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Pulp International - comic+art
Intl. Notebook Jan 19 2024
PET SPIDER-MAN
Collectors drive price of comic book sky high.


Have you ever seen a million dollar comic book? Now you have. A copy of the Marvel's Spider-Man #1, originally published in 1963, sold at auction a couple of days ago for $1.38 million. The comic was considered to be in near-perfect condition, and shattered the previous record for a Spider-Man #1, which had sold for $520,000. You know our rule. Never pay exorbitantly for something that you can use to swat a fly. But see, that's exactly why we aren't rich. Inability to see the big picture. We're starting to see it now, though. We have a lot of rare and unusual publications, and there could be value in them one day. How sweet would it be if our copy of A Visual History of Lovemaking Toys eventually became worth a million dollars? It isn't in near-perfect condition anymore though, because we left it out and the Pulp Intl. girlfriends got hold of it. But still. 

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Vintage Pulp Aug 27 2022
THAT MASKED MAN
Before Superman, Batman, and Spiderman there was the Phantom.


We picked up a copy of El Hombre Enmascarado late last year when we were passing through Granada, and in typical fashion, it's taken us almost a year to scan anything from it. But never let the early become the enemy of the late, or something to that nonsensical effect, so above you see the cover of issue thirty-four, written and illustrated by Lee Falk and published in 1960 by Editorial Dolar as part of its Héroes Modernos series. However, Dolar was merely translating a U.S. serial. There the main character was known as the Phantom, originating as a daily syndicated comic strip. This episode is titled “Balas,” or “Bullets.” The only credit inside is for Falk, but we're actually unsure whether he was the sole hand behind this. Although Falk was an artist, Phantom strips are generally credited to three cartoonists—Ray Moore, Wilson McCoy and Seymond Barry.

Falk invented the character of the Phantom in 1936, which makes him a precursor to modern superheroes. He even predates Superman, who came in 1936, and Batman, who arrived in 1940. His background is fun. During the age of piracy, Sir Christopher Standish was killed in an attack that his son survived. That son swore to fight evil in his father's name, and pledged that his descendants would too. So each new Standish generation inherits a costume and fights crime, perpetuating the idea among the public that the masked vigilante is immortal—a phantom. In addition to the costume he carries two pistols and two rings: one bears the image of a skull, which he uses to mark foes by slugging them in the jaw. The other ring is a peace symbol. His sidekick is a wolf and he also sometimes rides a white stallion. We've scanned a few interior pages plus the slightly defaced rear cover for your enjoyment. And perhaps—who knows?—we'll have more from the masked man later.

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Modern Pulp Nov 11 2019
YUNO WHO
What's a crime? Being unable to identify the artist.


Has the Mexican crime art revival passed? Maybe, but not on Pulp Intl. We've talked about this niche quite a bit, and today we're veering back in that direction to share this piece entitled “Crimen Perfecto,” painted during the early 1980s by someone who signed as Yuno. Yuno who? We dunno. Do you? You do? Let us know. Actually, we don't expect you to know, because these artists were rarely properly credited, nor properly compensated, we suspect.
 
For that reason they never could have expected interest in their work to rekindle, but it did, and for a while auctions in these were pretty active, both online and in brick-and-mortar. The technical execution on display isn't what you'd usually find in classic paperback art, but as critic Ken Johnson wrote in the New York Times in 2015, “The value of [Mexican crime] paintings isn’t to be found in their aesthetic sophistication or refinement. This is truly art for the masses, as kitschy as it is amusing.”
 
He forgot to mention horrifying and violent. A smart person once said that violent societies have violent amusements, and Mexico, like the U.S., has certain strains in its culture that persistently glorify mayhem. Art such as this gives you a glimpse of that, put to pasteboard via brush and paint. While the artists remain mostly unknown, what they produced resonates all these decades later. See more wild Mexican crime art here, here, here, and here.

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Vintage Pulp Jul 2 2019
COUNTING JACULA
Vampires never get old, in legend or in publishing.

