A long-running and well-done pulp fanzine I collect is John Gunnison‘s Pulp Collector. Published for 24 issues over a 10-year period, 1985-95, it was one of the better-produced zines of the time. I think only Pulp Vault had a higher print quality. I still need five issues to complete my set, but wanted to put out an overview of it.
Pulp Collector was published in an 8.5-inch by 11-inch format, always perfect bound, and professionally printed. The quality of the layout improved over the years due to improvements in desktop publishing. The magazine was black and white, and reprinted some pulp covers. Most covers were by Frank Hamilton. One issue (#19) had random color pulp cover reprints glued to the cover. Consumer color printing was improving at the time, and I believe Gunnison was selling color reprints of pulp covers for a while.
Issue #22 went with a slick cover with two colors, and #23 had red added. The last issue, #24, went to a full-color cover, but it was also in a digest format that matched John’s reprint fanzine, Pulp Review. Later Pulp Review would be renamed High Adventure, and the print quality of that improved. Around that time his company was renamed from Pulp Collector Press to Adventure House.
I have no idea why Pulp Collector ended. It was nominally a quarterly publication, though a few years only two or three issues came out. But for its last three years, only one issue per year came out (#22 through #24).
While there were no set series or departments, we did see several items that appeared in many issues, such as showing a rare cover, covers that are reused (way more than you’d think), or best and worse covers, and articles by many of the main pulp researchers. Link Hullar had an “Odds & Ends” article, but I’m not sure if it was in every issue. Some fiction was reprinted. So here are some of the highlights.
• #1 (Spring 1985) gives us several interesting articles. Robert Sampson looks at the reprint pulp 5 Detective Novels. Will Murray goes over long-running crime series Big Nose Serrano. Nick Carr examines Don Diavolo. Link Hullar and Murray check out Street & Smith’s The Skipper.
• #2 (Fall ’85) is one that I don’t have, but it features a nice Pete Rice cover by Hamilton.
• #3 (Winter ’86) is also one that I don’t have, but it has a cover tribute to Walter Gibson, who had passed away recently. So I assume this was a tribute issue.
• #4 (Spring ’86) gives us an article by J. Randolph Cox on his meeting with Walter Gibson. Rick Lai looks at Doc Savage‘s possible involvement in the “winter war” between Finland and the Soviet Union during WWII. Nick Carr looks at Stanley Kirpatrick from The Spider series (who is featured on the cover by Hamilton). We get an index for Triple Detective. Gary Lovisi looks at Weird Tales in paperback, both reprint and the paperback version. And Donald Hamilton gives the first of a two-part article on the villain pulps.
• #5 (Summer ’86) Nick Carr looks at pulp jungle hero Ka-Zar (published by Martin Goodman, who used him at Timely Comics). Will Murray continues his examination of Big Nose Serrano. Rick Lai looks at Chang Li, the sinister secret society in the Wu Fang series.
• #6 (Fall ’86) is a Walter Baumhofer tribute issue. Best known for the covers for Doc Savage and Pete Rice, he also did work for Popular Publications and other magazines. We get articles by Michael Avallone, Howard Hopkins, Link Hullar, Frank Hamilton, Robert Sampson, Henry Steeger (via Gunnison), Will Murray, and Al Tonik. There is also art by Hamilton, and both interior and cover art by Baumhofer.
• #7 (Winter ’87) includes Rick Lai, who takes a look at connections between King Kong and the Peter the Brazen series. Will Murray takes a look at where Doc’s aides were over time. Nick Carr wonders how many people are killed in pulp hero series, and so takes a look at one issue of several series to find out. Doc ghost-busting story, “Pure Evil,” is the focus of Howard Hopkin’s work. We also get a tribute article on John D. MacDonald.
• #8 (Spring ’87) again includes Lai, who looks at the possible real-world inspiration for Señor Steel, the villain of the Doc story, “Freckled Shark.” The bizarre sf-air war series Terrance X. O’Leary’s War Birds is the focus of one article. In the first of a two-part article, Nick Carr looks at several Western pulp characters. Al Tonik has an interview with Western pulp author Walter A. Tompkins. Villain pulp series Dr. Yen Sin is the focus of another article.
• #9 (Summer ’87) has Al Tonik giving us an interview with pulp artist Jerome Rozin. We also get a selection of his covers. Link Hullar checks out the men’s adventure magazines that followed the pulps. Robert Sampson looks at an early pulp adventuress Janie Frete, who appeared in six serials in All-Story Weekly from 1916 to 1920.
• #10 (Fall ’87) features an article that looks at the “yellow menace” theme in some pulp stories. Robert Sampson’s work on The Spider had come out, and we get an article looking at the work that went into this. Will Murray looks at S&S’s The Whisperer. Nick Carr takes a look at two lesser-known pulp characters who ran in the back of other pulp hero magazines: Captain John Vedders of Military Intelligence and The Red Finger, both in the back of Operator #5. Gary Lovisi has an interesting short article comparing pulps to paperbacks.
