Steven E. Schend Blog

Author, Editor, Publisher
February 22, 2013

Bulwark 9: Flying Over the Edge

Author: Steven Schend - Categories: Bulwark Publishing, Nonfiction Works, ParadigMagic, Vanguard - Tags: , , , , , , ,

Chuck Meade’s Journal

07222008 301pm

In the air and heading for Cleveland…horrible traffic almost made me late for the flight, so I’m doing what I’d hoped to do while waiting to board now…

 

Think I have everything I need for my discussions with A.J. and the letters are in my sport coat stowed above my head. More than a few on this plane heading for the convention, as I counted at least five teens or adults dressed in costumes waiting to board this flight. The person next to me, thankfully, isn’t a costumer, but he’s wearing an old comic-license tie from the 1980’s that proclaims him a member of Corps Cosmica—one of the few books I don’t know well because A.J. and Monty had nothing to do with that comic.

 

In my final prep and packing, I ran across some old memos from C.K. Gill to A.J. (& others) and must remember to ask him about Gill and their working relationship.  This is the potential next book for me—examining Bulwark in the 1930’s and 40’s and mapping/analyzing through its big expansion in book (not periodical) publishing (& the republishing of all the fiction and comics) in the 1960’s and 70’s. If there’s too much material, it can be multiple books to encompass the full history of Bulwark and look at the current spate of repub projects (which, if rumors are true, will even bring back the dime novel materials for the first time in 100+ years).

 

What do I absolutely need to find out from A.J. this weekend?

  • He and Gill were the only two creators from BC’s Golden Age comics to be allowed to do some initial work on the Silver Age when many IPs were rebooted and changed. Was this an internal decision, office politics, or simply a case of who had the time and interest?
  • I’m curious as to how much input they had into people altering or tinkering with their older works and character IPs.
  • Did they fight to keep control over characters to prevent massive alterations (I.E. Almost no changes with Brass Bradley and other A.J. creations)? Or was it Gill working in-house that protected them from too much altering?
  • Might refocus this discussion/project even more tightly only on the comics of the 1940’s and the Soltare/Gill input, then look at all the iterations of two more successive generations of those same characters/IPs…especially if I can get AJ to give me more of an insider’s view than I can already glean from internal company memos et al.

 

IMPORTANT—Don’t forget that this man is among the last of those with direct knowledge of what Bulwark was like in its formative years, so don’t waste a second on minor or inconsequential discussions!!!

 

So, what’s—

 

 

“Excuse me, sir.”

 

I keep my “Damn!” to myself as I look up at the male flight attendant who’s moving past my seat. Oh yeah, first warning.

 

“We’ll need all electronic devices turned off before we head in for our landing, sir. Ten more minutes, okay?”

 

“Fine,” I say, turning my attention back to the screen. No use. Lost the train of thought anyway.

 

I queue up my checklist, then realize I need a connection to check on my room reservation and all that. Guess it’ll have to wait until later. I close the laptop and stow it in my briefcase beneath the seat in front of me.

 

When I sit back up, I feel the tension from my fingers all the way down my back. I stretch my fingers to loosen up forearm tendons at least, while I sit. Could really use a massage, if there’s time this weekend and if the hotel has a massage therapist.

 

The flight’s on time, thank the gods, but I have to hustle if I’m going to get to the hotel in time to meet up with A.J. and his aide for dinner. At least we’re meeting at the hotel, not another restaurant, so there’s that. I hope that doesn’t mean we’ll get interrupted a lot by convention-goers. Assuming he’s okay with discussing them in front of this Sam Herneson, I’d love to go over the letters tonight.

 

And what’s the deal with this guy, anyways? He’s obviously someone who A.J. and Mr. Kharm trust, but what’s his actual role and job within Bulwark? Anyone who’s actually worked with him say he’s open about not having much publishing pedigree, but he’s running a high-profile (at least internally) project of republishing the dime novels. Most of the Repub team seems relieved to have him in charge, thought it’s probably more relief about not reporting to David Brandt, whose ego is only surpassed by his love of semicolons.