Above you see a cover from the long running Elvifrance bande dessinée Jacula, with uncredited art. We picked this up from a Paris bouquiniste a few weeks ago. The backstory here is that a woman named Jacula Velenska is bitten by a vampire and, once turned, roams far and wide quenching her thirst for blood. She's accompanied by her vampire husband Charles Verdier, and his dog servant Wolf. This is in French but the series originated in Italy as a fumetti, or adult comic book, and ran from 1969 to 1982 for a total of 327 issues, which strikes us as quite a lot.

Our French reprint is from 1971 and is 14 in the series. We were anticipating some foundational Jacula vamp action, but were surprised to discover that it deals almost entirely with a loup garou, or werewolf, named Charles, and how he ends up eating his own child and wife. At the end of the tale he encounters Jacula, who he captures and plans to kill before thinking better of it, for reasons that are unclear. It could be this is the same Charles that later becomes her companion. We'll figure it out. One of the reasons we bought this was to practice French, which comes in handy where we live.

We said the cover art was uncredited, but generally they were painted by three guys—Leandro Biffi, Fernando Tacconi, and Carlo Jacono. Thanks to the powers of the internet we were able to determine that this one is by Biffi. The interior art by Alberto Giolitti is a bit more basic, which is usually true of comic books, but you're buying these for the story, 112 pages of it in this case, written by Giuseppe Pederiali. We have a few scans below, and if you want to see more from Elvifrance, start here.

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Modern Pulp Jun 11 2019
IMPECCABLE MANARAS
They're actually a little rude but the French don't seem to mind


Here you see the cover and few scans from Les femmes de Manara, which is a compendium from 1995 featuring published as well as previously unseen women created by the agile hand of Milo Manara, one of the great illustrators of graphic novels. He was born in Italy and was copiously published both there and in France, and remains extremely popular all over Europe. His niche is explicit erotica, and he's done it better than just about anyone, populating his books with lithe, beautiful women who manage to get into the weirdest scrapes. In Il Gioco, aka Click or Le Déclic, for example, the character Claudia Cristiani has an implant placed in her brain to help her with sexual arousal, which is all well and good until the remote control that operates it breaks and she's left in an ongoing nymphomaniacal state. It was made into a movie which we may discuss later, by the way. In Gulliveriana Manara's heroine survives a storm at sea only to find herself stranded naked on an island of tiny people. No movie of that, though we'd love to see one made. Anyway, these panels will certainly give you an idea why Manara became an icon in his field. He's still active, and maintains a nice website, frequently updated. So for more info on this master illustrator look there.

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Modern Pulp Feb 18 2019
SHINOHARA VISIONS
Creator of collectible pinku posters shows his comic skills.


We've shared two great Toei Company promo posters, here and here, painted by Japanese manga artist Toru Shinohara. Today we're checking out some of his manga covers. Below are fifteen. We'll have more from him later.

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Vintage Pulp Oct 18 2018
FRIGHT READING
Definitely not made for kids.


More Halloween themed goodness today, with twenty covers from creepy short story magazines and graphic novels, some in English and some Italian. These are all supposed to be for adults, but it's easy to suspect that the real audience was kids. We imagine putting ratings on the covers simply served the same purpose as warning labels on rap albums today—as a guarantee that your parents will freak out if they find out you own one. Well, whether for adults or kids, we love these.

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Modern Pulp Jun 10 2018
CRIME HEADS
Mexican comic book artists left no wickedness unexplored.


In Mexican comic book art of the 1980s and after, which is a subset of modern pulp we've documented before, a motif that recurred was the looming head. Multiple artists used this idea, which can only mean it was encouraged or sought by the publishers of series such as Micro-Misterio, Frank Kein, and Sesacional de Maistros. We have a mini-collection today of art pieces with floating heads. The creators include Beton, Dagoberto Dinorin, Rafael Gallur, and others. Also, we've learned that Dinorin often worked as a colorist, filling in the pencil drawings of other artists, particularly Gallur. So it's possible Dinorin had a hand in the piece signed by Gallur. We'll get into that subject more at a later date. We have nine more scans below, and since the Mexican comic book market thrived on transgressive violence, a few of them are a bit disturbing. You've been warned.

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Modern Pulp Nov 6 2017
MAXIMUM MEXICO
A Gallur gallery of viciousness and vice.


