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Flash Gordon (comic strip) (1934)
Published
Alex Raymond's Sunday pages, from 1934, in Titan's Complete Flash Gordon Library
The rocket-man fantasy at its purest. King Features built the strip to rival Buck Rogers, and Raymond answered with a planet, Mongo, crammed with the flying city of the Hawkmen, the Lion Men, the undersea Shark Men and the theatrical tyrant Ming the Merciless. Flash, Dale Arden and Dr. Zarkov lurch from cliffhanger to cliffhanger, so no wonder it became three Buster Crabbe serials.
The reason to read it now is Raymond's drawing, which ripens into some of the most polished brushwork in newspaper comics. Start with the first volume, On the Planet Mongo. Ming and his court are drawn as 1930s Yellow Peril stereotypes, which later versions tried to soften.
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The Complete Terry and the Pirates (2007)
Published
Milton Caniff's run, 1934 to 1946, in IDW's six-volume Complete Terry and the Pirates
A boy and his two-fisted mentor Pat Ryan go hunting a lost gold mine in China, and the Dragon Lady's pirates are waiting. This is the adventure strip as smoky, grown-up melodrama, full of double-crosses, dangerous women and some of the moodiest inking ever printed in a newspaper. Caniff's drawing leaps forward within the first couple of years, so push past the stiff opening months.
IDW's set prints the Sunday pages in color alongside the dailies. Two warnings: the early strips lean on crude stereotypes, including Connie's pidgin English, and once America enters the war the strip becomes almost entirely a World War II story.
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The Phantom (comic strip) (1936)
Published
Lee Falk's daily strips, from February 17, 1936, in Hermes Press's reprints
The jungle avenger who got there first: the Phantom was the first fictional hero in a skintight costume, years before the superhero boom. Falk's best idea is the legend itself. The man behind the mask is the 21st in a line of crime-fighters, so to the people of Bangalla and the crooks who cross him he is an immortal, the Ghost Who Walks.
Read it for that sense of a hero bigger than any one man, and for brisk, serial-length chases through jungle and sea. Hermes Press has reprinted the dailies in a long run of volumes, and the strip still runs today. Its Africa is a 1930s pulp fantasy, and the early strips see African characters with the colonial outlook of the day.
More about The Phantom (comic strip)4
Will Eisner's The Spirit Archives (2000)
Published
Will Eisner's Sunday sections, June 2, 1940 to October 5, 1952, in DC's 26-volume Spirit Archives
Criminologist Denny Colt is presumed killed in the first three pages, sets up base under his own tombstone in Wildwood Cemetery and fights crime in Central City with a blue domino mask, gloves, his wits and his fists. No superpowers, just short weekly stories that swing wildly in genre and tone.
This is where pulp met real cinematic craft: Eisner's inventive title splash pages and his staging still get copied. DC's Archives reprint the whole run in color. His sidekick Ebony White is a blackface caricature, and Eisner later admitted to consciously stereotyping him.
More about Will Eisner's The Spirit Archives5
Tarzan: The Joe Kubert Years, Volume 1 (2005)
Published
Joe Kubert's DC Tarzan of the 1970s, issues 207 to 214, in Dark Horse's 2005 hardcover
The jungle hero drawn by a master of the human body in motion. Kubert wrote and drew these issues, and they go straight back to Edgar Rice Burroughs, opening with "Origin of the Ape Man" and moving on to Jungle Tales of Tarzan. The action has a raw, brushy energy that suits a hero who lives by tooth and knife.
Comics historian Les Daniels ranked Kubert's scripts and art among the most authentic and effective Tarzan ever seen. Dark Horse restored the original colors for this edition. It is a 2005 hardcover, so check secondhand dealers as well as stores, and Burroughs's Africa comes with the period's colonial outlook.
More about Tarzan: The Joe Kubert Years, Volume 16
The Private Files of the Shadow (1989)
Published
Dennis O'Neil and Michael Kaluta's 1973 DC run, collected in The Private Files of the Shadow (1989)
The Shadow as the pulps imagined him: a cloaked, gun-blazing phantom cutting through 1930s gangland, with none of the superhero polish later comics added. Kaluta's elegant, finely detailed drawing is the attraction, and although DC's series ran twelve issues, he drew only five of them.
This 1989 hardcover gathers those five, issues 1 to 4 and 6, plus a new fifteen-page Kaluta story, "In the Toils of Wing Fat." Look to secondhand dealers for it, but it is the cleanest way to get the definitive comics Shadow on the shelf.
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Doc Savage (1975)
Published
Marvel's black-and-white magazine, August 1975 to 1977, written by Doug Moench, in Dynamite's Doc Savage Archives
The Man of Bronze has had plenty of comics, and this short magazine run plays him as straight pulp. The first issue sets the tone: a New York skyscraper reduced to rubble by a mysterious lightning bolt, and a trail that ends with a psychotic genius on his island hideaway, drawn by John Buscema and inked by Tony DeZuniga. The bigger magazine page and black-and-white art give the action room to breathe.
It lasted only eight issues, all reprinted in Dynamite's 2015 hardcover The Curtis Magazine Era, so it is a quick binge. Pick it for a straight-faced Doc Savage adventure rather than a modern reinvention.
