Pulp

I can tell you when it all started... On the day I almost died for the third time. 

But really, it's kind of a complicated story... With a lot of beginnings. But that's what life is... Right? A bunch of beginnings piled up on top of each other... 

All the chances you had to not mess it up.

— Max Winter

Today I want to turn my attention to the latest project from Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips, an original graphic novel titled Pulp. 

You might gather from the cover that Brubaker and Phillips venture into the genre of westerns.

Well, they do and they don't. 

It's 1939 in New York City and Max Winters is an old man now, struggling to make ends meet as a writer for pulp magazines. 

Pulp magazines were precursors to comic books, stuffed with stories of high adventures of men who solved problems with their fists or their guns, crime fighters, explorers, spacemen and cowboys. These magazines were called "pulps" for the extremely cheap paper they were printed on. 

Max writes stories for a western character called the Red River Kid, a sort of Robin Hood of the Old West. He's trying to add a little depth to the Kid, going beyond mere shoot 'em ups. 

Max is up against a short sighted editor who doesn't want depth, just give him shoot 'em ups. He's also dicking down Max's rate from 2 1/2 cents a word to 2 cents. Hell, he's got a kid in the bullpen who can grind out inventory stories of the Red River Kid for a penny a word. 

Max Winters is an old man now and the world is treating him accordingly. He still feels like the same person he was decades ago. 

Long decades past when Max Winter roamed the American West as the Red Rock Kid, outlaw.  

Max Winter, western outlaw, began when he almost died the first time. 

Max, his brother, and his friend Spike were caught between two cattle barons who wanted the land they lived on. The barons hired a gang to burn down their house and gun down everyone.  Max almost dies but manages to hang on. Max's brother was not so lucky.  

Max and Spike returned with a vengeance against the cattle barons. This was followed by their subsequent life of crime. After eluding the grasp of law enforcement and Pinkerton detectives, Max and Spike eventually make a break for the border and retire in Mexico.  

The fictionalized stories of the "Red River Kid" that Max writes are based on his actual adventures. 

But the intervening years have not been kind to man who was one the Red Rock Kid. His wife and daughter in Mexico lost to him, his friend Spike dead. Now he ekes out a living in New York City trading on his history as a western outlaw for pennies a word in pulp adventure stories. 

A chance encounter with some street hoodlums results in Max getting beat up and having a heart attack. 

The heart attack is a wake up call that makes Max confront his mortality. He worries about Rosa, his lover and companion for the last 10 years. He wants her to have some money to help her reach her dream of a house in Queens before he dies.

Max begins plotting a robbery. 

Jeremiah Goldman has other plans. 

Goldman is a former Pinkerton detective who used to be on trail of the Red Rock Kid way back in the day. Goldman has sought out Winter not for any reward but to employ him to steal some money.

From Nazis. 

It's two years before America's entry into World War II but Nazis are still a problem. 

This is an Ed Brubaker story so naturally our protagonist Max doesn't have the full story of what Goldman is up to and of course things do not go exactly as planned.

And happy endings are just not in the cards. 

Pulp is a short novel, clocking in at 72 pages but it packs in a lot of stuff. It's one story that has stuff set in the Old West and friggin' Nazis. 

But mostly it's a story about one man's survival. Max Winters has spent his life defying the odds, even defying death itself only to find he's outlived his usefulness.  The opportunity to be useful one last time, not just to get the money Rosa will need but also to get that money sticking it to Nazis is too much pass up. 

Max is also a man caught in the gears of economic forces greater than himself. His ranch home lost to greedy cattle barons. His work as a writer diminished and marginalized by cold economic calculations.  

In this and his other work, Ed Brubaker clearly has zero chill when it comes to such economic powers working to crush people. In Pulp, Max Winter is such a man who has been crushed and being crushed again. It drives him to desperation to make his mark and to be free of such repression.

Ed Brubaker still has a perfect artist partner in Sean Phillips. A lot of what Brubaker writes involves characters brooding which is a challenge to illustrate but Phillips meets that challenge admirably. His son Jacob Phillips is the colorist and their joint efforts make Pulp a beautiful book to look at. 

I'm not as old as Max Winter and I lack the dramatic tragedies of Max's past but I do find I empathize with him. I am currently cast adrift by an indifferent economic machine with few opportunities for someone of my age to climb back on. Like Max, I do worry about the future and if I am too old to have one. I know objectively that I'm not that old and something will work out somehow. But subjectively, I do feel a lot like Max Winter.  

Pulp is a thought provoking and emotionally evocative story well told by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips.