Exciting Love and Thrilling Football
This is as much a confession as a considered
observation.
I have a few genuine pulp
magazines. They're a LOT harder to collect than comics, and I have neither the
time, the money, nor (anymore) the acquisitive urge to do so. But there's
something about the deeply browned pages, the rough-cut edges, the
ashcan-school painted covers, and the 'repair refrigerators--your path to
success!" ads. Even ordinary healthy people ooh and aah over them, like they do
over an obviously ancient stamped-metal
toy.
Not all are expensive--the science
fiction and horror ones tend to be, the other genres, not so much. Sometimes
people will sell them for cheap, since the "old comics are worth money!"
mythhology doesn't seem to apply.
Recently,
one came under my hands. Exciting Western, September 1947--getting towards the
end of the pulp era. A thing of beauty--but on the contents page, at the bottom,
there was a list:
Our companion
magazines:
Triple
Western
Triple
Detective
The Phantom
Detective
Thrilling
Detective
Popular
Detective
Detective Mystery
Novel
Thrilling
Love
Thrilling Ranch
Stories
Thrilling
Western
Thrilling
Sports
Thrilling Wonder
Stories
West
Sky
Fighters
G-Men
Detective
Popular Sports
Magazine
Popular
Love
Popular
Western
Everyday
Astrology
Texas
Rangers
Range Riders
Western
Startling
Stories
Detective Novel
Magazine
Masked Rider
Western
Rio Kid
Western
Exciting
Love
Thrilling
Football,
Black Book
Detective
Exciting
Sports
Popular
Football
and Rodeo
Romances.
I tell you, I couldn't stop
my mouth from watering.
And this was
Better Publications--not the biggest publisher by a long shot. And there it
rolled out--issue after issue of writing meant only to excite, enthrall, push
you onward to the next page, and leave you spent and satisfied at the end. Story
after story meant only to make your world dramatic and wonderful. All that prose
bent on loving you.
And thousands of writers,
some had-bitten, some cynical, some enthusiastic, some half-nuts, some more than
half nuts, all horribly underpaid. And all that stuff washing over the working
class of America like a firehose, month after month of heroism, romance, cheap
myth and everyday mystery. Torrents of it. Tons of
it.
Exciting Love. Thrilling
Football.
Yes, please. I'd like some of
that.
Posted: Sunday - March 18, 2007 at 04:53 PM