For today's #SundayMotivation I'm looking back at '70s Argentine superhero Namur, a lady who lives her life by the motto "Peligro Supremo!"
Namur is something of a mystery. She's an FBI agent who uses her unique martial arts skills to fight crime. However she always wears a mask to protect her identity.
Namur's boss at the FBI is the equally mysterious 'Taurus' who hides his identity behind a fan. It's such a secretive world fighting crime...
Many of Namur's investigations take place in Argentina, where she is in a constart battle with various international criminal masterminds; gangsters, kingpins, smugglers, skeletons etc...
Fortunately Namur is in constant televisual contact with all the police forces of the world, providing valuable real-time information to help her on her secret missions. She also has excellent taste in table lamps!
Namur is if course a martial arts expert and is a match for any opponent...
...however Namur's favourite weapon is the whip, which she expertly wields to disarm foes.
Actually Namur is an Argentinian fotonovela first published in 1972 by Ediciones Record S.C.A.
Namur was played by actress Gloria Gago, better known for her roles in Spanish language comedies such as Estoy Hecho un Demonio (1972) and El Gran Marrone (1974).
Namur was one of a long line of 1970s action fotonovelas produced in Argentina. The format was quite popular and covered everything from superheroes to the occult.
The layout of these fotonovelas was somewhat simplistic, as was the captioning and the special effects. Much of it was done in pen directly over the photographs.
But if action, adventure and leather bikinis is your thing then Namur is probably right up your alley. Do keep an eye out for her!
More pulp heroes another time...
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Today in pulp I'm looking back at one of the greatest albums of all time.
What are the chances...
By 1976 Jeff Wayne was already a successful composer and musician, as well as a producer for David Essex. His next plan was to compose a concept album.
War Of The Worlds was already a well known story, notorious due to the Orson Wells radio play production. For Wayne it seemed like a great choice for a rock opera.
Today in pulp I'm looking back at a very popular (and collectable) form of art: Micro Leyendas covers!
Micro Leyendas (mini legends) are a Mexican form of fumetto, small graphic novels normally pitting the everyday hero against the weird, the occult and the unfathomable.
The art of Micro Leyendas is bold, macabre and very funny. The books often tell a cautionary tale of revenge or humiliation, much like a modern folk tale.
Today in pulp: what makes a good opening sentence for a pulp novel?
Now this is a tricky one…
The opening sentence has an almost mythical status in writing. Authors agonise for months, even years, about crafting the right one. Often it’s the last thing to be written.
Which is odd, because very few people abandon a book if they don’t like the first sentence. It’s not like the first sip of wine that tells you if the Grand Cru has been corked! Most people at least finish Chapter One.
The Time Machine, Brave New World, 1984: these weren’t the first dystopian novels. There's an interesting history of Victorian and Edwardian literature looking at the impact of modernity on humans and finding it worrying.
Today in pulp I look at some early dystopian books…
Paris in the Twentieth Century, written in 1863, was the second novel penned by Jules Verne. However his publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel rejected it as too gloomy. The manuscript was only discovered in 1994 when Verne’s grandson hired a locksmith to break into an old family safe.
The novel, set in 1961, warns of the dangers of a utilitarian culture. Paris has street lights, motor cars and the electric chair but no artists or writers any more. Instead industry and commerce dominate and citizens see themselves as cogs in a great economic machine.