Arts & Entertainment: Pulp Fix(a)tion

In this interview, we meet Jeff Luther, the genius behind a gleefully lurid line of pulp postcards

Tacky Living: Jeff, thanks for taking the time to talk to us. I'm familiar with your work and love it - I first bumped into your cards in a bookstore in downtown Mountain View, CA and was instantly smitten - but would you please describe your business and products for the uninitiated?

JL: PC Design is a business producing a line of postcards whose images feature the covers from vintage paperback book covers from the 1940s - 1960s. Nearly all covers are from U.S. paperbacks - a few British are in there as well - and a few of the covers are either from 1950s magazines or from 1930s 'pulp' magazines. A large number of themes, or 'genres,' are featured in the line of 312 postcards: 'girlie,', science fiction, mystery, drug-related, gay/lesbian, and just plain 'offbeat,' 'lurid,' 'retro' covers from zany images, book titles, or cover blurbs (i.e., the line below the title describing the book.)

Additionally, I've put these images on refrigerator magnets and light switchplates, and other companies have licensed and released them in books, keychains, candles, gift wrap, computer mousepads and screensavers, and historically on posters and T-shirts.

Tacky Living: Your business is neat, but a bit unusual. How did you get started?

JL: The answer is a bit long, depending on how far back I go, but briefly: friends were coming over to my house and wanted to look at my paperback book collection (I had some 1,500 or so of my then 10,000+ books displayed in bookshelves in my living room) and were being amazed at the covers. I saw that people got a big kick out of the covers but that too few people had access to the wonderful art, crazy titles, and so on. As a 'lark,' since my day job then was doing contract programming and consulting, I decided in very early 1995 to come out with 24 postcards, find some way of marketing and selling them and see if the general public had an interest in them.

The path to releasing 24 postcards was rocky: copyright issues, finding a printer, learning to use a scanner and image touchup program so I could clean the covers of scratches, bends, etc. (these books were designed as 25-cent throwaways, some 50 or more years old already and many of my books weren't in real good condition), finding sales reps. or a distributor to sell the cards (this was before the internet),these were all tasks that had to get done.

One note: I'd already seen others doing a few of these books on cards or a bound book of postcards, but in all cases were printing the covers as they found them, bends and nicks and tears and scratches and all! I vowed to do it the 'right' (i.e., A/R) way: clean up the image and restore it to how it might have looked new. This includes rebalancing color and skin tones, etc.

One major concern for me when I started was the political incorrectness of these images; I was afraid of upsetting lots of women. You can probably see as I released more cards that I 'pushed the envelope' of P.I. even more, because they didn't offend people. The buying public 'got' the humor of it. In fact, women are the major buyers of this card line.

Tacky Living: What do people do with the cards, particularly if they order a collection? Let's face it - 400 cards is a lot to send out!

JL: The line's actually 312 cards now, but... I guess folks who order the entire set of cards are postcard collectors. My cards fall within the group called "moderns" and I suspect collectors get my cards for that reason.

Tacky Living: Do the covers of these books bear any resemblance to the stuff inside? Did anybody actually read these books, or did they just look at the covers?

JL: Back when the books were released? The books with lurid covers were extremely tame and only suggestive of sex back then: "One look into each other's eyes and they retired to the bedroom." was about as far as they went. The covers, however, were designed to promise more, and the largely male population back then were the target market. I'd guess they at least tried to read them; millions were sold back then, and people weren't going to pay for just the cover, I wouldn't think.

The covers often didn't promise anything of what was inside the book. Many times the cover was reused for a different title, and I remember one cover was used first for a mystery or general fiction title, then for a lesbian title!

