Jim Beard pounds out adventure fiction with classic pulp style and flair. A native Toledoan, he was introduced to comic books at an early age by his father, who passed on to him a love for the medium and the pulp characters who preceded it. After decades of reading, collecting and dissecting comics, Jim became a published writer when he sold a story to DC Comics in 2002. Since that time he's written official Spider-Man, X-Files, and Planet of the Apes prose fiction, Star Wars and Ghostbusters comic stories, and contributed articles and essays to several volumes of comic book history. Jim is also the co-publisher at Flinch Books, a small-press pulp house.
Tell us a bit about your latest work.
My friend John Bruening and I just published our tenth book through our Flinch House imprint. It’s called OCCUPIED PULP and features six tales set in post-war Europe and Japan during the Allied occupation. We’re so proud of it it’s not funny.
What happened in your life that prompted you to become a writer?
I wanted to be an artist, even went to school for it, but I found out I didn’t have the drive to make it work. I’d always loved creative writing since I was a small kid, and when I realized there was this community of people reviving and refreshing the classic style of pulp fiction, I jumped in, found I could do it, and have never looked back. So, failure at one thing can sometimes open up doors somewhere else.
What inspires you to write?
Very little! But seriously, just about everything. I get ideas from everywhere, from just about anything I can be doing. I’ve been blessed with never running dry of ideas—I got a million of ‘em!—but the hard part for me is the actual writing. True story. It’s like pulling teeth. I’d almost rather be the idea guy and hand concepts off to others to do all the dirty work.
What are the themes and subjects you tend to revisit in your work?
An odd one is hubris. It showed up in a lot of my earlier writing and stories. I don’t know why. I’m also very fond of the idea of a team of characters and the dynamics between each member. That harkens back to my love of comic books and groups like the Fantastic Four, the Justice League, and the Avengers. I’ve found I’m always coming up with teams. Even when it’s a supposed solo character, I tend to want to surround them with partners or similar.
What would be your dream project?
Very easy: An original prose novel based on the 1966 BATMAN TV series. Sadly, no one will let me do it.
What writers have influenced your style and technique?
Lester Dent, of course, and in some ways Norvell Page. One of my most favorite writers is Ray Bradbury, but I’m kind of the anti-Ray Bradbury in my own writing, just about the complete opposite of him. He was a poet. I’m a hack-and-slasher.
If you have any former project to do over to make it better, which one would it be, and what would you do?
My Spider-Man novel, definitely. The highest-profile thing I’ve ever done, and the one I’m almost too embarrassed to even acknowledge. It was ****ed up even as it was being written, and so edited in committee that I can only look back on it in frustration. For one thing, what was published was an uncorrected proof, so there are a boatload of typos. Beyond that, there are whole sections that were excised and I would like to restore.
Where would you rank writing on the "Is it an art or it is a science continuum?" Why?
Hate to come down in the middle, but it’s both. Or it can be both. There’s a kind of science involved with the rules of the language and all, but there’s also an art to how you can take those building blocks and string them together and create worlds. Kind of cool.
What is the most difficult part of your artistic process?
Writing! I mean it—just sitting down and banging out words and paragraphs and pages each and every day makes me want to run for the hills. Like I said before; I got the ideas, it’s making something out of them in book-form that nearly kills me each and every time. Why can’t it just happen by osmosis or something?
How do your writer friends help you become a better writer? Or do they not?
No, those ****ers are my demons! I hate them! They make me so jealous because they’re so cool and, well, I’m me! Otherwise, they often inspire me…when they’re not kicking my ass with the fifty-million books they put out every year.
What does literary success look like to you?
Golly. Sales? Hate to sound so capitalistic—well, no I don’t, but you dig it, I’m sure. Sales are nice, but when all is said and done, I could get by with the knowledge that someone, somewhere has read my stuff. They don’t even have to necessarily enjoy it, but it’d be nice to know I’m not writing and publishing in a vacuum. Success would mean one or two people recognizing my name. Isn’t that sort of pathetic?
Any other upcoming projects you would like to plug?
Yeah, I have my very first epic fantasy novel coming out this summer, and I’m working on the second of my D.C. Jones books, which are pastiches of the 1970s GI Joe Adventure Team toys. Pretty excited about both of those.
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