A while back we began sharing pieces of modern comic art from Mexico and intended to make it a regular feature. In our heads we're still featuring Mexican art regularly, but today we realized we haven't posted a piece in two years. Which goes to show you how things work around here. So we're back to Mexican ’80s comic art today, with all its crazy violence and wild stylings.

Above you see a painting entitled Enlatadas, which in Spanish means “canned.” We're guessing that's Mexican slang for getting your ass handed to you in the most brutal possible way. Below you see three more pieces. The first is for a comic series called Frank Kevin, and is the cover art used for #366 in the series. Second you see a piece for the series Sensacionál de Maestros, or “teacher's sensation.” In this case, thief seems to be the answer. And third you see cover art for something called Posesión Demoníaca, no translation needed.

The artists on Mexican comic illustrations are often forgotten, except for a select few. All today's pieces are by the same person—Rafael Gallur—who has had a long and prolific career in newspapers and comics. You can see more from him here. We'll try to pump new life into our Mexican art series going forward, which means you should see the next post in about a year. 
Just kidding. We'll do better. In the meantime check out others in the category here, here, here, and here.

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Vintage Pulp Dec 16 2016
HITLER THE HERO
Mercocomic reimagines Adolf Hitler as a force for good.

The seventies were an incredibly creative time for popular arts. Comics and graphic novels of the period have a certain caution-to-the-wind quality. Mercocomic's six part series Hitler is a prime example. It's an amazing tale in which Adolf Hitler successfully escapes Berlin at the end of World War II but is wounded by a bomb blast that induces amnesia. With his face drastically altered and his memory totally obliterated, he becomes a Nazi hunter in the service of the KGB. Of course all this digging around is bound to jog the memory of even an amnesiac, and then there will be hell to pay. Yeah. It's crazy—even crazier than Mercocomic's other offerings starring Che Guevara and John F. Kennedy. You can just hear the discussion going back and forth: “We can't do this.” “Of course we can.” “No we can't.” “I tell you we can.” In the end they did do it, because that was then and popular art consumers would give anything a chance. 1977 copyright on these, with covers by Prieto Muriana.

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Next Page
History Rewind
The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
March 19
1931—Nevada Approves Gambling
In the U.S., the state of Nevada passes a resolution allowing for legalized gambling. Unregulated gambling had been commonplace in the early Nevada mining towns, but was outlawed in 1909 as part of a nationwide anti-gaming crusade. The leading proponents of re-legalization expected that gambling would be a short term fix until the state's economic base widened to include less cyclical industries. However, gaming proved over time to be one of the least cyclical industries ever conceived.
1941—Tuskegee Airmen Take Flight
During World War II, the 99th Pursuit Squadron, aka the Tuskegee Airmen, is activated. The group is the first all-black unit of the Army Air Corp, and serves with distinction in Africa, Italy, Germany and other areas. In March 2007 the surviving airmen and the widows of those who had died received Congressional Gold Medals for their service.
March 18
1906—First Airplane Flight in Europe
Romanian designer Traian Vuia flies twelve meters outside Paris in a self-propelled airplane, taking off without the aid of tractors or cables, and thus becomes the first person to fly a self-propelled, heavier-than-air aircraft. Because his craft was not a glider, and did not need to be pulled, catapulted or otherwise assisted, it is considered by some historians to be the first true airplane.
1965—Leonov Walks in Space
Soviet cosmonaut Aleksei Leonov leaves his spacecraft the Voskhod 2 for twelve minutes. At the end of that time Leonov's spacesuit had inflated in the vacuum of space to the point where he could not re-enter Voskhod's airlock. He opened a valve to allow some of the suit's pressure to bleed off, was barely able to get back inside the capsule, and in so doing became the first person to complete a spacewalk.
March 17
1966—Missing Nuke Found
Off the coast of Spain in the Mediterranean, the deep submergence vehicle Alvin locates a missing American hydrogen bomb. The 1.45-megaton nuke had been lost by the U.S. Air Force during a midair accident over Palomares, Spain. It was found resting in nearly three-thousand feet of water and was raised intact on 7 April.
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