EDitorial Comments

PulpFest 2012 Report

Let me say at the outset that my opinion of the recently concluded PulpFest might be colored by the fact that I was a committee member and therefore saw the convention through different eyes. Having said that, I think the event was quite successful.

The last time I checked — early Sunday morning — paid attendance stood at 374, down from last year by almost exactly 10 percent. However, I nonetheless consider this a triumph for several reasons. First, the economy stinks and many people have been forced to cut back on discretionary spending. Second, the price of gas has spiked in the last few weeks, hurting people making long vacation drives. Third, the high cost of downtown parking likely accounted for the decline in curiosity seekers who typically visit us for a day as a result of the local publicity we generate. And fourth, in moving from the Ramada Plaza to the Hyatt Regency we increased the per-night price of a sleeping room by $30. That alone might have been a deal-breaker for some people; at the very least, a three-night stay meant something less than a hundred dollars of disposable income for each person — money that could have gone toward dealer-room purchases. Frankly, under these circumstances I was delighted to see us attract as many folks as we did.

The Hyatt Regency and its adjoining convention facilities were more than adequate for our needs, and even with the increased costs it proved a much better venue than the increasingly lackluster Ramada Plaza. The number and proximity of eateries was a definite plus, with sandwich places in the downstairs Food Court sufficing for quick lunches and numerous restaurants within walking distance providing a plethora of acceptable options for more leisurely dining in the evening hours.

Among the (very) few complaints I heard was that the massive ballroom we selected for our dealers lacked bright lighting, and I have to agree.  When you’re inspecting old books and magazines priced at hundreds of dollars, you want all the light you can get.

Our programming room, which housed the auction, presentations, panel discussions, and film screenings, was extremely spacious and could have handled a hundred or more people than we had. It’s nice to know that our new digs will allow us room for growth when (or if) the economy improves.

As usual, our programming was quite well received. While we were scheduling the various events, I somehow managed to overlook the fact that I would probably be exhausted when I arrived at the hotel on Thursday after ten hours of driving. So it might not have been a great idea to volunteer for not one but two Thursday-evening presentations, the second closing out the night’s activities. Early on Garyn Roberts and I discussed the “Golden Age” of John W. Campbell’s Astounding Science Fiction, the leading SF pulp. Then, following two more events, I came back to deliver a paper on the making of New Adventures of Tarzan, the 1935 serial produced by Edgar Rice Burroughs himself. This was followed by a screening of the extra-long first chapter, and by the time it finished unspooling I was looking for toothpicks to prop my eyelids open.

L to R: Henry Franke, Garyn Roberts, Ed Hulse, Will Murray, Steve Haffner.

The next night we had several excellent presentations. In keeping with our theme — a 100th-birthday tribute to ERB and his best-known creations, Tarzan and John Carter — Guest of Honor Mike Resnick described his early fascination with Burroughs and his determination to write novels in the ERB vein. Although I missed his talk, I’m told it went over very well. Later in the evening I moderated a panel on the competing visions of Mars offered by popular pulp writers. Burroughs Bibliophile treasurer Henry Franke weighed in on ERB, novelist and historian Will Murray covered Burroughs imitator Otis Adelbert Kline, Stephen Haffner talked about Planet Stories favorite Leigh Brackett, and Garyn Roberts shared his views on Ray Bradbury and the Martian Chronicles stories.

The Munsey Award is given annually to someone who has significantly increased awareness and preservation of pulp fiction. This year’s deserving recipient was Matt Moring, whose Altus Press has published dozens of high-quality pulp reprint volumes in a few short years. The first Rusty Hevelin Service Award (named after the long-time steward of Pulpcon, the original gathering of pulp collectors) was presented to PulpFest chairman Jack Cullers, whose tireless efforts on behalf of our little community should have been recognized long ago. Both winners are eminently worthy and deserve thanks as well as congratulations.

2011 winner Anthony Tollin (L) presents 2012 award to Matt Moring.

