Frank Bolle, Orlando Busino, Ron Goulart from a 2006 lunch in Westport.
Award winning writer and popular culture historian Ron Goulart has passed away, a day after his 89th birthday.
"Besides writing extensively about pulp fiction, including the seminal Cheap Thrills: An Informal History of Pulp Magazines (1972), Goulart had written for the pulps since 1952, when The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction published his first story, a sci-fi parody of letters to the editor. He went on to write dozens of novels and countless short stories, spanning genres and using a variety of pennames, including Kenneth Robeson, Joseph Silva, and Con Steffanson.
"In the 1970’s, Goulart wrote novels starring series characters like Flash Gordon and the Phantom, and in 1978 released Calling Dr. Patchwork (1978), a comic sci-fi novel that began the Odd Jobs, Inc. series; and created the brilliant newspaper strip, Star Hawks, with Gil Kane, most recently republished by IDW."
-- DownTheTubes
He was the ghost writer for William Shatner's Tekwar series of books. He also wrote a comic/mystery series of mystery books featuring Groucho Marx.
“… He was a great lover of comic books and a fine historian of the form. He dabbled now and then in writing for comics and at one point, collaborated with artist Gil Kane on an ahead-of-its-time newspaper strip called Star Hawks.
“The last time Ron and I were together – which I now sadly realize was too long ago – we had a long talk about how he wished he fit in better with the comic book field but kept finding more comfort in prose writing.
“He was awfully good at it. He was awfully good at everything he did.”
Ron was an early historian of pulp magazines and comic strips and comic books. His books Cheap Thrills: An Informal History of the Pulp Magazines (1972) and The Adventurous Decade: Comic Strips In the Thirties (1975) are seminal histories of these popular forms.
Indeed a sad juxtaposition seeing the obits of Ron Goulart and Orlando Busino side by side. They both have been part of my cultural experience since my youth. Archie comics should have had a hit with “Bats”. It made a big, but brief, impression on me as a kid. Thank you.
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