Pulp Heroes EXPLAINED!...John Carter, you're not so naughty now

The pulp magazines discussed previously (click here) were responsible for the sci-fi genre. Horror sci-fi, like H. P. Lovecraft, and planetary travel sci-fi, like Edgar Rice Burroughs, drew fans out of the serie noire (French crime) and the western pulps.  For novices, Edgar Rice Burroughs not only wrote something other than Tarzan,  he wrote something BETTER than Tarzan!

And now Disney is going to kiddify it! Horrified yet? You should be.

Pulp magazines were written to appeal to a more adult crowd than the comics of the same time period.  They were exploitative, bloody, scary, and full of steam! They depicted hard men, damsels in distress, and twisted criminals. Ever wonder what that family in The Thin Man was hiding behind their big fancy house and secret closet doors? Read the book! Same goes for A Princess of Mars. You'll be even more confused after watching Disney's John Carter, I'd wager.

Why?

I'll tell you!

John Carter is mysteriously immortal.  He has no idea how old he is.  One night after a strange ordeal in a cave, he finds himself pulled to the planet Mars where clothes are considered ugly and unnecessary.  Good thing he arrived there naked as the day he was born! The hulking, 15 feet tall green Martians that Burroughs describes? Disney has made into skinny, Avatar-esque creatures that wouldn't frighten the flea off a Thark's behind! And what of the beautiful Dejah Thoris, the red Martian princess that John Carter falls immediately in love with? Burroughs? Naked as a jay bird.  Disney? Wearing some silly costume only Earth girls would find appealing.

(Not to mention the description of one of the green Martian leaders could be describing Jabba the Hut, and the titles of some of the ranking Martians are suspiciously a predecessor to Jedi.)

The John Carter of Mars books, beginning with A Princess of Mars, are chock full of nakedness, gory battles, more distress than a damsel can shake a stick at, and epic adventure that could not possibly translate to Disney PG-13 (assuming it isn't going to be PG, I've been too scared to check).

When John Carter was first seen around 1918, I'm sure the nakedness of not only the bizarre green Martians, but more particularly of the hero and heroine and everyone in between, was rather shocking to a puritan America.  It is also one of the most strikingly different aspects of life on Mars.  Of course, they weren't depicted as such on the covers of the pulp magazines, but once you crack open the cover, there they were, displayed in all Edgar Rice Burroughs' beauteous descriptives.

There you are.  How can you tell that John Carter is a pulp hero? Exploitation. Damsel. Epic battles. Exotic locales. Heroic adventures. Check, check, check, check, and check.

We can expect none of the exploitation from the movie, I am certain. So, hop onto your Kindle and download A Princess of Mars for FREE, and see what all this pulp heroism is about!

Keep your eyes peeled for more PULP HEROES...EXPLAINED!

Pulp Fiction Unpacked! Part 1

And I don’t mean the movie Pulp Fiction. If you need someone to explain that to you, then you may be of too sensitive a constitution to get into the deep end of the pulp pool!


I mean the genre that created genres, defined men, and gave evil a face.

Emerging from the frivolous dime novels of the last half of the 18th century, pulp magazines opened the wide world to the average Joe.

History
There assuredly are factors that contribute to the popularity of the pulp magazines in their hay day that go beyond the inexpensive cover price. For one thing, in the years following the civil war, elementary and secondary school enrollment for African Americans increased dramatically. By 1880, around 35% of black youth were registered in school, compared with 10% in 1870. Even into the 1920s the school enrollment rate was at its highest for all races of children in America. Government attention was also focused on education, with the first annual report of the Office of Education in 1869. The report focused on informing congress yearly the condition and progress of American education. During the 1940s, an increase in higher education began to push others to continue at least through high school when the trend had been a completion of education in the 8th grade.

So it’s easy to see that the whole attitude of the country toward literacy and education of all people had taken a swift kick in the pants.

In 1870, 20% of Americans age 14 and over were illiterate. By 1920, the number had dropped to 6%. And with this new voracious appetite for knowledge came what I’d like to think was dissatisfaction with their mundane existence. After all, dissatisfaction is from whence comes the best invention.

The pulp business

The new educated masses had jobs which meant they wanted things. They were tied down to what they now realized were boring existences. Enter the story writer. Of course, no one could afford a $12 paperback in those times, so crafty publishers took the cheapest bits of paper leftovers, paid writers barely enough to keep themselves in typewriter ink, and the pulp magazine was born.

The new bourgeois of literacy, with ten cents to spare, converged on the magazine racks with a vengeance. Big bosomed damsels, square-jawed gangsters, grinning heroes, mammoth-sized tigers, and haberdashered aliens. Inside those colorful covers were three or four tickets to other worlds.

Whatever your taste, the pulp publishers would pay someone peanuts to write to you. There were military adventures, sexy trysts, mysticism from the dark continent. And thanks to the pulp era, the science fiction and hard-boiled detective genres facilitated the births of generations of geeks!

H. P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard and the Weird Tales magazine brought unknowable creatures to life. Robert Heinlein, Issac Asimov, and L. Ron Hubbard ushered in an era of exploration beyond our Earthly shores. While back in deepest Africa, Tarzan was being adopted by apes.

And if you think that Trekkies invented the fan convention, think again! Long before mere humans were learning proper Klingon, pulp fans in the 1960s were organizing conventions.

The end?

World War II brought not only fear of real world terrors, but rationings of everything, including paper. Thus began the demise of the pulp genre. But was it the end?

From the murky depths of the Internet, a rise in the popularity of pulp has been seen. Despite the encroaching terror of the viral video, the Kryptonite of Tila Tequila, and the staggering atrocities of bulletin boards, real heroes reemerge in the form of Dashiell Hammett on ebook, and reprinting of 1930s magazines so that all may acquire the knowledge that Doc Savage was the first man to have a Fortress of Solitude!

Has pulp fiction seen it’s end?

I think not, Drummond. I believe that we shall meet again!

...end of part one.  Tune in next time for Pulp Heroes...EXPLAINED!