Pulp magazines had a profound effect on popular culture across the globe. Their stories and art have reverberated through a wide variety of media — comic books, movies, paperbacks, genre fiction, television, men’s adventure magazines, radio drama, video, anime, manga, and role-playing games. And their influence continues today.
We hope you’ll join PulpFest 2024 from August 1 through August 4 at the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Pittsburgh – Cranberry in Mars, Pennsylvania. We’ll be celebrating “Spice, Spies, Shaw, and More” as well as the writers, artists, and publishers of contemporary genre fiction at this year’s convention.
One of the leading publishers of today’s pulp-inspired fiction — Flinch! Books — will be front and center on the PulpFest stage on Friday, August 2, at 1:30 pm. Plan to be there for our 2024 Flinch! Fest.
Flinch! Books was founded in 2015 by two Ohio-based writers living on the shores of Lake Erie. Since their initial foray into the world of independent publishing — Something Strange is Going On!: New Tales From the Fletcher Hanks Universe — co-publishers Jim Beard and John C. Bruening have followed with six other wide-ranging anthologies, as well as editions of their own work. Leading western writer, James Reasoner called one of their recent books, Six-Gun Legends, “. . . a really strong anthology with an intriguing concept and a good bunch of authors and stories.”
But what about the founders of Flinch! Books that we mentioned above?
Jim Beard became a published author when he sold a story to DC Comics in 2002. Since then, he’s written official Star Wars and Ghostbusters comic book stories and contributed articles and essays to several volumes of comic book history. His prose work includes the novellas Green Hornet: How Sweet the Sting and Kolchak: The Last Temptation; co-editing and contributing to Planet of the Apes: Tales from the Forbidden Zone; a story for X-Files: Secret Agendas; three books of essays on the 1966 Batman TV series and the recent Breaking Bold and Brave: A Fan’s Journey Through One of Comics’ Greatest Titles; the Sgt. Janus occult detective series of novels; Monster Earth, a shared-world giant monster anthology series; and Captain Action: Riddle of the Glowing Men, the first pulp prose novel based on the classic 1960s action figure. Jim also provided regular content for Marvel.com, the official Marvel Comics website, for over seventeen years. In addition to co-publishing Flinch! Books, Jim is the publisher at Becky Books, named after his late wife.
John Bruening drew his literary inspiration from the stories of his father’s generation, defined by the Great Depression and World War II. “I was enamored with the adventure stories and pulps of my dad’s era. We were at rock bottom in the 1930s and facing a global threat in the 1940s. That landscape of adversity was the place where great heroes emerged.”
John has been writing professionally for nearly 40 years, first as a newspaper reporter and magazine editor and later as an advertising copywriter and marketing specialist. As far back as he can remember, he’s been a fan of comics, pulps, adventure fiction, classic movies and serials, old-time radio, and any other form of heroic storytelling. His debut novel, The Midnight Guardian: Hour of Darkness, was called “the creative construct of a first-rate storyteller” (William Patrick Maynard, writing for blackgate.com). John followed with the 2019 sequel, The Midnight Guardian: Annihilation Machine. The third volume in the series — The Midnight Guardian: God and Sinners — appeared in late 2022. Since then, John’s fiction and essays have also appeared in books by numerous other small press publishers, including Moonstone Books, Blue Planet Press, Becky Books, Stormgate Press, and others.
Please join PulpFest 2024 as we welcome Jim and John for “In-Your-Face Pulp-Style Adventure Fiction!” from Flinch! Books. Their Flinch! Fest is part of our fine line-up of programming at this year’s PulpFest.
The general public is welcome to attend our 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!
The pulps gave us Buck Rogers, Conan the Barbarian, Cthulhu, Doc Savage, Hopalong Cassidy, John Carter of Mars, Sam Spade, The Shadow, Solomon Kane, Tarzan, Zorro, and many other pop culture icons. These characters and their stories continue to inspire writers, artists, and publishers even today.
Our featured image was excerpted from Ted Hammond’s cover art for Six-Gun Legends, an anthology of ten western tales published in 2023 by Flinch! Books.
Our lead image was adapted by PulpFest advertising director William Lampkin from Adam Benet Shaw’s cover for Occupied Pulp, published in 2021 by Flinch! Books.
Derek Starr is a writer and popular culture enthusiast who began contributing to our website in 2022. He particularly enjoys the Fiction House pulps. One of his favorites is Planet Stories, the publisher’s legendary science fiction pulp. His most recent contribution to our website discussed Edgar Rice Burroughs classic trilogy, The Land That Time Forgot.
