During the 1980s and ’90s, longtime pulp fan, collector, and historian Albert Tonik took his cassette recorder along during interviews with pulpsters and to PulpCon, the precursor to PulpFest. Those recordings — The Tonik Tapes — preserved voices and memories that might otherwise have been lost.
This is the first of several interviews from that collection to be featured on Pulp Tales.
Al Tonik received one of the pulp community’s highest honors, the Lamont Award in 1994. He passed away in 2018 at the age of 92.
In this episode, Al talks with artist Jerome Rozen about his career in the pulp magazines, which included several early covers of The Shadow Magazine. The interview was recorded on Sept. 27, 1983. 2026 marks the 95th anniversary of the debut of The Shadow Magazine. Al’s article, “In the shadow of Jerome Rozen,” based on this interview, is available at ThePulp.Net.
