Fans of NCIS actress Pauley Perrette will welcome the opportunity to see more of her in the forthcoming film The Girl from Mars.
The Girl from Mars tells the story of a lonely geek whose life is transformed when he meets the girl of his dreams (Perrette) who claims to be a visitor from another planet.
The film is written and directed by DIY auteur James Felix McKenney, whose previous features include the retro sci-fi flick, Automatons and the upcoming Hypothermia from Dark Sky films starring Michael Rooker (The Walking Dead).
McKenney will be sharing producing chores with Lisa Wisely and Chase Tyler of Brooklyn, NY based The Work Room Productions.
The Director of Photography will be Eric Branco, who lensed both McKenney’s Hypothermia and Satan Hates You for New York-based production company Glass Eye Pix.
Says the director about working with Perrette, “We’ve wanted to do something with Pauley in the lead for quite a while now. She has such a powerful presence with so much energy and compassion, it’s infectious. Writing this part was all about trying to capture that combination of kindness and enthusiasm that makes Pauley so special as a person and distill it all into a character that audiences will really respond to.”
Syndication in the US and the international success of NCIS make Ms. Perrette a recognizable and beloved actress around the globe.
Production is scheduled to begin in Los Angeles in May 2011.
AP: Lee, welcome to ALL PULP! First, can you tell us about yourself, some personal background?
LEE: I’m a high school graduate with a smattering of junior college, and words have been a part of my life as far back as I can remember. My parents read to me when I was young, and I’m always haunting the public library and bookstores, so it’s a rare day if I don’t have a book in my hands at some point. Ever since I figured out what a writer was and did, I have always tried to pursue that career path somehow and now the dream is finally coming true.
AP: As a writer, what influences have affected your style and interests the most over the years? Do you have a particular genre/type of story you prefer to write?
LEE: My personal tastes have been all over the genre spectrum, although I do find myself always coming back to science fiction, fantasy, and detective mysteries. I also enjoy good television, anime/manga, music, and am a major comic book fan. While I could list several influences in each category, when writing, I do tend to stay within the sci-fi, fantasy, and mystery genres regardless of what format I’m working in, because they have the most adventure and biggest sense of good triumphing over evil.
AP: What about genres that make you uncomfortable? What areas within pulp are a little bit intimidating for you as an author?
LEE: I’m not a fan of true horror, and prefer more ‘milder’ work like Kolchak, the Night Stalker or a good Godzilla movie to the Jasons and Freddies of the world. I personally feel you don’t need to know about every single drop of blood and inch of entrails to build suspense and drama. My biggest intimidation period is self-promoting. As a firm believer that one’s work should speak for itself, I am constantly being told I’m too modest for my own good. Otherwise, I find period pieces the most daunting to create, because while I have no problem doing the research, I’m always afraid of getting some little minute detail wrong that might spoil the story for the audience.
AP: Are you a pulp fan? If so, how has that affected you as a writer of pulps? If you aren’t a longtime fan, then why pulp?
LEE: I may not be as big a fan as some of the other people I work and associate with, but am a fan of the classics such as The Shadow and the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs. I’ve been told my stories can be a little terse at times, which is akin to the limited word count some pulp authors had to work with, but were still able to tell a great story despite any restrictions. As for why pulp, why not? The pulp style can trace its roots back to at least Cervantes’ Don Quixote, if not earlier, and the genre is just as entertaining today. Its influences are quite apparent in material as diverse as The Wild, Wild West; Jonny Quest, the Indiana Jones and NCIS franchises, Castle, and some of today’s comic books.
AP: What do you think you bring to pulp fiction as a writer?
LEE: First, I must thank Ken Janssens for the job referral, or I would never be where I am today. As a fan of various media, I’ve seen what does and doesn’t work over the years and as a writer, use that knowledge as a starting point, while trying to put fresh new spins on the presentation and hopefully not repeat what’s been done before. So when writing, I try to make sure people have as much fun reading my material as I do creating it.
Hugh Monn (on left) and Big Louie Art by CW Russette
AP: You’re a staff writer at Pro Se Productions and have a couple of recurring characters. Tell us about HUGH MONN, PRIVATE DETECTIVE.
LEE: Someday, mankind finally reaches the stars and takes its place within an already populous universe. But problems still exist and at times you need someone like Hugh to resolve them. I took some of the classic private detective trappings, like having a war veteran with his own sense of justice trying to earn an honest living the best way he knows how, and placed everything within a futuristic setting on another planet far removed from our own solar system, which hasn’t really been done that much within the mystery/detective genre. Of course the biggest mystery might just be Hugh himself. He freely admits in the first story, “Dineena’s Dilemma”, that ‘Hugh Monn’ (a play on the term Human) is just a business name, but there is something within his past he is not proud of that has helped shape him into the man he is today. I do reveal his given first name within the sixth adventure (“At What Price Gloria?”), but can assure the readers that the answers will be eventually revealed as the series progresses within Masked Gun Mystery without it affecting their enjoyment of the individual stories.
AP: Now, onto your other ongoing series at Pro Se. It’s a departure from futuristic mystery. Just what is WYLDE WORLD all about?
LEE: Very briefly, an ordinary man wakes up with absolutely no memory of his past life before finding himself in an exotic jungle setting. But as he soon discovers, it is not a dream, for the village chief wants to execute him for interfering with the latest ‘blessed sacrifice’. Now with the only person willing to befriend him in this alien landscape, he strives to stay alive while trying to figure out who he is and where his people are, and that’s just the opening chapter! After Hugh was accepted, I was asked if I had anything else to offer Pro Se, so I reworked the opening chapters to the novel I was working on at the time. Although a few people have compared it to James Cameron’s Avatar, WYLDE WORLD is as much a homage to my enjoyment of the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs as it is my own creative endeavor. The first real (all text, no pictures) book I could ever read totally on my own was Burroughs’ A Princess of Mars. I read it and the rest of the Mars books throughout the fifth grade, thanks to the school library. I’m presenting the tale in the style of the classic Saturday afternoon movie serials, and do bring the reader up to date on the previous installments from past issues of Peculiar Adventures as each new story appears. It started with issue two, and while the first story arc should conclude somewhere around issue eight, the series will continue beyond that!
AP: You’re also an editor for Pro Se. What do you edit and what do you think you bring to the position that can be of benefit to the writers you edit?
LEE: I have been granted the privilege of editing Pro Se’s Fantasy and Fear magazine, starting with issue two. I like to think I bring all my experiences past and present from both the fan and the professional’s perspective to the position in hopes of presenting everything the writers contribute in the best possible light. While I realize that publishing is a business, I try to maintain a friendly atmosphere and ‘open door’ policy with everyone. I even thanked by e-mail all the contributors to issue two I had contact information on for their hard work, a practice I will maintain on all future issues.
AP: What’s coming from Lee Houston, Junior in the future? Any projects you want to discuss?
LEE: In what I laughingly call my ‘spare’ time, I am working on other ideas; including my own super-hero and an all ages’ adventure featuring a group of inner city kids. Meanwhile, I do want to assure readers that HUGH MONN and WYLDE WORLD will continue indefinitely. Eventually there will probably be trade paperbacks collecting their stories thus far, although I am looking forward to reworking Wylde back into the novel it was originally intended to be for that volume. A Hugh adventure will appear within the 2011 Pulp Ark Convention Benefit Book to help raise money to acquire pulp books for libraries. I am also the Editor-In-Chief of The Free Choice E-zine at www.thefreechoice.info and recently edited the three issue comic book mini-series Raye Knight: Spellbound for its writer/creator Victoria Pagac, with art by Lou Manna, which is available from Indy Planet.
AP: Thanks a lot for taking time to visit with ALL PULP, Lee!
AP: Tell us a little about yourself and your pulp interests.
ST: My interest in pulps began like most of my reading habits… from comic books. I wasn’t the type to just read the superhero books. No, I also dug the war anthologies and horror and sci-fi anthologies from just about Day 1. That, of course, later grew into a love for pulp prose stories as well, mostly adventure stories for teens, and as I got older I found and fell in love with the tone of classic adventure stories featuring two-fisted heroes and great-looking dames. Because there were no girls here, mind you. They were dames.
AP: What does pulp mean to you?
ST: To me, pulp is more a tone than a genre. Pulp is a way of thinking about stories. It’s that great and grand adventure that seems to fly from old serial reels into my mind. It’s got clear heroes and villains, but not just them, there as so many more who live in the varying shades of grays. Pulp is a way of seeing a dame fighting off a thug around the next corner, a way of expecting a new adventure when you get out of the car, a way of bring the excitement of the impossible into my writing. I guess in a barebones, nuts-and-bolts fashion, to me pulp is a way of turning off the high-minded literary part of my English Lit major brain and just having fun with good guys, bad guys, and the people who populate their stories.
AP: You are known mostly as a writer of comic books.How did you get your start? What was your first published work?
