The answer is pulp artist [Wil] Hulsey...
June 12, 2020 11:44 AM   Subscribe

Many readers have asked me "why do so many pulp covers feature women in ripped red blouses standing in swamps while a man fights off an unusual animal attack?" (Twitter thread, with many images of violence and objectified women)

Wilbur "Wil" Hulsey (often attributed as "Will") passed away in 2015 at the age of 89. Little about him is known (which seems to be by his own choice), other than his skill at illustrating animal attacks and barely-covering ripped blouses.
posted by Etrigan (30 comments total) 25 users marked this as a favorite
 
Oh, now I know the context for Shousetsu Bang*Bang Issue 37. Thanks!
posted by brook horse at 11:48 AM on June 12, 2020 [4 favorites]


Chewed to Bits by Giant Turtles!

...

...

...

Really, there is nothing to add.
posted by GenjiandProust at 11:55 AM on June 12, 2020 [14 favorites]


First thing I saw was, "San Diego: Passion Port of the Pacific." WHAAT? Have these people not heard of Tacoma?
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 11:55 AM on June 12, 2020 [14 favorites]


Little disappointed the thread did not call out the coding of these covers all featuring white men protecting white women from being ravaged by dark, dangerous animals. The headlines speak to anxieties of post-WWII incels.
posted by MiltonRandKalman at 12:05 PM on June 12, 2020 [15 favorites]


Weasels attended my funeral.
posted by rhizome at 12:07 PM on June 12, 2020 [8 favorites]


James Lileks did a similar deep dive and analysis of the artist Art Frahm, a pin-up and advertising artist whose specialty seemed to be women whose underpants had unexpectedly and suddenly suffered a loss of elasticity and went sliding down their legs. Lileks also points out that for some reason, many of these works also include celery somewhere.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:08 PM on June 12, 2020 [25 favorites]


covers all featuring white men protecting white women from being ravaged by dark, dangerous animals

A fair bit of them seemed to be white men protecting white women from being ravaged/captured by other marauding women actually, unless I'm reading that wrong. At least one was also advertising that foreign brides make better wives than the alternative so, well, this whole thing contains multitudes of bad/dated behaviors I think.

I was surprised there wasn't a crossover into bodice-ripper type literature covers for this sort of artist/individual. I was fully expecting that to be part of his career, maybe not though.
posted by RolandOfEld at 12:09 PM on June 12, 2020 [2 favorites]


many of these works also include celery somewhere

This is where McGruber got that from. I knew it was all connected.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 12:11 PM on June 12, 2020 [1 favorite]


Pecked to Death by Ducks
posted by Greg_Ace at 12:28 PM on June 12, 2020 [1 favorite]


A dingo ate my baby face!
posted by Foosnark at 12:39 PM on June 12, 2020 [3 favorites]


It's fascinating to see the really precise formula for the headlines on the covers. So many of them fit this exact, oddly specific pattern:

1. [CITY] where there's [PROMISCUOUS SEX]!

2. Some other brutal violent story (not the one on the cover).

3. American [choose one of: Men/Women] are bad at [choose one of: Sex/Marriage] and/or it is bad for them.

4. Animal attack (pictured on cover)

The third one surprised me the most, I think. Not that I'm surprised to find magazines playing up and playing to peoples' insecurities and unhappiness, by any means (some things haven't changed), but nowadays you traditionally think of the 50s as a playground for the straight white dudes. For that to be such a part of the formula of these magazines (along with #1's implicit, "Everybody is having sex, someplace you don't live!"), at least to me that suggests a lot of straight white guys were just as unhappy with the sexual/relationship mores of the 50s as everybody else was.

Also, of all the overblown animal attack titles in that thread, I think I like the relatively understated "Give me back my arm" the best.

I do have to wonder which editor looked at the two animal attack stories "Weasels ripped my flesh!" and "Hooked to a killer shark!" and said, "Yeah, let's put that weasel story on the cover."
posted by mstokes650 at 12:44 PM on June 12, 2020 [12 favorites]


Solid tagging game in this FPP.
posted by biogeo at 12:55 PM on June 12, 2020 [1 favorite]


1. [CITY] where there's [PROMISCUOUS SEX]!

