If you dig The Shadow snippets here, you might think of checking out my side channel, The Shadowcast here: ua-cam.com/channels/E5ls-3WtyXiirzcyzEgxXw.html And if you want to check out my ORIGINAL pulp series, 'Nightvale', head over here: www.nightvalenovels.com Godspeed!
@@shebakoby lol what? The shadow is a morally binary white knight in a black cloak and slouch hat. Alucard is literally a bloodthirsty monster in a zoot suit who'd gun down innocent people in his way. They're nothing alike. The Bram stoker version of Dracula, alongside Sherlock Holmes and others, were an influence on the shadow.
Even in that grey world, though, there's a morality of retribution. If a character strays from the straight and narrow, they're doomed. They won't ever escape the consequences of their actions. The best they can manage, like Mitchum in 'Out Of The Past,' is to delay the punishment that awaits them which in some way makes it even worse. Just when you've built a nice quiet little life for yourself, thought 'That Day' was far behind you, gotten yourself a girl even, that's when that old dog comes back around to bite you in the ass and no matter how much you squirm, it won't let go until you're dead.
Which is what makes it so great. It’s easy to preach about honor and duty when everything is going right, but standing by your convictions in a world gone mad, and continuing to fight the good fight no matter how much life tries to beat you down; that’s truly admirable.
"Today's flawed superheroes are superior in physical strength but common, average, ordinary in mental strength and rich in super-powers but bankrupt in reasoning powers." - Steve Ditko (1987) "The Masters of Comic Book Art" documentary "Comic book fans who later became editors, writers, wanted flawed heroes, anti-heroes to suit their own unwillingness to seek higher standards. It seems comic book companies, publishers, editors, too many writers and artists, all want the comfort of the anti-hero, where we're ALL grey, so no one can judge anyone or anything." -Steve Ditko (2014)
There is a world of difference between recognizing the inherent flawed nature and limitations of what at the end of the day are still human beings - and wholeheartedly subscribing to moral relativism. The modern entertainment industry is often muddled by the latter, but not universally so. Also, Steve Ditko was a neurotic, and often quite contradictory mess of a flawed human being, far and away from objectivist ideals he advocated for. Which is often the main issue I have with people like him, even if I try my damndest to separate the art from the artist.
When you look at ancient heroes from mythology they come off as being quite morally gray considering things a good example is Heracles whose story is quite a tragedy.
@Glenn Krenz while aspirational depictions of heroism and heroes has its merit, flawed, humanized heroes make for better stories. Simple as that. No real person, historical or contemporary, can remain entirely unscathed and unfazed as he faces extreme adversity and evil time and again. The heroic tropes need to be reconstructed, but not by reductionist and traditionalist retrogrades like Razor.
"Progress means getting nearer to the place you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turn, then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man." - C.S. Lewis
I inadvertently started getting into pulp thanks to Disney of all places. Back when the original Tarzan animated film came out it spurred my interest in reading about the character delving into the pulp genre before I was even 10 years old. I have to say, pulp is a genre that never ends, the amount of content out there from film serials to radio shows that are saved on CD and digital, to comic strips and comic books, to novels and short story collections, to movies and TV shows, it's an inexhaustible resource, and that's just the stuff that's already made. It's up to the next generation of content creators and us as a whole to preserve the original content that came before and push forward with new content to inspire and entertain current and future audiences.
@@Harvest133 except that they did speak greek. They are a distinctly greek culture. The oldest one on record actually. They came after the proto greeks. Mycenean greek has been translated from the linear b script it was written in and it is destinctly greek. Linear b was the script used to write greek till around 700 bc when the current greek alphabet replaced it. Linear B was based on the minoan script also known as linear A. It predates classical greek but its still greek nonetheless. Im greek and can still roughly understand mycenean texts when reading them. All languages change over time. some more drastic then others but whats makes greek unique is that it has changed reletively little campared to most other languages.
@@MrSpotface That's pretty amazing you can just understand it when modern Greeks have a hard time with Medieval era Greek, and even more so with Classical. Myceneans were also genetically distinct from modern and classical populations as they did not incorporate Doric and other peoples. They are an ancestor of Greeks, but not entirely Greek themselves, in the same way that all Modern Europeans have Indo-European ancestry within, but Indo-Europeans were not Europeans. There isn't an easy straight line from A to B in terms of modern human populations. A lot of migrations and conquests occurred before written history, and during written history. If they are Greek, than so are Minoans.
When I was growing up I was fascinated with the stories of Flash Gordon, Zorro, The Lone Ranger. It wasn't until I started watching this channel that I was reunited with those stories, and introduced to "The Shadow".
@@johnjay370 because those are creations, building up a myth and legend of a character and theme. Now it’s all deconstruction. Which can work, but needs to be built back up afterwards.
Honestly, this video had me ready to buy whatever you were selling me. I’m going to check out some Pulp comics As soon as I can. This is better than any infomercial I’ve ever seen.
The best part is you can find a lot of old pulp at your local used bookstore. This also has the benefit of keeping you money local instead of enriching some far left loon out west.
Funny enough, Zorro is still big in the Latino community. A friend of mine has done cosplay as the Dred Pirate Roberts for a number of conventions, and he says he repeatedly hears Hispanic families and convention goers call him "Zorro". Man we could use Zorro to save California now...
Zorro is the biggest hero in the Hispanic community by far. He’s the greatest example of making a POC character without throwing bullshit political agendas into his character.
Something I don't get. Disney once had the rights to El Zorro, the Fox so naturally, when they came to make an animated feature about a cartoon fox, he's... Robin Hood? I mean, what the fuhh? 🤨
Solomon Kane's inspiring, more that can be said for the vast majority of comic book superheroes. He falters, fails, falls, and doesn't give up, doesn't get deconstructed as the bad guy, doesn't get replaced, doesn't instantly heelturn, he rises back up with renewed faith, vigor, and hope, and he overcomes by fighting for what's right. If that's not a spirit people should try to emulate, I don't know what is.
Nay, alone I am a weak creature, having no strength or might in me; yet in times past hath God made me a great vessel of wrath and a sword of deliverance. And, I trust, shall do so again. -Solomon Kane A fine quote from the man himself.
Doc Savage seems to encapsulate what fiction used to be about: what we can all strive to be, the embodiment of man at his very best and most noble, a truly exceptional figure using his talents for good. In this jaded, cynical age, we could use a hero like the Doc. And not "re-imagined for modern audiences", but played completely straight and with the same extraordinary spirit the character was created to embody.
I've been storing ideas for years, it will take me a bit of time but over the next few years your going to see the most badass insane stories ever told (and ofc no woke agenda or any of that bullshit!)
One could argue some of the 80s "toy commercial" heroes were also PULP to a degree, or took some inspiration from the era with their sense of morality. He-Man, Duke, Optimus Prime, Lion-O, etc. It is a shame modern writers always try to write them as morally gray.
The Shadow was a breath of fresh air for me. His sense of absolute justice and the method of carrying it out spoke to me far more than the likes of Spider-Man (the only character I think benefits from self doubt and moping around), Superman, and even my longtime favorite character Batman. We need more crimefighters like The Shadow.
I especially dislike one specific thing about Batman (the rest is cool) and it’s what basically everyone else who I know loves most about his philosophy: he refuses to kill because he believes it drops him to the level of those he fights… so the joker can blow up entire buildings with people in them but Batman will just throw him in an asylum he’ll escape by Tuesday, so he can murder another mass of innocent people. This is true for basically all those villains, but he refuses to kill one evil person, and so constantly the innocent are harmed because he won’t just do his job for once.
Marvel Max line Punisher by garth ennis. A M60 machine gun, a gym bag full of spare belts of ammo, some claymore mines, and a willingness to kill everything within a square mile.
@@nkemnoraulmanfredini7286 Batman is basically a hypocrite for refusing to kill the Joker since hes afraid he might end up becoming a murderer, but the Joker has killed hundreds of thousands+ more people throughout the decade. This would make Batman a murderer by proxy due to this. That's what OP was saying. "ALL THE PEOPLE I'VE MURDERED, BY LETTING YOU LIVE!" "I never kept count." "I DID!" "I know! And I love you for it!" - _The Dark Knight Returns_
@@acrsclspdrcls1365 He refuses to kill, because Batman is a traumatised child dressing up like a bad-ass, in order to face his own fears. That's what he is, a hypercompetent, peak-human who is a scared child on the inside. It is what made him what he is, his deepest secret and his greatest weakness.
My dad used to go on and on about Pulp. I never understood why every time a “new” characters came out from the big comics, he would say that they’re a rip-off. I get it now dad.
There was a good pulp-inspired Hollywood movie that came out over 15 years ago called Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. It was a huge flop at the box office, but it stands out from 99% of modern movies because of its obvious pulp inspiration and total dedication to the style.
I saw it at the movies; it was the first movie all filmed on green screen IIRC. It was more axed toward the high adventure, still decent for the time, way better than most compared to today's movies.
The best line in Pulp Noir: Yeah, that's me, Tracer Bullet. I've got eight slugs in me. One's lead, the rest are bourbon. The drink packs a wallop, and I pack a revolver. I'm a private eye.
Ah! So THIS is the inspiration for the Silver Shroud from Fallout 4. Just got done with that quest the other day and now I get a look at pop culture that inspired him. Thanks Razor!
So I’m not crazy! Back when I lived in Colombia as a kid, I remember reading a bunch of Zorro pulps that my grandpa used to own. It’s no wonder why I grew to love the character over the course of my life. Awesome video Razor!
"Dreams save us. Dreams lift us up and transform us. And on my soul, I swear... until my dream of a world where dignity, honor and justice becomes the reality we all share -- I'll never stop fighting." - Superman. I miss when Superhero stories had that kind of message. No long winded speeches about how we need to do better without telling us HOW we can do better. No lecturing a hero about how they're privileged and should feel bad, as if the last 70 years of character development didn't happen. No edge lord nonsense about seeing the worst in people. Just good old heroism. And if a full blown revival of the Pulp genre is what it takes to bring back those superhero stories of hope that I grew up with, then I welcome it with open arms. Because right now, Japan has done a better job of keeping that hope alive than America has.
I've been a fan of Conan, Tarzan, and pulp content in general for decades. It has a raw, straight-forward brutality that's mixed with ideas of individualism, which is why I find it so enthralling.
@@jmgonzales7701 Pulp refers to these adventure and detective stories published in cheap magazines in the 1920's, 1930's and onwards. They're called pulps because of the bad quality of the paper the magazines were printed on, to keep costs down. And this word has become representative of entire genres and subgenres of various kinds of stories. And yes, I'm crazy about them as well. They have an inimitable vibe of vital, raw glory and excitement which today's mass produced millennial and zoomer crap can NEVER hope to equal, let alone surpass.
