Pulp (literature)

The term pulp or pulps, abbreviation of the English "pulp magazines" (pulp magazines or pulp magazines), refers to cheap, low-quality publications that were very popular in the United States from 1896 to the late 1950s. In particular, the term Pulp derives from the cheap wood pulp paper on which magazines were printed, referring to a cheap and popular paperback binding format for specialized magazines. stories and comics from different genres of fictional literature. The typical pulp magazine had 128 pages, 18 cm wide by 25 cm high and 1.3 cm thick, with uneven, untrimmed edges. The publications contained simple plots with engravings and artistic impressions that illustrated the narrative, similar to a comic or a comic strip.

Such publications appear during the first third of the 20th century and continue to be printed until the end of the 1950s. It was the low cost of pulps that made them so popular among the American masses, and in this sense they were direct descendants of the dime novels and the penny dreadfuls and the short fiction magazines of the century XIX that told the exploits of soldiers and bandits, in a cheap magazine format intended for popular consumption: they were sold for 10¢ (one dime) and one cent (penny) respectively.

The pulps gave rise to the term pulp fiction to refer to popular literature and low quality. Although many respected writers wrote for the pulps, the magazines were best known for their morbid, exploitative and sensationalist subject matter. These magazines mainly published fictional stories (very often presented as true stories), with a wide variety of themes, such as science fiction, horror fiction, thriller, action, romance and fantasy in which lewd elements such as violence and eroticism, concentrating on variants of exploitation fiction. The publications began to be distinguished from the traditional comic book due to their extensive publication format and the intervention of elements of exploitation fiction. exploitation in the argument of the publication.

After a period of success, the genre declined starting in the 1950s, due to the increase in the price of paper and strong competition from comics, television and novels. The few pulps still published today are primarily oriented toward science fiction and fantasy. Modern superhero comics are sometimes considered descendants of 'hero pulps', illustrated stories of heroic characters, such as Flash Gordon, The Shadow, Doc Savage or The Phantom Detective.

Etymology

From an etymological point of view, the term pulp refers to the waste wood pulp used to make a yellowish, shabby paper of very poor quality and without guillotining but at a very low cost. with which these magazines were printed and which today is still seen in paperback editions or in pamphlets with little circulation and low price.

During the 1920s they were known as "pulp magazines"; although until the following decade, the current meaning of the term pulp was not coined to refer to the type of fiction reproduced in its pages.

Features

At the height of their popularity, in the 1920s and 1930s, the major American pulp magazines could sell up to a million copies per issue, such as those called by some pulp historians. i>pulp like "The Big Four" (The big four): Argosy, Adventure, Blue Book and Short Stories. Other well-known pulp magazines in that period were Amazing Stories, Weird Tales, Black Mask, Cowboy Stories, Dime Detective, Doc Savage, Flying Aces, Horror Stories, Love Story Magazine, Marvel Tales, Oriental Stories (later renamed The Magic Carpet Magazine), Planet Stories, The Shadow, Spicy Detective, Star Western, Startling Stories, Thrilling Wonder Stories , Top-Notch Magazine, Unknown or Western Story Magazine.

Although pulp magazines were mainly published in the US, there were also some European pulp publications. In the United Kingdom, between the Edwardian era and the Second World War, the following stood out: Pall Mall Magazine, The Novel Magazine, Cassell's Magazine, The Story-Teller, The Sovereign Magazine, Hutchinson's Adventure-Story and Hutchinson's Mystery-Story. In Germany, the fantasy magazine Der Orchideengarten had a similar format to the American pulp, since it was also printed on rough paper and abundantly illustrated.

Within the popular imagination, it is believed, mistakenly, that there is a genre called pulp fiction or pulp fiction, although this is not really the case since the pulpreferred to the print format (emphasizing its cheap and low-quality character), and not to the literary genre that the narrative adopted, where this fiction was filtered to its readers. The term, therefore, refers to the characteristics and literary and aesthetic approach created by pulp writers and publications themselves.

This approach placed emphasis on adventure and intrigue, giving special preeminence to the plot over the presentation of the characters, leaving dialogue and narration in the background in favor of a purely physical, functional, agile and modern, where style and quality, despite the fact that many authors were skilled writers, were forgotten to meet the great demand that the market demanded.

"[...] it focuses on the action itself and places little emphasis on the springs that move it or the elementary assumptions: it gives priority to what and even more to how about why, it likes in living colors, strong spices, agile rhythm, and prefers the muscle exhibition to emotional analysis".

