Pulp Books

This book has interesting tid-bits of information for those who are interested in history. It is not sufficient as a travel guide, but would be a great purchase for those who live in Montreal or will be spending significant amounts of time there.

I've read a lot of books about Montreal but this is uniquely packed with saucy stories, clever quips and little-known tales. It's excellently written and has stories that haven't been told elsewhere, from Barry Bonds' romantic connection to the city, to the smuggling of the dead film-noir starlet over the border, to the phone book blunder that offended the city's Italian community - every page seems to offer an insiders view about the city that shouldn't be missed. Highly recommended for repeat readings.

I'm not a huge reader so I was pretty skeptical when I was given this for Christmas, but I was quickly won over. It's a readable, fast, funny and very interesting bunch of stories and history and insight of the city of Montreal. Some great yarns that come to mind include the graveyard tales, the guy acquitted of kidnapping the millionaire heir by explaining his written plans were a novel he was working on, the transportation of the dead Hollywood starlet - all of these stories make this a pretty satisfying read, plus the restaurant and nightlife sections and other stuff are really useful as well. I've seen a couple of reviews in the papers about this book and they pretty much said the same thing as myself. One of the best I've seen about this city for a long time.

A rare bookshop find sends an avid horror fiction fan into danger while a fighter against the demonic battles a hole in the fabric of reality. Connections between the two events will bring in an investigation team unique in their ability to chase a killer through an underground occult world in this gripping story perfect for dual fans of mysteries and science fiction.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

LOVED the characters and intriguing plot...some great mystery and horror here, as well as a dash of romance. I also very much enjoyed the dark humour. Looking forward to following these characters in future books.

I couldn't put this book down!

Part magic realism, part urban fantasy, with more than a passing nod to Lovecraft and his ilk, but not too much for the horror-squeamish. It's got a whole lot of what always draws me to Charles de Lint, and I think de Lint fans would enjoy it. It also shares elements with the Magic Time series: parallel narratives, separate stories that gradually come together, and the gradual reveal of an overall picture that's bigger than you imagined.

Mages, shamans, angels, demons, historical figures, fictional monsters, and rifts in reality. Who could ask for anything more?

Well, actually, I could. Because it's the first in a trilogy. More please!

Waugh, Thomas. "Out/Lines: Underground Gay Graphics from Before Stonewall", Arsenal Pulp Press, 2002.



Homoerotic Drawings



Amos Lassen and Literary Pride



About two hundred homoerotic drawings are collected in "Out/Lines" from the author's own collection. They show a rich and extensive collection of male sexual graphics and together with a detailed introduction we see a rich history. The drawings are by such artists as Tom of Finland, Etienne, Blade, Steve masters, and Graewolf as well as lesser known artists. Meant to inspire lust, some of these drawings foreshadow the age of pornography of today. Tame by what we have today, they are nevertheless erotic.

Here is an important book for anyone who s interested in our history. Covering the period from the 1920's to the 1960's, we see the representations that were once outlawed ad illegal. Created by both professional artists and amateurs, the drawings are interesting in that they show that not only they existed but were important to men at a time when any expression of homosexuality was forbidden. Yet even though they were forbidden, they achieved popularity and were collected by many as well as sold and given as gifts. Waugh also gives interesting background of eleven of the artists and presents a look at the sexual fantasies and practices some fifty years before the Stonewall riots.

The introduction by Waugh is well researched and interesting reading. It gives an academic look at the history of erotic drawings and the cultural meanings ascribed to them.

I found the book to be arousing, entertaining and educational, all at the same time and is a must for all serious collectors of erotica. We so often forget that there was a period before Stonewall in which things were very much different. It was an era where gay pornography was not tolerated and definitely not accepted. Waugh's personal collection is history and it exudes the personality of the man who collected the drawings and further helps to understand the times in which they were created and circulated. Waugh manages in his writing to relay serious history balancing it with lust and desire to give us a wonderful look at what was. After reading what he has to say about the art in his book, it is impossible to look at these pictures as anything but historical.

This is an important and well crafted book that surveys the fascinating world of erotic images created by and for gay men from the 1920s through the 1960s, when any such drawings, hetero, homo or bi, were outlawed.

These images were created by a wide range of men, from professional artists to untalented amateurs. One of the more interesting aspects of viewing them today is knowing how important they were to large numbers of men during a time when any expression of homosexual desire was so forbidden. Although prohibited, they were very popular, and like illicit photographs, were widely collected, reproduced, and sold, given, or traded among gay male friends and acquaintances. Waugh identifies and discusses 11 of the more prolific artists of the genre, most of them for the first time.

