Ed Hulse answers our “3 pulp questions” this week.
For the past 12 years, Ed has edited Blood ‘n’ Thunder, the “Journal of Adventure, Mystery and Melodrama in American Popular Culture of the Early 20th Century,” which is published quarterly. He’s also author of “The Blood ‘n’ Thunder Guide to Pulp Fiction,” a wonderful reference book for anyone wanting to learn more about the pulps. (That is the new title of the recently revised and expanded — almost double the pages — “The Blood ‘n Thunder Guide to Collecting the Pulps.”)
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3 Pulp Questions
3 Pulp Questions is an opportunity for you to get to know fellow pulp collectors a bit better and, maybe, introduce you to pulps, authors, stories or characters that you haven’t explored.[/box]
Ed publishes the classic pulp reprints through his Murania Press imprint.
As if that’s not enough to do, Ed is also on the committee that produces the annual PulpFest each summer. In 2007, Ed was the recipient of the Lamont Award at Pulpcon 26 for his exceptional work within the pulp community.
Let’s hear from Ed as he answers “3 pulp questions”:
1. How were you introduced to the pulps?
I was a fan of pulp fiction before I ever saw a pulp magazine. As a voracious reader of mystery, adventure, and science fiction, I began buying paperbacks in the early ’60s. Most of those I bought reprinted stories originally published in pulps, although I didn’t know that at the time.
Readers of this site who are too young to remember that period can only imagine the thrill of discovery we experienced regularly. In 1963, at the age of 10, I latched onto Edgar Rice Burroughs via the Ballantine reprints, then via the Ace reprints with Frazetta covers. Then came the Bantam Doc Savage reprints. I still vividly remember when and where I saw (and purchased) the just-published “The Man of Bronze.”
Around that time I also bought “Armageddon 2419 A.D.,” the Ace reprint of the Buck Rogers stories. A little later came the Lancer Conan reprints. Toward the end of the decade there were the short-lived Bantam Shadow and Berkeley Spider reprint series.
My favorite character in those years was The Shadow. Back in ’63 I was listening to the rebroadcast radio episodes syndicated by Charles Michelson, and I had seen “Late Late Show TV” broadcasts of the three Monogram Shadow movies starring Kane Richmond.
That same year, at a flea market, I found a beat-up copy of the 1935 Ideal Library hardcover reprint of “Eyes of The Shadow,” which I devoured in one sitting. The paper was so brittle that the corners snapped off as I turned every page. A year later I bought Walter Gibson‘s new novel, “Return of The Shadow,” in the original Belmont paperback edition. And a year or two after that I got the Grosset & Dunlap hardcover, “Weird Adventures of The Shadow,” as a Christmas present. Those books hooked me, even though the pulp Shadow was considerably different from the character I knew from both the radio show and Monogram movies.
The first pulp magazine I ever saw, and bought, was a warped, moisture-bloated copy of the April 1936 G-8 and His Battle Aces, which I found at the same flea market where I got “Eyes of The Shadow.” It cost me a quarter. I bought pulps fairly regularly in the early ’70s after I started working part time while attending college. Initially I collected The Shadow and various weird-menace pulps.
As an adult working full time and making decent money, I got involved in the more expensive hobby of collecting first-edition hardcover mysteries. Every now and then I purchased a pulp from the book dealers I regularly patronized. That’s how I became familiar with Black Mask, Dime Detective, Detective Fiction Weekly, et al.
Actually, though, I didn’t start collecting pulps seriously until 1995, when I attended my first Pulpcon.
2. What is your most prized pulp possession?
I’m slightly more than 70 percent complete on a 30-year (1918 to 1948) run of Adventure, the best pulp of them all. Even if I never acquired another issue, I’d treasure that group of magazines more than anything else I’ve got.
3. What overlooked (pulp magazine, story, author, character, or series) would you recommend to pulp fans and why?
With so much previously obscure pulp material now back in print, I don’t know what counts as “overlooked” anymore. A couple years ago I would have named L. Patrick Greene‘s series about The Major for Short Stories. But now that Altus Press has started reprinting the Major saga, I don’t know that it still qualifies.
Given that so much stuff from Black Mask and Dime Detective has been or soon will be reprinted, I’m surprised nobody has published a collection of D.L. Champion‘s Rex Sackler stories. The series began in 1939 with several entries in Detective Fiction Weekly and moved to Mask in 1940 after Popular Publications bought the magazine.
Sackler, a notorious cheapskate fondly known as “the parsimonious prince of penny pinchers,” is an eccentric private eye preoccupied with solving cases for wealthy clients and finding new ways to swindle employee Joey Graham out of his none-too-generous weekly salary.
It’s a fast and funny group of yarns — legitimate mysteries, but with plenty of character-driven humor.
Black Mask collectors are uniformly fond of the Sackler series, but relatively few other pulp fans seem aware of its existence. More’s the pity.
I have to agree with so much that Ed says in this article. ADVENTURE is also my favorite pulp and the Rex Sackler series is also a big favorite with me. It’s a crime that it has not been reprinted!
I want a T.T. Flynn detective collection; he was a marvelous pulp writer!
Good news for Don and other admirers of T.T. Flynn. Altus Press will soon publish MR MADDOX, Volume one by Flynn. These long detective stories star a racetrack bookie who solves murders. Introduction is by Ed Hulse.
Matt Moring over at Altus Press has been producing some great pulp reprints recently. I can’t keep up!
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Around that time I also bought “Armageddon 2419 A.D.,” the Ace reprint of the Buck Rogers stories. A little later came the Lancer Conan reprints. Toward the end of the decade there were the short-lived Bantam Shadow and Berkeley Spider reprint series.
Given that so much stuff from Black Mask and Dime Detective has been or soon will be reprinted, I’m surprised nobody has published a collection of D.L. Champion‘s Rex Sackler stories. The series began in 1939 with several entries in Detective Fiction Weekly and moved to Mask in 1940 after Popular Publications bought the magazine.
I have to agree with so much that Ed says in this article. ADVENTURE is also my favorite pulp and the Rex Sackler series is also a big favorite with me. It’s a crime that it has not been reprinted!
I want a T.T. Flynn detective collection; he was a marvelous pulp writer!
Good news for Don and other admirers of T.T. Flynn. Altus Press will soon publish MR MADDOX, Volume one by Flynn. These long detective stories star a racetrack bookie who solves murders. Introduction is by Ed Hulse.
Matt Moring over at Altus Press has been producing some great pulp reprints recently. I can’t keep up!