In 2010, a New Pulp publisher appeared called Pro Se Productions, or Pro Se Press.
Headed by Tommy Hancock, who did the short-loved Pulp Ark show in Arkansas, it started with a trio of New Pulp magazines: Fantasy and Fear, Peculiar Adventures, and Masked Gun Mystery. They only lasted two or three issues, and production design did improve. Then we got Yesteryear. And then the move was more toward books and collections than magazines.
Design production also improved from those original magazine. Pro Se created a “New Pulp” logo, which they made available to other publishers to use as well, which was great. One thing I see is that most of the New Pulp publishers will work with each other, and you’ll see the same creators working with several companies.
Since then, they has put out a wide range of New Pulps. Yes, they do various New Pulp heroes. Barry Reese brought over his characters, such as The Rook, who would be renamed The Peregrine. But he created several new characters like Lazarus Gray, most tied to the shared location of the Sovereign City Project. Derrick Ferguson would later bring over Dillon. And we’d get others like The Silver Manticore, The Black Centipede, Pulpette, and more.
But we will also get action, adventure, mystery, horror, and other genres.
They created various imprints. For certain authors, like Reese and Ferguson, they got their own imprints. Others created include Young Pulp, Single Shots (short works in epub format), Holmes Apocrypha (new Sherlock Holmes works), and others. Pulp Obscura would give us new stories of classic characters, usually ones being reprinted by Steeger Books.
Of all the New Pulp publishers out there, Pro Se seems the one to take risks with new types of works, and while I might not be interested in everything they do, I do have to admire them for trying a wide range of works.
I have several of its works in my collection and have reviewed them here, and I’m always keeping an eye out for more from Pro Se.