This offers an engrossing glimpse of the erotic desires and sexual fantasies and practices held by gay men during the fifty years before Stonewall, and is a book I enthusiastically recommend to anyone interested in this subject.

Thomas Waugh has collected and published here for the first time some of the most explicit homoerotic drawings from the period before the Stonewall riot in 1969. There are about 200 previously unpublished gay male sexual graphics in this book that are from the author's extensive collection. The amount of work and effort Waugh has taken to bring this collection to print is inspiring and a credit to this author's dedication to recording this rich history. Tom of Finland, Blade, Etienne, Steve Masters and Graewolf are some of the more well-known artists represented, along with many other unknown artists. Ein Liebhaber is a favorite of mine, whose drawings of orgies of ancient youths in Corinthian helmets is fascinating. There's no denying these images were meant to create lust. They may seem a little tame by today's standards, but can still create a highly erotic desire when viewed.

Waugh's essays of introduction are well-researched and fascinating reading for anyone desiring a detailed and academic history of erotic drawings and what it all means culturally. For those of us who prefer to just peruse the drawings, each drawing is explained at the bottom of the page. The author's biographies of the artists are a definite plus and appreciated. It's nice that we get to know the artists, which often is sadly missing in other books of this genre. This is a must for any collector of gay male erotic art. It is a book that will entertain, arouse, and teach all at the same time. Highly recommended!

Joe Hanssen

_Pulp Art_ contains a varied collection of wonderful cover art from the pulp fiction of the early 1920's through the 1940's. The paintings are nicely reproduced, crisp and colorful. Intended to encourage the viewer to buy the book, all the cover art is sexually suggestive, menacing, or mysterious. The art also reflect the attitudes and prejudices of their times. The whole spectrum of different genres are represented here, including Science Fiction, Tarzan, Mysteries, Westerns, Heroic, Romance, and War. I found several spelling errors in this book, some of them quite obvious. _Pulp Art_ could have benefited from a decent proof reading, to be sure. Still, the beautiful art is fascinating to view and speaks louder than the printed text inside.

Pulp fiction is an acquired taste these days; although I was born in the sixties, long after the death of these magazines, the paperback boom in science fiction and fantasy following the explosion of popularity due to Tolkien and "Star Wars" put much of the classic pulp series in my hands. I still love the stuff, much in the same way that I enjoy sitting down to a childhood meal of Captain Crunch or a chocolate Sundae. This book provides the graphic counterpart to the words I know so well, in gorgeous reproduced color. The pop culture of the thirties is to this day some of the deepest and most endearing, from Fred and Ginger to the Marx Brothers to the Wizard of Oz movie to hard-boiled detectives to golden age science fiction to the westerns to...well, you probably get the point by now. This is an art that was never intended to do anything more than sell a magazine, but it shows a vitality and craft sadly missing from the same kind of art today. Granted, some of it is misogynistic, sadistic, and racist, but then almost everything in western society is, even to this day. Taken with a little salt, the paintings reach out and bash you between the eyes, daring you not to pick up the magazine they advertise. The book provides an introduction to the topic unmatched elsewhere, and makes suggestions for follow-ups to the fan. The pictures alone are worth the price: they range from N.C. Wyeth to J. Allen St. John to Margaret Brundage to Rafael de Soto (whose use of light, darkness, and bright colors is perhaps the most striking in the whole book, at least to my uneducated eye -- regardless, his paintings in particular leap off the page). All in all, a most enjoyable volume.

However, with all due respect, a book about the pulps without at least one typo would not be true to its subject. That is to say, a hallmark of the pulps is the speed and verve with which the books were produced -- mispellings, tygos, broken fonts and printing blemishes included.

Michael Bronski's enlightening anthology of mostly forgotten gay writings from the mid-twentieth century is a wonderful addition to any bookshelf. Alternating literary analysis with lively samples, he demolishes the notion of a dearth of gay literature from World War II to the 1969 Stonewall riot. All of the works excerpted here are out of print, and while some may not be to our modern readers' tastes, they are all evocative of gay men's lives at the times, for better or for worse. From insightful drama to hardcore erotica, these books did much to shape America's views of homosexuality, and "Pulp Friction" whets the appetite and showcases where today's gay literature can trace its roots. Also included is an appendix where Bronski lists a smattering of gay novels published from 1940 to 1969. This anthology is a great introduction to this genre of queer writings.

