Hawkman, the Pulp Comic Hero

    CBR's Ashley Land put out a ranking of the top pulp comic heroes, and Hawkman showed up on the list. It's not too surprising, since Hawkman is a good example of how something was created from pulp fiction. LINK 

Here's part of what she says, 

Though DC's Hawkman is often thought of as a traditional superhero, he's very much a creation of the pulp fiction age. His adventure-first theme, coupled with the fact the hero's alter ego is an Indiana Jones-style archaeologist leaves little room for doubt that Hawkman is DC's pulpiest hero.

 You hear the term "pulp comic" and it's generally understood what it means, but I thought I'd check and see how Wikipedia defines the term. 

Pulp magazines were inexpensive fiction magazines that were published from 1896 to the late 1950s. The term "pulp" derives from the cheap wood pulp paper on which the magazines were printed. In contrast, magazines printed on higher-quality paper were called "glossies" or "slicks". Although many respected writers wrote for pulps, the magazines were best known for their lurid, exploitative, and sensational subject matter, even though this was but a small part of what existed in the pulps. Successors of pulps include paperback books, digest magazines, and men's adventure magazines. Modern superhero comic books are sometimes considered descendants of "hero pulps"; pulp magazines often featured illustrated novel-length stories of heroic characters, such as Flash Gordon, The Shadow, Doc Savage, and The Phantom.

    It's way deeper than that, but you kind of get the picture. I've mentioned in the past how I first really noticed Hawkman from the rest of the other DC heroes when I saw him on the back of the 1976 DC Calendar. I guess you can say that Hawkman is definitely the pulpiest hero in that bunch. And I do mean that in a good way. 

Art by Neal Adams and Dick Giordano