—Fernando Savater, "Mystery, excitement and risk: about books and adventure films"

The plots of pulp fiction exploited the exotic elements in the plot of the publication, whether racial (inclusion of Native American tribes in Western pulps), sexual (inclusion of scenes of erotic insinuation, nudity or explicit sex in the pulps of Spicy & Saucy), socio-economic (inclusion of scenes with illicit themes such as robbery and banditry) or geographic (exploitation of jungle, western and extra-planetary settings); Simple, strongly expressed emotions where good triumphs over evil in most cases and whose sole intention was to entertain and provoke sensationalism as attested by the explicitly visual covers of these magazines.

History

Pulp literature descends from the dime novels of the second half of the XIX century, but it reached great popularity between 1920 and 1950. Pulp comics are characterized by presenting simple narrative sequences adorned with elements of exploitation fiction, following their plot throughout several collectible publications that were presented in disposable formats..

19th century

The paperback binding method is characterized by being a type of cheap binding because the covers that cover the pages are not made of rigid cardboard, and because the protected sheets are attached to the spine with glue and not with threads or staples. This type of binding has existed since the mid-19th century, but did not become popular until the 1930s. This format and massive editorial publication was adopted by Frank Munsey's Argosy magazine in 1896, whose content did not include any type of image but was entirely narrative. Massive literary pulp publications prospered due to the increasing urbanization and economic boom of the United States in the late 19th century. .

In the middle of the 19th century comic magazines emerged for popular consumption that were sold in exchange for a dime, which is why they received the name dime novel. The dime novels were widely accepted because they frequently included the western genre in the plot of the story and also erotic and exotic elements that provoked the fascination of the public, such as: eroticism, danger, violence, crime, banditry and racial exoticism (characters of different ethnic origins). This type of popular literature was mainly intended for a male audience, so female characters frequently appeared in dangerous situations or male characters with a dominant and strong character.

20th century

In the last years of the 19th century publishers began to appear that used the new technique of paperback binding to market literary copies in cheap formats such as Argosy and All-Story. The consumption of these products increased due to the decrease in the illiteracy rate in the United States, in response to the country's growing economic development. Literature began to take new approaches that captured fantasy and terror through the writing of stories. fantastic ones that spoke of the social notions of technological advance in the future in the last years of the 19th century, an approach identified in the Scientific Romance of early science fiction expounded by authors such as H. G. Wells and Jules Verne. Short stories presented in pulp magazines began to become popular due to their simple plot and focus on science fiction. Starting in the 1920s, this genre became popular and led to other approaches such as Planetary Romance, presenting exotic extra-planetary settings; In addition, publishers specialized in the science fiction genre appeared such as Amazing Stories and Planet Stories.

In the early years of the XX century, dime novels continued their popularity, exposing their cultural influence of the decadent Wild West from the beginning of the XX century. These publications were culturally marked by the end of the Wild West and the beginning of the Mexican Revolution, so they frequently presented classic Western stories that nostalgic for the years of the Gold Rush, exploiting elements related to the time such as banditry, the railroad and cattle rustling. It was at the end of the 1910s when publishers began to add colorful illustrations to publications to ensure mass sales, influenced by the popularity of comic strips. In the 1920s, eroticism began to be exploited. widely in the mass media, a clear example was the Tijuana Bibles (Biblias de Tijuana or Dirty comics) in the era of the Great Depression of the 1930s, they constitute the official beginning of eroticism in the industry of the comic books, which contained trademarked cartoons involving sexually explicit scenarios.

In the 1910s, magazines specialized in literary publications in pulp format such as Detective Story Magazine, Dime Mystery Magazine and Detective Stories are influenced by the growing rise of the English noir novel, a literary genre that presented earthly scenarios in which the plot revolved around the police cases of a detective. The < i>Hard boiled emerged as an American variant of the noir novel during the early years of the 1920s, based on the classic literature of detective novels that exalted intellect and ability. deduction from detectives and police forces investigating different criminal scenarios; famous literary genre in the first decades of the XX century in recognized authors such as Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle. The major pulp detective fiction that included elements of exploitation fiction was Black Mask in the 1920s and 1930s. Carroll John Daly and Dashiell Hammett were the pioneers. of hard boiled in the late 1920s with novels such as Red Harvest and The Maltese Falcon. In the 1920s, due to The cultural influence of the alcohol prohibition era, the gangster genre became popular.

