- I can tell you when it all started... On the day I almost died for the third time. But really, it's kind of a complicated story... With a lot of beginnings. But that's what life is... Right? A bunch of beginnings piled up on top of each other... All the changes you had to not mess it up.— Max Winter
Pulp is an Original Graphic Novel written by Ed Brubaker and illustrated by Sean Phillips with colors by Jacob Phillips. It was published by Image Comics on July 29, 2020.
Max Winter should be dead. In his youth, he was a outlaw and criminal called the Red Rock Kid, along with his friend Spike, but those days are long past. It's 1939 now and Max is much older, but still struggling to get by, forced to turn his stories from his own life into fictionalized stories of the "Red River Kid" and sell them as Two-Fisted Tales to the pulp magazines. But the money is drying up and it's getting harder to live on what he makes.
So when an old acquaintance meets up with him and asks him if he wants to do one more job, Max says yes. Especially since the people they are robbing are Nazis. But Max isn't the young man he used to be — saddled with a heart condition — and the man who got him into this job isn't telling him the whole truth either. If he can get out of this one alive, he'll be set... but that's a big if.
Tropes included in Pulp:
- The Alcoholic: Max's friend Spike eventually drank himself to death in Mexico. Max also suggests he was 'in a drunk' for a long time before his wife helped pull him out of it.
- Bittersweet Ending: How the heist itself ends. Despite not getting the money Max was expecting (with the actual loot being incriminating banking documents involving Nazis), Jeremiah nonetheless manages to arrange for him and his wife a new home in the outskirts and enough funds to keep them happy for the rest of their lives.
- Bolivian Army Ending: The book ends with Max killing the Nazi who killed Jeremiah and then getting shot himself as the entire bar (which is filled with Nazis) tries to kill him. We don't know if he's going to live or not as he lies there, bullet wound in his chest, surrounded by dead bodies.
- Cattle Baron: Max describes how he, his brother, and his friend Spike were all caught between two cattle barons who wanted the land they lived on. The barons hired a gang to set their house on fire and when they ran out, the gang tried to gun them down. Max and his friend Spike survived — Max's brother did not.
- Dented Iron: Max still retains much of his own Western outlaw skills, such that he's still amazed by how he quickly slides back to them. Nonetheless, however, time and his ailing condition have made said skills rusty, which come to bite back at him hard.
- The Drifter: What the Red River Kid and his friend Heck were supposed to be. According to the publisher, they would just drift from town to town and help people, but they couldn't retire. The stories were too much of a
Cash-Cow Franchise. - Genre Deconstruction: Of The Western, specifically the Two-Fisted Tales version told in pulps. This is done by creating three contrasting looks at the genre: the heroic ideal represented by the Red River Kid stories, which Max's editor doesn't want to end and insists on keeping the same with every story; the reality of Max's outlaw life, which was realistically hard and brutal despite some moments of happiness; and Max's current life where he lost his first wife and daughter while now writing fictionalised accounts of his outlaw days. The comic shows that the stories presented in pulp books weren't in anyway realistic and had a very basic Black-and-White Morality story with lots of gunfights, while Max very quickly embraced the idea of being an outlaw and robbing from the type of men who indirectly caused the death of his brother. By the present Max finds his somewhat nostalgic look on his outlaw life and the stories he wrote shattered by the realisation that he now lives in a very different world and is not the man he once was, his new heart condition being a strong reminder of his own mortality. The Bittersweet and Bolivian Army Ending of the comic reinforces the idea that Max, just like he says he is at the end, is nothing more than a killer living in a brutal world of monsters
- How We Got Here: The narration is revealed to be Max's thoughts as he lays shot in the Nazi bar.
- Pinkerton Detective: Jeremiah Goldman, who used to hunt Max Winter.
- Retired Outlaw: Max Winter.
- Revolvers Are Just Better: Max's weapon of choice, while Jeremiah's is a Sawed-Off Shotgun.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge:
- After the cattle barons had killed his brother, Max and his friend Spike returned and took revenge on them. That was the beginning of their life of crime, which Max eventually turned into Two-Fisted Tales.
- After Jeremiah dies, Max finds the Nazi who killed him and shoots him.
- Roman à Clef: This is what all of Max's stories of the "Red River Kid" are, although with some details changed. Max was the actually called the Red Rock Kid and his friend was named Spike, not Heck, but enough of it is the same so that Jeremiah Goldman (a former Pinkerton who hunted Max back in the day) realized who the stories were actually about and found Max because of them.
- Run for the Border: This is how Max wanted to end the story of the Red River Kid, with the Kid and his friend Heck heading towards Mexico. Unfortunately, his publisher insisted he change it, since nobody wants to read about a retired cowboy. However, this was actually based on Max's own life, when he and his friend Spike finally did retire from their life as criminals and lived in Mexico.
- Sawed-Off Shotgun: This is what Jeremiah Goldman wielded. And, in the end, this is the weapon Max uses to take revenge on the Nazi who killed Jeremiah.
- Those Wacky Nazis: The story takes place in 1939, as the Nazis start their march through Europe, but there is also the "Nazi Bund" (which was actually called the "German American Bund") in New York. Jeremiah's plan is to rob them of their money. Except it's not: he actually wants to steal their ledger to see who has been donating to the Nazis and expose them.
- Twilight of the Old West: The bulk of the story takes place long after Max's days as an outlaw. By 1939, on the cusp of a new global conflict, people like him have become increasingly alienated by a changing world.
- Two-Fisted Tales: This is how Max makes his money in 1939, by writing fictionalised versions of his adventures. Unlike how his real outlaw days were like, the Red River Kid and his partner are much more heroic characters.
- "Wanted!" Poster: How Jeremiah Goldman recognized Max, even though it had been forty years.
- The Western: "The Red River Kid" and Max's history definitely fit into the category.
- Your Days Are Numbered: Max himself by the end. Whether or not he makes it out of the Nazi bar shootout, it's shown that he's living on borrowed time due to ailing health. Going so far as to write his own last will beforehand.
