The Deadly Mister Punch is the second novel in the adventures of Wild Inc. The ebook is on sale at a special price for one week when the paperback version appears (and the price goes up) so if you are a fan, gets yours today!
In honor of the release of The Deadly Mister Punch, the latest in the Wild Inc. series, here is a gallery of the great Pulp Heroes from yesteryear. Before the likes of Superman and Batman, there was Doc Savage and The Shadow. These Pulps centered around a character (or characters) rather than a genre. They look like Mystery fiction, and sometimes appeared in detective Pulps. They could be Horror though they weren’t in Weird Tales. (Doctor Satan was latter created by Paul Ernst for Weird Tales, but the readers didn’t want Hero Pulp. They wanted Horror.) Sometimes they looked like Science Fiction, but SF would have its own cadre of heroes with Buck Rogers, Captain Future, etc. The genre was HERO.
Conclusion
Heroes weren’t invented in the 1930s. The Victorian magazines and the later “soft weeklies” had their share. Sherlock Holmes, Allan Quatermain, Zorro, Tarzan, John Carter, Jimmy Dale, The Gray Seal, not to mention those found in the Dime Novels like Kit Carson, Buffalo Bill, Nick Carter, etc. The Great Depression took the standard hero and pumped him up (and sometimes her), making them more fantastic, more brilliant, more everything. This was the slippery slope that lead to superheroes in the comics. The Pulp hero made even more super, more flash, more inhuman, and we arrive at Spider-man, Wonder Woman, etc.
What makes the hero so enduring no matter the date is the eternal struggle between good and evil? You can say such tales are too dated, too old-fashioned but I would disagree. Look at the top grossing films of all-time. Avatar, Avengers: Endgame, Titanic, Star Wars, Spider-man, Jurassic World, etc. All hero stories. You can read mainstream novels of introspection filled with Henry James slice-of-life realism. You can do that. But when all that realism begins to depress you, you can always have some fun with heroes instead. You can be that little boy or girl who curled up with a Pulp tale of awesomeness.
What a great post, thanks very much! Nice to see a bunch of characters that my father used to talk about, plus the ones I didn’t recognize. “The Green Lama?!” Now that’s imagination!
Is that the same Doctor Satan from Republic Pictures? One would assume there could only be one mysterious Doctor Satan, but none of the pages for the serial mention Weird Tales.
According to Wikipedia the movie started as a Superman script. The plot is similar. Good guy versus weird evil dude.