Last week we showed you our copy of Capt. Billy’s Whiz Bang and directed you to Darwnination because that website had the full issue already scanned. It seems a good time to point those of you interested in mid-century magazines toward Darwination again. It’s one of only a few sites on the internet that makes entire scans available for free. One day, when we’ve got some time, we may remodel Pulp Intl. a bit so that you can download full publications here, but for now we have too many other obligations, including earning money, building another website, painting our new place some color other than white, restoring the 150-year-old French desk underneath those magazines, getting our computer gear off the dining table and into the office where it belongs, and of course, giving all the attention we can to the eternally patient Pulp girls, who some days of the week might as well be widows. After a busy weekend, we don’t have anything really prepared for today, but we will get to scanning and posting everything you see above, plus exponentially more stuff that remains packed away, including a large supply of Japanese movie posters. Back to our regular schedule tomorrow. 

The numbers in reverse on the top photo tell you the date—today, 1955. The occasion was yet another nuclear test in the Nevada desert near Las Vegas, and the image captured the glow that had filtered all the way to downtown Los Angeles, more than 250 miles away. The blast that made all that light appears in the second image. The test was called Apple-2, and it was part of Operation Teapot, a fourteen blast series designed to examine potential tactics for ground forces under nuclear attack. We aren’t military experts, but we have a pretty good idea what the best tactics are—run like the Devil is chasing you. Come on now—tactics for infantry under nuclear attack? What would those be, really? Wear BluBlockers? Hide inside a fortress of hot dogs? Strategy our asses. We think the Army just liked blowing shit up. 

This 1925 photo of two workers clowning around on a radio tower above Königs Wusterhausen, Germany perfectly illustrates how we feel today. Why? Because yesterday the internet mafia sent their nicest technician by and she wired our new place, finally. We get less than half the promised speed, and the crazy corners in this place makes the wireless do weird things, but still, this is reason for celebration. Going to friends’ houses is nice and all, but after our last trek over the hills in a driving rainstorm we realized we would not last much longer. Today we sit here, dry, warm, making chocolate chip cookies and sipping red wine, and feeling (temporarily) satisfied. Thanks for bearing with us through the difficulties, everyone. And especially, thanks to those friends who opened their houses to us. P.S.G. Pumpometer and the Black Bomber are back! 

We came across two more postcards celebrating Las Vegas’s distinction as a city from which it was possible to see nuclear test shots. You may remember we posted a couple of similar items in December. These two promote not just Vegas’s dubious proximity to planet-killing nuclear ordnance, but also the venerable Horseshoe Club, a casino owned by Vegas legend Benny Binion. This is the 1950’s we’re talking about, so of course Binion was mobbed up. He started as a thief and killer in Dallas, and ended up with a commemorative statue on Freemont Street (later moved to the Strip). That simple fact probably says more about old Las Vegas than entire books. We’ll get back to him a bit later. No pulp site could be complete without him. 

In honor of baseball season in the U.S., we have for your enjoyment today an extreme rarity—an official 75th anniversary baseball program from Wrigley Field in Los Angeles, circa 1951. Casual baseball fans are scratching their heads right now, because Wrigley Field is located in Chicago. Well sure, that one is. But the first Wrigley Field, which opened in 1926, was in L.A. Chewing gum millionaire William Wrigley used the park to house his Los Angeles Angels, a minor league team that played in the Pacific Coast League. Wrigley also owned the Chicago Cubs, but though the park in Chi-Town was built before the one in L.A., it wasn’t named Wrigley until 1927. The original Wrigley Field, with its unusual off-center clock tower, was a marvel of Spanish revival architecture, but L.A. being L.A., it was demolished without a thought in 1966. Check the images below. And... play ball! 

While pulp digging in L.A. we found this cool flyer advertising Black Ace Books’ 33rd Annual Paperback Collectors Show and Sale. There will be some heavyweight authors at this thing, including some award winners, but unfortunately, we can’t go because we won’t be in L.A. anymore. It was a lovely three weeks in the U.S., though. We saw many friends, and between forays into the abundant and diverse nightlife found plenty of new pulp, which you’ll see as the year progresses. Anyway, if you happen to be in Southern California, consider attending the Black Ace event. Mission Hills is a little out of the way, in our opinion, but if you’re from the area you’re certainly used to driving an hour or two to get where you want to go.

On another note, we’ll be moving headquarters in the next few weeks, which involves the torturous process of getting new internet set up, so don’t be surprised if we post a bit more intermittently than usual through the first part of April. On the other hand, things could go really smoothly and we’ll avoid disruptions. It’s impossible to predict, though. That’s just the nature of infrastructure related issues where we live. If we really wanted fast, cheap, reliable internet we’d move to Scandinavia, but sadly our bodies cannot tolerate ice unless it’s in a margarita. Thanks, America, for a fun trip. 

The Pulp Intl. tour across America has left San Francisco for our last stop, Los Angeles, and our timing was good, because this interesting item appeared in the news yesterday. Apparently, a Los Angeles bunker intended to house Adolf Hitler is being razed to make room for a picnic area. Set on several acres in what is now Will Rogers State Park, it was built during the 1930s by a group of fascist adherents who called themselves the Silver Legion of America, or Silvershirts, with the idea of giving Hitler a base of operations in America. Though the land was purchased by Winona and Norman Stephens, the mastermind behind the project was William Dudley Pelley, below, a well-known fascist of the time. The sprawling site was inhabited by his Silvershirts, and besides a large house intended for Hitler, included a diesel plant, a sprawling garden, and a bomb shelter.

