Although the earliest pulps were general fiction magazines, the rough-paper rags eventually began to specialize. Pulps featuring aviation and war stories, fantasy and the supernatural, love and romance, the railroad, science fiction, sports, and other genres emerged. There were also titles devoted to prison yarns, firefighters, and even engineering stories. However, one of the longest-lasting and most popular categories was the detective field. In fact, the first pulp magazine successfully dedicated to a single fiction genre was Street & Smith’s Detective Story Magazine.
Although a trailblazer as a specialty magazine, Detective Story did little to further the development of the detective or crime story. That task would be left to its highly prized successors: Black Mask — the pulp where the hardboiled detective story began to take shape — and Dime Detective Magazine — where the tough guy detective became extremely popular. Call them what you will — flatfoots, gumshoes, dime detectives, or private eyes — it was these hardboiled dicks that transformed the traditional mystery story into the style of crime fiction that remains popular to this very day.
We hope you’ll join PulpFest 2024 on Thursday, August 1, at 6:55 pm for “Black Mask: The Early Years.” From its populist beginnings helping publishers H. L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan fund The Smart Set to its glory days under editor Joseph “Cap” Shaw, Black Mask published some of the finest hardboiled fiction from Carroll John Daly and Dashiell Hammett to Paul Cain and Raymond Chandler. Those were just for starters as the title also featured notable fiction from Dwight Babcock, W. T. Ballard, George Harmon Coxe, Tom Curry, Norbert Davis, Steve Fisher, Erle Stanley Gardner, Horace McCoy, Frederick Nebel, Vincent Starrett, Stewart Sterling, Theodore Tinsley, Roger Torrey, Raoul Whitfield, Cornell Woolrich, and others.
Longtime Black Mask collector and enthusiast, Walker Martin, and editor, publisher, and writer Ed Hulse will team up to look at the magazine where the hardboiled detective genre took root and flourished — Black Mask.
A reader and collector for over seventy years, Walker Martin has written extensively about pulps and collecting for Steve Lewis’ Mystery*File blog. In 1997, he received the Lamont Award at Pulpcon 26 in Bowling Green, Ohio. For PulpFest, he has participated in numerous panels and presentations and contributed “Why PulpFest?” to our website.
A journalist and pop culture historian, Ed Hulse covered the home video and motion picture industries for over 30 years. Since 2002, he has edited and published the award-winning, pop culture journal Blood ‘n’ Thunder. The winner of the Lamont Award in 2007, Ed is a prolific public speaker who has lectured on various aspects of vintage American popular culture for museums, libraries, and universities. His books include The Art of Pulp Fiction, The Art of the Classic Western Movie Poster, Distressed Damsels and Masked Marauders, and many other titles. In 2017, he co-edited The Art of the Pulps, with Doug Ellis and the late Robert Weinberg. His most recent books are the Blood ‘n’ Thunder 2024 Special Edition, the horror-pulp anthology Mistress of Death and Desire, and the revised and expanded edition of The Blood ‘n’ Thunder Guide to Pulp Fiction. To learn more about Ed and his work, please visit his website at muraniapress.com.
PulpFest 2024 begins on August 1 and runs through August 4 at the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Pittsburgh – Cranberry in Mars, Pennsylvania. We’ll be celebrating “Spice, Spies, Shaw, and More” at this year’s convention.
The general public is welcome to attend our evening programming events free of charge. To learn more about our programming, please click the Schedule button at the top of this page.
For those who also want to enjoy our dealers’ room, you can join PulpFest by clicking the registration button at the top of this page. And don’t forget to book a room at the DoubleTree. They’re going fast!
If you want to sell at this year’s PulpFest, our wall tables are sold out. Island tables are still available, but they won’t last long. Register soon!
Our featured image was excerpted from J. W. Schlaikjer’s cover art for the April 1932 number of Black Mask. Beginning with the October 1929 issue, Schlaikjer became the regular cover artist for Black Mask through the July 1934 number. He also contributed cover art to Adventure, Everybody’s, Frontier Stories, and West as well as working for the better-paying slick magazines.
Our lead image was adapted by PulpFest advertising director William Lampkin from Fred Craft’s cover for the December 1927 issue of Black Mask.
The first issue of The Black Mask — dated April 1920 — featured front cover art by William Grotz. A commercial artist who was active during the early twentieth century, Grotz contributed cover art to a variety of magazines including Action Stories, the black mask, Film Fun, Judge, Liberty, Needlecraft Magazine, and Western Story Magazine.
The April 1940 issue of Black Mask was the final issue of the magazine to be published by Pro-Distributors Publishing. It featured cover art by J. George Janes, the artist who painted many of the covers for the early issues of A. A. Wyn’s Secret Agent X. In later years, Janes was known as a top illustrator for Auto Age and other technical magazines.
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