ST: My first published comic book story was in a pulp book… of sorts, Shooting Star Comics Anthology #1. Some friends and I got together and put out a book to serve as a portfolio of work we could show editors to try to solicit work from other companies. Well, some of us were so happy with the showing and so enamored with the work that we legally formed a publishing company and kept putting out the book, aiming to keep it more like the old pulp adventure books of yore. Some heroes, some Doc Savage type action stories, some noir adventure, and even some old-fashioned sci-fi thrown in to boot.
AP: How did your comic book interests lead to your working for Gene Simmons of KISS fame on the Gene Simmons Dominatrix comic book?
ST: Networking. Networking. And before I forget to mention it… Networking.
Seriously.
You never know when someone you work with or someone who works for you will be your boss. And that’s just what happened for Gene Simmons Dominatrix. When I was editor-in-chief at Shooting Star Comics, we published a book called Children of the Grave written by Tom Waltz. Well, IDW ended up publishing the trade paperback collection of that miniseries and Tom made his way up the ranks at IDW to become the editor of Simmons Comics Group line of books for the company. And when he needed someone to write a potentially controversial book about some potentially misunderstood content featuring a female lead… well, naturally he thought of me.
That said, that book still stands out as some of my finest work, I think. I loved being able to take what could have been a caricaturistic, one-note kind of book and injecting odd characters and fun downtimes into it that lead to one reviewer calling it the “pulpiest pulp on the stands.” That was probably the high point review for me. I just kept thinking of hot girls, insane situations, fun settings and two-fisted fighting action, and voila, the book did pretty well and hit the top 300 list from Diamond for all six issues.
AP: You have worked on short prose tales for Show Me A Hero, the Dominatrix trade collection, the new iHero magazine, and the upcoming Lance Star: Sky Ranger vol. 3 anthology.What draws you to these shorter stories and can we expect to see more coming?
ST: That one’s easy. Short stories don’t take as long to write, and I’m at heart a lazy cuss. That and it frees me up to have fun with more than one character at a time and not have to commit so much time to one writing relationship so to speak. I’m a sort of literary quintessential bachelor that way, but I guess one day I’ll eventually have to settle down and have a long term commitment to a tale.
Actually, the story I’m writing for Lance Star: Sky Ranger vol. 3 is about twice as long as my typical story, a longer commitment for me, but since the character is so interesting and I get to introduce a new female “villain” into the mix for Lance, it’s well worth sticking around a few weeks extra in this relationship.
AP: I mentioned Show Me A Hero earlier. Tell us about this collection of stories and what separates this super hero prose from the pack.
ST: Show Me a Hero is a collection of every single short story I’ve every written for iHero Entertainment, even back when it was still called Cyber Age Adventures. With iHero and CAA we (president Frank Fradella, the rest of the staff, and I) really tried to focus on stories that didn’t feel like comic book stories (though we all love them), but we instead wanted to do the kind of stories that either the format of comics or the limitations placed on them by public perception wouldn’t allow. These are literate, adult tales of people. They just happen to be people with powers or costumes. Perhaps the highest compliment of my work for iHero has come from Dwayne McDuffie, who said it was “more human than all but the best super hero comic book work.”
We’re also relaunching the iHero magazine, now called I, Hero, and the first issue is available now. Check out http://www.ihero.net/ for more information.
AP: What, if any, existing pulp or comic book characters would you like to try your hand at writing?
ST: You know, I’ve always had an affection for the old Phantom Lady, but I’m getting to revisit a dream project right now actually with my good friend and incredible artist James Ritchey III. We’re doing a brand new story of the old Centaur character The Blue Lady for a new pulp comics anthology featuring public domain characters. I’ll have more information about that one as we get closer to the publishing date.
Other than that I’d prefer to work in genres rather than necessarily just on certain characters. Something about all those old horror and sci-fi pulp covers inspires me to write stories about strange things.
What’s really fun for me is to take characters that may not have originally been part of a true pulp type of story, and then twist it around to tell stories with them in a new, pulpy way that remains true to the character yet still brings something new to the table.
AP: Who are some of your creative influences?
ST: I’ll admit up front it’s a mixed bag of goodness and badness. Coming from an English-Lit background, I’m the kind of guy who enjoys reading Shakespeare, Flannery O’Connor, Hemingway, and F. Scott Fitgerald for fun. I’m also a big fan of Raymond Carver, Annie Dillard, C.S. Lewis, and Zora Neale Hurston.
But I’m love my thrillers too, and Ed McBain’s work is a huge influence as well as that of Donald Westlake and Christa Faust.
When I turn to sci-fi, I’m kind of old-school, and I prefer to read Vonnegut, Heinlein, and Bradbury, or sometimes Dr. Who novelisations (see that ‘s’ – that’s because it’s British… cool, huh?) from the old series.
For comics, I always inspired by books written by Chuck Dixon, Steve Seagle, Beau Smith, or Gail Simone. Those guys (and that classy lady) really deliver the goods on a consistent basis.
AP: That pulps inspired many comic book creations. Are pulps still a viable source of comic book inspiration or are the two more or less influencing/encouraging one another now idea wise?
ST: I think that today it’s more a two-way street. Perhaps it’s that comics kept the sort of pulp ideal alive long enough for the pulp revival we’re seeing today. You certainly can’t fault AlanMoore for looking back and drawing from that well when he developed The League of Extraordinary Gentleman. And as much as I’m not in the know with the current Steampunk drive, it certainly seems to have a kind of pulpy mindset to it as well. Whatever the reason, pulp’s star certainly seems to be shining again, and we’re even seeing it in the movies. With flicks like Give ‘Em Hell Malone, The Expendables, The Spirit, and the upcoming Green Hornet, whether you like the movies or not, they’re doing a great job of keeping pulp storytelling in the public eye. And to me, like I said earlier, pulp is a lot more about storytelling than it is about genre or even finished publishing format. It may have originated with the paper, but it’s outgrown that limited definition now.
AP: What does Sean Taylor do when he’s not writing comic books and pulp stories?
ST: Whenever possible, he sleeps. When he wakes up, he watches horror movies or cartoons. When he’s tired of those, he writes. And he realizes that he should probably change the order of those priorities, but there’s probably something good on TV right now, so he’ll have to get to that later.
AP: Where can readers find learn more about you and your work?
AP: Any upcoming projects you would like to mention?
ST: Several, actually. Thanks. For my prose work, look for IDW’s Classics Mutilated anthology in stores now. I wrote a story for that one pitting Alice from Wonderland against Snow White, and even got to throw in some surprise villains from the Lovecraft mythos. Then in February, my first zombie story becomes available in DAW Books’ Zombiesque anthology. It’s a tale called “Posthumous” about how far a resurrected corpse who’s also a popular writer will go to keep her marriage together with her still living husband. And of course, don’t forget that new Lance Star story I’m writing for volume 3 of that series and my ongoing monthly work on the new I, Hero magazine. We’ll be revisiting lots of fan favorite characters there, from Fishnet Angel to the Fool and the Grandstander.
On the comics front, I’m writing an original sequel to the works of H.G. Wells for IDW that will be drawn by the amazing George Pitcher III. I’m also doing a weird tales kind of thriller (think Ed McBain meets Ranma 1/2) for Markosia called Quinn: The Reckoning, that will be drawn by my good friend Martheus Wade. I’m writing an indie zombie book called Zen Vs. the Zombies with a friend (more information on that one as we get closer to the date), and one of my favorite projects right now is the Jesse James in the Mayan Underworld book I’m working on for Arcana. Of course, don’t forget the upcoming pulp comics anthology story I’m doing with James Ritchey III featuring the indomitable Blue Lady. And for those fans who remember my Shooting Star Comics work, well, let’s just say that… I’ll have to stop here before the spoiler police beat down my door.
AP: Are there any upcoming convention appearances or signings coming up where fans can meet you?
ST: Sure, I’ll be at Connooga from February 18-20 in Chattanooga, Tennessee, then back home in Atlanta for Momocon for March12-13. And if you plan ahead as far as May next year, come visit me in Birmingham, Alabama for Imagicon. That one’s always one of my favorites for the year. I keep my list of conventions and other appearances updated at http://www.taylorverse.com/conventions.html so check there for new announcements.
AP: You have served as a writer, editor, and publisher. Are there any creative areas you’ve not worked in that you would like to try your hand at doing?
ST: I’ve also lettered comics digitally, which is fun. If anything I wish I could draw. I’d love to try my hand at that, but I understand my limitations and inabilities all too well.
I would love to write for films though, primarily for low- to mid-budget horror flicks. I cut my teeth watching those things and love the clichés and stereotypes of them, and would really enjoy playing in that playground. So if anyone reading this has a production company and needs a scriptwriter for some good ol’ fashioned creepy scares and hack and slash action, let me know. I’ve got a folder filled with ideas for the proverbial “just the right time.”
AP: And finally, what advice would you give to anyone wanting to be a writer?
