Just prior to the Windy City Pulp and Paper Convention, we got the annual issue of Blood ‘n’ Thunder: the Blood ‘n’ Thunder 2026 Special Edition, from Ed Hulse’s Murania Press.
This is the sixth such annual edition, going back to 2021, but this fanzine goes back 24 years. I’ve reviewed the prior volumes here.
We get 270 pages, a little shorter than last year’s, with 11 articles on pulp and vintage movies. We get several top contributors this time, along with some first-timers. Some of these works are reprints, but most people have probably not seen these. And there are many illustrations of pulp covers and movie photos.
Will Murray has five articles this issue. First up is an article on the mutual admiration that Dashiell Hammett and Lester Dent had for each other, though they never met or even corresponded. Then he takes a look at the pulp career of Preston Grady, a somewhat unknown pulp author with high hopes that never materialized. You get the feeling that the pulps were full of people who saw them as a stepping stone to the slicks or other better markets, but never were successful enough in the pulps to make the transition.
The Great Depression had a big effect on the pulps, which is the subject of his next article. While I knew some of this, I wasn’t aware of the huge impact it had. It seems the pulps never truly recovered, as they would later face paper shortages and competition from new media. He then looks at the emergence of comics and their impact on the pulps. I didn’t realize that comics basically took away the juvenile readership of the pulps, as I didn’t feel there was a big audience for them. As someone who is both a pulp fan and a comicbook fan, this was a fun read. Finally, we learn of attempts to cross over between pulp genres, but they were seldom successful. You wish some of these had been more successful. All of these articles were great, as usual.
We get “Gilbert’s Corner” by Gilbert Colon, which looks at finding references to pulps in other media. First, in particular, a pair of movies on HBO: Cast a Deadly Spell (1991) and Witch Hunt (1994), which cast H.P. Lovecraft as an L.A. private eye, giving us a hard-boiled detective in a world where magic is real. While I’ve heard of these movies, I have yet to see them, and I’m not sure if I want to.
Next is Hammett (1982), a biopic of Dashiell Hammett. Finally, we get a bizarre alternate history novel, A Man Lies Dreaming (2014) by Lavie Tidhar, which finds Adolf Hitler as a down-and-out PI in London after not becoming chancellor of Germany.
We get an overview of the career of L.P. Holmes (1895-1988), who mainly wrote Western fiction, by Lucian Corlan. While not a Western fan, I found this article interesting, and Holmes did write other pulp fiction. Checking Amazon, I did find that some of his Westerns are still available.
Mike Chomko looks at magazine publisher Bernarr Macfadden and his pulp Ghost Stories. Macfadden was a leading figure in the world of “physical culture” at the time and published several magazines. He would get into pulp magazines, and one of the unique ones he did was Ghost Stories, which started in 1926. We learn about the many pulpsters who contributed to Ghost Stories, including Robert E. Howard.
Buck Rogers was an early multimedia success, going from a pulp story to a comic strip and from there to various books, a radio show, and a movie serial. Matthew Bradley covers all of these, including several I wasn’t aware of. Don’t worry if you’re not up on Buck Rogers, as we get a detailed synopsis of the two original pulp stories and the first set of comic strip stories to set things down.
From editor/publisher Ed Hulse, we get two articles. One is on Ruth Roland, who was the star of many silent-movie serials, and there are several pictures from those serials. The other is on Unknown, the classic, if short-lived, fantasy pulp magazine from Street & Smith, edited by John W. Campbell. Unknown lasted for five years, from 1939 to 1943, though this article focuses on its first year. I wonder if the others will be covered in future issues.
As always, it’s a great collection of articles. I look forward to next year’s volume, which may sadly be the last one.
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