I've respected Michael Bronski's journalism for years, but this is the first of his books I've read. I'll definitely be reading more. Here he performs two amazing feats. First, after doing an extraordinary amount of background reading, he selects examples of gay pulp fiction from the 1940s through the 1970s, ranging from the surprisingly literary to campy porn. I worried that the excerpt approach would be frustrating, but Bronski has a real knack for setting the scene, and the excerpts are all satisfying on their own. Given that most of these novels are hard to find (now probably more so), this is a tremendous resource.

Second, he offers an introductory essay bursting with insight & nuanced introductions to every piece (often with tantalizing information about the writers). At the back, perhaps most valuable of all, he puts together an annotated timeline of highlights of gay male literature 1940-1969 which discusses works by the writers included in the book as well as more literary work (Genet, Vidal, Baldwin, etc.). It's an essential resource for those looking for further reading.

The later pieces are often pornographic, campy and silly (very entertaining, occasionally dark or hard-core) while some of the earlier pieces are generally more thoughtful, even literary, though sometimes downbeat. Bronski's selections always emphasize what was exceptional or unique for the time. *None* of these pieces are routine. My personal favorites are "Sam," "Spur Piece," "Lost on Twilight Road," "The Boys of Muscle Beach," "Song of the Loon," and "Gay Revolution" (in which the world is turning gay, Body Snatcher-style). "Maybe--Tomorrow" is hilarious yet somehow brilliant. ("Muscle Beach" & "Gay Whore" are also hysterical.) My excitement about gay literature has been completely renewed. Bronski has eschewed the stuffy (often depressing) "classics" angle for a poppier approach of the smartest kind. At a minimum, every gay discussion group should read this book, but it should also appeal to adventurous non-gay readers.

Just after the end of World War II, a small literary movement began, unnoticed to most of the public: the gay pulp novel. From quiet novels about homosexual relationships post-WWII to the psycho-analytic and sexually charged writings of the Sexual Revolution to the more speculative and activist writings post-Stonewall, Author Michael Bronski has drawn from extensive research and a large collection of pulp novels to give an in-depth look at this almost hidden movement. Through this anthology, the reader not only sees a history of the gay literature but of societal views concerning homosexuality and how they have progressively changed.

Bronski has chosen to cite only a few chapters from specific works to point out the pulp styles as they changed with the times. At first, I thought I would be put off by this, but instead, it has interested me enough to try to find copies of some of these works, many of which have not been in publication since the 1950s and 1960s. One selection of note is from "The Gay Haunt" by Victor Jay. Kind of a gay "Blithe Spirit," even the snippet that was included in this book had me laughing hysterically.

This is a fascinating read, most definitely worth your reading.

Susan Stryker has written a succinct account of this corner of American paperback publishing during the middle of the last century. The four areas she covers are lesbian, bisexual, transgender and gay with each chapter having the relevant book covers (150 in all) nicely placed so they are near the appropriate text.

She covers the two sides of the pulp fiction market, the big mainstream publishers, who issued literature in a mass market format and so had to present Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal, Somerset Maugham, Truman Capote, Radclyffe Hall, James Baldwin and others with suggestive images (the predictable shapely female with the half unbuttoned blouse) and come-on cover lines to generate sales, I bet they would have loved to change the titles to something more racy though. The other side was the very cheaply produced (but expensively priced) paperback that had no literary pretence and was produced for the 'one hand reader'. Plenty of these latter covers are shown and the designs are as predictable as the words inside but when you see them presented, sometimes four to a page, their overwhelming blandness becomes fascinating, however there are some that look as if a designer has been able to produce something creative with art and typography.

So many of the lowbrow and no-brow paperbacks are parodies of the genre, 'Hot Pants Homo' by Percy Fenster, 'The Man They Called My Wife' by Stark Cole' or 'Take My Tool' by Vivian LeMans, all with the appropriate tacky graphics and blurbs. Overall an interesting book (and well designed, too) about a slice of pop culture publishing that sold copies in the millions. Another book, also well designed, covering the same subject is Jaye Zimet's 'Strange Sisters' (ISBN 0140284028) with two hundred covers of lesbian pulp fiction. Both books will be appreciated by graphic designers and pop culture fans.

