Lit How Pulp is Star Wars and How Pulp should it be?

Well, of course Star Wars was inspired by and born out of Lucas love for Pulp SciFi stories of his youth (Flash Gordon, etc.) and we all can count plenty of Pulp influences on his movies, storytelling, characterisations, imagery etc.
But by now SW is more and can be more, as it is an entire world that can fit in any style StarWarsified as the rich variety of books, comics, movies and tv proof!

But how much Pulp do you want SW to be, still? What Pulp trends should it grow out of, or has it grown out of already? We arn't in the 30s-60s anymore and a lot changed in society as also reflected in fiction. Especially regarding gender equality, sexism in media, tropes shifting from "damsel in distress" to "strong woman" etc. SW today, especially with Disney and a majority shift of female, diversity and LGBTQ+ influences in Lucasfilm has surpassed not all but many tropes and shaken off a lot of past trappings the EU was entagled with still to varying degrees.

Classic Star Wars and Marvel comics are very pulpy, and novel-wise early SW novels are too. Han, Lando Adventures, Splinter... or one of the most Pulp SW works ever, the great COPL.

Not just recently, but in general, the love for retro stories, remakes, reboots and the like in movies but also other franchises has lead to a revival of lots of Pulp-era originated stories that got adapted for modern audiences, some changed, some closer to the original in their Pulpyness.

What works, what doesn't? And what does Pulp mean to you? How to even define it properly as different people read different things into the era and stories it generated. Some loved how it mixed genres, bringing western into space, noir into not just crime stories, or experimented with all kinds of alternate worlds, societies, rules and reflected on earth's ones in the process, transporting past earth cultures into space or analysing gender problems by putting different earth cultures on separate planets. Others prefer the Pulp visuals, the experimental architecture of the space age paired with old school retrofuturist imagination or the brutalism of the 20s-30s transported to space.

And as a visual bonus, have some Star Wars Art by Boris Vallejo (and yes the female dress code of the Pulp Era is disturbing... but that is an entirely different topic, or is it? I am more worried that all men have to be muscular! At least in Asterix I got belly-bearing male warriors and their curvy women fishslapping them to reason!):

 

Give me Star Wars Conan the Barbarian and Star Wars Cthulhu mythos while we’re at it.

 

I think that Star Wars shifting to a more serious direction after the Marvel years was a good move as it allowed to explore uncharted territory for the universe, stories with a lot of depth such as the KOTOR comics or Tales of the Jedi: Redemption, Shadows of Mindor, Traitor, Greg Keyes' books, Plagueis, etc. but at the same time, i feel that later era misses a lot of the charm of the late 70's and early 80's, in many ways the sillier elements of the old Star Wars was made more serious, giant Stormtroopers disappeared, and we didin't have more typical adventures with the big 3 focused on wacky adventures on original and creative alien worlds, particularly in the comics. Instead, modern Rebellion era stories were more serious and filled with continuity, which is all fine and good, but it makes me miss the feeling of the earlier stories in that era whenever i re-read the Empire or Rebellion series, the worst offender was the Star Wood series, far too much melodrama and dead serious characters, it wasn't allowed to have much fun, to the point where, when it did, it felt off.

In current Marvel comics it stays consistent with the tone of the movies for the Luke, Han and Leia comics, the Vader comics go for a more psychological angle, which i greatly enjoy for that character, but i feel there should be more pulpy stories in comic form starring the original heroes of Yavin, have some random adventures where they find an insane giant Gree monstuosity or whatever, something outlandish that has no purpose other than being a wacky adventure in the spirit of what ANH was trying to be and what the original Marvel years were.

So my answer is: Pulp it up to 11! Have both serious and philosophical stories coexist with pulpy shlock, let Star Wars be as varied as it can be, in all mediums, and as serious and thought-provoking as it can be, allow for both worlds to exist and be enjoyed on their own right.

 

Rather than quote the whole post, just mark me down as agreeing with everything @Irredeemable Fanboy said. As much as I love modern Star Wars with all its continuity and vast storytelling canvas, I also feel like it lost something when it became THE SAGA™ and left its freewheeling, pulpy, "From the Adventures of Luke Skywalker" roots in the past and basically became its own genre. It's why much of my favorite Star Wars is still, to this very day, the earliest - the Han Solo novels, the original Marvel comics and newspaper strips, etc.

