Why Pulpjunkie
I'm going to try my hand at blogging properly. The site itself needs some work, but I need to start writing and get some momentum up. the blog, of course, will be about the same sort of things I've written of here off and on. Below the cut is a sort of definition of what I'm on about., an introduction to my tastes. Those who've known me many years will probably not be surprised by any of this.
I laid claim to "Pulpjunkie" as my internet handle many years ago, when I was young and thought I needed one.. The precise reasons escape me.It may simply have referred to the huge mass of paper goods I've dragged along with me over the years: Books, magazines, comics, role-playing games, CD sleeves, game boxes, all stored in a mountain of cardboard.The "pulp" part of the name also refers to a certain aesthetic I appreciate, lurid, lively, active, at least a bit sexy, with more than occasional bursts of violence. This is vaguely linked to what is known today as the "Pulp" era of genre fiction, the period between the two World Wars, when American newsstands were full of magazines devoted to crime, mystery, horror and adventure stories, titles like Black Mask, Argosy, Weird Tales or even Spicy Mystery Stories.
The boom in the Pulp Magazines, combined with the popularity of newspaper comic strips, led to the boom in comic books in the late 1930s, and especially in the war years. Comic books brought us superheroes, elaborations on the more flamboyant action heroes of the pulps. Post WWII, and throughout the 1950s, there was another boom, the paperback novel, which took over from the pulps the areas of adventure and mystery, with a profusion of hard-boiled private eyes,historical swashbucklers, space explorers and spies. Science Fiction pulps migrated to the big screen in the fifties, as a string of space exploration films, gave way to alien invaders and rampaging radioactive mutants. At the start of the 1960s, there was a string of pop culture revivals, partly in film, and partly due to the reappearance of older material on TV. The adventure serial made a comeback in the deceptively modern form of the James Bond films. Classic horror films re-ran on TV, supplying a generation of "monster kids" with TV horror hosts, model kits and Famous Monsters-style magazines, while a new wave of monster and horror films arrived from England, Europe, and the cheaper end of Hollywood. The action/spy craze collided with the monster craze and a revival of superheroes in comics, to send a stream of superhero cartoons onto TV, and eventually the arrival of the Batman TV show.
This is where I came in, right between Adam West Batman and Night of the Living Dead. All that went before,especially the TV and film from the previous ten years, was my bread and butter growing up. Constant re-runs of Batman, Lost in Space, the Addams Family and Get Smart. The occasional re-appearance of older cartoons like Johnny Quest and Space Ghost (so much better than 1970s "action"cartoons). A constant diet of Scooby Doo and 25 cent comic books (plus the occasional 60 cent 100 page special, full of fascinating old reprint stories). "Vincent Price Week" or Giant Monster Week"on the 4:30 Movie. And in the late 1970s, the one-two punch of Star Wars in theaters and The Hobbit on TV.
So that's where I come from, culturally.Sure there were other things that contributed to the weird world inside my brain. I watched the more "normal" shows, the Brady Bunch and Gilligan's Island reruns. I watched Happy Days like every other kid in America. I saw Grease in the theater, like all kids were apparently legally required to, despite being a tiny bit too young for some of the subject matter. I got infected by the 50s rock 'n' roll bug that was going around. I watched 50s revival act Sha Na Na's variety show(which, oddly enough, introduced me to the Ramones at the tender age of ten, around the time the Muppet Show gave me my first taste of Alice Cooper) Somehow, my musical tastes ended up with a strong pulp component,even though I went through more mainstream paths to get there.
So pulp, to me is an aesthetic of action and color, sometimes brutal, but not lacking in humor. It's a view of a world where there are heroes and villains, though they may be in disguise,or even switch sides; where the protagonists of the story know what they want, think they have an idea of how to get it, and pursue that idea vigorously; a world full of fantastic secrets, dark or wonderful or both, waiting to be discovered. If the heroes need an anti-matter wave transmitter to save the world, there will be a way to get one.If the villain wants an army of flying lions to conquer the world, there will be a way to make one, "reality" be damned. There will be conflict, pursuit, reversals, a smashing climax, all leading to a definite conclusion which draws a line under what came before (though not necessarily excluding more of the same occurring later). It is a basically optimistic world, where, despite whatever destruction may have been wreaked during the proceedings, something is accomplished,or something is saved, or some good is achieved.
That's my basic sweet spot for story-telling.It's what I hope for in a film or book. It's the sort of thing I intend to yammer on about on this blog in future. First up: Heroic Fantasy.