In 1923 the publisher Weird Tales appeared, specialized in the variant of horror fiction known as weird fiction, whose main exponent was H. P. Lovecraft. Weird Talesspecialized from its beginnings in horror fiction related to fantastic elements such as mythology, supernaturality, etc. Weird Tales was, at the height of pulp literature, one of the most popular and recognized publishers for emblems of pulp and fiction such as < i>Cthulhu and Conan the Barbarian.

Between the 1930s and 1950s, pulp was established as a literary genre distinguished by presenting fantastic plots added with elements of exploitation fiction. In the late 1940s, specialized homoerotic approaches began to appear in homosexual literature that featured LGBT characters involved in highly sexual or violent plots.

World War II and the decline of the market

Magazines pulp They began to decay in the 1940s, giving way to pocket books, comic books and novels in digest size.

During World War II, paper shortages seriously affected pulp production, initiating a steady rise in costs and the decline of pulp magazines.. Starting with Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, in 1941, pulp magazines began to change to digest size, smaller, thicker magazines. In 1949, the Street & Smith closed most of his pulp magazines in order to move up the ranks and dedicate himself to the production of paperback magazines on finer paper.

Competition from comic books and paperback novels further eroded the market share of pulp magazines, but it was the widespread expansion of television that rang the death knell. of pulp magazines. In a more economically affluent postwar United States, the price difference with respect to thin-paper paperback magazines was much less significant. In the 1950s, men's adventure magazines began to replace pulp magazines.

The liquidation in 1957 of the American News Company, then the main distributor of pulp magazines, has sometimes been considered the end of the "pulp era"; By that date, many of the famous pulps of the previous generation, such as Black Mask, La Sombra, Doc Savage and Weird Tales , had already disappeared. Almost all of the few pulp magazines that remain are science fiction or mystery, now in formats similar to "digest size", such as < i>Analog Science Fiction and Fact and Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. The format is still used for some long series, such as the German science fiction weekly Perry Rhodan (more than 3,000 issues in 2019).

Throughout its evolution, there were a large number of pulp magazine titles; Harry Steeger of Popular Publications claimed that his company alone had published more than 300, and that at their peak they were publishing 42 titles a month.Many titles, of course, survived only briefly. Although the most popular titles were monthly, many were bimonthly and some were quarterly.

The collapse of the pulp industry changed the publishing landscape because pulps were the largest outlet for short stories and short stories. Along with the decline of thin-paper magazine fiction markets, writers trying to support themselves by creating fiction turned to novels and anthologies of shorter book-length pieces. Some former pulp writers, such as Hugh B. Cave and Robert Leslie Bellem, switched to writing for television in the 1950s.

Genres

The literature presented in pulp format concentrated on the genre of fiction and its variants, including warlike, violent, erotic or merely sexual scenarios. They usually contained a solid plot that was modified by publishing issues in sequence to follow the story line.

Adventures

The adventure genre includes a wide variety of themes from pulp literature, among which the western theme, retro-futuristic themes, and superhero fiction stand out. The adventure genre was characterized by the active participation of an intrepid character (usually male) who enters exotic settings to carry out a task, which is hindered by violent confrontations with villains. The genre within pulp descends from the penny dreadfuls and the dime novels of the XIX, which usually talked about cowboys and outlaws of the Wild West. The adventure genre also had other approaches related to the mystery genre.

Another popular approach in the pulp of the late 1920s and early 1930s was the conception of the superhero endowed with superhuman intellect, technology, or abilities. The superhero genre appeared in the late 1920s in publishers dedicated to the adventure genre such as Amazing Stories and Detective Stories. Earthly humans with simple skills, experts in martial arts and great intellect who played a secret detective role were frequently featured, such as The Shadow (1931) and Batman (1939). The popularity of the adventurous pulp superhero contributed to the Golden Age of the superhero in comics.

Men's Adventure

The Men's Adventure (translated into Spanish as adventures of men) is a variant of the adventure genre mainly recognized in the pulp literature of the 1950s. to the 1960s, which is characterized by the protagonist of a male character within a plot that presents warlike, violent or erotic elements. Men's adventure was characterized by presenting the adventures of a strong male character within exotic settings such as war settings from World War II and the Vietnam War, western settings or jungle settings where he fought with wild animals. The male character was frequently involved in erotic or romantic situations in which he entrusted himself to save a female character in danger, where partial nude images or softcore stood out.

