Decoder Ring Theater rings out 2012 with a new episode of The Red Panda Adventures called The Lost Sheep. You can listen to it here.
About The Lost Sheep: The tempest of war has carried many of the Red Panda’s allies far from the field of his private war for justice. But even after so many years of seeing the best, boldest and brightest torn away, some wounds are impossible to bear. How far will the Flying Squirrel go to save… The Lost Sheep?
About Decoder Ring Theater: Welcome to Decoder Ring Theatre – home of all-new audio adventures in the tradition of the classic programs of Radio’s Golden Age. Here you will find full-length, full-cast tales of mystery and adventure to fire your imagination, with new releases on the 1st and 15th of every month, year-round – including our latest episodes, posted below.
Decoder Ring Theatre’s shows are available for free download in mp3 format, either directly from our site, via the Podcast Feed or subscribe in iTunes. Or if you prefer, use the handy player beside each episode.. Please explore and enjoy the pulse-pounding thrills of The Red Panda Adventures, the noir stylings of Black Jack Justice and the grab-bag of suspense, science fiction and comedy found in our Showcase. Each episode is a stand-alone story and you can begin wherever you’d like!
We begin our look back on the Pop Culture that was in 2012 as Media Mogul Ric Meyers (ricmeyers.com) runs down the vast array of great TV comedy from the year. From CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL to HAPPY ENDINGS to SUBURGATORY, it’s been a damn good twelve months. Plus what show was downloaded illegally the most in 2012 (we are talking millions here) and how iPads are killing the toy business.
(Peter David‘s wife, Kathleen, updates us on what happened. Taken from Peter’s site. –CM)
As stated yesterday on his web log, Peter had a stroke. So we are at the beginning of what is going to be a long road. We have a diagnosis, which is a small stroke in the Pons section of his brain. Now we have to figure out where we go from here and how we get Peter back to what he was before the stroke. We know that a total recovery is slim because damage to the brain doesn’t go away but the brain can be trained to work around the damage and give Peter back what he has lost.
I am dealing with a lot of woulda, coulda, and shoulda issues right now. But we are where we are and we are working out a plan of recovery.
What happened was that we were in Disney Hollywood Studios having just had lunch at the Prime Time Café. We were walking to the front gate because we were off to Animal Kingdom to see a friend of ours perform in the Finding Nemo Show. Peter had been tired and also not sleeping well the past week or so. He had been taking naps in the afternoon to catch up on the sleep that was eluding him at night. He told me that he had blurry vision in his right eye. The way he described it to me sounded like an ocular migraine so we took him back to the Hotel and went onto Animal Kingdom. We got back and he was working on his next novel. We decided to go to dinner but he was still having a slight vision problem so I drove.
While at dinner I thought his speech was a bit slurred. He put it down to fatigue and his face always looked like that. That morning he couldn’t get his right leg to move correctly. He told us later that he had gotten up because he couldn’t sleep and tried to type and couldn’t get his hand to work correctly but he didn’t want to wake me up and alarm me. I called my mom with the laundry list of things. My mother said get him to a hospital NOW. We loaded him into the car and took him to Celebration Hospital at the recommendation of some friends.
Celebration Hospital did a great job of getting him in and starting treatment. His blood pressure was scary scary high so their first job was to get it back to closer to normal. They did some tests and a CAT scan to check for a stroke. The CAT scan didn’t show anything but they were going with their observations and the evidence that his blood work was not good and getting worse. The decision was made to transfer him down to Florida Hospital in downtown Orlando where they could do an MRI and some other tests Also Florida hospital has the best cardiac unit and they were worried that he had a heart attack or a cardiac episode (having told Peter that he might be having a cardiac episode, he put on his best comic guy voice and said, ”Worst Episode Ever.” So Ariel got to take “ride in an ambulance” off her bucket list as she went down to the hospital with Peter while I dealt with getting us out of our hotel room.
