In the pages of Pulp Art you'll find:

-- Still-existing original paintings, sharply focused and vibrantly colored, from artists Virgil Finlay, J. Allen St. John, Rafael de Soto, Hannes Bok, and many others.
-- Eighteen essays by collectors and experts in the pulp field, including Forrest J. Ackerman and Sam Moskowitz, as well as relatives of legendary pulp figures, such as Danton Burroughs and John de Soto.
-- Critical discussions of individual paintings and the major themes of pulp magazines, such as science fiction and fantasy, heroes and detectives, and aviation and western pulps.
The term pulp fiction has always had a certain resonance; but it is the art work--bold, energized, dramatic, garishly colorful, and frequently grotesque--that has made pulp magazines memorable to so many people.

Pulp Art is about the artists who created the incredible paintings for those pulp covers. Because so many of these illustrators have long been forgotten, and their original canvases long ago consigned to garbage heaps, it is only in recent years that the surviving paintings have been rediscovered and have found their way into serious private collections.

At last, preserved in this volume are most of the still-existing originals created for the pulp covers. Robert Lesser, a pioneering collector of this work and an expert on American popular culture, has assembled a gallery of these now-priceless originals. Lesser has augmented his own extensive range of images with important pictures from other U.S. collections.

The dynamically pulp-flavored text is a complete historical survey of the pulps and their most important cover artists--Virgil Finlay, J. Allen St. John, Rafael de Soto, Hannes Bok, George and Jerome ROzen, Frank R. Paul, Norman Saunders, Walter Baumhofer, Rudolph Belarski, and many others. Also offered are critical discussions of individual paintings, as well as the major themes of the pulp magazines, in chapters focusing on science fiction and fantasy, heroes and detectives, Tarzan and other jungle subjects, "ladies in terror," and aviation and western pulps. Rounding out the collection are eighteen brief essays by distinguished contributors--collectors and experts in the pulp field, including Forrest J. Ackerman, Sam Moskowitz, Walt Reed, JIm Steranko, and Charles Martignette, and relatives of legendary pulp figures, such as Danton Burroughs, Zina Saunders, and John de Soto.

To make this the consummate reference book on pulp art, Lesser has also provided appendices devoted to readers' letters to the pulps, collecting the paintings, and artists' biographies, as well as an extensive bibliography and an index.

Pulp Art is the groundbreaking--and ultimate--book on one of America's most important and spectacular forms of illustration art.