Unfortunately, magazine covers were stubbornly analog, so they couldn't just go "Hot singles in [your area] want to meet you!"
posted by Naberius at 1:19 PM on June 12, 2020 [2 favorites]


Solid tagging game in this FPP

I choose to believe that there are men who spulp mags.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 1:28 PM on June 12, 2020 [5 favorites]


Everything I know about this stuff, I learned from Saxton Hale.
posted by Western Infidels at 1:38 PM on June 12, 2020 [2 favorites]


men who spulp mags

That's a topic for a very different, NSFW FPP...
posted by Greg_Ace at 2:04 PM on June 12, 2020 [3 favorites]


Well see, the red dye tended to react badly with the early rayon fabrics of the 50s...garments made from this material tended to just fall apart. Particularly in the presence of swamp humidity.
posted by sexyrobot at 2:10 PM on June 12, 2020 [6 favorites]


That's a topic for a very different, NSFW FPP...

I think you spelled 'fap' wrong.
posted by sexyrobot at 2:11 PM on June 12, 2020 [1 favorite]


Was wondering if Art Frahm's peculiar fetish would get a mention; wasn't disappointed.

Btw, is Lileks some kind of awful MAGA these days? I remember he went full-bore neocon after 9/11.
posted by acb at 2:26 PM on June 12, 2020 [3 favorites]


Wait.... are those sugar gliders? Come on.
posted by The Bellman at 2:30 PM on June 12, 2020 [3 favorites]


The "Chewed to death by giant turtles" cover is a masterpiece.

I do love all the headlines like "NEW U.S. MENACE TEEN-AGERS IN BLACK LEATHER JACKETS" too, boomers have been the same forever!
posted by JDHarper at 2:33 PM on June 12, 2020 [8 favorites]


On the subject of knocking out formulaic covers to a tight deadline, I've just been reading this Everyman edition of a PG Wodehouse novel. All the 100-odd Wodehouse books they've done have cover illustrations by the same artist, Andrzej Klimowski.

What struck me with this one was that the scene pictured appears at the bottom of page 1. I like to imagine Mr Kilimowski cracking the book open thinking "Christ, it's got to be in this afternoon and the bloody thing's 300 page long! Well, I've got to find something - great, that'll do!"
posted by Paul Slade at 2:44 PM on June 12, 2020 [2 favorites]


boomers have been the same forever!

Obnoxious jerks in leather jackets?
posted by acb at 3:10 PM on June 12, 2020 [3 favorites]


Frank Zappa's inspiration for his seventh album. Obviously.
posted by blob at 3:16 PM on June 12, 2020 [3 favorites]


Lileks also points out that for some reason, many of these works also include celery somewhere.
And leering men, often wearing the uniforms of petty authority.
posted by Multicellular Exothermic at 6:04 PM on June 12, 2020 [3 favorites]


New England's Passion Paradise:
SHOCKING P-TOWN
HOT-BED OF THRILL-SEEKING GIRLS

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose
posted by rhamphorhynchus at 7:35 PM on June 12, 2020 [3 favorites]


Re: Lileks - I looked him up again the other month, after thinking about his Art Frahm blog-thing and his going full-on Sept. 11 cheerleading warmonger. Seems he's taken the well-trod path of many a lazy odd-slice-of-life columnist before him: the lowest of low-stakes, low-effort, boomer-style sniping from the sidelines.

"Without my reusable bag, no one knows what I believe". "We need a new shaming standard". "New purchase fails to spark joy". "To read this online, you must accept my new privacy policy". Etc. And they're the highlights.

The most recent comments on his blog suggest he's still got fans amongst the ageing Right-wing set…
posted by Pinback at 10:51 PM on June 12, 2020 [3 favorites]


How much of pop culture is just men trying to get society to validate their fetishes? Maybe i'm bitter (I am) but i'm kind of sick of "artistic choices" coming out years later as the artist's fetish. A lot of the "lol XD random" culture in the early 2000s can be attributed to weird shows on nickelodeon, and it turns out Dan Schneider is a big fucking creep.
posted by FirstMateKate at 1:22 PM on June 13, 2020


I've been playing rimworld lately and my colony, which is in a swamp, just fought off an attack of maddened chinchillas.

So... Apparently my game has procedurally recreated a bad old pulp story. Chinchillas ripped my flesh!
posted by sotonohito at 5:24 PM on June 13, 2020 [1 favorite]


post-WWII incels

not sure about the usefulness of transporting that term back in time, TBH

to me that suggests a lot of straight white guys were just as unhappy with the sexual/relationship mores of the 50s as everybody else was.

isn't that pretty much what all the white guy stories of the 60s were about?
posted by atoxyl at 8:50 PM on June 13, 2020


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