• When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

The Pulp Appreciation Thread

Started by ArAich,

43 posts in this topic

RedFury

RedFury

Posted
Posted

Just to clear up a few misconceptions, here is the story with Buck Rogers and Amazing Stories. I'm doing this from memory as I'm at work and my copies are at home, but I think I am remembering correctly.

 

Buck Rogers First appearance anywhere was in a story called "Armageddon 2419 AD" by Phillip Francis Nowlan in the August 1928 issue of Amazing Stories. In the story, he is called Anthony Rogers. The image on the cover, while it certainly looks like Buck Rogers, is not. A second Buck Rogers story appeared in the March 1929 Amazing Stories, titled "Airlords of Han." These were his only two pulp appearances. Buck rogers became a comic strip later in 1929, and that's where it really became famous.

 

Todd

Link to comment
Share on other sites
RedFury

RedFury

Posted
Posted

I threw a few scans up on my webpage to share with the unititiated the wonder of pulps. Hope you like them!

 

Todd

 

Amazing Stories - August 1928 - 1st appearance of Buck Rogers. The cover is not related to the Buck Rogers story.

 

Amazing Stories - March 1929 - 2nd appearance of Buck Rogers. This cover is from the Buck Rogers story.

 

Amazing Stories - October 1941 - John Carter of Mars story by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Great cover by J. Allen St. John. You can really see the influence he had on Frank Frazetta and Al Williamson.

 

The Avenger #1 - Sept 1939 - 1st appearance of the Avenger. Supposedly by the same author who wrote Doc Savage, but "Kenneth Robeson" was a house pseudonym used by Lester Dent on Doc Savage and Paul Ernst on The Avenger. The Avenger later appeared in DC comics titled Justice, Inc.

 

Planet Stories #1 - Nov 1939 - Pre-cursor to Planet Comics, the 1st science fiction comic. Published by the same publisher, Fiction House.

 

Planet Stories - Winter 1949 - great GGA cover!

 

Startling Stories - Jan 1950 - Great cover! Kind of reminds you of Startling Comics #49 doesn't it?

 

Unknown #1 - March 1939 - early pulp of the supernatural genre.

 

Weird Tales - Dec 1932 - 1st appearance of Conan the Barbarian by Robert E. Howard. The story he appears in is called The Phoenix on the Sword. The cover painting, which is another nice example of J. Allen St. John's work, refers to a different story.

 

Weird Tales - Feb 1938 - great nude cover by Margaret Brundage!

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites
hammer-migration

hammer-migration

Posted
Posted

Thank you Todd for taking the time! Great covers. The more you study pulp cover art (mostly OIL paintings!), the more you realize where the roots of mostly ALL the Golden age artists and their characters influence emanates from. There's VERY little content in Golden Age Comics that didn't have direct predecessors from pulps dating 1912 (The first appearance of Tarzan in All Story and the "Action 1" of Pulps.... one ARCHIVED copy auctioned for $17,000+ a few years ago) to 1940!!!

Link to comment
Share on other sites
ArAich

ArAich

Posted
  • Author
Posted

Hey Todd.....thanks for the scans....I have only had a chance to look at the Planet #1 as I am dial-up here at work...I will scope out the rest at home tonight..

 

That Planet #1 is sweet and is on my want list....especially in that (or better) condition... grin.gif

Link to comment
Share on other sites
RedFury

RedFury

Posted
Posted

Thanks Hammer. I guess it's just not widely known that so many of our fictional pop culture icons originated in pulps. Off the top of my head we've got Tarzan, John Carter of Mars, Zorro, H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulu mythos, Solomon Kane, King Kull, Bran Mak Morn, Conan the Barbarian, The Shadow, The Spider, Doc Savage and even Horatio Hornblower. And almost every major sci-fi writer of the first half of the 20th century got their start in pulps.

 

The influence of pulp heroes on early comic book heroes is undeniable. The most obvious is the influence of the Zorro, the Black Bat, the Spider and the Shadow on Batman. Less well know, but eerie in their similarities, is the relationship between Doc Savage and Superman:

1. Both are named Clark

2. Supes is the Man of Steel, Doc is the Man of Bronze

3. Both have a secret base in the Arctic called The Fortress of Solitude

4. Both were "superhuman" of sorts, both physically and intellectually.

5. Both have superhuman female cousins.

 

But of all the early super-heroes, the one I've always would ahve been more at home in the pulps than the comics was the Sandman (the fedora and gas-mask costume, not the later purple and yellow costume). The whole tone of the Sandman was straight out of the Shadow!

Link to comment
Share on other sites
PovertyRow

PovertyRow

Posted
Posted

The influence of pulp heroes on early comic book heroes is undeniable.

 

These are really sweet, Red. Many thanks for posting and do post more. The covers also go into the sci-fi/horror/adventure comics as well. I especially love the way Fiction House's Planet is so much like their Planet Comics with the immodestly clad fighting women, and the way some of the horrific covers are so much like my beloved precdoe horror. Not to mention Xela (Schomburg) covers.

 

Do you (or any pulp collectors) know if there has been any Edgar Church type pulp collections that have become well known amoung collectors?

 

Also, do you know any pulp price guides?

 

Also, how about pulp message boards or newsgroups or other type resources. These books have been pulling at me for some time and it is time for me to allocate about 25% of my comic book spoending to pulps.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
hammer-migration

hammer-migration

Posted
Posted

EXTREMELY influential Frank R. Paul cover painting. After this issue hit the newsstands, most people that reported seeing "unidentified objects in the sky", described them as being saucer-shaped, rather than the usual descriptions of "dirigible-shaped" UFOs, which were NOT a new phenomenon starting in 1947/8, but had been "seen" for millenia.

 

Please page down to the second image of the following link:

 

Science Wonder Stories 1929

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Go to topic listing