Pulp Power: The Shadow, Doc Savage, and the Art of the Street & Smith Universe

“A gorgeous tribute to the art of classic crime serials” (Boing Boing), Neil McGinness’s Pulp Power: The Shadow, Doc Savage, and the Art of the Street & Smith Universe is a visual treasury of the iconic Street & Smith pulp novel covers of the 1930s and 1940s. Foreword by Frank Miller Pulp Power gives fans a rare glimpse into the pre-war pulp novel decade of the 1930s, a period of bold action and adventure storytelling that ultimately led to the creation of the comic book and the superheroes we know and love today. This period, a pre-Batman, pre-Superman golden era of American creativity and artistic excellence, starred two main characters in leading roles: The Shadow and Doc Savage. In more than 500 novels written between 1930 and 1940, The Shadow, Doc Savage, and the Street & Smith universe of characters captivated a generation of Americans with their heroic exploits and inspired a new generation of writers to create a pantheon of comic book superheroes in their mold. Street & Smith, the renowned publisher of these novels, commissioned leading artists to provide bold and original cover artwork for their publications, and in Pulp Power, hundreds of these eye-catching covers are reproduced as a collection for the first time.