Pulp TV

With The Black Hood making his TV debut on Riverdale, after appearing in comics, radio and a three issue pulp, I decided to look at what other pulp characters and works from pulp writers have been adapted to TV.

So either the character had to appear in a pulp magazine or it had to be the work of a pulp writer. 

Pulp Characters

Conan

Conan The Adventurer (1992)

Conan (1997-1998)

Zorro

Zorro (1957-1961)
The New Adventures of Zorro (1981)
Zorro and Son (1983)
Zorro (1990-1993)
Kaiketsu Zorro (1994)
Zorro (1997-1998)

Zorro: La Espada y La Rosa (2007)
Zorro Generation Z (2008)
Zorro The Chronicles (2015)

Sheena

Sheena Queen of Jungle (1955-56)

Sheena (2000-2002)

The Lone Ranger

The Lone Ranger (1949-1957)
The Tarzan Zorro Hour (1980-82)

Tarzan

Tarzan (1966-68)
Tarzan and The Super 7 (1978)

Tarzan The Lord of Jungle (1976-79)
The Tarzan Zorro Hour (1980-82)
Io Jane, Tu Tarzan (1989 – Italy)
Tarzan (1994)
Tarzan: The Epic Adventures (1996-1997) - which also featured Pellucidar and Amtor (Venus) from Burrough's other series.
The Legend Of Tarzan (2001-03)
Tarzan (2003)
Tarzan and Jane (2017)

Philip Marlowe

Philip Marlowe (1959-60)
Philip Marlowe, Private Eye (1983)

Flashgun Casey
Crime Photographer (1951-52)

Buck Rogers
Buck Rogers (1950)
Buck Rogers in the 25^th Century (1979-81)

Pulp Writers

Dashiell Hammett
The Thin Man (1957-59)


Erle Stanley Gardner
Perry Mason (1959-66)
The New Perry Mason (1973)
Perry Mason TV Movies (1986-1996)



Max Brand (Frederick Faust)

Destry (1964)

Doctor Kildare (1961-66)

Young Doctor Kildare (1972)

A number of stories that appeared in pulp magazines were adapted as episodes of anthology series like Robert E. Howard’s “Pigeons from Hell” as an episode of Thriller or Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos appearing in many sources such as Supernatural, Scooby Doo, Justice League, and Limitless to name a few. 

Justice League (2017)

So this movie has been a loooong time coming.  The 2007 attempt Justice League Mortal never happened due to the writer's strike.  The less said about the pilot that came out in 1997 the better. So The Justice League finally come out after some twenty years of trying. 

Gal Gadot was great as Wonder Woman in her third  outing as the character and she gets a nice arc here with reference to her solo outing. We finally get an explanation about the age of heroes coming again line from Wonder Woman.

Ben Affleck does another good turn as Batman. Henry Cavill is even better as Superman than his past couple of outings.

Now we finally get to see Jason Mamoa's Aquaman, Ray Fisher's Cyborg, and Ezra Miller's Flash.

Cyborg was probably the least used in the movie but Fisher is fine with a nice callout to the animated Teen Titans.

Aquaman takes queues from the long haired version seen in the 90s and I appreciated the blonde highlights in his hair.  Mamoa is too bad ass to not be taken seriously.

Ezra Miller's Flash probably has the hardest job here not only does he have to compare to the comic book version but to the TV version played by Grant Gustin. (Miller would be the fifth actor to play Barry Allen - after Rod Haase, John Wesley Shipp, Kenny Johnson and Grant Gustin)  And I found him lacking.  Miller's character has more in common with Sheldon Cooper than any of the other Flashes and I found that a little hard to reconcile. The character is a nice comic relief but he never felt right, per haps had they made him Wally West instead of

I did enjoy the movie but I wouldn't rate it as one of the best superhero movies nor would I dismiss it as one of the worst.  I am keen to see more of the new characters and will check them out in their solo outings but I felt that this film left a lot of the work to introducing the characters to the solo outings.  This the advantage of the Marvel Avengers model pretty much everyone had been introduced and could be used quickly.

This is the End: Darkman

So it was Christmas 1989 (or it may be 1990 - Australia typically got stuff much later) when I saw this poster


I was like "who is this?"

It was a number of months later that I got to see the movie - a double feature with Ghost (if memory serves) and holy smokes it blew me away,

Sam Raimi wanted to make a Shadow movie but couldn't get the rights (although there was a story a few years back that he had the rights to all the Street and Smith pulp characters but nothing has come from it - I'd love to see him do those characters)

It always struck me as odd that when Taken came out in 2008 that people were surprised that Liam Neeson was an action hero I mean he was Darkman nearly 20 years earlier.

Darkman became a multimedia star - the movie was adapted to a three issue Marvel comic and a novelisation by Randall Boyle. There was plans to make a TV series with a  pilot that was a 30 minute version of the movie

Except for the pilot, each had their own continuation, first up was Marvel with a six issue miniseries which had Darkman believe that Durant wasn't dead with an outrageous way to bring him back from the dead.

Then there was a four book series by Randall Boyle which was really good.

Next was two direct to TV movies starring Arnold Vosloo: Darkman II The Return of Durant Darkman III: Die Darkman Die.

The final Darkman product is the Dynamite 6 issue miniseries teaming Darkman with Ash Williams from The Evil Dead movies.  Dynamite reported that they were doing a series but nothing came of it.

Surprisingly despite the fact that all the continuations were produced separately the stories form a fairly consistent narrative - the obvious one for me is the novels having Westlake taking a briefcase of money questioning if he should use it or not.  By Darkman II we see Westlake ripping off  criminals for money.  (that said Durant's fate in the Marvel miniseries and the second movie are contradictory)

I collected everything I could find and original Marvel series was the most elusive and I finally found the last issue the other day.