#pulp art 1933

[driveintheaterofthemind]

Vintage Pulp - Honeymoon Tales (June1933)

Novel Idea

[atomic-chronoscaph]

Salesman for Death - art by Rafael DeSoto (1933)

[k-i-l-l-e-r-b-e-e-6-9]

𝔊𝔢𝔬𝔯𝔤𝔢 ℜ𝔬𝔷𝔢𝔫

[mudwerks]

Weird Tales - October 1933 (Popular Fiction)

This classic bat-woman cover by Margaret Brundage makes this one of the most sought-after issues of Weird Tales, as well as a highly desired pulp in general.

the most tumblr-centric art ever

also that NRA symbol is for the National Recovery Administration, a Roosevelt program from 1933 that was VERY popular with workers.

[bucketofcheesecake]

[cantsayidont]

August 1984. This won't change anyone's feelings about cult movie perennial THE ADVENTURES OF BUCKAROO BANZAI: ACROSS THE EIGHTH DIMENSION one way or the other, but if you're wondering what the hell the deal is supposed to be with Buckaroo Banzai and his team, the answer is, "It's an obvious pastiche of the pulp hero Doc Savage."

Launched in 1933, Doc Savage was one of the leading adventure heroes of the pulp magazines. Doc (whose full name was Clark Savage Jr.) was scientifically trained from childhood to the peak of human perfection, singularly adept in everything from mechanical engineering to medicine to martial arts. He had a secret headquarters called the Fortress of Solitude and a whole array of specially designed vehicles and equipment, but he was also a public figure, with offices in the Empire State Building. Doc had a team of eccentric, highly specialized aides — Monk Mayfair, Ham Brooks, Renny Renwick, Long Tom Roberts, and Johnny Littlejohn — who each had a particular skill and a couple of distinctive personality traits (for instance, Monk was a skilled industrial chemist, but also an "ape-like" brute with a ferocious temper). They were sometimes aided by Doc's cousin, Pat Savage, who was almost as capable as Doc, although he tried to keep her out of the fray because she was (gasp) a girl.

This was a fairly common pattern for pulp heroes. For instance, the pulp version of the Shadow (who was distinctly different from the radio incarnation) relied on a whole network of agents, some appearing only once or twice, some recurring across many of his published adventures. From a narrative standpoint, the agents and assistants had two principal purposes: The first was to offset the rather overpowered heroes — pulp heroes didn't necessarily have superhuman powers, but even those who didn't tended to be preternaturally skilled at nearly everything, so it was convenient to limit their direct involvement in an adventure to crucial moments, and let the assistants (who could be much more fallible) do much of the legwork. The second object was to beef up the characterization. Doc Savage was morally irreproachable as well as absurdly multi-talented, so there wasn't a lot to be done with him character-wise, while maintaining the mystique of a character like the Shadow required him to remain a fairly closed book.

Although the pulp heroes were a huge influence on early comic book superheroes like Superman and Batman, some of these conventions didn't translate well to other media: In a 13-page comic book story or half-hour radio episode, having too many characters was cumbersome (and expensive, where it meant hiring extra actors), and comic book readers normally expected to follow their four-color heroes quite closely, even before the breathless internal monologue became a genre staple. So, Superman inherited Doc Savage's Fortress of Solitude, but not his "Fabulous Five" assistants, while heroes like Batman and Captain America generally stuck with a single sidekick rather than a team of aides. Even the late Doc Savage pulp adventures (which ended in 1949) de-emphasized the assistants to keep the focus more on Doc himself. Ultimately, the pulp heroes didn't really have the right narrative center of gravity for visual media, which is why they've become relatively obscure, despite repeated revival attempts. The 1975 Doc Savage movie with Ron Ely, for instance, was a notorious commercial flop, and elements like Doc's childishly bickering assistants seemed odd and dated, even taking into account the film's nostalgia-bait '30s period setting.

What BUCKAROO BANZAI tried to do was to bring that old pulp hero formula into the modern era with a big infusion of '80s style and humor. Like Doc Savage, Buckaroo is a wildly gifted polymath (in the opening scenes, he rushes from performing brain surgery to test-driving his Jet Car through a mountain), so famous and important a personage that he puts the president of the United States on hold, and he surrounds himself with an array of brilliant, eccentric aides with silly nicknames who play in his rock band when they're not fighting crime or doing advanced scientific experiments.