@@mirceazaharia2094 should we revive these pulp stories to modern day stories and superhero movies, I do like the idea of detective stories but i do fear its not gonna be as popular to modern day audience as it tends to be slow and boring.
@@jmgonzales7701 "modern day stories", i.e. try to appeal to degenerate speds who need do not drink labels in motor oil? That's exactly what has ruined entertainment.
When my grandmother went into labor with my father my grandfather dropped her off at the hospital and then left so he could find a radio because he didn't want to miss that week's episode of The Shadow.
It's interesting how stories about men that had moral codes and did what was right in a world gone mad is more manly and enduring than the deconstructivist hellhole we ended up in the current industry. I used to love reading the Phantom, i will get around to give some other Pulps a read as well.
Can't remember where I heard this, but, to paraphrase: "Strong men make good times, good times make weak men, weak men make hard times, hard times make strong men..."
The world has always been mad you just didn't have a 24/7 window for it. I mean the world is very small compared to even 20 years ago let alone thousands.
H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, and Edgar Rice Burroughs have created some of the most enduring characters of all time. Embrace pulp, it will embrace you back.
Razorfist's enthusiasm and passion is contagious. Im giving pulp heroes a shot. Tired of mainstream comics' non-stop proselytization and condemnation...
"It was a hard code, that one of Doc's. It would have curled the hair of weak sisters who want criminals mollycoddled. For Doc handed out justice where it was deserved. Doc's justice was a brand all its own. It had amazing results. Criminals who went against Doc seldom wound up in prison. They either learned a lesson that made them law-abiding men the rest of their lives- or they became dead criminals. Doc never did the job halfway." -- Lester Dent from "The Land of Terror."
@Bobby Campbell aka (The Oracle) I adore brutal and hilarious. In an age where a sentient being with a finite span of life would rather cover up the world and worry about "micro-aggressions" than having fun, we need brutality and ESPECIALLY hilarious aspects. To hell with feelings
Those wondering if they can get into Pulp, let me ask you a question, did you like the Indiana Jones trilogy? How about the Shadow? The Spirit? what about the Rocketeer? If you said yes to any of these, you've already been exposed to pulp heroes, since Indiana Jones is based off the old pulps and the others come from them.
Razor got me into Elric, his reading of Ideal War got me into Battletech at this point I'm willing to do as I'm told. If he says read [insert title here] I'm gonna do so.
He recommended The Amateur, the book about the lame first term of Barack Obama. I got it for free on Audible because I also have Prime. Give you a good idea why he ranks Obama among the top five worse Presidents, as although I think he would put TaliBiden ahead of Obama now.
I’m the exact opposite no matter how interested I am and all the things people mention or convince me off I can’t for the life of me bring myself to read or watch anything. Depression be like that.
Agreed about Razor's reccommendations. I didn't know how fucking awesome the The Shadow, Ninja Turtle, and Dare Devil were until I watched his comic videos.
*_“In those days spirits were brave, the stakes were high, men were real men, women were real women and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri.”_* The past was and STILL IS ... better!
@@weemadangus1834 Our grapes - one plant of 20m vines with quite a lot of grapes - are being eaten by those dastardly evil Raccoons ... which a) arent native to the region (but arent allowed to be hunted/caught) and b) have the black mask and striped costume of a villain!
@@captainmaim One of the first "encounters" I had with raccoons ... was a trio of youngsters at the bottom of our freshly emptied trash bin (so there was about 1m of slick wall for them to "climb out"), which had just one bag with an empty tin of cat food in it. No one "wanted to take care them" ... and this could have been done without shooting (since we are in a city that is a bit dangerous). P.S.: The one video I uploaded on my channel is raccoons climbing through our grapevine ...
Stories back than taught children important lessons, and didn't treat them like complete idiots. Also, they understood that all children eventually grow up, and will have to face the harsh & ugly realities of the real world, no matter how any of us feel about it. Unlike today, where children are taught to live in a safe-space fantasy world.
That's how I feel about most 1990s cartoons (the cartoons from my childhood, though there were some 1980s ones scattered around and some further back if you want to include the cartoons like Looney Tunes and Tom and Jerry).
Well said Razorfist. "Zorro" and "Rocketeer" were my favorite growing up as kid. Couldn't agree more with your take on how "Rocketeer" is being treated in the Modern day.
I’m working on some pulp stories of my own in that aim. Taking a hint from Solomon Kane and real life lawman Bass Reaves, I have Wesley Toombs, an ex-slave and veteran of the American Civil War traveling the Southwest and Deep South in search of wrongs to right. Klansmen, evil voodoo priests, outlaws, vampires, werewolves you fucking name it, and he will be there to defend the innocent with hot lead and cold steel.
One of the biggest obstacle for these pulp heroes is literally been men and women out of time in a place where heroes don’t do heroic no more. Like an example, in my free time i an currently writing a pulp about a Spanish conquistador adventures in the high seas, The New World and the world beyond the new . If I ever published the story the same goons running Industry and sites will accuse me of glorifying stereotypes of the time and justify the Spanish conquest of the New World.
As a side note, The rocketeers rig was not created by Howard Hughes but by Doc Savage, in the last part of the first comics story Monk, Ham, and I think Doc makes an appearance to get the jet pack back and later on in one of the Dark Horse or Millennium Doc Savage comic Doc uses the jet pack it even still has the leak from the pistol round they show it at the beginning of the story Doc is taking on a bunch of American Nazis while using it.
Most people bash it simply because family guy did. As if seth McFarland knows a damn thing about cinema. Does anyone even remeber what a million waysvto die in the west was actually about?
It was the very first thing I streamed on Disney+ upon that service’s launch. Followed by ‘Gargoyles,’ which while not in any way, shape, or form a part of “the pulps” does hit a lot of the same tones and story beats (albeit in a Nineties kid friendly form).
@@chalkdeamon6070 a sheep farmer, virgin, hanging out with a guy who is gonna marry a brothel worker, in the late 1800's runs a foul of a real Chad and somehow defeats him despite being the worst shot in the world (surprising considering he lives and works on the family farm in the 1800's). It's not a great western, much more a parody like Blazing Saddles, which still checks out.
Not joking Razor, seeing this lifted a heavy weight off my heart. With the shitshow farce that modern society has become, I find precious little to provide an escape. I knew of pulp before, but I did not know pulp until this video. Congratulations brother, you have another convert to the golden years of entertainment.
Growing up, we could not afford a TV. But we had a Short Wave Radio. My Brothers and I would stay up late Listening to Radio Shows and Mystery Theater. It was so freaking COOL!!!
“What do I know of cultured ways, the gilt, the craft and the lie? I, who was born in a naked land and bred in the open sky. The subtle tongue, the sophist guile, they fail when the broadswords sing; Rush in and die, dogs - I was a man before I was a king!” THAT was pulp. THAT is what the spirits of readers are STILL aching for almost a century later. And it was the industry at large fucking -refuses- to embrace. Good on ya, Razor.
That Raymond Chandler introduction you read is one of the best passages ever written in the English language. It is the distilled quintessence of virtuous masculinity in the modern era. Heard it a hundred times, but it never fails to make me say, "Damn. That's SO good."
He'd have to do dialogue, thats a must. Actually that could be his superpower. All his foes would go back to their hideaway in utter shame, questioning what was once their iron clad beliefs. Oh yeah, he'd also have....razors on his fucking fists!
Awesomely BAD. Try reading "The LIving Shadow" (Shadow #1) or some of the other early novels. He was a person of mystery and was NOT Lamont Cranston. Even his aides didn't know if he was working on the side of good or evil. He did NOT have magical powers. He could NOT to turn invisible. In the earlier novels he wasn't really the main character : in "The Living Shadow" the story revolves around Harry Vincent, a down in his luck guy who is rescued from an attempted suicide and now who's life is own by The Shadow. He gets instructions over the phone from some unknown person (it turns out later to be another of the Shadow's agents) that he follows without knowing what those instructions are for.
@bjbell52 I haven't read as much as I should, but I do know that the movie is based on the radio drama, and they DID give him the power to "cloud men's minds" in that medium. I'm not sure about the telekinesis, though. The name and backstory I understand weren't exactly cannon, but I think it was pretty well done. My dad loves old radio shows, so on road trips, we'd listen to some, The Shadow was a favorite of mine, and I still love the movie to this day.
@@bensigl3766 I'm sure The Living Shadow can be found onLine. I found a site that had 260+ Shadow novels in text form. Let me know if you can't find them - maybe we can figure out a way for me to get them to you.
Got into the Doc Savage and The Shadow when Nostalgia Ventures started publishing reprints. Reading about Doc and the band of iron gave me a religious experience.
Doc Savage, Tarzan, The Shadow,Conan the Barbarian, the Lone Ranger, Zorro, John Carter - there was a lot of great stuff that I got into thanks mostly to used books from yard sales and flea markets. I've had a difficult time convincing anyone else about it, in part because of the butchery these classics were subjected to in the translation to Hollywood....
Pulp heroes are amazing. Literally no political correctness bullshit anymore because they were mostly written before Marxists took over. Even older comics could work.
I highly recommend the Conan stories, the world building is so rich and detailed, the character is so much more nuanced than you might imagine. They may be *a little bit* dated but they are far superior to most modern fantasy.
A few years back, I was in intensive care for ten days. Going out of my mind a colleague lent me a kindle and finding public domain books didn't cost anything I read and fell in love with edgar rice's Barsoom novels. They allowed me to escape the confines of that bed and begin to truly heal. Then I discovered lovecraft, and was never the same again...
Wow...! I cannot unsee "The Silver Shroud" from Bethesda's Fallout being a nod to the Shadow... I feel I have failed in not finding such masterpiece before...
I just discovered your channel and wanted to say "Thank you" from the bottom of my heart. You've expressed what I have been for years been unable to vocalize, and you've also added to my growing list of material to read, watch, and listen to. It's because of you that I'm listening to "The Shadow" radio dramas, and why I'm diving deeper into pulp than I already was. You also reminded me of The Rocketeer and Sojour in this video and another, and I plan on getting their collections soon. I'm a writer who enjoys more classic media than modern, and I also have values, morals, and ideas that don't lineup with mainstream media. Thank you for giving me hope that I'll find my audience. God bless :)
I love the old pulp stories and heroes, but I still miss me some caped crusading. I wish we could enter an era with the unrestrained creative storytelling of the Silver Age successfully married to the deeper and more sophisticated characterization of the 90s and very early 2000s.