(The history is that the American paperback industry began in November, 1939 with Pocket Books, Inc.'s release of The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck. An experiment, really, to see if the American public was interested in a 25-cent pocket-sized book. Shortly after this, WW II began and though a few other publishers had begun by the early '40s - Avon, Popular, Dell, to name a few - it was the collaboration of Pocket Books and American Penguin (another publisher) coming out with free paperbacks for the G.I.s which caused the market to be born. These free paperbacks, called Armed Services Editions and printed in oblong sizes on presses used for the magazine publishing industry, got the American male reading. When the War ended, back the GIs came and the paperback publishing industry really got going. At one time - late '40s to mid/late '50s - I'd guess that there were literally hundreds of publishers, big and little, coming out with standard and digest-sized paperbacks. Many only published a few before going under; others like Pocket Books, Dell, Avon, Ballantine and others endured many changes in the publishing industry in the late '50s, often combining as huge publishing conglomerates.)

Tacky Living: What are some of the common themes of the covers?

JL: In the '40s the most popular themes were mystery, science fiction and westerns, duplicating the popular themes found in the 1920's/'30s 'pulp' magazines, with Pocket Books publishing general fiction 'classics' as well. In an effort, I suspect, to attract more (male) readers, publishers began evolving their covers, and themes (AKA 'genres') to display sex and love. The sexy covers, regardless of the genre, became the norm in the '50s. So much so, in fact, that Senate obscenity hearings were held to fight that evolution.

By the latter '50s you can see 'nurse' books start to be popular - catering to the woman reader. This evolved into the Canadian publisher Harlequin coming out with romance novels, the most popular women's genre today, I'm sure. Interesting, though, that Harlequin only began this in the late 1950s; in their earlier releases they specialized in nonfiction, sci-fi, etc.

With the evolution toward the more lurid came other themes like gay and lesbian, and by the 1960s the 'innocent' novel with the lurid cover gave way to hard-core pornography, not generally available but sold under-the-counter--the major publishers weren't publishing these - but others were.

I've also come out in postcard line with what I'd call "title" themes: a set of cards with related titles, almost like telling a story: cards like Don't Push Me Around to Don't Come Crying To Me (PC-145 to PC-148), or She Tried To Be Good to Call Me Bad (PC-281 to PC-286) come to mind. Some people 'get' this and I see order the entire run of 4 or 8 cards; others just choose the one(s) which speak to him or her.

I draw on my paperback collection for most of my images, though I did buy from a vintage paperback dealer his collection of some 15,000 or more photos of all the books he'd been selling over a period of a dozen years or so. Thus, I have a large 'database' of images from which to choose.

Tacky Living: What time period are the covers from?

JL: I generally choose from the 1940s through 1960s. (The highlight decade in terms of lurid covers and offbeat titles has to be the 1950s.)

Of course, I am not giving equal balance to all genres and periods, so my card line is not representative of what the book covers were like then. Of the more than 20,000 books I now own, I would say that maybe some - and this is just a guess - 1,000 to 1,500 might have general appeal, where 'general appeal' is defined as a market where the offbeat, lurid and outrageous cover is what's bought. I throw in some covers which I know will be 'loss leaders,' like Smalltalk (PC-027), or the westerns or mystery, or - in my latest release of 72 cards in 12/1999, Eat Dog Or Die! (PC-279), Fully Dressed And In His Right Mind (PC-291), just to round out the card line or because I (or my wife) personally get a kick out of the title or cover blurb. Abnormals Anonymous (PC-242) is another example of one I knew was definitely what I liked when I first saw the book, and it's proven to be popular as well. Some cards are gimmes: I'm certain that it'll be a big seller, especially as I've seen sales over the years and know better what the market wants. Thus Reform School Girl (PC-095), Quickie! (PC-137), Pit Stop Nympho (PC-201), Office Tramp (PC245), I, B.I.T.C.H. (PC-256) haven't proven me wrong.

Note that I don't always know when a card will or will not be a popular seller: I did not know how popular Don't Ever Love Me (PC-147) would be!, and another 'sure winner,' so I thought, like Mistress Of Satan's Roost (PC-268) doesn't sell as well as I would have guessed.

Tacky Living: Which cards are your favorites?

