Pulp Adventures #46

Pulp Adventures #46 from Bold Venture Press, dated Fall 2024 came out towards the end of the year, the third for the year. This one is a King Kong themed issue, with both fiction and non-fiction pieces. There are detective, supernatural, urban crime, and more. The cover for #46 is an original piece, done with AI, as is the back cover, both tied to stories in this issue. For this issue’s “Salute to King Kong,” we get four items. From Bart Pierce, who created the gore effects for Sam Raimi‘s Evil Dead, is “King Kong and the Wrong Woman.” In the 1933 film, a woman looked out of a bedroom window. Kong reached in for her and threw her to the ground. But who was this “wrong woman”? This is a long piece that takes up half the issue, looking into who were the actresses considered for the parts, how they planned for the special effects, and more. While this seems to be a minor item, it opens the door to how King Kong was made. Next David Goudsward takes a look into the cantankerous landlady who barks at people during Carl Denham‘s talent search. Will Murray, pulp researcher and author, discusses how he created his novels that paired up King Kong with Doc Savage and Tarzan. And finally Micah Swanson Harris examines the influence H. Rider Haggard‘s Alan Quatermain series may have had upon the creation of King Kong. This is from his upcoming book on King Kong. For classic pulp fiction, we get H.P. Lovecraft‘s classic tale “Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family,” better known as “The White Ape,” which was reprinted in Weird Tales twice. A man looks into his ancestry, only to make a shocking discovery. I thought this was an appropriate addition to this King Kong issue. From a trio of U.K. authors, we first get from SF pulp author John Russell Fearn in “Foolproof.” It’s a crime tale about someone who thinks they have a foolproof alibi. There almost never is one. In “Leave Of Absence” by John Burke, a man must deal with the spirit of the woman he scorned. Finally, from Shelley Smith is a supernatural story of a haunting, and what it leads to in “A Thing Possessed.” And for New Pulp, we get “The Happiest Family” by Riley Hogan, where a wandering caballero in the early Southwest encounters an unusual frontier family. From Dr. Richard A. Olson, we get a Christmas-themed story with his PI Nick Stihl with “Don’t Stihl Christmas.” And Teel James Glenn gives us an interesting tale in “Saturday Knight Special,” about an actor still in his costume at a convenience store. It’s another great issue to close out 2024. I hope we will get back to four issues in 2025.