Alas, judging by the poor box office returns, general audiences were no more amenable to the '80s version of this formula than they had been to DOC SAVAGE: MAN OF BRONZE nine years earlier, even with the 1984 film's extraordinary cast and memorably witty dialogue. Granted, even many of the movie's most diehard fans are baffled by the convoluted plot — a crucial expository scene where the leader of the Black Lectroids (Rosalind Cash) explains much of what's going on is nigh-incomprehensible without subtitles or closed captioning — but beyond that, THE ADVENTURES OF BUCKAROO BANZAI is essentially an extended riff on a particular slice of pop culture that had long since dropped out of the public consciousness, which is both part of its charm and also its commercial undoing, at least as mainstream entertainment.

(Also, if you're wondering, yes, the TOM STRONG series by Alan Moore and Chris Sprouse is also an obvious Doc Savage pastiche, although at least some of its plot and character concepts were probably retoolings of unused ideas from Moore's earlier Maximum Press/Awesome Comics SUPREME series, which was an extended pastiche of the pre-Crisis Superman.)

[tomoleary]

“Published in 1933, this rare, historical issue was the very first comic book to appear on newsstands that contained all new, original artwork centered on a single theme. All comic publications prior to DETECTIVE DAN contained comic strips, were books, or were compilation reprints of comics previously published in newspapers. In most respects, DETECTIVE DAN, SECRET OPERATIVE 48 is the cornerstone of the comic book media and art-form we know and love today. Detective Dan was created, written and drawn by Norman Marsh, and the 10x13" comic book was a one-shot single issue. However, the ground-breaking character went on to enjoy exposure in newspaper strips, Big Little Books and pulp magazines (as well as merchandising). In many respects, Detective Dan was a clone of the character, Dick Tracy, with his fedora, square jaw, and penchant for fisticuffs. In addition to DETECTIVE DAN, SECRET OPERATIVE 48's groundbreaking role in comic book history, both the comic's title and the Wu Fang character that the story contained are said to have inspired Detective Comics #1 published 4 years later. As comic aficionados know, that series lead to the name of the publisher, DC Comics, and gave birth to the hero Batman in 1939.”

[freakingoutthesquares]

Sounds, 8 March 1986 Words: John Wilde, Photographer: Jayne Houghton Transcription: Acrylic Afternoons

Meet the "new hard centre" in indie pop's choc box. John Wilde finds that Pulp have grown on him.

Pulp, neither putty nor pretty, meet Sheffield's steely stone gaze with a prickly, lawless grin or two. Defying, denying the commandment that equates Sheffield pop vultures with a stinging, heart-attack splutter... Pulp, some kind of self-made Christs, seem solitary and even freakish besides. Oddballs or oracles? Let's see.

Voice Jarvis Cocker, either the Alex Chilton or the Bamber Gascoigne of the new pop, first rallied his troops together over ten years ago, "Inspired more by The Sex Pistols than Jethro Tull" and intent on being "the Finnegan's Wake of post-punk". After more lulls than lunges, here they are. Last year's 'It' album dribbled out on Red Rhino, oblivious to the uncaring skies and hampered on its way by bitter Simon And Garfunkel comparisons. Musically too cautious and lyrically self-conscious, it mostly choked on the vitriol.

Then last month's 'Little Girl (With Blue Eyes) And Other Pieces' appeared; Pulp with a rocket up their arse and a racket in their hearts. A regenerated, most degenerated Pulp, swapping a casual canter for a scurvy disrespect. "A new hard centre," as guitar/violin Russell Senior quaintly puts it, staring into his mug of gin.

The EP's strange but endearing conceits have been swamped by the fussy over-concern towards its more, er, fleshy areas. There's a wry point buried someplace within the lust-lorn 'Little Girl (With Blue Eyes)' - 'There's a hole in your heart, and one between your legs. You've never had to wonder which one he's going to fill' - which has had their dissenters waving copies of Spare Rib and generally missing the seething satire of the line. Then there's (gulp) 'The Will To Power', a sturdy crack across the rib-cage of fascists and scumbags all: 'The only choice, the only voice in the darkness. 1933, where are you now, where are the broken bottles... where's truth and beauty?'

"We're not actually real-life fascists at all," states Russell with a sandpaper-dry smile and a swift shine of his NUM button. 'Little Girl', meanwhile, is as much a pure love song as 'Baby I Love You' or 'Baby Love'. This is what Jarvis tells me.

Whatever, this year's Pulp is a different kettle of spiders to last year's Pulp or the Pulp that have been lazing about in Jarvis Cocker's head for the last ten years. Just one year ago, I saw them in London, displaying all the hesitancy and spineless inhibition of 'It'. All that saved them was their apparent unsoundness of (collective) mind and their ragbag appearance, a look recalling the barmy escape party from One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest more than anything. Twelve months on, Art Garfunkel is left picking the pubes from his teeth the morning after and Pulp turn into a monster, sort of.

