It’s been thirteen years since I last attended the Windy City Pulp and Paper Convention, one of the premier cons in the US that focuses on pulps and related ephemera. It’s a big 3-day event held at the upmarket Westin hotel in Lombard, in the Chicago suburbs. Since it was a beautiful Spring day on Saturday (May7th 2022) I decided to head over to Lombard to see how the con had changed since I last attended in 2008.
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| © Ian Baker. The Westin, Yorktown Center, Lombard, IL. |
I had paid $25 for a 1-day membership, which entitled me to attend the dealers rooms, the panel discussions, the films on show, and the painting gallery. A 3-day membership cost $35.
Upon arriving my welcome back contained a copy of Windy City Pulp Stories #21, an annual book published especially for the con by Black Dog books of Normal, Illinois. In addition to reprinting some rare pulp stories by Dashiell Hammett and Robert E Howard and others,it lead with a very interesting historical essay by Will Murray on the Fall and Rise of Fiction House, a prime mover in the transition of the sedate dime novel to the fast adventure stories of the pulps. The idea of this book, providing content and context to stimulate further interest in the hobby seems a very sound one to me, and could be transferred to the comic-con world as well.
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| © Black Dog Books, Normal, IL |
I spent a very enjoyable few hours wandering around the dealer tables. What struck me immediately about a Pulp con (as opposed to a Comic-Con) was the both the attendees and dealers are in general significantly older than their Comic-Con counterparts. These are people who probably first encountered pulps through the 1960s and 1970s reprints of Doc Savage, The Shadow, Conan, Tarzan and that stimulated their passion for those characters, which in turn made them seek out the original pulps.
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| © Ian Baker. Dealers Room. |
Entering the main ballroom, at first glance it seems similar to a comic mart, but this time the long boxes are full of pulps in Mylar bags. Immaculate pulps are displayed on stands and it is quite a sight to see the bright painted covers of The Shadow by George or Jerome Dozen on display, along with the Spider and The Avenger, amongst others.
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| The Adventure House dealer's table. |
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| Part of the Adventure House stand. |
Of course, copies of Astounding Stories and other seminal SF pulps are also to be found alongside the more character-driven pulps.
In addition there were quite a selection of Golden Age comics from a few dealers, along with a good selection of DC and Marvel comics from the 1970s that featured comic adaptations of famous pulp characters (eg Ka-Zar, Conan, John Carter of Mars, Tarzan, etc) .
But it is not all pulps. Mass-market paperbacks from the 1960s and 1970s were also on sale - those cheap sci-fi and cheap-thrill paperbacks with frequently sleazy covers that really filled the vacuum left by the pulps after they died in the late 1940s.
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| A typical $2 box |
I saw no price gouging at all. There were a few slabbed CGI-authenticated pulps but usually valuable stock was displayed in the usual Mylar bags, and available for inspection. Comics for sale were in the $3-$5 range. I saw good quality Doc Savage Bantam paperbacks for sale as low as $1 each. People were there to enjoy themselves and meet old friends.
I wound up having an enjoyable discussion with Will Murray (foremost authority on Doc Savage and the writer of a score of Doc Savage novels since the 1990s, writing under the original house name of Kenneth Robeson). Mr Murray is in process of arranging the publishing of a revised and updated version of his “Duende History of the Shadow”, a book I first bought back in 1979. I’ll be first in line to get the revised book. For anyone interested in the history of the pulps, I can particularly recommend three of Mr Murray’s non-fiction books - “Writings in Bronze” (essays on Doc Savage), “The Rise of The Shadow” (essays focusing on the background to the character and the original radio show), and “Wordslingers” (a history of the Western pulp, which I found fascinating).
I ended up buying a few old Avenger paperbacks for the re-acquisition nostalgia value, a couple of 1970s “Weird Heroes” anthologies by Byron Preiss, and two of the most recent Doc Savage novels by Will Murray. I returned home a happy man.
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| Part of my haul. |
So, it was a very enjoyable morning and afternoon. I did not get the opportunity to return in the evening for the Saturday panel sessions (the son of artist Norman Saunders - famed for his Mars Attacks and Batman trading card paintings - was due to run a session), but I will be sure to return next year.
© Ian Baker
I've never read any of The Avenger novels, though I've got the DC run of comics from the '70s. I must give the books a try one of these days.
ReplyDeleteThe books are quite well written, although the creation of the Avenger was an attempt to create a hybrid of Doc Savage and The Shadow. The books were written by a chap called Paul Ernst under the house name of Kenneth Robeson. I think there were something like 19 or so original stories that were re-published by Warner books in the early 70s, and then Ron Goulart took over to extend the series for a further number - perhaps up to number 36? I need to check my facts on it. I do like the paperbacks for their painted covers, which were very much in the vein of the James Bama-painted Doc Savage covers and used the same model Steve Holland for the paintings by Peter Caras.
DeleteI did have the 4 Avenger comics that DC produced in the 70s. I rather liked the Jack KIrby version, even though he worked on the title as a way of completing his commitment to DC. I did not like the more recent incarnation of The Avenger in DC's First Wave series around 2011.
Never saw the 2011 version, B - thankfully, by the sound of it.
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