ST: First, plumbers fix pipes and don’t stop for plumber’s block. Race car drivers drive fast in a oval and don’t pull off to the side with driver’s block. Assembly line workers assemble and don’t let assembly block slow them down. You are what you do, not what you claim to do. Writers write. It’s that simple. Don’t give me that writer’s block excuse. Write something. Anything. Then keep writing.
And second, learn to edit. Not just proofread, but edit. And whenever possible, turn off your spellchecker. It only makes you lazy.
AP – Hi Mark, and thanks so much for stopping by All Pulp HQ. In the past few years you’ve made quite a name for yourself in the pulp field and it is a pleasure to finally be able to sit and talk with you about your art career. Why don’t we start with a little informal background. Where were you born and raised? Where do you live now? And do you have a “day” job with doing pulp art?
MM – I was born on Tyndall Air Force Base in Panama City, Florida to Don and Joann Maddox. I have one brother, Mike and three sisters, Elise, Carole and Jeanne . Being a military brat had us moving around a lot. We lived in Germany, South Dakota, Maryland and North Carolina. After my dad retired we moved to Tallahassee, Florida. Later, when I got married my wife Carlyn and I moved to Thomasville, Georgia, had two incredible kids and are now settled in Athens, about an hour east of Atlanta. We really like it here. At present the only work I am doing is freelance… the fun kind: Book covers (some which are pulp), illustrations, comic book covers, monster magazine covers, private commissions, game design, concept designs, logos, etc. It isn’t at the financial level I would like yet but I’m fairly new to this type work. Before that I did straight corporate graphics which isn’t terrible but it’s not nearly as much fun as my current endeavors.
AP – Mark, what kind of art education do you have? Did you always want to be a professional artist or was it something that came to you later in life?
MM – My parents were very supportive of my abilities which started around the age of ten. In high school I took art classes but the teacher was a joke. Some of the interns that came in were a lot more beneficial to my creative advancement. My dad saw my talent as a possible life long career and pushed me to go to take the commercial art course at Lively Vo-Tech school in Tallahassee. I had a great teacher by the name of Oral Ledbetter. He was an old school commercial artist/ illustrator and he taught us things that are all but lost today with computers and such. I also went to the local community college and Florida State University which had good art programs.
AP – Were you a comic book or sci-fi fan growing up? And did either of these genres influence your taste in art?
MM – Comics, movies, monster magazines, television…I ate it all up. My particular favorite reads were Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, Doc Savage reprints, Edgar Rice Burroughs sci-fi, etc. Comics included Fantastic Four, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby Monster comics, Thor, Hulk, Captain America. Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy is easily my favorite comic strip. I’m actually one of those fans who likes Dick Tracy during his sci-fi period.
AP – Which artists, past and present, do you admire and did their styles have an effect on your own work as it developed?
MM – Dr. Seuss was awesome for a little kid. To this day I look at his work when I’m reading to my kids and marvel at it. Jack Kirby is, to me, far and away the greatest comic book artist. I am also a big fan of Will Eisner, Moebius, Frank Bellamy, Sergio Toppi, Joe Kubert, John Severin, Herge, Jose Gonzlez, Geoff Darrow, artists on the Jonny Quest TV show and so many more. I am a huge fan of illustrators like N. C. Wyeth, Dean Cornwell, Virgil Finlay, Franklin Booth, James Montgomery Flagg, Charles Dana Gibson, Basil Gogos, Sanjulian, etc. Fine artists include the impressionists, John Singer Sargent, Anders Zorn, Vermeer, Edward Hopper, Chuck Close and the Photorealists,
AP – Much of your early work is clearly inspired by horror and sci-fi movies. I take it you a movie fan? What is your favorite movie of all time?
MM – That’s not a fair question! I have so many favorites it’s impossible to pick just one. Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago are two of my classic favorites. Raiders of the Lost Ark, Aliens and Universal monster movies are some of my genre favorites. Popcorn munchers include: Dracula A.D. 1972, Japanese monster movies, Omega Man, Hell Drivers. The list is so huge a ten gig hard drive couldn’t hold it.
AP – Okay, so how did you get involved with pulps?
MM – A guy named Blake Wilkie introduced me to Ron Fortier who was with Wildcat books at the time. We did a few tiny comic projects together and one day he dropped me a line saying he needed a cover for his book Captain Hazzard and the Curse of the Red Maggot. I think the artist that was to do it had to drop out at the last second. It was a dream come true for me. He needed it quick and I was willing to burn the midnight oil to get it ready.
AP – You seem to have a natural affinity for pulps. What is it about the genre that appeals to you?
MM – I was born in the early sixties and came back to the United States when the big thing was the campy batman TV show (I preferred The Green Hornet). I later found out about pulps, radio plays and cliffhanger serials (Tom Tyler as Captain Marvel, yay!) and realized there was a huge amount of this great entertainment from a long time ago where fantastic adventures were treated seriously. Doc Savage, The Shadow, John Carter, Weird Tales, etc. That’s just great stuff! Plus it fit right in with my love of comics and old Hollywood.
AP – You were the recipient of the first Pulp Factory Award for Best Pulp Cover of 2009. Tell us about that and how it all came about? What piece did you win it for?
MM – The piece I won for was Airship27’s Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective. It was actually a piece that I resisted doing. I am a big fan of Holmes but in his original Strand Magazine form. When I was told I could do the art and design based on the original look and typography I was all for it. I was also allowed to dedicate the book to my late mother-in-law. She was a big Holmes fan and it would have pleased her so. I was very happy with the way that piece turned out because it was my take on Holmes and Watson the way they look in my mind’s eye. Most people don’t realize that Watson was a handsome, fit man.
AP – Weren’t you actually nominated for two covers that year and how did it feel to compete against yourself? Did you prefer one piece over the other?
MM – It felt great and strange! I was hoping they didn’t cancel each other out. The other cover was Captain Hazzard and the Python Men of the Lost City. And I really like them both equally. That’s a good feeling to have.
AP – Since your work for Airship 27, you’ve expanded your pulp career by working for other companies in the field. Tell us about your projects for Bill Cunningham’s Pulp 2.0 Press?
MM – I heard that Bill was going to be reprinting Don Glut’s Frankenstein books he had written in the sixties. Frankenstein is one of my all time favorite subjects and I had been reading Don Glut’s work since I was ten and I had been looking for those books for a long time. I wrote Bill and begged him to consider me for the covers.
I’ve completed the first cover in the series called Frankenstein Returns! I am very pleased with the way it turned out and Bills graphics look great on it. I’m getting ready to start volume two’s cover in the next month or so. I’m pretty excited about it.
AP – You also contributed covers to Win Scott Eckert’s CROSSOVER books, right?
MM – Yes, there are two of those so far and it was a lot of fun featuring all these classic characters together in the same image.
AP – You recently started doing covers for Moonstone Comics. Tells us about that and did the experience vary much from doing pulp covers?
MM – I’ve completed two covers and am working on a third. The first one was for Kolchak: The Night Stalker Files written by Christopher Mills . I was in front of the TV the night The Night Stalker film premiered in the early seventies and have been a fan ever since. It was another dream come true. The second cover was for the first issue of The Heap written by Charles Knauf (Iron Man and Captain America: Theater of War), featuring the creature from the Airboy comics of the forties. What could be better than a monster tearing the heads off of Nazis? The latest cover is for the great superspy Derrick Flint written by Gary Phillips (Vertigo Crime’s COWBOYS). I’m doing this piece with a nod to sixities design styles and having a blast. Moonstone publisher, Joe Gentile has been really great to work with.
AP – People who have met you personally all comment on your dry, acerbic wit. Have you always had this humorist bent and do you like looking at the world in a slightly skewered way?
MM – I don’t know. I come from a family smart mouths. Everything had to have a comeback. It’s a way for me to keep things lively and it’s nice to see people laugh.
AP – Is there any single genre you have yet to work in that you would really like tackle?
MM – Adventure, 60’s period Marvel heroes, monsters, drama, crime, sci-fi. I’d even like to tackle a western some time. In the seventies, Thrilling Adventures Magazine did a short comic about Lawrence of Arabia. I would love to work on something like that. A sort of adding on to the legend. Like the Daniel Boone TV show.
AP – So, wrapping this all up here. What’s on the horizon for you project wise? Can you give our readers some preview as to where your marvelous art is going to pop up next?
MM – Well besides the work for Moonstone I’ve got two new Hammer film books that are coming out. One called The Last Bus to Bray: The Unfilmed Hammer. It’s about many of the films that Hammer almost got produced but didn’t see the light of a projector for one reason or another. This includes the infamous Vampirella, a movie about Prince Vlad starring Yul Brunner, another about the Loch Ness Monster with backing by David Frost and many others. The other book is from Hemlock called Hammers Fantasy & Sci-Fi dealing with films outside of the Dracula and Frankenstein realm (One Million Years B.C., Quatermass, etc.). There are also one or two projects I’ve been sworn to secrecy on although I can say they are sci-fi and monster related… plus more artwork for Little Shoppe of Horrors.
