Below is a play-by-play of PulpFest 2013’s creation, told through many of the posts that originally appeared on the convention’s home page during 2012 and 2013. We’ve left out posts that pertain to “housekeeping chores,” such as registration, Munsey Award nominations, and so on.
The posts begin in September 2012, soon after the organizing committee started planning, arranging, and promoting the 2013 convention — which fans later called the “best pulp con of them all!”
Chris Kalb adapted our lead image from Walter Baumhofer’s cover art for the March 1933 issue of Doc Savage Magazine.
PulpFest 2013 Plans Are Underway
Sept. 27, 2012 – The PulpFest committee is delighted to announce that our 2013 convention will once again be held at the Hyatt Regency hotel in downtown Columbus, Ohio. Our 2013 confab will take place from Thursday, July 25 through Sunday, July 28. It will boast the same combination of product and programming that has made PulpFest the must-attend annual event for fans, scholars, and collectors of pulp fiction.
Two very important anniversaries will figure prominently in PulpFest’s 2013 programming. First and foremost, we are celebrating the hero pulp revolution that began 80 years ago in 1933, with the debuts of such popular figures as Doc Savage, The Spider, Nick Carter, Pete Rice, The Lone Eagle, The Phantom Detective, and G-8 and His Battle Aces. The success of Street & Smith’s Shadow pulp, launched two years earlier, spurred this revival of single-character magazines, a dime-novel-era phenomenon. The hero pulps revitalized an industry laid low by the Great Depression, and they dominated the rough-paper field for the rest of the decade. They remain the most avidly collected and frequently reprinted periodicals in the hobby.
We’ll also acknowledge the centennial of Sax Rohmer’s Dr. Fu Manchu, who made his American bow in a February 1913 issue of Collier’s Magazine. In 1933, the initial cycle of short stories was published in hardcover as The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu. Rohmer’s “Devil Doctor,” the first and greatest “Yellow Peril” villain, was widely imitated in American pop culture; rough-paper knockoffs included The Mysterious Wu Fang and Dr. Yen Sin, two short-lived pulps from Popular Publications.
With so many possibilities for panels and presentations, the PulpFest committee once again plans to offer a full night of programming on Thursday, before the convention’s “official” opening on Friday, so attendees are urged to make early arrival a part of their PulpFest travel plans.
Although the 2013 convention is still ten months away, you can rest assured that the committee is already hard at work on planning and promotion. Ideas for panels and presentations have already been proposed and, as always, we remain open to programming suggestions and volunteer presenters. Most importantly, though, we wanted to let you know that our venue is confirmed. So start saving for the next PulpFest right away and check back periodically for updates.
Happy Holidays from PulpFest
Dec. 22, 2012 – Here’s wishing everyone the happiest of holiday seasons. As we near 2013 and the eightieth anniversary of the “hero pulp explosion,” when characters such as Doc Savage, G-8, The Spider, and The Phantom Detective were introduced to the reading public, let’s hope there’s a copy of your favorite pulp magazine tucked into Santa’s sack to help tide you over until April 12th, when the Windy City Pulp and Paper Convention will begin in the Chicago area.
After you’ve finished celebrating the winter holidays, please stop back at the PulpFest website as we gear up for next “Summer’s Great Pulp Con.” Better still, sign up for our email updates by filling in the little gray box titled “E-Mail List” right here on our home page. And while you’re at it, why not “like” our Facebook page as more than 500 others have done. You can also follow PulpFest on Twitter.
Celebrating the Pulp Heroes of 1933
Jan. 23, 2013 – Eighty years ago, following the great success of The Shadow, the pulp industry exploded with eight new single-character magazines. The Phantom Detective, Doc Savage, Nick Carter, The Lone Eagle, G-8 and His Battle Aces, The Spider, and Pete Rice all debuted in their own magazines in the glorious year of 1933. Join PulpFest on Thursday, July 25, for our celebration of “The Pulp Heroes of 1933.”
Enter the Phantom
Jan. 29, 2013 – In 1933, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was inaugurated as the 32nd president of the United States of America, proclaiming that “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” Adolph Hitler was named the Chancellor of Germany, amid promises of a parliamentary democracy. San Francisco broke ground on the Golden Gate Bridge. King Kong premiered in New York City, and the hero pulp revolution began.
The tremendous success of Street & Smith’s The Shadow Magazine prompted the return of the single-character periodical. The first of these hero pulps was The Phantom Detective. Launched by Ned Pines’ Thrilling Group, the Phantom was the alter ego of man-about-town Richard Curtis Van Loan. A veteran of the First World War, this moneyed playboy had grown bored with life. A family friend recommended he “try his hand at solving a mysterious crime which had stumped the police.” His initial success led Van Loan to dedicate his life and fortune to combat crime, making the Phantom “a name known and admired by the police of every nation.”
The first issue of The Phantom Detective was dated February 1933. The Summer 1953 issue would be its final number. The Phantom Detective was the longest-lived hero pulp, lasting just over twenty years.
Bertram Glover contributed the cover art for the February 1933 issue of The Phantom Detective, the first of several hero pulps Standard Magazines/Better Publications published.
Kenneth Robeson Coming to PulpFest
Feb. 2, 2013 – Following the astounding success of their first single-character pulp, The Shadow Magazine, Street & Smith set out to duplicate its good fortune in the adventure magazine market. Working with the company’s business manager, Henry W. Ralston, editor John Nanovic spent a year developing a scientist-adventurer who would travel the globe, right wrongs, and punish evildoers. In late 1932, Lester Dent, a former telegraph operator turned pulp writer, joined them. Soon thereafter, Doc Savage, the world’s first superhero, was born.
Doc Savage Magazine premiered early the next year with its first issue dated March 1933. The lead novel, “The Man of Bronze,” introduced Clark Savage, Jr. to a disheartened country thirsting for heroes. Amidst the dark days of the Great Depression, the magazine was an immediate success.
Although the first tale of Doc Savage and his five trouble-busting assistants was credited to Kenneth Roberts, a name belonging to a former journalist and author of historical novels, later novels in the series were proclaimed the work of Kenneth Robeson, a house name that hid the identity of Dent as well as Laurence Donovan, Ryerson Johnson, William Bogart, and other writers.
PulpFest is pleased to announce that Will Murray, the current “Kenneth Robeson,” will present at the 2013 convention for fans of pulp magazines and pulp fiction. The author of a dozen Doc Savage novels for Bantam Books and Altus Press, Will hopes to be Kenneth Robeson for a long time to come.
Murray discovered Doc Savage in 1969, when he bought a copy of Bantam Books’ Dust of Death. Before long, he began collecting the original pulp magazine and writing articles about the Man of Bronze for fanzines. This modest beginning led to Murray becoming one of the leading experts on Doc Savage and the pulps, the literary agent for the estate of Doc co-creator Lester Dent, a scriptwriter for The Adventures of Doc Savage program for National Public Radio, and the latest “Kenneth Robeson.”
Murray penned seven Doc novels for Bantam Books back in 1991-93. Twenty years later, he’s doing it again for Altus Press with the Wild Adventures of Doc Savage series. For the eightieth anniversary of “The Man of Bronze,” Will teamed Doc with another legend who first appeared in 1933 — King Kong — in the novel Skull Island.
Walter M. Baumhofer painted the front cover art for the March 1933 issue of Doc Savage Magazine, published by Street & Smith.
The World’s Greatest Detective
Feb. 18, 2013 – Nick Carter, created by John Russell Coryell, debuted in 1886 in Street & Smith’s New York Weekly. Five years later, Frederic Dey and other writers took over, penning over a thousand stories featuring the “Little Giant.” The character was so popular that when Detective Story Magazine began in 1915, Street & Smith claimed “Nicholas Carter” was its editor.
By 1933, interest in the old Nick Carter stories was beginning to wane. It was the era of the hardboiled detective, with characters such as Dashiell Hammett’s Continental Op and Sam Spade, Carroll John Daly’s Race Williams and Vee Brown, and Frederick Nebel’s “Tough Dick” Donahue and Jack Cardigan tearing up the pages of rough-paper magazines like Black Mask and Dime Detective.
