Pulp fiction—the term conjures images of seedy bars, strip clubs, over the top violence, and explicit sex. We can mostly thank Quentin Tarantino for such a drastic rebranding of perhaps the most unique, diverse, and influential pieces of Americana in history. Sadly, the film ‘Pulp Fiction’ has ensured that society at large conflates the associated genre with the exploitation genre, particularly grindhouse cinema.
I’m here to tell you nothing could be further from the truth. Since I already elucidated the influence of pulp fiction on Americana in general, I shall now attempt to differentiate pulp fiction from exploitation.
Exploitation is defined as a genre of film that is “a low-budget movie characterized by extreme violence, excessive gore, gratuitous sex, or other content meant to shock, disgust, or titillate”. Exploitation cinema was a type of B-film that rose to prominence in the 60s and 70s and was typically shown in grindhouses that catered specifically to the seedier side of cinema.
While they are influenced to some degree by pulps via shared genres like crime, horror, or some of the lesser known “saucier” genres of pulp, they tend to overrepresent the sleazier, gorier, more sexually explicit side of the genre as if that was what it was most known for or what made it so popular. This might come from conflating pulps like those of the 30s and 40s with old, European Penny Dreadfuls. While the Penny Dreadful could definitely be seen as a predecessor to American pulp fiction, its relation to latter day pulps is more so in its short form, plot driven story structure than its exploitative, sensationalist subject matter.
Keep in mind, pulps while an underground genre commonly seen as lesser fiction compared to great Victorian and American novels, was far from an obscure medium in its heyday. The most widely known and influential pulp magazines weren’t backroom smut rags in some adult bookstore, but magazines of adventure, horror, romance, and mystery primarily marketed towards young adults. Both young and old, male and female alike perused the magazine racks of their local newsstands or food markets for the latest edition of Nick Carter, Sam Spade, Doc Savage, The Spider, Secret Agent X, or The Shadow, particularly in the age of single-character pulp magazines in the 30s and 40s.
Just look at the most prominent talents of the pulp era. They weren’t closet groups of mouth breathing deviants that media today seems to market pulp towards. The great names of pulp were exceptionally talented men with strong literary backgrounds and social conscience.
Walter B. Gibson was a reporter, magician, and novelist who ghostwrote for Harry Houdini and Howard Thurston, and was a close personal friend of the magician Harry Blackstone (known as ‘The Great Blackstone’). He also worked a crime beat as a reporter in the days of Al Capone and Prohibition. Both of these together gave him a detailed knowledge of the inner workings of organized crime and a professional understanding of misdirection and illusionism. These elements coalesced into the world’s first superhero, The Shadow.
Lester Dent also relied much on experience to create his own pulps. In 1934, he used his money gained from pulp writing to purchase a 40 ft. schooner and live on it with his wife. Together they sailed all along the eastern seaboard and went treasure hunting in the Caribbean before selling it in 1940. Through his extensive travel and adventuring, he earned membership into the Explorers’ Club where he sought advice for story writing from more seasoned adventurers in the club. All of this experience and study would later coalesce into his creation of Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze. Dent would even assist Gibson in relieving the latter’s twice a month workload by penning a Shadow pulp called ‘The Golden Vulture’.
Now don’t get the wrong idea. When I say that pulps were marketed primarily towards young adults, that’s not to say that none of its most prominent exemplars were marketed towards an adult demographic. One need only look at the works of Robert E. Howard, the father of Sword and Sorcery, to mark that as untrue.
Howard’s tales of Solomon Kane and Conan the Barbarian stemmed not only from a love of ancient history and mythology, but from his own experiences growing up in Texas cowtowns and boomtowns during the Oil Boom and the last days of the Old West. Howard’s family was one of the last pioneer families of the American West, and he grew up with firsthand tales of gunfights, feuds, lynchings, and Indian raids. Combine this with a love of boxing and a hardboiled, fatalistic worldview, and we get both the mythical tales of the mighty Conan and the swashbuckling, historical, and horror themed adventures of Solomon Kane.