Stick with the runs that you enjoy by good creators. For 50-80 years of ANY character, at least 85% of it IS shit. There's like maybe 5-8 good years of any character that's been around THAT long. I don't want to own all of it. I have too many longboxes of mostly unsellable shit as it is! I just want the stuff that appeals to that 8-12 year old kid in me. I don't like relentlessly dark comics. Marvel and DC have mostly failed since at least the mid-1990s. They didn't go to crap in the last 10 years just because of SJW's. They were failing at least 15 years before that!
@@AvengerII Oh I get it. All you have to do is pull up the Wikipedia page for any character and after 20 seconds of reading your brain is already going to explode from the sheer amount of convoluted, stupid shit in their history. However, even at that they were almost always still "themselves". Its really been the last decade where the characters have transmogrified into unrecognizable, gender-bent parodies of who they were. The 90s may not have been kind to Superman, for example, in terms of the stories, but he was still undeniably the Man of Steel we always imagine him being. That image of hjs core qualities that was stamped so heavily onto him by the 5-10 years of great writing he had received remained. Meanwhike, the same cannot be said of what happened during the New 52 or afterwards. The people who have taken over actively want the dissolution and destruction of everything that came before because they have a bitter and resentful belief that it was all engineered to suppress them.
@@chaosgyro It depends on what you like. I haven't liked most of the last 20 years. I think in the modern era, the best Superman (general consensus) was between 1986 and 1992 -- after the Byrne revamp. It got better after he left because they reincorporated most of what was thrown out by him and the editorial staff that approved his revamp. (You can't blame that all on Byrne; somebody above okay'd his Superman!) I think they stripped down Superman too much, it was stupid to remove the Superboy backstory AND kill off Supergirl, too. They needed to write Superman better NOT tear out huge chunks of his history and pretend he was an all-new character. I gave up monthly comics a year before DC-52. DC-52 looked like a cluster-fuck before it launched. I HATED the putrid costume redesigns and all the unnecessary changes BUT to be honest I never liked the overall editorial direction of DC since Dan Didio took over. He was easily DC's worst executive editor in the history of the company. Dan Cherry for all his faults really was left with a company that was dying before he took over. Of course, he doesn't have a clue how to run it or understand the characters but he was put in charge because he probably couldn't do much worse than the guys before. DC was fatally damaged before Cherry came.
Hells yes! I started doing this long ago when I was on deployment in Kosovo back in 2000. Downloaded the entire The Shadow radio and pulp library and would listen or read it when not running missions or cleaning weapons. It's only expanded out from there.
@@TOGYS7 It's probably not even much of a coincidence, pulp has been getting more popular lately. Channels like Razor, Midnights Edge and The Critical Drinker have all talked about Conan recently. That's what got me into Robert E Howard :)
Anime and Manga has maintained the pulp influence of old. The reason shonen series in particular have risen in popularity is that, despite some cultural whiplash, the authors genuinely want to tell good stories about idealized heroes. It gives kids something to strive for.
I’m currently in the process of working out the kinks for a modern-day pulp hero: El Segador de Tijuana. A man who traveled to America, collects firearms while working to give his family a better life, and ultimately returns due to the realization that he has to bring that better life back home. Upon returning, he helps rebuild some homes, but seeing how his community is treated by the drug cartels, he dons a black cloak and sombrero, paints his face as a skull, and, with two six-shooters and a rifle he dubs as his scythe, begins hunting the cartels that wronged his country (Mexico). Thank you for bringing to our attention such a fantastic medium of entertainment and swashbuckling heroism, Razor!
Got Savage Tales of Solomon Kane, and I do love it. While straight-up novel print is dull to me, many of the stories kept me going because I wanted more of this Puritan Purveyor of Heroism. Personally, I love "Moon of Skulls" and "Hills of the Dead" most thus far. Mainly because I loved the weird worldbuilding involving Atlantis, and their take on Vampires. Never idealized Vampires as being giant, red-eyed man beasts with skin string lime wood and having a general aversion to fire as well as sunlight. Plus, I love it when N'Longa and Solomon team up; it's so fun, epic and charming.
BTW, Razor, sorry to comment on my own comment, but have you ever checked out PRIMAL? I don't know if you either like or just barley withstand animation, but it's pretty much an amazing Pulpy adventure helmed by a powerful Neanderthal and his T-Rex companion. Genndy Tartakovsky, the man behind the show, said he was a fan of Robert E Howard's Conan the Barbarian and loosely based it on that. Hell, the characters are named after Howard's earlier work, "Spear and Fang." All I can say is "Reject Disney, Embrace Monke."
That dialogue on the noir snippet you showed was just pure beauty. “I threw a curve ball just to see who would swing” and “You fell off the straight and narrow right into the gutter.” I mean that made me kiss my conned hand, like an Italian receiving gabbagoo, in celebration.
Razor has very esoteric tastes. A lot of his hobbies are obscure to people under 60 years old! Heck, I'm more knowledgeable about old pop culture than most people but I've barely seen much with Doc Savage, John Carter, or The Shadow! Most of this stuff was popular probably in the day of his GREAT-grandfather! None of these characters are terrible -- most of them are very good -- but they appeal mainly to pre-superhero audiences. It's a generational thing. Big Band and Jazz are of a certain era and they'll never be as popular as they once were. Superhero comics are on their way out now and it definitely looks like they will NEVER come back and be what they were even in the early 2000s. Time's passed them on and they didn't adapt properly -- they went in directions their primary audience didn't care for and they LOST THE KIDS (traditional 12-and-under target audience) at least 25 years ago because they wrote the books to appeal to people 15 and older. They never took into account replacement audiences or offered "primers" for kids and so the kids went elsewhere. They stopped making the comics for kids, period. The "videogames" appeal more to kids argument ignores what comics creators did to their industry BEFORE videogames became the dominant entertainment media in the early 1990s. Right now, many people are kind of depressed because as they're getting older, they're seeing their loved shows and hobby franchises become much less relevant. This has all been happening within the space of the last decade; it's too obvious not to see. We can blame it on Hollywood all we ant but it's sort of normal for these things. It's abnormal for MOST things to be relevant for more than 5-10 years. 40+ years for Star Trek, Star Wars, and Doctor Who is out of the norm... They were worn out even before terrible producers and writers got their mitts on these properties! With the exception of the Green Hornet (which had a brief revival for 1 year in the late 1960s; the TV series is mainly known for making the wider public aware of Bruce Lee's existence), these classic pulp characters all peaked by the early 1950s and died out. They still get periodically revived but they're nowhere near as popular as they were in the 1930s, 1940s, and early 1950s. Clayton Moore's public appearances and reruns kept the Lone Ranger relevant longer but they haven't been to do anything really good and lasting with the character since the 1950s TV series. Every attempted Lone Ranger revival on film has failed. The Shadow lasted longer on radio (where he was most popular) but they've never made a big go of it in movies or TV. Both Marvel and DC have produced Shadow comics but most of these things are long out of print and associated with specific creators. Howard Chaykin did at least 1 or 2 Shadow projects for DC Comics. Johnny Weismuller was the most popular Tarzan (1930s and 1940s) but again that character had his heyday long ago. The interest just isn't there to revive the character properly and the most renowned/recent Tarzan project for worse was the John Derek/Bo Derek Tarzan movie of the early 1980s. That KILLED interest in doing Tarzan movies for nearly 30 years! John Carter never appeared in any popular film of consequence that I'm aware of. I think the NASA and other space agency discoveries on the REAL Red Planet doomed most future possibilities with the character unless they radically revamp elements of John Carter -- but if they do that, it really won't be ER Burroughs John Carter anymore, will it? They've done tons of comics with lurid covers of John Carter's girlfriend but none of that stuff has sold that well. This is NOT saying NONE of these characters can't be popular or have a hit movie again but they're not going to be sustained like they were in the past for decades. Their time has passed and they are part of eras from decades ago. They're more relevant to our older relatives than they are to us. That doesn't make them terrible by any means but they just don't mean as much to most people under 50.
@@bmcfonzie The problem with Carter of Mars is that science has shown ER Burroughs version of Mars is PURE FANTASY. It's the same problem Disney had with Treasure Planet. Kids today have a problem buying a sail ship as a starship; they've seen the REAL space vehicles and these fantasy vehicles (Space Battleship, Harlock's Arcadia, and the sail ship in Treasure Planet) look ridiculous to even 12 year olds! Same problem with Carter of Mars unless you tackle the issue and write around the science somehow. Say it's a different reality or taking place FAR BELOW the surface of Mars so they don't deal all the inconvenient, technical stuff that's reality (unbreathable atmosphere, harsh radiation, bleak and lifeless). Oh, and I agree -- most of the movie adaptations fail because they're bad movies, not just because they're hack adaptations from pulps and comic books. Heck, I don't even like at least 85% of the successful adaptations (the ones that make money) because I don't think they're very good films. They're also mostly superficial and lack heart. That's the case for both Marvel and DC films.
Oh shit! After all these years, I finally know what audio book cassette tape I was listening to in my uncle's car in our trip to a mini golf course decades ago! The Voodoo Master. Thanks for some closure there, Razor!
These early 20th century heroes and culture have always interested me. Weird to think we went from legit badasses like James Cagney, Clint Eastwood, Bruce Lee, Humphrey Bogart, Jimmy Stewart, Christopher Lee and Audie Murphy to... I can't even think of any modern celebs that matches the experiences and charisma of these legends.
@@rogueboner8138 If someone says this to you seriously, that is an instant signal they know worse than nothing about the man's life, work, or opinions. Disregard any that say his stories are just "racist tales of tentacle monsters." And if these people truly hate Lovecraft so much THEN STOP ADAPTING HIS STORIES. These people are true bullies, belittling the awkward kid while also stealing his homework.
@@TheLeadhound I'm aware there's more to the man than "a cat with a very racist name". I've just heard that bullshit spouted off non-stop "i love c'thulu and Lovecrafts work i just hate what a ism/ist/phobe he was.. ugh separate the art from the artist amirite fellow leftoids?"
@@rogueboner8138 Yeah, I was not calling you out there. I know you were joking. So many are not and think they are enlightened, while ironically being totally ignorant.
Well, goddamn, Razor, absolute great episode! Solomon Kane and The Shadow are far, far superior character-driven stories in the pulps than any of the bullshit pumped out in today’s media. I finally got why Anne (Rice) raved about Solomon Kane for years at several New Orleans epic parties after I started narrating them. What powerful prose REH delivered. Long live the pulps!
batman: i dress as a bat because bats are scary, the costume makes me more than a man! The Shadow: I am not what they truly fear, what they fear is the cold cruel hands of justice.
batman: "no I cant kill the joker..." a sane person: " you know his body count is over 50 million people..." batman: " No he wins if I kill him..." a sane person: "no srsly just kill the guy you will save a lot of lives..." batman: "IM BATMAN...." *glides away* sigh
DC: Look, man. We need the Joker to milk more adventures out of Batman. Take it or leave it. A sane person: But...considering the world Batman's in, couldn't there be new villains who can challenge Batman physically, mentally and morally? DC: What!? You want us to, like....create NEW characters or something?
