Whew. It’s been a busy month.
By the time you’re reading this, this year’s issue of The Pulpster will be in the hands of the printer and being prepped for debut in a few weeks at PulpFest 2016.
I’ve got a post coming up next week on the PulpFest website giving a rundown of what’s in the zine’s 25th issue, and how you can get your copy.
As usual around this time each year, The Pulpster consumes much of my “pulp” time. But now that it’s at the printers, I can turn my attention back to ThePulp.Net and Yellowed Perils.
Now, onto some Bits of Pulp…
TIME AGAIN FOR TARZAN: Warner Bros. releases The Legend of Tarzan tomorrow. It’s the latest in a long line of Ape Man movies dating back to 1918, six years after the first Tarzan adventure was published in All-Story Magazine.
This new version stars Alexander Skarsgård in the title role, Margot Robbie as Jane Porter, Samuel L. Jackson as George Washington Williams, and Christoph Waltz as Capt. Rom.
The previews look promising, and comments by some on Facebook who have seen it have been positive. But Rotten Tomatoes gives it a meager 26 percent fresh based on (as of this writing) 31 reviews.
One of the ongoing criticisms of the film is that it’s out of step with modern sensibilities regarding Africa. Dave Schilling has a column “King of the bungle: Why Tarzan will never be OK” at The Guardian that looks at Tarzan and colonialism. And, he writes, “What people fail to realize is that these characters are intrinsically, hopelessly dated.”
Here’s another column, “Me Tarzan fan, but there aren’t many of us left as old heroes like the Lord of the Jungle and The Lone Ranger fade.” It appeared today on the New York Daily News website by Ethan Sacks. He takes a look at how Tarzan as well as other “pulp” characters have fared in the movies in recent years. Sacks tries to keep it positive.
Yes, the stories by Edgar Rice Burroughs do paint Africa and its people unflatteringly by today’s standards. But let’s hope the current film’s producers have taken steps to remedy those concerns, and that not all pulp characters are dated.
BRONZE GAZETTE, PART II: I hope you’ve received your copy of The Bronze Gazette No. 76. Mine arrived in the mail last week.
Michael Brown, our resident Pulp Super-Fan, provides a brief overview of the issue over on his blog.
And Scott Dennis Parker has a nice tribute to the fanzine at his blog, Writing from the Quadrant.
The fellows at PULPlications — Chuck Welch, Terry Allen, and Kez Wilson — have done The Bronze Gazette founder’s Howard Wright well in continuing his 25-year labor of love.