It was also the time of the pulp hero. With The Shadow Magazine flying off America’s newsstands, Street & Smith decided to expand the single character field with magazines featuring adventure and detective heroes. For the latter, it was decided to create a hardboiled version of the “Little Giant” of the dime novels, and Nick Carter Magazine was born. Dated March 1933, the new pulp would sport a cover by Jerome Rozen and lead with the novel “Marked for Death,” by author Richard Wormser (writing as “Nick Carter”). Nick Carter Magazine would run through June 1936.
Jerome Rozen contributed the cover art for the first issue of Nick Carter Magazine, dated March 1933. Thanks to Sanctum Books for the great cover scan.
The World’s First Superhero
There was death afoot in the darkness. It crept furtively along a steel girder. Hundreds of feet below yawned glass-and-brick-walled cracks – New York streets. Down there, late workers scurried homeward. Most of them carried umbrellas and did not glance upward.
Feb. 19, 2013 – Eighty years ago, the words above helped convince readers to buy Doc Savage Magazine when it appeared on newsstands in mid-February 1933. Sporting a front cover painted by the “King of the Pulps,” Walter M. Baumhofer, and published by Street & Smith, the new rough paper magazine promised “a thrilling saga of a scrappy outfit hunting a treasure and being hunted in turn.”
“The Man of Bronze,” credited to Kenneth Roberts, was by Lester Dent, a writer who broke into the pulp market in 1929 with an aviation yarn published by Top-Notch Magazine. In the ensuing years, he had sold about three dozen stories to a variety of magazines including Air Stories, Detective-Dragnet Magazine, Scotland Yard, Sky Riders, War Birds, and Western Trails.
Impressed by Dent’s ability to combine an “extravagant plot, scenes and action with comparatively high credibility and reasonableness of motivation,” the author was invited to the offices of Street & Smith to join business manager Henry W. Ralston and The Shadow Magazine editor John L. Nanovic in a brainstorming session to flesh out a new adventure series they were planning.
Although Doc Savage Magazine wasn’t the first hero pulp to debut in 1933, it would become the most popular single-character magazine launched that year, trailing only The Shadow in total issues published. The character would go on to inspire not only original pulp readers, but also fans of the Bantam paperback reprints that appeared from 1964 through 1990. Likewise, today’s readers, who enjoy the original pulp tales collected by Sanctum Books, and Will Murray’s new adventures of the Man of Bronze, published by Altus Press.
Join PulpFest 2013 over the last weekend of July to celebrate eighty years of Doc Savage and the pulp heroes of 1933.
Spring Training for PulpFest
Feb. 23, 2013 – With spring comes baseball, pulp cons, and paperback shows.
Leading off is the 34th annual Los Angeles Vintage Paperback Show. This one-day show will feature appearances by over forty writers, including James Blaylock, Dennis Etchison, William F. Nolan, and Harry Turtledove, all happy to sign your books. It will take place on Sunday, April 7th, at the Valley Inn and Conference Center in Mission Hills, California.
The Windy City Pulp and Paper Convention is on deck. Now in its 13th year, this Chicago-area event will celebrate ninety years of science-fiction and fantasy magazines with salutes to Weird Tales and the “Scientific Fiction Number” of Hugo Gernsback’s Science and Invention. The convention will be held at the Westin Lombard Yorktown Center from April 12 – 14.
The three-spot features the South’s leading “pulp culture” convention, PulpArk. A writers’ conference and pulp convention, it focuses on the methodology of pulp fiction, storytelling involving “action, adventure, larger-than-life heroes and villains, and a strong focus on both plot and characterization.” Featuring guest appearances by Joe Devito, Martin Powell, and Paul Bishop, PulpArk will take place April 26 – 28 at the Holiday Inn Springdale Hotel and Convention Center in Springdale, Arkansas.
Batting clean-up on May 11 is Canada’s premier pulp event, the 17th annual Fantastic Pulps Show & Sale at the Lillian H. Smith branch of the Toronto Public Library in Toronto, Ontario.
Penciled in to follow on May 17 – 19 is the 2013 Edgar Rice Burroughs Chain of Friendship (ECOF) Gathering, hosted by the Chicago Muckers, the regional chapter of the Burroughs Bibliophiles. It will be held at the Quality Inn in Morris, Illinois, and feature artist Mike Hoffman as its guest of honor.
Cinevent 45 is slotted in at number six and will take place over Memorial Day weekend, May 24 – 27. In addition to 170 tables of movie-related collectibles such as posters, lobby cards, press kits, DVDs, and 16 mm films, Cinevent features an extensive schedule of classic sound and silent films and one of the country’s largest live auctions of vintage posters. It will be held at the Ramada Plaza Hotel and Conference Center in Columbus, Ohio.
Robert E. Howard Days is installed as the number seven hitter on June 7 – 8 at the Robert E. Howard House & Museum in Cross Plains, Texas. This annual gathering of fans of Two-Gun Bob is presented by Project Pride of Cross Plains and sponsored by the Robert E. Howard Foundation, with help from the members of the Robert E. Howard United Press Association. Tim Truman, artist and writer for Dark Horse Comics, will be guest of honor.
In the 8-hole later this spring is Classicon 43, one of the first pulp and paperback shows ever established. Featuring 35 tables and thousands of collectible pulp magazines, paperbacks, vintage comic books, original artwork, and more, it is held twice a year in Lansing, Michigan. For further information, write to the Curious Book Shop at 304 East Grand River Avenue, East Lansing, Michigan 48823, or by email at cbsmail@curiousbooks.com.
At the bottom of the line-up is the best pulp event of all, the summertime destination for fans and collectors of vintage popular fiction and related materials, PulpFest 2013. Join us from July 25 – 28 at the Hyatt Regency Columbus for summer’s great pulp con. This year, we’ll celebrate Doc Savage and the pulp heroes of 1933, and the centennial of the villainous Dr. Fu Manchu.
This year’s Windy City Pulp and Paper Convention will salute ninety years of science fiction and fantasy magazines, including the August 1923 issue of Hugo Gernsback’s Science and Invention magazine, its “Scientific Fiction Number,” which featured front cover art by Howard V. Brown.
The Birth of Dr. Fu-Manchu
Imagine a person, tall, lean, and feline, high-shouldered, with a brow like Shakespeare and a face like Satan, a close-shaven skull, and long, magnetic eyes of the true cat-green. Invest him with all the cruel cunning of an entire Eastern race, accumulated in one giant intellect, with all the resources of science past and present. Imagine that awful being, and you have a mental picture of Dr. Fu-Manchu, the yellow peril incarnate in one man.
March 2, 2013 – One hundred years ago, the words above were published in the February 15, 1913 issue of Collier’s. “The Zayat Kiss” was by Arthur Henry Sarsfield Ward, better known as Sax Rohmer, and introduced American readers to Dr. Fu-Manchu. Although Rohmer did not create the “yellow peril” story, his tales of “the devil doctor” were certainly the most influential in that genre.
During his life, Sax Rohmer penned four accounts concerning his creation of Dr. Fu-Manchu. Supposedly inspired by a “Mr. King,” a wealthy man of mystery said to control all the Chinese gambling, drug traffic, and Tongs of London, Rohmer claimed that Fu-Manchu arose from a chance encounter that he had one night in the Limehouse district of the city. In “How Fu Manchu Was Born,” published in the September 29, 1957 issue of This Week, he wrote:
I saw a tall and very dignified man alight, Chinese, but different from any Chinese I had ever met. He wore a long, black topcoat and a queer astrakhan cap. He strode into the house. He was followed by an Arab girl, or she may have been an Egyptian.
The chauffeur closed the car door, jumped to his seat, and backed out the way he had come in. The headlights faded in the mist … and Dr. Fu Manchu was born!
Join PulpFest in July as we celebrate the centennial of Sax Rohmer’s enduring literary icon, Dr. Fu Manchu, and the 130th anniversary of Rohmer’s birth on
W. T. Benda’s masterful cover for the May 7, 1932 issue of Collier’s appears above, courtesy of The Page of Fu Manchu. It illustrates the author’s novel, “The Mask of Fun Manchu.”