Just once, I'd like to see what might happen if, one day, the Joker just gets gunned down, either by some no-name vigilante that's just had enough with his shit or by a bystander who actually knows what the Second Amendment is and doesn't give a flying fuck about big city bleeding heart commie horseshit infringing on the right to self-defense. Of course, knowing modern Batman, considering how he responded to Superman shoving his arm through the Joker's chest cavity after the latter nuked Metropolis in Injustice, he'd go off the deep end and try to bring the killer down despite them objectively doing the world a fucking favor.
@@z3r0_35 Batman selfishly enables the Joker for his own personal obsession. As far as I am concerned, Batman is an accessory to Joker's murders, by not taking him out permanently.
@@blank557 Exactly. Bruce Wayne is insane, if not criminally, then at least negligently. He projects his own fear of losing control of himself onto others, hence his staunch opposition to killing, and to doing so with firearms in particular, even when it's absolutely necessary. The Joker knows this, which is why he often tries to goad Batman into killing him.
Been saying it for years: Joker is like an sjw; he's a threat to society that would be pretty easy to deal with if it wasn't for the so called "righteous" who enable him and keep him from facing just consequences.
When a relative of mine suffered a brain injury and needed rehabilitation, The Shadow was what he read to rebuild his cognative skills. Take that batman.
When I was a wee little tyke, my uncle (in name only, he was more like one of my dad's best friends) owned a used book store in Northern California. He had stacks upon stacks of dime store pulp novellas and magazines from the pre-war era and I gobbled that shit up like nobody's business and in my elder years I'm finding myself going back to it with glee. Some of it may be nostalgia, but its also that pulp just scratches an itch that new fantasy and scifi just doesn't want to touch.
I actually saw The Rocketeer as a kid. My grandma had a copy on VHS, and while I don’t remember too much about it, as that was well over a decade ago, I do remember liking it. He always stood out in my mind if for no other reason than his iconic design. It’s a shame what has happened to him in modern days, because he had no right to become so defiled.
When I was a young teen, I discovered Doc Savage, John Carpenter of Mars, Conan the Barbarian, The Shadow, and The Phantom (few others too) in a box from a yard sale. Mind you, I'm nearly 50 years old now, so this was the late 80s, but I absolutely loved them! I immediately saw how a lot of superheroes, particularly DC characters, stole aspects, or just outright copies and renamed characters as they saw fit. I thought DC was too... goofy for my tastes, and liked Marvel more. When I was older, I worked in a comic shop for 10 years. Now this wasn't a modern comic shop, this was a comic shop that existed since the mid 70s, and also sold used books. It was sorta like what you see in TV and movies of occult book stores, where it might be clean, but all the books had a thin layer of dust on them. So the place had history, local cred, and was also the nexus where local kids could come in and hang out in a safe atmosphere. I loved participating in conversations with my boss, and you can imagine the comic book debates we'd have, but whenever I was backed against the wall, I'd always pull out a pulp character, and it would get the whole, "Yeah, yeah, that character could do it..." kinda resigned answer. it's been 20 years or better since I read Doc Savage and the others, so I might just dig those books up and refresh my aging memory and enjoy another adventure with the Man of Bronze, or see what exactly The Shadow knows!
My son and I do. He particularly LOVES King Kull, Robert E. Howard's version, as well as the Marvel run from the 80s. Nothing makes be beam more with pride than my 9 year old announcing to no one and anyone " BY THIS AX, I RULE!"
If you dig The Shadow snippets here, you might think of checking out my side channel, The Shadowcast here:
ua-cam.com/channels/E5ls-3WtyXiirzcyzEgxXw.html
And if you want to check out my ORIGINAL pulp series, 'Nightvale', head over here:
www.nightvalenovels.com
Godspeed!
HAIL COMICSGATE !!!
The Shadow influenced the portrayal of Alucard in the Hellsing animes. Change my mind.
Dude u should put these on spotify I would totally follow & listen as I listen more 2 podcasts at work than anything.
@@shebakoby lol what? The shadow is a morally binary white knight in a black cloak and slouch hat. Alucard is literally a bloodthirsty monster in a zoot suit who'd gun down innocent people in his way.
They're nothing alike. The Bram stoker version of Dracula, alongside Sherlock Holmes and others, were an influence on the shadow.
The last 12 years have suck ass for escapism
Film Noir is not about grey morality. It's about being moral in a grey world.
Very true.
Precisely
I just watched Out of the Past and you are 100% correct.
Even in that grey world, though, there's a morality of retribution. If a character strays from the straight and narrow, they're doomed. They won't ever escape the consequences of their actions. The best they can manage, like Mitchum in 'Out Of The Past,' is to delay the punishment that awaits them which in some way makes it even worse. Just when you've built a nice quiet little life for yourself, thought 'That Day' was far behind you, gotten yourself a girl even, that's when that old dog comes back around to bite you in the ass and no matter how much you squirm, it won't let go until you're dead.
Which is what makes it so great. It’s easy to preach about honor and duty when everything is going right, but standing by your convictions in a world gone mad, and continuing to fight the good fight no matter how much life tries to beat you down; that’s truly admirable.
"Today's flawed superheroes are superior in physical strength but common, average, ordinary in mental strength and rich in super-powers but bankrupt in reasoning powers."
- Steve Ditko (1987) "The Masters of Comic Book Art" documentary
"Comic book fans who later became editors, writers, wanted flawed heroes, anti-heroes to suit their own unwillingness to seek higher standards. It seems comic book companies, publishers, editors, too many writers and artists, all want the comfort of the anti-hero, where we're ALL grey, so no one can judge anyone or anything."
-Steve Ditko (2014)
There is a world of difference between recognizing the inherent flawed nature and limitations of what at the end of the day are still human beings - and wholeheartedly subscribing to moral relativism. The modern entertainment industry is often muddled by the latter, but not universally so.
Also, Steve Ditko was a neurotic, and often quite contradictory mess of a flawed human being, far and away from objectivist ideals he advocated for. Which is often the main issue I have with people like him, even if I try my damndest to separate the art from the artist.
Steve ditko was so smart Reading what his quote is, It still applies to today's spoiled rotten heroes
This is also why only villains can speak hard truths.
When you look at ancient heroes from mythology they come off as being quite morally gray considering things a good example is Heracles whose story is quite a tragedy.
@Glenn Krenz while aspirational depictions of heroism and heroes has its merit, flawed, humanized heroes make for better stories. Simple as that. No real person, historical or contemporary, can remain entirely unscathed and unfazed as he faces extreme adversity and evil time and again.
The heroic tropes need to be reconstructed, but not by reductionist and traditionalist retrogrades like Razor.
"Progress means getting nearer to the place you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turn, then to go forward does not get you any nearer.
If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man."
- C.S. Lewis
Holy shit, C.S. Lewis was a fucking genius. His essays and opinion pieces have influenced me more than his fiction. Love his insights about the world
False progressivism that is
I inadvertently started getting into pulp thanks to Disney of all places. Back when the original Tarzan animated film came out it spurred my interest in reading about the character delving into the pulp genre before I was even 10 years old. I have to say, pulp is a genre that never ends, the amount of content out there from film serials to radio shows that are saved on CD and digital, to comic strips and comic books, to novels and short story collections, to movies and TV shows, it's an inexhaustible resource, and that's just the stuff that's already made. It's up to the next generation of content creators and us as a whole to preserve the original content that came before and push forward with new content to inspire and entertain current and future audiences.
Lewis is a genius. When he talked about "progress" he meant the opposite of what leftists mean today.
"Every generation invents it's own Odysseus. The ancient Greeks had Hercules..."
And Odysseus. They had Odysseus.
Technically, Odysseus predates the Greeks.
@@Harvest133 no he doesnt
@@MrSpotface Mycenaeans predates Greece. They didn't speak Greek. They didn't write Greek. Proto-Greeks you might say
@@Harvest133 except that they did speak greek. They are a distinctly greek culture. The oldest one on record actually. They came after the proto greeks. Mycenean greek has been translated from the linear b script it was written in and it is destinctly greek. Linear b was the script used to write greek till around 700 bc when the current greek alphabet replaced it. Linear B was based on the minoan script also known as linear A. It predates classical greek but its still greek nonetheless. Im greek and can still roughly understand mycenean texts when reading them. All languages change over time. some more drastic then others but whats makes greek unique is that it has changed reletively little campared to most other languages.
@@MrSpotface That's pretty amazing you can just understand it when modern Greeks have a hard time with Medieval era Greek, and even more so with Classical. Myceneans were also genetically distinct from modern and classical populations as they did not incorporate Doric and other peoples. They are an ancestor of Greeks, but not entirely Greek themselves, in the same way that all Modern Europeans have Indo-European ancestry within, but Indo-Europeans were not Europeans. There isn't an easy straight line from A to B in terms of modern human populations. A lot of migrations and conquests occurred before written history, and during written history.
If they are Greek, than so are Minoans.
When I was growing up I was fascinated with the stories of Flash Gordon, Zorro, The Lone Ranger. It wasn't until I started watching this channel that I was reunited with those stories, and introduced to "The Shadow".
Good to see you here, Eastside. Been a long time listener.
@@MultiCommissar thank you. I been a fan of razor fist since like 2009 or 2011. He has been around on youtube for quite a long time
Oh shit east side show! I like your SCP readings.
"Flash! AHHHH! Savior of the universe!"
@@truckrobo147 queen plus flash Gordon was the best thing ever
Whoever is hiding the recording equipment from yoko is definitely my hero
And should have a statue.
Amen to that
🤣
You guessed it, Frank Stallone
With great power comes great responsibility…
going back a century in any genre of literature is a step towards greatness
Yes. That and going back to ancient legends and myth.
Yup.
@@johnjay370 because those are creations, building up a myth and legend of a character and theme. Now it’s all deconstruction. Which can work, but needs to be built back up afterwards.
I wonder what this says about where western comics will be in a century...
Yeah, real progress sometimes means realising you are on the wrong path and going back to where you last were right.
I thought I was going to be able to watch this video without spending money. Nope.
Welcome to every razorfist top list video.
Sometimes I wonder if everyone I watch also watches each other.
