September 10, 2002

10:19 PM

"First you look at the cover ... probably something rather lurid and colorful that makes you smile for its ingenuity. You are immediately assaulted by the characteristic smell of rotting paper, of pulp wood paper. You pick it up, wondering what strange stories you will find within those badly yellowed and rather crumbly pages - a dastardly deed, a fantastic villain or incredible hero, a love story perhaps, or even a voyage to some distant planet!"
posted by crunchland (10 comments total)

*drools, rolls eyes*
*strokes laptop and cackles manaically*
*disappears into The Pulp Zone, never to be seen again*
Thanks crunchland, great link!
posted by hilatron at 10:25 PM on September 10, 2002

The Shadow is such a cool character, too bad the movie with Alec Baldwin as the Shadow didn't do so well.
posted by riffola at 10:37 PM on September 10, 2002

I'm a bit of a collector of memorabilia from the 1939 New York Worlds Fair, so I found the article about the time capsule buried at the time, at the old fairgrounds, to be particularly interesting. But then there's all the old covers, too. And the site's design is pretty great, too.

All run by one of Miguel's fellow countrymen. Those Portuguese are an interesting bunch.
posted by crunchland at 10:45 PM on September 10, 2002

Once upon a time, there were so many magazines that printed fiction that a writer could make a living writing fiction. It's not the covers I miss, it's the stories.
posted by realjanetkagan at 10:58 PM on September 10, 2002

Warren Ellis' amazingly entertaining Planetary comic (now MIA for over a year) has made great use of facsimiles of many of the famous pulp heroes with its backstory of a secret group working for the betterment of the world in the '30s and '40s. Dr. Axel Brass is Ellis' version of Doc Savage. His Shadow clone and others can be seen in the little group shot here.

This book is HIGHLY recommended to anyone interested in this type of fiction with a modern twist... just get ready to wait once you're caught up.
posted by El_Gray at 11:32 PM on September 10, 2002

Warning: the inhalation of pulp spores has been found to cause hallucinations! And if you'd like a great directory of pulp on the net, or learn more about the characters of Doc Savage (two self links), The Avenger, or The Spider.

And for an online comic that is set in the Pulp Era try Australian artist Gary Chaloner's Red Kelso at adventurestrips.com.
posted by ?! at 5:10 AM on September 11, 2002

Reminds me of the Great Literature of my youth: big little books and dime novels at the thrift shops...the odd penny dreadful rotting away in someone's attic...

...And the years in which the hippie's press and the punker's publisher dispensed their pearls of wisdom...
posted by Smart Dalek at 5:24 AM on September 11, 2002

I literally have to be dragged away from our annual library bazaar every September, where I have been known to buy boxfuls of badly written pulp novels, just for the cover art. Thanks so much for this link, crunch - my printer is going to be working overtime today.
posted by iconomy at 5:28 AM on September 11, 2002

iconomy...you don't need your printer. Download your pulp.
posted by ?! at 5:38 AM on September 11, 2002

More pulp links here.
posted by fuzz at 6:00 AM on September 11, 2002