Mexican Pulp Art

By María Cristina Tavera

The lurid cover art of Mexican pulp novels are a pop culture revelation. Here, never before collected, are the often surreal and psychedelic images of extraterrestrials, robots, dinosaurs, dastardly killers, Zorro, Santo and many other icons from stories of suspense, mystery, romance and the supernatural. Presents the most striking examples of this sensational art form of the 1960s and 1970s.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1932595228
• ISBN13: 9781932595222
• Release Date: May 2007
• Publisher: Feral House
• Length: 140 Pages
• Weight: 0.64 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.6" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Lurid Treat

As a writer and lover of campy horror, I find delight and inspiration in the pages of this super-colorful and imaginative book. Flipping through the pages of this book is truly a wonderful experience. The color quality of the images is amazing, and each painting tells a wonderful and shocking story. In fact, I based a short-story writing assignment on these images for my creative writing class. There are many images that evoke a story in the viewer's mind. I find myself browsing through the book all the time just to get another jolt of vivid imagination. It just makes me happy. Most of the images are completely over-dramatic and lurid, and these are the ingredients that make this such a fun book. The book also includes an introduction that explains the original context of these art pieces as covers for pulp fiction magazines. It also puts the images in a cultural context, a mixture of popular fiction and folklore. This book will inspire the imagination of any writer in the field of supernatural fiction, and any fan of the lurid and the bizarre.

Worth buying

I was initially disappointed when I received this, because I was expecting Mexican book covers with lurid titles on the images. It turns out these are painted COMIC BOOK covers, not book covers. The images were taken from the original paintings, so there are no graphics on the images. The more I look at the book, the more I like it. Bizarre imagery, similar in style to the old Dell and Gold Key painted covers, but much weirder. No sex, but lotsa strange. Any chance of someone putting out a book of just Mexican wrestling movie posters and lobby cards? Ay curamba, that would be cool!

love the pulp art

I love the pictures in this book, but the dimensions of the book are small. It would have been much better if the book had been larger.

Pulp Culture History

In the 1960's America saw the rise of the erotic pulp paperback. The simple object of the covers of these books was to lure in the potential buyer with the promise of sex. The more lurid the cover was, the better the chance that the book would be purchased. The marketing plan worked to perfection and millions of the books were sold. Close to the same time a similar strain of book was being released in Mexico and the covers were designed in the same manner, to entice purchase. The difference between the marketing in America and the marketing in Mexico was vast. In the States they peddled softcore porn and prurient interests on the cover of their pulps, while Mexico went for the straight up bizarre. Mexican Pulp Art is a celebration of the art that graced the covers of the paperbacks that were released south of the US border. Maria Cristina Tavera pens the introduction to this collection. Tavera relates how the covers were used to lure the purchaser in and with 30 million pulps being produced monthly the competition was tough. The introduction is brief but revealing, telling of the different types of pulp titles that were produced in Mexico and how they were marketed to the public. She also relates how the books were assembled by the creative teams that put them together as well as how the themes covered in the pulps related to the Mexican way of life. After the introduction we get to the meat of the book and that is the vibrant, full-page reproductions of the cover art. Mexican pulp covers celebrate sex as much as their American counterparts, but they also throw in violence, sci-fi weirdness, lucha libre, psychedelia, murder, and crime. The covers that are collected in this book are from the 60's and 70's and all covers contained in this book are from a defunct publisher, Editorial Continental. All the artwork reproduced in this book is from the personal collections of two individuals Bobbette Axelrod and Ted Frankel. The artwork in this book is vivid, colorful and downright weird at some points. As Maria Cristina Tavera states in her introduction, "the fantasy elements reflect Mexican attitudes about life, death, mysticism, and the supernatural." Some of the highlights of the art: A gorilla breaking through a door to assault a man, giant ants attacking men, fighting invisible men, a fire starter, scenes of murder, suicide and mayhem, ghosts, corpses, the supernatural, gun toting children, sexpot women, aliens and much more. As the introduction states, the pulp covers blur the line between the mundane and the fantastic. I have a soft spot for all things from Mexico. This is probably the result of an active imagination as a child. When I was growing up I told of how, in a past life, I had lived in Mexico. My story was that I was a toothless mute who pumped gas on a dirt airfield somewhere in Mexico. Ever since then I have immersed myself in Mexican culture, this book adds to my collection of Mexican art and also to the kno