The Saturday-night auction was dominated by items from the collection of Al Tonik, one of the most enthusiastic pulp fans the hobby has ever known. Although Al sold most of his pulp magazines years ago, he kept hundreds of reference books and reprint volumes, some of which are now quite rare and collectable. Among the goodies fetching nose-bleed prices was his set of PEAPS mailings. For those of you who don’t know, PEAPS stands for The Pulp Era Amateur Press Society, and its quarterly mailings — sometimes running to several hundred pages — are comprised of often lengthy contributions by members. PEAPSters tend to be research-minded folks happy to share their discoveries with fellow members, and many a Blood ‘n’ Thunder article has been inspired by or reprinted from those thick, info-packed mailings. Al’s complete set, which filled many bulging boxes, sold for an astonishing $1450.

Well over 300 lots were disposed of, making this year’s auction a real endurance contest. I gave up shortly before 1 a.m. with about 50 lots to go.

In a major blow to Murania Press, my printer failed to make timely delivery of the anticipated copies of Blood ‘n’ Thunder’s Tenth Anniversary Issue, which I had promised to debut at the show. A snafu at the plant caused the shipment to go out one day late, and without the critical “For Saturday Delivery” instructions for UPS. Therefore, the shipment arrived on Monday — too late to do me any good. However, I’ve now got those copies in hand and have just started shipping them to subscribers.

I did, however, receive the promised copies of Pirates of the Pines, Volume Three in Murania’s Classic Pulp Reprints series, and I sold every single one of them. In fact, I wish now I’d ordered a dozen more for the show; probably could have sold most of those too.

Overall I thought this year’s PulpFest was a great show. There’s always apprehension when a convention committee moves to a new venue; dealing with each hotel presents its own challenges and you feel as though you’re reinventing the wheel. But as near as I can tell, our move to the Hyatt Regency went about as smoothly as we could have hoped for.

Veteran pulp collector Walker Martin (L) with Murania's Ed Hulse.

Believe it or not, the PulpFest committee is already kicking around themes for next year’s confab, and before much longer you can expect to see a big announcement both here and on the PulpFest site.

Gone fishing….

…fishing for old pulp magazines, that is. Once a collector, always a collector.

I leave 6 a.m. tomorrow morning for Columbus, Ohio and the fourth annual PulpFest, about which you’ve read much here. If you’re within driving distance of Columbus there’s still time for you to join us, and a gala weekend it promises to be!  Even though the convention doesn’t officially open until Friday morning, tomorrow night we’re hosting a meet-and-greet for early arrivals followed by several hours of programming, including some featuring yours truly, Mister Murania. I’ll be discussing John W. Campbell’s editorial tenure at Astounding Stories (later Astounding Science Fiction and Analog).

Which reminds me: If you do plan on joining us, don’t forget that all Murania Press books will be available at 20 percent off list price, for the duration of the show but only as long as supplies last.

I’ll be back in a week with a PulpFest report!

PulpFest, Here We Come!

I haven’t done much blogging lately because I’ve been sweating over the new Murania Press publications that will formally debut at next week’s PulpFest in Columbus, Ohio. Just today UPS delivered my first copies of A. M. Chisholm’s Pirates of the Pines, the third volume in Murania’s Classic Pulp Reprints series. It looks pretty darn good and I suspect it’ll do well. Now I’m waiting on the jumbo-sized (162 pages) Tenth Anniversary issue of Blood ‘n’ Thunder, which will be unveiled at the convention and shipped to subscribers later this month, after I get back from Ohio and decompress.

The Best of Blood ‘n’ Thunder: Volume Two and the reprint edition of H. Bedford-Jones’s The Wilderness Trail are both in production, as is the long-awaited Distressed Damsels and Masked Marauders, but unfortunately I won’t have copies in hand for PulpFest. No matter how much time I allot to these projects, it’s never quite enough. And as all of us know, real life has a way of inserting itself unexpectedly to up-end our plans and louse up our schedules.

Nonetheless, things are progressing satisfactorily for Murania Press and the coming months will see not only increased productivity but more aggressive marketing and promotion of the entire line. Meanwhile, I look forward to seeing many of you — some for the first time — next week at PulpFest. Believe it or not, as recently as a few days ago we were still getting space inquiries from dealers, and our hotel  sales rep reports that room reservations are still coming in as well. It looks like this year’s show will be a humdinger!

