The Hastings Gallery

A Queer Pulp Universe in a World of Chaos

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pulp (noun)

1. Fiction produced on inexpensive paper, typically characterized by sensational themes, simplified plots, and mass‑market appeal.

2. Printed material designed for rapid consumption rather than literary prestige.

 

     This whole pulp universe began, improbably enough, with an audiobook. I’d read a few of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan novels years ago, but I’d always meant to explore his stranger, more cosmic work. So I queued up The Gods of Mars, expecting swashbuckling adventure, and instead found myself listening to John Carter wake up naked on Mars, immediately battle plant men and white apes, and rescue a heroic green Martian warrior who was also naked, as was the custom for the warriors of Barsoom. At one point the two men, unclothed except for their swords and capes, hold hands while navigating a dark tunnel so they won’t lose each other. I paused the recording and asked AI if Burroughs was gay. The answer was no, he was married with children, and that the nudity symbolized purity and honesty. But the imagery lodged itself in my mind: mythic, earnest, homoerotic without meaning to be. I couldn’t shake it, so I did what I always do when something won’t leave me alone. I created art. And that’s how Planet of Monsters was born, the first spark in a universe I didn’t yet know I was building

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     And once I’d created Planet of Monsters, I looked around and asked the only logical question: What else in pulp fiction is gay? The answer was everything. Tarzan was gay. Conan the Barbarian was gay. Flash Gordon was gay with Ming the Merciless, that big evil queen in full drag‑emperor regalia, was absolutely gay.

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      Then there was Jonny Quest, his super‑cute brother Hadji, and their two dads. GAY. How anyone missed it is beyond me, but then again, people once thought Liberace was straight.

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     So I dove into my archive, scrambling through decades of photographs to find poses and expressions I could reshape into the pulp stories I’d been carrying around since childhood. I even created the monsters from old photos of Ricardo Breceda’s ginormous metal sculptures in Borrego Springs. 

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     I wasn’t trying to write novels or build the lore, I wanted the covers. The dime‑store promises. The pulp posters that told you everything in one explosive image. Like a movie trailer that gives away the entire plot; but make it gay.

As I kept making these early pieces, the work started to shift. I wasn’t trying to evolve anything, I was just following the same pulp instincts, the same queer lens, the same cartoon logic that had kicked this whole thing off. But the images began to assert themselves. They weren’t just camp anymore. They were symbols. Archetypes. Emotional architecture disguised as spectacle.

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     Clowns of Chaos was the turning point. It wasn’t just circus madness; it was a declaration. The Models of Mayhem weren’t arriving; they were already here. (Cue Stephen Sondheim). The ringmaster wasn’t in charge; he was scrambling to regain control. And the final line said it all: This is MY circus, and these are MY MONKEYS. That wasn’t just satire. That was sovereignty. The piece marked the moment the universe stopped reacting to pulp tropes and started rewriting them.

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     From there, I started twisting stories and characters even more and the work deepened. Tarzan and Boy became a story about mentorship, desire, and the threshold between innocence and experience. 

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     Escape from Olympus turned myth into a queer allegory. Ganymede and Icarus weren’t just characters, they were stand‑ins for longing and rebellion. And Fighting the Monster Within asked the first real psychological question: “Who’s the real villain?” It wasn’t just a tagline; it was a mirror.

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     The pulp veneer stayed shiny. The humor stayed sharp. The sexiness stayed sweet. But the stakes got higher. The pieces weren’t just fun anymore; they were building something. A language. A mythology. A world where chaos wasn’t the threat; it was the throne.

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     And now I was ready to circle back to the spark that started all of this; Edgar Rice Burroughs and his beautiful, hyper‑capable heroes surviving impossible worlds with nothing but charm, wit, and brute strength. I wanted to tap into that energy directly. So I called up my biggest, most handsome model, Juan Francisco, a man whose shoulders arrive in the room before he does and decided he would be my Burroughs mutation. My Tarzan–John Carter hybrid. My hero built for time, space, and whatever prehistoric nonsense I threw at him, who just happened to travel the galaxy in his underwear. I wanted Jurassic Clark to move through eras, planets, and mythologies the way pulp heroes used to; except queerer, smarter, and with better lighting. Honestly, these are all movie pitches waiting to be optioned. Hollywood loves to say films are sold on poster art alone, before a script even exists. Well… voilà. And from there, the time traveling trilogy took shape.

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     By this point, the universe had its heroes, its monsters, its chaos, and its queer heart. The next step wasn’t another fantasy world; it was mine. The real one. The one dealing with climate collapse, corporatism, and a level of willful ignorance that feels more surreal than anything I could stage with dinosaurs and death rays.

Tarzan and the Valley of Death was the first time I dropped a pulp hero into that reality. No lost city, no hidden temple, just a poisoned landscape and a man who suddenly realizes the real villain isn’t a monster, it’s us. It’s what we’ve done. The piece let me drag all that childhood adventure energy into a world where the stakes aren’t imaginary anymore.

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     By the time I reached this era, I didn’t need another hero. I needed the opposite. I needed the Tousled Triplets, three gorgeous, useless superheroes whose only real power is enthusiasm. They were designed to be stupid on purpose. Very pretty, very earnest, and very, very bad at their jobs. So of course I had to give them something ignorant to do, something that captured the spirit of our times. They needed to attack… a statue.

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     At first, I thought of my own Palm Springs world and the 26‑foot icon of kitsch, Forever Marilyn. But that felt too local, too specific. I wanted something universal, a symbol of approval, conformity, and the algorithmic hive mind. So I landed on the giant blue thumbs‑up. A little Yellow Submarine “Ah, Glove,” a little social‑media dopamine hit, a little syphilitic monument to everything we pretend to like. And once I had that statue, the rest fell into place. The Triplets could take down influencers, art museums, generations A through Z, and the entire metaverse without even realizing they were doing it. They’re not villains. They’re not heroes. They’re just… us. Beautiful, distracted, and convinced we’re helping while the world burns behind us.

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     This era is where the satire stops being gentle. It’s where the circus tent opens and you realize the clowns aren’t the problem — the audience is.

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     In the end, all of these eras; the queer pulp beginnings, the symbolic deepening, the rise of Jurassic Clark, and the age of beautiful idiots are just different ways of looking at the same world. Our world. A world that’s gorgeous, ridiculous, dangerous, overheated, over‑branded, and full of people who think they’re heroes while tripping over their own capes. I use pulp because it’s honest. I use humor because it’s sharper than despair. And I use beauty because it’s the only thing that still cuts through the noise. If the work looks like a movie poster, good; that’s the bait. But underneath the muscles, monsters, and mayhem, the message is simple: this is the world we’ve built; this is the circus we’re running; and whether we admit it or not, these are our monkeys.

 

To purchase these works go to TheHastingsGallery.com/pulp