Karavansara

East of Constantinople, West of Shanghai

Category Archives: Other People’s Pulp


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Other People’s Pulps – Revenge of the Peplums

cabiria101They never wrote novels about Maciste.
But someone’s writing them now.

Back in the ’50s and ’60s, Italy had its own brand of fantasy movies – they were called peplums, from the standard garment worn by the female characters, the classic attire of ancient Greece, or more generically “film mitologico” – myth-based movies.
And we’re talking classical myths – Hercules, Jason and the Argonauts, Ulysses… and Maciste.

Maciste first surfaced in 1914, in the silent era colossal Cabiria, portrayed by Bartolomeo Pagano, a former docks worker turned actor.
The success of the character was such that the following year Maciste was back on screen, starring in his own spin-off – the straightforwardly titled Maciste. Continue reading →


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Other People’s Pulps – Regime Heroes

dfulmineAs mentioned in a previous post, the Fascist Regime was bad juju for the pulps in Italy, but the genre did reflect on comics.
Graphic narratives were popular, and probably easier to manipulate.
A few American comics were “adapted” and later pirated by Italian artists – “Tim Tyler’s Luck” became “Cino & Franco”, Mandrake had its dialogues extensively rewritten, and a series of apocryphal Flash Gordon stories were published when the originals could no longer be imported.
The Regime feared the readers could still be seduced by the American way of life, even through adapted and manipulated comics.

With the American comics gone, the field was open for original heroes. And if “Lucio l’avanguardista” was probably the most all-out fascist-friendly comic book hero, the most popular was certainly Dick Fulmine.

NOTE: I’m indebted to my friend Alessandro Girola, who first wrote about Dick Fulmine on his blog, Plutonia Experiment.
Much of the research behind what follows started on Alex’s page. Continue reading →


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Other People’s Pulp – Blonde Panther

Italy is not a country for pulps.
Maybe it’s because when the pulp era was at its peak, the Fascist Regime was at its peak, too, and it enforced a strict censorship on American fiction.
Characters like Doc Savage or Conan would arrive in Italy only in the ’70s, and we complitely missed The Shadow and The Spider, and all the other heroes.
Burroughs was somewhat luckier – because his novels hit the shelves before Mussolini’s rise to power.
And movies and comics fared better, too – because they could be translated and adapted: there’s the old story about Mandrake working with the Nazis, in his Italian version.
With Mandrake, Flash Gordon, the Phantom (known in Italy as “L’Uomo Mascherato”), Tarzan and many others, pulp tropes percolated in the Italian comic industry.
So it was in original comics that Italy gave its greatest contribution to the pulp genre – with original characters like Dick Fulmine (we’ll talk about him) and, somewhat later, with Pantera Bionda. Continue reading →


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Other People’s Pulp – Curse of the Spider Goddess

Lost and alone in the African jungle, archaeologist Jonathan Baker has a very bad encounter with a giant spider – he loses his right hand, and barely survives the ordeal.
Saved by the lost Sumai people, he learns the legend of the Spider Goddess, planning the extinction of humanity, and receives the strange blessing of the ancient god Siruuk.
Through a mysterious ritual, his right hand is restored and imbued with mystical powers, and he becomes known as The Claw, the traditional enemy of the Spider Women that serve their evil Goddess.

Then things get really interesting. Continue reading →


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Pulp the Spanish way: The Island of Death

imageAnd so it started: my first expedition in the uncharted territory of other people’s pulp, my first non-Anglocentric (?) pulp read is a free ebook published in 2013 by Dlorean Ediciones.
It’s in Spanish.
It’s steampunkish.
It’s part of a series.
And it’s called La Isla de la Muerte.

And c’mon – how can anyone restist a story called The Island of Death, and featuring a great cover graced by a scantly clad woman wielding two katanas, standing on the shoulder of a giant ape?

Continue reading →


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Other People’s Pulps

What’s life without a good, large, massive, impossible project?

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I was sitting quietly during a discussion about the good and the bad of New Pulp, the other night
Yes, those who know me will realize that this is unusual – I do not normally sit quietly during discussions… I pace about and talk a lot.
But when I have the opportunity to sit and listen while some of the best in the field discuss the field, well, I keep mum and take notes.

Then I made an observation*. Continue reading →


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The Adventures of Jane

janeToday’s media-related post requires a little bit of introduction.

Jane‘s Journal, Or the Diary of a Bright Young Thing was a pretty risque British comic strip in the thirties, designed by Norman Pett.
Basically, stories about an ingenue that would be shown as often as possible in her underwear.
The author used his wife as a model for the character.

But, with the Second World War, Jane took a more active role in the conflict, and was now based on Crystabel Leighton-Porter (who would later reprise the role, live, for a quite popular… strip show). Continue reading →