THE LONG MATINEE-Movie Reviews by Derrick Ferguson
VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA 1961 20th Century Fox Directed and Produced by Irwin Allen Written by Irwin Allen and Charles Bennett
Not too long ago I was in a discussion with some friends who asked me if I had a chance to remake any movie with today’s special effects, which one would I do. My answer with no hesitation was VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA.
Don’t ask me why this movie holds such a place in my movie going heart but every single time it’s shown on Turner Classic Movies, I stop what I’m doing and watch it. What’s even stranger is that I really didn’t care for the TV show that was based on the movie and rarely watched it but the movie…I guess it’s because I first watched it when I was a kid and I can still get in touch with that 12 year old who saw the movie for the first time and who sat there totally hypnotized by the story, characters and action.
After we get past the theme song sung by then teenage idol Frankie Avalon (the 60’s version of Clay Aiken) we see our first view of the magnificent futuristic supersub Seaview as it leaps out of the water like a dolphin. Next to Captain Nemo’s Nautilus, The Seaview is probably the most famous fictional submarine you know. It’s sleek as a rocket with a unique transparent nose that is part of the observation deck where you can see the marvels of undersea life. The Seaview is the brainchild of Admiral Harriman Nelson (Walter Pidgeon) a brilliant, eccentric and arrogant (is there really any other kind in the movies?) scientist who is the founder of The Nelson Institute of Oceanographic Research and he’s taken The Seaview on a test run in the Arctic. Among those aboard The Seaview is the sub’s captain, Lee Crane (Robert Sterling) The Admiral’s personal assistant Lt. Cathy Connors (Barbara Eden), Nelson’s longtime friend Commodore Lucius Emery (Peter Lorre) Captain Crane’s right hand man Lt. Danny Romano (Frankie Avalon) as well as Dr. Susan Hiller (Joan Fontaine) who is observing the effects of long term undersea stress on the crew. Nelson’s sub has been considered a folly but the Arctic tests have proven the sub’s capabilities.: It’s not only the fastest sub ever built but it can dive deeper than any other sub. It carries more destructive capabilities than all the explosive power used during World War II and it has enough laboratories on board to qualify as a mobile research facility.
Nelson is deliriously happy with the results of the tests and is relishing in his sub having proven its worth. But then, during some underwater tests, icebergs batter The Seaview and the sub surfaces to find the entire sky is on fire. In a really surrealistic scene, Admiral Nelson and Captain Crane see massive icebergs smoking due to their melting from the intensive heat. Nelson contacts Washington and finds out that the Van Allen Belt of radiation surrounding the earth has been ignited by a rogue comet and the temperature of the Earth is rising. He’s ordered to The United Nations where the world’s leading scientists are meeting to try and find a solution. The Seaview makes it from the Arctic to New York in two days (told you it was a fast sub) and Nelson presents his solution: he thinks that if The Seaview can fire a nuclear missile from The Marianas Trench at just the right angle at just the right time on just the right day, the nuclear explosion will blow the Van Allen Belt out into space and kill the fire. Nelson is violently opposed as the other scientists think the fire will burn itself out once it reaches a certain temperature. The problem with this plan is that if Nelson doesn’t get to fire his missile and if his colleagues are wrong, there will no chance for another try and the temperature will keep rising and burn the Earth to a cinder.
Nelson and his crew have to fight their way out of The United Nations and back to The Seaview where Nelson orders Crane to head for The Marianas Trench. His intention is to get in touch with The President of The United States to get authorization. The radiation thrown off by the Van Allen belt makes this impossible and so Nelson decides to go ahead with his plan. The problem is this: The Seaview has been declared rogue and every submarine in the world has orders to blow it out of the water. So the intrepid crew of The Seaview not only have to make their deadline but they have to do it while dodging enemy submarines trying to stop them, a secret saboteur onboard, a giant squid, a lethal minefield and Nelson’s own arrogant stubbornness which leads his crew to near mutiny. And what if Nelson is wrong? Will his plan doom the Earth to certain destruction?
VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA is plain good old-fashioned non-stop pulp adventure from start to finish. There’s an amazing amount of good characterization provided by the actors, especially Walter Pidgeon, Peter Lorre, Barbara Eden and Joan Fontaine. The actors play it absolutely straight and even though the science in the movie is totally goofy, they sell it. Michael Ansara is also aboard the sub as a man who The Seaview picks up on the Arctic ice and who believes that The Seaview should be stopped in it’s mission as he believes it’s God’s will that if the world should come to an end, Nelson shouldn’t prevent it. They have a really good scene where Pigeon argues with Ansara that if God believes that that world should come to an end then why did God give man the intelligence and capabilities to try and prevent that end? It’s a really tense scene that lifts the movie out of what could have been a cheesy standard sci-fi underwater adventure and gives it a little thought and philosophical substance.
The movie also has great suspense as even Lee Crane begins to doubt Admiral Nelson, who he looks on as a father and he’s torn between his love and respect for the Admiral and his concern for his men. And to make things even worse there are signs that even the iron-willed Admiral Nelson might be cracking under the strain of trying to save the world. And who is sabotaging The Seaview? Is it Dr. Hiller who thinks that Nelson is suffering from stress? Or is it the religious fanatic Alvarez (Michael Ansara)? Or could it just be one of the crew who has begun to doubt Nelson?
The special effects are what you would expect from the 1960’s but they’re awfully effective, especially the attack by the giant squid but the truly terrifying scene where The Seaview has to navigate a mine field gets my vote as the real nail biter. And the last fifteen minutes of the movie where Alvarez holds the control room of The Seaview hostage with a bomb and time is running out to fire the missile is just as good.
So should you see VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA? Hell, yes. Even though it was made back in the 60’s I really don’t think it’s dated as all in terms of story and acting. It’s a terrifically entertaining Saturday Afternoon movie that wants nothing more than for you to sit back and be thrilled by the adventure on the screen. It’s got action, suspense, one of the coolest submarines ever put on film and terrific performances by an old school cast that knows they’re making a B-movie and they’re gonna make a damn good one. See it and I dare you to tell me VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA doesn’t deserve a “King Kong”style big-budget remake.
Hi, Bill. First of all, thanks for dropping by ALL PULP HQ and agreeing to sit in the hot seat. You’ve had a really great career in so many different writing fields. Let’s see how much we can cover in the next few minutes. Ready to go? Excellent.
AP –Let’s start with a little background data. Who is Bill Spangler, where do you reside? What is your education background and when did you first start writing professionally?
BS –Joyce and I live in Quakertown, which is southeastern Pennsylvania, about a half-hour south of Allentown. I’ve got a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Penn State. My first professional writing job was for the newspaper in my home town. I was a sportswriter, believe it or not. I was 16. I wasn’t a sports fan then, and I’m not now, but that was the job that was available. I grew up in a town in Western Pennsylvania called DuBois. A lot of people want to give that name the French pronunciation, but it’s actually pronounced due-boyce. DuBois’ only claim to fame was that Tom Mix grew up there. No wait, that’s not exactly true. The movie Groundhog Day held its world premiere in DuBois because it was the closest town to Punxsutawney that had a theater.
AP – Was journalism the first career that involved writing for you? What papers did you work for and what was it like seeing your first ever by-line?
BS – The sportswriting job was the first paying writing job I had, but I was writing well before that. I remember writing a story about a time machine in the second grade, and I’m told that I was hand-printing neighborhood newspapers even before that. I worked primarily on small daily and weekly newspapers in Pennsylvania. One daily I worked for lasted only seven issues. Let’s say their business plan was less than complete….
As for seeing my by-line for the first time, I think I still have a clipping of that article somewhere in my files, so, yeah, it meant a lot to me.
AP –What are the major differences between reporting and fiction writing, aside from the obvious? Do you prefer one over the other?
BS – For me, the major differences were in the things reporting calls for in addition to the writing. Reporting demands a lot of time; you’re going to spend a lot of nights and weekends covering meetings and other events. That’s fine if you’re 23 and single, but it can be problematic if you want to have a life. Sometimes, reporters have to be able to ignore other people’s feelings and generally be obnoxious in order to get to the facts. That can have all sorts of repercussions, both to the reporter and to the people he’s talking to. Also, reporting involves writing and researching at a speed that I found difficult to maintain sometimes. I’m hesitant to make a generalization, but…the newspaper editors I worked with liked good writing. But when they had to choose between good writing and fast writing , they’d go with fast writing every time.
I think I prefer writing fiction over newspaper work, but I still do non-fiction when a good opportunity presents itself.
AP –Tell us about your comic writing career. How did that get started and what were some of your early published comics?
