Is it Pulp?

"What is pulp?" a question heard around the various pulp groups.

Some argue that like Champagne – unless your fiction appeared in the pulp magazines it’s just not pulp fiction.  Some will give you a time frame, others may narrow it down by country. (I should know I’ve seen several of these arguments, heck I’ve been in some of these arguments)

I tend to take the definition coined by the New Pulp movement as my touchstone:

“PULP IS -fast-paced, plot-orientated storytelling of a linear nature with clearly defined, larger than life protagonists and antagonists and creative descriptions and clever use of turns of phrase, words, and other aspects of writing that add to the intensity and pacing of the story.”

Pulp defies genre – The Cape can be both a superhero story and pulp, The Lone Ranger a western and pulp.  Pulp defies medium – pulp storytelling can come from pulp magazines, radio, comic strips, comic books, movies, TV, and video games

 Now I want to look at two recent TV series that both have similar premises but one is pulp and the other is not.

The premise: A high school teacher abducts one of his female students, holds her captive and tries to make her his family before she escapes.  In both shows we see the fallout of this act as the women recover from their abductions and return to society.

The first series is Found (2023-2025) and the second is Girl Taken (2026) based on the novel Baby Doll by Hollie Overton.

Both series handle their premises differently:

In Found, we follow abductee Gaby Mosely twenty years after her abduction and escape, who now runs a private investigation firm with a team of investigators who have all been victims of abductions or affected by an abduction.  The agency specialises in finding missing persons who might fall through the cracks of the police or other larger agencies.  Through flashbacks we see Gaby’s time as an abductee and then in second season her return to society.  Mark Evans, the kidnapper known as Sir is presented as a genius, who seems to be able to enter wherever he wants whenever he wants and evades capture for 20 years until Gaby finds him and locks him in her basement utilising him like Hannibal Lector assisting in the solving of her missing persons cases.

Gaby Mosely and her team are larger than life, challenging and supporting the system. Mark Evans/Sir is the bogeyman and we get the feeling that he could escape Gaby’s chains whenever he wants but his captivity gives him what he wants to be close to Gaby. Mosely and Associates are licenced private investigators but are often referred to as vigilantes.  In many ways they remind me of The Avenger and his team – Justice Inc. Like Justice Inc. all had been affected by crime and they bring special skills to the team. They solve the cases outside the norm for the police.  The kidnappers are rarely larger than life but Sir’s presence looms so large over the series especially after his escape at the end of season 1 that we don’t need other master villains.

 

In Girl Taken, we follow the escapee Lily through her abduction, sexual assaults, birth of a child and the immediate aftermath of her abduction and attempts to reintegrate into her old life.  The kidnapper Rick Hansen is presented as a smart man but is quickly captured after the escape.

Girl Taken on the other hand is grimly mundane, there are no special investigators, no master strokes of deduction. Lily is missing for five years, while her family and the police have no leads until she escapes. Rick Hansen is no bogeyman, he is just an ordinary kidnapper, holding his victim for his sexual gratification.

Girl Taken is a mundane crime story that could be ripped from the headlines.  Found takes that mundane premise and makes it larger than life adding the element of a super criminal and the almost extra-legal private investigation firm that elevates that show into pulp.  In fact, I recommend checking Found out.

Shi: Before the Way of the Warrior

 

Shi: Before the Way of the Warrior

Shi: Senryaku, Shi: Year of the Dragon.

We start with 2 miniseries that tell stories of Ana’s adventures before she became Shi.

Senryaku was a three part miniseries with 36 short stories from Ana’s youth and training illustrating the 36 stratagems of the art of war.  The stories bop around in time, so you get a story set when Ana is 6, to one at age 17, then 13, followed by a story with no date clues.  These are paired with gorgeous artworks of adult Shi in action by some of the best artists in the business.

I had the original 1990s three issue comic but I picked up the 2023 Omnibus which separates the text from the art and it looks amazing.  It’s a cool experiment and worth reading as an insight into Shi and to look at the beautiful artwork (the Omnibus is worth getting for the virgin art as well as some extra artwork)  When I bough the omnibus, the guy at the comic store warned me that it was not a comic story and asked several times if I was sure.  I explained that I had the original editions so I knew what I was getting.

 

Year of the Dragon is an actual three issue comic set in 1988.  It retells a couple of the stories from Senryaku but makes changes.  Ana is 18 years old and Tucci is wearing some of his influences on his sleeve with much of the artwork inspired by Patrick Nagel. The story features an 18 year old Ana going out into the world and hanging with the wrong people and not following either the Christian faith or the Way of the Warrior.  It’s a good prequel that shows Ana rejecting the call before embracing her destiny.

Dimension Hopping 

Next up we have what I like to call “the dimension hopping saga” of Cyblade/Shi & Shi/Cyblade, Funnytime Features, Lethargic Comics, Lethargic Lad, Gen 13, Shattered Image and Weirdsville.  (these all take place after Razor Annual #1/ Razor Shi Special)

It starts in Cyblade/Shi with Ana encountering Cyblade of Cyberforce in a cross company crossover with Witchblade making her first appearance.  It’s a slightly more fantastic story than the relatively grounded Way of the Warrior, with robot shock troopers and ends in a cliffhanger of an explosion.

