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.