Genre: Pulp

Generally, I see myself as a man who'd enjoy writing Pulp type stories, about a Pulp type character, imbued with enough "timeless" qualities that they could be mistaken for more than they are, but still gratefully exactly what they are.

To that end, I've begun to put pressure on myself to accomplish a tough feat in today's "modern" culture: write books for men, about men, doing men kind of things. Right now, the publishing industry is rife with fiction for, about, and catered to women, particularly suburban women with children who turn Oprah's latest preferred author into a million seller overnight. All well and good, I've been told, and really I can't blame the publishers for targeting the one sure audience they are guaranteed in these here United States, particularly the East and West Coasts: women.

Popular fiction for men has dwindled steadily since the 1980s, the zenith of the "macho" novel series by writers like Don Pendleton and Warren Murphy, as well as the core of action movie cinema, both of which had taken on hysterical aspects until nothing was left but those aspects, such as the movies of Michael Bay (THE ROCK, THE ISLAND, BAD BOYS.) The "stay at home" mother tested her might by vaulting Stephen King into a stratasphere of popular success unrivaled in the 20 years following the cruel pelting of Carrie White with sanitary napkins on the first page of King's first published novel, CARRIE. Every girl's worst fear was realized, and King's innate ability did not specify gender views, but tapped into them. Men and women readers saw themselves in King's words, thus King remained one of the only writers of the modern era to successfully cultivate both the reality of American rural/suburban life and the fictional Pulp iconography of his childhood 1950s in an undeniable product. Where the Pulps may have arrested the attention of the pre- and post-War Americans prior to the arrival of the greatest threat to the written word in every American home (television), Stephen King's work in the selfish "Me Generation" of fast-food and easy-access became a compulsion in an already overstimulated society.

I've seen, in my near-forty years, a slow damning of the Pulp ideology, which in turn created the sort of genres that boys could understand, like the Superhero. As has been pointed out ad nauseum wherever finer books are sold, without Doc Savage and the Shadow, in particular, Superheroes would not exist. Doc Savage and the Shadow were genetic fathers of Superman and Batman; their motifs spawned the Fantastic Four, which began the "Marvel Age" of comics. Today these characters are produced in movies which encapsulate hundreds of individual careers and generate tens of millions in revenue.

Yet still does the idea of Pulp, from pulse-pounding adventure to lurid exploitation, find itself tethered to a male-centric stigmata. At this point in time, Pulp itself has begun to take on a shape, to form itself as its own genre, identified by a construct of forgotten memory, of late-night B-movies and Kung-Fu Theatres on Saturday afternoons, and the more poignant formulas of short, tersely-thrilling novels and tattered comic books from long ago.

There's been a barricade of technology obscuring the sweaty unknown dangers of Pulp, a barricade of pop literature and celebrity accessible at all times to a hungering public. And yet the technology itself, the Playstation and the Xbox, lean heavily on the archetypal Pulp storylines and characters, their clarity and honesty. Audiences transport themselves into the core characters of video games who themselves are cyphers for adventures, both the pulse-pounding kind and the lurid. The technology supports the possibility that the Master Chief or the Hitman are Pulp archetypes as inviting and informing as the Shadow or the Whistler on radios of the 1930s.

Of course I want to write books anyone can pick up and read, but I really want to write books anyone will pick up and read because there's a lot of crazy Pulp between its covers. Though steeped in formula, the Pulp novel/comic is as predictable as a tsunami...but still as powerful in scale. The potential to make an impact on the minds and hearts of readers is important to every writer, but the Pulp writer is maintaining a legacy which has existed at least since the Murders of the Rue Morgue. It's an important position, which requires a humble, dutiful attention, not slavish but inspired.

A lot of my favorite writers, Richard Stark and John D. MacDonald for instance, took a lifetime of Pulp and infused it with an inevitable brilliance. The results were Parker, professional thief, and Travis McGee, salvage expert, respectively. The Pulp character had been electro-shocked by Stark (Don Westlake) and MacDonald's talent into a new, shining life, complete with literary import. Meanwhile, the movies, as they have always done, physicalized the Pulp Hero and made it even more palatable, in the form of Indiana Jones' and Luke Skywalker's eternal portraits.