So I am betting that in this point of the narrative you, if you know our family, are asking where is Caroline while this is all going on. She was and is in Jacksonville with her sister and Peter’s eldest daughter, Shana. Currently we haven’t told her what is going on but that is going to change in the next couple of days. So she is having fun with big sister and her playmates in Jacksonville. Shana has been a rock in all this and a champ about taking care of her little sister while all this has been going on. I have been able to concentrate on Peter right now.
He went into the Florida Hospital in the Cardiac Care Unit as they try to ascertain what exactly happened. They did an MRI about midnight along with some other tests. They came to the conclusion that it was not a heart attack but a stroke and moved him to the neurology unit where he is now.
As he stated, he has lost most of the use of his right arm, his right leg is incredibly weak, the vision in his right eye is blurry, and the right side of his face is drooping slightly. But the brain is there with all its quips and quick retorts. He has had the nurses laughing a lot.
Today we figure out what the next step is and where it is going to happen. Tonight the New Year Begins and for us it is a very different beginning than we thought we were going to be having.
Thank you everyone for your good wishes, prayers and kind words. They do help. And BIG thank you to our Orlando buddies who have taken us into their houses and helped us deal with what is going on.
Continue to think good thoughts for Peter. This is not going to be easy for him or us but we will get through this together.
This is a story I told to Joe Kubert. He loved it, said to write it up and he would use it as a backup in Sgt. Rock.
1943. Somewhere over Burma. The Dragonfly Squadron, inheritors of the famed Flying Tigers, is returning to base after flying a coverage mission for Merrill’s Marauders. First Lieutenant Meyer “Mike” C. Newell is flying wingman to his best bud, First Lieutenant Benjamin “Blackie” Blackstone. They met in training, and have been flying together ever since. The P-51D’s are pretty banged up, but the planes are the workhorses of the CBI and the pilots are confident that they will make it back to base, even though Johnson’s aircraft is leaking hydraulic fluid.
It is the rainy season in Burma and the landing strip, cleared out of the jungle overgrowth by Army engineers and sun-baked and rock-hard during the dry months, is a quagmire of mud that sucks at the wheels of P-51s as they touch down. The pilots must come down fast and hard with their throttles all the way open to clear the runway.
Three succeed, but Johnson’s plane, with its loss of hydraulic fluid, doesn’t have the power. Even with the throttle all the open the plane comes in slow and dodgy, and the mud captures the P-51 halfway down the runway. Johnson quickly gets out of the plane, and with the aid of the ground crew, is working to move the plane off the landing strip.
Blackie is already making his approach when the flare is sent up warning the other pilots off. Unable to veer off, he is forced to come in, still flying hard. As the wheels hit the ground, Blackie pulls back on the throttle and hits the brakes, but the inertia drives the P-51 forward and up onto Johnson’s plane. Blackie can’t shut off his engines, and the propellers are chopping their way through the other plane’s fuselage. That bird is still leaking hydraulic fluid. Blackie tries to open his canopy, but it is stuck. He is trapped.
Up above, Mike Newell, preparing his landing, sees the flare and pulls off, circling over the airfield. There is radio silence; no one knows what is happening below, though they know it is bad.
Admiral of the Fleet Lord Louis Mountbatten, First Earl of Burma and Supreme Allied Commander, Southeast Asia Command (SEAC) is visiting the base. He and his aide-de-campe (they have been together for many, many years) are watching the disaster on the landing strip unfold.
Fire is dancing from the Johnson’s plane, and billowing black smoke is making the work of the ground crew even more difficult as their eyes tear and their lungs fill with the noxious stuff. Blackie is still alive; he can be seen struggling to open his canopy.
Suddenly the aide-de-campe runs to Blackie’s plane, jumps up on the wing, and works to free Blackie…
The fire is inching closer. It is an inferno consuming both P-51’s…
They explode.
The air is heavy with the smell of fuel.
Bits of burnt fuselage dance in the air like dust motes.
There is nothing left.
The runway is clear.
A second flare is sent up. Mike Newell resumes his approach.
He lands cleanly.
The remaining pilots bring in their planes, one by one, without incident.
They report for debriefing.
Late that night, Mike Newell is sitting on the wing of his plane, a bottle of Scotch in his hand. He swills it frequently, staring at the now silent and empty runway. It is raining again.
