Today in pulp... Milwaukee Magazine: it's the cream of Cream City!
If anyone tells you Wisconsin sucks just ask to see their crummy city magazine. I'M LOOKING AT YOU HERE CLEVELAND! #TuesdayThoughts
The city's most interesting faces*. Milwaukee Magazine, May 1980.
(*no Gene Wilder. He disowned the city after it slated Stir Crazy)
This is what #Bloomsday looks like in Wisconsin. It's what Joyce would have wanted...
Milwaukee Magazine, March 1980.
Where have all the heroes gone? Milwaukee Magazine, December 1985.
Somebody REALLY liked Bonnie Tyler here...
"Oh yes it's ladies night, at the Lucid Light, oh what a night..."
Milwaukee Magazine, March 1984. Oh behave!
"Church man" George Exoo, going medieval on yo pew...
Milwaukee Magazine, February 1994.
Charles Sykes slams the Boomers!
(Plus: the ethnic diversity of bread.)
Milwaukee Magazine, December 1992.
He then got a job managing Blockbusters, and was never heard from again...
Milwaukee Magazine, May 1983.
Sinister theatre cults! Punk palaces! Racketball! Where will this madness end...
Milwaukee Magazine, April 1983.
Boomers be like: "get off the internet, I need to make a phone call! Dawson's Creek is rubbish! I hate Ray Of Light, why can't Madonna play her old stuff!"
Milwaukee Magazine, February 1998.
"I'm a Mac. And I'm a PC..."
Milwaukee Magazine, March 1986.
So let's celebrate Milwaukee Magazine and the great local journalism that keeps it going. It's not just for the metro area: even Waukesha gets a mention!
Racine can go f*ck itself however...
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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.
In January 1919 a new magazine heralded the dawn of the Weimar era. Its aesthetic was a kind of demented Jugendstil, and its stories were dark gothic fantasies.
This is the story of Der Orchideengarten...
Der Orchideengarten: Phantastische Blätter (The orchid garden: fantastic pages) is probably the first ever fantasy magazine. Published in Munich by Dreiländerverlag, a trial issue appeared in 1918 before the first full 24 page edition was published in January 1919.
"The orchid garden is full of beautiful - now terribly gruesome, now satirically pleasing - graphic jewelery" announced the advanced publicity. It was certainly a huge departure from the Art Nouveau of Jugend magazine, which German readers were already familiar with.