In the late 1930's, the pulps suddenly faced competition from two new sources. Comic books had been around since the late 1920's, but most of them were nothing more than reprints of newspaper strips. Quickly, however, they began to print original material, and when the first Superman story was published -- Action Comics, 1938 -- comic book sales exploded. The superhero comics -- with simple stories, vividly told -- pulled the juvenile market away from the pulps.

At the same time, publishers began to experiment with a new format: paperback books. The paperbacks offered novel-length fiction for a cheap price, but without the sleazy reputation of the pulp magazines. During World War II, paperback book drives for soldiers overseas made the new format a favorite of returning troops.

By the end of the war, the pulps were facing a slow but inevitable decline. All but the most reliable money-makers -- the detective, science-fiction and Western pulps -- were cancelled. Then even the old cash-cows began to lose money. In 1949, Street & Smith abruptly shut down its entire pulp-magazine line (with the exception of Astounding, which continued in digest form). After 1950, the rest of the field slowly disintegrated, and by mid-decade, they were all gone.

Nevertheless, the influence of the pulps continued. A few of the science fiction magazines survived in their digest form. Many of the hard-boiled writers moved on to the paperback market, where they founded the new genre known as noir. Superman and Batman carried the lineage of Doc Savage and the Shadow into a new era. The pulps died, but the pulp tradition became central to American pop culture.

Bibliography

If you're looking for the history of the first paperbacks, the best account I know of is Over My Dead Body by Lee Server (the author of Danger is My Business). There are countless histories of comic books; two that I know of are The Steranko History of the Comics and (a personal favorite of mine) Jules' Feifer's The Great Comic Book Heroes.

Other Sites

• J.A.M.'s Nostalgia Page includes links to all sorts of pages (including this one).
• Film Noir and Pulp Fiction is devoted primarily to the former, so I've included it here.
• Ian Fleming's James Bond novels, and the movies based on them, were also clearly inspired by the pulps.  Learn more about the connection on this well-written page about Bond and the Pulps.
• Tawdry Town -- A fun page, devoted to the lurid paperback era.
• Paperback Cover Art Illustration Display -- A page devoted to the greatest paperback artists.
• Here's a page devoted to Pulp Fiction Postcards (really paperbacks) from Archive Books.
• Film Noir is yet another site devoted to the genre.
• Greatest Films of the 1940's is self-explanatory.
• Cyberboiled is another site devoted predominantly to contemporary hard-boiled fiction.
• Here's a page on one of the great noir authors of the paperback period: Savage Life -- Jim Thompson in Hollywood.
• Comic Book Covers from the 1940's -- This is the only site that I've been able to find devoted to Golden Age comic books.  You can also turn to The Grand Comic-Book Database Project.
• Pulp Images -- Actually, these are old paperbacks, but who's keeping track?
• Pulp and Paperback Covers from Chris Grau -- in this section for the same reason.