Paizo’s Planet Stories Plunges into Pure Pulp!
You’d need to have a very long memory to remember the heyday of the original Planet Stories magazine, since it closed down in 1955. It was a pulp magazine – in both senses of the word “pulp.” But the name has lingered ever since, whispered at last call at convention bars to describe a certain kind of Science Fiction story – one where the science isn’t too complicated, and never gets in the way of the plot. One where the women are gorgeous and scantily clad, where the men are strongly-thewed (and often also scantily clad), and where the villains are black-hearted scoundrels out to rule their worlds. One where the blasters are hot, the ships have fins, and countless alien worlds are just waiting for the right blonde-haired American boy to become their new warlord. You know: the fun stuff.
Paizo Publishing, a rogue satellite that careened out of the Wizards of the Coast orbit some years back, has come up with a diabolical scheme to bring back the Planet Stories name. But this time it won’t be a magazine – Paizo is launching a new book line starting in August. Many of the novels in the new Planet Stories imprint will be drawn from the era of the original Planet Stories, and all will follow the original’s ethos of “Strange Adventures on Other Worlds.”
The new Planet Stories begins with Gary Gygax’s 1992 novel The Anubis Murders, a game-flavored alternate-world story about a sorcerous detective that makes up in extra pulp what it lacks in age. Also in August is a collection of tales about one of Robert E. Howard’s lesser-known barbarian sword-swingers, Almuric. Then in September comes Michael Moorcock’s City of the Beast, the first in a swashbuckling Edgar Rice Burroughs pastiche trilogy from the mid-1960s. In October comes the first bona fide classic of the list, C.L. Moore’s eerie masterpiece Black God’s Kiss, collecting all of the “Jirel of Joiry” stories, including one rare tale in which the warrior-woman Jirel meets Moore’s other famous creation, the science fictional adventurer Northwest Smith.
In my 25 odd (sometimes very odd) years in comics, I’ve had a chance to be associated with certain books/characters/concepts and produced work of which I’m very proud such as GrimJack, Suicide Squad, The Kents, Wasteland, and others. With some – such as GrimJack and Suicide Squad – I’ve had a chance to go back again recently and re-explore them which offers different challenges, new perspectives, but also familiar pleasures.
Back in 1961, cartoonist Dan DeCarlo created a newspaper strip called Josie. Unsuccessful at selling into that crowded market, it was picked up by Archie Comics , and the feature evolved into Josie and the Pussycats. Dan based the lead character on his wife, Josie as sort of a different look at the Archie environment. He also created Sabrina The Teen-Age Witch and, with Stan Lee, Willie Lumpkin.
In entertainment, as with so many other subjective phenomena, many of the old clichés come into play, the main ones being "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" and "I don’t know much about art, but I know what I like." While one purpose of entertainment may be to seize on the universal in order to create a bond between creators and audience that explores or delights in our common humanity, it’s also a fact that everyone brings their own unique experiences to bear on their chosen entertainment, so different people can often have very different reactions to the same creation.
I think Kyle Baker is the funniest man in comics. With the exception of the recently completed non-fiction Nat Turner, everything he¹s done has made me laugh, including the artwork for DC’s Shadow series and Vertigo’s King David. After the publication of his second graphic novel, Why I Hate Saturn in 1992, Ben is Dead, a popular e-zine, proclaimed "Kyle Baker is God." Since then, he¹s written and drawn for every major publisher, and his work has appeared in New York Magazine, Spy, Vibe, ESPN and more. He¹s adapted the Dick Tracy movie and Alice in Wonderland for comics. His graphic novels include You are Here, I Die at Midnight, King David, the previously mentioned Nat Turner, several collections of short pieces and a continuing series about his family, The Bakers.
Now, where were we…?
If you have ever suffered through one of my comics writing classes, or were lucky enough to take a Robert McKee film writing course, you know that some professional wordsmiths set a lot of store by structure, and that the most reliable structure is called the three act structure. (For more, and better, on this, see the recommended reading below.) I’m not about to presume to teach a class here, but most briefly – the three-act structure: 1, Something happens to cause the hero to act. 2. The problem gets complicated. 3. The hero resolves the problem.
