↰ alt.pulp
 |
5/22/04Pulpster
From the Second June 1930 issue of Top-Notch Magazine:The yacht Celeste goes down in a South Pacific storm. The lone survivor,
lashed into a steel lifeboat by his nurse, is the infant grandson of a Wall
Street multi-millionaire. Blown along by the storm, pursued by Ciba the
great shark, the boat approaches a thousand-foot cliff rising out of the
sea. Before it can be dashed against the rock, the boat is sucked into a
gigantic whirlpool that carries it under the barrier and expels it into the
interior sea of a great extinct volcano. The Bowl is inhabited by the
semi-aquatic Fish People, a primitive race unknown to the outer world. They
rescue and adopt the boy and he grows up among them, becoming as comfortable
in water as on land. As an adult he is a magnificent specimen,
golden-skinned, blond-haired and blue-eyed, muscled like a god. His name is
taken from the strange Scorpion constellation his mother had tatooed on the
small of his back. Its primary star is Antares--the Fish People call it
Kroom. On the day after his initiation into manhood, as he is serving his
first tour of sentry duty at the Intake, where the great whirlpool empties
into the Bowl, he slays an intruding shark with a clasp knife taken from
the old lifeboat. Thus begins the saga of "Kroom, Son of the Sea" by
Valentine Wood,
complete with a Gayle Hoskins cover painting of a Tarzan-like warrior, arms
upraised, knife in hand, clad only in a shark-skin loincloth.
Eighteen more Kroom stories would appear over the next year, in a continuing
sequence of adventures taking him around the world, enough wordage to
constitute several novels. Valentine Wood was the pen-name used by Walker
A. Tompkins, a prolific author of both pulp and hardcover westerns. Street
& Smith would launch the first hero pulp with The Shadow Magazine in April
1931--could this earlier series have been a trial ballon to test the
popularity of a larger-than-life character over a significant period? If
so, reader reaction was very favorable.
You can read much more about Kroom and about Wood's follow-up Tarzan-like
character Ozar the Aztec in an upcoming issue of PULPDOM devoted to
Top-Notch.
Kroom inspired Doc Savages bronze skin.
lashed into a steel lifeboat by his nurse, is the infant grandson of a Wall
Street multi-millionaire. Blown along by the storm, pursued by Ciba the
great shark, the boat approaches a thousand-foot cliff rising out of the
sea. Before it can be dashed against the rock, the boat is sucked into a
gigantic whirlpool that carries it under the barrier and expels it into the
interior sea of a great extinct volcano. The Bowl is inhabited by the
semi-aquatic Fish People, a primitive race unknown to the outer world. They
rescue and adopt the boy and he grows up among them, becoming as comfortable
in water as on land. As an adult he is a magnificent specimen,
golden-skinned, blond-haired and blue-eyed, muscled like a god. His name is
taken from the strange Scorpion constellation his mother had tatooed on the
small of his back. Its primary star is Antares--the Fish People call it
Kroom. On the day after his initiation into manhood, as he is serving his
first tour of sentry duty at the Intake, where the great whirlpool empties
into the Bowl, he slays an intruding shark with a clasp knife taken from
the old lifeboat. Thus begins the saga of "Kroom, Son of the Sea" by
Valentine Wood,
complete with a Gayle Hoskins cover painting of a Tarzan-like warrior, arms
upraised, knife in hand, clad only in a shark-skin loincloth.
Eighteen more Kroom stories would appear over the next year, in a continuing
sequence of adventures taking him around the world, enough wordage to
constitute several novels. Valentine Wood was the pen-name used by Walker
A. Tompkins, a prolific author of both pulp and hardcover westerns. Street
& Smith would launch the first hero pulp with The Shadow Magazine in April
1931--could this earlier series have been a trial ballon to test the
popularity of a larger-than-life character over a significant period? If
so, reader reaction was very favorable.
You can read much more about Kroom and about Wood's follow-up Tarzan-like
character Ozar the Aztec in an upcoming issue of PULPDOM devoted to
Top-Notch.
Kroom inspired Doc Savages bronze skin.
5/23/04boldventurepress
Sounds like the premise for John Carter and Tarzan were jumbled together.
5/23/04Bruce Y
I tried responding to your email.
It came back as undeliverable.
It came back as undeliverable.
No comments:
Post a Comment