The Pulp Heroes Take to the Air
May 27, 2013 – Americans in 1933 had “nothing to fear but fear itself,” and the pulp heroes introduced that year were proving the country’s new president absolutely correct. During that harrowing year, The Phantom Detective, Nick Carter, and Doc Savage had met and defeated “The Emperor of Death,” “Maniacs of Science,” “The Red Skull,” and other adversaries. As the year wore on and the Great Depression savaged other genres, the new hero pulps surged ahead, their magazines disappearing from America’s newsstands. The publishers noticed.
After Fiction House introduced Air Stories in the summer of 1927, aviation fiction became a standard part of the industry. With the launch of War Birds in early 1928, Dell Publishing added war to the mix. Riding the tide of “air-mindedness” inspired by Charles Lindbergh’s heroic flight, both magazines proved instant hits. Similar titles were rushed to the stands.
Following the stock market crash of 1929, “the vision that aviation would lead mankind to a higher level of civilization … came plummeting down to earth,” taking much of the air pulp market with it. However, the genre was far from dead.
In 1932, a trio of air-war magazines was born – Popular Publications’ Dare-Devil Aces and Battle Birds, and the Standard’s Sky Fighters. Their pages filled with the exploits of flying aces of the First World War, these pulps were “especially sought after by boys raised on the courageous exploits of fathers and uncles who had served in the Great War, boys who kept themselves busy building model planes constructed of balsa wood.” Little wonder that the next pulp heroes to be introduced in 1933 would take to the air.
Borrowing one of the nicknames given to Lindbergh following his nonstop flight from New York to Paris, Standard Magazines was first to the stands with The Lone Eagle. Relating the heroic adventures of Air Intelligence Agent John Masters, “the world’s greatest Sky Fighter,” as proclaimed on the magazine’s cover, the pulp debuted in the late summer of 1933.
“Masters showed a natural affinity for a stuttering machine-gun and as his natural proficiency increased, he built up a dark and terrible reputation about his name. He became the “Lone Eagle” of the skies … He showed an indomitable courage and a dynamic driving power, in pushing to a successful conclusion his secret missions. Many men feared him, many hated him–an occasional one loved him.”
Those words, written by F. E. Rechnitzer, appeared in “No Man’s Air,” the lead novel for the first issue of the new hero pulp. A former World War I Allied pilot and prisoner-of-war, Rechnitzer is believed to have written many of The Lone Eagle’s adventures under the “Lt. Scott Morgan” house name. Robert Sidney Bowen probably contributed most of the later novels. In all, 75 tales of “the world’s greatest Sky Fighter” appeared through the spring of 1943 when the magazine would fly off into the sunset as The American Eagle.
One month after the debut of Standard’s air hero, Popular Publications premiered G-8 and His Battle Aces, featuring Robert J. Hogan at the controls. An air cadet at the end of the First World War, Hogan turned to writing after losing employment as an airplane salesman. Although he also wrote sports and western fiction, Hogan was a regular for the air pulps, scoring big with his Smoke Wade and Red Falcon stories.
In the summer of 1933, Henry Steeger, co-founder of Popular Publications, asked Hogan to create a book-length air character patterned after The Shadow and Doc Savage, pitting “a super protagonist and his loyal side men against heinous forces of power and evil.”
“We have decided to make you a special agent of the spy system of America. A special independent system…. No one will take command over you. You may choose any assistants you wish. You may take matters entirely in your own hands. You will answer to no one but us, and that will be at your discretion. Your first job will be to stop this deadly plan of the fiend, Krueger…”
Determined “to avoid similarity and dullness with a healthy injection of fantasy,” Hogan created diabolical masterminds to match wits with his flying spy:
Herr Doktor Kreuger, a fiendish, thick-lensed gnome whose outsized brain conceived surgically altered man-beasts and mammoth bird monsters, deadly rays and flying swords … Chu Lung, an oriental mercenary scientist with a retinue of padding hatchet men, and the huge Herr Stahlmaske, crazed and scarred in a fiery crash, who wore a bullet-shaped steel mask and commanded an underworld corps of disfigured brutes equipped with razored gloves. There were others with secret formulas from the ancient tombs of Egypt, voodoo priests and flying zombies from Haiti, cobra charmers and poison-dart mystics from India and Africa, and even a tribe of defrosted Vikings from northern glaciers (Sidney H. Bragg, “G-8, Flying Spy of the Pulps.” Xenophile #11).
Debuting in “The Bat Staffel,” in the October 1933 number of G-8 and His Battle Aces, Hogan’s hero would appear in 110 adventures, battling “The Skeleton Patrol,” “Staffel of the Floating Heads,” “The Black Aces of Doom,” “Squadron of the Flying Dead,” “Skeletons of the Black Cross,” “Hordes of the Wingless Death,” and other hideous horrors of the hated Hun. The final issue of the Popular Publication was dated June 1944.
To learn more about these and the other great pulp heroes of 1933, register now for PulpFest 2013, running from Thursday, July 25th through Sunday, July 28th.
Illustrating this section are Eugene Franzden’s cover for The Lone Eagle, dated September 1933, and Frederick Blakeslee’s cover for the October 1933 issue of G-8 and His Battle Aces.
Bill Maynard Presents Fu Manchu
May 30, 2013 – They were called scribes, word slingers, hacks, and penny-a-worders. But perhaps the most favored term, especially among the men and women who labored for the bloody pulps, was fictioneer or, more specifically, a fiction writer, particularly a prolific creator of commercial or pulp fiction. Join PulpFest as we celebrate today’s fictioneers — the authors writing the new pulp fiction— the New Fictioneers!
Our special guest, William Patrick Maynard, will get things rolling at 1 p.m. on Friday, July 26, in the Fairfield Room located on the second floor of the Hyatt Regency Columbus. Authorized by the estate of Sax Rohmer to continue the Fu Manchu series, Maynard’s debut novel, The Terror of Fu Manchu, was published in 2009 by Black Coat Press. A sequel, The Destiny of Fu Manchu, followed in 2012. Bill is currently working on The Triumph of Fu Manchu, his third novel concerning Rohmer’s fabulous devil doctor. Bill hopes to “continue to tell new stories of these classic characters for many years to come and, hopefully, somewhere in the Great Beyond, Sax Rohmer is happy to see his characters alive and well after a century.”
As a child growing up in Cleveland, Ohio, Bill Maynard discovered Fu Manchu through Marvel Comics’ Master of Kung Fu. Later, he learned of the Pyramid paperback reprints of Sax Rohmer’s fiction classic and developed a passion for the series and the character.
A past nominee of a Pulp Factory Award for Best Pulp Novel and a Rondo Award for Best Genre Article in a Periodical, Bill has published articles in Blood ‘n’ Thunder, The Cimmerian, The Pulpster, and Windy City Pulp Stories, among others. He also pens a weekly pulp fiction column for The Black Gate. His short fiction has appeared in The Ruby Files (Airship 27), Gaslight Grotesque (EDGE Publishing), and Tales of the Shadowmen: Grand Guignol (Black Coat Press). He has also contributed essays to Serial Squadron’s remastered Drums of Fu Manchu DVD and to the Sax Rohmer collection, The Voice of Kali, published by Black Dog Books. His forthcoming works include The Occult Case Book of Shankar Hardwicke and a hardboiled detective novel.
Wold Newton Fictioneers
June 3, 2013 – Longtime Farmerphile Win Scott Eckert is a familiar face at summer’s great pulp con. Since FarmerCon joined with PulpFest in 2011, Win has appeared on several panels, signed books, and regaled audiences as part of the convention’s popular New Fictioneers presentations. For his reading this year, Win has decided to share center stage with his good friend and fellow Philip José Farmer devotee, John Allen Small.