I’ll leave you today with a scan of the anniversary issue’s cover. See (some of) you next week!

Special Murania Press Sale At PulpFest: 20% Off All Books, New And Old!

PulpFest is coming up fast now: The convention begins just two weeks from today. We’ve packed the dealers room — in fact, we’re still getting requests for tables — and registrations are on a par with last year’s record-breaking total. Moreover, if previous years are any guide, our 2012 show will have a sizable number of first-timers…relative newbies to the hobby.

With this in mind, I have decided to offer — at PulpFest, while supplies last, and only for the duration of the show — a 20 percent discount on all Murania Press books, past and present. This offer does not extend to issues of Blood ‘n’ Thunder, mind you, just such Murania books as The Best of Blood ‘n’ Thunder, Blood ‘n’ Thunder’s Cliffhanger Classics, and the Classic Pulp Reprints line: Gordon Young’s Savages, J. Allan Dunn’s Barehanded Castaways, and A. M. Chisholm’s Pirates of the Pines. And while The Blood ‘n’ Thunder Guide to Collecting Pulps is technically out of print, I have reclaimed a few more copies from one of our dealers. So I’ll have that one on hand in Columbus as well.

For those of you whose math skills are a little rusty, the $19.95 books will be discounted to $16.00, and the $24.95 books to $20.00. I’ve rounded off the discount prices to avoid having to weigh myself down with nickels and pennies.

I realize all too well that money is tight and PulpFest attendees might not be able to afford all the books they’d like to buy at the convention. Those of us on the committee are grateful that these folks are supporting us in our first year at a new and more expensive venue, and I felt that offering a discount was the least I could do to say thanks. But remember, this is not an extended sale or a permanent price reduction; the 20 percent discount extends only for the duration of the con.

Dark Knight, Meet The Spider.

This probably deserves a longer post than I have time to write, but I wanted to make the point and see if anybody agrees with me.  So if you want to comment, please do it here (rather than on Facebook) and maybe we can get a good discussion going.

This afternoon I saw The Dark Knight Rises. Now, I quit reading Batman comics in the late Sixties, so I missed all that Ras Al Ghul stuff.  When Frank Miller’s Dark Knight graphic novel came out, in the Eighties. I flipped through it in a comic shop but hated the look of it and therefore never bought a copy. So I should state at the outset that I have no idea to what extent, if any, Dark Knight Rises reflects the progression of Batman comics since I stopped reading them.

What struck me about the movie was how closely Christopher Nolan’s Batman mirrors the Spider of pulp-magazine fame. The similarities are striking: Both men suffer the tortures of the damned — mentally, physically and emotionally — in their struggles against crime. (Nolan’s Batman has been dark all along, but never so much, it seems to me, as in this final installment of the trilogy.) Both have messianic complexes. Both suffer crises of conscience. Both finish their adventures more dead than alive. Both occasionally yield to an inner rage they keep under wraps most of the time. Both are hunted by the police yet go out of their way to help and protect cops, even at risk of their own lives. And both overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles and eventually triumph over their adversaries  by sheer force of will.

Now, maybe I’ve missed something. Maybe DC’s four-color Batman has moved a lot closer to Popular Publications’ pulp Spider. But I kinda doubt it. You tell me, though. Has the Caped Crusader been reading Richard Wentworth’s mail, or what? The similarity between Christopher Nolan’s vision and Norvell Page’s vision seems too pronounced to be accidental. Does anybody out there know if Nolan is a Spider fan? I’d be very surprised if he wasn’t. Or maybe Batman comics simply have more depth than they did back in the “New Look” era.

Rafael De Soto Pulp-Cover Recreation To Be Auctioned At PulpFest

About a month back, PulpFest 2012 was very proud to announce that at this year’s convention we’d be auctioning the substantial collection of longtime fan and scholar Al Tonik — pulps, paperbacks, hardcovers, dime novels, comic books, fanzines, and, particularly, reference books.