BS – I had written for some fanzines while in high school, but I really wasn’t giving much thought to getting paid for writing comics until the direct market boom of the 1980s. A lot of companies were advertising for new talent, and one of them was Malibu Comics. I sent a proposal for a character I called Bloodwing to Malibu. I assumed that it would be rejected, but I was hoping to get some personalized feedback. To my amazement, Malibu bought it. I’ve worked with a lot of licensed characters; Robotech; Alien Nation; Tom Corbett, Space Cadet, but I’ve sold some original characters too. In addition to Bloodwing—which I used to describe as The Shadow meets Blade Runner—there was the Argonauts, which is very pulp-influenced. I was also one of the writers involved with a character called Jordan Risk. I like to think of him as a gentleman adventurer, in the tradition of the Saint. He appeared in a limited series in the late 1990s called The Deception.
AP –Who was the one artist you most enjoyed working with in that period?
BS – Good grief, I can’t limit myself to just one; how about three? Tim Eldred and I worked on a lot of Robotech stories together and I think we made a good team. We did 18 issues of Invid Wars and a one-shot called Firewalkers. I also enjoyed working with John Ross and Fred Perry. John and I did Argonauts: System Crash for Alpha Productions and an adaptation of H.G. Wells’ Time Machine. Fred and I did eight issues of Tom Corbett, Space Cadet for Eternity.
AP –How did you first get involved with pulp writing?
BS –As I mentioned, I wrote for some fanzines while in high school. One thing I remember doing is a series of sword-and-planet stories about a character I called Jon North. I probably didn’t know the term sword-and-planet just then, but that’s what they were. I think those were probably my first pulp stories. And my comic work was pulp-influenced from the beginning. Now that I think about it, I wrote some fanfiction in high school that might qualify as pulp to (although the term fanfiction probably didn’t exist back then). There was a Man from UNCLE story and one based on The Prisoner, believe it or not.
AP –Were you always a pulp fan or was it something you recently discovered? And how did that come about?
BS – I don’t think I encountered the classic pulp characters like Doc Savage or the Shadow until high school. But I was a big fan of series characters like Tom Corbett and Tom Swift Jr. before that, and I like to think that’s a type of pulp. Also, my favorite comic book characters as a kid were more pulp-oriented than super hero oriented—people like Adam Strange and Magnus, Robot Fighter.
AP –Tell us some of the pulp stories you’ve had published and for what outfits?
BS –Well, my first project was when the esteemed Ron Fortier asked me to contribute to Airship 27’s first production, Lance Star, Sky Ranger. I wrote “Talons of the Red Condors” for that. I did a Commando Cody story called “The Secret Citadel,” for the first issue of a magazine called Thrilling Tales. And I’ve got a story in The Green Hornet Chronicles Vol. 1, an anthology just published by Moonstone Books. The story’s called “Mutual Assured Destruction.”
AP -What is it about writing pulps that is different from other genres? Why do you enjoy working in it?
BS –With pulp-style writing, you’ve got larger-than-life characters with clearly-defined goal. And, in general, they achieve these goals. They make a real difference in the world around them. It’s hard to do that in the real world, and I think people like experiencing that vicariously. At least I do. lso, I have a weakness for stories that show some type of hidden world or culture set against the mundane world, whether it’s dueling spies, dueling aliens, dueling time travelers or whatever. If you know where to look, or how to look, the world can be a very strange place indeed.
AP –With so many publishers, prose and comics, and now movies, focusing on pulps, there seems to be a real renaissance of the field. Why do you think this is so? And do you think it will last?
BS – I think one reason why we’re seeing this resurgence is that the classic pulp characters were created at a time when there was a lot of economic and social instability, and we’re seeing the same sort of instability now. But I think the pulp tradition never really went away. Even before this recent renaissance, we had characters like James Bond and Dirk Pitt and Indiana Jones. I don’t know if the current interest in pulps has peaked yet or not. It’s bound to start fading eventually, but, with companies like Moonstone and Airship 27 out there keeping the faith, I think the interest will remain pretty strong.
AP –Having done comics, pulps and sci-fi, which is your favorite? Is there a genre you would not feel comfortable writing?
BS – My favorite genre is science fiction, whether it’s in prose or comic form. I’m not a big fan of westerns, but that’s just a matter of personal taste. I can’t say that I’ll never write one. Pulp writers are supposed to be versatile, after all…
AP –What’s on the horizon for Bill Spangler? What new projects do you have coming out in the near future and the long run? Go ahead and plug away.
BS – I’ve been spending most of my time recently working on young adult science fiction, and what I guess is called a historical thriller—something in the style of William Dietrich’s Ethan Gage books. While this isn’t in the future, I think I am going to plug the Green Hornet anthology again. There are a lot of names familiar to All-Pulp writers in that. And fans of old-school space opera might want to check out the recent Tom Corbett, Space Cadet comic I scripted. It was a four-issue limited series, and there was a paperback collection that you should be able to order at your local comics shop.
AP – Bill, this have been terrific. Thanks ever from the entire gang at All Pulp.
AP: Bill, thanks for taking some time out of your schedule to visit with All Pulp. You seem to be keeping busy, but before we get to that, would you tell us a bit about yourself?
WMP: I’m a 39 year-old husband and father. I work as a National Sourcing Manager by day. I write when my work and home schedule allow which means late nights at home and in hotels. I’m a native Clevelander and still call Northeast Ohio home when I’m not on the road for my day job.
AP: You have your hands in pulp a couple of different ways. Let’s talk about your writing? How about a quick rundown of your authored works?
WMP: My first book, THE TERROR OF FU MANCHU was published by Black Coat Press in 2009. I contributed a Sherlock Holmes story to the anthology, GASLIGHT GROTESQUE published by EDGE Publishing in 2009. I wrote a Fantomas story for 2009’s TALES OF THE SHADOWMEN anthology, GRAND GUIGNOL published by Black Coat Press. That story was also published in French earlier this year by Riviere Blanche as part of a different anthology series, LES COMPAGNONS DE L’OMBRE. I’ve also written articles for magazines like BLOOD ‘N’ THUNDER and VAN HELSING’S JOURNAL. The former was also published in French by K-LIBRE. I was a weekly columnist for THE CIMMERIAN before it closed up shop and currently I contribute articles every Friday to THE BLACK GATE. My articles for both sites are cross-posted on my blog, SETI SAYS.
AP: ‘The Terror of Fu Manchu’ highlights a character with quite an extensive background. What’s the story historically behind Manchu? Who is he? Who created him?, etc.
WMP: Dr. Fu Manchu is an alias assumed by a brilliant and honorable, but also ruthless and obsessive Chinese scientist who opposes Western imperialism in the East. He wasn’t the first criminal mastermind in fiction, but he was certainly the most infamous and influential. He was created in 1912 by a young Englishman named Arthur Ward, who wrote under the exotic pseudonym of Sax Rohmer. He continued to write about his exploits in a series of novels and stories up until his death in 1959. There were 13 novels, a novella and 3 short stories by the original author.
AP: According to your blog (setisays.blogspot.com) this is the first licensed Fu Manchu novel in 25 years. What does that mean exactly and how was the license acquired? What was your involvement in that process?
WMP: Rohmer had no children. When his widow passed away in 1979, she bequeathed the literary rights to The Society of Authors and The Authors Guild to protect the characters and control the copyrights. The Rohmers were frequently unhappy with how the character was adapted in other media and she wanted to protect the integrity of her husband’s work. Shortly after Elizabeth passed away, Cay Van Ash (who had been their friend and was Rohmer’s secretary and later his biographer) acquired a license to continue the series. He wrote two more Fu Manchu thrillers in the 1980s before he passed away in 1994. For my part, I sought out the rightsholders a number of years ago and presented a story outline and sample chapters. They liked my approach which was to fill in the gaps in the existing narrative by picking up on clues left behind by either Rohmer or Van Ash and embroidering on the established history of the character. THE TERROR OF FU MANCHU was my first one and is set on the eve of the First World War. THE DESTINY OF FU MANCHU is the one I’m working on now. That one is set on the eve of the Second World War.
AP: We’ve talked historically. Now let’s talk about your vision. Tell us how you see Fu Manchu? Is he the embodiment of evil, simply misunderstood, or something else?
WMP: I see him as Nayland Smith’s true counterpart. Not two sides of the same coin like Holmes and Moriarty, but almost twins born in opposite hemispheres. Their separation is political more than ideological. Rohmer’s characters aren’t traditional good guys and bad guys, they’re more flawed and more complex as a consequence. Fu Manchu is an honorable villain and Nayland Smith is an intolerant hero. Neither is perfect, but both are fascinating.
AP: Any other characters you’ve written about you’d like to discuss, either established or your own original creations?
