I had recently posted on a fanzine titled bare*bones, which is devoted to “unearthing vintage, forgotten, and overlooked horror/mystery/sci-fi/western/weird film – paperbacks – comics – pulp fiction – video.” I reviewed the first eight issues, though as this blog is focused on pulp and pulp fiction, that was my focus with those issues. Now as there are more issues, here are the next four issues, plus The Best of volume as well which reprints from the original five issues.
Again, for many, there is probably other material included in this zine that will be of interest, but as this blog is focused on pulp, that is what I will also focus on. There are reviews of movies, books, comics, and more that you may enjoy. Each issue also has an in-depth look at different crime digests.
As noted, bare*bones has an interesting history, as this is a revival of this fanzine. The folks behind it started with The Scream Factory, which focused on all aspects of horror, for 20 issues from 1988 to 1997. This was then replaced by the first version of bare*bones, with its wider coverage, from 1997 to 2001 with five issues (four digests and a double-sized magazine). You can get back issues. And there are a pair of “best of” volumes for these two older mags.
Issue #9 (Winter 2022): This one gives us an article on A.E. van Vogt‘s The Voyage of the Space Beagle, and the movies it spawned (including Alien). And if you’re not aware, the book is based on four stories first published in the pulps. We also get articles on Eurospy films, a guide to Sure-Fire Detective Stories, and the works of John Wyndham.
Issue #10 (Spring 2022): This time gives us an interesting article on the influence of the movie What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), which was based on a work by Henry Farrell (1920-2006). And if you say, so what? Farrell was really Charles F. Myers who wrote in the pulps, most well known for the series Toffee, recently reprinted in hardback by Steeger Books. We also get articles on Star Wars Extended Universe fiction and Marvel’s black&-white magazine Monsters Unleashed.
Issue #11 (Summer 2022): The only thing close to pulps this time is the article on Two-Fisted Detective Stories from the 1960s. There are also articles on the Quiller spy novels and a pair of early sf TV series.
Issue #12 (Fall 2022): This one gives us a very nice article on Edgar Rice Burroughs‘s Caspak trilogy of stories, and the two movie adaptions of them. The only thing that would have completed this article would have been the inclusion of the comics. John D. MacDonald is best known for his Travis McGee series, but he started his career writing in the pulps. But this article is on four of his early paperback novels. There are also articles on Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine and Marvel’s black-&-white magazine Vampire Tales.
Now, one thing I liked with the earlier issues is they seem to settle on alternating with black and white covers with an insert of a color image on the front cover. But then they messed this up by giving both #11 and 12 a black background. I don’t know why.
Moving on, there is also bare*bones: The Best of volume, which came out in 2019. It collects 20 articles from the original five issues, along with an index of those issues. While there is nothing explicitly pulp, there are several that are related.
Richard S. Prather‘s Shell Scott is a hard-boiled detective in paperbacks from the 1950s and ’60s. I only know of him as some want to play the game that maybe he’s Doc Savage‘s son. Here we get an interview with Prather from some time toward the end of his life. Cornell Woolrich is a pulp detective writer, but here we get an article on his six “Black” novels (so-called as all have “black” in their titles) that came out in the 1940s outside of the pulps.
We get an article/index on a pair of digest magazines from the 1950s: Saturn Science Fiction, which later became Web Detective. There is a nice article on Karl Edward Wagner‘s Kane, a sword-&-sorcery character clearly inspired by the works of Robert E. Howard. There are others here you may enjoy, such as one on the Dark Shadows‘s novels (now being reprinted), and others on Richard Stark and Trevanian.
As noted, all of these are available on Amazon and they do a pretty good job of coming out on a regular basis. Check out this fanzine if you haven’t already.