 

Therese in Archives thinks Sam’s secretly either a son or nephew of Oscar’s, given his levels of access at all Bulwark offices despite a lack of experience, history, or degrees. She did say he’s almost always working directly for Mr. Kharm. While she said she knew more, she kept getting sidetracked telling me her fantasies about the guy. That tells me he’s a long-haired with tattoos and a bad-boy vibe—Therese’s overt weakness—and knowing she’d readily throw herself onto a table for the guy is something I wish I could un-hear. Almost as disturbing as having my drunken boss hitting on my girlfriend at my first Bulwark Christmas party four years ago, but not quite.

 

Conrad Post is the most buttoned-up cliché of an editor I’ve ever met, and his insistence on professionalism is how said drunk boss got canned before New Year’s (and Conrad liked my background enough to promote me into his job). Conrad fumes if anyone under his watch doesn’t have the requisite training or degrees he thinks they should have. Seemed strange to me that he’s only got glowing comments about Sam Herneson despite his total lack of background or degrees.

 

Stranger still, he stepped out of his office when I was leaving and whispered, “Give my regards to A.J. and Sam both, but warn them they still owe me eight Januscripts between the pair of them. They’ll know what I mean, hm?” With a rare smile and rather enigmatic chuckle, Conrad waved me off…and I’ve never known Conrad to be amused by anything outside of P.G. Wodehouse.

 

Well, guess I’ll learn about him soon enough. About two hours before dinner, assuming I get to the hotel in time. I stand up briefly to let my window-side companion out and decide to get my sport coat on. I take it out of the overhead bin, shrug it on, and pat my chest pocket…where A.J.’s letters should be but aren’t.

 

The fasten-seatbelt chime sounds just as my stomach falls through the floor of the cabin.

 

October 14, 2012

Bulwark 8: Omens and Portents

Author: Steven Schend - Categories: Bulwark Publishing, Citiestoried, Fairgeth, Fort Corax, New Jericho, Nonfiction Works, ParadigMagic, Publishing, Svetlantzek

TO: Charles Meade

FR:Conrad Post

DA: July 21, 2008

RE: Corporate event at GrealKon/Schedule Conflicts?

Chuck, here’s an internal PR flack memo (built  from the internal bibles on our IPs & products) just to give you an idea of at least one of the headaches you’ll have to endure while in Cleveland this weekend. Expect to schedule your meeting(s) with AJ around his interviews with various and sundry about this game, its touchstones with his work, etc.  I’ve already informed those from GMG running the show down there that you are NOT to be wasting your work time playing this sort of thing–leave that time for the children.

 

Online Thrills I & II

This MMORPG was created and launched by Earthorizons & GMG in October 2000 as a pulp-driven interactive world in which players could become 1920s and 1930s pulp characters working alongside many Bulwark pulp characters. The game’s core setting is the cursed city of Fairgeth, the standard location for stories of Ace Barrigan and other characters (though the game adds many characters from a variety of 1930s Bulwark pulps and comic books).

Since its initial worldwide launch in October 1999, Online Thrills has built and maintained a modest average audience of subscribers in the millions. Its two releases (in 2000 and 2003) were City Under Fire (an expanded Fairgeth moved up to the 1930’s filled with gangsters, Nazis, and demons) and Haunted Highways (expanding the territories and adding 4 smaller towns and the environs among them and the Fairgeth metropolis). Since that third release, the game has relied on fans to build their own sub-games using online generators and the tacit approval of the game developers to use some open-sourced elements of their original platform.

Plans are in the works for a major and far more immersive game experience to be released in late 2008. All information on the game has been tightly controlled, and all that has publicly been revealed is a release schedule:

  • Online Thrills II: Fairgeth to New Jericho (September 2008)
  • Online Thrills II: New Jericho to Fort Corax (February 2010)
  • Online Thrills II: Ravens to Svetlantzek (June 2011)
  • Online Thrills II: The Crossroads (August 2013)

Fans have been chewing on these scant details for more than a year and have built anticipation on seeing the other Citiestoried locations (and their characters). However, even more excitement comes from the Crossroads, since it has always been exclusively a Bulwark Comics notion and fans want to see even more modern and more powerful characters in their games.

