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 eye-catching colour for a magazine 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. Putting them in 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 outrageous war stories. By the end of the 1960s these were replaced by tales of hoodlum 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 girlie mags and physical fitness publications were selling far more copies. The days of the painted pulp adventure 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...
(Mind how you go...)
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
Today in pulp I try to discover what the Bra Of The Future will look like... courtesy of Thrilling Wonder Stories!
Ever since the dawn of time Man has pondered the bra. What will it be like in the future? Will it even be needed?
And one magazine did more pondering than most. Thrilling Wonder Stories not only probed the mysteries of the future, it also tried to guess the evolution of the humble brassiere.
"The gun is GOOD! The Penis is EVIL!" bellows a huge stone head floating over the Irish countryside. It's quite a strange start to any film, but it's about to get even stranger.
This is the story of John Boorman's 1974 sci-fi spectacular Zardoz...
In 1970 director John Boorman began work on a Lord Of The Rings film for United Artists. It would be an unusual adaption; The Beatles would be the Hobbits and Kabuki theatre would open the movie. Alas the studio said 'No', but the idea of making a fantasy film stuck with Boorman.
So in 1972, following the commercial success of Deliverance, John Boorman started work on Zardoz - a fantasy film into which he would cram many unorthodox ideas. Initially Burt Reynolds was to play the lead role of Zed, but pulled out citing other filming commitments.
"Fear is the mind-killer," but movie production is a close second. As Denis Villeneuve's epic movie adaptations of Dune pull in audiences worldwide, I look back at an earlier struggle to bring that story to the silver screen.
This is the story of David Lynch's Dune...
Dune is an epic story: conceived by Frank Herbert after studying the Oregon Dunes in 1957 he spent five years researching, writing, and revising it before publication. He would go on to write a further five sequels.
Dune is a multi-layered story and a hugely immersive novel. It's about a future where the mind rather the computer is king, aided by the mysterious spice melange. It also has more feuding houses than Game of Thrones.
Detective stories have always been a staple of young adult fiction. I guess every young person wants to be a crime fighter at heart.
The Hardy Boys (Frank and Joe Hardy) are possibly the longest-serving teenage detectives. Their first adventures began in 1927, published by the Stratemeyer Syndicate and they've been in print pretty much ever since.