Today in pulp... a quick look at at the Golden Age marvel that is Planet Comics!
Planet Comics ran from January 1940 to Winter 1953, and is widely credited as being the first comic dedicated solely to science fiction.
The comic was a spin-off from the pulp magazine Planet Stories, and covered many of the same themes: ray guns, bug-eyed monsters and rowdy space girls.
Planet Comics employed many leading women illustrators like Fran Hopper & Lily Renée, whose amazing life story became a 2011 graphic novel.
Regular Planet Comics characters included Mars God of War, Mysta of the Moon, Reef Ryan, Gale Allen and the Girl Squadron, and The Red Comet.
Planet Comics often featured 'good girl' covers: improbable dresses and poses! This pin-up style was also used by Planet Stories magazine.
By the early 1950s Planet Comics was struggling, sometimes producing only one issue a year, and the title finally closed in 1953.
There's certainly a lot of 'John Carter of Mars' type action going on in many editions of Planet Comics.
But there's also plenty of Dale Arden/Flash Gordon type action happening as well. It's a nice mix.
And that's it my our look at Planet Comics today. I hope you enjoyed it!
(And for everyone asking "whatever happened to Spurt Hammond?" he was a minor character in the first 10 issues of Planet Comics, before being replaced by Cosmic Corrigan in March 1941)
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If the spacesuit is the symbol of progress, the gas mask is the sign of the apocalypse. In popular culture it signifies that science has turned against us. It's the face of dystopia.
Today in pulp I look at the culture of the mask!
The first chemical masks were work by Venitian plague doctors: a bird-like affair, the beak stuffed with lavender, matched with full length coat and hat. It was a terrifying sight - the grim reaper come to apply poultices to your tumours.
But it was poison gas, first used at the Second Battle of Ypres in 1915, that led to the modern gas mask. At first these were cotton masks treated with chemicals. However their protection was limited.
It's now over half a century since 1970, and I'm starting to wonder if we should bring back its concept of gracious modern living...
You see we've grown so used to Swedish-style modernism that we've sort of forgotten that maximalism, rather than minimalism, was once the sign of a cultured abode.
The 1970s in many ways reached back to the rich ideas of Victorian decor: heavy, autumnal and cluttered. Home was meant to be a baroque and sensual experience, rather than a 'machine for living in.'
Given how many people have left - or are thinking of leaving - Twitter, I thought I'd reshare an old thread: what on Earth is this platform good for? And should you stay on it?
TLDR: nobody knows.
Most people's tweets (if they're really people) are a stream of consciousness, and Twitter itself is a daily flow of 500 million of these across the surface of your phone. You are currently looking at the collective unconscious of the planet in real time.
And like any examination of the unconscious you will see things on Twitter that fascinate you and things that disgust you. This was always part of its sales pitch, though there used to be some enforceable guard rails.