DDR Pulps: Dinoland Vol. 1, Issue 1
Posted by John Brownlee
While recently wandering the Hackescher Markt flöhmarkt with the inamorata, our joint bibliophilia inexorably led us to a slush pile of DDR-era East German pulps, fifty pfennigs to the kilo.
Although the quality of ablauted prose in these magazines is as cheap and itchy as the newsprint, the covers are fascinating. Judging solely from these covers, there seem to be four genres of DDR pulps.
The first genre is also the largest: romance pulps that are usually bound in bright and florid photographic covers featuring the real life weddings of alarmingly mucousy looking East German couples. Given the romance pulps’ cover models, all of whom have a certain Smeagol-like quality that identifies them as villagers caught at the peripheral of Chernobyl’s fallout area, these photographs are likely plucked from submissions of wedding pictures sent in by actual readers.
There’s then an additional three genres:
a. Pulps about trucks.
b. Pulps about monsters.
c. Pulps about both monsters and trucks.
As an example of the vibrant subgenre c, then, I give you the cover to Dinoland vol. 1, issue 1. There’s no actual publication or copyright date anywhere in the magazine, but given the Dinoland logo’s font, this must have come out around 1993, around the time of Jurassic Park.
Still, the cover is interesting. One can only imagine the progression of events that led to this snapshot in time. Two stranded RV campers are changing a flat tire in Germany’s vast and arid desert wastelands when a rampaging Tyrannosaurus pulls up to them. Eager for help, one camper lifts an arm in an insistent attempt to flag the dinosaur down. However, his companion is more cautious, and places one hand — quivering with trepidation — upon her boyfriend’s elbow.
“Gunter!” she whispers, “Look at his arms! That dinosaur’s never going to be able to help us change this tire.”
Categories: DDR Pulps, Dinosaurs, Pulps
Posted at 11:18 am on October 1, 2009
12 Comments -
For educational reasons: This is not from East Germany. The currency (DM) and the countries it was exported to should have told you this. In the GDR people paid with Marks (M). Exports to “imperialistic” states were not announced openly. And the paper and layouts of magazines were much worse. Believe me, I had to read them.
Comment by Gunter — October 1, 2009 @ 11:44 am
I was a tad vague, and used a bad example to start the series. Also, ultimately, I don’t give a shit. Still, this one may very well have been from East Germany, considering it was published in 1993. The Deutschemark was being used even in East Germany then.
Comment by John Brownlee — October 1, 2009 @ 11:47 am
Not to snark, but Gunter is correct – this is not a DDR comic. In addition to all the Western European currencies all over it showing that it was published for those markets, if you’re right about the Jurassic Park-inspired logo dating it to around 1993, it was published four years *after* the fall of the wall.
According to this link, the Dinoland series was in fact part of the Jurassic Park-inspired dinosaur craze, and was published every two weeks from October 1993 to May 1995 by Bastei-Verlag in Bergisch Gladbach.
Comment by Benjamin Stürmer — October 1, 2009 @ 11:52 am
Sorry to add a second comment, Brownlee, but I didn’t see your response until I’d posted. Bergisch Gladbach is just east of Cologne, so no dice there, either. :) Not giving a shit is a good defense, though – we’ll let it slide on account of the excellent cover art.
Comment by Benjamin Stürmer — October 1, 2009 @ 11:55 am
Thanks for the info, Ben! And, well, crap. I’m not going to waver in calling this “DDR Pulps” though, no matter how much evidence is presented to me: it just has a better ring to it than “German Pulps.”
Comment by John Brownlee — October 1, 2009 @ 11:57 am
I have missed your prose dearly, sir. Attempts to stifle laughter at work were only successful in that no one gave me any funny looks, but I still thoroughly unable to maintain my typical stony misanthropy.
Comment by chesh — October 1, 2009 @ 11:58 am
“Gunter! Don’t wave down that stranger…he could be a rapist.”
Comment by Cascus — October 1, 2009 @ 12:10 pm
Shall I just call you a misguided Frenchman then? I mean, you’re probably not from France, but I like the ring of it.
Comment by lavvyan — October 1, 2009 @ 3:01 pm
[...] Yes, dammit, I know. I don’t care! ‘DDR Pulps’ just sounds [...]
Pingback by ECTOPLASMOSIS! » DDR Pulps: Trucker-King Issue 238 — October 2, 2009 @ 12:41 pm
First u post a misleading headline and then u are to vain to correct yourself my French American friend.
You are misrepresenting the truth 2 get hits and write ups? Bad whuffie. You damn right boing boing would not hype your blog if you did not use false claims to make your post more interesting. DDR pulpls about heroic truckers, what a bunch of crap.’ I don’t give a shit’ and (I make up my own stories about places I don’t give a shit about), that’s about all u are sharing here. And your refusal to learn a little history.
Those pulps are American btw, translated. BORING!
Have another Stein.
Comment by Herr bonobo — October 19, 2009 @ 11:44 am
[...] was pointed out that this pulp fiction was not from the DDR, the blog replied. “Yes, dammit, I know. I don’t care! ‘DDR Pulps’ just sounds [...]
Pingback by 15 Minutes to Buffalo. German Trucker Pulp « GIS: German Image Systems — October 19, 2009 @ 11:58 am
No matter how it may sound – it is just WRONG.
But if oyu insist on looking like an uneducated, US american peasant, so be it!
Comment by Jens (the other one) — October 19, 2009 @ 12:29 pm