As of June 18, 2008, the online discussion forums for Bulwark Publications have exploded with theories and commentary with the announcement that there would be a major preview and chance to play the beta version of the game at GrealKon in Cleveland on Saturday and Sunday only. Lotteries among ticket/badge holders for the convention would take place on Thursday and Friday nights with the lucky 150 players chosen at random among those at the convention and announced at 11:58pm on Friday night with demos starting when the main hall opens that Saturday morning.

October 11, 2012

Bulwark 7: Contents May Shift

Author: Steven Schend - Categories: Bulwark Publishing, Citiestoried, Nonfiction Works, ParadigMagic, Publishing

TO: Oscar Kharm, A.J. Soltare

FR: Charles Meade

DA: July 20, 2008

RE: Men of Letters & Action TOC

 

Misters Kharm and Soltare,

 

Yes, I know you’ve both insisted many times that I refer to you as Oscar and A.J., but habits and propriety die hard among those of us in the editorial trenches.

That said, I’m sending along the tentative table of contents for Men of Letters & Action for your perusal and tacit approval. We can discuss any particulars about the structure when I get to Cleveland this week or when Mr. Kharm can visit our Chicago offices.

In short, we’ve opted for a chronological structure. We break the book into four parts of two decades each, allowing us to see the initial letters build toward one of the best writer friendships on record. While this makes some topics and details more complex and harder to track/follow for readers, it’s more organic and lifelike in that we simply sort the letters by date and let the conversations speak for themselves.

While Mr. Montgomery’s writing begins almost ten years before Soltare’s, this gets ignored other than in conversations discussing such works after the fact. I’ve chosen only to list his complete bibliography as an appendix (the same with Mr. Soltare’s output as well). This allows the book to be more about their friendship and “things that mattered to writers of their times” rather than a catalogued biography of the writers and their works.

I’m still working to gain Conrad’s approval to make it easier for new readers to follow the threads of conversation among the letters. This means more sidebars to underscore the significance of some comments or simply to remind folks of the contemporary history in your letters (as an off-hand reference to “the on-going problems in [X]” needs more than a letter’s date for clarity).  His argument against such a move is simple—it adds cost in my time to make said clarifications, work for graphics in layout and execution before printing, and it adds another check/step during galleys. I’ll have another discussion with him before I leave for Cleveland and let you know the status of the book and its prospective layout at that time. I’m holding out hope that sidebars will win over footnotes, but as long as people can understand what’s being discussed, we all win.

Here’s the very basic TOC, and I can clarify exactly what’s in each chapter when I meet you. In short, it’s a basic assumption that each chapter will roughly span 6-8 years to allow us twenty years per part and within three chapters. However, the correspondence was greatest between 1936 and 1954, so Parts I and II have more chapters and pages than the remainder of the book.

 

Introduction

Prologue/Intro by Publisher Oscar Kharm, as one of the few Bulwark professionals who has had connections and contact with both men.

 

Part I: The 1930’s and 1940’s

Chapter 1: The Start of a Beautiful Friendship (1931-1935)

Re: introductions, first collaborations, creation of Solomon Lazarus

Chapter 2: Fighting through the Great Depression (1936-1941)

Re: the Redressor, the Gaslight, Lexicon Jones, Ace Barrigan, Brass Bradley, Fairgeth & other Citiestoried locales/characters, etc.

Chapter 3: The War Years (1942-1945)

Re: Real world issues, continuing work outside (and inside?) the war, etc.

Chapter 4: Help Across the Waves (1946-1949)

Re: post-war England & America, changes in tone & style, etc.

 

Part II: The 1950’s and 1960’s

Chapter 5: Shine Up the Old (1950-1955)

Re: slow work years, bits about radio, movies, character revivals, etc.

