PULP HISTORY

Street & Smith made the near complete switch to pulps when they re-titled their Dime Novel - Nick Carter Weekly into DETECTIVE STORY MAGAZINE. An almost direct link from that was THE SHADOW, when Street & Smith sponsored a radio program with stories being adapted from Detective Story and hosted by someone known only as "The Shadow." Confused listeners enjoyed the program but they asked for copies of The Shadow magazine when they visited their newsstands. Not to miss an opportunity, Street & Smith quickly assigned an editor (John Nanovic) and found a young writer (Walter Gibson) and THE SHADOW was born.

Between World War I and World War II, the pulps became one of the dominate forces in popular culture. Just after World War I, the pulp magazine industry started to flourish.  Most titles sold for 20¢ or 25¢ and included nearly 200 pages of content.  Most magazines had a major focus in regards to genre, but those titles were still fairly broad in their content.  Sports, Detectives, Adventures, Westerns and Love pulp titles were the norm.  With a small handful of new publishers crashing the scene, in the mid-20's, those publishers needed to make new customers and introduced more focused magazines like, science fiction, gang and aviation.  With the stock market crash in 1929, the pulp industry almost crashed as well.  Those publishers who were nimble enough and willing to gamble on cutting their word rates, page counts and slash the prices of their magazines to 10¢ flourished.  All those who couldn't died.  Those who stuck it out started a new golden age of pulp magazines in the early 30's that lasted almost the entire decade.  The 40's saw world crisis take center stage and the pulps started to fade.  Post World War II and the advent of more entertainment choices spelled doom for the pulp magazines and publishers began to leave the pulp industry for paperbacks, slick magazines and even comics.

Magazines and writers came and went by the score. Some key magazines that came into being included: (they are not in any particular order)

1. Black Mask (detective magazine later known as the home of Hardboiled fiction)
2. Weird Tales (horror, fantasy and some science fiction, later known as the home of Conan the Barbarian)
3. Detective Story Magazine (the first detective fiction magazine began in 1915)
4. Amazing Stories (credited as being the first science fiction magazine)
5. The Shadow (credited as being the first and one of the most important "Hero" pulp characters)
6. The Phantom Detective (the second detective character pulp, following closely on the heals of The Shadow and the longest running hero pulp character 1931 - 1953)
7. Ranch Romances (one of the longest running pulp publications - beginning in 1924 and ceasing publication in 1964)
8. Argosy (also known as Argosy All-Story and even All-Story, although All-Story was a separate magazine that combined with Argosy. These magazines brought us Tarzan, Zorro, Dr. Kildare and much, much more.)
9. Doc Savage (the second of hero pulps published by Street & Smith)
10. The Spider (the first hero pulp tried by what would be the largest publisher of pulps - Popular Publications)
11. G-8 and His Battle Aces (the second hero created by Popular Publications - the first as an W.W.I spy and aviator)
12. Dime Detective Magazine (Popular Publications first true hit with the public and credited with saving the fledgling publishing house)
13. Dime Mystery Magazine (the first "weird menace" magazine that started a trend that most every publisher except for Street & Smith tried. The magazine centered around horror and what could be called sadistic covers and stories - highly collected today for their ghoulish and garish covers)
14. Underworld (credited as the first "gangster" pulp. Later published by the king of gangster pulp publishers Harold Hersey who also gave the public Racketeer Stories, Gangster Stories, Gangland Stories, Greater Gangster Stories, Speakeasy Stories, Mobs, Dragnet, Detective Dragnet, Courtroom Stories and more)
15. Western Story Magazine (credited as the first dime novel to pulp western stories fiction weekly)

Some notable publishers:

1. Street & Smith Publications
2. Popular Publications
3. Frank A. Munsey Company
4. Clayton Group
5. Thrilling Group
6. Culture Publications
7. Gernsback
8. Pro-Distributors

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Some notable authors and some of their most notable characters:

• Edgar Rice Burroughs - Tarzan and John Carter of Mars
• Dashiell Hammett - Sam Spade and The Thin Man
• Walter Gibson - The Shadow
• Max Brand
• Johnston McCulley - Zorro
• Robert E. Howard - Conan
• Lester Dent - Doc Savage
• Raymond Chandler - Phillip Marlowe
• Louis L'Amour - Hondo
• Norvell Page - The Spider
• Robert J. Hogan - G-8
• Ray Bradbury
• Arthur C. Clarke
• John D. MacDonald
• Carroll John Daly - Race Williams
• Robert Leslie Bellem - Dan Turner
• Luke Short
• H.P. Lovecraft
• Isaac Asimov
• Cornell Woolrich
• George F. Worts - Singapore Sammy and Peter the Brazen
• George Bruce

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These are not complete lists by any stretch of the imagination. Just a sample to show that when critics of the pulps condemn them all to the slag heap of poor fiction, they are just being prejudiced. True, cover art on quite a few pulp magazines went to the extreme. Purple prose was the dominate form of scripting. Strong action, vivid covers, low pay, cheap paper was the driving force behind the pulps. Yet some magazines, characters, authors and publishers still survive today.

As paperbacks and comics took over each end of the spectrum that the pulps served, the industry saw a decline. Yet if you could define the "heyday" of the pulps, you would have to proclaim the 30's as the "pulp 30's." The majority of the magazines published found their way onto the newsstands and into millions of homes during that turbulent time. From depression through the start of World War II, the pulps helped millions escape from their troubled lives.

John P. Gunnison

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Copyright © 2004 Adventure House. All rights reserved.
Revised: July 10, 2008 .

Hero Pulps

© 1934 Phantom Detective Inc.

Detective Pulps

© 1933 The Berryman Press, Inc.

Aviation Pulps

© 1931 Popular Publications, Inc.

Western Pulps

© 1937 Street & Smith Publications

Love Pulps

© 1949 Columbia Publications, Inc.

Science Fiction Pulps

© 1934 Popular Fiction Publishing Co.

Sports Pulps

© 1937 Popular Publications, Inc.

Gangster Pulps

© 1927 Thomas J. Wood

Adventure Pulps

Weird Menace Pulps

© 1937 Popular Publications, Inc.