Black Mask

Launched in 1920, Black Mask began as a commercial magazine with stories of adventure, mystery, romance, love, and the occult.  It was a `pulp´ magazine as opposed to `slick´ meaning the paper was cheaper and thus the magazine could be sold for less.  In 1923 the magazine published the first tough private detective story, and by December 1933 it was publishing nothing but crime stories.  Its circulation was 103,000 and it cost 20 cents.

Writers for Black Mask included Dashiell Hammett,  Erle Stanley Gardner, and Raymond Chandler, and many others who also wrote for the movies and wrote novels.  In the late 1930`s, due to the popularity of comic books, cheap paperback books, radio, and movies, Black Mask went into decline.  It managed to hang on until 1951.  The magazine was revived briefly from 1985 to 1987.  Black Mask inspired the Quentin Tarantino film ``Pulp Fiction.¨

I recently picked up The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories at the library.  It`s a collection of crime fiction from the magazine and includes stories by Hammett (The Maltese Falcon), Chandler (Try the Girl), and other well known names from the heyday of the pulps.  They´re pretty much all of the hard-boiled detective school, mostly male, with a few interesting women thrown in (Katherine Brocklebank has a story in the book), though generally not as protagonists or authors.  Apparently readers of the magazine sent letters to the editor when such appeared and said they didn´t care for them.  I quite enjoyed the book.  Many of the stories are short and can be read in an evening or afternoon.  They are varied, though now and then I got bored with another boxing story.

The history of dime novels, slick and pulp magazines in a way mirrors what´s happening today with the internet, print on demand, and the established publishing industry.   It seems to keep getting more difficult to get published in the regular way, but people are finding alternatives to getting their work out there.   Change is inevitable and always has been.  It’s a matter of finding your own path in the changing landscape, searching out the way that stays most true to your own values and goals.

Black Mask is now a web site: www.blackmaskmagazine.com and it contains information and stories from a variety of pulp magazines, in pdf format.