If you’re
on social media at all by now you’ve no doubt heard about LEGENDS OF NEW PULP FICTION. It would be damn near impossible for anybody
interested in New Pulp to have escaped or avoided seeing the news about it.
After all, it’s a totally unprecedented event in the New Pulp Community. And an
event that I believe once and for all establishes that the new Pulp Community is a Community in every sense of the
word.
Last year
Tommy Hancock (and if I have to tell you who he is then you’re in the
wrong place) had to be hospitalized due to congestive heart failure. This was a
source of horrendously bad news to everyone in New Pulp. You know that game; “The
Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon”? It’s based on the Six Degrees of Separation
concept which puts forth the notion that any two people on Earth are six or
fewer steps apart. Well, Tommy Hancock is kinda like that. Just about everybody
and anybody in the New Pulp Community can be connected to Tommy in one way or
another. Just follow the steps and I guarantee that somehow, someway, whoever
you name can be hooked up with Tommy Hancock.
It was
Jaime E. Ramos and Ron Fortier that came up with the brilliant idea of a
benefit anthology to assist in defraying the medical costs Tommy’s treatment
would incur and sent out the call for writers and artists to submit stories and
artwork. Sixty writers and thirty-six artists answered the call, including
Yours Truly.
So now that
I was in, what exactly was I going to write? I didn’t want to contribute a
Dillon or Fortune McCall story. That would have been too easy. And in keeping
with the title of the book I wanted to write a story about a pulp legend/archetype.
One that has fascinated me for a very long time: The King of The Jungle.
The best known
one is Tarzan, of course. Everybody knows him. Marvel Comics had Ka-Zar, Lord
of The Savage Land who himself was based on a Classic Pulp hero, Ka-Zar The
Great. There was Bomba the Jungle Boy, Polaris of The Snows who basically is
Tarzan raised in the Arctic (the stories are actually pretty good and well
worth looking up) Ki-Gor and comedic versions of Tarzan; the best known and
most beloved being George of The Jungle. There were even female versions of
Tarzan: Sheena, Queen of The Jungle, Jana of The Jungle, Rima and Shana The
She-Devil.
But no
matter how high or low I looked, I couldn’t find a black King of The Jungle
with a pack of bloodhounds and a search warrant. As a kid discovering Classic
Pulp during what I refer to as The Big Pulp Boom of The 1970s, I had gotten
used to not finding any black pulp heroes so I didn’t hold out any hope I would
find a black King of The Jungle. Even though that would seem to be a natural,
wouldn’t it? I mean, in Africa you expect to trip over black Kings of The
Jungle every ten feet or so.
The best
advice my father gave me when I started out writing came about during one of
our conversations about James Bond where I asked him why wasn’t there a black
James Bond. My father replied; “Well, when you become a writer I guess you’ll
have to make one up.” And in the spirit of that simply yet brilliantly profound
wisdom I decided that my story for Legends
of New Pulp Fiction would feature a black King of The Jungle.
Here’s
where Lou Mougin enters the picture. He’s written for number of prominent comic
book companies including Marvel where he wrote what stood for many years as the
definite origin of The Swordsman in Avengers Spotlight #22. But that’s
far from his only professional credits. Observe: View a chronological list of Lou's work
Lou and I
bonded over our mutual love of fan fiction years ago. He’s written plenty of it
and I read as much of it as I could find. I didn’t know he was Lou Mougin then.
I knew him under the name he used to write fan fiction and its probably a good
thing I didn’t as talking to professional writers makes me nervous as hell. By
the time I knew who Lou was, we’d become good online friends and nervousness
didn’t even enter into our conversations. Lou is also an astounding historian
and is always steering me to fascinating characters and creators that I have
never heard of and I’ll always be thankful to him for pointing me in the
direction of Matt Baker and Voodah.
Matt Baker
(1921-1959) is generally acknowledged as being the first successful African-American comic book artist here in
America. The majority of his work was done during the 1940s and 50s where he
took over the Phantom Lady, redesigned her into the incarnation we best know
her for and drew her for about until a dozen issues until it was cancelled.
Matt Baker was the foremost artist of what was then known as “Good Girl Art”:
artwork depicting gorgeous women in sexy, skimpy outfits and often in
provocative poses and situations. Much of his Good Girl Art is highly sought
after today as collector items, particularly his Phantom Lady work. He also
drew a significant amount of romance stories and the adventures of Sky Girl, an
aviation heroine.
But it’s
his King of The Jungle character Voodah that interests us. Lou asked me if I’d
ever heard of Voodah and I replied that I had not. As he is wont to do, Lou
obligingly sent me links so that I could download copies of Crown Comics, which
is where Voodah appeared. The truly fascinating thing is that while Voodah was
depicted as being a black man in the stories themselves, on the covers he was portrayed
as being white. Indeed, after a few issues, in the actual stories Voodah
suddenly switched from being a black man to a white man.
After
reading the stories and letting the character marinate around in my brain cells
for a few days, I got the notion of re-imagining Voodah for a modern day audience
(as he’s a public domain character now) and perhaps in that way honoring the
memory of Mr. Baker’s original character. It would also fall in line with my
idea of presenting a Classic Pulp archetype in the Legends of New Pulp Fiction anthology.
And that’s
the long and short of how “Voodah of Thunder Mountain” came to be. On so many
levels it’s one of the most satisfying stories I’ve ever written and it’s such
a pleasant surprise that to date I’ve had at least half a dozen readers contact
me to tell me how much they enjoyed the story and Ron Fortier has asked me if I’m
going to be writing more Voodah stories. At this point I don’t think I have a
choice in the matter. Am I right?