John grew up wanting to be a writer, and so he did. A journalist and columnist who has earned nearly 200 awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, the National Newspaper Association, and other professional organizations, John hails from Oklahoma. He has also written fiction for The Avenger: Roaring Heart Of The Crucible (2013), The Green Hornet: Still At Large (2012), The Worlds Of Philip José Farmer 2: Of Dust And Souls (2011), and other works; authored two collections of his own; and contributed to the new hardcover edition of Farmer’s Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life and the forthcoming Tales Of The Wold Newton Universe. At PulpFest, John will be reading “The Bright Heart of Eternity,” a tribute to Edgar Rice Burroughs and Philip José Farmer, and the opening scene from his Avenger story, “Ghost of Thunder Isle.”
A three-time New Fictioneer, Colorado’s Win Scott Eckert returns to the Fairfield Room stage with two new works. He’ll read from The Scarlet Jaguar, his limited-edition novella to be released by Meteor House at PulpFest 2013/FarmerCon VIII in celebration of Doc Savage’s eightieth anniversary. Featuring Patricia Wildman, daughter of a certain bronze champion of justice, The Scarlet Jaguar is the sequel to the Eckert/Farmer collaboration, The Evil in Pemberley House (2009).
Win also plans to offer an excerpt from A Girl and Her Cat, the first new “Honey West” novel in over forty years. In this exciting work forthcoming from Moonstone Books, co-written by Matthew Baugh, Honey teams up with former cat burglar-turned-bodyguard Thomas Hewitt Edward Cat, better known as “T.H.E Cat.”
In addition to the works mentioned above, Win Scott Eckert edited and contributed to Myths for the Modern Age: Philip José Farmer’s Wold Newton Universe (MonkeyBrain Books), a 2007 Locus Awards finalist. He has co-edited three Green Hornet anthologies for Moonstone Books; the third, The Green Hornet: Still at Large, recently won the 2013 PulpArk Award for best anthology. His tales of The Green Hornet, Zorro, The Avenger, The Phantom, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Captain Midnight, and Sherlock Holmes can be found in various character-themed anthologies from Moonstone, as well as anthologies such as Tales of the Wold Newton Universe (Titan Books) and Tales of the Shadowmen (Black Coat Press). His critically acclaimed Crossovers: A Secret Chronology of the World was released by Black Coat Press in 2010. Find Win online at www.winscotteckert.com.
Mark Sparacio’s contributed the cover art for Win Scott Eckert’s forthcoming The Scarlet Jaguar, published by Meteor House and debuting at PulpFest 2013/FarmerCon VIII.
The Future of “New Pulp”
June 5, 2013 – At 1 PM on Saturday, July 27, writer, editor-in-chief of Airship 27, and two-time Pulp Factory Award winner, Ron Fortier, and five contemporary authors will gaze into their crystal balls to chart the road ahead for the new and exciting continuation of the pulp genre known as “New Pulp.” Joining Ron will be Jim Beard, Win Scott Eckert, Rick Lai, Frank Schildiner, and Dr. Art Sippo.
A native Toledoan, Jim Beard became a published fiction writer after selling a story to DC Comics in 2002. Since then, he’s written Star Wars and Ghostbusters comics, as well as several works of new pulp fiction including Sgt. Janus, Spirit-Breaker and Captain Action: Riddle of the Glowing Men, the first pulp prose novel based on the classic 1960s action figure.
One of our 2013 New Fictioneers, Win Scott Eckert, co-authored the Wold Newton novel The Evil in Pemberley House with Philip José Farmer. Win’s sequel, The Scarlet Jaguar, will debut at this year’s PulpFest. In addition to co-editing three Green Hornet anthologies for Moonstone Books, Win has written countless tales featuring Zorro, The Avenger, Honey West, The Phantom, Captain Midnight, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Sherlock Holmes, and many other genre fiction characters.
Rick Lai is a computer programmer best known for his articles based on Philip José Farmer’s Wold Newton concepts. Altus Press recently collected these into four volumes. His short stories have appeared regularly in the Tales of the Shadowmen anthologies published by Black Coat Press. In 2011, Wild Cat Books released Rick’s Shadows of the Opera, a novel about a 19th-century female vigilante.
A pulp fan since reading Philip José Farmer’s Tarzan Alive, Frank Schildiner is a New Jersey martial arts instructor. He has written Black Bat, Ravenwood, and Secret Agent X stories for Airship 27; Avenger yarns for Moonstone Books; tales of Thunder Jim Wade and Richard Knight for Pro Se Productions; and contributed to Black Coat Press’s Tales of the Shadowmen series.
An emergency room physician in St. Louis, Missouri, Dr. Art Sippo has written several articles and short stories grounded in the pulps. His first book, Sun Koh: Heir of Atlantis, was a 2010 Pulp Factory Award nominee for Best Pulp Novel. Art served in the United States Army for 36 years.
The Beard . . . . New Fictioneer!
June 7, 2013 – Jim Beard’s father introduced him to comic books, passing on a love for the medium and the pulp characters that preceded it. After decades of reading, collecting, and dissecting comics, Jim became a published writer when he sold a story to DC Comics in 2002. Since then, he’s written comic stories for Dark Horse’s Star Wars and IDW’s Ghostbusters and contributed articles and essays to several volumes of comic book history.
A native of Toledo, Ohio, where he is a regular columnist for the Toledo Free Press, Jim broke into the world of “New Pulp” in 2012 when Airship 27 published Sgt. Janus, Spirit-Breaker, a collection of ghost stories featuring an occult detective, and Captain Action: Riddle of the Glowing Men, the first prose novel based on the 1960s action figure. Jim provides regular content for marvel.com, the official Marvel Comics website, and has new and forthcoming comic and prose work from Bluewater, TwoMorrows, Airship 27, and Pro Se Productions.
Join “The Beard” on Saturday, July 27 at 3 PM when Jim will be reading from Sgt. Janus, Spirit-Breaker, Captain Action: Riddle of the Glowing Men, and “The Parade of Moments,” a story published in Monster Earth, a shared-world anthology of giant monster tales. And to learn more about this exciting new writer, please visit The Beard: The Jim Beard Fan Page.
Doc Meets the King
June 9, 2013 – Beginning with the premiere of Standard Magazines’ The Phantom Detective at the start of the year and Nick Carter Magazine and Doc Savage Magazine from Street & Smith in February, 1933 was the “year of the hero pulp.”
But 1933 was not just the year of the hero pulp. On March 2 of that same year, RKO Radio Pictures premiered “the eighth wonder of the world,” King Kong, at New York’s Radio City Music Hall and the Roxy. In just four days, the film earned nearly $90,000, a substantial sum in those dark Depression days.
To celebrate the 80th anniversaries of “The Man of Bronze” and King Kong, Will Murray, author of The Wild Adventures of Doc Savage, paired the two characters in his novel, Skull Island. On Saturday, July 27th, at 2 PM, PulpFest 2013 will host a special New Fictioneers reading of Mr. Murray’s bestselling novel, read by Radio Archives reader Roger Price.
During his lengthy career as an entertainer, Roger has performed on television, radio, and the live stage. At one time or another, he has worked as a stand-up comic, hosted a late-night movie series as a character called “The Baron,” worked as a morning radio personality, hosted and emceed numerous live events, served as an entertainment news anchor, and even as a ring announcer for professional wrestling. Comic book and pop culture fans know Roger as the creator, director, and “voice” of Mid-Ohio-Con, one of the largest and longest-running conventions of its kind.
Through Radio Archives, Roger Price can be heard reading various short stories on Strange Detective Mysteries #1, Captain Satan #1, Captain Zero #1, and other audiobooks. Roger also works with a wide variety of clients as an announcer and voice actor, specializing in character/cartoon voices and dialects.
Following the reading, both Will Murray and Roger Price will be available for questions and conversation.
A poster for the RKO Pictures 1933 release, King Kong. The artist is not known.
Master of Men!
June 12, 2013 – Popular Publications got its start in late 1930 when Henry Steeger and Harold Goldsmith released their first four titles – Battle Aces, Detective Action Stories, Gang World, and Western Rangers. A year later, they were joined by two more – Underworld Romances and the magazine that helped send the company to the top of the pulp chain, Dime Detective Magazine.
