They Never Had a Chance

Pulp heroes never really died; they just changed formats.

by Duane Swierczynski

Wreckage encompassed them on every side.

Streets had ceased to exist, except as barely distinguishable canyons through the mounds of litter.

And nowhere was there a living human being ... only mangled, half-burned corpses to indicate that this stricken wilderness had once been a great city.

I've been reading Don Hutichson's The Great Pulp Heroes, a survey of the cheap, popular pulp fiction magazines that ruled newsstands during the Great Depression and pre-WWII era. If any of you reading these words are old enough to have snapped up a fresh copy of Doc Savage or The Shadow for a dime, I envy you. These were the glory days of fiction, before they died out to make room for paperback originals, which eventually gave way to TV and DVD and PSP and, soon, direct brain implant.

Of course, pulp heroes never really died; they just changed formats. If you dug Spidey 3, you were probably the kind of person who would have dug Norvell Page's Spider, a masked avenger who routinely had the crap beaten out of him in his efforts to save New York City and/or the president of the United States. In fact, pretty much every summer blockbuster — from grungy pirates to spandexed, crotch-bulged heroes to robotic alien invaders who look like PT Cruisers — has its roots in the pulps of the 1930s. (Recent attempts to resurrect actual pulp characters, however, have been met with indifference. Remember hardass paterfamilias Alec Baldwin as The Shadow?)

Anyway, I was stopped dead in my tracks halfway through a chapter about "Operator #5," aka Jimmy Christopher, a Secret Service agent working in a bizarro alternate United States of the 1930s. Mirroring the isolationist paranoia of the day, Operator #5's USA is routinely invaded, blown up, carved apart and frozen by a swarm of hostile invaders, from countries both real (Germany) and imaginary ("Bulkaria"). It's a neocon's fever dream — the ultimate justification for "fighting them over there."

And in one adventure, "The Army from Underground" (November 1939), evildoers drop an atomlike bomb on a city you might recognize:

"Everything is destroyed," one dazed worker told them as he tore away tumbled wreckage in an attempt to reach a screaming woman pinned beneath the debris. "Philadelphia is wiped out ... everything but the suburbs."

His incredible words were all too true. Operator #5 found them corroborated even before the grey light of dawn revealed the tremendous crater that was the huge empty grave of the Quaker City. Philadelphia had been utterly obliterated, wiped from the face of the earth — with a loss of life that would probably reach a million!

"They never had a chance," he said bitterly as he stared out over that terrible waste.

Pretty hardcore for 1939, no? And earlier in the series, a bunch of bad guys try to hang Operator #5's girlfriend, Diane Elliot, from the freakin' Liberty Bell. (Presumably still hanging in the tower of Independence Hall.)

I bring all of this up in our Summer Fun issue (nothing says "summer fun" like a screaming woman trapped under a chunk of concrete) because this is the season when entertainment and our worst fears collide.

Could you imagine what pulp writers — who drew story ideas from the collective fears of their time — would produce today?

Maybe the Shadow, with his ability to "cloud men's minds," could get residents to start snitchin'. (His creator, Walter Gibson, worked as a Philly journalist for 10 years.) Of course, he'd have to pack away his signature oversized .45s, lest he be seen as part of the problem.

Surely the brilliant 'n' brawny Doc Savage could think of a way to save Earth from the environmental disaster — perhaps with the assistance of a certain steel-jawed former American vice president who once invented the Grand Computer Networks of Earth, and who has been tracking the problem for years, despite the nefarious evildoings of the current administration.

And good ol' Operator #5 has endured the Purple Invasion, the Yellow Vulture and the decimation of Philly. Couldn't he figure a way to straighten out the Sunnis and Shiites over in Iraq ... before they come flooding into Washington, D.C.?

This summer, the menace may be real. But remember: Dreams cost only a dime.

(duane@citypaper.net)