Recently there's been an upsurge in the genre of Pulp, as a genre in itself. Comics have spear-headed the movement, from Mike Mignola's inspired Hellboy to Eric Powell's wondrous Goon, to Ed Brubaker's CRIMINAL series. Along with them has come a fleet of new Pulp-inspired artist/writers, operating in the various theatres of technology, the Internet, the digital medium. All of them perceive the Pulp Genre, the iconography of Pulp as an art form. It's a fascinating status for Pulp in general, which of course I'd like to take the Nestea Plunge within myself. And I always have, since I was nine years old writing and drawing a comic book adaption of RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK. I never finished it, and it became something else, something of my own. And I'm still trying to figure out how to finish what I started. It was a contract, an agreement signed in the blood of snakes and Nazis...and I must fulfill it.

The Pulp Hero Guide to Good Comics

The thing about Pulp Hero, I hope, is that folks realize the point of the blog is to discover the "new" Pulp thematically in what we term comic books. The connection between the two goes far deeper than merely Doc Savage = Superman, The Shadow = Batman...comics emerged from the Pulp magazines, a natural successor derived from the illustrations adorning the lurid, surreal stories, not to mention the brilliant covers. Contextually, the Pulp adventurers could make hay in the superhero's universe(s.) The icons of Pulp not only inspired most of the iconic superhero archetypes, but they informed the stories' general commercial appeal as well. The characters were designed to entertain and thrill as general an audience as possible, while still straddling lines of good taste. Basically, what most people wanted to read in the 1930s or the 1950s had the resonance of bad taste with the skill of professional writers/artists who knew what to include and what to allude to, in order to both avoid the censors and manipulate the old imagination.









Meaning, a lost art, essentially.







Anyway, my bend is toward Pulp as I understand it, and it all comes back to Pulp at some point. Comic books, the ones I really like, have elements of the long-standing traditions of Pulp and its derivatives, Drive-In movies and "macho" fiction ala "The Destroyer" "The Penetrator" and even Surf Music! There's a concussive reverberation from Pulp which continues to evolve and encompass Popular Culture.









Anyway, let the Guide commence hereforth.

Pulp Hero: CAPTAIN MIDNIGHT!

Over at http://atomic-pulp.blogspot.com/ Christopher Mills is proudly showing off the cover of the new Moonstone Comics series, CAPTAIN MIDNIGHT, written by hisself and art by Richard Clark. Frankly, I'm more than all over the new character design.

Man, I do love goggles, folks.

Pulp Hero: Lobster Johnson!

Not long ago, we got our first mini-series starring a "historical" figure within the Hellboy Universe, created by Mike Mignola.

Lobster Johnson appeared, drawn by the able Jason Armstrong, and was one of the best things from the year. Needless to say, a comic about Lobster Johnson serving justice in the 1930s against Nazis and demonic wizards and floating bodiless brains and giant Gorilla Men was made just for me, lovingly.

Not much is known about Lobster Johnson, save what we've seen in his few (memorable) appearances over the years. It turns out the Claw enjoys what many justice-servers enjoyed, such as the Shadow and the Spider: namely, opening up on criminals with his double .45s and then burning his Claw insignia into their foreheads after they are dead, as a warning to others.

Lobster Johnson takes other inspiration from the Pulps, having his own team of secret operatives who assist him in his work. They are all hardened men, all as unknown as the Lobster, except for their shared obsession to rid the world of evil.

There's nothing not to love about Lobster Johnson. He wears awesome goggles all of the time, which look like the bulbous eyes of the sea creature he's named after. He seems to have only his purpose for characterization. He's uncompromisingly vicious, but not inhuman. He's not superhuman, either, as he's often injured and, according to Mignola's history, he's deader than sh*t. He does pop up as a ghost quite often, doing something nutty like shooting phantom bullets into a comatose woman before dissipating. The woman soon awoke from her trance, but how the Claw serves within that world, officially, is anyone's guess.

What's important is that readers seem rightfully entranced by Lobster Johnson, and his mystery, which I hope Mignola never spoils. I don't really want to know who Lobster Johnson was, or what he did. Certainly hints and allusions are welcome, but I prefer the mystery. Really, the purpose of Lobster Johnson is to hammer the anvil of justice. We are compelled to follow his thirst for justice, as if he was starving before our eyes. We want him to have justice, then, to survive and enthrall us more. Hopefully we will be seeing more of the Claw very, very soon.