In spring and summer 1933, Henry Steeger planned additional releases. Two targeted the western and love genres, while the others were aimed at the single-character market. “At this point in pulp history, individual titles became very popular, so we decided to try out a few …”
Popular Publications debuted its four new titles in September 1933 – Star Western and Lovers Magazine; its air-war hero pulp, G-8 and His Battle Aces; and the company’s answer to the phenomenally popular Street & Smith character pulp, The Shadow Magazine. It was called The Spider.
R. T. M. Scott’s “The Spider Strikes” led off the first issue of The Spider, cover dated October 1933. A mystery novelist well known for his character Secret Service Smith, Scott would only write the first two novels of the magazine’s long run. He would, however, introduce many of the trappings that would endear the pulp’s characters to readers.
With its third issue, the magazine turned The Spider over to Norvell W. Page, a newspaperman turned pulp writer. Hidden behind the name Grant Stockbridge, Page would contribute 91 tales of the “Master of Men” – more than three-quarters of the magazine’s 118-issue run – writing with “heart, feeling and emotion.”
As the late Michael Avallone wrote in the June 1981 issue of Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine.
Richard Wentworth, playboy millionaire by day and caped crusader by night … Master of disguise, superbly conditioned body, keen, alert brain and altogether hair-trigger personality when the United States and the world were threatened by master villains, Yellow Perils, horrible hordes, devastating plagues, and killing, chilling terrorism. Wentworth, who became the cragged, grotesque Spider who left his vermillion trademark on the dead foreheads of The Enemy.
Started as a knock-off of the first single-character pulp, The Spider would eventually join Doc Savage, G-8 and His Battle Aces, Jim Hatfield (in Texas Rangers), The Phantom Detective and The Shadow, the magazine that inspired them all, as one of the longest-lived of the hero pulps, thanks largely to the white-hot prose of Norvell Page.
PulpFest 2013 salutes eighty years of The Spider and “The Pulp Heroes of 1933″ from July 25– 28 in Columbus, Ohio.
Walter Baumhofer painted the cover to The Spider: Master of Men! for October 1933, pictured above.
The Ancestors of Batman
June 14, 2013 – PulpFest‘s programming begins with an off-site presentation to which convention attendees are cordially invited. On Thursday, July 25th, in Room 150A-B at Ohio State University’s Thompson Library, PulpFest committee member and Blood ‘n’ Thunder editor and publisher Ed Hulse will deliver a lecture titled “The Ancestors of Batman: Colorful Crime Fighters of Pulp Fiction.”
Ed’s presentation ties in with PulpFest‘s 80th-anniversary celebration of the 1933 hero-pulp explosion that gave us Doc Savage, The Spider, The Phantom Detective, and others. As he will point out, these characters directly influenced such later comic-book heroes as Batman – whose very first exploit was, in fact, plagiarized from a 1936 Shadow novel.
Batman was hardly the first colorful crime fighter to affect the pose of wealthy idler. The pulp magazines beat him to that characterization by a quarter century. Bruce Wayne simply joined a fraternity whose members already included Jimmie Dale, Lamont Cranston, Richard Wentworth, and Richard Curtis Van Loan, to name just a few. But great wealth and social prominence were not the only traits these men shared, as Ed will point out.
The presentation will also include latter-day examples of hero-pulp concepts that became embedded in American popular culture. One example is 24‘s Jack Bauer, who shares with pulpdom’s Operator #5 the distinction of being a government agent working outside the system to combat terrorists seeking to inflict grave harm on the United States with apocalyptic weapons.
“The Ancestors of Batman” is scheduled to begin at 4:30 PM, is open to the public, and will set the tone for the many informative and entertaining programs scheduled for this year’s PulpFest.
Pictured above is Detective Comics #27, dated May 1939, with cover art by Bob Kane.
Buying & Selling at PulpFest 2013
June 16, 2013 – Every great pulp con is centered around its dealers’ room, and this year, PulpFest will be hosting about fifty sellers of pulp magazines and related materials, vintage paperbacks, digests, men’s adventure and true crime magazines, first edition hardcovers, series books, dime novels, original art, Big Little Books, Golden and Silver Age comic books, vintage films and radio programs, and other pop culture collectibles. Over 100 tables of material will be available.
The PulpFest dealers’ room will be in the Regency Ballroom, a 15,800-square-foot gathering space with wide aisles and spacious work areas for our sellers. Located on the third floor of the Hyatt Regency Columbus, the ballroom can accommodate up to 1600 people at any given moment.
The PulpFest dealers’ room will be open to all registered attendees from 9 AM to 5 PM on July 26 and 27, and from 9 AM until 2 PM on Sunday, July 28.
The 2013 Munsey Award Nominees
June 16, 2013 – The PulpFest Organizing Committee is pleased to announce that thirteen individuals were nominated by their peers for the 2013 Munsey Award. This year, no one was nominated for the elite Rusty Hevelin Service Award.
The following nominees will be forwarded to a committee of all living Lamont, Munsey, and Rusty Award winners, who will select the recipient of the 2013 Munsey Award.
These individuals include Charles Ardai, William G. Contento, Randy Cox, Chris Kalb, Steve Miller, Laurie Powers, Garyn Roberts, Phil Stephensen-Payne, Celina Summers, J. Barry Traylor, George Vanderburgh, Howard Wright, and Dan Zimmer.
The recipient of the 2013 Munsey Award, a limited edition print designed by artist and pulp enthusiast David Saunders, will be announced on July 27 as part of the Saturday evening programming, open to all PulpFest 2013 registrants.
The Pulps After Fu Manchu
Tall, thin with lizard-green eyes, yellow robe and black cap embroidered with coral bead, Fu Manchu was the very picture of warped genius. Such unusual potions as spiders, scorpions and plague-carrying tsetse flies were just part of Fu’s prescription to foreshorten the white race’s actuarial expectations. Master of super science and creative toxicology, he . . . was the Yellow Peril.
June 17, 2013 – Although Kaiser Wilhelm is believed to have coined the term “Yellow Peril,” Sax Rohmer profited most from the idea, largely through the villainous Dr. Fu Manchu. Little wonder that countless pulp writers, from Walter B. Gibson and Norvell W. Page to Robert E. Howard and George Worts, turned to the devil doctor to find inspiration for their lurid pulp tales.
To begin PulpFest‘s celebration of the 100th anniversary of Sax Rohmer’s infamous creation, Rick Lai looks at “The Pulp Descendants of Fu Manchu,” beginning at 8 PM on Thursday, July 25, in the Fairfield Room located on the second floor of the Hyatt Regency Columbus. Rick will discuss the influence of Sax Rohmer’s devil doctor on the pulps with a look at villains such as Wu Fang, Shiwan Khan, The Blue Scorpion from Peter the Brazen, and Robert E. Howard’s Skullface and Erlik Khan.
Best known for his articles expanding on Philip José Farmer’s Wold Newton Universe concepts, recently collected by Altus Press as Rick Lai’s Secret Histories: Daring Adventurers, Rick Lai’s Secret Histories: Criminal Masterminds, Chronology of Shadows: A Timeline of The Shadow’s Exploits and The Revised Complete Chronology of Bronze, Rick Lai lives in New York. His short fiction has been collected in Shadows of the Opera (Wild Cat Books, 2011) and two upcoming Black Coat Press collections to be printed this year – Shadows of the Opera: Retribution in Blood and Sisters of the Shadows: The Cagliostro Curse.
Pictured above is Jerome Rozen’s menacing cover art for the March 1936 issue of Popular Publications’ The Mysterious Wu Fang.
From Pulp Page to Silver Screen
June 19, 2013 – Blood ‘n’ Thunder editor Ed Hulse explores the pulp-to-movie connection in his PulpFest presentation “Hollywood and the Hero Pulps,” one of several pre-convention programs scheduled for Thursday, July 25, at 9 PM.
Motion-picture incarnations of pulp magazine protagonists date back to the medium’s earliest days. Moviegoers of the nickelodeon era —the pre-World War I years — were treated to cinematic adaptations of Short Stories’ Hamilton Cleek and The Popular Magazine’s Terrence O’Rourke, among others. Tom Mix became the industry’s top Western star thanks to his 1920 portrayal of Max Brand’s Whistlin’ Dan Barry. Master detective Nick Carter, who successfully made the transition from dime novel to pulp magazine, appeared on screens both in the U.S. and overseas in several sets of short subjects produced between 1908 and 1927.