This is an easy read and very fascinating at the same time. Stryker accomplishes bridging the gap between the social atmosphere of the golden age and covering the different genres of books typically associated with "queer" (i.e. bisexuality, transexuality, and homosexuality) while giving a plethora of examples in each category. You just might find a pulp in this book you must read.

Taking a similar tact to Michael Bronski's epochal PULP FRICTION, ace historian Stryker parlays a collection of battered pulps into a periscope through the murky waters of gay and lesbian acceptance in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. She's able to show, just through the cover alone, how bisexuality proved to be the wedge that eventually toppled Amewrica's binary notions of sexuality. Triangle books, two men and a woman, two women and a man, perhaps seemed safer for timid 50s readers to understand, or at any rate aroused mass curiosity, and before you know it, the "divided path" had made way for full on "queer passions."

Stryker devotes separate chapters to the paperback revolution itself, as well as to lesbian, transgender, and gay male bodies of work. The covers are sometimes humorous, sometimes inane, but all of them give off a nervous sexual energy that still fills you up through your hands and eyes. She delves into the lives of the primary pulp creators, insofar as they have been divulged, and makes you feel with them as they created this enormous corpus. Chronicle Books has outdone itself with its huge, creamy graphics and must have had a good time doing so, with some amusing juxtapositions.

What happened to the end, though? The book ends without so much as an adieu, nearly in the middle of a paragraph. Perhaps the book's chic designer overrode whatever conclusion tthe author had written; they had perhaps run out of illustrations and, like Alice in the Lewis Carroll book, saw no sense in a book that had neither "pictures nor conversations." Instead, an able bibliography appears, meekly enough, and a tidy 4 page index.

Some of these authors are new to me, but I hope very soon to be able to pore through some of the books of Chris Davidson (GO DOWN, AARON; CAVES OF IRON; A DIFFERENT DRUM; THE GOLDEN TUFT), who sounds the most far-fetched of the lot. Will I be using one hand, or two, only time, or Tim, will tell.

This Baen omnibus includes two Spider novels by Norvell Page, and one of the two Skull-Killer stories, the Octopus.

The cover is by Steranko, and references the first Spider novel, with iron men laying waste to New York streets, and there is an amusing little intro piece featuring the author and some details of his work.

Spider - 075 Satan's Murder Machines

The Spider vs Iron Man.


Iron Men, too, if you like. Rather than Ole Shellhead of course, we have a variety fo bad guy here, but with a similar methodology.

Power armour suits to wreak havoc and destruction, as opposed to saving the world.

The only man that can stop them, is, of course, Richard Wentworth, The Spider. That's if the not so swift police acquaintances will stop hassling him long enough to let him do so.

Luckily, the brave, gorgeous, and very smart Nita van Sloan is around to help, not to mention fearless muscular assistant Ram Singh.

The Spider will fight Iron Men under water, and especially will bash them with big things while doing his Iron Man act on top of a bus.

A pretty classic action finish, this one.


3 out of 5


Spider - 026 Death Reign Of the Vampire King

The Spider vs Bat Man.


This one isn't trying to strike fear and terror into the hearts of criminals, either, but quite the reverse.

He is using bats with poisoned sharp bits to slaughter hundreds of innocents in his own crazy crusade against the USA.

The Spider needs help in this one, as he cannot fly on his own like the Bat Man, and a pilot steps up to help, along with the usual crew.

The Spider realises he might have to give the whole flying bat thing a go himself before this is over.


3.5 out of 5


The Octopus - The City Condemned To Hell

Jeffrey Fairchild likely suffers from the same sort of personality disassociation problems as Moon Knight.

As Dr. Skull, a man thirty years older than he actually is, he works with Carol, a nurse, who he is definitely interested in.

He is also The Skull-Killer, and must work hard to stop one of Dr. Skull's colleagues, when he discovers he is The Octopus, turning people into devolved sea monster types with the aid of a purple ray.

3 out of 5




3.5 out of 5

This is actually THREE classic short novels, rather than two. The first two are tales of "The Spider", the kind of hero whose stereotypes are Doc Savage or The Shadow, a man whose public face is "idle rich", but by night...

The first story, SATAN'S MURDER MACHINES, finds the Spider dealing with the Robot Titans of the title. Giant walking machines which kill and ravage the city with impunity, thwarting all efforts to stop them. This story absolutely stunned me with the amount of thought and planning that went into it. I won't reveal the machine's secrets here, but I will say that Page was dealing with concepts that wouldn't re-appear in science fiction for almost thirty years, and he made the machines both believable *and* workable. Fun.