Howard’s gritty tales of sword and sorcery stood as a dark predecessor to modern fantasy with no small amount of blood and guts action. This may seem to propagate the idea of pulp fiction’s inherently exploitative nature, but while subject matter is one thing, presentation is another. Howard relays grandiose battles with a visceral nature endemic to his writing, rife with flashing blades, blood, and dismemberment. Yet, while a lesser writer would linger on the visceral details in the morbid kind of carnography seen in the works of people like Tarantino, Corman, and Herschell Gordon Lewis, Howard’s writing is quick and dynamic, giving just enough to make the reader gasp or wince before moving quickly on to the next opponent. The gore is there to give impact to the fighting rather than serving as a gross-out factor. In fact, Howard tends to leave the worst of the gore to the reader’s imagination through his spectacular use of atmosphere and vague descriptions of Lovecraftian horror.
Even in the crime pulps commonly associated with Tarantino or Robert Rodriguez’s grindhouse visions, while morbid in their sense of humor, they were more driven by the mystery at hand and the charisma of its leading character. While Raymond Chandler’s stories dealt with everything from homicide, to infidelity, to the smut industry, they were always seen through the eyes of a morally binary, everyman hero like Philip Marlowe—a ‘knight in dirty armor’ as Chandler was wont to call him.
“But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective in this kind of story must be such a man. He is the hero; he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor—by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world. I do not care much about his private life; he is neither a eunuch nor a satyr; I think he might seduce a duchess and I am quite sure he would not spoil a virgin; if he is a man of honor in one thing, he is that in all things…He will take no man’s money dishonestly and no man’s insolence without a due and dispassionate revenge. He is a lonely man and his pride is that you will treat him as a proud man or be very sorry you ever saw him. He talks as the man of his age talks—that is, with rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust for sham, and a contempt for pettiness. The story is this man’s adventure in search of a hidden truth, and it would be no adventure if it did not happen to a man fit for adventure. He has a range of awareness that startles you, but it belongs to him by right, because it belongs to the world he lives in. If there were enough like him, the world would be a very safe place to live in, without becoming too dull to be worth living in.”
-Raymond Chandler, ‘The Simple art of Murder’
While Philip Marlowe was certainly rough around the edges with his hard drinking, roughnecked demeanor, and heavy dose of black humor, he was also a man of staunch, almost archaic chivalric principles guided by a personal code of honor. In many ways, he wasn’t too different from the cowboy characters of the old dime novels and contemporary pulps, nor from the kind of characters typified by western stars like John Wayne or Alan Ladd.
Even Howard’s Conan lived by his own code of honor with a contempt for the power-hungry machinations of conniving bureaucrats, wizards, and sorcerers, refusal to prey on the weak, and a strong sense of loyalty to his comrades.
“Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.”
-Robert E. Howard, ‘The Tower of the Elephant’
Yet more even than Conan does Howard’s seminal character, Solomon Kane, exemplify the morally binary pulp heroes of yore. In Kane’s inaugural pulp, ‘Red Shadows’, he happens upon a girl, beaten, raped and stabbed on the side of the road, who names her killer with her final breath. As this girl who he’s never known or ever will know dies in his arms, he takes it upon himself to pursue her killer to the ends of the earth and exact vengeance.
“Slowly he rose, mechanically wiping his hands upon his cloak. A dark scowl had settled on his somber brow. Yet he made no wild, reckless vow, swore no oath by saints or devils. ‘Men shall die for this,’ he said coldly.”
-Robert E. Howard, ‘Red Shadows’
Here, Howard gives us the ultimate exemplar of heroism. Kane doesn’t brood or moan about the sorry state of the world, nor does he devolve into moral relativism or apply the common bit of pseudo-moralism from DC’s Dark Knight that ‘if you kill a killer, the number of killers remains the same.’ He pursues the murderer from Europe to the darkest reaches of Africa all to avenge the murder of a stranger simply because it’s the right thing to do. Whereas Batman allows mass murderers like the Joker to fight another day for limp-wristed, moral relativist reasons (thereby making himself complicit in the murders to follow), Solomon Kane knows that anyone who seeks to prey on the innocent deserves no mercy.
