Pulp magazines were popular for the first half of the 20th century, and eventually faded out of favor sometime in the ‘50s, being replaced by comics, TV, and radio. Pulps were so called because of the cheap, pulp paper they were printed on. They were the main form of inexpensive entertainment for working class Americans in the days before TV, radio, and movies were common. Pulps typically had several short stories or long-running serials within their pages. The serials were often combined into popular novels later on. If they were especially popular, they were often made into radio serials, and even movies in a few cases. Pulp stories generally depicted larger than life heroes, such as Conan the Barbarian, Tarzan, Buck Rogers, John Carter, and the Shadow, written by such authors as H. Rider Haggard, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, and H.P. Lovecraft. For just a dime, you could enter a world of suspense, fantasy and mystery. This was especially important during the Great Depression in the 1930’s; folks needed an inexpensive way to escape from the economic hardships they had suffered.
Pulp heroes had a huge impact on later pop culture. Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Barbarian and Kull the Conqueror influenced a generation of fantasy media, such as Dungeons and Dragons. Doc Savage was an inspiration for Superman and hundreds of other heroes of Gold and Silver Age comics. The Shadow was the prototype for Batman. Edgar Rice Burroughs literally created movie franchises as we know them with his Tarzan series.
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AuthorI'm Ian Wilson; an eccentric comic artist, just telling a story.
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