A shape approaches him in the darkness, and a clipped British voice says, “May I join you, Leftenant?”
Mountbatten swings himself up onto the wing as Mike moves over.
“This buggered war.” says Mountbatten.
“Yeah,” says Mike Newell.
“May I have some of that?”
Mike hands him the bottle. Mountbatten takes a swallow.
The two men sit in silence, sharing the Scotch.
• • • • •
Lord Mountbatten was the Last Viceroy and First Governor-General of India, overseeing the transition of that country into an independent republic. The IRA, who planted a bomb aboard his yacht when Mountbatten was vacationing in Ireland, killed him. First
Lieutenant Meyer C. Newell, awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and many other medals and honors for his service in the Army Air Corps, survived the war, came home, and married Loretta Yontef. They had two children, Mindy and Glenn. He stayed in the Army Air Corps – which became the U.S. Air Force – until the middle of the 1950s. His unit was called up during the Korean War, but never saw active service. The new Israeli Air Force sought him out, offering him a high commission if he would join them. Worried about losing his United States citizenship, he refused. In 1985 he received the Medal of Honor from China for brave and decorous duty for the Chinese Republic during World War II. The Dragonfly Squadron received the Congressional Medal of Honor for their service to the United States of America several years ago. Last year, a student at the Air Force Academy wrote his graduate paper on the CBI theatre, the Dragonfly Squadron, and First Lieutenant Meyer Carl Newell, P-51 fighter jock.
Sgt. Rock was cancelled and the story of Blackie, the aide-de-campe, Lord Mountbatten, and my father never saw print. Until today.
My father, who will be 90 in January, is dying. We brought him home from the hospital. He is receiving hospice care. Every now and then he will talk to us.
Yesterday I said to him, “Dad, it’s Mindy.”
“I know,” he said.
“I love you, Daddy.”
“I love you, too.”
I bent over and gave him a kiss. He moved his head, weakly gesturing for me to come closer.
Samaritan by Bobby Nash is a novella set in the future where man is exploring space aboard prospector ships. The Aquarius is one such ship. The Aquarius has been out in deep space for eight long years and is just now returning to Earth. In all that time they have not encountered another being of any species. That is about to change.
When the ship comes upon a seeming graveyard of spaceships and spaceship parts the crew is understandably curious and excited. For the first time they have evidence of life on other worlds. Sadly, as they are about to find out, it’s better off not answering certain questions, at least not at this time.
This is a VERY well written space adventure, and within its forty plus pages an entire story is told, and nothing is left wanting. I really liked this one a lot, even more than I expected too. It held my interest and the pace which started out slow built to a frenetic crescendo at the tales end. This is as much a horror story as it is Sci-fi, in the vein of ‘Alien’.
But therein lies the problem with this tale, to me at least. The end, while excellently and professionally written, felt a little too expected for me. The big surprise was pretty much what I expected to happen.
But do NOT let that deter you from reading this story. It honestly is one of the best things I’ve read in a long time. There’s very little sci-fi out there that I like. Most of it reads like bad Star Trek or Star Wars. Or it strives far too hard to be neither. This just read like a good sci-fi story. I’ve been lucky recently and read three good sci-fi stories in a row, including this one. You can’t go wrong here. Bobby’s characters are real and you don’t like all of them, which to me is the sign of a good writer, and a good story.
Give Samaritan a whirl. It’s a short but very engrossing story. Far better than most novella’s I’ve read recently.
#####
About SAMARITAN (an ebook novella by Bobby Nash):
Deep space.
The science ship Aquarius, under the command of Captain Jeremiah Rains has finally reached the end of its exploratory mission to the depths of uncharted space and is returning home to Earth.
Captain Rains and his skeleton military crew are tired and bored from the lack of adventure they expected to find out in the great beyond. The scientists, however, are extremely happy with their many discoveries.
When the ship comes upon the wreckage of a destroyed space vessel, the crew is surprised to find one survivor; a woman, quite possibly the most beautiful woman any of them have ever seen. Her name is Lari and all she wants is someone, some Good Samaritan, to take her home.