@@Tuberculosis_Man all the time, now go back to work, big brother is always watching 👁️
Well it’s not much money.
Well how would you know? You're just some guy.
Honestly, this video had me ready to buy whatever you were selling me. I’m going to check out some Pulp comics As soon as I can. This is better than any infomercial I’ve ever seen.
The pulp short stories are great, not just the comics.
@Sinatra_Says "This is better than any infomercial I’ve ever seen" You know that it is NOT a high bar to meet? ;-)
Look into anthologies. Great short stories, and you don't feel gypped if a couple fall flat.
Me too, Razorfist would be a kickass salesman.
You're great, keep it up along with CreepSin!
The Rocketeer smashing the Hollywood sign is just great.
Sinclair did say he'd "miss Hollywood"...
The best part is you can find a lot of old pulp at your local used bookstore. This also has the benefit of keeping you money local instead of enriching some far left loon out west.
That's actually how I got into 'em. There was a little used book shop by my alma mater that would sell them two or three for five bucks.
I live in rural Germany and won't find this stuff close to me in all likelihood, any good online sources I could use my tablet for?
@@serenity2228 project Gutenberg
Definitely, I found a bunch of Elric, Conan, and Raymond Chandler at mine for $2 each! Totally worth it.
Better yet try your local library.
Funny enough, Zorro is still big in the Latino community.
A friend of mine has done cosplay as the Dred Pirate Roberts for a number of conventions, and he says he repeatedly hears Hispanic families and convention goers call him "Zorro".
Man we could use Zorro to save California now...
Zorro is the biggest hero in the Hispanic community by far. He’s the greatest example of making a POC character without throwing bullshit political agendas into his character.
There's no saving California if Californian's don't get up and save there state with there own hands.
i think you mean latinx
@@themisfitbrigade
I thought Chapulin was bigger than Zorro?
Something I don't get. Disney once had the rights to El Zorro, the Fox so naturally, when they came to make an animated feature about a cartoon fox, he's... Robin Hood? I mean, what the fuhh? 🤨
"Stop what you're doing honey! It's story time with Razor."
Your name gave me a chuckle.
Gather round children!
"What is Justice without Vengeance? Simply a slap on the wrist, and an invitation for evil to continue unabated."
-The Spectre
Justice is mercy and vengeance in balance.
I know, its been 2 years, but is this the Spectre from DC comics? Or is there a pulp Spectre?
@@Mister-Six That's a quote from DC's Spectre from the episode "Chill of the Night" of the Batman: The Brave and the Bold cartoon.
Solomon Kane's inspiring, more that can be said for the vast majority of comic book superheroes. He falters, fails, falls, and doesn't give up, doesn't get deconstructed as the bad guy, doesn't get replaced, doesn't instantly heelturn, he rises back up with renewed faith, vigor, and hope, and he overcomes by fighting for what's right. If that's not a spirit people should try to emulate, I don't know what is.
Nay, alone I am a weak creature, having no strength or might in me; yet in times past hath God made me a great vessel of wrath and a sword of deliverance. And, I trust, shall do so again.
-Solomon Kane
A fine quote from the man himself.
As a Christian writer I think I need to study me some Solomon Kane.
Doc Savage seems to encapsulate what fiction used to be about: what we can all strive to be, the embodiment of man at his very best and most noble, a truly exceptional figure using his talents for good. In this jaded, cynical age, we could use a hero like the Doc. And not "re-imagined for modern audiences", but played completely straight and with the same extraordinary spirit the character was created to embody.
"re-imagined for modern audiences" is code for "debased to subvert traditional culture"
@@whitworth5s248 big facts
@@whitworth5s248 it's less modernism & more postmodernism when they change these characters
God I been wanting a Doc Savage movie saving the damsel in distress while fighting giant monsters with his fist kind of simple awesomeness
Isn't Dwayne Johnson supposed to play the character in an adaptation? If they kept him true to his roots, I'd see a Rock Savage movie.
Read “The Curse of Capistrano” not too long ago. The book still slaps nearly a century later.
Wait til you read protocols of the learned elders of zion
Is it on Project Gutenberg?
@@ScottRuggels probably not, no
JD. good to hear! I’m curios to read it now.
OUR hero
"It's time to stop retreating from the culture, and BECOME the culture!"
You already have your stories, lads. Let's get to work.
I've been storing ideas for years, it will take me a bit of time but over the next few years your going to see the most badass insane stories ever told (and ofc no woke agenda or any of that bullshit!)
Video games, movies, shows, comics, etc we rebuild for what we have lost!
The dailywire has already set off this revolution now! Its only a matter of time before others join the fight!
I don't have the artistic capability, but I got the storytelling capacity. We'll take some damage at first, but if we stick it out we'll do fine.
So what have you done since posting this?
One could argue some of the 80s "toy commercial" heroes were also PULP to a degree, or took some inspiration from the era with their sense of morality. He-Man, Duke, Optimus Prime, Lion-O, etc. It is a shame modern writers always try to write them as morally gray.
Very good points. Their simplicity and pure dedication to their beliefs make them better than most modern grey characters
The Shadow was a breath of fresh air for me. His sense of absolute justice and the method of carrying it out spoke to me far more than the likes of Spider-Man (the only character I think benefits from self doubt and moping around), Superman, and even my longtime favorite character Batman.
We need more crimefighters like The Shadow.
I especially dislike one specific thing about Batman (the rest is cool) and it’s what basically everyone else who I know loves most about his philosophy: he refuses to kill because he believes it drops him to the level of those he fights… so the joker can blow up entire buildings with people in them but Batman will just throw him in an asylum he’ll escape by Tuesday, so he can murder another mass of innocent people. This is true for basically all those villains, but he refuses to kill one evil person, and so constantly the innocent are harmed because he won’t just do his job for once.
@@feartheghus 🤨🤨??
Marvel Max line Punisher by garth ennis.
A M60 machine gun, a gym bag full of spare belts of ammo, some claymore mines, and a willingness to kill everything within a square mile.
@@nkemnoraulmanfredini7286
Batman is basically a hypocrite for refusing to kill the Joker since hes afraid he might end up becoming a murderer, but the Joker has killed hundreds of thousands+ more people throughout the decade. This would make Batman a murderer by proxy due to this.
That's what OP was saying.
"ALL THE PEOPLE I'VE MURDERED, BY LETTING YOU LIVE!"
"I never kept count."
"I DID!"
"I know! And I love you for it!"
- _The Dark Knight Returns_
@@acrsclspdrcls1365 He refuses to kill, because Batman is a traumatised child dressing up like a bad-ass, in order to face his own fears. That's what he is, a hypercompetent, peak-human who is a scared child on the inside.
It is what made him what he is, his deepest secret and his greatest weakness.
"I'll keep it short" = "strap in for a full audiobook"
My dad used to go on and on about Pulp. I never understood why every time a “new” characters came out from the big comics, he would say that they’re a rip-off.
I get it now dad.
I just realized how much of Starlord's style was entirely ganked from The Rocketeer.
Also Buck Rogers. Starlord, Han Solo and Mal from Firefly are basically all Buck Rogers derivatives.
@@thegreatergood8081 Don't forget Duck Dodgers's name being a parody of him. I think more people nowadays don't know about that detail.
Starlord is a bad parody of John Crichton from Farscape
The Flash store his look from Silver Streak
And unlike starlord, rocketeer keeps his helmet throughout the whole movie
There was a good pulp-inspired Hollywood movie that came out over 15 years ago called Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. It was a huge flop at the box office, but it stands out from 99% of modern movies because of its obvious pulp inspiration and total dedication to the style.
I saw it at the movies; it was the first movie all filmed on green screen IIRC. It was more axed toward the high adventure, still decent for the time, way better than most compared to today's movies.
I adore that movie! Loved it as a kid, and still do.
Gotta find that DVD somewhere
I really enjoyed John Carter as well.
I tried watching it and it was so cheesy and boring I just couldn't do it. I respect what they were going for tho
The best line in Pulp Noir: Yeah, that's me, Tracer Bullet. I've got eight slugs in me. One's lead, the rest are bourbon. The drink packs a wallop, and I pack a revolver. I'm a private eye.
Ah! So THIS is the inspiration for the Silver Shroud from Fallout 4. Just got done with that quest the other day and now I get a look at pop culture that inspired him. Thanks Razor!
So I’m not crazy! Back when I lived in Colombia as a kid, I remember reading a bunch of Zorro pulps that my grandpa used to own. It’s no wonder why I grew to love the character over the course of my life. Awesome video Razor!
"Dreams save us. Dreams lift us up and transform us. And on my soul, I swear... until my dream of a world where dignity, honor and justice becomes the reality we all share -- I'll never stop fighting." - Superman.
I miss when Superhero stories had that kind of message. No long winded speeches about how we need to do better without telling us HOW we can do better. No lecturing a hero about how they're privileged and should feel bad, as if the last 70 years of character development didn't happen. No edge lord nonsense about seeing the worst in people. Just good old heroism. And if a full blown revival of the Pulp genre is what it takes to bring back those superhero stories of hope that I grew up with, then I welcome it with open arms. Because right now, Japan has done a better job of keeping that hope alive than America has.
My favorite superman comic was undoubtably kingdon come
Yeah, but those dreams are over there, and you know how Superman feels about having to go too far to save people. Over there can deal with that.
I take it you watch AT4W?
The Rocketeer is amazing and should never be cursed with a reboot
I need to find it on dvd.
I was one of the few kids in the theater on opening weekend.
A token female reboot 🙄
@@jackielogan9104 Yeah I saw it.......
The Rocketeer was one of my favorite movie is growing up. I used to rent it almost weekly on VHS as a kid.
I've been a fan of Conan, Tarzan, and pulp content in general for decades. It has a raw, straight-forward brutality that's mixed with ideas of individualism, which is why I find it so enthralling.
what is pulp content?
@@jmgonzales7701 Pulp refers to these adventure and detective stories published in cheap magazines in the 1920's, 1930's and onwards. They're called pulps because of the bad quality of the paper the magazines were printed on, to keep costs down.
And this word has become representative of entire genres and subgenres of various kinds of stories. And yes, I'm crazy about them as well.
They have an inimitable vibe of vital, raw glory and excitement which today's mass produced millennial and zoomer crap can NEVER hope to equal, let alone surpass.
@@mirceazaharia2094 should we revive these pulp stories to modern day stories and superhero movies, I do like the idea of detective stories but i do fear its not gonna be as popular to modern day audience as it tends to be slow and boring.
@@jmgonzales7701 "modern day stories", i.e. try to appeal to degenerate speds who need do not drink labels in motor oil? That's exactly what has ruined entertainment.