With the rise of talkies and Hollywood’s emergence as the world’s filmmaking capital, pulp fiction became an even more frequent source of story material. Hundreds of movies released during the Thirties, Forties and Fifties — feature films and short subjects alike — were made from yarns originally printed in rough-paper periodicals.
As Blood ‘n’ Thunder readers know, Ed is the leading authority on pulp-related movies, having researched and written about them for decades. His PulpFest presentation will cover many, but focus on those adapted from hero pulps, with special emphasis on serials such as The Spider’s Web (1938), The Shadow (1940), and The Spider Returns (1941). He’ll present little-known, behind-the-scenes info gleaned in part from his own interviews with people who worked on these episodic epics, including Victor Jory (who played the serial Shadow) and Iris Meredith (who played Nita in The Spider’s Web). Ed will address the rumor that Columbia Pictures planned a G-8 and His Battle Aces serial for a 1939 release, and he’ll also report what little is known about the proposed Republic chapter plays featuring Doc Savage and Nick Carter.
This program, leading into the screening of Chapters One through Five of The Spider’s Web, promises to get PulpFest’s 2013 hero-pulp tribute off to a fascinating start.
Kenneth Duncan as Ram Singh reads an issue of The Spider in this publicity photo for the 1938 Columbia Pictures movie serial, The Spider’s Web.
The Spider’s Web
June 21, 2013 – Beginning at 10 PM on Thursday, July 25, PulpFest 2013 will present the fifteen-chapter Columbia Pictures movie serial, The Spider’s Web.
Released in 1938 and starring Warren Hull as Richard Wentworth, the “Master of Men,” and Iris Meredith as his beloved Nita Van Sloan, The Spider’s Web is now considered one of the greatest chapter plays ever filmed. PulpFest will show the serial in its entirety over three nights.
Columbia Pictures released its first cliffhanger serial in 1937. Jungle Menace and its immediate successors, The Mysterious Pilot (1937) and The Secret of Treasure Island (1938), were independently produced by the Weiss brothers, Poverty Row denizens with roots in the motion-picture industry going back to the early silent-movie days. Their serials were competent but cheaply made and uninspiring. Columbia executive Irving Briskin surmised that to capture a significant share of the chapter-play market, the company would have to make serials in-house and invest them with more “production value” than the Weiss brothers could provide on their shoestring budgets.
Briskin began negotiating for screen rights to popular characters from other media. Soon, he secured The Spider from Popular Publications. He then assigned the property to newly hired producer Jack Fier, lured to Columbia from Republic Pictures, then turning out the industry’s finest serials and grade-B Westerns. Granted a generous budget (more than twice what the Weiss brothers spent on their chapter plays), Fier took on the daunting task of bringing one of pulpdom’s most popular heroes to the screen—and, by extension, establishing Columbia as a formidable competitor in the arena of episodic epics.
As serial historian Ed Hulse will explain in his PulpFest presentation on movie adaptations of hero pulps, Fier’s first chapter play went into production as The Spider — Master of Men. Thanks to careful writing (with editorial input from Norvell Page, chronicler of the Spider’s pulp-magazine adventures), this Columbia serial maintained an unusually high degree of fidelity to its source material. Jack Fier’s attention to detail and relatively liberal expenditure of money paid off, and after some last-minute tinkering (the result of Production Code administrators complaining to Columbia about the serial’s high body count), the newly retitled The Spider’s Web went into release in late October of 1938, eliciting mostly favorable reviews and generating more box-office revenue than the previous two Weiss serials combined.
Never commercially released on home video, The Spider’s Web has nonetheless been available for many years in “grey market” editions of varying quality. PulpFest has obtained the best version currently in circulation and will offer all 15 high-octane chapters to convention attendees in five-episode increments spread out over three nights.
To learn more about this great movie serial and its sequel, please visit The Spider Returns website. You’ll find a link to the “serials” section in the site’s menu.
The Sheriff of Buzzard Gap
June 23, 2013 – When the powers at Street & Smith saw what a gold mine they had in The Shadow Magazine, they began planning a raft of companion titles, selecting four top pulp genres as their themes: adventure, detective, aviation, and western. The publisher covered the first two by releasing Doc Savage Magazine and Nick Carter Magazine early in 1933. Their aviation title, Bill Barnes, Air Adventurer, was held back until the beginning of the next year. But as soon as circulation figures showed the new single-character titles were winners, Street & Smith launched its western hero pulp, Pete Rice Magazine. Its first issue was dated November 1933.
Street & Smith Publications, Inc., the oldest and foremost fiction-publishing house in America, take pleasure in presenting this first issue of Pete Rice Magazine to their discriminating readers. It is not “just another magazine,” but a publication which has been a long time in developing, and one which is aimed at the new, modern trend of public taste.
In this magazine you will feel the real pulse of the great West as it actually exists. The scenes and action will be familiar to all those who know of the West, and will be instructive to those who do not. The characters will live and breathe through these pages as no others have, and they will give you more entertainment than you have ever deemed possible from fiction before.
“Pistol Pete” Rice was the sheriff of Buzzard Gap, Arizona, a clean-living, non-swearing, alcohol-avoiding paragon of frontier virtues and terror to outlaws who still lived with his mother. He was backed by two trusty deputies: 300-pound giant William Alamo Butler, better known as “Teeny,” and the town’s combination barber and medico, Lawrence Michael Hicks, colloquially known as “Misery.” Pete rode a sorrel horse named Sonny and was sometimes accompanied by a dog called Vulcan.
This hard-riding trio operated in the never-never land of the “Pulp West,” a vague, undated era in the magazine’s early issues. As the series progressed, the stories took on the quaint qualities of a 1930s Hollywood western film, where the sheriff and his posse would start out in an automobile and switch to horseback when the terrain got too rocky for rubber. In one story, Pistol Pete hopped a plane to Chicago to get his man. Unfortunately, by trying to have the West both ways, the magazine had a short lifespan. It folded in 1936 after just 32 issues.
Ben Conlon wrote all the Pete Rice novels as Austin Gridley. Afterward, Conlon took the series to Wild West Weekly, where Pete encountered other Street & Smith buckaroos such as Sonny Tabor. Eventually, Pete’s creator was replaced by other writers hidden by the Gridley house name. The series finally petered out in 1939 after some fifty adventures — not counting a short-lived radio program. Fans best remember Pete Rice Magazine because it shared cover artists with Doc Savage. Walter M. Baumhofer painted the cover art for both series until Robert G. Harris took them off his hands in time for Pete Rice‘s finale.
Although Pete Rice Magazine ran for less than three years, it paved the way for other western character pulps, beginning with Ranger Publications’ The Masked Rider Western Magazine in spring 1934 and, later that same year, Popular Publications’ Mavericks. The longest-lived western pulp hero, Jim Hatfield, would debut in the October 1936 issue of Texas Rangers. Standard Publications’ “Lone Wolf” hero would ride the range for 206 issues, heading into the sunset with its February 1958 number. Among the hero pulps, only The Shadow Magazine appeared more often.
Pistol Pete was the last of the pulp heroes of 1933 — seven in all. From July 25 – 28, join PulpFest in Columbus, Ohio, as we celebrate these characters who had “nothing to fear but fear itself” during those dark days of the Great Depression when the great pulp heroes were born.
The great Walter M. Baumhofer contributed the cover art for the first issue of Pete Rice Magazine, pictured above.
The Black Bat – The Forgotten Hero?
June 24, 2013 – An eighth single-character pulp debuted in 1933. Black Bat Detective Mysteries began with its October 1933 number, and ran for six issues, ending in the spring of 1934. The magazine’s lead novels featured a character called The Black Bat (not to be confused with The Black Bat that later appeared in Standard’s Black Book Detective Magazine.
