We all know how pulps are the physical, spiritual and in the case of some characters, the flat-out origin of what we love. And what we love is Comic Books. But with so much available in comics, is anyone actually reading pulps?
The answer is YES. There are an incredible number of wonderful reprints out there that will help beginners find something new as well as thrill long time lovers of the form.
Most visitors to this site are looking for information on what they love, comics. But for many, especially older collectors, reading a good pulp story or novel is as thrilling as a good comic. Only with a pulp, the art is in your brain!
With collecting being such a primary concern for so many, we often forget that reading an amazing adventure or a wonderful story is what caused us to fall in love with them to begin with. (I know that many of you also fell in love with comics for the art…but the gist of the article is essentially comics with no art… Thanks for indulging me!).
Pulp titles crossed genres. They were as wide ranging as comics are today. The stories and titles covered Jungle Adventures, Science Fiction, Foreign Legion and Desert stories, Fantasy and Detective (or crime) stories to name a few. They were also one of the first formats to publish reoccurring heroic characters such as The Shadow and Doc Savage.
As the comic collecting hobby has grown over the last decade, many excellent reprint series such as DC Archives, Marvel Masterworks or the fine work that Dark Horse has done for John Stanley, Creepy and other are going a long way towards alleviating the “Non-Reading Concern”. In the same vein the incredible thought that goes behind IDW’s comic strip reprint volumes such as Terry and the Pirates, Dick Tracy and Little Orphan Annie provides high quality access to work that would be ordinarily unavailable to many. Each of these companies has set a very high bench mark for any reprint series.
Reprints of original Pulp magazines, characters and writers are also seeing an upswing in high quality reprints. Most of the reprints are available in a 10” by 7” format (Doc Savage, The Shadow and almost everything from Adventure House Publishing) and the regular –sized book/paperback (9” by 6”) format.
The best place to start for anyone who hasn’t actually sat down with a good pulp would be the ongoing reprints of The Shadow and Doc Savage. Ask your comic store owner about these the next time you stop in. Theyshould have one or two copies on the shelf. For the price of an inexpensive trade paperback you will find hours of fun. Both titles are published by Nostalgia Ventures (http://www.radioarchives.com) and are among the most successful series being published right now. Eventually the entire run of each title will have seen publication. But be warned, some early issues are already sold out.
In the case of Adventure House (who also publishes full original editions of Spicy Detective, Phantom Detective, Planet Stories and many others) the reprinted magazine holds not just the text, but the original printing type as well as original ads. For fans who love reprints that that resemble the original publication as close as possible should visit the Adventure House site at http://www.adventurehouse.com/index.html for some prime examples of the best in the field.
Some characters, such as Doc Savage and Conan, have never really gone out of print. Writers who covered the detective and crime genre in pulps are among the most respected in American Fiction. Most notable among them would be Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and James. M Cain, all of whom found work in Hollywood in addition to pulps.
For many readers, Conan is the ultimate action hero. But he was not the only character that Robert E. Howard ever created. Howard covered a lot of bases in his work. He set his Solomon Kane stories in 16th Century England and the vengeful and very serious Puritan even went as far as to travel to Africa. Over in the Middle East Howard created the desert hero El Borak, who, along with two of the hardest punching friends you could ask for, provided an exceptional series of adventures. Almost all of Howard’s work, including Conan and Solomon Kane, are available in very affordable paperback editions published over the last few years by Dell Publishing. This January they are publishing some of the rarest Howard of all, Sword Woman.
Fans of crime and detective writing may want to check out The Black Lizard Book of Pulps. It truly features the best from the golden age of the 20’s through the 40’s. Fans of a more “nourish” feel of detective fiction may want to find the sister volume The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories. Both volumes are easily available at Amazon for a good price. Each gives you hundreds upon hundreds of pages of the best in the genre.
For those who like the work of Howard as well as that of H. P. Lovecraft (whose earliest work was to found in pulps) may want to check out the hardcover collections of Clark Ashton Smith. A great writer who sometimes gets lost on lists of great writers, Night Shade Books has just finished a five volume hardcover set of his collected works. They are also available through Amazon.
Some of the most thorough and complete collections of individual pulp writers are being created by Haffner Press (http://www.haffnerpress.com/) The seventh volume of their Collected Works of Jack Williamson has just hit the streets. Out of print editions of earlier volumes are already bringing triple digits on the collector’s market.
Comic fans should make sure they check our Haffner Press’s reprints of Capitan Future as well as their new series, The Collected Works of Edmond Hamilton. Astute comic fans will recognize Hamilton as the creator of The Legion of Super Heroes, a series which borrowed heavily from Hamilton’s own work in pulps. Haffner is also doing reprints of the work of writer Henry Kuttner. We will have more with Haffner Press shortly.
Pulp heroes are finding a second home in the work of respected comic publisher Moonstone Books (http://www.moonstonebooks.com/shop/default.aspx). You can find a magnificent mix of heroes from all ages of publishing on their site. Moving backwards you can start with a modern Pulp hero such as The Adventures of Buckaroo Bonzai or travel back to the a TV show form the sixties with a woman who wouldn’t have been out of place in an early twenties book from Street and Smith, Honey West. If you want to go back to the very earliest of a pulp mentality try out one of their Sherlock Holmes stories. After all what was The Stand but a very fancy pulp from England?
Publishing through Amazon has opened up a new wave of reprints. Many of which cover the most obscure of all. Most pulps featured a hero but the stories of Doctor Death featured a whacked out villain. His adventures only lasted five stories but they are all collected now at Amazon through the CreateSpace line of books. You can also find The Secret Six (a classic team that has a very familiar sounding name), The Spider, The Cobra, Secret Agent X, The Bat and many others through the same publishing house at Amazon.
Like comics, pulps have a very active and serious group of collectors. For more information on collecting pulps visit http://www.pulpworld.com. The site has a very good history of the genre as well as information on collecting the originals.
Pulp Fiction is much more than hard-boiled detectives, cheap paperbacks or a pretty slick movie. What we have listed today is just a few of the great books to be found out there. Anyone who enjoys comics owes it to themselves to pick up at least one of the books listed here today and see what so many others are raving about lately. They will find fast action, forgotten teams (Secret Six), crazy villains (Doctor Death) and more than anything, a great way to fill a snow filled January afternoon.
Who knows, but you may find an entire brand new line of something wonderful to collect. The paper in original pulps may not stand the test of time the way that the best of comics has, but there are plenty of great looking books out there for the new collector to find.
