Customer Reviews

Those Macabre Pulps

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

What a ripoff! First of all, of the 25 magazine titles featured, only 8 could be called "macabre pulps" in the generally accepted meaning of the term. (And if you count cover images rather than titles, the macabre pulp representation is even smaller.) And at most only five more titles could be considered pulps at all, even if you stretch the term to include some quasi-pulp publications. As to the rest, though most are fantasy or occult related, very few are in the "macabre" category, and none of them are pulps by any stretch! These include: seven post-pulp era digests published as recently as 1973, including one that contains no fiction; a fanzine; three standard size (8 ½ by 11) non-macabre magazines published during the pulp era, including two that contain no fiction; and a standard sized post-pulp era non-fiction magazine. The book's text is extremely skimpy, for the most part merely recounting some publishing information gleaned from the indicia of the magazines. If the author is an expert on pulps, you'd never know it from this book. For each title there's a listing of all the articles and stories, by author, which is OK, although for the most part these writers are probably best forgotten. The biggest problem with the book is that the text is artificially bulked up, with the checklists in large type and spread out across the pages. There are only 104 cover reproductions in this 111 page book, but because text and checklists take up so much space, many of the covers are reproduced quite small. (I know--this is like the classic complaint about the restaurant that serves terrible food--and in such small portions!) If the contents checklists had been printed in small type two or three columns per page (preferably in the back of the book), the cover illustrations printed in a larger size, more pulp titles added to the book, and the book's title changed to "Some Randomly Selected, Mostly Rare, Short-Run, Macabre, Occult and Fantasy Magazines Published Between 1919 and 1973," the book would still be a ripoff, but might barely be worth the Amazon discount price to the curious. This is the bottom of the barrel from Adventure House! If you want a good book on the pulp era, try their UNCOVERED, THE HIDDEN ART OF THE GIRLIE PULPS, which is chock full of pulp covers and has an extremely informative text by Douglas Ellis, or their reasonably priced Belarski cover collection.

I'd have to agree with the first reviewer. this one is not worth your time. i had very high expecations as i love this genre of illustration and graphic design... and there was hardly any content! i'm not even sure how they actually had enough pages to bind this book. the cover was the most exciting part. Look to some great titles like "UNCOVERED: the hidden art of the girlie pulps" and you'll be much more satisfied.

I don't understand the harsh 1-star reviews. This book is designed for the general public new to the subject of "macabre pulps," and it is not designed for the specialist collector. It's an over-sized paperback with numerous color photographs and I enjoyed it because the subject matter was well presented! End of story! When I buy a book like this I'm not looking for an encyclopedia!