One of the last remaining PulpFest members who actually bought rough-paper mags off the newsstands, Al spent several decades researching many aspects of pulp history. In the course of his work, he amassed a huge library of reference material that he used to cross-reference the wealth of knowledge he uncovered through his friendships with veteran pulpsters.

As we began to catalog Al’s vast holdings, it became increasingly apparent that we would have difficulty getting through everything in time for this year’s convention. Given his standing in the pulp community, we wanted to do justice to his collection. With that in mind, PulpFest has decided to take a couple of years to work through the Tonik archives. Therefore, only a portion of his holdings — albeit a substantial one —  will be put up for bid at our 2012 Saturday Night Auction.

In order to thank the PulpFest membership for their patience, Al has decided to sell one of his most prized possessions — a recreation of the November 1934 front cover art to The Phantom Detective, painted by the original artist, Rafael de Soto. A former pulp-convention guest himself, de Soto began to sell cover art to pulp magazines in 1932, contributing to such magazines as Ace G-Man, All Detective, Argosy, Black Mask, Captain Zero, Champion Sports, Dime Detective, Dime Mystery, Five-Novels Monthly, Popular Detective, The Spider, Terror Tales, Thrilling Detective, Walt Coburn’s Western Magazine, War Stories, Western Aces, and Wild West Weekly in addition to Phantom Detective. He produced pulp covers into the 1950s.

De Soto also contributed cover art and interior illustrations to such “slick” magazines  as Colliers, Redbook, Ladies Home Journal, and The Saturday Evening Post, as well as to men’s adventure magazines such as Battle Cry, For Men Only, and True Adventure. He also produced many paperback book covers for Ace, Bantam, Dell, Lion, Signet, and Pocket Books beginning in the fifties.

According to pulp-art historian David Saunders, Al Tonik was one of several collectors who personally commissioned de Soto to paint recreations of his classic pulp covers. “I had to think long and hard to pick the one image I would most like to have!” Al recalled. He chose the November 1934 cover for The Phantom Detective.

Al’s DeSoto painting is a real gem, as you can see here. It will go up for sale on Saturday, August 11th at PulpFest 2012. Register now for a chance to bid on this fabulous piece of pulp memorabilia.

BLOOD ‘N’ THUNDER’s Upcoming Tenth Anniversary Issue

After returning from Winston-Salem last Sunday, your humble correspondent required several days to recuperate from sleep deprivation and horrendous drives in both directions. But time marches on, or waits for no man, or something like that, so I need to get my butt back into gear — especially because, among other things, I’m moving at month’s end and have thus far packed less than half of my stuff.

That leaves me little time to complete the jumbo Tenth Anniversary issue of Blood ‘n’ Thunder, which will debut early next month at PulpFest and ship to subscribers soon thereafter. Fortunately, I’d made good progress before taking a break to attend the Western Film Fair (which, by the way, was great fun), and this weekend I hope to wrap up work on two feature articles that need polishing before I give the entire editorial package to Chris Kalb for layout.

It’s hard to believe that ten years have passed since Mark Trost and I introduced BnT at the 2002 Pulpcon in Dayton, Ohio.  Our first issue — 36 saddle-stitched pages printed at the local Kinko’s — was received warmly enough, although I remember being slightly disappointed that we didn’t sell more copies at the convention. But as good word-of-mouth spread I received a steady flow of orders via e-mail and snail-mail, and by year’s end the 300-copy first printing was nearly sold out. I went into second printings on Number One and the next two issues as well, increasing my print run to 500 copies with Number Four.

So here we are in 2012, and BnT is still going strong. Each issue now runs to well over a hundred pages, but the Tenth Anniversary special will be more than half again as large. I expect it to come in at 160 pages or thereabouts, although we won’t know for certain until layout is completed.

