‘The Pulp Magazine Scrapbook’

The Pulp Magazine Scrapbook is an interesting volume by Wooda “Nick” Carr published by Wild Cat Books in 2007 following The Pulp Hero and Master of the Pulps by Carr they also published. As the title suggests, this is a scrapbook of “covers, letters, and characters” gathered by Carr.

Originally done as two “volumes” and made available to a few people in photocopy form, this book collects a wide array of letters from pulp authors, editors, and publishers collected by Carr from the ’40s to the ’80s. These letters are reproduced as photocopies, most typed though a few are handwritten. They are largely correspondence to Carr, many giving information and answers that he was looking for.

The letters are written by an almost who’s who of the pulp world, especially of those still living into the ’70s and ’80s. We have letters from Hugh B. Cave, Robert Sidney Bowen (air pulp author and creator of Dusty Ayres), John Jakes, Norm Saunders, Wyatt Blassingame, Harry Steeger, Judson P. Philips, Manly Wade Wellman, Joe Archibald (air pulp author and creator of Phineas Pinkham), Ryerson Johnson, Arch Whitehouse (air pulp author and creator of The Griffon and several others), Ken Crossen (creator of Green Lama), Norman Daniels (creator of a lot of characters at Thrilling), and many others.

I thought it was interesting that in many of the letters from the ’70s mentioned Carr’s quest to fine Emile Tepperman. I assume he was never successful. Some pulp authors just kind of disappeared. I noted that some of the later letters from Harry Steeger were under the letter head of “Steeco Publications.” These were written after he had sold off Popular in 1972. But did Steeco actually publish anything?

Adding to the letters are “covers and characters.” These are reproductions of pulp covers, sadly in black and white, and sadly murky photocopies. The rest were reproductions of the spot art of various characters from the interior of the pulps, as well as several photos.

This is a great volume of work. I wish it was still in print. Someone should reprint it, hopefully with better reproduction, especially of the artwork. Maybe re-arrange the letters chronologically, with an index to make it easier to find information. There is a lot of good information in this material.