The catch is that her planet is located at the center of a black hole.
Samaritan will be part of the upcoming BEN Books release, FRONTIER, a collection of sci fi stories by New Pulp Author Bobby Nash. Frontier will be the first time Samaritan has been in print since its original run in Startling Stories #3 from Wild Cat Books in 2007.
UPDATE: Peter’s site is back. Feel free to add well-wishes there.
Peter David, writer of over one thousand comics for everyone over the past four decades, has suffered a stroke. He writes on his site:
I have had a stroke. We were on vacation in Florida when I lost control of the right side of my body. I cannot see properly and I cannot move my right arm or leg. We are currently getting the extent of the damage sorted out and will report as further details become clarified.
His main website, PeterDavid.net, is getting hammered, but we’ll be updating as we have more information. He’s still planning on hitting all his deadlines, though.
Peter, of course, is well known for his comics work, holding the current record for most months consistently published. comic book resume includes an award-winning twelve-year run on The Incredible Hulk, and he has also worked on such varied and popular titles as X-Factor, Supergirl, Young Justice, Soulsearchers and Company, Aquaman, Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2099, Star Trek, Wolverine, The Phantom, Sachs & Violens, The Dark Tower, and many others. He has also written comic book related novels, such as The Incredible Hulk: What Savage Beast, and co-edited The Ultimate Hulk short story collection. Furthermore, his opinion column, “But I Digress…,” has been running in the industry trade newspaper The Comic Buyers’s Guide for nearly a decade, and in that time has been the paper’s consistently most popular feature and was also collected into a trade paperback edition.
His latest prose fiction, Pulling Up Stakes, is available from Crazy 8 Press. Part one is available as an e-book on Amazon and Barnes & Noble now, with part two arriving shortly. His latest comic, Richard Castle’s A Calm Before Storm, is a spinoff from the TV series Castle, starring Nathan Fillion.
New Pulp Author Martin Powell shared a couple of teaser images on his Facebook page this week that shows not one, but two projects featuring classic pulp jungle lords coming in 2013.
This is the time of year when all manner of people and media post their best/worst selections of the year. The main purpose is to elicit outrage or agreement or bewilderment regarding the selections. Anyone can play. So I guess I will with these caveats. I’m not saying that what follows is the best of any the categories. It’s simply what I most enjoyed. Some books, TV shows, music, movies I simply didn’t experience (e.g. Argo and The Hobbit) or didn’t enjoy as much as those listed (i.e. the latest Dresden book, The Dark Knight Rises, The Amazing Spider-Man). I’m only touching on what was new in 2012 – not those things I’ve enjoyed from other years and enjoyed again in 2012.
Caveats away. Let’s get down to it.
Doctor Who: The mid-season finale didn’t please me as much as I hoped. The departure of long time companions Amy and Rory had me scratching my head. However, the Christmas Special – The Snowmen – made up for it, introducing an intriguing new companion for the time and space faring Doctor and a tantalizing mystery. Steven Moffat – show runner and head writer – remains in fine form.
Justified: Big tough ass series based on an Elmore Leonard character. This season was even better than the one last season, which is saying a lot. Star performances made the season starting with Timothy Olyphant as Marshall Raylan Givens, along with Walter Goggins, Nick Searcy, Neal McDonough as a truly scary bad guy from Detroit, and Mykelti Williamson as an equally scary local bad guy. It’s violent, sexual, badass, and Raylan Givens is so damn cool he should be illegal.
Fringe: It’s now on its final episodes and taking a whole different tack from the previous seasons. I’m hoping it all ties up and makes sense by the end but this was created by J.J. Abrams, Alex Kurtzman, and Roberto Orci who also did Lost and the ending of that got a little bit away from them. Still, John Noble’s Walter Bishop is a delight to watch and is reason enough to tune in.
The Daily Show/The Colbert Report: This got me through the freakin’ election. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are both geniuses. Stewart does the faux news show and Colbert does a faux conservative commentator ala Bill O’Reilly. Colbert’s may be the more brilliant show but I have to admit that Jon Stewart makes me laugh more. However, Colbert did perhaps the last interview that famed children’s book writer Maurice Sendak ever gave and its hysterical and touching. Both shows are must-see TV for me.
