In the first of the Blood ‘n’ Thunder Presents series for 2018 we get the fourth volume: Pulpourri. Unlike the previous volumes, this is all new, with a wide-range of articles from several pulp researchers and historians. Along with the articles are an array of interior artwork, covers, rare photos and movie posters.
Editor Ed Hulse kicks off the volume with a cover article on The Bat, a work by mystery writer Mary Roberts Rinehart. It started as her 1907 pulp yarn The Circular Staircase, which appeared in All-Story. She then turned it into a mystery-comedy play, The Bat, in 1920 that was actually a Broadway hit. It was then turned into a successful silent movie in 1926, then redone as a pulp story in Flynn’s Weekly (though apparently ghost written by another). It was later remade as The Bat Whispers in 1930, then as a Vincent Price movie in 1959 and a couple of TV movies as well. It’s also considered one of the influences on The Batman. I wasn’t aware of this work, so this was very interesting and educational.
Jeffrey Shanks provides an article that is taken from a scholarly article he wrote. The focus is on “colonialism” in pulp magazines, especially the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs, H.P. Lovecraft, and Robert E. Howard.
The Suicide Squad was a series from Ace G-Man Stories about a trio of FBI agents. Dave Smith gives us an overview of the series and characters. Altus Press has reprinted the whole series in four volumes.
Laurie Powers provides an overview of Street & Smith’s female editor, Daisy Bacon. Some may know her as being the final editor of The Shadow and Doc Savage, who actually restored the magazines to pulp-size and style. But she made her fame as editor of Love Story Magazine, a position she held for over 20 years. Bold Venture Press has reprinted her work Love Story Writer.
Pulp historian Will Murray provides us a pair of articles, both about spicy pulp authors. One gives us look at Robert Maxwell, who is probably best known for producing The Adventures of Superman radio and TV shows. Less known is that he also wrote heavily for the various spicy pulps from Harry Donenfeld, who owned both DC Comics as well as spicy pulp publisher Trojan/Culture. The second reveals the spicy pulp works of Robert C. Blackmon, whose writing there was also under other names.
Rick Lai, another pulp researcher, provides a big work looking at the ancient religion and mythology that influenced the works of Robert E. Howard. Along with this work is a facsimile reprint of Howard’s “Black Talons,” a tale from December 1933 Strange Detective Stories.
In addition to that work, we get a weird mystery reprint from Arthur J. Burks from Mystery Tales, December 1939. A nonfiction reprint is from the 1951 Writer’s Year Book, giving a “‘”doom and gloom”‘” outlook on the pulp magazine field.
Moving over to pulp-inspired movies/serials are a couple of works.
Ed Hulse provides an article on the 1938 Republic serial, Hawk of the Wilderness, which adapts William L. Chester’s classic work from Blue Book magazine of a white boy, Kioga, raised in the wilderness in a similar mold as Tarzan, though this wilderness was a lost world in the Arctic. The author wrote three sequels that would later be reprinted in paperback, and wrote nothing more in the pulps. And the second is an interesting look, with pictures, into an aborted 1935 film (of a planned series) that would have featured Street & Smith’s Western-pulp hero Pete Rice. Again, something I was never aware of. Apparently S&S tried to license many of their characters for radio and movies with little success apart from The Shadow.
As with the long-running Blood ‘n’ Thunder magazine, this volume of BnT Presents is another great edition. In many ways it’s the most in the style of the magazine itself. I don’t know what we’ll see next from this new series, but will be looking forward to see.