The second story, DEATH REIGN OF THE VAMPIRE KING, we find the Spider dealing with a villain who uses swarms of bats, augmented with poison fangs, to terrorize the city. The Spider ends up framed for the murders and must both catch the killer and clear his name. The aerial combat scenes were splendid, and I liked the fact that Nita, the Spider's girlfriend, is drawn by the author to be just as skilled and tough-minded as the Spider.

The final story, THE OCTOPUS: THE CITY CONDEMNED TO HELL, was a one-off that apparently never gelled as a series. It deals with "Dr. Skull", a skilled and dedicated young physician, who disguises himself as old, and fights crime and evil wherever he finds them. Here, he must deal with "The Octopus" an evil both ancient and young, who turns people into monsters to feed his empire. It's not quite up to "The Spider", but it was fun to read.

Add in cover *and* interior art by Steranko, and you've got a recipe for solid entertainment. The book also lists another volume "The Spider: City of Doom" in the works.

This was a heckuva lot of fun to read, so all I can say about the prospct of another volume is: Goodie!

The only problem I had with this book is, that as a long time collector of the Spider, I was disappointed that two of the three novels I already had in book form. As there are about a hundred Spider novels that I haven't read, I would have like some of them instead. That said, for the beginning Spider fan, this is a good place to start. Two Spiders, plus another novel, The Octopus, by Norvell Page, The main writer if the series. Recommended on that basis.

Last semester i had taken a visual arts course at my college, Artforms was the text that we use and that the school still uses. If you are wanting to familiarize yourself with past and modern works of art from all cultures then this is a complete introduction to the reasoning behind specific artforms. After reading it you will get an overall gist of what art was in societies before ours and how it continues to live on and how it is viewed in present day societies.

This book deserves to be in any person's library. It tells you the different thecnics of painting, the differents colors, how they divide, how to recognize the paintings. If you are studiying art or just like it, you must get this book.

PSYCHOLOGICAL CUTTING-EDGE TERROR WITH A WICKED TWIST!
A TURN OF THE SCREW!

F. Paul Wilson ... Ramsey Campbell ... Mort Castle ...Tim Lebbon ... Tina L. Jens ... Robert Weinberg ... Nancy Kilpatrick ... Sephera Giron ... Thomas Deja ... J. Knight(RISEN) ... these along with other masters of suspense plunge you into their corkscrew world of hateful revenge, uncertain fate, and finally--panic. You drift deeper and deeper, tumbling into "THE BLACK SPIRAL."

In twenty maximum-fear-factor tales of suspense you'll encounter ... Elvis rising from the grave to wreak havoc on a rap group who's been sampling his songs ... the uncertainty of crossing over into the shadowy world of the near death experience ... a writer who finds himself hunted like a character in the pages of his own screenplay ... a young couple who think they've found their dream home... that is, until they learn of its blood-soaked past ... a seductive vixen who uses her voluptuous body as bait as she prowls the Goth scene's nightlife looking for fresh meat, leading to an orgiastic night that guarantees eternal life for Vanessa and her all-consuming passions ... lust-filled ghosts who covet and seduce unsuspecting women as they sleep ... a beautiful, hard-driving femme fatale who's on the run in the dusty heart of the Arizona Desert and races the devil for pink slips ... and a serpent-handling, traveling preacher man who gets more than he bargained for when he unwittingly makes a pact with old "Mr. Scratch."

These stories are at once eerie and haunting, chilling and nightmarishly brilliant. Guaranteed to prickle your skin with gooseflesh, and keep you reading until the wee hours of dawn.

THE BLACK SPIRAL: TWISTED TALES OF HORROR

A FINGERNAILS-ON-THE-BLACKBOARD THRILLFEST!

Some of these stories are so twisted - the hair on the back of my neck stood up.
Way to go Ramsey. Keep writing.

the book incorporates an analytical and in situ approach to the material, the making, the techniques and the history of this most fundamental "tissue" and withour digressing to nostalgia and romance or high technique, thour there is not much there a priori, establishes an informes and amiable approach including excellent references and sampling. It is an original work

help me to find good paper for alternative photographic process. All paper are in this book. Areally good book for people looking for new paper or want to know more about paper. sorry for my poor english I'm french.