The stories were published in magazines aimed at heterosexual men, including publishers such as Argosy, For Men Only and Swank. The stories featured frequently claimed to be based on true stories about a man's adventures and, due to their heterosexual male consumption, frequently featured pin-up style images of women within the cover or interior art..

Noir novel and Hard Boiled

The noir novel and the hard boiled are variants of detective fiction, that is, a variant of the mystery genres that based a large part of their plot on elements like crime. The crime novel is a sober version of the hard boiled, since it did not involve notably lascivious elements such as extreme violence and explicit sex. Both featured characters related to crime, usually characters who worked as detectives in charge of solving mysterious murders, robberies or police chasing gangsters. Some specialized publishers were Dime Mystery Magazine and Detective Stories.

The hard boiled genre was consolidated between the years of 1929 and 1932 with the edition and publication of the pulp Black Mask series, with the editing and collaboration of authors such as Joseph T. Shaw, Dashiell Hammett and Erle Stanley Gardner. The pulp Black Mask magazine distinguished itself by including different action scenarios full of violence in which the protagonist of a detective with a tough character who faces danger and who constantly resorts to the violence. The hard boiled revolutionized the genre of English detective fiction that emerged and was predominantly noted in the literary work of Arthur Conan Doyle: Sherlock Holmes. They were also known as hard boiled i>hardboiled some stories from the western genre, the adventure genre and Men's Adventures (war stories starring a male character who, unrealistically, manages to defeat his opponents and escape from justice without anyone's help).

Gangster

The gangster genre is a regular theme in the pulp of the late 1920s and early 1930s, culturally influenced by the Prohibition Era in the United States, the Roaring Twenties and its subsequent decline. Gangster pulp frequently featured erotic art on its covers involving pin-up female characters in situations such as bondage. The main characteristic of the gangster pulp was that it dignified the gangster's criminal work such as murder and alcohol trafficking, showing the criminals as heroes.

Spicy & Saucy

The Spicy & Saucy (translated into Spanish as spicy & picaro) is an approach to exploitation fiction that is characterized by presenting erotic elements that accompany the plot of the work. It was frequently presented as a complement to other genres such as adventure, western and hard boiled, combining erotic and violent characters. These approaches were represented with erotic art that was normally featured female and male characters involved in highly sexual situations such as BDSM, semi-nude, nude, and explicit sex. Some specialized publishers were Spicy Stories and Saucy Stories, where the term originates. Thespicy & saucy usually contained socially unacceptable themes at the time such as paraphilias, sexual abuse and homosexuality, the latter being a theme related to another pulp genre, homosexual pulp.

Homosexual pulp

Homosexual pulp emerged in the late 1940s, but achieved great popularity in the second half of the 1950s until the end of pulp literature. > in the 1970s. In gay pulp literature, the presentations of strong male characters in highly sexual situations were frequent, including a romantic plot about a love blocked by heteronormative society. The art that featured gay pulp literature included beefy half-naked men on the covers, designed using hypermasculinist art (an artistic aesthetic that provided male figures with mesomorphic somatotypes and hypergonadism). Gay pulp literature and beefcake magazines formed part of the identity of the camp aesthetic before the Stonewall Riots, offering the "occult" homosexual public a possibility in the consumption of pornography. Some well-known pulp writers were Victor J. Banis, Chris Davidson and Carl Corley.

Lesbian pulp literature is one of the binary approaches to homosexual pulp literature that gained great popularity between the 1950s and 1960s, characterized by the frequent erotic insinuation of homosexual female characters. that were introduced into history. Like gay pulp literature, it was frequently related to other pulp genres, but it usually had a romantic or sexual character defined by heteronormativity, impossible love, etc. Lesbian pulp built a style in lesbian feminism, offering consumers the possibility of acquiring erotic material within the heteronormative society prior to the Stonewall Riots. Pulp literature > Lesbian frequently featured butch female characters with common attributes such as beauty and toughness within highly sexual settings. Some lesbian pulp writers were: Marijane Meaker, Marion Zimmer Bradley and Ann Bannon.