@@heroesytumbas and this is exactly why these pulp stories are no longer applicable to the modern world, its probably done.
When my grandmother went into labor with my father my grandfather dropped her off at the hospital and then left so he could find a radio because he didn't want to miss that week's episode of The Shadow.
Lol can't blame 'Im.
Lmaoooo
A man has to have his priorities
I like your grandfather's priorities. GOod man.
Gramps was redpilled and based.
It's interesting how stories about men that had moral codes and did what was right in a world gone mad is more manly and enduring than the deconstructivist hellhole we ended up in the current industry.
I used to love reading the Phantom, i will get around to give some other Pulps a read as well.
Can't remember where I heard this, but, to paraphrase: "Strong men make good times, good times make weak men, weak men make hard times, hard times make strong men..."
The world has always been mad you just didn't have a 24/7 window for it. I mean the world is very small compared to even 20 years ago let alone thousands.
H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, and Edgar Rice Burroughs have created some of the most enduring characters of all time. Embrace pulp, it will embrace you back.
Made a very similar comment before seeing yours. I like your style random internet person
Burroughs is my favorite of them, especially with the Gridley universe he had going on with it that covers a LOT of his stuff.
I love Lovecrafts cat.
Is that kinda like "If you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you"?
@@thisguyyoudontknow4653 Something everyone should know lol
"Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of the comic book industry? ...the Shadow knows." (cackling)
Razorfist's enthusiasm and passion is contagious. Im giving pulp heroes a shot. Tired of mainstream comics' non-stop proselytization and condemnation...
"It was a hard code, that one of Doc's. It would have curled the hair of weak sisters who want criminals mollycoddled. For Doc handed out justice where it was deserved. Doc's justice was a brand all its own. It had amazing results. Criminals who went against Doc seldom wound up in prison. They either learned a lesson that made them law-abiding men the rest of their lives- or they became dead criminals. Doc never did the job halfway." -- Lester Dent from "The Land of Terror."
"Bi coastal cuhnt colonies"😂
This. This is why I watch razorfist with wreckless abandon.
@Bobby Campbell aka (The Oracle) I adore brutal and hilarious.
In an age where a sentient being with a finite span of life would rather cover up the world and worry about "micro-aggressions" than having fun, we need brutality and ESPECIALLY hilarious aspects.
To hell with feelings
He does have a way with words
it's not reckless & abandoned.....it's informed viewing.....lolz
Witty and creative 👌
As a writer of pulp fiction novels, I really appreciated this video.
Do you have any links? I’d be interested to check out your work :)
@@bryanasher2732 I swear I replied with a link last night…
@digifalc0087 I did reply with a title, but it’s been removed for some reason.
Those wondering if they can get into Pulp, let me ask you a question, did you like the Indiana Jones trilogy? How about the Shadow? The Spirit? what about the Rocketeer? If you said yes to any of these, you've already been exposed to pulp heroes, since Indiana Jones is based off the old pulps and the others come from them.
Razor got me into Elric, his reading of Ideal War got me into Battletech at this point I'm willing to do as I'm told. If he says read [insert title here] I'm gonna do so.
He recommended The Amateur, the book about the lame first term of Barack Obama.
I got it for free on Audible because I also have Prime. Give you a good idea why he ranks Obama among the top five worse Presidents, as although I think he would put TaliBiden ahead of Obama now.
I’m the exact opposite no matter how interested I am and all the things people mention or convince me off I can’t for the life of me bring myself to read or watch anything. Depression be like that.
@@JM-vp8zc you’re right suicide does sound like a viable option lmfao
@@MyWatchIsEnded thumbs up for the laughing. No mo’ Ono.
Agreed about Razor's reccommendations. I didn't know how fucking awesome the The Shadow, Ninja Turtle, and Dare Devil were until I watched his comic videos.
GOD-FUCKING-SPEED! We salute you.
You said a swear! (When I do it, UA-cam nukes my comment.)
*_“In those days spirits were brave, the stakes were high, men were real men, women were real women and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri.”_*
The past was and STILL IS ... better!
Lol I been thinking of this quote best week. Off to have my women peel grapes for my dog!
@@weemadangus1834 Our grapes - one plant of 20m vines with quite a lot of grapes - are being eaten by those dastardly evil Raccoons ... which a) arent native to the region (but arent allowed to be hunted/caught) and b) have the black mask and striped costume of a villain!
@@Muck006 Dogs are allergic to grapes 👀
@@Muck006 Raccoons are actually aliens. They're going through our trash to catalog our capabilities before we're enslaved.
@@captainmaim One of the first "encounters" I had with raccoons ... was a trio of youngsters at the bottom of our freshly emptied trash bin (so there was about 1m of slick wall for them to "climb out"), which had just one bag with an empty tin of cat food in it. No one "wanted to take care them" ... and this could have been done without shooting (since we are in a city that is a bit dangerous).
P.S.: The one video I uploaded on my channel is raccoons climbing through our grapevine ...
Amazes me that these comics, written ONLY for kids, is much more grown up than modern comics, written for "adults".
I think it’s because stories used to be used to teach kids adult lessons in a safe way. Now we have stories being used to treat adults like kids.
Stories back than taught children important lessons, and didn't treat them like complete idiots.
Also, they understood that all children eventually grow up, and will have to face the harsh & ugly realities of the real world, no matter how any of us feel about it. Unlike today, where children are taught to live in a safe-space fantasy world.
That's how I feel about most 1990s cartoons (the cartoons from my childhood, though there were some 1980s ones scattered around and some further back if you want to include the cartoons like Looney Tunes and Tom and Jerry).
Well said Razorfist. "Zorro" and "Rocketeer" were my favorite growing up as kid. Couldn't agree more with your take on how "Rocketeer" is being treated in the Modern day.
Did we forget The Phantom?
Pulp heroes are seriously Underrated and need a big comeback.
Is it me or these pulp heros were more like people. They morally grey yet they did the right thing because it was the right thing
I’m working on some pulp stories of my own in that aim. Taking a hint from Solomon Kane and real life lawman Bass Reaves, I have Wesley Toombs, an ex-slave and veteran of the American Civil War traveling the Southwest and Deep South in search of wrongs to right. Klansmen, evil voodoo priests, outlaws, vampires, werewolves you fucking name it, and he will be there to defend the innocent with hot lead and cold steel.
@@BlackIce3190 Go get em Brock
One of the biggest obstacle for these pulp heroes is literally been men and women out of time in a place where heroes don’t do heroic no more. Like an example, in my free time i an currently writing a pulp about a Spanish conquistador adventures in the high seas, The New World and the world beyond the new . If I ever published the story the same goons running Industry and sites will accuse me of glorifying stereotypes of the time and justify the Spanish conquest of the New World.
Does Donald Duck comics count as Pulp? Since they are short
I'm 62, and was reading Doc Savage and The Shadow as a kid when all my friends were reading comic books.
I not only reject modernity, I enthusiastically reject it.
Edit: Incredible Rocketeer tshirt Razor, I'm jealous.
The Rocketeer has one of the greatest hero attires ever created.
True.
As a side note, The rocketeers rig was not created by Howard Hughes but by Doc Savage, in the last part of the first comics story Monk, Ham, and I think Doc makes an appearance to get the jet pack back and later on in one of the Dark Horse or Millennium Doc Savage comic Doc uses the jet pack it even still has the leak from the pistol round they show it at the beginning of the story Doc is taking on a bunch of American Nazis while using it.
And later Cliff meets The Shadow in the story where the villain is modelled after Rondo Hatton's Creeper. Loved the crossovers and easter eggs!
Pulp is also where we got 90% of our horror symbology from.
Very true.
Also birthed the Western in its entirety.
Movies rip off from pulps so much. Indiana Jones & Rick o Connell from The Mummy are very much pulp hero pastiches
@@gabbar51ngh The Indiana Jones font alone is an exact take-off of the Amazing Stories covers!
The Rocketeer movie is SUPREMELY underrated.
Most people bash it simply because family guy did.
As if seth McFarland knows a damn thing about cinema.
Does anyone even remeber what a million waysvto die in the west was actually about?
It was the very first thing I streamed on Disney+ upon that service’s launch.
Followed by ‘Gargoyles,’ which while not in any way, shape, or form a part of “the pulps” does hit a lot of the same tones and story beats (albeit in a Nineties kid friendly form).
@@ianshaliczer Bro do you remeber the interactive VHS for gargoyles?
Played that all the time.
@@chalkdeamon6070 Seth McFarland is the mind behind the closet thing we have to Star Trek being made these days so clearly he knows cinema.
@@chalkdeamon6070 a sheep farmer, virgin, hanging out with a guy who is gonna marry a brothel worker, in the late 1800's runs a foul of a real Chad and somehow defeats him despite being the worst shot in the world (surprising considering he lives and works on the family farm in the 1800's). It's not a great western, much more a parody like Blazing Saddles, which still checks out.
Not joking Razor, seeing this lifted a heavy weight off my heart. With the shitshow farce that modern society has become, I find precious little to provide an escape. I knew of pulp before, but I did not know pulp until this video. Congratulations brother, you have another convert to the golden years of entertainment.
to know more people feel the same, feels nice. And I was looking for an excuse to read Solomon Kane.
It's like stepping out of a fun house full of mirrors and seeing the world as it's meant to be.
This is why I have fallen to the classics
Growing up, we could not afford a TV. But we had a Short Wave Radio. My Brothers and I would stay up late Listening to Radio Shows and Mystery Theater. It was so freaking COOL!!!
“What do I know of cultured ways, the gilt, the craft and the lie?
I, who was born in a naked land and bred in the open sky.
The subtle tongue, the sophist guile, they fail when the broadswords sing;
Rush in and die, dogs - I was a man before I was a king!”
THAT was pulp. THAT is what the spirits of readers are STILL aching for almost a century later. And it was the industry at large fucking -refuses- to embrace.
Good on ya, Razor.
That Raymond Chandler introduction you read is one of the best passages ever written in the English language. It is the distilled quintessence of virtuous masculinity in the modern era. Heard it a hundred times, but it never fails to make me say, "Damn. That's SO good."
Razor: I'll keep it brief on the shadow
Also razor: proceeds to wax poetically on the shadow for almost a quarter of the video.
Never change my dude.
For a discussion about The Shadow on this channel? That _is_ brief.
@@TheRageaholic indeed!!!
I think Razorfist should be a comic
@Cultöerectus and Terran will finally be able to come out of the closest as his sidekick
@@billybobsac4421 That issue would have a flashback about how they met under a certain bridge.
@@aaronbarringer4913 Would that be the Queensboro bridge. . .for $15/man?
