Pulp Power

Pulp Power

by Neil McGinness

Abrams, July 2022

 

'Pulp Power' was published by Abrams in July, 2022. At that time, it was something I was interested in, but it also had a cover price of $65, which made it a little over my budget.

 

I was fortunate to find a brand-new copy last month at Ollie's Bargain Outlet, for only $17. 

Ollie's does have a large section of overstock books that the company purchases by the pallet-load; these overstocks are not remainders, and thus have no stripes or dots on their page blocks like remainders do. Whether these overstocks, such as Justin Timberlake's 2018 book 'Hindsight: & All the Things I Can't See in Front of Me,' are particularly desirable, is of course up the individual........

 

At 352 pages, measuring 13 1/4 x 10", and weighing over 5 lbs, 'Pulp Power' is a coffee-table book: formidably bound, and printed on thick paper.

As the flyer states, the book is a homage to the Street and Smith pulp magazines of the 1930s and 1940s and focuses, in particular, on the Shadow and Doc Savage, two of the best-known heroes of that era. Many of the original paintings and published magazine cover paintings of these characters, by artists such as George Rozen, Graves Gladney, and Walter Baumhofer, receive full-page presentation.

The text accompanying the illustrations is rather spare, providing vignettes of the publisher, the authors, and the contemporary impact of the pulp heroes, rather than an in-depth explication. There is a conscious effort by author McGinness to frame the content and characters of these nearly century-old media in the wider context of 20th popular culture; for example, the influence of Doc Savage on the creation of Superman by Siegel and Shuster, and of the Shadow, on Bob Kane's Batman.

I can't say that the Shadow was all that engrossing to me when I was younger and in the 1970s, reading the pulps in their paperback incarnations. It was mainly Doc Savage books that I read, and it's interesting to see the titles that were issued by Bantam Books represented here in their original appearances.

Along with reproductions of the magazine covers, the book presents a large selection of the black-and-white interior illustrations that were part and parcel of the pulps, but alas, didn't make it into the paperbacks.

While the pulp-era Shadow and Doc Savage magazines get the most prominent coverage in 'Pulp Power,' additional chapters cover the other hero pulps, such as Nick Carter, and the Avenger, issued by Street and Smith.

 

 

Then there is a chapter devoted to the reprinting of the pulps for the paperback market, starting in the 1960s on through to the 1990s. Artists such as James Bama, Jim Steranko, and George Gross are profiled. 

 

 

'Pulp Power' closes with an overview of the appearance of the pulp heroes in comic books, from the postwar era to the 2000s.

 

Who will want a copy of 'Pulp Power' ? Well, at a discounted price, it's a good acquisition for fans of the pulp heroes, as well as those with an interest in popular culture. That said, I don't see many people under 50 (?) being all that interested in spending time with a coffee table book devoted to the topic of pulp heroes. 

 

The sad truth is, the generation who experienced the heroes when they first emerged has passed on, and those of us who embraced the heroes as part of the paperback reprint boom of the sixties and seventies, are aging out in our own turn. Perhaps the best way to approach 'Pulp Power' is as a legacy tome, one that hopefully will endure in the coming decades and keep the flag waving for a little longer.

Book Review: Moon of Ice

May is 'Third Reich Triumphant' Month at the PorPor Books Blog

Book Review: 'Moon of Ice' by Brad Linaweaver

0 / 5 Stars

 

'Moon of Ice' was issued by Tor Books as a mass-market paperback edition (279 pp.) in April, 1993, and features cover art by Matt Stawicki.

 

The title of the novel derives from the quasi-mystical cosmological theories of the Austrian engineer Hanns Horbiger (1867 - 1931), who claimed that the moon, and the planets of the solar system, all  were composed of a sort of frozen ether that Horbiger called 'ice.' 

'Moon' first appeared as a novella in the March, 1982 issue of Amazing Science Fiction Stories. It was reprinted in the 1986 anthology 'Hitler Victorious: Eleven Stories of the German Victory in World War II.' Lineweaver expanded the novella into his 1988 novel. 

'Moon of Ice' deals with the misadventures of the Joseph Goebbels and his daughter Hilda (b. 1934), in a world where, instead of the Goebbels family committing suicide in May 1945, amidst the defeat of Nazi Germany, Hitler Wins in 1944 (due to developing the atomic bomb and V-3 rockets).

 

After Hitler nukes London and deters Operation Overlord, the war ends with an uneasy truce between the Roosevelt administration and the Fuhrer. The US proceeds to defeat Japan, while Germany assumes control of all of Europe through to the Ural mountains, beyond which is a wildland occupied by Soviet partisans, German deserters, bandits, and other malcontents.