Suits: I would not have bet you that a series set in a high powered law firm with people I don’t especially like would keep me riveted, but this one sure does. Gabriel Macht, Patrick J. Adams and Rick Hoffman are superb but for me the best characters are two women – Gina Torres (who you might recognize from Firefly) as the really tough head of the firm and especially Sarah Rafferty as Macht’s tart tongued, all knowing secretary who steals the show. Morally complex, suspenseful, and witty.
Kate Bush: 50 Words For Snow: I’ve been a big Kate Bush fan for a long time and it becomes an event when she brings out a new CD. Kate Bush is one of the most influential female singer/songwriters in the music business. This is one of her best CDs in recent years and the duet she sings with Elton John, Snowed In At Wheeler Street, is haunting. I play it over and over again. It’s influencing a concept that I’m working on. I love this CD.
The Avengers: The most perfect cinema realization of the Marvel comics ethos. Joss Whedon (director and writer) rules. This made umpty gazillion dollars and you’ve probably seen it. One of the best moments: Hulk vs. Loki. ‘Nuff said.
Lincoln: I’ve talked about this in one of my other columns. Daniel Day-Lewis gives one of the great movie performances of all time but he’s not the only one. Sally Field, Tommy Lee Jones. Hal Holbrick, David Strathairn, Joseph Gordon-Levitt (who has had a very good year), James Spader and so many others make the film an acting delight.
Skyfall: James Bond’s 50th Anniversary in films and this one is a knockout. Bond is not simply an icon in this film; he’s a character with a deeper story. We see a seedy Bond, we see a Bond off his game, we see an aging Bond who may be outdated in the modern espionage world and knows it. This is right up there with my other two all-time favorite Bond movies, From Russia With Love and Goldfinger and it may be my favorite of the three. A key to the film’s success was hiring noted director Sam Mendes who delivered not only the action set pieces we expect from a Bond film but visual style, pacing, and performances. Daniel Craig gives his best outing yet as Bond, Javier Bardem’s Silva is one of the scariest all time Bond villains and Judy Dench – ah, Judy Dench. If you’ve seen the movie, you know what I’m talking about and, if you haven’t, I won’t ruin it for you. It’s not just a good Bond film; Skyfall is a really good film – period.
The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection: One of the pleasures of series books is coming back and seeing characters that you’ve come to regard as friends in a setting, a world, that has become real to you. Alexander McCall Smith has done that for me with his No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency books, a detective series set in Botswana, Africa, and starring his woman detective, Precious Ramotswe. This series is a long ways from a hardboiled noir detective. The stories are gentle and filled with characters I love. The challenge with series books is to give the reader everything they remember and want in the series while also covering new ground. It’s a tough trick to pull off; the books could become stale. This series progresses slightly with each book and stays fresh. I look forward to my next trip back to Botswana.
Favorite Person In the Whole Wide World: My Mary. Who else? Love you, cutie pie.
I’ll be back next year. Happy New Year to you all.
Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, my ComicMixers! I hope you all had a merry Christmas, a sassy Chanukah, and grumpy Festivus if you were so inclined. So, with Father Time about to hit the retcon button on our daily calendars… I thought it would be apropos to reflect a bit on those amazing and terrible things that made my year. Please note: this isn’t ALL about comic books; you’ve been warned.
Because I like to start on a dour note… here’s The Worst!
5. Avengers Vs. X-Men Vs. My Sanity: Simply put, this stands up as yet-another-example of what makes me hate the mainstream comics business. No matter how many times they lather us up with “we’ve got the best talent on this”, “this will change everything”, and “you won’t believe what happens!”, they always end up the same. Bloated, predictable, and unending. Every Marvel event since the dawn of Brian Michael Bendis has finished up in deeper doo-doo than when they began. His boner for “shades of grey” is unnerving. We get it; making our favorite characters wail on one another is why we buy comics. But, hey… guess what? It isn’t. I’d much prefer a well thought out story that ends instead of a non-stop soap opera.