His arch nemesis would be Styxhexxenhammer for whom he was always confused.
He'd have to do dialogue, thats a must. Actually that could be his superpower. All his foes would go back to their hideaway in utter shame, questioning what was once their iron clad beliefs. Oh yeah, he'd also have....razors on his fucking fists!
The Alec Baldwin Shadow movie was AWESOME!!! One of the great injustices was there not being a sequel.
That movie was underrated. Hell Batman begins is ironically way too similar to it.
Awesomely BAD. Try reading "The LIving Shadow" (Shadow #1) or some of the other early novels. He was a person of mystery and was NOT Lamont Cranston. Even his aides didn't know if he was working on the side of good or evil. He did NOT have magical powers. He could NOT to turn invisible. In the earlier novels he wasn't really the main character : in "The Living Shadow" the story revolves around Harry Vincent, a down in his luck guy who is rescued from an attempted suicide and now who's life is own by The Shadow. He gets instructions over the phone from some unknown person (it turns out later to be another of the Shadow's agents) that he follows without knowing what those instructions are for.
@bjbell52 I haven't read as much as I should, but I do know that the movie is based on the radio drama, and they DID give him the power to "cloud men's minds" in that medium. I'm not sure about the telekinesis, though. The name and backstory I understand weren't exactly cannon, but I think it was pretty well done.
My dad loves old radio shows, so on road trips, we'd listen to some, The Shadow was a favorite of mine, and I still love the movie to this day.
@@bensigl3766 I'm sure The Living Shadow can be found onLine. I found a site that had 260+ Shadow novels in text form.
Let me know if you can't find them - maybe we can figure out a way for me to get them to you.
A Part 2 would be very much appreciated.
There are so many characters and writers that need the spotlight, and a chance to be rediscovered.
So much this. I really want him to do another list that features Mike Hammer and Tarzan.
@@libRteedude I hope he'd mention John Carter of Mars, especially after Disney screwed his revival up with their own greed and stupidity.
Got into the Doc Savage and The Shadow when Nostalgia Ventures started publishing reprints. Reading about Doc and the band of iron gave me a religious experience.
Doc Savage, Tarzan, The Shadow,Conan the Barbarian, the Lone Ranger, Zorro, John Carter - there was a lot of great stuff that I got into thanks mostly to used books from yard sales and flea markets. I've had a difficult time convincing anyone else about it, in part because of the butchery these classics were subjected to in the translation to Hollywood....
Try the Spider as well, he was brutal as hell!
Pulp heroes are amazing. Literally no political correctness bullshit anymore because they were mostly written before Marxists took over.
Even older comics could work.
When a society finds more joy in looking back at past glories than looking forward to future prospects,that society has no future to look forward to.
I highly recommend the Conan stories, the world building is so rich and detailed, the character is so much more nuanced than you might imagine. They may be *a little bit* dated but they are far superior to most modern fantasy.
Conan and his setting are underrated as hell.
@@Shagamaw-100doesn't help that none of the adaptations has ever truly gotten Conan right.
A few years back, I was in intensive care for ten days. Going out of my mind a colleague lent me a kindle and finding public domain books didn't cost anything I read and fell in love with edgar rice's Barsoom novels. They allowed me to escape the confines of that bed and begin to truly heal.
Then I discovered lovecraft, and was never the same again...
Wow...!
I cannot unsee "The Silver Shroud" from Bethesda's Fallout being a nod to the Shadow... I feel I have failed in not finding such masterpiece before...
Same here brother
Except The Silver Shroud used a Tommy gun rather than a pair of 1911s. But the aesthetic is very similar.
Thanks for the recommendation! I've been missing some politically incorrect, burly chested characters 😁
Pulps and Razor got one thing in common: they're both timeless classics.
Holy shit, Razor, I nearly died when your video transmission was interrupted. Gotta be careful watching this at work.
I busted out ROFLMFAO cause I knew...
In my heart... that Razor stuck it in there for giggle factor !
I just discovered your channel and wanted to say "Thank you" from the bottom of my heart. You've expressed what I have been for years been unable to vocalize, and you've also added to my growing list of material to read, watch, and listen to. It's because of you that I'm listening to "The Shadow" radio dramas, and why I'm diving deeper into pulp than I already was. You also reminded me of The Rocketeer and Sojour in this video and another, and I plan on getting their collections soon. I'm a writer who enjoys more classic media than modern, and I also have values, morals, and ideas that don't lineup with mainstream media. Thank you for giving me hope that I'll find my audience. God bless :)
This has inspired me to write some old fashioned adventure stories.
Thank you Razorfist. This was the inspiration I fucking needed.
I love the old pulp stories and heroes, but I still miss me some caped crusading. I wish we could enter an era with the unrestrained creative storytelling of the Silver Age successfully married to the deeper and more sophisticated characterization of the 90s and very early 2000s.
Stick with the runs that you enjoy by good creators.
For 50-80 years of ANY character, at least 85% of it IS shit. There's like maybe 5-8 good years of any character that's been around THAT long.
I don't want to own all of it. I have too many longboxes of mostly unsellable shit as it is!
I just want the stuff that appeals to that 8-12 year old kid in me. I don't like relentlessly dark comics. Marvel and DC have mostly failed since at least the mid-1990s. They didn't go to crap in the last 10 years just because of SJW's. They were failing at least 15 years before that!
@@AvengerII finally someone understands the truth
That would be legit.
@@AvengerII Oh I get it. All you have to do is pull up the Wikipedia page for any character and after 20 seconds of reading your brain is already going to explode from the sheer amount of convoluted, stupid shit in their history. However, even at that they were almost always still "themselves". Its really been the last decade where the characters have transmogrified into unrecognizable, gender-bent parodies of who they were.
The 90s may not have been kind to Superman, for example, in terms of the stories, but he was still undeniably the Man of Steel we always imagine him being. That image of hjs core qualities that was stamped so heavily onto him by the 5-10 years of great writing he had received remained. Meanwhike, the same cannot be said of what happened during the New 52 or afterwards. The people who have taken over actively want the dissolution and destruction of everything that came before because they have a bitter and resentful belief that it was all engineered to suppress them.
@@chaosgyro It depends on what you like. I haven't liked most of the last 20 years. I think in the modern era, the best Superman (general consensus) was between 1986 and 1992 -- after the Byrne revamp. It got better after he left because they reincorporated most of what was thrown out by him and the editorial staff that approved his revamp. (You can't blame that all on Byrne; somebody above okay'd his Superman!)
I think they stripped down Superman too much, it was stupid to remove the Superboy backstory AND kill off Supergirl, too. They needed to write Superman better NOT tear out huge chunks of his history and pretend he was an all-new character.
I gave up monthly comics a year before DC-52. DC-52 looked like a cluster-fuck before it launched. I HATED the putrid costume redesigns and all the unnecessary changes BUT to be honest I never liked the overall editorial direction of DC since Dan Didio took over. He was easily DC's worst executive editor in the history of the company. Dan Cherry for all his faults really was left with a company that was dying before he took over. Of course, he doesn't have a clue how to run it or understand the characters but he was put in charge because he probably couldn't do much worse than the guys before. DC was fatally damaged before Cherry came.
Hells yes! I started doing this long ago when I was on deployment in Kosovo back in 2000.
Downloaded the entire The Shadow radio and pulp library and would listen or read it when not running missions or cleaning weapons. It's only expanded out from there.
Ironic this video comes out around the same time I’ve been binge watching lore videos of Conan the Barbarian and Kull the Conqueror
@@medikor9190 also check out Doc Savage
that's not ironic, it's just a coincidence
@@TOGYS7 It's probably not even much of a coincidence, pulp has been getting more popular lately. Channels like Razor, Midnights Edge and The Critical Drinker have all talked about Conan recently. That's what got me into Robert E Howard :)
Anime and Manga has maintained the pulp influence of old. The reason shonen series in particular have risen in popularity is that, despite some cultural whiplash, the authors genuinely want to tell good stories about idealized heroes. It gives kids something to strive for.
Zorro and The Shadow deserve a larger following these days. I’m just in my mid 30s but I have always connected with these far more than say, Superman.
Yes, the Rocketeer was a great example.
After seeing this two and a half minutes intro, I'll get comfy. This gonna be good.
I’m currently in the process of working out the kinks for a modern-day pulp hero: El Segador de Tijuana.
A man who traveled to America, collects firearms while working to give his family a better life, and ultimately returns due to the realization that he has to bring that better life back home.
Upon returning, he helps rebuild some homes, but seeing how his community is treated by the drug cartels, he dons a black cloak and sombrero, paints his face as a skull, and, with two six-shooters and a rifle he dubs as his scythe, begins hunting the cartels that wronged his country (Mexico).
Thank you for bringing to our attention such a fantastic medium of entertainment and swashbuckling heroism, Razor!
Dude, that sounds so fucking dope. Really hope you create that one.
@@michaelkikle3018
Thank you! I’m in the middle of writing the first one.
The idea of someone coming to America, getting guns, then returning to their homeland to liberate it from tyranny is pretty based.
That sounds awesome. How's it coming along?
Got Savage Tales of Solomon Kane, and I do love it. While straight-up novel print is dull to me, many of the stories kept me going because I wanted more of this Puritan Purveyor of Heroism. Personally, I love "Moon of Skulls" and "Hills of the Dead" most thus far. Mainly because I loved the weird worldbuilding involving Atlantis, and their take on Vampires. Never idealized Vampires as being giant, red-eyed man beasts with skin string lime wood and having a general aversion to fire as well as sunlight. Plus, I love it when N'Longa and Solomon team up; it's so fun, epic and charming.
BTW, Razor, sorry to comment on my own comment, but have you ever checked out PRIMAL? I don't know if you either like or just barley withstand animation, but it's pretty much an amazing Pulpy adventure helmed by a powerful Neanderthal and his T-Rex companion. Genndy Tartakovsky, the man behind the show, said he was a fan of Robert E Howard's Conan the Barbarian and loosely based it on that. Hell, the characters are named after Howard's earlier work, "Spear and Fang."
All I can say is "Reject Disney, Embrace Monke."
That dialogue on the noir snippet you showed was just pure beauty. “I threw a curve ball just to see who would swing” and “You fell off the straight and narrow right into the gutter.” I mean that made me kiss my conned hand, like an Italian receiving gabbagoo, in celebration.
“Whoever hides the recording equipment from Yoko Ono”
😂🤣😂🤣😂🤣
the cool thing about razor is i dont know what the hell hes talking about so its always a learning experience.
Razor has very esoteric tastes. A lot of his hobbies are obscure to people under 60 years old!