Pelley and his Silvershirts numbered about 15,000 official members during the mid-1930s, and certainly there were many more sympathizers. The group was powerful enough that it became a concern for President Franklin Roosevelt, who ordered FBI director J. Edgar Hoover to keep an eye on them. Hoover did so, but left the group more or less in peace until Pearl Harbor was bombed, at which point feds raided the ranch and arrested the occupants. That was 1941, and by then the Silvershirts had already declined in membership and influence. The raid pretty much destroyed what was left of the group, and the base designed and built forAdolf Hitler fell into disrepair. We think the place would serve an important purpose if at least one building could be saved and perhaps adorned with a historical marker. Picnic areas need bathrooms, after all, and what better place to take a piss than in a monument to global fascism. But of course, what else would we think? We’re a history site, and we believe covering up the past serves no one. Some say the Silvershirts were never important enough to be considered a threat to American democracy, and thus should not be remembered, but they only seem hapless in hindsight. It’s precisely when people think their society is immune to malign influences that they always seem to take hold. 

There’s an interesting story emerging today involving former CIA officer Brian Latell, right, who claims that Fidel Castro ordered subordinates to listen carefully for news from Texas on November 22, 1963. That was, of course, the morning U.S. president John F. Kennedy was assassinated, and Latell, who was the CIA’s national intelligence officer for Latin America, says Castro gave the order to put ears to the ground hours before the shooting. Possible? Well, probably quite a few people had advance knowledge of the assassination, so why not Castro? One wonders, though, why Latell, who’s made a nice living of writing about Fidel, appears with this revelation now. Had it slipped his mind for forty-nine years? Surely these claims have nothing to do with goosing sales of his new book Castro’s Secrets? That would be so very… capitalist of him.

Kidding aside, there’s little logic in Castro trying to kill Kennedy. Latell doesn’t make this claim, exactly, though he comes mighty close: “I don’t say Fidel Castro ordered the assassination. I don’t say Oswald was under his control. He might have been, but I don’t argue that, because I was unable to find any evidence for that.” Hmm. We tend to think a presidential killing conceived and orchestrated in the U.S. could be effectively covered up because some of the participants might be government officials able to classify documents, manage the press, pressure investigators, falsify evidence, and so on. But a Cuba-based conspiracy would have none of those advantages, thus the evidence would be there. Glaringlyso, we think. Indeed, we can imagine teams of CIA analysts in the days after the murder searching—if not praying—for even the most tenuous Cuba connection in hopes of uncovering a pretext for dispatching a division of marines to Havana. The fact that those marines never embarked says volumes. So we’re going to vote no on the implication that Castro had Kennedy killed. Advance knowledge? Possible. Did he pull the strings? No way. But like millions of Americans, we’d love to know who did.  

Sad news just off the wire—unique, prolific, and influential French illustrator Jean Giraud has died aged 73 after a long battle with cancer. Giraud broke onto the art scene in 1965, won his first awards by 1973, and by 1975 had adopted the pseudonym Moebius and developed into a graphic arts master. He worked in the comics medium quite a bit as both a writer and artist, and in addition to nine Marvel/Epic graphic novels, and work on longrunning Marvel characters like the Silver Surfer, was also a regular in the pages of the seminal French sci-fi magazine Métal Hurlant—known in the U.S. as Heavy Metal. Aside from all that, he also worked extensively in motion picture production design, and his efforts helped shape films such as Alien, Willow, Tron and The Fifth Element. It’s been a rough week for the art world—Ralph McQuarrie died less than a week ago. We’ve gathered up a few Giraud/Moebius pieces below so those who don’t know this master can get a sense of his singular style. 

Above, two mugshots from today 1946 of Iva Toguri D’Aquino, who was one of many women who broadcast English-language radio from Tokyo during World War II. These broadcasts were aimed at Allied personnel in the Pacific, and the soldiers referred to all the women collectively as Tokyo Rose, despite whatever they actually called themselves on air. D’Aquino called herself Orphan Ann, and her radio stints were limited to twenty-minute segments on Radio Tokyo. It wasn’t much time, but her low, raspy voice made an impression on listeners. What did she say? History.net answers that question by providing an example of a typical D’Aquino intro:

Hello there, Enemies! How's tricks? This is Ann of Radio Tokyo, and we're just going to begin our regular program of music, news and the Zero Hour for our friends—I mean, our enemies!—in Australia and the South Pacific. So be on your guard, and mind the children don't hear! All set? OK. Here's the first blow at your morale—the Boston Pops playing ‘Strike Up the Band!’

When the war ended D’Aquino, who was an American citizen, was taken into custody and shipped back to the U.S., where she was tried and convicted of treason. There was no actual proof that she had done anything traitorous—in fact her humor-tinged broadcasts had often undermined her Japanese employers’ intentions—but she neverthelesslanguished in prison for six years. D’Aquino’s legal troubles only ended in 1977, when U.S. president Gerald R. Ford pardoned her after evidence emerged that witnesses had lied at her trial. Cleared of wrongdoing, and the constant threat of deportation lifted, D’Aquino lived the rest of her days quietly and died in 2006 at age 90.