JL: I think the titles, as a group, are the most fun: I Married A Dead Man (PC-023), The Wicked And The Warped (PC-054), Girls Out Of Hell! (PC-063), Take It And Like It (PC-125), the aforementioned Quickie! and Don't Ever Love Me, Sin On Wheels (PC-202), I Wake Up Screaming (PC-214), The Queer Sisters (PC-224), and Satan Was A Man (PC-296) are some of my favorites. This is what I look for, and if I can find a great title *with* a great image, so much the better!

Titles are great for customers too: Here are two sample stories: A woman buys 100 of I Married A Dead Man to use as an invitation to her "Divorce Party".

A couple buys Why Get Married? (PC-061) for their wedding invitation, Shameless Honeymoon (PC-011) as their 'thank-you' note and the following year contact me for Smalltalk as the announcement because they're expecting a baby!

Tacky Living: You've mentioned some strange cards; which would you say is the strangest you've ever published?

JL: Probably Dykes On Bikes (PC-243), since it has the most outrageous title and a cover featuring topless, chain-and-mace females sparring on motorcycles! I'd guess the most 'edgy' and lurid too and I hesitated printing it for that reason.

Other 'strange' cards that come to mind are two: The Hellcats (PC-166) and The Young Punks (PC-290). In both case, the main person who posed for the image got in touch with me! In Hellcats it was the woman who had originally posed for the movie poster and didn't even know that the publisher of the novel had used the poster for the book cover, and in Punks it was the person sitting on the trashcan who said he'd worked for the publisher in some capacity in marketing or something, and one day he and two others got rounded up to pose for the artist for this bookcover!.

Tacky Living: Were there any covers which were so awful in one way or another that you couldn't bring yourself to make cards out of them?

JL: I stay away from the harder core images from the 1960s, certainly. Dykes On Bikes is as edgy as I'll go. My wife helps veto others, like a Satan worship cover or a cover with the title I Was A Nazi Flyer. In both cases, the cover artist did a great job. But in both there's the real chance of offending someone in a serious way.

One or two of the bondage-type covers are already offensive to a few. One card called Kiss My Fist! (PC-134) with a great title got someone very angry because it depicts a guy ready to slug a woman. Interesting, because no one has complained about Warped Women (PC-079) because it's a woman's hand ready to whip another woman, and I suspect that if Kiss My Fist! had a woman hitting the guy, it would be OK. (There's a commercial currently on TV depicting a bikini-clad woman and a very overweight man running toward each other on the beach. As soon as he's close she whacks him with her arm across his neck and he falls down. Camera pans back to show several standing women and a slew of overweight men lying all along the beach!! Now... reverse the genders of who's standing vs. who is lying on the ground... Amazing that this is on television!)

Tacky Living: Which cards are the most popular with your customers?

JL: I'd say that the most popular card is Marijuana Girl (PC-016), though Reform School Girl, Pit Stop Nympho, Dykes On Bikes and Satan Was A Man are right behind in popularity

Tacky Living: What should people do if they're interested in checking out your cards?

JL: They can get to my website (pulpcards.com) and either order directly off the site by downloading and printing an order form, or by requesting a catalog.

Tacky Living: Do you offer other products that readers might enjoy?

JL: Besides postcards, I sell keychains, T-shirts, mousepads and the set of screensavers directly off my site. Additionally (though it's mainly for wholesale/dealer customers) there is contact info. for a company selling candles and giftwrap, and another selling greeting cards.

As I mentioned, I have made some prototypes for refrigerator magnets and switchplates. I will likely be adding these for sales on a retail basis to my website in the future.

Tacky Living: What's in store for the future?

JL: More cards, I'd guess. I have some 200 or more images that I've run across in my search for good covers and would like to eventually publish many of those. Copyright clearances, time, money and the fact that this is a one-person, home-based business keep me from being able to expand the business as quickly as customers want.

In terms of other products, two different book publishers are coming out with bound books of select images for one company, and magnetic postcards for the other. And, lastly, a startup company is working on doing T-shirts of some of the more popular images.