I have been working on my collection of pulp fanzines, and in addition to the several long-running ones are some shorter-lived ones.
An interesting group of fanzines was done by Joseph Lewandowski (1922-1987), who I long assumed was related to Frank Lewandowski who did the long-running Nemesis Inc. (which I am working on a posting on). He’s not, though he contributed several works there.
Sadly, I only have his last fanzine, Pulpette, which had two issues, in 1981 and ’83, and was also included in the Pulp Era Amateur Press Society mailings. (The second was included in #11 in April 1990. Was the first? Strange it appeared after Joseph passed.)
His first fanzine was Echoes From the Pulps, which ran four issues from 1978 to ’81. After that Joseph started Pulpette with one issue of Cloak and Pistol in between the two issues of Pulpette. I’m not sure why the change in names, but as Pulpette mainly had fiction, that might have been the reason.
Both issues of Pulpette are 8.5- by 11-inches in size. However, #1 is single sheets of paper, stapled along the edge, whereas #2 is printed offset and saddle stitched. #1 has a color cover, on textured paper (not sure the right term for it), and #2 has no color.
Pulpette #1 (January 1981) had just an editorial, a fiction piece by Joseph titled “A Nose for Trouble,” and a collection of black-and-white artwork from the pulps. This artwork is from the spicy and weird menace pulps and is a bit risque. His story is an attempt to do a hard-boiled detective tale, as if written by a pulp writer but doing so today.
Pulpette #2 (December 1983) again has an editorial, with a fiction piece by Joseph, though this time under a pseudonym, “These Van.” It’s titled “The Phallus That Failed,” and is a risque pulp hero tale (with new artwork in the same style), that also tries to be a Wold Newton tale. It was promised back in Echoes from the Pulps #2 to have Captain Satan, The Skipper, and G-8 in the real story that was turned into Farmer’s Adventure of the Peerless Peer. Here these characters were renamed.
They are an interesting pair of zines. From the second issue it seems he intended to do at least two more, but it never happened. No idea why. He had plans for further fiction pieces, but no idea if he ever did them. “In the Service of the Czar” would appear in Nemesis Inc #24 in 1987.
I know Joseph contributed in other fanzines, but not sure for how long. I do hope to get his prior zines, but haven’t had much luck. Pulpette had only about a hundred copies of each made.