• #11 (Winter ’88) returns with Rick Lai giving us a couple of articles. One looks at Nee-sa, the female villain who assisted Wu Fang in the last four stories of that series, and the second is the first part of two looking at Peter the Brazen. Nick Carr looks at the pulp stories of Sheena, Queen of the Jungle. For fiction, we get a paraphrasing of a story from Railroad Stories.
• #12 (Summer ’88) brings a look by Nick Carr at the Masked Rider. John Gunnison has an article on strange courtroom suicides (!). And Will Murray wonders if the pulp hero revival is over. Is he right?
• #13 (Fall ’88), sadly, is another issue I don’t have.
• #14 (Winter ’89) again features Nick Carr who looks at the impact of the “yellow menace” villains on the pulps. We get a reprint from a 1931 book Tong Wars. Robert Sampson checks out Singapore Sammy, a character created by the author of Peter the Brazen. Rick Lai looks at the bride of Shiwan Khan. Paul Orban, an illustrator for Doc Savage magazine, is given a brief portfolio.
• #15 (Spring ’89) is a Norman Saunders tribute issue, with four of his covers reprinted on the cover. We get articles and tributes of him from Henry Steeger, Will Murray, Gary Lovisi, Robert Sampson, and Al Tonik. There’s also a portfolio of his work. Other articles include one on Zorro by Nick Carr and another reprint from Tong War.
• #16 (Summer ’89) has two articles by Nick Carr: One where he is looking for the pulp works by his relative John Dickinson Carr, and a second one on western heroes. John Gunnison looks at sinister surgeons in the shudder and weird menace pulps. Rick Lai looks at the early adventures of Peter the Brazen. Robert Sampson looks at the long-running history of Terrance O’Leary in the first of two articles. There are several articles on artists this time, including the beginning of a checklist of covers by Hubert Rogers, Walter Baumhofer, and Rafael deSoto.
• #17 (Winter ’90) looks at the 50 rarest pulps in one article. Nick Carr looks at pulp characters who seemed to have died but came back. Jerry Page looks at the use of house names.
• #18 (Summer ’90) has Nick Carr kicking things off with close calls for The Spider. Don Hutchison looks at the various new pulp heroes from Thrilling in the 1940s. Gunnison looks at the use of skulls/skeletons on pulp covers. Jerry Page reveals interesting information on the career of pulp author Ray Cummings (Girl in the Golden Atom). Rick Lai wonders about the inspirations for Robert E. Howard‘s Skull-Face. And we get a reprint of a Dan Turner story, one of the earliest.
• #19 (Winter ’91) looks at 50 more rare pulps, while another article looks at short-lived, but well-loved ones. And Gunnison looks at rare pulps. Will Murray looks at The Black Bat and his origin in two articles. We look at another The Whisperer, who appeared in Ace’s 10 Detective Aces for one story (another promised). Dr. Yen Sin is checked out by Nick Carr. Rick Lai looks at Robert E. Howard’s character from the spicy pulps: Wild Bill Clanton. And we get a reprint of the last Dan Turner story to see print.
• #20 (Spring ’91) is a Henry Steeger tribute issue, with a cover by Frank Hamilton showing Harry and The Spider. We get articles on Steeger by Gunnison, Michael Avallone, Nick Carr, Tom Johnson, Gary Lovisi, Don Hutchison, Robert Sampson, Al Tonik, and others. We also got a gallery of Popular Publications covers.
• #21 (Fall ’91) is another one I’m missing.
• #22 (Spring ’92) has Michael Avallone telling of his interactions with pulp collector Andrew Biegel Jr. Robert Sampson provides a long article on Illustrated Detective Magazine, a “slick” pulp sold only at Woolworth’s. Doc villain John Sunlight is the subject of Will Murray’s article. Nick Carr checks out Captain V. Al Tonik looks at British pulp The Thriller, and includes an index for it.
• #23 (Summer ’93) is the last one I’m missing.
• #24 (Winter ’94) features Will Murray checking out another Doc villain, Cadwiller Olden. We get reports on the recent Pulpcon “A” and Pulpcon #23. Another article checks out pulp villain The Scorpion. Nick Carr looks at hard-to-find Western pulps, and Al Tonik looks at the authors of Western series from Standard/Thrilling. We get an interesting article on the controversy around the Doc Savage story, “The Man Who Shook the Earth,” where it was claimed Dent plagiarized the story from one by Murray Leinster.
While John has put out other books over the years, even a too-short series focused on individual pulp artists, I wish he had continued Pulp Collector as some kind of book series, or as an annual. And I wish that some of the articles here would be collected for posterity. Let’s not lose the scholarship of folks like Nick Carr, Al Tonik, Link Hullar, and others.
