Issue 0

Volume 1

Modern

PULP
Sweeney Todd
the Demon Barber
of Fleet Street

Pacific Rim

When Kaiju attack!

Pulp Sci-Fi Gaming

Traveller

John Carter in

A Princess of Mars

Issue 0
Volume 1

Modern

PULP

Pulp Sci-Fi Gaming

Traveller

Pacific Rim

When Kaiju attack!

John Carter in

A Princess of Mars

Sweeney
Todd
the Demon Barber of Fleet Street

Issue 0
Volume 0

Modern

PULP
Sweeney Todd
the Demon Barber
of Fleet Street
Pulp Sci-Fi Gaming

Traveller

John Carter in

A Princess of Mars

Pacific
Rim
When Kaiju attack!

Our Cover: John Carter

and Thuvia, from Edgar
Rice Burroughs: John Carter in: A Princess of Mars

Contents
Table of Contents
Letter from the Editor A few words for the guy in charge
Fan Letters tell us what you do and do not like
A Princess of Mars the first chapter of our feature story
Q & A Ask the answer man
Top 5 Classic Movie Monsters

Sweeney Todd A History of the Butcher of Fleet Street
Pulp Sci-Fi Gaming: Traveller

B-Rated What is B-Rated? Heres our answer!
Pacific Rim Our movie review

3
6
7
12
24
27
28
34
42
44
3

John Carter in

A Princess

12

of Mars
by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Foreword
To the Reader of this Work:
In submitting Captain Carters strange
manuscript to you in book form, I
believe that a few words relative to
this remarkable personality will be of
interest.
My first recollection of Captain Carter
is of the few months he spent at my
fathers home in Virginia, just prior
to the opening of the civil war. I was
then a child of but five years, yet I well
remember the tall, dark, smooth-faced,
athletic man whom I called Uncle Jack.
He was a splendid specimen of
manhood, standing a good two inches
over six feet, broad of shoulder and
narrow of hip, with the carriage of the
trained fighting man. His features were
regular and clear cut, his hair black and

13

closely cropped, while his eyes were

of a steel gray, reflecting a strong and
loyal character, filled with fire and
initiative. His manners were perfect,
and his courtliness was that of a typical
southern gentleman of the highest type.
His horsemanship, especially after
hounds, was a marvel and delight even in
that country of magnificent horsemen.
I have often heard my father caution
him against his wild recklessness, but
he would only laugh, and say that
the tumble that killed him would be
from the back of a horse yet unfoaled.
When the war broke out he left us, nor
did I see him again for some fifteen
or sixteen years. When he returned it
was without warning, and I was much
surprised to note that he had not
aged apparently a moment, nor had
he changed in any other outward way.
He was, when others were with him,
the same genial, happy fellow we had
known of old, but when he thought
himself alone I have seen him sit for
hours gazing off into space, his face
set in a look of wistful longing and
hopeless misery;
and at night he
would sit thus
looking up into
the heavens, at
what I did not
know until I read
his manuscript
years afterward.

during these years he was very reticent,

in fact he would not talk of them at all.
He remained with us for about a year
and then went to New York, where he
purchased a little place on the Hudson,
where I visited him once a year on the
occasions of my
trips to the New
York market--my
father and I owning and operating
a string of general
stores throughout
Virginia at that
time. Captain Carter had a small but
beautiful cottage, situated on a bluff
overlooking the river, and during one of
my last visits, in the winter of 1885, I observed he was much occupied in writing,
I presume now, upon this manuscript.

a typical southern
gentleman of the
highest type.

He told us that he had been prospecting

and mining in Arizona part of the time
since the war; and that he had been very
successful was evidenced by the unlimited amount of money with which he
was supplied. As to the details of his life

14

Taylor Kitsch as
Captain John Carter
He told me at this time that if anything
should happen to him he wished me to
take charge of his estate, and he gave
me a key to a compartment in the safe
which stood in his study, telling me I
would find his will there and some
personal instructions which he had
me pledge myself
to carry out with
absolute fidelity.

strict sense of the term a religious man.

Several months after I had returned
home from my last visit, the first of
March, 1886, I think, I received a telegram from him asking me to come
to him at once. I had always been his
favorite
among
the younger generation of Carters and so I hastened to comply
with his demand.

He told me at this
time that if anything
should happen to him
he wished me to take
charge of his estate

After I had retired

for the night I have
seen him from my
window standing
in the moonlight
on the brink of
the bluff overlooking the Hudson with
his arms stretched out to the heavens
as though in appeal. I thought at the
time that he way praying, although I
never understood that he was in the

I arrived at the little station, about

a mile from his
grounds, on the morning of March
4, 1886, and when I asked the livery
man to drive me out to Captain Carters he replied that if I was a friend
of the Captains he had some very bad

15

Top 5

Classic Pulp Monsters

1. Bram Stokers classic undead villain

has spawned countless variations over

the years, and is our #1 monster!

2. Mary Shellys stiched together

monster is hands down, a favorite
with the pitchfork and torches

3. The wolfman has made audiences

and readers howl in terror over the years
and makes our list at #3 spot!

4. Nothing fishy about The Creature

From The Black Lagoon, who has
inspired lake and sea dwelling horrors
to raid our shores for years!

5. Aliens! Our #5 pick has been invading

Earth and entertaining the masses for

decades in countless forms!