This year, they know their onions, a five-sided mess of snide rustlings and furtive fumblings. The Velvet Underground skip behind the bike-sheds for a surreptitious snog with Ted Rodgers, that sort of thing. Violin shrill, guitar grind, drums à la Maureen Tucker, vocal deadpan though often impassioned, full of hemmers and hawers. Like those Velvets, they frisk and skit from 'Sunday Morning' tranquil to 'White Light White Heat' bedlam, a disquieting imbalance but a good one.

... "'It' was our puberty, a document of teenage crushes and talking about ideas when you don't know much about them, loving the idea of love rather than 'it' itself. The LP is almost embarrassing to listen to now for us, but it was accurate for that time. We didn't feel comfortable with all that smoothness. Now, the overall feel is not wafting away on clouds of marshmallows. It's more an underlying feeling of striving or longing for something that isn't quite there. It's more painful now - grabbing, clutching and missing."

Currently confined to a wheelchair following a three-storey fall out of a window ("I thought it was a door" / "I was exorcising a demon" / "Did it for a bet" depending who he's telling), Jarvis is unrelenting. Onstage, while the other four ends of Pulp run amok, nutty as a fruit cake, with this grumbling spire of noise, Jarvis sits there a long way from Val Doonican and 'The Green, Green Grass Of Home'. Limbs twitch, eyeballs bulge and bounce, body snaps in short convulsions. Most interestingly, as the songs persist to their fickle climaxes, Jarvis clutches the chair arm, his hands sliding in time to the clumsy beat, his body wincing and starting, the chair a sex object. Thrilling. But they're not just as sexy as your sister.

Neither wilfully opaque nor bleeding bloody awkward, Pulp are many shades, fitting into the Sheffield brute-funk mosaic not at all. "We are ten times more Sheffield than any of those bands. Just because it's from Sheffield, why does it have to sound like a steel factory? You go to Grimsby, you don't expect fish-slapping, or the noise of trawlers. We stem from our industrial culture more than Chakk or anything like that. We're just not what the current image of Sheffield is supposed to be."

And so what? Pulp are not perfect, but they make most indie pop seem like it has its head packed with cotton. Pulp have only marginally more charisma than Leslie Crowther but have the gall and nerve of a madman. Pulp will barely rise from cultdom, they're too full of nonchalant anarchy for that, but in the small pond... they will be nasty and endure. They'll annoy the living, shitting hell out of you, and you'll rub up to the person next to you because of it. They're haywire and, like The Raincoats or The Mekons, they're better for it. Their songs build and build and, unlike bubbles, they explode and still last.

Jarvis?

"It's like someone once said... as soon as you realise that except for love and art it's all a bucket of shit... well, that's true about us."

Pulp. Nowhere near the bucket.

[hplovecraftmuseum]

This poster was an origional creation of Robert W. Chambers himself to advertise his book of short stories called THE KING IN YELLOW. None of the short stories of the collection bore that title. Chambers had been an art student in Paris, France for many years. He had several showings at salons in Paris too. Despite this Chambers turned to writing as a profession. The King In Yellow tales are today the most well known of his works. In time Chambers would turn from horror to writing utterly forgettable romance type fiction. Chambers and his art school friend Gibson eventually gained fame for the invention of 'The Gibson Girl', a new, progressive and relatively independent type of female character emerging at the turn of the century. These post-Victorian females were the stars of Chambers more commercially successful, but artistically lacking works. Regarding the King In Yellow poster created by Chambers himself: it is obvious that there are no tentacles emerging at the base of ' The King's' yellow gown. Chambers best work was done long before Lovecraft's tales appeared in pulp magazines. There is no evidence that Chambers knew who Lovecraft was. Chambers died in 1933, 4 years before Lovecraft himself passed. His KING IN YELLOW book was first published in 1895. Though HPL respected Chambers supernatural tales and referenced certain characters from Chambers (Who had himself lifted bits of his own self-contained mythology from 2 tales from Ambrose Bierce ( it's a long story!) it was really August Derleth who worked to connect Bierce, Chambers, and Lovecraft, building the utter fantasy that there was any actual conscious connection in their work! Yeah, for all the good Derleth did, he really made a mess of things for anybody hoping to study Lovecraft for Lovecraft! (Exhibit 260)

[jedivoodoochile]

On this day in 1897, Bram Stoker’s Gothic horror novel “Dracula” was published by the Archibald Constable and Company.

‘The Bat-Man’ first appeared in Bill Finger & Bob Kane’s “The Case of the Chemical Syndicate” in Detective Comics #27 on March 30, 1939. It is no surprise that Kane and Finger were inspired by not just heroes of the screen like Zorro but by the pulp fiction magazines at the time, such as Walter B. Gibson's ‘The Shadow’ created in 1931, 1933's ‘The Phantom Detective’, and comic strip's ‘Dick Tracy’. Even costumed heroes such as 1936's ‘The Phantom’ and 1938's ‘Superman’ all played a part into making the Batman.

