THE JOKER – Time to examine another neglected Pulp Hero in the tradition of Balladeer’s Blog’s looks at the Moon Man, Silver John, the Nyctalope, G-8 & His Battle Aces and Northwest Smith. This time it’s the Joker, but not THAT one. Before the comic book villain and even before Conrad Veidt’s turn as Gwynplaine in The Man Who Laughs (1926), came the 1919 Pulp Magazine figure called the Joker.
NOTE: Sometimes people mistakenly think Pulp Magazines were the same as comic books, only earlier. However, the Pulps were TEXT STORIES, not sequential art like comic books. The Pulps did have colorful, striking covers like later comic books would have and sometimes a few illustrations in the stories but the Pulps were a much higher level of storytelling.
The 1919 Joker was created by Hugh Kahler, who the year before had created the White Rook, another hero/ villain of the Pulps. In some ways the Joker was a rehash of Kahler’s own White Rook crossed with Guy Boothby’s Simon Carne/ Klimo crime figure from 1897. Continue reading
Balladeer’s Blog’s posts about neglected Pulp Heroes like the Nyctalope, G-8 and His Battle Aces and others have proven enduringly popular over the years. My work on the then-obscure Moon Man from the 1930s caught the eye of author Greg Hatcher, who was kind enough to thank me for my synopses of all 38 original Moon Man stories AND to send me a copy of his story in the 2014 collection of new Moon Man (and other hero) tales by modern authors. 
This brings us back to the Nyctalope, the neglected bionic French Pulp Hero created in the VERY early 20th century by France’s sci fi icon Jean de la Hire. My review of some of the Nyctalope novels in the original French predated a couple of the recently published English language translations and assorted readers were wondering when I would finish the whole series, like I did with G-8, Silver John and Northwest Smith. 
Thank you to all the Balladeer’s Blog readers who let me know where to lay my hands on a French copy of The Cross of Blood (1941), one of the Nyctalope novels I had not yet been able to track down. 
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