WMP: Well I wrote a Holmes story because the editor of the GASLIGHT anthologies, Charles Prepolec liked my Fu Manchu. I love Holmes and I’m putting together my own collection of Holmes stories now. The book is called THE OCCULT CASE BOOK OF SHERLOCK HOLMES. I wrote a Fantomas story, but I have no ambition to do something larger with the character although I am a fan and greatly enjoyed David White’s recent FANTOMAS IN AMERICA book. I see that as more David’s territory than mine. He can certainly do it justice better than I can and probably better than anyone else since he can get right inside the mind of an anarchist and still make you enjoy the character. I am working on another licensed property, but we’re still at the proposal stage so it’s too soon to expand on that unless it comes to pass. I do have an original detective character I’m working on as well that I hope will launch in 2012. He’s a hardboiled detective who is also a devoted husband and father. The setting is America in 1960 right at the cusp of the nation losing its innocence with Kennedy’s assassination and all that followed in its wake. The book and character are called LAWHEAD and that’s something I’m really excited about getting off the ground.
AP: You’re also a columnist. Who do you write columns for and how would you define what a pulp columnist’s job is?
WMP: I started my blog out of boredom between shifts shoveling snow out of my driveway last January. I didn’t really know if I would really maintain a blog or not. At the time it just struck me as a good way to get more search engine hits with my name and work. The mercenary approach didn’t quite last because I quickly found people who enjoyed it. The first was Deuce Richardson who was an editor at THE CIMMERIAN. Deuce invited me to become a weekly columnist and cross-post from my blog. The discipline of writing a weekly column was something I was wary of, but I realized the benefits reaped in terms of exposure to people who have never heard of me outweighed any other considerations. I patterned what I did to fall between three of my favorite blogs: Ron Fortier’s PULP FICTION REVIEWS; Michael Cornett’s DUST AND CORRUPTION; and James Bojaciuk’s EXPLORERS OF THE UNKNOWN. Between the three you have pulp old and new, dark antiquarian fiction, and the Wold Newtonian perspective. That’s what I looked to for inspiration and I just decided I would try to work my way through my own library, books I borrow from the public library, and all roads in between. I jump around a lot from pulp to mystery to sci-fi to horror and there are all of these multi-part articles that start and stop along the way. It seems to have found a good home in THE BLACK GATE which is where we moved to after THE CIMMERIAN ended. John O’Neill has been a huge help in getting me over my technophobia to where I can sort of function somewhat competently now without relying on help with formatting. Obviously, I owe Deuce and John a debt of graditude for championing me and helping to bring my writing to greater attention. Thanks to them, sales of my book have remained consistent as well which is certainly a substantial advantage to blogging.
AP: How do you pick topics to cover? What are some of the topics you’ve addressed as a columnist?
WPM: Well, I start with influences and it often reflects what I’m writing or would like to write. I’ve done DRACULA to death and I’m still not finished and I’ve barely scratched the surface on hardboiled mystery. When LAWHEAD is published in a couple of years, we’ll shift gears in that direction a bit more. Now we’ve stayed close to the lineage that starts with Shelley and Stoker and turns to Rohmer and Alex Raymond. This winter I hope to dig deeper into French pulp fiction with Pierre Souvestre and Marcel Allain as well as Paul Feval. A year from now and I’ll look at how Rohmer approached a second Fu Manchu thriller when I’ll have done the same. It’s fair to say you can chart things in my life and work by watching what I review or discuss.
AP: Some would say that to do a column over something, your subject needs to be relevant. In your opinion, what makes pulp relevant today? Answer that both as a columnist and an author.
WPM: Pulp is such a broad term the way we tend to apply it. A purist would argue that while Doc Savage and The Shadow were true pulps, Fu Manchu was not. I tend to include any genre or specific authors whose works would be considered low-brow or undignified or contemptible by the elitists when I define pulp. Once you’ve offended the bluenoses, you’re on the right track. Political correctness is just censorship under a different guise and it’s just as creatively stifling and intellectually inbred as it was in the last century. The strange thing is pulp is usually a great barometer for what is going on politically or morally in the world, but it isn’t always evident in its own time. You need distance to gauge its ability to reflect the world around it. Of course the most important facet is it functions as a literary rollercoaster. It’s the most fun you can have in a book. That is another way of determining whether you’re reading or creating pulp.
AP: In reviewing your columns, I find you to be almost as much historian as columnist? What appeals to you about the history of pulp? What do you feel like the pulps of the past have to offer readers and creators today?
WPM: There is a certain amount of innocence in their appeal despite the heavy doses of S&M and all sorts of general nastiness. Pulp is handled with a light touch and is always enjoyable like a good scare or thrill. From a historical perspective, they are modern myths whether you’re talking Mary Shelley or Doc Savage, they function in the same way that myths did in the Classical World. Hollywood recognizes this now, it’s part of what signalled the transition from campy genre films to summer tentpoles that are expected to reinforce moral integrity and make audiences feel like cheering a hero again. George Lucas is the gentleman who claims the honor of changing that mindset with STAR WARS and INDIANA JONES, but it took a couple more decades before the rest of the industry caught up with Peter Jackson and Sam Raimi leading the pack. Now everyone wants pulp in some format. That really helped pave the way for pulp-specialty publishers and the pulp revival currently underway in comics. Now if only mainstream publishers would get on board, but the tide is turning. It is a great time to read and create pulp.
AP: Do you have anything in the works for the future pulpwise you’d like to share with ALL PULP?
WPM: I think that THE OCCULT CASE BOOK OF SHERLOCK HOLMES will be ready this Spring to get to print by Summer, hopefully. I really hope the proposal I have hanging out there for another property is approved by the rightsholder and publisher as I think it’s a property that is a natural fit for me. You really have to believe you can do what you do better than anyone else. You have to believe you were born to write certain characters. If you lack that confidence so will your reader. The trick with writing pulp today is appealing to the classic and modern sensibilities at once. You can do both and All Pulp is a testament to those who show you what can be done with the form. Probably the best lesson for anyone out there who wants to write, but hasn’t finished anything is to learn the dynamics of storytelling, read everything you can get your hands on and understand how it is built and what makes it work. Understanding that will help your own work and help build your confidence.
AP: Art, thanks for stopping by ALL PULP to visit with us about you and your adventures as a pulp fan, writer, and podcaster. First, though, give us some insight into who Art Sippo is.
AS: I am 15 years old with 42 years experience.
I started reading comics in 1958 shortly after I learned to read. By the time I was 10 years old, I found the plots in comics too fantastic and longed for something more realistic. My Aunt Helen introduced me to Doc Savage in the Bantam reprints on a bus trip to Florida in 1965 and I was hooked. I later went to Xavier Military Institute in Manhattan for High School in the late 1960s. It was there where I developed my love for books and for the pulp genre of literature. I attended St. Peter’s College in Jersey City, NJ and graduated Magna cum Laude with a Bachelor’s of science in Chemistry in 1974. On Military scholarship, I went to Vanderbilt University Medical School and after graduation in 1978, I was an Intern at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington DC. I spent three years as a Flight Surgeon with the 101st Airborne division before entering an Aerospace Medicine residency. I received a Masters in Public Health form Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health in 1982 and completed training at the School of Aerospace Medicine, Brooks Air Force Base, San Antonio Texas. I got Board Certified in Aerospace Medicine in 1984. For three years, I was a medical researcher at the US Army Aeromedical Research Laboratory and eventually became the Director of the Biodynamics Research Division there. I next spent three years as an exchange officer in England at the RAF Institute of Aviation Medicine in Farnborough, Hampshire. I married my lovely wife Katherine in 1987 and we took off to England to start our family.
In 1990, I returned to civilian life but remained in the National Guard. I was a partner in the Occupational Care Consultants of Toledo and was Board Certified in Occupational Medicine in 1994. In the Guard I eventually commanded the 145th MASH Hospital at Camp Perry, OH. In 1995, I was appointed the Assistant State Surgeon.
For 36 years I wore the uniform of the US Army until I retired in 2000 with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. I currently work full time in the Emergency Room at the John Cochran VA Medical Center in St. Louis Missouri.
I have had a lot of adventures along the way. I had been on assignment in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean. I even was one of the physicians trained for rescue and egress for the Space Shuttle program and worked 2 launches in 1985.
All during that time I was an avid reader of adventure fiction and more serious topics in science, religion, and philosophy. I think all of these experiences developed a deep regard for the concept of the hero.
The single defining moment in recent times occurred in September of 2003 when a lumbar disc in my spine ruptured and crushed my spinal cord leading to paralysis and numbness below the waist. I had an emergency decompression done, but I still have lost function and sensation in my legs. It took me three months to learn to walk again, but at the end of that time, I went back to work in the ER. During my down time I began writing stories and they helped to keep me sane during a very frightening time. Kathy and I have been married for 24 wonderful years. We have two girls and one boy all of college age and we are currently raising Kathy’s teenaged granddaughter.
AP: You’re a pulp writer. What have you written and published that falls within the pulp field?
AS: I have published several stories in the last 7 years that would count as pulp stories.