 

The opening chapters of the novel are set in New York City in 1975. Hilda, having emerged as an anti-Nazi agitator, is publishing the diary of her late father Joseph, these diaries promising to expose appalling acts (i..e, the Holocaust) committed by the Hitler regime. Hilda is at ease with discrediting her father and the Reich, having become - in her words - an 'anarchist' hostile to all forms of 'statism.'

 

The narrative largely is taken up with excerpts from the diary of Goebbels, written by him during the mid-1960s, following the death of Hitler of old age in April, 1965. The passing of his friend and commander sparks a ruminative mood in Goebbels; in the diary, he expatiates on how the Third Reich triumphed, and how it is to be maintained for the desired thousand years. Linaweaver provides exhaustive discourses on Goebbels' political and philosophical theories, and these were imposed on the German populace via demagoguery. These chapters of the novel are dull and plodding.

 

Later on in the novel the plot merges with that of the novella, with the merge point introducing some improbable, pulp-style events involving mad scientists, castles and dungeons, conspiracies between competing Nazi factions, super-soldiers, occult phenomena, monsters, and unholy religious ceremonies. I won't disclose spoilers, save to say that as goofy as this stuff was, I found it a welcome respite from the static quality of the initial two-thirds of the novel.

 

The closing chapters of the novel move from the pulpy to the cringe, when, in the alternate world of 'Moon of Ice,' Hilda Goebbels and her publisher attend the 1984 PAXCON science fiction convention in South Africa. In attendance are none other than the dynamic personality and science fiction fan Forry Ackerman, accompanied his wife Mathilda 'Wendayne' Wahrman. 

 

[Ackerman is among the sci-fi authors and editors listed in Linaweaver's Acknowledgements.]

 

This sort of clumsy toadying, when combined with a lackadaisical narrative devoid of any momentum, means that 'Moon of Ice' gets a Zero Star Rating. Stay away from this novel !

Heavy Metal May 1979

Heavy Metal

May, 1979

 

May, 1979, and atop the Billboard Hot 200 chart for albums sits the Doobie Brothers with Minute by Minute. Fast rising, and soon to take over the top slot, is Supertramp's Breakfast in America. Also in the top five is Spirits Having Flown by the Bee Gees; little did anyone know that it would be the last time a Bee Gees LP ever would top the charts.........

I have gone to Gordon's Cigar Store with my hard-earned cash and picked up the May issue of Heavy Metal magazine. This is a good issue. The front cover, 'The Wizard of Anharitte,' is by UK artist Peter Jones, and the back cover, a glowing fantasy by Clyde Caldwell, titled 'Centaur's Idol.'

 

Lots of quirky material inside, material best taken in with the accompaniment of herbal substances.

While Moebius continues to contribute 'Airtight Garage,' frustratingly, Sean Kelly and Julie Simmons insist on parceling it out in very brief (i.e., two- and three-page) installments. 

Also presented in an installment is part 4 of the novel 'Starcrown,' by John Pocsik. While it got a nice treatment from artists like Gil Kane, 'Starcrown' never advanced beyond a limited serialization in Heavy Metal.

 

Perhaps the major feature in this May issue is the first installment of a serialization of the opening chapter (i.e., 16 pages) of the graphic novel accompanying the upcoming film Alien. The graphic novel, by Walt Simonson, was the first such publication ever to appear on the New York Times bestseller list for paperbacks.

Also noteworthy were some original pieces, such as 'Night Angel,' by Paul Abrams, the continuation of the 'New Tales of the Arabian Nights,' by Richard Corben, and a retro-style adventure, starring a comely female: '8 Bells; Amora,' by Grey Morrow. All good stuff !

 

 

 

The late Al Sarrantonio contributes 'Roger in the Womb,' a three-page story about a most unusual fetus. It's humorous, but also with a rather offbeat, disconcerting note at the ending. 

One of the more interesting pieces in this May issue is a black-and-white comic by Ben Katchor, titled 'A Proposed Architect.' Katchor, who would go on to produce comics and graphic novels featuring a Jewish urbanite named Julius Knipl, focuses on cityscapes and their buildings. In 'Architect,' there are no tits and no ass (rather unusual for Heavy Metal). Still, it succeeds as a memorable excursion into the surreal.

 

 

 

 

Book review: Fatherland

 May is 'Third Reich Triumphant' Month at the PorPor Books Blog

Book Review: 'Fatherland' by Robert Harris

3 / 5 Stars

'Fatherland' first was published in hardcover in 1992. This Harper Paperbacks edition (380 pp.) was issued in May, 1993. 

UK author Robert Harris (b. 1957) has published a number of novels in the thriller and mystery genres, such as 'The Ghost Writer' (aka 'The Ghost') which was made into a 2010 feature film starring Ewan McGregor. 'Munich' (2017) and 'V2' (2020) are historical adventures centering on the European theater of World War Two. 'The Second Sleep' (2021) is set in a future, post-apocalyptic Britain and thus qualifies as science fiction.