“He never sought to analyze his motives and he never wavered, once his mind was made up. Though he always acted on impulse, he firmly believed that all his actions were governed by cold and logical reasonings. He was a man born out of his time - a strange blending of Puritan and Cavalier, with a touch of the ancient philosopher, and more than a touch of the pagan, though the last assertion would have shocked him unspeakably. An atavist of the days of blind chivalry he was, a knight errant in the sombre clothes of a fanatic. A hunger in his soul drove him on and on, an urge to right all wrongs, protect all weaker things, avenge all crimes against right and justice. Wayward and restless as the wind, he was consistent in only one respect - he was true to his ideals of justice and right. Such was Solomon Kane.”-
- ‘The Moon of Skulls’, Howard
The heroes of the pulps are men of action and principles. Not only do they include mythical heroes but everything from cowboys, to superspies, to soldiers, to police and private detectives. They represent American principles of self-efficiency, independence, the sanctity of the individual, and the duty of the individual to uphold all principles of right and justice.
Conan himself presents the principle of self sufficiency in a savage world and would sooner test his mettle in that world than use his strength to prey on the weak. Even when he conquers Aquilonia and becomes its king, he does so at the request of its people who wish to be free from their tyrannical ruler Numedides, and rules his subjects benevolently. Furthermore, though he is savage, he genuinely cares for the lives of innocents, particularly those under his rule.
“‘Compensation!’ It was a gust of deep laughter from Conan’s mighty chest. ‘The price of infamy and treachery! I am a barbarian, so I shall sell my kingdom and its people for life and your filthy gold. Ha! How did you come to your crown, you and that black-faced pig beside you? Your fathers did the fighting and the suffering, and handed their crowns to you on golden platters. What you inherited without lifting a finger—except to poison a few brothers—I fought for. You sit on satin and guzzle wine the people sweat for, and talk of divine rights of sovereignty—bah! I climbed out of the abyss of naked barbarism to the throne, and in that climb I spilt my blood as freely as I spilt that of others. If either of us has the right to rule Aquilonia, it is I! I found Aquilonia in the grip of a pig like you — one who traced his genealogy for a thousand years. The land was torn with the wars of the barons, and the people cried out under oppression and taxation. Today no Aquilonian noble dares maltreat the humblest of my subjects, and the taxes of the people are lighter than anywhere else in the world…”
-‘The Scarlet Citadel’, Howard
This recurring notion of self-sufficiency and individualism not only owes itself to America’s colonial, pioneering legacy, but to the eras people like Howard, Gibson, and Chandler lived in.
Robert E. Howard grew up during the oil booms in the waning days of the Old West and literally watched as civilization gradually subdued it. He saw the kind of greed, crime, corruption, and avarice, not to mention horrific accidents that resulted from an oil boom, and this experience most certainly informed his perspective on the merits and flaws of civilization.
“I’ll say one thing about an oil boom: it will teach a kid that life’s a pretty rotten thing about as quick as anything I can think of.”
-Robert E. Howard
People of the golden age of pulps didn’t need cynical, morally gray, wishy-washy tales of pouty antiheroes bemoaning the sorry state of their existence. The average man, woman, and child knew exactly how hard and cruel life was, and yet they persevered in spite of it all. This pioneering spirit—the spirit of the Old West—informed the creation of heroes like Nick Carter, Sam Spade, and Philip Marlowe. These were men who knew exactly what kind of world they lived in, and through their exploits, the readers of America aspired to greater things to be just like the heroes of their youth. You may scoff at the notion of hero worship as naïve, but it was through the examples of great men—real men—from Washington, to Jefferson, to Sam Houston, to Jim Bowie, to Paul Revere, that the industrious spirit of America bloomed and took us (in the span of about a couple hundred years) from a backwater colony of Great Britain to the most powerful nation on earth.
Yet the influence of the American spirit of heroism doesn’t owe itself to simply great names like these. It owes itself to normal men and women who came before us—pilgrims and pioneers who crossed the ocean and tamed a hostile land, fathers and mothers who only wanted better lives for their children, staunch Christians who wanted the freedom to worship as they pleased and to care for and defend their families without threat of the iron grip of a tyrannical government.
Through the real heroes of our past and the tales of our ancestors we would create tall tales of characters like Paul Bunyan and John Henry in a new, unique American mythology that would later evolve into the creation of the superhero.
Beyond the “influence” of Doc Savage and the Shadow on the creation of two of the most iconic superheroes in history, Stan Lee himself was not only an avid pulp fan, but (unlike Bob Kane) freely admitted the influence of pulp heroes on his own work.
