"When You Think "Pulp", Is This What You Mean?" Topic

This stuff here?

link

Dan

Bodice-ripping done right, back in the day.

That lead guy in the first cover is actually Race Bannon, with some jungle berries smeared on. "Don't look, Johnny!" [bad guys eaten by hungry crocodiles]

Kyotebluer,

Any cool links to those covers?

Thanks,

Dan

thats the stuffs!

If you like 60's b movie stuff

Ah, Al's Barber Shop!

Those are the "sweats". Mostly short stories, while the pulps were novels. Also, they follow the Noir convention of avoiding supervillians like Fu Manchu or Johnny Sunlight. They could have supervixens, however, while pulp tended to eschew sex. Even the Spicy pulps were pretty mild. Don't get too hung up on classifications, if you want to game them, use pulp rules. This is unlike Noir which should be more "realistic".

Yeah, pretty much.

Two fisted action… Think Indiana Jones, the Shadow and Doc Savage.

Hmmm – well, One Union Soldier and 100 Rebel Girls is not exactly what I think of as pulp – but a lot of the rest qualifies!

As noted, this is an example of one of the "Sweats," but is absolutely NOT "Pulp."

"Pulps" got the name in original reference to the paper they were printed on. "Sweats" were one genre (Men's Adventure) that evolved into the "slicks," printed on paper we now experience in news magazines and the like.

Also, the "Sweats" featured stories that were supposedly based on actual events, not outright fiction: No serial Villains, no Heroes in weird costumes.

One of the reasons "Pulps" began to pass in the late 40's and early 50's was not only TV, but the fact that the kids who read them in the 20's and 30's went off to war and came back from overseas with a wider sense of the real world. It was harder to get worked up about "The Purple Emperor" after having experienced war against an all too real "Fuehrer."

The only "Pulp" connection about these magazines is in the lurid (and even more highly promising) cover art. The more realistic artistic style--always with high action content--was in some ways a logical evolution from the old covers. Both were intended to grab a man's attention on the newstands and insure that sale.

Words have meanings, and stretching, pulling, and blurring them does not generate more light.

So, "No," this is not what I think is the meaning of "Pulp."

TVAG

"'I Survived the Ritual of the Seven Naked Virgins'" – but did he really want to survive?

I like the cover defending the barricades in the gold miners town for a game concept.

Oh, ya and all the cheese cake woman are great too.

These images aren't particularly 'Pulp' to my eye… they're more 'He Man Adventure Tales'… which I suppose could be one genre of 'Pulp'… but the allusion to various 'true' stories puts them closer to the 'True Detective' magazines, IMO.

I'd never heard the term 'Sweats' before… so I learned something new today.

Korak – son of Tarzan. Perfect.

No.

They do not seem representative of the breadth of "Pulp Gaming" or "Pulp Literature."

>>They do not seem representative of the breadth of "Pulp Gaming" or "Pulp Literature."<<

They are from a different era. "Sweat" magazines picked up where "pulp" magazines left off in the mid 1950's. They are considerably more sexually oriented than the "pulps" as our society was becoming more permissive. There were no continuing characters or continuing heroes. They were, for the most part, trashy and you would only occasionally see a well known writer contributing to them. The only thing good about them, IMHO, were the covers. The great Norm Saunders, for instance, was a heavy contributer to the "sweats"