In 'Fatherland,' Germany has won the Second World War by defeating Russia in 1943, the UK a year later. After devastating Japan with the A-Bomb, in 1946 the US is obliged to make peace with Germany when Hitler flies a V3 rocket over New York City, demonstrating the Third Reich's ability to strike at America from afar and the reality of mutual deterrence.

It's now April, 1964, and the only territory in Europe still resisting the Nazis is eastern Russia, where partisans, covertly supported by the US, wage a war of attrition that is draining manpower and money from the otherwise triumphant Reich. Hitler's seventy-five birthday is approaching, and the nationwide celebration will be centered in the massive Chancellery complex in downtown Berlin. Lending considerable importance to the celebration is the thawing of relations between the Reich, and the US and its President, Joseph P. Kennedy.

The protagonist of 'Fatherland' is Xavier March, a stolid, but intelligent, man in his early 40s, a veteran of the U-Boat campaign, and the Battle of the Atlantic. March is an officer in the Berlin Kriminalpolizei, or the branch of the government devoted to civilian police affairs. As the novel opens, March has been called to the grounds of the Schwanenwerder causeway in suburban Berlin. A cadet at the Sepp Dietrich Academy, out for an early morning jog, has found an elderly man's corpse in the shallow waters of the shore of Lake Havel.

March is cynical - dangerously so -  about the Reich and its transformation of German society, but he is a dedicated investigator, so he is conscientious in pursuing what seems to be an unremarkable missing persons case. But it turns out that the deceased man is a former high-ranking official in the Nazi party, someone who was involved in the party from its earliest days. A man with connections to other, very influential, people.

Soon enough, there are orders from the Kriminalpolizei bureaucracy that the upper echelons of the Gestapo will handle the investigation themselves. But March is stubborn, choosing to ignore the red flags out of detestation for the Gestapo general, the loathsome Odile Globocnik. Staying one step ahead of Globocnik, March discovers that the dead man was involved in a criminal enterprise that, should word of it be exposed to the public, greatly would embarrass the Party, and the Fuhrer, on the eve of the latter's birthday.

Aided by an American journalist named Charlotte Maguire, who is in Berlin as a representative of World European Features to cover the celebration of the Fuhrer's birthday, March digs even deeper into the workings of the inner circle of the Reich. But time is running out for March, and if he fails, any chance for ending the Nazi domination of Europe fails with him.......

'Fatherland' is a Three-Star novel. It starts off as a very readable, well-plotted mystery, with a believable portrayal of Berlin as the capital of a Nazi empire, its streets overwhelmed by massive Brutalist architecture, and the heraldry of the Reich. Author Harris also is good at depicting a society steeped in the doctrines of National Socialism, where the state surveils its citizens and shows no hesitation in crushing dissent.

Where the book falters is in its Big Revelation, which I suspect most, if not all, readers will see coming well in advance. As a result, as the second half of the novel ladles out one divulgence after another, these inevitably have a perfunctory quality.

As well, the denouement, which goes on for over 50 pages, generates suspense by having the lead characters make stupid decisions, never a good tactic in composing a storyline. By the time I got to the closing chapters a tiredness was permeating the narrative, and I found the conclusion more than a little predictable.

Summing up, 'Fatherland' is a competent, is not overly imaginative, 'Hitler Wins' novel. 

May is 'Third Reich Triumphant' month

 May is 'Third Reich Triumphant' Month at the PorPor Books Blog

Here at the PorPor Books Blog, occasionally we like to devote a month to providing reviews and profiles of books that deal with a particular topic. For May 2025, we're going to focus on science fiction and alternate history works that posit a victory by the Third Reich in the Second World War. 

(I had to be careful in phrasing this topic, so as to avoid being flagged for promoting 'Nazi' or 'extremist' content online)

It's been 80 years since May, 1945, when the Reich came crashing down in the ruins of Berlin. However, what if the Reich had avoided destruction, and persevered ?

We'll be looking at an anthology of 'Hitler Wins' stories, as well as three novels that present a world in which the Third Reich holds sway over Europe. All works designed to shock, appall, and provoke !

Get ready for a triumphant Third Reich, all month here at the PorPor Books Blog ! 

Recycling visual motifs

Recycling Visual Motifs

 

So, I was poking through my archive of paperback book cover scans and I selected 'Serpent's Reach,' a 1980 DAW Book by C. J. Cherryh, for my sidebar Image Gadget. After posting it, something about the cover art, by David Mattingly, tugged at the back of my brain. Where had I previously seen that visual motif of the background image of the big, bug eyes ?