“When I was about 10 years old, I used to read a pulp magazine called THE SPIDER and sub-titled ‘Master of Men.’ Perhaps it was the Master of Men that got me, but to my impressionable, preteen way of thinking, the Spider was the most dramatic character I had ever encountered. He ranked right up there with Doc Savage and the Shadow. Even better, he wasn’t as well known as the others, which gave me the warm feeling that his fans belonged to an elite club. At any rate, in searching for a title for our newest superhero, I remembered by old pulp favorite — and the title Spider-Man instantly hit me. I didn’t mind borrowing the Spider part of his name because everything else about our new character would be completely different. I was determined to make our next production the most original, most unique comic book character ever to swoop down the pike.”
-Stan Lee
Frankly, the misunderstanding of pulp and the distancing of comics from their pulp roots has resulted in much of the hyperpolitical, moral-relativism present in heroes of today. While Zack Snyder films Superman brooding with Batman on rainswept rooftops and relentlessly whingeing and handwringing over their dreary pasts and whether or not they have the right to their own powers or abilities and the right to, you know, save people, I say we cast aside that puerile sophistry in favor of the creeds of old. It seems Batman and Superman, while great at ripping off their forebears (going so far as to even trace artwork), have forgotten what made those characters great in the first place. If they have no creed to guide them, then what better creed than that of the Man of Bronze himself?
“Let us strive every moment of our lives to make ourselves better and better to the best of our ability so that all may profit by it. Let us think of the right and lend our assistance to all who may need it, with no regard for anything but justice. Let us take what comes with a smile, without loss of courage. Let us be considerate of our country, our fellow citizens, and our associates in everything we say and do. Let us do right to all - and wrong no man.”-
-Doc Savage
Pulp fiction is more than some exploitative, backroom, smut rag kids hid from their parents like a Playboy centerfold. Pulp fiction is the great grandaddy of American pop culture. It covered a variety of genres like mystery, horror, superheroes, war, romance, sci-fi, adventure, fantasy, crime, westerns, and even sports.
They reflected the American culture and social conscience of the day, addressing our struggles and national anxieties. Through his Shadow pulp ‘Gangdom’s Doom’, Walter B. Gibson drew upon knowledge and experience as a crime reporter to give citizens a cathartic sense of justice in the heart of Prohibition. In the crime-riddled streets of New York and Chicago rife with gangsters, corrupt politicians, and petty crooks, he gave readers the first superhero—an incorruptible agent of inviolable justice who mercilessly meted out impartial punishment to any who dared prey upon the innocent. Through the mythical exploits of Conan and Solomon Kane, Robert E. Howard embodied the spirit of the pioneer and explorer, guided by justice and self reliance to stand up in the face of perils earthly and unearthly, material and immaterial, mortal and spiritual to make something greater of himself—to be the hero in his own story.
"‘Nick Savoli,’ said the sinister voice, ‘you have led a life of crime. While you were one of many, you were ordinary. Now you believe yourself supreme. You are wrong. You are dangerous—that is all. You are mistaken when you believe that you are supreme.’
‘Is this a warning?’ asked Savoli, with a grim smile. ‘Or is it a threat?’
‘It is a judgment,’ said The Shadow sternly. ‘In your crimes you have not respected the individual. You are responsible for the murder of one man against whom you had no grievance. For this crime you shall lose the power which you claim to possess."
- ‘Gangdom’s Doom’, Gibson
That is the legacy of the pulps—aspiration and personal growth over cynicism and despair, justice over revenge, responsibility of the individual over tyranny of the collective. These are ethics long lost in an age of entitlement and perpetual victimhood.
How often in modern films after setting up grandiose villains with great powers or epic battles between superhumans do we so often find the true villain in the end to be some wealthy, silver-haired, Caucasian patriarch who must be taken down by a perpetually preachy diversity icon more often justified by skin color and dearth of Y chromosomes than by any fixed morality? It’s always the oppressors versus the oppressed, the rich versus the poor, the haves versus the have nots.
