The hero Pulp was a product of the 1930s and the Great Depression. In a time when all seemed doom and gloom, it was exciting and inspiring to read about heroes who always beat the odds. With names like The Shadow, Doc Savage, The Avenger, The Spider, Operator #5, Captain Future and The Phantom Detective, you knew these weren’t your run-of-the-mill do-gooders.
The character-lead series is far older than 1930. The dime novels of America featured heroes like Buffalo Bill, Kit Carson, Frank Reade Jr. and Nick Carter. It was this last one that transitioned into a Mystery pulp called Detective Story Magazine. Pulp publishers were always looking for that quick name recognition that had sold dime novels by the thousands.
Probably the most successful of all the hero Pulps was The Shadow. He began as a mysterious voice (provided by Orson Welles) on a radio show. Slowly over time, he developed into an actual character and finally into a Pulp magazine lead in Lamont Cranston. Street & Smith was the company that got the property and hired magician Walter B. Gibson to write those hundreds of novels, sold every two weeks.
Later S&S tried to duplicate the formula with Doc Savage, written by Missourian telegraph operator and inventor, Lester Dent. The publishers found Doc sold differently, well over the month, not in crackling hot two weeks spurts. Still, Dent and his host of ghost writers, put out 181 of the short novels. Later, in the paperback era, Doc Savage would be the top dog when it came to reprint sales. Other heroes tried to duplicate Doc’s paperback appeal but failed.
Still hungry for more, S&S tried again with The Avenger, written by all-round pro, Paul Ernst. Ernst had written the Doctor Satan stories for Weird Tales a few years earlier when Farnsworth Wright wanted to compete with the Shudder Pulps. After a couple dozen monthly issues of The Avenger, the fire just wasn’t there and Richard Henry Benson got turned into a back-up feature for other magazines like Clues, written by Emile C. Tepperman.
Now all these men wrote a lot of books but none of them bore their names. The policy at Street & Smith was to use house names. (It kept the writers from asking for pay raises.) Maxwell Grant for The Shadow and Kenneth Robeson for Doc Savage and The Avenger. While this was great if the writer needed a break, a ghost could pen a novel or two, before coming back, but it also robbed them of their deserved fame.
Other publishers certainly saw what sales Street & Smith were having and many other heroes were created. Popular Publications and Harry Steeger created the World War One flyers, G8 And His Battle Aces (written by Robert J. Hogan) as well as the Shadow-like The Spider (written by Norvell W. Page), and Operator #5 (written by Fredrick C. Davis, Emile C. Tepperman and Wayne Rogers).
Ned Pines wasn’t sleeping either. He created The Phantom Detective (which was written by D. L. Champion under a house name). The Black Bat followed from editor Leo Marguiles (written by Norman A. Daniels). The Ghost by G. T. Fleming-Roberts. Pines even brought the hero magic to Science Fiction with Captain Future. Created by Marguiles and Mort Weisinger, Curt Newton’s adventures were written by veteran SF author, Edmond Hamilton (and under his own name). Later the house name Brett Sterling was created so other authors like Manly Wade Wellman and William Morrison could continue the series. When Ed came back to the series he used the Sterling moniker too. After the magazine ended, Curt and his robotic sidekicks continued in short stories.
Lone Eagle, Doctor Death, Kwa of the Jungle, Ki-Gor, Captain Hazzard, Captain Satan, the Pecos Kid, the Masked Rider, Sheena, Queen of the Jungle (who started as a comic then became a Pulp!), Ka-Zar, Bill Barnes, etc. All kinds of heroes in all kinds of Pulps. And as these magazines were created another phenomenon was happening: comic books.
The Shadow and Doc Savage both received comic books from Street & Smith. Pines owned a whole line of comics with his Nedor chain so all those Thrilling magazines became Thrilling Comics. There is no secret that both Clark Savage Jr. and Clark Kent have a Fortress of Solitude. Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster were big fans of the hero Pulps. All that Pulp machismo bled into the superhero comic genre. So while the Pulp giants have fallen, their comic book sized progeny lives on.
The good news for Pulp fans is that the 21st Century has brought all the fun of the old Pulps back in New Pulp. This genre of writing takes all that was exciting and page-turning about the old magazines and created new stories with the same zest. Of course, in our politically correct century, much of what might be disagreeable with the old magazines has been discarded, but the spirit of telling a story for its own sake, of keeping the reader on the edge of their seat, remains. A writer who understands this is Jack Mackenzie with his new super-saga, The Shattered Men, the first of the Wild Inc. novels.
Read an interview with the author, Jack Mackenzie here.