I have written 3 stories in what I call my “Loki Companions” series which has been published in the Zine of Bronze #3, #4, & #5. These are about a group of six men (who may be familiar to pulp fans) during their service in World War I. His Last Hand is about a poker game at the Moulin Rouge in Paris as the six companions prepared to return to the United States after the Armistice. It is really a character study with a twist at the end based on a little known fact. Long Tom Robber relates the true story what really happened when a certain electrical genius used an antique cannon to thwart a German advance during that same war. Andy and Ted’s Excellent Adventure is about the friendship that developed between two very different American soldiers serving with the French Foreign Legion and how the practical jokes they played on each other changed their friendship.
I also wrote a short story for the collection Two Fisted Tales of LaPlata, Missouri that was entitled The Supreme Adventurer. It is a fantasy about a young Lester Dent growing up in LaPlata that shows how his experiences there may have contributed to the creation of Doc Savage.
I also have written 5 short stories about the German pulp character, Sun Koh who was the Aryan equivalent of Doc Savage. Three of these were originally published in Professor Stone Magazine # 1 and #2, and Thrilling Adventures #140. These have all been collected in a single volume Sun Koh: Heir of Atlantis, Vol. 1.
I had another short story in the Glimmerglass Writer’s Annual entitled Destiny or Choice: Shall Any Valiant Act Gainsay Extinction. It is about a child genius who confronts a great evil during a Archaeology convention in St. Louis in 1908.
My latest pulp story is The Perils of Patricia which in the Zine of Bronze #7 & #8. It is an adventure of a certain bronze-haired spa owner whose famous cousin is a well known world-wide troubleshooter.
All of my stories have homages to other action characters and some pulp crossovers. Some even have references to some of my own characters I haven’t yet written about.
AP: A project you undertook and have completed one volume on and are working on the second for concerns a character of some controversy. Before we discuss that, share with our audience who the character Sun Koh is historically.
AS: Sun Koh; Heir of Atlantis! Sun Koh was a character created by Paul Mueller for Germany’s pulp magazines who was based on Doc Savage. He was intended to be the Nietzschean Übermensch. He was an Aryan prince from ancient Atlantis who came to the future and descended out of the sky to land in London. He had come to prepare for the coming of the next Ice Age when Atlantis would rise gain from the ocean. He would save all those who were fit to survive and use them to repopulate the lost continent. Of course, those he considered to be most fit were of Aryan/German extraction according to the theories of the Theosophists whose mythology had been taken over by the Nazis.
Sun Koh went to Germany and collected around him a colorful group of aides that included science detective Jan Mayen, buckskin wearing Alaska Jim Hoover, WWI veteran Sturmvögel, and an Afro-American Boxer James “Nimba” Holigan. Sun Kho became to Germans what Doc Savage was to Americans.
Between 1933 and 1938 there were 150 Sun Koh stories published. Sun Koh epitomized the Aryan ideal and fought all sorts of villains and super-science threats very similar to those from the Doc Savage stories.
Strangely enough, the Nazis found these stories frivolous and in some cases subversive. Nazi censors made Mueller kill off Nimba because it was unseemly for an Aryan hero to have a black associate. Eventually they forced the series to end and Mueller had Sun Koh discover and conquer the newly risen Atlantis inside the Hollow Earth in 1938. That brought an end to the series.
The Sun Koh stories were full of adventure imagination and racial slurs. Expurgated versions were republished after WWII at least 3 times. Currently the original versions with annotations are being printed in Germany.
Sun Koh was the most successful of all the Doc Savage clones (if we exclude the comic characters like Superman and Batman). I was fascinated by the idea of such a character having so many adventures in a language that I could not read. I became frustrated and decided to write my own stories about Sun Koh preserving as much of the original adventure ideas as possible and excluding all the Nazi nonsense.
AP: Now, to the controversy. Have you had anyone complain or attack your direction with the character, that being your decision to write about a character who many identify with a Germany many would like to forget?
AS: Well, Jess Nevins who is a world-wide pulp expert was appalled that I was resurrecting the Sun Koh character whom he considered to be a poster child for Nazi ideology. My publisher for the Sun Koh series is Wayne Judge from Age of Adventure. He has had problems finding artists to do illustrations and covers for the Sun Koh stories because of the character’s roots.
I find it kind of funny to have such an edgy character. I am a very conventional person and I have no love for the Nazis and their dysfunction system of hatred. I like the noir ambience that you can get with this setting. It gives you a truly heroic character seen from a different perspective which raises ambivalence in the reader. It is the same experience you get while watching movies like The Usual Suspects, LA Confidential, and Payback.
It also gives me a chance to do a dark kind of Doc Savage-like character and explore what it would have been like to be a real superman in a culture that allegedly revered such beings. As my Sun Koh has been finding out, the dreams of the German leadership were delusory and did not match up to his own standards.
AP: What are your plans for Sun Koh? Will you redeem him and if you do, what then?
AS: Sun Koh was never part of the Nazi war effort. He was long gone before the invasion of Poland. I am intending to show how a true superman would not remain deceived by Hitler and his cronies for very long. It would soon become apparent to him that the Nazi were degenerates. I envision Sun Koh being part of the conspiracy in the Wehrmacht before Neville Chamberlain signed the pact with Hitler allowing the occupation of the Sudetenland. Had Chamberlain stood up to Hitler, the planned coup would have toppled the Nazis and Word War II might have been avoided. It will have been Sun Koh’s involvement in this conspiracy that leads him to disappear from Germany in 1938. Where he went at that point is still not know at this time.
AP: You’re also quickly becoming a podcasting legend. You are one half of the hosting team for THE BOOK CAVE (ALL PULP’S official Podcast, by the by). This is your chance, Art-How did you come to team up with your partner Ric Croxton and why do you think the relationship you two have works so well for a pulp podcast (It actually works very well, ALL PULP just wants to know why you think it works).
AS: Ric and I met at the 2006 LaPlata DocCon. The folks at that Con formed a bond and we have kept in touch over the years. When Ric launched The Book Cave podcasts, he had me on as a guest to talk about Sun Koh and some other topics. We worked well together and we got positive feedback from the audience and so Ric made me his permanent co-host.
The Book Cave is a show by fans for fans. We cover mostly pulp fiction but we also talk about Sci-Fi, Wold Newton, Lovecraft, comics, movies, TV-shows, and other things that adventure fiction fans really enjoy. I have been kicking around for a long time and I have had an interest in these things for almost 50 years… Let’s be honest. It has been OVER 50 years. I have taken these things very seriously and I love to talk about them.
This also gives us an opportunity to talk to the authors, producers, and creators of these entertainments and get to know them. I have always been interested in the creative process and how these stories came to be written. The fan base seems to enjoy this as well. And one thing about writers is that they LOVE to talk about themselves.
Ric and I have been privileged to meet and get to know folks like Will Murray, Ron Fortier, Andrew Salmon, Barry Reese, Paul Malmont, Derrick Ferguson, Josh Reynolds, William Preston, Jeff Deishcer, Win Eckert, Tommy Hancock, Jean Marc L’Officier, Tom and Ginger Johnson, Jim Campanella, Wayne Reinagel, Chris and Laura Carey, Paul Spitieri, Mike Croteaeu, James Sutton, and so many others who are creative forces in this field. These folks are great people and it is fascinating to talk with them. I learn so much and it gives me greater insight into the work they do.
I think the formula works because we come to the interviews with respect for the people and their work and I think our enthusiasm shows. We also remind our guests that we advocate them to give “shameless plugs” for any things they want to let the fan base know about. We also make it clear that we are a friendly show that is upbeat and pro fun. That is why we are all here.
AP: Ric often picks on your ‘special ability’ to know major details about your guests. Seriously, what sort of prep work do you put into getting ready to interview a guest in The Book Cave?
AS: It is amazing what you can find out from Googling someone’s name. Even before the internet, I was very good at ferreting out information. I also have a relatively good memory (not as good as it used to be, I’m afraid) and I tend to link together all sorts of disparate facts.
Ric and I always read the material we are going to discuss and we try to do some other background checking as well.
AP: Do you think podcasting in general and your podcast in specific is having any positive impact on pulp? If so, what? How can that impact be increased or improved upon?
AS: Podcasting allows us to do some things we never could before. It is now possible to do interviews with folks anywhere in the world record them, edit them, and put them on the world-wide web for anyone anywhere to listen to at their leisure. This means that pulp aficionados can hear their favorite authors talk about themselves and their work and send them feedback. Plus we can bring information about future projects to the pulp audience and help to spread the word about good books and how to get them. We have links on the podcast website that fans can follow for more information. Back in the 1960s I was the only Doc Savage fan that I knew. Today, I know dozens of Doc fans and pulps fans and we converse regularly. And information moves quickly through the pulp community. Our podcasts are routinely mentioned at Bill Thom’s Coming Attractions web site which is a gold mine of information for pulp and adventure fiction fans.
In the future, we may add video links to the show. I am not too keen about this since I don’t look all that good in real life and I do not dress smartly for the shows.
Another possibility is to have live call-in shows where fans can call in and talk to our guests. This would be a chancy thing and would require some kind of time delay so that we could weed out the disruptive calls.