Just look at ‘The Batman’ which came out only a year ago. Much as I enjoy the film, it’s just as guilty of the same, neo-Marxist, moral relativist agitprop emblematic of all contemporary superhero products. Just listen to the backdrop of political discourse between the evil, white Mayor Don Mitchell Jr. and his opponent, the up and coming, strong, independent, black woman candidate Bella Real. Reeves even cornily jibed that the latter character ‘represents hope’, as in our only hope is to cast aside all the evil, white, upper or middle class men in order to strive for a more equal society (heck, I’m surprised Reeves didn’t just name her ‘Hope’. That’s the level of subtlety we’re dealing with here). Think I’m reading too much in or overreacting? Catwoman basically confirms the message in a conversation with Batman, claiming Gotham only cares for ‘white, privileged a**holes’ (many of whom, I’m sure, they relied on for funding the film). Riddler goes on to rant about how the rich and upper-class forget the poor and orphaned before serving himself as a ham-fisted allegory for internet ‘incels’ and mass shooters. In the end, Mr. Vengeance gives in to the victimhood mentality in favor of being a symbol of hope (which I thought was Superman’s job, but whatever) in the most wishy-washy, preachy ending in recent memory.
Yet, in spite of this bastardization of the message of superheroes and pulps, these films and properties become so clunky the more they do them, because they run into a single, immutable fact about the genres—that they were both birthed from a specifically individualist mindset. The tyranny of the collective often served as a primary antagonist in many pulps and early comics, from organized crime groups like the Italian Mob, Hydra (both from the Shadow and Marvel comics), or the Sinister Six, to Marxists or villains upholding explicitly Marxist values like the Shadow’s own ‘Red Envoy’ who hunts down escaped tsarist loyalists. It’s no coincidence that we had villain team-ups, gangs, and syndicates long before superhero teams were a thing (not that I have anything against team ups of either nature, but I’m just saying). These stories were a call for individuals to excel in whatever they do to uphold justice, right, and what it means to be an American. Why do you think the most famous superhero of all time, Superman, had the tagline ‘truth, justice, and the American way’?
Beyond even superheroes, why do you think the use of the fictional private detective was birthed in American dime novels and pulp fiction? Just look at Poe’s character of C. Auguste Dupin or Ormond G. Smith’s character of Nick Carter, both of whom debuted before Sherlock Holmes. The concept of a private individual taking up the cause of justice or solving problems without the help of, and often in direct conflict with, local authorities or government agencies was birthed in American culture.
Yes, pulp is often chocked with violence, scantily clad seductresses, and visceral horror, but gleaming amidst the horror and violence like a diamond in the rough was always the hero—a knight in dirty armor to guide us through the melee. These elements are present in Indiana Jones, yet I don’t hear anyone relegating him to some morally gray exploitation icon. The horror and violence made these tales real and put our heroes in true peril that had us thrilling for each consecutive issue. The stories themselves showed us the horrors endemic to existence, and our heroes showed us how to persevere and rise above them. They clearly delineated good from evil and punished all who fell into the latter.
Why do you think the pulp market was so successful during the Depression and the prominence of organized crime in the 40s and 50s? Walter B. Gibson even went so far as to say his Shadow stories (which were heavily in demand almost from the hero’s inception) made him essentially “Depression-Proof”. Robert E. Howard even made his living off of pulps, and we already covered how pulp proceeds funded the wealthy excursions of Lester Dent and his wife.
By relegating pulp to a subgenre of exploitation and a paragon of vice, we doom ourselves to wander around aimlessly through the cultural detritus of post-2016 comics, television and cinema wondering where it all went wrong. We wallow in moral relativism and perpetual victimhood or idolize antiheroes who revel in vices and then have the gall to pin the moniker of “pulp fiction” to it. Because of this, too many people automatically associate pulp fiction with the worst of humanity, when in truth, most of it has historically been associated with some of the greatest heroes in contemporary fiction and even contributed to the development of genre fiction as a whole.
At Western Civilization’s lowest points—be it the Depression, the Great War, or the Red Scare—the pulps served to address the anxieties of the American people. They were birthed in the heart of fiscal, financial, governmental and moral tribulation—an underground genre that only recently became really underground. Pulp is the great-granddaddy of the mainstream—the unsung hero of American pop culture. It didn’t achieve that distinction through copious quantities of titillation or glorification of the worst elements of mankind, because them men who wrote these stories weren’t the dregs of humanity. They weren’t the kind of basement-dwelling, neckbearded hipsters that spend their time making painfully unfunny pop-culture jokes and references to thinly veil their fetishized view of reality and human interactions and give you the impression that they’re ‘edgy’, Avant Garde, or somehow politically or socially relevant.