Heck, I'm more knowledgeable about old pop culture than most people but I've barely seen much with Doc Savage, John Carter, or The Shadow!
Most of this stuff was popular probably in the day of his GREAT-grandfather!
None of these characters are terrible -- most of them are very good -- but they appeal mainly to pre-superhero audiences. It's a generational thing. Big Band and Jazz are of a certain era and they'll never be as popular as they once were. Superhero comics are on their way out now and it definitely looks like they will NEVER come back and be what they were even in the early 2000s. Time's passed them on and they didn't adapt properly -- they went in directions their primary audience didn't care for and they LOST THE KIDS (traditional 12-and-under target audience) at least 25 years ago because they wrote the books to appeal to people 15 and older. They never took into account replacement audiences or offered "primers" for kids and so the kids went elsewhere. They stopped making the comics for kids, period. The "videogames" appeal more to kids argument ignores what comics creators did to their industry BEFORE videogames became the dominant entertainment media in the early 1990s.
Right now, many people are kind of depressed because as they're getting older, they're seeing their loved shows and hobby franchises become much less relevant. This has all been happening within the space of the last decade; it's too obvious not to see. We can blame it on Hollywood all we ant but it's sort of normal for these things. It's abnormal for MOST things to be relevant for more than 5-10 years. 40+ years for Star Trek, Star Wars, and Doctor Who is out of the norm... They were worn out even before terrible producers and writers got their mitts on these properties!
With the exception of the Green Hornet (which had a brief revival for 1 year in the late 1960s; the TV series is mainly known for making the wider public aware of Bruce Lee's existence), these classic pulp characters all peaked by the early 1950s and died out. They still get periodically revived but they're nowhere near as popular as they were in the 1930s, 1940s, and early 1950s.
Clayton Moore's public appearances and reruns kept the Lone Ranger relevant longer but they haven't been to do anything really good and lasting with the character since the 1950s TV series. Every attempted Lone Ranger revival on film has failed.
The Shadow lasted longer on radio (where he was most popular) but they've never made a big go of it in movies or TV. Both Marvel and DC have produced Shadow comics but most of these things are long out of print and associated with specific creators. Howard Chaykin did at least 1 or 2 Shadow projects for DC Comics.
Johnny Weismuller was the most popular Tarzan (1930s and 1940s) but again that character had his heyday long ago. The interest just isn't there to revive the character properly and the most renowned/recent Tarzan project for worse was the John Derek/Bo Derek Tarzan movie of the early 1980s. That KILLED interest in doing Tarzan movies for nearly 30 years!
John Carter never appeared in any popular film of consequence that I'm aware of. I think the NASA and other space agency discoveries on the REAL Red Planet doomed most future possibilities with the character unless they radically revamp elements of John Carter -- but if they do that, it really won't be ER Burroughs John Carter anymore, will it? They've done tons of comics with lurid covers of John Carter's girlfriend but none of that stuff has sold that well.
This is NOT saying NONE of these characters can't be popular or have a hit movie again but they're not going to be sustained like they were in the past for decades. Their time has passed and they are part of eras from decades ago. They're more relevant to our older relatives than they are to us. That doesn't make them terrible by any means but they just don't mean as much to most people under 50.
@@bmcfonzie The problem with Carter of Mars is that science has shown ER Burroughs version of Mars is PURE FANTASY.
It's the same problem Disney had with Treasure Planet. Kids today have a problem buying a sail ship as a starship; they've seen the REAL space vehicles and these fantasy vehicles (Space Battleship, Harlock's Arcadia, and the sail ship in Treasure Planet) look ridiculous to even 12 year olds!
Same problem with Carter of Mars unless you tackle the issue and write around the science somehow. Say it's a different reality or taking place FAR BELOW the surface of Mars so they don't deal all the inconvenient, technical stuff that's reality (unbreathable atmosphere, harsh radiation, bleak and lifeless).
Oh, and I agree -- most of the movie adaptations fail because they're bad movies, not just because they're hack adaptations from pulps and comic books. Heck, I don't even like at least 85% of the successful adaptations (the ones that make money) because I don't think they're very good films. They're also mostly superficial and lack heart. That's the case for both Marvel and DC films.
Oh shit! After all these years, I finally know what audio book cassette tape I was listening to in my uncle's car in our trip to a mini golf course decades ago! The Voodoo Master. Thanks for some closure there, Razor!
These early 20th century heroes and culture have always interested me. Weird to think we went from legit badasses like James Cagney, Clint Eastwood, Bruce Lee, Humphrey Bogart, Jimmy Stewart, Christopher Lee and Audie Murphy to... I can't even think of any modern celebs that matches the experiences and charisma of these legends.
Lovecraft is my favorite pulp author. I hate the way his work is typically "reimagined" by modern people.
*Cough* lovecraftcountry! *Cough*
Bu-bu-but wovecwaft was a waciiissss we must fix his wegacy!
@@rogueboner8138 If someone says this to you seriously, that is an instant signal they know worse than nothing about the man's life, work, or opinions. Disregard any that say his stories are just "racist tales of tentacle monsters." And if these people truly hate Lovecraft so much THEN STOP ADAPTING HIS STORIES. These people are true bullies, belittling the awkward kid while also stealing his homework.
@@TheLeadhound I'm aware there's more to the man than "a cat with a very racist name". I've just heard that bullshit spouted off non-stop "i love c'thulu and Lovecrafts work i just hate what a ism/ist/phobe he was.. ugh separate the art from the artist amirite fellow leftoids?"
@@rogueboner8138 Yeah, I was not calling you out there. I know you were joking. So many are not and think they are enlightened, while ironically being totally ignorant.
Nothing like a Razorfist list of bad ass recommendations after a hard day.
The Rocketeer blowing up the Hollywood sign fills me with so much joy
Well, goddamn, Razor, absolute great episode! Solomon Kane and The Shadow are far, far superior character-driven stories in the pulps than any of the bullshit pumped out in today’s media. I finally got why Anne (Rice) raved about Solomon Kane for years at several New Orleans epic parties after I started narrating them. What powerful prose REH delivered. Long live the pulps!
batman: i dress as a bat because bats are scary, the costume makes me more than a man!
The Shadow: I am not what they truly fear, what they fear is the cold cruel hands of justice.
batman: "no I cant kill the joker..."
a sane person: " you know his body count is over 50 million people..."
batman: " No he wins if I kill him..."
a sane person: "no srsly just kill the guy you will save a lot of lives..."
batman: "IM BATMAN...." *glides away*
sigh
DC: Look, man. We need the Joker to milk more adventures out of Batman. Take it or leave it.
A sane person: But...considering the world Batman's in, couldn't there be new villains who can challenge Batman physically, mentally and morally?
DC: What!? You want us to, like....create NEW characters or something?
Just once, I'd like to see what might happen if, one day, the Joker just gets gunned down, either by some no-name vigilante that's just had enough with his shit or by a bystander who actually knows what the Second Amendment is and doesn't give a flying fuck about big city bleeding heart commie horseshit infringing on the right to self-defense. Of course, knowing modern Batman, considering how he responded to Superman shoving his arm through the Joker's chest cavity after the latter nuked Metropolis in Injustice, he'd go off the deep end and try to bring the killer down despite them objectively doing the world a fucking favor.
@@z3r0_35 Batman selfishly enables the Joker for his own personal obsession. As far as I am concerned, Batman is an accessory to Joker's murders, by not taking him out permanently.
@@blank557 Exactly. Bruce Wayne is insane, if not criminally, then at least negligently. He projects his own fear of losing control of himself onto others, hence his staunch opposition to killing, and to doing so with firearms in particular, even when it's absolutely necessary. The Joker knows this, which is why he often tries to goad Batman into killing him.
Been saying it for years: Joker is like an sjw; he's a threat to society that would be pretty easy to deal with if it wasn't for the so called "righteous" who enable him and keep him from facing just consequences.
This is what I need after a day of being talked to by communist pretending to be academics
We've been returning back to old movies and series to escape "The Message" (as the Critical Drinker puts it)
When a relative of mine suffered a brain injury and needed rehabilitation, The Shadow was what he read to rebuild his cognative skills.
Take that batman.
It’s perfectly fine to like both.
When I was a wee little tyke, my uncle (in name only, he was more like one of my dad's best friends) owned a used book store in Northern California. He had stacks upon stacks of dime store pulp novellas and magazines from the pre-war era and I gobbled that shit up like nobody's business and in my elder years I'm finding myself going back to it with glee. Some of it may be nostalgia, but its also that pulp just scratches an itch that new fantasy and scifi just doesn't want to touch.
I actually saw The Rocketeer as a kid. My grandma had a copy on VHS, and while I don’t remember too much about it, as that was well over a decade ago, I do remember liking it. He always stood out in my mind if for no other reason than his iconic design.
It’s a shame what has happened to him in modern days, because he had no right to become so defiled.
Could this man single handedly save the comic book industry?
No he'll do it with a fist instead, a razorfist!
Maybe it will take a generation for the pseudointellectual commie drivel fanboys to die off, but in time comics may go back to basics.
12:30 philosophy and morality of the Shadow
20:01 words of wisdom from Doc Savage
30:23 how Raymond Chandler defined his detective
When I was a young teen, I discovered Doc Savage, John Carpenter of Mars, Conan the Barbarian, The Shadow, and The Phantom (few others too) in a box from a yard sale. Mind you, I'm nearly 50 years old now, so this was the late 80s, but I absolutely loved them! I immediately saw how a lot of superheroes, particularly DC characters, stole aspects, or just outright copies and renamed characters as they saw fit. I thought DC was too... goofy for my tastes, and liked Marvel more.
When I was older, I worked in a comic shop for 10 years. Now this wasn't a modern comic shop, this was a comic shop that existed since the mid 70s, and also sold used books. It was sorta like what you see in TV and movies of occult book stores, where it might be clean, but all the books had a thin layer of dust on them. So the place had history, local cred, and was also the nexus where local kids could come in and hang out in a safe atmosphere. I loved participating in conversations with my boss, and you can imagine the comic book debates we'd have, but whenever I was backed against the wall, I'd always pull out a pulp character, and it would get the whole, "Yeah, yeah, that character could do it..." kinda resigned answer.
it's been 20 years or better since I read Doc Savage and the others, so I might just dig those books up and refresh my aging memory and enjoy another adventure with the Man of Bronze, or see what exactly The Shadow knows!
I love the fact that he's literally holding the first Doc Savage book I ever read, the thousand headed man.
My son and I do. He particularly LOVES King Kull, Robert E. Howard's version, as well as the Marvel run from the 80s. Nothing makes be beam more with pride than my 9 year old announcing to no one and anyone " BY THIS AX, I RULE!"