One of the reasons for the extra length is that I’m reprinting a complete, book-length novel of 60,000 words. I believe it to be the longest work of fiction to appear in a single issue of a fanzine. The yarn is a classic from Street & Smith’s The Popular Magazine: Francis Lynde’s “B. Typhosus Takes a Hand.” This 1922 story follows the adventures of a young man who wakes up in a Pullman car to find that he has lost his memory. In dazed condition he alights in the small city where he apparently runs a thriving business and is engaged to a wealthy, beautiful woman. Embarrassed to reveal his memory loss, the amnesiac tries to bluff his way through. In short order he is implicated in a murder and becomes the victim of a blackmail plot.

Lynde’s suspenseful tale, told in first person by the amnesiac, is remarkable for its anticipation of themes, characters, and sequences in which Cornell Woolrich would specialize some two decades after “B. Typhosus” was written. The long arm of coincidence stretches forth perhaps once too often in Lynde’s story, but the same can be said of most Woolrich yarns as well.

I toyed with the idea of publishing “B. Typhosus” as part of Murania’s Classic Pulp Reprints series but in the end decided to make it a bonus feature in BnT‘s anniversary issue. It’ll be more of a bonus for some than others: Although the jumbo-sized issue will carry a $15.95 price tag for single-copy purchasers, it’ll count as a normal-sized issue for subscribers. That alone should persuade those of you who’ve been tardy about renewing to re-up tout de suite.

The Tenth Anniversary special will also include articles on Chandu the Magician (of film and radio fame), the New Pulp movement, Wild West Weekly writer Paul S. Powers, the hardboiled fiction of Frederick Nebel, Superman’s science-fictional radio adventures, and the 1914 Perils of Pauline serial. Additionally, there’ll be a profusely illustrated report on this year’s Windy City convention and a 1940 Writer’s Digest article by SF writer Nelson Bond.

If you’re not a subscriber already, now’s the time to sign up. Just meander over to the Blood ‘n’ Thunder page and click on the Subscriptions tab.

Taking a Breather…But PulpFest Looms!

All my bags are packed, I’m ready to go. But I ain’t leavin’ on any jet plane. Nossir, I’m about to drive south to Winston-Salem, North Carolina for the Western Film Fair I mentioned here a few days ago. The show begins tomorrow afternoon and I can’t wait to unveil Blood ‘n’ Thunder’s Cliffhanger Classics and Blood ‘n’ Thunder’s Western Movie Roundup. Plus, I need a few days off. So this is the last update you’ll see for the rest of the week.

I just want to remind those of you who plan on attending PulpFest that July 15 is the deadline for booking hotel rooms at the special convention rate. I understand they’ve been moving briskly, too; the Hyatt recently informed PulpFest chairman Jack Cullers that the hotel has “shifted some inventory” to allot us more rooms than initially set aside for our group. We committee members are really excited about this year’s gathering, the first in our nifty new venue. The Hyatt Regency is an ideal convention hotel and well worth the money we’re paying, not only by virtue of its amenities but also for its proximity to a wide array of shops and restaurants in downtown Columbus.

The plethora of programming this year means we’re going to be running long all three nights, so staying at the Hyatt is the only realistic option if you don’t want to miss our late-evening sessions. So make your reservation now while you can still get the special PulpFest rate!

The Greatest Adventure Movie. Ever.

I intended today to post an update on a different topic altogether, but I’ve just finished watching — for perhaps the 30th or 40th time — my all-time favorite film, the one that satisfies me most out of the many thousands I’ve seen in 50 years as a true-blue cinephile. It still appeals to the ten-year-old boy in me, the breathless grade-schooler introduced to it back in the early Sixties.

The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) is famous for its Technicolor cinematography, but I first saw this classic in black and white on the old 21-inch Zenith television set in our New Jersey home. To say I was always movie-struck tells only half the story; I was the kind of kid who got up in the middle of the night to watch some ancient “B” mystery on the Late, Late Show. More often than not I’d fall asleep on the living-room couch, where my exasperated parents would find me the following morning. Of course, Robin Hood wasn’t a “B” movie and it wasn’t relegated to 2 a.m. airings; I remember seeing it frequently on Sunday afternoons in the Good Old Days before Cinemax, MOWs, and “reality” TV.