AP: Another area of interest you have that falls squarely in the pulp field is the work of Philip Jose Farmer. Would you share how you came to be a fan and devotee of Farmer and his work?
AS: I first ran across Phil Farmer in the late 1960s as I began reading science fiction. The themes of his books seemed to be very controversial and I was put off by them. Then in the old Bookmaster’s store at Times Square in 1969, I saw a paperback by Mr. Farmer with two naked men on the cover who looked suspiciously like Doc Savage and Tarzan. It was entitled A Feast Unknown and it purported to be the memoirs of Lord Grandrith and his epic battle with Doc Caliban. The book is not tame fare. There was plenty of gratuitous sex and violence, but also a fascinating story. I was hooked. I began to read more of Farmer’s work. That was also the beginning of his Pulp Period where he was writing pastiches on pulp characters and themes. This period would last for over a decade and Phil became my favorite SciFi author.
AP: On the Book Cave, you often speak of how you became a fan of pulp, initially with the Doc Savage books and such. How has pulp helped shape you as a person, if its had any impact at all?
AS: For 36 years I wore a uniform and thought of myself as a soldier. My understanding of what that meant was shaped very much by the heroes I read about in books and comics. Doc Savage was in many ways my ideal and I tried to emulate him especially in academics. He was my inspiration for going into medicine. I attended Johns Hopkins for my masters because that was where Doc Savage had gone for his medical degree. (In fact I have a story in mind about Doc as a medical student in Baltimore in the 1920s.) Above all, Doc Savage and the pulps in general were ‘good guys’ who consciously sought moral uprightness. They did not always play by the conventional rules but in the end, their actions benefited more than themselves.
AP: You’re a doctor. Has your career contributed in any way to your ability as a pulp writer?
AS: You learn a lot in medicine about human nature and human limitations. You also learn a lot about science and math along the way. I have tried to make the fantastic elements in my stories at least plausible. I have also travelled the world and practiced medicine in some unusual circumstances. It all has contributed to the background in many of my stories.
AP: So, what does the future hold for Art Sippo? Any writing projects in the works you want to talk about? What about Book Cave plans?
AS: I have a Sun Koh novel currently under way. I eventually want to write the story of how Sun Koh is ultimately saved from Nazism and what becomes of him. I also plan to do some more Loki Companion Stories for Renny and Johnny and at least one more Pat story. And there is the story of Doc Savage at Johns Hopkins and the girl that ALMOST stole his heart. When I have enough of them, I’d like to publish them in a single volume along with some essays from my Speculations in Bronze website.
Ric and I plan to continue doing the Book Cave as long people enjoy it. We are always seeking new authors to interview and new material to pass on to the fans.
Ric and I both plan to be at the PulpArk con in the Spring of 2011 and to do shows from there.
AP: Dr. Sippo, it’s been a wonderful time talking to you. Thanks for the opportunity!
AS: It has been my pleasure as well. Folks should drop by the Book Cave site and drop us a line. We love to hear from the fans. Keep reading!
Beau Smith, Marketer/Creator, Writer of CAPTAIN ACTION story, Moonstone Books
AP: Tell us a little about yourself and your pulp interests and your mission to make manly comics.
BEAU: I’ve been writing comic books since 1987 as well as marketing them. I was in the third grade when I decided that I wanted to “make” comic books, I was always entranced by the colorful art and characters and spent the next few decades trying to figure out how I was going to put a check beside this goal of mine. Being from a smallish town in West Virginia, it wasn’t easy. Even as a kid I had been drawn to the pulp style painted covers of the magazines and paperback books I would see at the newsstand and drug store. I believe it was Argosy or Stag Magazine that mesmerized me with their sometimes lurid, yet adventurous covers of a manly man saving a beautiful woman with torn clothes from some wild boar or crazed Nazi. I wanted to read and write that kinda stuff.
AP: How did you get your start as a writer and how did it lead to marketing gigs?
BEAU: Tim Truman, creator of SCOUT and co-creator of GRIMJACK, gave me my first break in comics. Tim and I had met at Chicago Con around 1984. We found out we are both West Virginia boys and that set the cart off to full throttle. We also shared the same interests in comics, film, TV and books. Tim introduced me to Dean Mullaney who was the publisher of Eclipse Comics. It seemed at the time (1987) they were in need of a Sales Manager in the direct market. Since my background was sales and marketing, as well as knowing comic books, Tim hooked me up with a meeting with Dean at the American Book Sellers Association in Washington D.C. It was there I also met Chuck Dixon who was also a buddy of Tim’s and writing Airboy for Eclipse. Things started to roll and next thing you know, Dean hired me and Tim asked me to write a one page gag strip in the back of SCOUT called “Beau LaDuke’s Tips For Real Men”, based on the character that Tim and I co-created as a supporting cast member in SCOUT. (The character just happened to look like me…) So there I was in my early 30’s making my third grade dream come true. I wished I had gotten the job a little sooner, but life does tend to throw curve balls at you from time to time.
AP: As a Marketing Advisor you’ve worked for several companies and recently joined IDW Publishing’s Library of American Comics imprint (which includes some pulp like comics within its vast amount of material) as its new Director of Marketing. What can we expect to see from this imprint?
BEAU: We want to continue to collect and publish important comic books and comic strips that have been the foundation to the comics we read today. Readers need to know the history of comics and see where the influences and traditions have come from if they expect to grow into the future. The upcoming Genius Isolated: The Life And Art Of Alex Toth http://www.libraryofamericancomics.com looks to be one of the most anticipated releases in our catalog of books yet. It will appeal to not only readers, but professionals on all sorts of creative levels as well.
AP: There seem to be many different opinions about what can be defined as pulp. How do you define pulp and what do you look for in a pulp story as a writer and a reader?
BEAU: Pulp is like trying to describe the term pop culture, it’s hard to pinpoint it to one certain arena. Personally, I’ve always related pulp to that of noir. A traditional sense of thrilling stories with a grit to it. It’s adventure with a moodier light cast on it. You have examples of Doc Savage, The Shadow, Mike Hammer, there are just so many variants, nothing wrong with that. I like a big canvas. I look for that peculiar slant on adventure or sci-fi that you don’t usually get from mainstream. If someone were to suggest a new book and say “Well, it’s kinda like Tarzan with a sci-fi twist.” I would be the first person to order it. I believe it’s a mix of traditional with a new layer.
AP: Where can readers find information on you and your books?
BEAU: as always, folks can find out what recent crimes I’ve committed on my official website www.flyingfistranch.com or find me on Facebook (Beau Smith) and Twitter. (BeauSmithRanch) As far as the work we’re doing at The Library Of American Comics we have the website http://www.libraryofamericancomics.com and the IDW Publishing webiste www.idwpublishing.com
AP: What upcoming projects do you have coming up that you can tell us about at this time?
BEAU: In December 2010 from IDW Publishing, I will have my new original graphic novel, Wynonna Earp: The Yeti Wars (Full color, 104 pages, $17.99) In January from Moonstone, you can find an action packed Classic Captain Action story that Eduardo Barreto and I are doing called “White Lies.” It’ll be in the Captain Action Winter Special book. I also have a new project, a full blown western coming up from a major publisher for 2011, but that’s all I can say right now on that.
AP: Do you have any shows, signings, or conventions coming up where your fans can meet you and buy you a beer?
BEAU: I will be a special guest at this year’s Mid-Ohio Comic Convention in Columbus Ohio. (November 6-7) http://midohiocon.blogspot.com I hope a lot of folks come by and see me there. I ain’t much to look at, but I can talk the skin off a chicken.
AP: And finally, what does Beau Smith do when she’s not writing, marketing, or kicking ass?
BEAU: I don’t know about the kicking ass part, I’m not getting any younger. I might have to let a ball bat do the majority of the talking for me these days, but mostly I read (A lot!), do five miles a day, work with weights three days a week, watch some fine TV like Human Target and Burn Notice as well as some movies that interest me in a manly sorta way. I walk my dogs, my wife and I enjoy the empty nest thing and I try and run my son’s adult lives as much as I can. I have lunch with my long time buddies once a week and discuss things only adults with 12 year old brains should talk about and I guess that’s about it. If I did anymore we’d hear police sirens in the background.
The Broadway Mall bookstore of Denver, Colorado played host on Sunday, Oct. 17th to Laura Givens, pulp/sci-fi cover artist turned writer/editor and she and several of her colleagues greeted the public and signed copies of SIX GUNS FROM HELL.
Seated left to write are David Boop, Carol Hightshoe, Laura Givens, Jennifer Campbell-Hicks & David B. Riley. The book was published by Science Fiction Trails Publishing. The signing attracted a nice crowd of friends, family and fans and a really fun time was had by all in attendance.
Laura Givens is a popular, well known cover artist who will be featured in a full length ALL PULP interview later this week. For All Pulp – Ron Fortier
Fans of NCIS actress Pauley Perrette will welcome the opportunity to see more of her in the forthcoming film The Girl from Mars.