In Shi/Cyblade, we discover that the explosion seems to have sent the two women into another dimension where they encounter a large number of independent comic book characters.  Toto we are not in Kansas anymore, and it’s a completely bonkers story -  to the point I wonder what the planning meetings between the two publishers was like.

Both Funnytime Features and Lethargic Lad had part one of their story run as a back up feature in Shi Way of the Warrior (6 & 7 respectively) and part 2 in their own title.  Both have Shi interacting with wacky characters in their own worlds.

Shi appears in a brief cameo in Gen 13 #13C, helping Grunge fight off a team of bad girls. Another cameo in Shattered Image #4 telling members of Cyberforce that they could join her as an independent, and that she had met their teammate Cyblade.

Our final cameo, has Shi appear in the main character’s cupboard in Weirdsville #5.

Most of these are fun stories but don’t really add anything much to Shi mythos as a whole and can be skipped. 

Grifter/Shi & Horseman

And Shi is back in reality, teaming up with Grifter from WildC.A.T.S to stop an attack on America on the 50^th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. It’s a good action piece that pairs Ana with a man who worked with her father. 

Horseman follows directly on from the events of Grifter/Shi and has Ana meeting an immortal Korean horseman.  The Horseman would later appear in his own series. 

One thing I love is the fact that the independent smaller publishers all seem to be happy to allow the crossovers between their series as well as giving each other a forum to debut new characters.  The Horseman debuted in Shi, Shi debuted in Razor and Razor in Sade.

 Both set up Ana's career as Shi before Way of the Warrior #1.

Painkiller Jane (2005) TV movie

 

Starring Emanuelle Vaugier, Eric Dane, Richard Roundtree, Callum Keith Rennie and Tate Donovan. Directed by Sanford Bookstaver.

(How awesome is the poster above?  Nothing like that happens in the film)

I’ve been on a bit of an Event Comics/Painkiller Jane kick of late and I discovered there were 2 attempts to make a Painkiller Jane show.  This 2005 TV movie/pilot and a 2007 one season TV series.

I’ve said before that in a sense adaptations almost need to be reviewed at least twice, once in comparison to the source materials and once as itself.

In a lot of ways this puts me in mind of the 1944 Captain America serial – we have a guy called Captain America in a reasonable version of the suit and that’s about all that came across from the comics. This adaptation has a woman named Jane who heals quickly and that seems to be all that came over.

In the comics Jane Vasco was an undercover cop who had her cover blown and pumped full of untested synthetic drugs. She goes into a two year coma and wakes up with rapid healing powers.  Her former partner now gives her cases that sit outside the law.  In earlier Adventures she is covered in bandages, which is a cool look. 

Here our heroine is Jane Browning, an Army Captain in the Painkiller Unit. The unit is in Chechnya shutting down what they think is a drug lab.  The team start to bleed from their eyes (never a good thing) and men in biohazard suits shoot them.  Jane is the only survivor and she has a heightened metabolism and heals quickly.  She also has enhanced intelligence but doesn’t seem to come into play as much. 

Colonel Watts (Roundtree) tells Jane that they stumbled onto the lab of evil scientist and bioweapons manufacturer, Peter Erfan, a man so mysterious that they only have one photo of him at age 6 in an orphanage. 

Intel suggested that our scientist is trying to enhance human beings but until now it only burns subjects out eventually killing them. Until Jane that is.  The Secretary of Defence, Donnie Mitchell, wants her to be studied.

Jane is about be put into protective custody in Alaska, but determined to find Erfan and with a little encouragement from Dr Knight, she escapes custody.  Where she basically kidnaps Nick Pierce, a thief forcing him to outrun the military on his motorcycle.

Jane is shot so Nick takes her back to his house, where she recovers from her wound, her body forcibly ejecting the bullet.  Jane meets the rest of Nick’s crew - Blue, a medic and Squeak, young man who know every tunnel in the city.

There’s some skullduggery, Jane discovers that the man she thinks is Dr Knight is not Dr Knight and he tells her he is Captain Lucas Insley, military intelligence investigating Colonel Watts, believing that Watts has created Irfan as a cover for Watt’s own experiments.

Not knowing who to trust Jane brings in her sister (who does not appear in the comics) and calls on Nick and his crew.

We discover who the real Peter Erfan is, and he is able to recreate the virus that created Jane.  I won’t say who it is in case you want to watch the movie yourself on Youtube.

The story ends with Jane reported dead and given a new identity by Watts looking closer to her comic book counterpart.  We aren’t told the new identity but I like to think it is Jane Vasco.

Erfan believed to be dead, but a final coda shows him alive.

I presume had this gone to series, Watts would have given her missions to chase Erfans and battle his enhanced soldiers, likely working with Nick and his crew.

As an adaptation, this isn’t particularly faithful but does a reasonable job with the action on a TV movie budget.  It’s an ok set up, I suspect the series may have been closer to the comics or at least tried.  I liked Eric Dane’s Nick Pierce, I would have been on board for more of him, a roguish thief who helps Jane because it is the right thing.

Now this has me curious to see what was changed for the short lived series 2 years later.

I presume that this led to the 2006 Painkiller Jane comic miniseries from Dynamite comics.