Created by Murray Leinster, The Black Bat, whose real name was never revealed, was an omniscient amateur detective who worked closely with the police. The character was more of a defective detective than a pulp hero. Although Black Bat Detective Mysteries was technically a single-character magazine, it more closely resembled a detective pulp. Published by a small outfit out of New York City, Berryman Press, and given its limited run, the magazine had little impact on the pulp market.
Philip José Farmer’s Doc Savage
June 25, 2013 – Since 2011, PulpFest has hosted FarmerCon, a convention within a convention. FarmerCon began in Peoria, Illinois, the hometown of Grand Master of Science Fiction Philip José Farmer. Originally a gathering of Farmer fans figuratively, and literally, right outside Phil’s back door, FarmerCon offered presentations, dinners, and even picnics at the author’s house.
After Phil and Bette Farmer passed away in 2009, the organizers decided to take FarmerCon on the road to broaden its horizons. By holding the convention alongside events like PulpFest, Farmer fans get a variety of programming and a room full of pulp and book dealers to enjoy. This year, PulpFest is pleased to welcome FarmerCon once again to the Hyatt Regency Columbus for its 8th convention.
As it has every year since 2011, FarmerCon will provide some of PulpFest’s evening programming. On Friday, July 26, at 7:30 PM, our FarmerCon friends turn their attention toward the Grand Master‘s work related to Doc Savage with a panel entitled His Apocalyptic Life, Escape from Loki, and The Mad Goblin.
The earliest of the three works, The Mad Goblin, was first published in 1970, paired with The Lord of the Trees as half of an Ace Double. Both novels were sequels to an earlier work, A Feast Unknown, that introduced Lord Grandrith, a thinly disguised Tarzan, and a “man of bronze” known as Doc Caliban. In Feast, Grandrith and Caliban learn that a powerful secret society known as The Nine has manipulated their lives. The two heroes go to war against their tormentors. The Mad Goblin tells the story from Doc Caliban’s point of view, while The Lord of the Trees presents Lord Grandrith’s version.
Although he published over fifty novels and 100 short stories during his career, Philip José Farmer is best remembered for his Wold Newton Family. According to the author, the radiation from a meteorite that landed near the village of Wold Newton caused mutations in the villagers’ descendants, making them smarter, stronger, and more driven than most. Included among the offspring were Lord Greystoke, Sherlock Holmes, Sam Spade, Fu Manchu, and Dr. James Clarke Wildman, Jr., best known as Doc Savage. Much of Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life, first published by Doubleday in 1973, focuses on this idea.
Farmer’s final “work of bronze” was Escape from Loki, published by Bantam Books in 1991. Shot down behind enemy lines during World War I, sixteen-year-old Clark Savage, Jr. finds himself in a German baron’s notorious escape-proof prison. There, Doc and his future aides come together to match wits and derring-do against the sinister baron, whom Doc believes intends to wield a weapon of mass destruction that could mean the end of freedom and victory for the Kaiser.
Moderator Art Sippo, author of Sun Koh: Heir of Atlantis, a 2010 Pulp Factory Award nominee for Best Pulp Novel, and his panelists will dissect and analyze the Grand Master‘s contributions to the Doc Savage mythos. Joining Art will be Christopher Paul Carey, the co-author with Philip José Farmer of Gods of Opar: Tales of Lost Khokarsa, and the author of Exiles of Kho, a prelude to the Khokarsa series; Rick Lai, well known for his articles expanding on Farmer’s Wold Newton Universe concepts, recently collected into four volumes by Altus Press; Win Scott Eckert, the co-author with Philip José Farmer of The Evil in Pemberley House, and the author of its forthcoming sequel, The Scarlet Jaguar, featuring Doc Wildman’s daughter Pat; and John Allen Small, an award-winning journalist, columnist, and fiction writer whose work includes “The Bright Heart of Eternity,” a tribute to Edgar Rice Burroughs and Philip José Farmer, and “Into Time’s Abyss,” anthologized in The Worlds Of Philip José Farmer 2: Of Dust And Souls.
Meteor House will be premiering a new, expanded edition of Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life at PulpFest 2013. Featuring dust jacket art by Joe DeVito (pictured above) and essays by Win Scott Eckert, John Allen Small, Keith Howell, Rick Lai, Art Sippo, Christopher Paul Carey, and current Doc Savage writer Will Murray, it will be available as a deluxe hardcover. Altus Press will be publishing the softcover edition. It will be available at PulpFest through Mike Chomko, Books.
Doc Savage & the Pulp Heroes of 1933
June 28, 2013 – Eighty years ago, following the astounding success of The Shadow Magazine, the pulp industry created a tremendous splash in publishing by releasing a wave of single-character magazines. The Phantom Detective, Nick Carter Magazine, Doc Savage Magazine, The Lone Eagle, G-8 and His Battle Aces, The Spider, and Pete Rice Magazine all debuted in 1933, despite the economic hardships of the Great Depression.
Street & Smith Publishing introduced The Shadow Magazine to readers in early 1931. With author Walter B. Gibson’s talents, the magazine proved an instant hit. Planned as a quarterly, this first “hero” pulp became a monthly after just two issues. A year later, The Shadow Magazine became a semi-monthly, appearing twice each month until early 1943.
By 1932, Street & Smith was planning other single-character pulps, hoping to emulate the high-flying Shadow Magazine. Other publishing houses also noticed the strong sales experienced by Gibson’s “Dark Avenger.” As Henry Steeger of Popular Publications stated: “At this point in pulp history, individual titles became very popular, so we decided to try out a few.” And so began what we now call, “The Hero Pulp Explosion of 1933.”
On Friday, July 26, at 8:30 PM in the Fairfield Room of the Hyatt Regency Columbus, Ed Hulse, editor and publisher of Blood ‘n’ Thunder, and a panel of pulp historians will take a look at “Doc Savage and the Pulp Heroes of 1933.”
Joining Ed will be Nick Carr, one of the elders of the pulp community, who actually read The Spider and other pulps fresh off the newsstand, and has written countless articles about pulp heroes both known and little known; Don Hutchison, who also had the opportunity to buy pulps at a news agency and has likewise written many articles on the history of the pulps as well as the Stoker Award nominee, The Great Pulp Heroes (a “must-read” book for fans of the hero pulps); a child of the sixties when he first discovered “The Man of Bronze” and now today’s “Kenneth Robeson,” Will Murray, yet another author of numerous books and articles concerning the pulps; and Garyn Roberts, professor of English and popular culture studies and unabashed pulp fan and editor of some of the best collections from the pulps including The Compleat Adventures of the Moon Man, The Magical Mysteries of Don Diavolo, and other titles. This quartet of pulp experts will join Ed to discuss the causes and effects of the “Hero Pulp Explosion of 1933.”
Walter Baumhofer: King of the Pulps
July 1, 2013 – Who was the “King of the Pulps?” Some say it was H. Bedford Jones, while others claim the title for Frederick Faust, better known as Max Brand. But to the young readers who devoured the pulp magazines and “delighted in his four-color depictions of action and adventure,” the one and only “King of the Pulps” was Walter M. Baumhofer.
When an injury at age fourteen left him unable to do manual labor, Baumhofer began to study art intently. A scholarship let him attend the prestigious Pratt Institute, where he studied under Dean Cornwell and H. Winfield Scott. While still a student, he began his art career drawing pen-and-ink story illustrations for Adventure Magazine. By 1926, he was contributing covers to Clayton Publications and, soon thereafter, to Harold Hersey’s line of pulps. Street & Smith signed him to a contract in 1932 to paint a cover each week for their pulps. Around the same time, he was sought out by Popular Publications to provide cover art for their line of magazines, and so began his reign as the “King of the Pulps.”
Baumhofer worked in the pulp market for just over a decade, painting about 550 covers for a wide variety of titles, including Ace High, Adventure, Detective Tales, Dime Mystery Magazine, Doc Savage, Fire Fighters, Gangland Stories, The Spider, Spy Stories, Western Story Magazine, and others. He moved into the slick market and advertising art in the late thirties, contributing work to American Weekly, Collier’s, Cosmopolitan, Esquire, Redbook, Women’s Day, and other magazines. In later years, his paintings graced the covers of Argosy, Outdoor Life, and Sports Afield, and his portrait, landscape, and Western art were exhibited in fine art galleries nationwide.