‘Deconstruction’ is the word of the day with these hipsters. Yet how long can we deconstruct genre trappings before we even forget what they were or where they came from? People who try to appeal to ‘pulp’ fans have so perverted the genre in the mainstream (literally and figuratively) that when they return to the genres pulp spawned, be it fantasy, westerns, or film noir, they just churn out another interchangeable piece of exploitation in comics, films, television, etc. that quickly finds itself languishing in the bargain bin. Then how do people criticize it? Critics say these other people aren’t as talented as Tarantino or Robert Rodriguez—that they don’t understand what makes those other works classics!
Why do you think film noir has been dead since the 60s? Why is it that when Lord of the Rings finally showed how fantasy can have real popularity and mainstream appeal the genre died almost immediately after its inception with dreck like Eragon or Stardust? Sure, Narnia kept the genre on life support before dying three movies in, but then we follow it up with Clash of the Titans, Prince of Persia, Immortals, Gods of Egypt, and two Hercules movies—all of which somehow managed to bomb spectacularly. Seriously, how do you mess up Hercules?
The answer is that these genres have been pruned of their pulp roots! Just look at the Lone Ranger! The contemporaries of the Lone Ranger weren’t Pirates of the Caribbean and Indiana Jones; they were Western pulps like ‘Texas Rangers’, ‘Wild West Weekly’, ‘Western Story’ magazine, or ‘Western Aces’. Icons like Conan the Barbarian, Zorro, Tarzan, Wil Eisner’s The Spirit (who’s literally just a rebranded version of The Phantom Detective), and literally everything H.P. Lovecraft wrote all found their genesis in the sallow pages of pulp magazines.
Even as far back as the 70s, pulp was already being deconstructed and defanged by the progressive numbskulls of the hippie movement. Just look at Robert Altman’s adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s ‘The Long Goodbye’, which was literally conceived as an indictment of the film noir genre that people like Chandler, Hammett, and James M. Cain had carefully cultivated over the span of two decades.
-Leigh Brackett, screenwriter for ‘The Long Goodbye’
Altman himself even seemed to have a level of derision if not outright contempt for the very character he was adapting.
“Chandler fans will hate my guts. I don’t give a damn.”-
-Robert Altman, director of ‘The Long Goodbye’
The more things change the more they stay the same, eh? It seems contempt for a fanbase or one’s own audience isn’t a new phenomenon at all.
By all accounts, this nihilistic, grindhouse, smut image associated with pulp is not an organic development cultivated from decades of study and refinement of the genre. Rather, it’s a result of the deliberate bastardization of its key aspects and themes—a parody that over time became accepted as an accurate representation of the genre. The carefully cultivated image of pulp perversion stems from a character assassination by those who turned their noses up at its commonly moralistic, traditional, patriotic, and heroic underpinnings. Now, contemporary audiences hail it or deride it as a sort of masochist’s wet dream—a fist in the face of fundamentalist principles and naïve piety. Rather than the exemplar of our national culture and pride it once was, it now stands as a fist in the face to those very ideals that made it.
Yet all is not lost, my friends. As many begin tiring of the morally gray antiheroes and weepy, social justice revisions and outright character assassinations (both literally and figuratively) of their favorite heroes, a new movement of independent creators has risen to the challenge. Like the rebel filmmakers of the 70s, a new slough of independent talent has begun to converge beneath the banner of the ‘Iron Age’. Be it the pulps of Razorfist and Rob Rimes, the comic book projects of Ethan Van Sciver and Eric July, the film projects of Josiah Swanson’s ‘Epicverse’ or Will Jordan’s ‘Rogue Elements’ short film, the new, indie revolution has formed its battle lines against the mainstream.
With this new movement comes the rebirth of traditional storytelling—a return to the plot-driven, character-driven tales of high adventure devoid of preachy, sociopolitical dogma that once united Americans in a shared love of freedom and adventure. So now, more than ever, it’s time to reclaim and restore the good name of pulp so that new generations can understand the heritage of American values and the uniqueness of American culture, and Western Culture as a whole. It’s time to resurrect the genre that once encouraged and inspired young and old alike to be sober, intelligent, righteous, and patriotic—a genre that encouraged us to build up civilization rather than tear it down. So, I echo the entreaty of the Iron Age, my friends: Don’t cry about the culture, become the culture!