4. The 2012 Election: Not the result, mind you, but the unending nature of it all. For what felt like nearly the entire year, we were privy to 24 hours a day coverage of not only our POTUS but everyone vying for his seat. It brought out the worst in the candidates and the politically charged masses along for the ride. In the worst case, certain louder-than-usual politico-creators became so unnerving I was forced to hide them from my feeds. First world problems? You bet. But no less annoying on my life and times this year.
3. Wizard World Conventions: The movie definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. So Wizard World changes the guard on high. They attempt to make sweeping changes on the floors of their traveling circus, making D-List celebs the premier attraction. They continue to maintain the second highest per-show cost for visiting artists. In short? They continue to drive away the very thing that started them out so very long ago: comics and the people who make them. While my li’l studio always sells well at these abominations… rarely are we joined in celebration at the end of the cons. Hence, my finger of shame this year.
2. Green Lantern: Another finger of shame… a ring finger! Geoff Johns has taken Grant Morrison’s Five-Year Plan model and Michael Bay’ed it to death. As I’ve been forced to note several times this year, the continual event fatigue on the entire line –which shouldn’t even be a line – is too much to bear. And while the majority of 2012 was spent with Sinestro and his gal Friday Jordan traipsing around the universe righting wrongs… this Rise of the Third Army is the emerald icing on a sheet cake of excess. Too many McGuffins, too many predictable plots, and a brand-new Lantern who thus far is more a caricature of “not-a-terrorist” than a fleshed-out legacy ring-slinger. One I’ll happily predict will last in prominence half as long as the last not-ready-for-prime-time-player, Kyle “Costume Change” Rayner.
1. Comics News Coverage: Well it finally caught up to us too, didn’t it? CNN begat CNN, and from them spawned the 24-hour news cycle that has extended to comics. Between Newsarama, Bleeding Cool, Comic Book Resources, and others (hold your tongue for a second, please) all looking for an audience… We’re left scouring trash-bins and date books in order to report anything about our beloved industry. I waive the white flag. And now to those who think I hold this very site on the fire? Nay. ComicMix is about writers expressing their opinions, and that’s enough for me to remove us from said blaze. Simply put, the news is important, but the environment we’ve built to report and sustain it is sickening. Marvel, DC, and the like can’t sneeze without us finding out about it… and then creating a backlash over it before the press releases have hit an inbox. Enough is ‘nuff said.
And now… The Best:
5. The Dark Knight Rises: Three cheers for Christopher Nolan’s magnum opus. Yeah, I know… The Avengers was more fun. But it wasn’t close to TDKR’s level of sophistication. Neither movie was flawless, but Batman kept me on the edge of my seat pretty much the whole way through. The depiction of Bane was as good as it will ever be – menacing, big picture villainous thinking, and an actual brain amidst the brawn. But Bane wasn’t what made the movie. Bale’s Wayne was nuanced, angsty without being annoying, and above all else… visibly human. Nolan, in spite of Frank Miller and Grant Morrison showed that you don’t have to depict the God-Damned Batman to show the world a fantastic caped-crusader. Add in a brilliant turn for Selina Kyle, and it added up to one of my favorite flicks of the year. I would have put Django Unchained in this spot, but I haven’t seen it yet.
4. Marvel Now: If you read my reviews over at Michael Davis World (and I know you do…), then you’d know just how much I’m loving the House of Mouse these days. Fantastic Four / FF is proving thus far to balance the whimsy the series used to be known for with mature overtones. Iron Man, while nowhere near as good as Fraction’s run, is still entertaining. Superior Spider-Man has me legitimately interested in the wall-crawler again. Mike Gold has tried several times to recommend Captain America to me. My Unshaven Cohort is reading an X-Men book for the first time ever. And Avengers? Epic as I’d ever want it to be. Marvel looked at DC’s retcon-reboot-whatever, and opted instead to play it safe. Frankly, it’s proven to me that it was the right thing to do. Sales spikes or not. By choosing not to throw the baby out with the bathwater, Marvel is stealing me away one book at a time
3. The Baltimore Comic-Con: Unshaven Comics took the 13-hour drive to the East Coast, and boy howdy was it ever worth it. We sold an incredible amount of books. We rubbed elbows with industry giants at the Harvey Awards. We got to hand our book to Phil LaMarr. We had dinner with Mark Wheatley, Marc Hempel, Glenn Hauman, and Emily Whitten. And at that dinner? We had crab cakes as big as softballs. Frankly? It was a weekend of a lifetime. Such that we’ve already registered and purchased our table for 2013. It’s the most comic-book-centered convention we’ve been privy too. Charm City? Color me charmed.
