1. How the Pulps Avoided Censorship
One of the fun things about pulp magazines is how nonredeemable they are in terms of taste. Although the tasteless phase is often dismissed as being a product mostly of the pre-war era, it was present earlier than most accept and continued on until the demise of the medium. Various different attempts have been made at rescuing the old pulpwood's reputations, mostly through the magic of redefinition. We here at HIL-GLE embrace our inner trailer trash and will do no such thing.
While radio, movies, television and comics all found themselves under censorship scrutiny from time to time, the pulps largely escaped. How and why they got away with this will be explained in blow by blow detail.
2. Girls Made Good: The Story of Ideal Magazines.
The Ideal behind William Cotton's Ideal Magazines was to have a subject matter expert call all of the shots in his magazines. They were writer's magazines--as in the writers had full control of all aspects of the magazine's presentation. The way this hit or miss system worked is that the hot shot writer would then hire his pals and all of them would do the magazine in the way a magazine would be done if writers ran magazines. The net product was a lot of short-lived magazines. Along the way they started the careers of a number of female editors. From the late 1940s on, Ideal was dominated by female editors.
Ideal is only tangentially a pulp publisher. They were a Movie Magazine publisher which transitioned into impulse buy magazines on various subjects--always chasing fads with limited life periodicals. In pulps they stuck to the romance genre--using fairly much the same staff as for their other magazines.
Never much more than a Mom and Pop shop, Ideal had a fairly long run, evolved a unique style of operating and has a history which is a microcosm of the magazine business itself--up to and including being absorbed by a conglomerate which had no idea what it was doing in the magazine business. It's a funny and rather twisting story with a double death unhappy ending. (Only Filmways Corporation was harmed in the making of this melodrama.)
3. Character Management
Fictional people as a commodity owned by corporations. The wondrous world of "good will", of corporations capitalized largely by trademarks, such as McDonald's and the Chicago Cubs. When your logo up and dances, you are in the world of Character Management. No, Disney didn't invent it. A Dime Novel house turned pulpster more or less industrialized the game. It actually dates literally back to the time of Paul Bunyan, who never really was a myth, but rather a corporate spokesman who outlived his corporation. A cautionary tale for our time and all time.
4. Pulp Magazines currently owned by Disney and the National Enquirer.
It's not as impressive of a list as you might think, but it does have its shockers. These are all trademarks the two companies can claim ownership of. They can thank me later. (I take cash.)
5. Superhero Movie Classics you may have missed.
My reviews of movie serials based on comic book and pulp magazine heroes. Many are still available in one form or another. I have them all. I am not sure I have seen them all.
6. Global Elite Me.
My introduction to the world of being a global elite. A blow by blow account of how I became one of the most important people in the world. A true story.
I promise you none of this on any set deadline. I will be starting with the censorship piece, mostly because I know the details by heart. (I will still need my notes in order to not have another accident.) Given that I am again headed out of town and am very likely to be relocating my abode shortly, our next few entries are likely to be on the latest crop of neo-pulps and a survey of the neo-pulp world as it stands today.
Be here. Aloha.
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