How cool would it be if Del Rey released a series of slim paperbacks, starring the Big Three or various characters or whoever - marketed as being "From the Adventures of Luke Skywalker" and featuring cover designs like these:





Breezy, standalone adventures that aren't overly burdened by continuity or the need to advance THE SAGA™. Just pulpy fun in the old school tradition. I know Star Wars paperbacks aren't really a thing anymore, but like... how cool would that be?

 

That last one dates back to the Pomojema statue in Splinter of the Mind's Eye and Alan Moore's Marvel UK comics, which took a lot of influence from Lovecraft. Then Supernatural Encounters expanded on both those sources, and then there's Abeloth in FOTJ who's in many ways a cosmic horror-type figure... yeah, SW has had a surprisingly long history dabbling in this, even in the early days.

And as for Conan, we saw a lot of influence from the 1982 John Milius film version in the recent Book of Boba Fett series, as Robert Rodriguez is a huge fan of the character and turned Fett into this "warrior destined to become king"-type figure.

I remember being so surprised by that early "Adventures of Luke Skywalker" branding, which they kept up even as late as those Lando books. All other merchandise really pushed the Star Wars name, but the books really deemphasized that - you could be totally unaware of SW and pick them up as just original, standalone books. (The Ewok films even did the same thing!)

I know Pablo also bemoans the lack of "180-page'rs" in publishing, where you could have these shorter, pulpier stories that could (hypothetically) be adapted into film more easily than, say, the Thrawn Trilogy.

And as for me, I was surprised at how good the Lando books are. They have this reputation for being really silly and out-there, but they're so well-written for something that was (according to the author) written very quickly over a deadline. And yes, I do love those covers as well!

 

The "Ewoks" period was a weird one all the way around in terms of Star Wars logos and branding. The title card for the animated series had no Star Wars branding, while some merchandise (such as the action figures) did. Other merchandise (presumably stuff released closer to 1983) had Return of the Jedi branding. And lots of merchandise was released with neither Ewoks nor Star Wars branding - there was, for example, a whole series of children's books tied into the animated series that were simply labeled "An EWOK Adventure." (Meanwhile, the Droids series prominently displayed Star Wars branding most of the time, including the series title card.)

These branding questions around the early spinoff merchandise, films, etc. have always interested me. That's the sort of thing that would be perfect for a Pablo Twitter thread.

The covers are fantastic. They just don't make them like that anymore. (I love that the artist clearly used the Kenner Millennium Falcon toy as his reference.) And yeah, the novels themselves are fun. I've only read Flamewind of Oseon and Starcave of ThonBoka once each - just couldn't find copies in my neck of the woods until the omnibus edition came out when I was an adult - but my local library had a copy of Mindharp of Sharu that I hit up probably twenty different times. Other than the novelizations of ANH and ROTJ it might hold the record as my most-read Star Wars book!

 

Onscreen: fundamentally pulp, with a mythological overlay (which, actually, a lot of pulp has, although it's usually more window-dressing than in SW).

Andor just might be the first onscreen thing to *really* take a different approach. While I basically strongly prefer the onscreen stuff to stay rooted in its accessible-for-kids form, I am looking forward to Andor... I feel like the amount of onscreen content these days will allow it to tap the lit-based explorations of the larger galaxy in a way that probably wasn't "worth" screen time before. The TV shows thus far have done that a little bit, but kept to the pulp style rather strictly; Andor looks set to go "dark gritty and realistic". And while I personally don't like a lot of grimdarkness in my fantasy, I find that my affinity for the SW worldbuilding, and having read a lot more new canon stuff lately, has me ready for the dive.

 

Relatable characters in pulpy scenarios filled with pulpy visuals

 

I always thought the prequel era would be good for some pulp treatment; imagine a story involving Cad Bane in a old west style pulp story or a eldritch horror story set on Dathomir involving a downed clone trooper. The amount of short stories are endless if one can put their mind to it and not have to worry about mandated seriousness.

 

Maybe its a cop-out, but I think it should vary from story to story. TCW is pulpy and amazing, and Andor is one of the lease pulpy star wars things I have seen and it is also amazing. The Star Wars setting is big and flexible enough for all kinds of stories.

 

In my language, "pulp fiction" is very much related to the language used. Do you feel that a different language is used in the latest literature? I understand the gist of the thread, but my question is whether the latest literature is more sophisticated? Questions of the role models of the time excluded