More about Doc Savage8
The Rocketeer: The Complete Adventures (2009)
Published
Dave Stevens's complete run, 1982 to 1995, in IDW's The Rocketeer: The Complete Adventures (2009)
The great love letter to the Saturday matinee. In April 1938, stunt pilot Cliff Secord stumbles on a rocket pack that two fleeing gangsters stashed in his racing plane, the Blind Bulldog, and soon everybody in Los Angeles wants it back. Stevens draws every rivet, roadster and flight jacket with loving precision, and Cliff's girlfriend Betty is modeled on Bettie Page.
Stevens finished only a handful of chapters, spread over thirteen years and several publishers, so this one book holds the whole saga. The IDW edition adds new coloring by Laura Martin that suits the art beautifully.
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The Further Adventures of Indiana Jones (1983)
Published
Marvel's series, January 1983 to March 1986
The movies borrowed from the serials, and this series hands the favor back. Across 34 issues Marvel sent Indy on brand-new digs between the films, with its own continuity rather than retellings, so it reads like a stack of lost Saturday chapters with a fresh cliffhanger every month. John Byrne wrote and drew the first issue, and Steve Ditko drew the last.
The creative teams changed often, so quality swings, which makes it better for dipping into than reading straight through. Dark Horse's three Further Adventures omnibus volumes collect the run if you can find them, and they are the easiest way to sample it.
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Jonny Quest (1986)
Published
Comico's series, 1986 to 1988, written by William Messner-Loebs
The 1964 cartoon was already a pulp serial in miniature, and Comico's comic took it seriously. William Messner-Loebs wrote the series, which ran 31 issues, and the first issue features art by Doug Wildey, who created and designed the show, alongside Steve Rude, so Jonny, Hadji, Race Bannon and Dr. Quest look exactly right from page one.
It is the pick for anyone who grew up on the show and wants the same jet-age globe-trotting with a little more room for character. For the full Wildey treatment, add the three Jonny Quest Classics issues, where he retells episodes of the show himself.
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Sandman Mystery Theatre (1993)
Published
Vertigo's series, 1993 to 1999, by Matt Wagner, Steven T. Seagle and Guy Davis
The darker side of the pulp avenger. Wesley Dodds stalks late-1930s criminals in a gas mask with a gun that fires sleeping gas, and the stories play like film noir: slow-burning mysteries built around grim crimes and his sharp romance with Dian Belmont, the district attorney's daughter. Guy Davis's scratchy, unglamorous art sets the period mood.
This came from DC's mature-readers imprint, and it earns the label with violence and adult themes, so it is the one entry here for grown-up readers only. The two Compendium volumes collect all 70 issues and are the best way to read it.
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Tom Strong (1999)
Published
Alan Moore and Chris Sprouse's series for America's Best Comics, 1999 to 2006
Alan Moore's sunniest book is a tribute to the science heroes of the pulps, played for wonder rather than irony. Tom Strong was born at the dawn of the 20th century, given an intensive education by his scientist parents on the island of Attabar Teru, and still looks only in his forties by the year 2000. He works out of the Stronghold in Millennium City with his wife Dhalua, daughter Tesla and Pneuman, a steam-powered robot.
The fun is in the range: each story bounces to a new corner of adventure fiction, with Sprouse's clean, bright art holding it together. The 36 issues sit in six collected volumes, so start with the first and keep going.
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Lobster Johnson: The Iron Prometheus (2007)
Published
Mike Mignola and Jason Armstrong's five-issue series, 2007 to 2008, collected as Lobster Johnson Volume 1
The pulp avenger Mike Mignola invented for the Hellboy world gets his first solo series here, and it is all action. The Lobster works in secret in 1930s New York and signs his work by burning a lobster-claw brand into villains' foreheads, a calling card that echoes the old pulp hero The Spider.
It is not a deep read, and it does not need to be: fearsome monsters, mad scientists and threats from the world beyond, with Dave Stewart's colors giving Armstrong's art that Hellboy glow. You can enjoy it without having read any Hellboy, which makes it the easiest way into Mignola's pulp corner.
More about Lobster Johnson: The Iron Prometheus14
Atomic Robo (2007)
Published
Brian Clevinger and Scott Wegener's series, from October 2007
The most fun a modern reader will have with pulp science. Robo is a robot built by Nikola Tesla in 1923 and the heart of Tesladyne Industries, whose Action Scientists answer paranormal and supernatural emergencies with equal parts physics and fists. Stories hop across the decades, with volumes such as The Shadow from Beyond Time and The Ghost of Station X.
Clevinger's jokes land, Wegener's cartooning is pure kinetic energy, and the first volume earned an Eisner nomination for Best Limited Series. New readers can sample it free, since the issues have been posted as webcomics on the series' website, then pick up the collected volumes.
More about Atomic Robo15
The Black Beetle Omnibus (2026)
Published
Francavilla's Black Beetle stories in Dark Horse's 208-page omnibus, published October 13, 2026
The newest way into pulp on this list, and one of the best looking. Francesco Francavilla writes and draws his masked sleuth of Colt City as a love letter to the classic crime busters, mixing pulp noir, supernatural intrigue and action in poster-bright artwork that looks like a vintage movie one-sheet come to life. Expect a case at the Colt City Natural History Museum and a hero who works best in the dark.
The paperback gathers every Black Beetle tale Dark Horse has published, including No Way Out, Kara Böcek and the one-shot Night Shift, plus concept art and lobby cards. It is the obvious buy for anyone who loved The Spirit.
More about The Black Beetle Omnibus
