Pulpflakes Blog: The Secrets Of The Pulps

For over five decades, the pulp magazines entertained people all over the world. Discover the people behind them; the authors, editors, illustrators and their stories. Look behind the scenes and learn the secrets of storytelling.

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  • Simple, Fast search of the FictionMags Index

    Simple, fast search of the FictionMags Index. It’s finally here. https://pulpflakes.com/fmisearch/ The FictionMags Index (FMI) is the biggest online index of English language fiction published in periodicals. Search the FMI by author or artist name, magazine title or look for a specific issue by date or issue number. Tips and tricks While search tolerates partial……

  • Secrets of the Mask, part 14: The new hard-boiled

    Last week, we saw Popular Publications was struggling to make money on Black Mask at the fifteen cent price point in 1946. How could they make it work? In May 1946, Black Mask went to publishing every other month, a sure sign of trouble. Detective Fiction Weekly had stopped publication in 1944. Dime Detective was……

  • Secrets of the Mask, part 13: Nickel and Dime Detective

    There’s visible improvement in the January 1942 issue of Black Mask. More pages, for a start. 128 pages excluding the covers, and a readable font. There are nineteen pages of ads, so actual fiction is around 112 pages. One more story than the Ellsworth era issue we saw recently. The price is the same, fifteen……

  • Secrets of the Mask, part 12: Popular Culture

    Last week we saw how the competition was hurting Black Mask during Fanny Ellsworth’s editorial reign. And hinted that it might need a bigger backer. That backer was Popular Publications, a phenomenon created by Harry Steeger and Harold Goldsmith, who had started with four titles and a combined print run of 400,000 copies. While Battle……

  • Secrets of the Mask, part 11: Exploring the darkness

    Last week, we found Fanny Ellsworth taking over from Joe Shaw as the Black Mask editor. She changed the magazine, selecting stories with a deeper tinge of darkness than Shaw would have. Let’s see how, taking the December 1938 issue as an example. I selected it because it’s right in the middle of Ellsworth’s reign……