Many readers have asked me "why do so many pulp covers feature women in ripped red blouses standing in swamps while a man who looks a bit like David Bowie fights off an unusual animal attack?"
The answer is pulp artist Wil Hulsey...
Wilbur "Wil" Hulsey was the undisputed king of the animal attack pulp cover. You name it, he'd paint it attacking you in a pool of stagnant water.
Very little is known about Wil Hulsey, but he worked on a number of men's pulp magazines in the 1950s and early 1960s including Man's Life, True Men, Guilty, Trapped and Peril.
Their audience for these was ex-GIs: during WWII the US Council of Books in Wartime had given away over 122 million books to American servicemen to read. This led to a post-war surge in paperback and magazine sales amongst these newly enthusiastic readers.
As a result the 1950s saw a raft of men's pulp magazines being published to tap into this market - almost 200 different titles!
For some reason the most popular types of story in the late 1950s were tales of men surviving attacks by vicious animals - the more unusual the better. Many pulp artists did their best to paint them.
But painting magazine covers is hard work, especially at speed, so many artists worked to a formula - often set out by the publisher. Wil Hulsey certainly perfected his.
The main male character in a Hulsey cover generally looks a bit like David Bowie. Artists would often use photos of the same model for various covers and the 'Bowie' model clearly worked for Wil.
Next there would be a woman in a button-popping ripped red blouse. Bright red, like bright yellow, is a stand-out colour which is eye-catching on a cover - especially if you're not sure how the blouse is staying on.
But why are they always in a swamp? Well, if you want the head and arms to be in the centre of the cover you have to lose the legs. Water, or long grass, is an easy way to do that, or you can paint people crouching.
There is a huge amount of male masochism in 1950s and early '60s pulp covers: men are trapped or bound, being flogged, eaten or bitten. The message seems to be 'real men can take it - and live to tell the tale!'
But by the early 1960s pulp tastes had changed, and animal attack covers gave way to violent war stories. By the end of the 1960s they were replaced by tales of bikers in leather jackets and hopped-up radical students running amok.
It just wasn't Wil's bag...
By 1973 the men's pulp magazine market was almost out of business: softcore titillation and physical fitness magazines were selling far more copies, and the days of the painted pulp cover were over.
So let's hear it for pulp artist Wil Hulsey. He could only draw one thing. But it was a great thing! And he drew it!!
Pulp salutes you Wil...
(And his legacy still lives on...)
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Today I'm looking back at the work of British graphic designer Abram Games!
Abram Games was born in Whitechapel, London in 1914. His father, Joseph, was a photographer who taught him the art of colouring by airbrush.
Games attended Hackney Downs School before dropping out of Saint Martin’s School of Art after two terms. His design skills were mainly self-taught by working as his father’s assistant.
Today I'm looking back at the career of English painter, book illustrator and war artist Edward Ardizzone!
Edward Ardizzone was born in Vietnam in 1900 to Anglo-French parents. Aged 5 he moved to England, settling in Suffolk.
Whilst working as an office clerk in London Ardizzone began to take lessons at the Westminster School of Art in his spare time. In 1926 he gave up his office job to concentrate on becoming a professional artist.
Today in pulp I look back at the Witchploitation explosion of the late 1960s: black magic, bare bottoms and terrible, terrible curtains!
Come this way...
Mainstream occult magazines and books had been around since late Victorian times. These were mostly about spiritualism, with perhaps a bit of magic thrown in.
But it was the writings of Aleister Crowley in English and Maria de Naglowska in French and Russian that first popularised the idea of 'sex magick' in the 20th century - the use of sexual energy and ritual to achieve mystical outcomes.
Between 1960 and 1970 Penguin Books underwent several revolutions in cover layout, at a time when public tastes were rapidly changing.
Today in pulp I look back at 10 years that shook the Penguin!
Allen Lane founded Penguin Books in 1935, aiming to bring high-quality paperbacks to the masses for the same price as a packet of cigarettes. Lane began by snapping up publishing rights for inexpensive mid-market novels and packaging them expertly for book lovers.
From the start Penguins were consciously designed; Lane wanted to distinguish his paperbacks from pulp novels. Edward Young created the first cover grid, using three horizontal bands and the new-ish Gill Sans typeface for the text.
Today in pulp: a tale of an unintentionally radical publisher. It only produced 42 books between 1968-9, but it caught the hedonistic, solipsistic, free love mood of the West Coast freakout scene like no other.
This is the story of Essex House...
Essex House was an offshoot of Parliament Press, a California publishing company set up by pulp artist Milton Luros after the market for pulp magazines began to decline. It specialised in stag magazines sold through liquor stores, to skirt around US obscenity publishing laws.
By the 1960s Parliament Press was already selling pornographic novels through its Brandon House imprint, though these were mostly reprints or translations of existing work. Luros was interested in publishing new erotic authors, and set up Essex House to do just that.
Today in pulp... one of my favourite SF authors: Harry Harrison!
Harry Harrison was born Stamford, Connecticut, in 1925. He served in the US Army Air Corps during WWII, but became disheartened with military life. In his spare time he learned Esperanto.
Harrison started his sci-fi career as an illustrator, working with Wally Wood on Weird Fantasy and Weird Science up until 1950. He also wrote for syndicated comic strips, including Flash Gordon and Rick Random.