27

Swee

28

eney Todd:
The Demon Barber
of Fleet Street

By Anonymous
Sweeney Todd is a fictional character who first appeared as the murderer of the
Victorian penny dreadful The String of Pearls (184647). He appeared in the
British film, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1936). In 1973,
he was introduced as an antihero when English playwright Christopher Bond
retold the Victorian tale, which formed the basis of the 1979 musical and its
2007 film adaptation of the same name.
Claims that Sweeney Todd was a historical person are strongly disputed by
scholars, although possible legendary prototypes exist.
In the original version of the tale, Todd is a barber who dispatches his victims
by pulling a lever as they sit in his barber chair. His victims fall backward down

29

break their necks or skulls. In case they

are alive, Todd goes to the basement
and polishes them off (slitting
their throats with his straight razor).
In some adaptations, the murdering
process is reversed, with Todd
slitting his customers throats before
dispatching them into the basement via
the revolving trapdoor. After Todd has
robbed his dead victims of their goods,
Mrs. Lovett, his partner in crime (in
some later versions, his friend and/
or lover), assists him in disposing of
the bodies by baking their flesh into
meat pies and selling them to the
unsuspecting customers of her pie shop.

by Tim Burton, written by John

Logan, Hugh Wheeler, Christopher
Bond and starring Johnny Depp.
Sweeney Todd first appeared in a
story titled The String of Pearls: A
Romance. This penny dreadful was
published in 18 weekly parts, in
Edward Lloyds The Peoples Periodical
and Family Library, issues 724, 21
November 1846 to 20 March 1847.
It was probably written by James
Malcolm Rymer, though Thomas
Peckett Prest has also been credited with
it; possibly each worked on the serial
from part to part. Other attributions
include Edward P. Hingston,
G e o r g e

Ill polish him off

Todds
barber
shop is situated
at 186 Fleet Street, London, next to
St. Dunstans church, and is connected to
Mrs. Lovetts pie shop in nearby Bell Yard
by means of an underground passage.
In most versions of the story, he and Mrs.
Lovett hire an unwitting orphan boy,
Tobias Ragg, to serve the pies to customers.
The tale became a staple of Victorian
melodrama. It was the subject of a
1959 ballet by English composer Sir
Malcolm Arnold and, in 1979, a Tony
award-winning Broadway musical by
Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler.
The musical was adapted for the screen
in 2007 as a musical film, directed

30

Macfarren,
and Albert Richard Smith.In
February/March 1847, before the
serial was even completed, George
Dibden Pitt adapted The String of
Pearls as a melodrama for the Britannia
Theatre in Hoxton. It was in this
alternative version of the tale, rather
than the original, that Todd acquired
his catchphrase: Ill polish him off .
Lloyd published another, lengthier,
penny part serial from 184748, with
92 episodes. It was then published in
book form in 1850 as The String of
Pearls, subtitled The Barber of Fleet
Street. A Domestic Romance. This
expanded version of the story was 732

Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter

as Sweeny Todd and Mrs Lovett (2007)
31

WHAT IS

B-Ra
15

By Anonymous
A B movie is a low-budget
commercial motion picture that
is not definitively an arthouse.
In its original usage, during the
Golden Age of Hollywood, the
term more precisely identified a
film intended for distribution as
the less-publicized, bottom half
of a double feature. Although
the U.S. production of movies
intended as second features
largely ceased by the end of
42

ated?
the 1950s, the term B movie
continued to be used in the
broader sense it maintains
today. In its postGolden Age
usage, there is ambiguity on
both sides of the definition: on
the one hand, many B movies
display a high degree of craft
and aesthetic ingenuity; on the
other, the primary interest of
many inexpensive exploitation
films is prurient. In some cases,
both may be true.
43

PACIFI
44

IC RIM
45

If

I were nine years old, I would

see the monsters-versus-robots
adventure Pacific Rim 50
times. Because Im in my forties and
have two kids and two jobs, Ill have to be
content with seeing it a couple more times
in theaters and re-watching it on video.
Like George Lucas original 1977
Star Wars, Guillermo del Toros scifi actioner uses high technology to
pump up disreputable subject matter
to Hollywood blockbuster levels. The
films main selling point is its overscaled
action sequences. In a terrified
futureworld, spindly-limbed, whalesized beasts emerge from a Hellmouth
on the ocean floor and duke it out with
immense robots. The robots are run
by two-pilot teams whose movements
suggest tai chi exercises taking place on
the worlds largest, weirdest elliptical
machines. They work in pairs because
they use their minds and bodies to
guide the machines in the way that
puppeteers guide puppets, and the

46

technology is too complex for a single

brain to handle.
The creatures began attacking years
before the start of the story proper
(we get the history in a prologue). The
humans cant fight the monsters by
conventional military means because
it causes too much collateral damage.
They created the robots called
Jaegers to engage them directly,
before the creatures, called Kaiju,

could make landfall. Over time the

beasts have become bigger, nastier,
more resourceful, as if theyre evolving.
And now they seem to be winning.
Humankind is in retreat.
The fight scenes are often shot too closein for my taste, and they go on too long,
particularly during the final stretch - a
problem that also afflicted Iron Man
3, Star Trek Into Darkness, Man of
Steel and other recent summer films
- and there are times when one of
the combatants will use a weapon so

devastating that you wonder why they

didnt just haul it out at the start of the
fight and make the punching, kicking
and flipping unnecessary.
Nitpicks aside, though, the fights are
astonishing. They split the difference
between classical filmmaking and the
blurrier, more chaotic modern style
in a way that made me appreciate the
virtues of both. Some of the whirling
action has a geometric beauty thats
faintly Cubist, and each fight contains
surprises: a tactic you havent seen
yet, a power you didnt know about, a
complication you didnt see coming.
But for all its mayhem, Pacific Rim is
a film with more more emotion than
its trailers could have led you to expect. The hero, Raleigh Becket (Charlie
Hunnam) is an ace pilot who gave up
robot-piloting for coastal wall-building when his partner and older brother
Yancy (Diego Klattenhoff) died fighting a monster. The pilots dont just
share physical responsibilities, they
have unfettered access to one anoth-

47