At 9:30 PM on Friday, July 26, David Saunders will present a biographical profile of Walter Baumhofer’s life and the artist’s fascinating family history. He will exhibit never-before-seen visual documents from the personal world of this pulp art master. Walter was a close friend of the presenter’s father, Norman Saunders, and as such David was personally acquainted with the artist for over thirty years. Baumhofer was a sensationally colorful character, and David Saunders looks forward to sharing many amusing anecdotes and incidents that will help to promote a greater awareness of this legendary artist.
Walter M. Baumhofer contributed the front cover art to the August 15, 1935 Adventure, pictured above.
Dr. Fu Manchu & the Yellow Peril
July 6, 2013 – One hundred years ago, Sax Rohmer’s Fu Manchu made his American debut in Collier’s, a five-cent weekly. “The Zayat Kiss” ran in the February 15, 1913 number. Nine more stories featuring Rohmer’s “devil doctor” would appear in Collier’s through June 28, 1913. In September of that year, McBride would release The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu, collecting all ten tales into novel form.
Although Sax Rohmer did not create the “yellow peril” genre of pulp fiction, his Fu Manchu stories would greatly influence the bloody pulps. From writers as diverse as Dashiell Hammett, Carroll John Daly, Walter B. Gibson, Norvell W. Page, Arthur J. Burks, Philip Nowlan, H. P. Lovecraft, and Robert E. Howard, pulpsters delivered many a story inspired by Rohmer’s evil genius. Even Robert J. Hogan’s flying spy, G-8, battled oriental evildoers in the author’s fantasy version of the First World War.
At 8 PM on Saturday, July 27, PulpFest will salute the American centennial of Dr. Fu Manchu with a panel exploring Sax Rohmer’s character and his influence on early-twentieth-century pulp fiction. Moderated by Blood ‘n’ Thunder editor and publisher, Ed Hulse, the panel will consist of pop culture experts Gene Christie, editor of three collections of Rohmer’s fiction and a leading authority on early American science fiction and fantasy; Win Scott Eckert, known for his work on literary crossovers and chronologies, including Marvel Comics’ Shang-Chi: Master of Kung Fu, a classic series concerning the son of Dr. Fu Manchu; Nathan Madison, author of Anti-Foreign Imagery in American Pulps and Comics, 1920-1960; William Patrick Maynard, authorized by the literary estate of Sax Rohmer to continue the Fu Manchu series; and Will Murray, author of the Wild Adventures of Doc Savage and one of the world’s leading authorities on the pulp era.
Pictured above is Joseph Clement Coll’s illustration for the first Fu Manchu story published in the United, “The Zayat’s Kiss.” The picture originally appeared in the February 15, 1913 issue of Collier’s. The image is courtesy of The Page of Fu Manchu, an ongoing effort by scholars and readers around the world to create a definitive Sax Rohmer bibliography, reference and archive.
Hero Pulp Premiums and Promotions
July 9, 2013 – How did pulp magazine publishers keep readers coming back month after month? Of course the best way was to publish excellent stories. Regardless of genre, the leading pulps attempted to do just that, issue after issue.
Another method that publishers employed to lure dimes on a regular basis from buyers with thin wallets was to create a club and offer premiums. For a few cents or by clipping coupons from a favorite pulp magazine, a devoted fan could become a member in good standing of the Doc Savage Club, one of the Friends of the Phantom, or Adventure Magazine’s Camp-Fire Club. Rings, pins, and other items were also available, such as the Spider Pencil, a celluloid mechanical pencil with a rubber eraser bearing The Spider seal, produced in very limited quantity during 1941-42.
On Saturday, July 27, at 9 PM, please join PulpFest website designer Chris Kalb in the Fairfield Room located on the second floor of the Hyatt Regency Columbus as he takes us back to a time when a few cents not only bought a pulp magazine filled with thrills, but also an Operator #5 ring, a G-8 Battle Aces Club pin, or a membership in the Green Lama Club. Chris will present “Hero Pulp Premiums and Promotions,” an event you cannot afford to miss. It won’t cost you a dime more than your convention membership.
For more pulp premiums, visit Pulpster editor Bill Lampkin’s The Pulp.Net website and search for “premiums.” Bill has photographs of rings, membership cards, pins, and other items on his highly informative website.
Picture above is the Doc Savage Club card, Street & Smith, c. 1930s.
Tonik Auction Continues!
July 12, 2013 – One of the many highlights of PulpFest is its Saturday night auction. Organized by J. Barry Traylor and a gaggle of enthusiastic volunteers, the auction is always the final programming event of summer’s great pulp con. Any registered member of the convention may submit items for auction as long as they meet PulpFest’s guidelines.
PulpFest is very proud that this year’s auction will include 115 lots made up of approximately 250 books from collector and scholar Al Tonik’s huge library of hardcovers, paperbacks, pulps, dime novels, comic books, fanzines, and reference books. At its 2012 convention, PulpFest sold about seventy percent of the Tonik collection with more than $15,000 bid on a wide range of items. Most of what remains from Al’s library are hard-to-find reference books and author biographies. Over many years, Albert Tonik was one of the leading scholars of pulp history. The winner of a Lamont Award in 1994, Al researched aspects of pulp history previously covered sketchily and loved to share his knowledge with our community.
In addition to the Tonik material, PulpFest will be accepting about 100 lots from registered members of PulpFest 2013. However, due to the substantial amount of Tonik lots, there may be limits on the number of lots that can be offered by each consignee. The sooner you submit your consignment to Mike Chomko (who will be collecting all the auction consignments), the more likely that it will be included in our auction. Mike’s tables will be along the wall, across from the registration desk just inside the entrance to the PulpFest dealers’ room.
For a look at what books will make up the Tonik lots, we are providing an auction spreadsheet. The Tonik lots will be lot numbers 1-30, 56-85, 111-140, and 166-190. The gaps of 25 lots between the Tonik segments represent the 100 lots of consignment material that we will be accepting from PulpFest 2013 members during the actual convention. To examine the spreadsheet, click the “auction spreadsheet” link above.
PulpFest‘s annual Saturday night auction will start at approximately 9:30 PM on July 27th, following the conclusion of Chris Kalb’s presentation, Hero Pulp Premiums and Promotions. Remember to bring your convention badge: your badge number will be used when buying and/or selling during the auction. Our auctioneers will be Adventure House‘s John Gunnison and Joseph Saine, a full-time proprietor of an antique toy shop and licensed auctioneer from northwest Ohio.
Meet Chuck Welch
On this day when we salute the American worker, PulpFest is pleased to welcome its newest “laborer,” Chuck Welch, to its organizing committee. A Wisconsin resident, Chuck began attending pulp cons in the late nineties. After starting a family, he rejoined PulpFest several years back and has been a devoted attendee ever since. Here’s what Chuck has to say about himself:
Although some may believe he is old enough to have purchased pulps off the newsstand, Chuck Welch is a mere whippersnapper. As one of the original Internet “Fans of Bronze,” Chuck started attending the summer pulp convention in the late 1990s. After meeting his future wife at one of those conventions, Chuck took some time off to start a family. At Bill Mann’s behest, he returned to attend PulpFest.
As is his wont, Chuck immediately started volunteering and making suggestions to Jack, Barry, Ed, and Mike. Fed up with his puppy-dog eyes, the fearsome foursome asked Chuck if he’d like to join the team. Recently moved and having foisted off his old businesses, Chuck accepted. His goal for PulpFest 2014 is to not have any other members call for his head.
Chuck lives in La Crosse, Wisconsin, with his wife and daughter. Though the youngest Welch has access to three complete collections of Doc Savage novels, she hasn’t yet found her parents’ love for the character. A generalist at heart, Chuck won’t claim an expert’s knowledge in any area of pulps or pulp collecting. However, he brings technical expertise in social media, new and dinosaur journalism, and organization.
Please welcome Chuck as one of the planners of PulpFest, “The Summer’s Great Pulp Con!”