Chapter 6: Feeling Outside of the Process (1956-1963)

Re: editorial changes to older materials, reprints, & paperback collections

Chapter 7: Spanning the Generation Gaps (1964-1969)

Re: Bulwark’s Silver Age comics work, Beatle mania, “Sixties”

 

Part III: The 1970’s and 1980’s

Chapter 8: Stories in Motion (1970-1979)

Re: the cartoons & comics off your old works and new

Chapter 9: A Third Renaissance (1980-1989)

Re: Bulwark’s Bronze Age comics work & spin-off licenses

 

Part IV: The 1990’s to Today

Chapter 10: Sunset Years (1990-1996)

Re: reception of old work, respect of peers, awards & new reprints, etc.

Chapter 11: AJ Alone (1997-2006)

Re: letters to others about Monty and/or his family to AJ, modern work on major revamp/relaunch of many properties

Chapter 12: Epilogue

Re: AJ’s obits for John Farnsworth, Ed Page, and Blake Montgomery

 

Part V: Appendices

Bibliography for Blake Hart Montgomery (1924-1996)

Bibliography for Alexander John Soltare (1931-2008)

Characters Created or Co-Created by Montgomery or Soltare

 

Again, thank you both for all your time, input, and aid in this project. I look forward to seeing you Thursday night, AJ, and perhaps you can solve that mystery regarding those odd letters for me.

 

Respectfully,

 

Charles “Chuck” Meade

 

PS: Just for full sharing of information, here’s my original thematic plan/TOC that fell by the wayside five months back.

I originally liked this plan better as it encapsulated discussions and topics that spanned decades of your correspondence. It also let browsers find snippets of info where they expected them. The major problem with this organization was time consumption in terms of sorting and making the anecdotal editorial anecdotes out of the bodies of the letters. It also left behind the obvious friendships built by said letters and merely used your letters as sources from which to build a Bulwark publishing history. Still, thought you’d find it of interest in some way.

 

Respectfully Yours

Opening chapter/intro that sets the stage with your initial letters, introductions, and getting to know each other as writers and people

 

Dime Dreadfuls and the British Pulps?

Chapter on The Redressor, the Gaslight, and other British exclusive characters

 

Ace, Brass, Cops, & Detectives

Chapter on Brass Bradley, Ace Barrigan, & other noir/detective pulps

 

Cities Made of Stories

Chapter on all “Citiestoried” locales (Fairgeth, New Jericho, Norbridge, Fort Corax, Myrford, Vereule, the twin cities of Svetlantzek, & Portanika) and their work therein

 

Kharndam Rising / Kharndam Come

Two chapters on the fantasy world for which you two are famous (one on the building of the world & pulps end; one on the comics and the reprints in the 1960’s and today)

 

A Gold Mine in Four-Colors

Chapter on the other Golden & Silver Age comics works by both men

 

Sundry Wonders and One-Offs

Chapter on random works, stories not linked into any series (at least at first), etc.

 

Under Cover: The Bulwark House Names

Chapter on the discussions on the corporate house names, your work therein, your thoughts (beyond what’s noted in the letters for a sidebar, perhaps?), etc.

 

Men Illuminated (A.J. & Monty & the Movies)

Short chapter on the licensed use of many characters, your involvement (or lack thereof) in the movie or television versions, etc.

 

By the By

Chapter for random and sundry letters and discussions that don’t apply within the above structure but retain some benefit for the readers in terms of learning more of what makes their favorite writers tick

 

Requiem

Chapter for discussions on the passing of contemporaries, friends, and others; also includes AJ’s published obits for John Farnsworth, Ed Page, and Blake Montgomery

 

Appendices

Complete bibliographies for each author, sorted chronologically; also has lists for each character created or co-created by said authors and their appearances (and how many appearances of said characters were not done by the two authors in this book)

 

 

September 27, 2012

Bulwark 6: Bulwark Publications History

Author: Steven Schend - Categories: Bulwark Publishing, History

Bulwark Publications—A History

Bromley Kharm came to the American Colonies in 1679 as an importer of British goods (via his family’s many businesses in England). His business and family prospered, and he died succeeded by four sons and five daughters (all of whom had equally sizable families). By 1756, his great-grandson August established a printing-house in Boston and named it Bulwark Press.