Weird Fiction

Weird Fiction (translated into Spanish as strange fiction) is a fantasy genre that is characterized by presenting various themes related to horror fiction, in which macabre characters related to mythology and occultism intervene, which owes its name to the magazine pulp Weird Tales in which two of its great exponents H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. worked. Howard. Strange fiction was frequently included in other themes such as hard boiled in which a detective investigated strange events caused by a paranormal identity such as a ghost, as well as in the publications of The Spider and Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror.

Weird Menace

The Weird Menace (translated into Spanish as strange menace) is a variant of the mystery genre that combines elements of the spicy & saucy, characterized by including erotic elements within plots dedicated to exalting supernatural events, murders and events related to horror fiction. The Weird Menace is characterized by presenting characters (usually female) within erotic-violent scenarios that involve torture and BDSM where the woman is defenseless to be subdued by mysterious beings or masked characters for subsequent murder or sexual abuse, events observed by the protagonist of the story who is also defenseless and unable to save his companion or love interest. Some publishers specialized in this genre are Weird Tales and Spicy Stories.

Sword and sorcery

The Sword and Witchcraft genre (also translated into Spanish as sword and sorcery) is a variant of fantasy fiction that combines elements of horror fiction in the weird fiction approach. /i> which is characterized by presenting arguments related to the occult and witchcraft. The stories are usually epic in nature, presenting the exploits of a Herculean being who dedicates his life to fighting magical-mythological beings. The stories also usually include elements from other genres such as a romantic character and erotic material. The most notable example of this genre is Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian for the Weird Tales publishing house.

Romance

The romantic genre in pulp literature was mainly focused on complementing the original plot dedicated to other genres. Romance as a unique approach within pulp literature was characterized by presenting active female characters looking for love, similar to chick lit, involved in unfortunate love relationships marked by socioeconomic status. Pulp literature is influenced by the French novel of the late 19th and early 19th centuries. XX, which was characterized to present female characters in search of love, facing opposition from people close to the core of the relationship between the protagonist and her love interest. Romantic pulp usually included themes such as marriage, miscegenation, forbidden love, infidelity, homosexuality, love of convenience, arranged marriage, gold digger, the gold digger, the differences in socioeconomic status in the main characters and other notions of love.

Planetary Romance

The Planetary Romance is an approach to fictional literature that is dedicated to showing intergalactic scenarios, usually related to extraterrestrial civilizations with developed technology; It is related to Scientific Romance (steampunk approach to literature in the Victorian and Edwardian eras). The space opera is a variant of romantic pulp literature and science fiction that places a love plot within an advanced society in the era of space conquest, that is, focuses on presenting an interplanetary love between a member of the human race dedicated to space exploration and a humanoid member of an extraterrestrial race. Planetary Romance contains various aesthetic elements that nourish the retrofuturistic culture of dieselpunk, among which intergalactic machinery, futuristic fashion and the conquest of space stand out.

Fantasy

The fantasy genre within pulp is recognized in various thematic variants in which horror fiction and science fiction stand out. Within horror fiction, various themes are concentrated, such as occultism, mythological beings, beings of a paranormal nature, and beings of a magical or religious nature. Within the approaches of science fiction, the dieselpunk notion of futurism, culturally influenced by the artistic current of modernism and the arrival of new types of energy in domestic use, is mainly concentrated. Futurism in pulp often speaks to pre-1960s retro-futuristic possibilities about the existence of extraterrestrial life, utopian life, and the development of new technologies such as air transportation and robotics. Some publishers specialized in the fantasy genre were: Amazing Stories, Outstanding Stories, Wonder Stories and Fantastic Adventures.

Western and Railroad

The Western genre within pulp literature appears with its first approaches; It emerges in the dime novels of the late 19th century century. The western genre is influenced by the decline of the genuine Wild West at the beginning of the century XX and the beginning of the Mexican Revolution of 1910, so they frequently presented classic western stories that nostalgic for the years of the Gold Rush, exploiting elements related to the time such as banditry, the railroad and cattle rustling. The genre usually featured male protagonists who lived in towns in the wilderness of California, dedicated to banditry or gold mining, who sometimes found themselves involved in sentimental or political duels. The Railroad ('railroad' in English) is a subgenre of the western that was characterized by presenting traveling protagonists who traveled through different towns in the southern United States stowing away in railroad cars, or, they were outlaws who intercepted the train tracks and assaulted the passengers traveling in the cars.