2. Unshaven Comics’ Sales: Hate to get all self-promotional here, but screw it. Unshaven Comics had a simple goal. With no distribution, no investors, and nothing more than our blood-sweat-n-tears… we wanted to sell 1000 books over the course of a year. After attending a dozen shows, and doing our best work ever? We sold 1406. We made amazing connections, saw fans actually seek us out at shows, and gained over 300 Facebook fans without purchasing an ad or doing anything more than hustle. By hook or crook, we’re making the smallest impact known to man on the comic book industry. But I’ll be damned—it may actually be working. All it’s done is fuel our fire for 2013. 1,667 books moved next year will mean we see the shores of San Diego in 2014. Beards on.
1. Bennett Reed Fishman: Simply put, no other moment, comic book or otherwise, is worth a hill of beans in my world. On January 27th, 2012, I became a father. Ever since, every single thing I’ve done has been for the betterment of his life. Having been an ego-centered bearded ne’er-do-well for far too long, suddenly became moot. In his eyes and smile, the world around me means nothing. And when at 5:30 every day he stops whatever he’s doing, and smiles ear to ear when Batman: The Animated Series comes on? It tells me this kid is my kid. And my worldview is 100% different. Sorry, comics. You never stood a chance.
Happy New Year to all of you who read my articles week in and week out. May 2013 prove to be a safe, prosperous, and amazing year for you all.
THE COMPLETE JOHN THUNSTONE by Manly Wade Wellman is now shipping. Copies are on their way and we expect to have the remaining preorders shipped by the 31st.
Conceived by Manly Wade Wellman and Weird Tales editor Dorothy McIlwraith in 1943, John Thunstone is a scholar and playboy who investigates mysterious supernatural events. Large and strong, intelligent, handsome, and wealthy, he has the typical attributes of a heroic character. He is also well-read in occult matters and has access to weapons (such as a sword-cane forged by a saint) that are especially potent against vampires, werewolves, and other supernatural creatures. In addition to the ghosts and other traditional supernatural beings, several of Thunstone’s enemies are Wellman’s unique creations. Particularly compelling are the enigmatic shonokins, a race of human-like creatures who claim to have ruled North America before the coming of humans.
Thunstone’s most persistent foe is the diabolical sorcerer Rowley Thorne, a character loosely based on the real occultist Aleister Crowley. Thunstone originally appeared in short stories published in Weird Tales from 1943 to 1951 with a final short story in 1982. Wellman would later write two novels featuring Thunstone: What Dreams May Come (1983) and The School of Darkness (1985).
Stories included in this collection: The Third Cry to Legba Weird Tales Nov ’43 The Golden Goblins Weird Tales Jan ’44 Hoofs Weird Tales Mar ’44 The Letters of Cold Fire Weird Tales May ’44 John Thunstone’s Inheritance Weird Tales Jul ’44 Sorcery from Thule Weird Tales Sep ’44 The Dead Man’s Hand Weird Tales Nov ’44 Thorne on the Threshold Weird Tales Jan ’45 The Shonokins Weird Tales Mar ’45 Blood from a Stone Weird Tales May ’45 The Dai Sword Weird Tales Jul ’45 Twice Cursed Weird Tales Mar ’46 Shonokin Town Weird Tales Jul ’46 The Leonardo Rondache Weird Tales Mar ’48 The Last Grave of Lill Warran Weird Tales May ’51 Rouse Him Not Kadath Jul ’82 What Dreams May Come, Doubleday 1983 The School of Darkness, Doubleday 1985
