There have been a few anthology works that have looked overall at the artwork produced for the pulps. The most recent — and I think the best — is The Art of the Pulps: An Illustrated History, edited by Doug Ellis, Ed Hulse, and the late Robert Weinberg, all of whom are long-time fans and collectors of pulp artwork.
It was published by IDW in 2017. It contains 12 chapters, each focused on a different area of the pulps and its artwork, with sections in each chapter focused on a certain theme, author, or type of character. Each of these chapters are written by different authors, all experts in that topic: Laurie Powers, Will Murray, David Saunders, and others.
As the book is all about artwork, we get lots of it. Artwork varies in size from full-page covers reproductions, down to 3- by 5-inches and a few sizes in between. And we get some interior artwork as well.
We get a forward and an intro on the birth of the pulps. Each chapter has a good write up covering that period, with excellent artwork to illustrate it. The chapters include:
- Adventure pulps, including focuses on Edgar Rice Burroughs and the covers to Adventure.
- Crime and detective pulps, with focuses on gang and hard-boiled detectives
- Western pulps, including Northwest pulps
- Aviation and war pulps, plus zeppelins and submarines.
- Sports pulps
- Love and romance pulps, with focuses on editor Daisy Bacon
- Weird menace pulps or horror pulps
- Science fiction and fantasy pulps, including Weird Tales
- Hero and villain pulps, with focuses on The Shadow and Doc Savage
- Spicy pulps
- Pulp artists, with focuses on Norman Saunders and Walter Baumhofer
- Pulp authors, with focuses on H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard
There is an afterward on the death of the pulps and the rise of paperbacks, which in the minds of many “replaced” the pulps, including having similar cover artwork
Rounding out the volume is a good index, art credits, and other acknowledgement.
I really enjoyed this book. There is so much work that I know was passed over, and there could be further examinations on various artists and areas that I think they could have doubled the size and still had to leave stuff out. Maybe a second volume? A DVD companion with more artwork? I have a few other books focused on pulp artwork, but this one is the best yet, and twice the size as any of the others that I have. So get this one.
