‘The Pulpster’ #34

Today begins PulpFest 2025, and we have The Pulpster #34, the convention book. This one comes in at 60 pages.

Also, this will be my third year attending PulpFest, and my first getting something into The Pulpster.

This time, the focus is on pulp villains as well as the “masters of blood and thunder” fiction. And this year’s PulpFest is also including ERBFest, FarmerCon, and Doc Con. It’s been almost a decade since there has been a Doc Con. So it should be a great time.

For our pulp villains, we get four articles.

It has always surprised me that despite the success of Fu Manchu and Fantômas, the villain pulps were never very successful. First up, pulp historian Don Hutchison looks at 1935, when we would get our first pulp magazine starring a villain: Doctor Death from Dell Publications. Written by Harold Ward, Doctor Death was a more over-the-top villain than the ones who had previously starred in their own pulp series. This would lead to a few more pulp villain series.

Next, I have an article on those various pulp series that starred villains, including the two Doctor Deaths, Doctor Satan, The Octopus, The Scorpion, and more. Will Murray takes a deeper dive into Doctor Death, who will be appearing in an upcoming new Secret Agent X novel from Murray coming out at PulpFest, which will have a few other heroes helping out.

And Craig McDonald looks at the two villains that faced off against The Shadow four times: Shiwan Khan and Benedict Stark. Most people act almost like Shiwan Khan was the only supervillain The Shadow went up against more than once. His Moriarty, so to speak. Benedict Stark, the Prince of Evil, was created by Theodore Tinsley, who wrote some of The Shadow novels along with Walter Gibson. Stark is your twisted millionaire, in both mind and body, who is vengeful and sociopathic. While overshadowed by Khan, he did appear in some Shadow comics.

For our “masters of blood and thunder,” we get articles on Rafael Sabatini, Edgar Wallace, and Edgar Rice Burroughs.

While few today may know of Sabatini, they should be aware of the many swashbuckler movies based on his works: The Sea Hawk, Captain Blood, Scaramouche, and The Black Swan. Though to be honest, The Sea Hawk just used the title, the story being original. John C. Bruening gives us a great introduction to the author and his works.

Ed Hulse examines Edgar Wallace. I know of him from The Four Just Men series, one of the first about a group of vigilantes that inspired series like the Park Avenue Hunt Club. What I didn’t realize is that he was also the Edgar Wallace who created King Kong.

And Burroughs Bibliophiles editor Henry G. Franke III goes into the efforts to create a landmark for Edgar Rice Burroughs, who created so many characters like Tarzan and John Carter, on the 150th anniversary of his birth. He goes over several candidate sites.

Rounding out the issue are several other articles. We have two on female characters in the pulps. An assumption of too many people who know nothing about pulps is that they somehow lacked strong female characters. Not so. Kurt Brokaw‘s article looks at some of the tough females on several pulp covers, including some from Thrilling Detective and Dime Detective Magazine. Tony Davis looks at the female sf pulp authors and sadly shows that while the overall number of sf authors increased from the 1930s to the 1940s, the percentage of female authors declined. But it’s not clear why this was.

While we all know of Robert E. Howard through characters like Conan, his first published story was “Spear and Fang” in Weird Tales, which starred a Cro-Magnon against a Neanderthal. Jeffrey Shanks takes a closer look at this work, its author, its inspirations, and its impact on his later works.

Darrell Schweitzer provides an interview with Philip José Farmer from 1984. A long-time sf author, Farmer is well known for his works involving both Tarzan and Doc Savage. From Jen DiGiacomo, who published The Savage Society of Bronze fanzine, is a look at an early gathering of Doc Savage fans at the 1994 San Diego Comic-Con, which led to the Doc Cons.

As always, we get the “Final Chapters,” which notes the passing of several pulp-related people, including actor Ron Ely, artist Steven Fabian, author and editor Howard Andrew Jones, and others. Also noted is the ending of the Science Fiction Book Club. I remember it from decades ago and wasn’t aware it was still around.

Again, editor William Lampkin and publisher Mike Chomko have put together another great issue. I always look forward to getting these each year. Even if you aren’t able to attend PulpFest, The Pulpster is worth obtaining.