The question I always ask: Is it worth my time?

Bleeding Pulp exists because modern entertainment has forgotten that its first job is to entertain.

I created Bleeding Pulp to showcase the kinds of horror, adventure, crime, and pulp stories I spent my life looking for but increasingly couldn’t find.

That doesn’t mean people have stopped making these stories. They haven’t. They’re simply harder to get made because of risk management.

Critics often evaluate whether a work advances the medium. Audiences usually ask a much simpler question. The one I also ask:

Did I have fun?

Those are both valid questions.

What’s changed isn’t that criticism exists. It’s that an entire online ecosystem now profits from outrage, disappointment, and cultural conflict.

It’s goofy culture war bullshit that permeates everything I love.

Not all criticism is bad. Good criticism is invaluable. Critics have changed the way I think about storytelling, challenged my assumptions, and made me a better writer.

Much of what passes for criticism isn’t really criticism anymore. It’s participation in an attention economy, where being first, loudest, or most outraged often matters more than engaging honestly with the work itself.

The industry is doing itself no favors either. Marketing departments increasingly steer creative decisions, and too much entertainment feels engineered to offend as few people as possible instead of exciting anyone. Safe. Formulaic. Focus-group approved. I happen to be one of those people. Yes, I am part of an ongoing focus group for as of yet unreleased material for a certain streaming service. When they ask for my opinion, I give them my most honest feedback and I don’t hold anything back. However, I always acknowledge when I am not the audience for something. Anyway…before there were reaction videos to watch parties for Game of Thrones held in some local bar…

Cinema Paradiso reminds me how much of the communal experience of entertainment we’ve already lost. There was something special about going to a movie theater when it was affordable, when you couldn’t pause it, spoil it, or have a thousand opinions waiting for you before the lights even went down. Sometimes that screening was your only chance to see the film. You experienced it together, reacted together, and carried those conversations home.

I feel fortunate to have grown up before every reaction became content. I miss the sense of discovery. I miss being surprised. I miss when not everything was a vehicle for a star. Like discovering Peter Dinkledge and Bobby Cannavale in a small theater in 2003.

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre 2. Jennifer’s Body. Evil Dead II. Starship Troopers. John Carpenter’s The Thing—and frankly, much of John Carpenter’s filmography.

Many of these works were dismissed, misunderstood, or attacked when they were released. What sustained them wasn’t critical consensus. It was that audiences eventually recognized something simple:

This thing delivers exactly the experience it promises. This is the philosophy I try to bring to my comics. To be entertaining regardless of the genre. If I have something to “say” if I can’t say it in an entertaining way, I tend not to say anything at all.

I realize I don’t always talk publicly about the media I consume. The person I probably discuss it with most is my longtime friend and collaborator Jimmy Palmiotti. Years ago, I remember dismissing Nicole Kidman for reasons I can’t even recall now. Jimmy said something to the effect of:

“Look at the movies she’s choosing. They’re all strange. The characters are unconventional.”

He was right.

What Jimmy was pointing out about Nicole Kidman wasn’t whether she was the greatest actor alive. It was that she was interesting. At the time, she kept choosing projects that were strange, risky, uncomfortable, or just plain weird. Once you start looking at her career through that lens, you see someone deliberately making choices that prioritize curiosity and entertainment over brand management.

I don’t even mind messaging in entertainment if it is done well. For instance we all know there’s a class war going on and a lot of people are telling stories about it. I’ll have more to say about that next time.

Justin

Bleeding Pulp