“A Treatise on the Natives along the Allegheny,” an eight-page pamphlet by Samuel Alriss, became the first publication from Bulwark Press in early October 1756. There are three extant and complete copies on display at requisite Bulwark Publications headquarters in Toronto, London, and Chicago and another copy owned by the Kharm family at their English estate. Five known copies remain in private hands, while another nine exist at Oxford and various Ivy League colleges. The last time a copy came to auction in 1997, the “Treatise” sold for $38,000 to an unknown buyer.

During the rise toward American independence, many younger Kharms supported or actually became Sons of Liberty (including Lincoln, August’s nephew, and his children). Many others (including the related Hullark and Arlan clans) remained loyal to the British Crown and emigrated among various Canadian provinces by 1772. Family skills and traditions stayed strong, and the Hullarks remained printers and publishers with Guardian Publishing.

In 1843, the last British Kharm relation died without issue, leaving the eldest of the North American Kharms—Barnett Kharm, age 52—a baron’s title and manor (Geneva House manor outside of Chichester, Sussex) with additional properties and lands around the United Kingdom. While his two elder sons remained in Canada with their printing business, Barnett and his youngest children emigrated to England for the first time.

By 1855, Cullen Kharm built Rampart Press in London and restored the British family name & fortune. By 1897, he unified business relations with his Canadian and American cousins to merge the three printer-publishers under one corporation—Bulwark Publications. Cullen placed his five sons at the heads of the largest and most lucrative Bulwark holdings before his death in 1901. Control of Bulwark was a contentious issue for decades because of this heavy-handed move. After influenza wiped out the entire American branch of the Kharm family (and many relations by marriage) by 1920, the English branch of the family has had unshakeable control of the publishing empire.

Bulwark’s most visible growth spurt came between the 1920s and the 1940s when four different houses in three countries put between 15 and 30 Bulwark-owned pulps on the stands at any given time. As the era of the fiction pulps began to fade, Bulwark diversified its properties by licensing radio and movie serials, toys, comic strips, and comic books. Guardian Comics printed its first comic books in 1936, followed by Bulwark Comics in 1940. By 1942, the two companies’ comics and characters were only eclipsed by National Periodicals/DC Comics and Fawcett Comics in the 40s.

Another reason for Bulwark’s longevity and success (at least according to some in publishing circles) is their apparent honesty toward its creative staff. Since the beginning of the 20th century, all of Bulwark’s companies have reliably paid higher rates for short and long fiction and nonfiction work and even paid out royalties on reprinted materials. However, some have always complained about a lack of control under their auspices. Bulwark has had an ironclad work-for-hire standard on all of their published and licensed materials since 1899 (with the only exception being the WISHLAND book series as a shared-copyright with the Ventesch family). In short, Bulwark always paid better in exchange for total control of characters and worlds created under its roof.

Books—Fiction

Bulwark Press: 1797-1897

Guardian Publishing: 1958-1978

Rampart Press: 1877-1940

Bulwark Publications: 1940-present

Books—Nonfiction

Bulwark Press: 1797-1878

Rampart Press: 1878-1940

Bulwark Publications: 1940-present

Chapbooks, Pamphlets, & Limited Publications

Bulwark Press: 1756-1877

Guardian Publishing: 1772-1825

Rampart Press: 1855-1877

Comic Books

Guardian Publishing: 1936-1958

Bulwark Publications: 1940-1948; 1964-1991; 1998-2008; 2013?

Dime Novels & Dreadfuls

Bulwark Press: 1849-1921

Guardian Publishing: 1846-1876

Rampart Press: 1855-1897

Fiction Magazines & Pulps

Guardian Publishing: 1902-1927

Rampart Press: 1902-1924

Bulwark Press: 1902-1973

Bulwark Publications: 1989-1998; 2009-present

Games & Licensed Print Media

Guardian Media Group: 1978-present

Newspapers

Guardian Publishing: 1825-1939 (Guelph Guardian)

Nonfiction Magazines

Guardian Publishing: 1877-1916

Rampart Press: 1877-1920

Bulwark Publications: 1902-1973; 1980-present

Non-Print Media & Other Licenses

Bulwark Publications: 1928-present

Guardian Publishing: 1991-present

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