Beyond the pulp magazines that hit the newsstands, there were literary novels that inspired the Gothic look of the shadow of the bat. Irish author Bram Stoker's 1897 novel "Dracula" possessed the dark romanticism and the bleak visuals much Gothic literature of the Victorian era encompassed. More so, Dracula, a vampire from Transylvania moving to England to find fresh blood, was a creature of the night that literally struck fear into the hearts of his victims. This 19th century literature made the nocturnal figure one to use as a model for the Dark Knight and proved to be the foundation of the visual prowess that became an overnight sensation in 1939. #WorldDraculaDay 🦇🧛🏼‍♂️📚

🖼️: Art by Bob Kane & Sheldon Moldoff, 1939’s Detective Comics #32; Stills of Bela Lugosi in Tod Browning's 1931 film “Dracula”.

[walkingatombomb]

Comics I Read Today

April 14

Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze. The Devil’s Thoughts #1 (1991)

Doc Savage was an adventure character published in pulp magazines beginning in 1933. Today, he would be considered a super-hero due to his super intelligence and peak physical conditioning.

Every time I would see a Doc Savage comic, I would snatch it up. I enjoyed most of the stories, especially the ones set in the 1930s. But I hated this one by Millennium Publications at all. It’s plagued by bad art, poor storytelling and muddy coloring. It’s probably a good thing Millennium didn’t hold the license for long.

[driveintheaterofthemind]

5 Random Pulps - Film Fun

Art by Enoch Bolles

[liberty1776]

Zoe Mozert was born Alice Adelaide Moser on April 27, 1907 in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Her father was Fred William Moser, a mechanical engineer of German ancestry. The family name had orignally been Motzar, but that was changed to Moser when her grandfather emigrated to America. Her mother was Jessie Mable Hatfield of Ohio. Her parents married in 1906 and she was their first child.

From 1925 to 1928 she studied at the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art, where she took advanced classes with Thorton Oakley in 1927 and 1928. The future pulp artist, H. J. Ward, was also a student in that same class. She paid for her tuition by modeling at the school. She most likely also posed for H. J. Ward, several of whose paintings from this time period portray a woman with strikingly similar features. She began her career as an artist in 1927, while working for the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company. She soon began her own window display business.

In 1932 she moved to New York City to look for entry-level freelance work in the magazine industry. Her first illustration jobs were for Bernarr Macfadden's True Story. At this time she adopted a professional name, "Zoe Mozert." According to the artist, "I looked through a name dictionary for a new first name and when there were finally no pages left I settled on Zoe."

In 1933 she won a scholarship in a talent contest to study at the Art Students League.

From 1934 to 1937 she created many sensual and glamourous covers for pulp magazines, such as Smart Love Stories, Love Revels, and Night Life Tales. Fawcett Publications hired her to work full time as a staff artist on True Confessions, but at the same time she also worked in her free time as a freelance artist. In this way her work appeared in a wide range of glamour magazines, such as American Weekly, Romantic Movie Stories, Romantic Stories, and Screen Stories.

She was soon a prosperous and busy illustrator, who had grown beyond the low-paying pulp magazine industry. On Janury 9th 1937 she rented a nicer apartment at 29 West 12th Street in the fashionably artistic Greenwich Village section of Manhattan. By 1937 her unique style of illustration was so central to the ideal of Hollywood glamour that she was hired by Paramount Pictures to create the movie poster for the film, True Confession, starring Carole Lombard.

She also illustrated advertisements for such products as Dr. Pepper, Kool Cigarettes, Irresistible Beauty Aids, Mentolatum, and Raleigh Cigarettes. Many of these advertisements featured her distinctive pastel portraits of famous movie stars as product endorsements.

She also worked as an art adviser and painter with Warner Brothers in Hollywood. She created many artworks that were used as props within films, such as Never Say Goodbye starring Errol Flynn, and Calendar Girl starring Patricia O'Neil. She also painted the controversial movie poster of Jane Russell for the classic Howard Hughes film, The Outlaw.

In 1978 she retired to Sedona, Arizona, where she lived outside of town on Schnebly Hill Road, She continued to create pastel drawings and portaits, which were sold in fine art galleries.

Zoe Mozert - "Beauty by Night" - 1946 Calendar Illustration - Brown & Bigelow Calendar Co.

[oakendesk]

The Shadow Magazine Aug 1 1933

George Rozen

[atomic-chronoscaph]

art by Margaret Brundage (1933)

[gameraboy2]

Weird Tales, November 1933 Cover by Margaret Brundage