 

 

The answer ? On the cover of 'Mad Eyes,' Doc Savage novel No. 34, from 1969. The cover art is of course by the incomparable James Bama. Looks like Mattingly consciously evoked it for his DAW cover, 11 years later. I guess if you're going to recycle a visual motif, one from Bama is as good as anything you'll find.........

Book Review: War is Heaven

Book Review: 'War is Heaven' by D. Keith Mano

1 / 5 Stars

 

David Keith Mano (1942 - 2016) wrote a number of novels in the 1970s, most of which received critical acclaim. Mano was a religious man and his novels often featured religious themes, particularly in regard to Christianity (Mano was an Episcopalian).

 

His 1973 novel 'The Bridge' is frank science fiction. My review of that novel is here.

 

'War is Heaven' first was published in hardcover in 1970. This mass market paperback edition (254 pp.) was published by Avon Books in July, 1971. 

I picked up 'War is Heaven' thinking it was an allegorical treatment of the Vietnam war, which by 1970 was very unpopular in the US. But 'War is Heaven' is not an allegorical treatment of the Vietnam war, but in fact, an examination of morality and Christianity in the context of the sort of 'dirty war' that Vietnam exemplified.

 

The novel takes place in the near future, in a fictional Central American country called Camaguay. A Marxist rebellion, led by so-called 'Riffs,' has broken out in Camaguay, threatening the rule of right-wing dictator General Amayo, and the welfare of the American corporations that operate plantations in the countryside. The American government has dispatched Green Beret-style troops, known as the Irregular Command (IC), to lead teams of Camaguayan soldiers in a counterinsurgency campaign against the Riffs.

Corpsman Andrew Jones, a young black man, has just joined the IC team. A Navy corpsman, Jones had no intention of serving in the ground war, but drawing a short straw has led him to his assignment with the IC. Filled with self-pity and bitterness over his bad luck, Jones loathes the terrain and the assignment.

 

Also members of the IC are Lieutenant Storch, who essentially has abdicated command to his Sergeant, Clarence Hook. 

 

A man with the appearance and demeanor of an Old Testament prophet, Hook has acquired something of a legendary aura in the eyes of the Camaguayan infantry accompanying the Americans. Hook has seemingly miraculous luck; bullet miss him, while his own fire is lethal. Hook has an uncanny ability to evade booby traps and ambushes and even the pestilential insects of the jungle are unable to prey on him.

 

Then there are the enlisted men: the diminutive, but intense, former minor league pitcher, Horace Baxter; the repulsive Joe Garbini; Tom Hall, who increasingly is mentally unbalanced due to the knowledge that back in the states, his wife is cheating on him; and Lancelot Falk, who has joined the IC in an effort to live up to the example set by his brother Clay, a hero who died in Vietnam. 

 

Early in the novel the IC and their Camaguayan charges set off on a lengthy walk into the interior of the country; at the journey's completion lies a rendezvous with an allied force.

 

Save for some too-brief moments of combat action, the narrative is occupied with depicting, in labored fashion, the various psychological, moral, and emotional travails of the American participants. There is much 'telling,' and limited 'showing.' Sergeant Hook, being a devout Christian, serves as a conduit through which the author can address the conundrum of how a military man can reconcile the moral dilemma of killing other men, with adhering to a religion that espouses peace and nonviolence. 

 

In a manner similar to that of Priest, the protagonist of 'The Bridge,' Hook's journey through the violent, but colorful, landscape of Central America is a kind of extreme pilgrimage, designed to test a man's ability to maintain his moral compass when pitted against amoral antagonists.

 

The closing chapters of the novel revolve around the themes of physical pain and whether this is to be embraced in holiness, as in emulating Jesus Christ's torment on the cross. A putative war novel is an awkward vehicle for addressing these issues: I finished 'War is Heaven' thinking it a misfire both as a antiwar novel, and as an exegesis on religious belief in wartime. This novel is for Mano completists only.

At the library sale April 2025

At the Library Sale

April 2025

On a mild Spring day earlier this month, I made my biannual pilgrimage to the weeklong library book sale. As always, it was very well-attended, with folks coming in not just for books, but for large displays of puzzles, board games, CDs, and LPs. The children's book selection is a particular draw, as they have a large number of tables set out, piled over with books. 

For my own part, I was able to get a set of 'Hellboy and the BPRD' graphic novels for a very reasonable price. I also go some sci-fi novels, and a Young Adult drama, 'Run Softly, Go Fast,' from 1970 with (I believe) James Bama cover art.

 

 

 

Rounding things out, I got some 'Able Team' men's adventure novels, for a buck each. I am not familiar with these novels, but over at the 'Glorious Trash' blog, these seem to be well regarded.......

 

 

 

You never know what you'll find, at the Library Sale !