Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, John
Carter, Ki-Gor, Tarzan, Conan, The Green Lama, The Shadow, The Spider, Lee
Falk's the Phantom, Elak, The Avenger, Domino Lady, Black Mask, Black Bat, The
Phantom Detective – the roll call of classic Pulp characters is extensive and,
to quote Mike Bullock: “Readers can find a million articles about Edgar Rice Burroughs or Lester Dent or Norman Daniels. Also,
there's no end of articles examining the stories they wrote.”
True enough.
The Pulps have a rich and varied
history and in an era when so many of those old characters are re-emerging in
pop culture, revived and revised to better suit the times, it's not enough to
look backwards.
We're seeing an incredible rebirth
of the classic characters from the old Pulps. Like Frankenstein's grisly monster
or Lovecraft's catatonic cephalopod, the old characters are not dead, they
aren't even stunned—they're alive—very much alive; well and thriving. The
forgotten heroes of yesterday are coming back with a two-fisted or two-gunned
vengeance. And they're not alone. A whole new generation of characters have
begun to make their own mark on the world. Heroes like Derrick Ferguson's Dillon , Barry Reese's
The
Rook , Tommy Hancock's The Freelancer,
Mike Bullock's Death
Angel, and more—much, much more. And that's what Pulp Magnet is all
about: The New
Pulp.
Mike and the folks at the New Pulp Fiction blog wanted
someone to go out there, find the fresh stuff, discover the New Pulp characters,
profile the New Pulp publishers, and examine the new versions and re-imaginings
of the classic Pulp characters as well. This column is devoted to delving deep
into the dark heart of the unknown depths of the New Pulp and revealing all the
lurid details and dangerous secrets I can uncover in the course of my
investigations and interviews. Armed only with some weird little mystic magnet I
found in the pocket of a second-hand trenchcoat and a secret decoder ring that
might not have belonged to John Dee, I'm setting off into the shadowy alleys and
by-ways of the New Pulp looking for the new stuff, the cool stuff, the Good
Stuff. So pull up a chair, pour yourself a drink, and let's see what the Pulp
Magnet can attract.