Authors

Some writers who published in pulp magazines:

Famous pulp characters

• Buck Rogers created by Philip Francis Nowlan, presented in Armageddon 2419 A.D. for publishing Amazing Stories in 1929.
• Captain Future (Future Captain) created by Mort Weisinger in 1940.
• Conan the Barbarian (Conan the Bárbaro) created by Robert E. Howard for the editorial Weird Tales in 1932.
• Cthulhu created by H. P. Lovecraft, presented in The Call of Cthulhu for the editorial Weird Tales in 1928.
• Doc Savage created by Lester Dent, Henry Ralston and John Nanovic, presented in The Doc Savage Magazine for Street and Smith Publications in 1933.
• Domino Lady (Domino) created by Lars Anderson Saucy Romantic Adventures in 1936.
• Flash Gordon created by Alex Raymond for King Features Syndicate in 1934.
• Fu Manchu (Fu Manchu) created by Sax Rohmer.
• John Carter created by Edgar Rice Burroughs, presented at A Princes of Mars for the editorial The All-Story in 1912.
• Kull of Atlantis (Kull de Atlantis) created by Robert E. Howard, presented in The Shadow Kingdom for publishing Weird Tales in 1929.
• The Shadow (The Shadow) created by Walter B. Gibson for the editorial Detective Story Magazine in 1930.
• Solomon Kane created by Robert E. Howard, presented in Red Shadows for publishing Weird Tales in 1928.
• Tarzan (Tarzán) created by Edgar Rice Burroughs, presented in Tarzan of the Apes for publishing All-Story Magazine in 1912.
• The Zorro created by Johnston McCulley, presented in The Curse of Capistrano for the magazine All-Story Weekly in 1919.
• The Spider (The Spider) created by Harry Steeger for Popular Publications.

Famous pulp characters by Spanish authors

• The Coyote created by José Mallorquí in 1943. Star of 120 novels. Presented in The Round of the Coyote (1944).
• Brigitte "Baby" Monfort created by Lou Carrigan in 1965 for the Monterrey Editorial. More than 500 novels of the character.

Legacy

Between 2006 and 2007, a literary movement called Neo Pulp began to emerge in the United States. The greatest exponent is the author Barry Reese, who has written two series of novels that have achieved notable success. The Rook, with six novels published to date and The adventures of Lazarus Gray, with three novels published. This resurgence of pulp has led numerous writers to publish new adventures of characters such as Doc Savage or The Shadow.

In Spain, in February 2010, Emilio Iglesias founded RelatosPulp Ediciones, an editorial website dedicated to pulp literature. In February 2012, the digital magazine Ánima Barda emerged, which evolved over three years until reaching a first paper edition in April 2014 and, in December 2015, the creation of its editorial version, Pulpture, which also After editing the magazine itself, it produces books following the pulp style guidelines. In December 2012 Dlorean Ediciones published The Curse of the Spider Goddess by Miguel Ángel Naharro, the first novel of the character “the Claw”. As a result of the emergence of Dlorean, publishing houses such as Darkland Editorial or Neonauta Ediciones emerged, specialized in this literary genre. Other existing publishers create collections dedicated to pulp, such as the Monster Unleashed collection by Tyrannosaurus Books.

Dlorean Ediciones published Planeta Neo-pulp, a magazine with novels, short stories, novelettes and articles with the aim of publicizing the new Spanish values of Neo Pulp. To these publishers we must add the Arachne Label, which has several pulp publications within the genres of adventure, horror, sword and planet, weird noir and martial arts, all of them by various authors, both Spanish and Latin American. There are also a variety of self-published books such as Charlie Marlow and the Giant Rat of Sumatra by Alberto López Aroca, La frati nigra by Lem Ryan or The Crimes of Santa Úrsulaby Macu Marrero under the pseudonym Greta Spaulding among others.

In Argentina, starting in February 2020, Matías Castro Sahilices founded the magazine Salvaje Sur, dedicated to pulp literature on paper, betting on stories from the western, gaucho, noir, and adventure genres., terror and sword and sorcery,. All the stories are by various Argentine authors and have been illustrated by artists of the stature of Diego Fiorucci, Javier Mattano and Omar Hirsig, among others.

In cinema, this resurgence has been represented with the blockbusters Conan the Barbarian (2011), John Carter (2012) and The Lone Ranger (2013). In comics, Dynamite Entertainment has published numerous series starring pulp characters such as Doc Savage, John Carter, The Phantom, Green Hornet, Flash Gordon, etc.