Errol Flynn (above, making his first appearance in the film) was one of my favorite stars. I liked him in anything from his peak period as a Warner Brothers star, even to the extent of suspending disbelief when, English accent and all, he played a cowboy in Dodge City (1939). But there was for me always something special, something magical about Robin Hood. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it then, and I’m not sure I can now.

Of course, today I can appreciate the film as one of the masterworks of Hollywood’s Golden Age. Technically, it’s beyond criticism. Aside from the obviously lavish production values — extending to the sets, costumes, and hundreds of extras — Robin Hood is superbly written, directed and acted. It won Academy Awards for Editing, Art Direction, and Original Musical Score (the latter by Erich Wolfgang Korngold and tied with Franx Waxman’s music for Bride of Frankenstein as my favorite score). It was nominated for Best Picture, losing to Frank Capra’s vastly inferior and now badly dated You Can’t Take It With You.

Judged by any objective measure, Robin Hood rates top honors. But why does it continue to hold such a strange and wonderful fascination for me? I still don’t know. It’s not just the movie’s flamboyant, devil-may-care action, which thrilled me as a kid. And it’s certainly not the romance, which I tolerated as a kid but appreciated more in later years, when I realized how gorgeous the young Olivia de Haviland (as Maid Marian) was, especially in Technicolor.

Bear in mind, I qualify as what used to be called “an old softie.” Even now, so many years later, my emotions are easily stirred when I revisit favorite films of my youth. I’ve been known to choke up a little at the sentimental ending of a 1936 Hopalong Cassidy movie, Trail Dust, and that’s not something to which a grown man can safely admit without standing a good deal of ribbing — and I have, believe me.

Robin Hood is filled with memorable moments. The first major action sequence — in which Robin impetuously barges into a banquet at the castle of his arch-enemy, Guy of Gisbourne (Basil Rathbone, in another exquisite bit of casting), and boldly challenges Prince John (Claude Rains), the would-be usurper who lusts after the throne of his missing half-brother, King Richard the Lion-Hearted — is marvelously, almost breathtakingly exciting. Even better is the lengthy Sherwood Forest interlude in which Robin and his Merry Men attacks Gisbourne’s supply train (carrying a fortune supposedly intended to ransom the imprisoned Richard from the King of Austria) as it passes through Sherwood Forest. During this part of the film Robin persuades Marian, the haughty Norman maiden, that he’s not a simple bandit. It’s difficult not to be moved by the outlaw’s declaration of love for England and his plea for tolerance and fair play from the ruling class.

And then, of course, there’s the archery tournament, staged solely to draw Robin into Gisbourne’s clutches — another masterful sequence, capped by perhaps the most famous  scene in the Robin Hood legend: that prize-winning shot in which his arrow splits one placed dead center in the target by a previous marksman. Oh, and let’s not forgot Robin’s subsequent rescue from the hangman, cleverly planned by Marian and executed by the Merry Men.

Robin’s final duel with Gisbourne, which takes place during an invasion of the castle just as the usurper is about to be crowned, still rates among the most exhilarating exhibitions of  screen swordplay, with Sir Guy getting his just desserts in suitably grisly fashion — yet another bravura sequence in a motion picture that teems with them.

No doubt about it, the parts add up to a most satisfying whole. And yet, I still can’t isolate the thing or things that make The Adventures of Robin Hood so special to me. Earlier this evening, while channel-surfing, I came across the film on Turner Classic Movies just as the opening titles were rolling. I said to myself, “I’ll watch it for a few minutes until Flynn enters.” Then, after that scene had come and gone, I said, “I’ll watch it through the banquet sequence.” And then, “I’ll watch it through the ambush of the supply train in Sherwood.” And then…well, I wound up sitting through the whole damn movie.  A movie I own on DVD and can watch any time I want.

On an intellectual level I wish I was able to explain my love for this film. But I can’t, even though I’d like to. Yet I felt sufficiently moved to write this post and grab the DVD to pull frame captures I could use for illustrations. Robin Hood inspires me to such effort, even when I have better things to do (which, by the way, is certainly the case tonight).

I’d be interested in hearing from those of you who find yourselves similarly affected by other movies. What are they? Can you articulate what it is about them that keeps you riveted time and again?