Here’s another find from the forums, this time the Anime News Network Forums. A poster discovered that the Pulp magazine website is still up. Pulp was a magazine published by Viz in its pre-Shonen-Jump days and it featured a much edgier and more mature mix. The site has interviews with creators like Naoki Yamamoto and Junko Mizuno, reviews, and articles about manga and creators. There’s lots of non-manga content too, articles about films and music. The site is a bit frustrating as there isn’t much content from the earlier issues online, and very little manga, but it’s still an interesting read. If you only read one story, check out the nine circles of manga hell. Note that the content here is much more adult, in every sense of the word, than Shonen Jump.
I highly recommend for anyone to pick up back issues of PULP or any of the collections that have been released. Out of all the anthologies out there, it was by far one of the best. My favorite series were Dance Till Tomorrow, Heartbroken Angels, Short Cuts, Even A Monkey Can Draw Manga, Voyeurs & Voyeurs, Inc., and Uzumaki.
As for the missing year 1 articles…they’re collected in a book VIZ put out called “Fresh PULP.”
LINK: http://store.viz.com/browse/FRESHPULP/ALL/s.S2J7cb6j
One of the columns even had its own spin-off book called “TokyoScope: The Japanese Cult Film Companion.”
By far, though, the “SECRET COMICS JAPAN” book has to be my all-time PULP favorite release next to the post-PULP Battle Royale novel. It has some of the strangest and most-beautiful manga you’ll ever read.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1569313725/104-2708359-3091946?v=glance&n=283155
I do hope Viz will consider reviving Pulp in a few years (as Shoenen Jump readers get older) it was a magazine I liked the idea of, though it was too hit and miss for my tastes at the time. (My first taste of Junji Ito, a middle chapter of Uzumaki, didn’t work for me for a few years.)