PULP OBSCURA BEGINS! FIRST VOLUME DEBUTS!
From Laurie S. Powers’ Blog-
RIDING THE PULP TRAIL is now available as an eBook for the Nook, the iPad, the iPhone, the iPhoneTouch, and the Kindle!!! At the price of $4.99, you get 340 pages of some of the BEST pulp Western stories around! (Not that I’m biased or anything.)
Here are the links to the various formats:
Buy it at Barnes & Noble for the Nook ($4.99)
Buy it at the Apple store for iPad, iPhone and iPhoneTouch($4.99)
Buy it at Amazon for the Kindle ($4.99)
Here’s what one reviewer has said about RIDING THE PULP TRAIL:
Laurie Powers has been gathering, preserving, researching, and publishing the pulp work of her late grandfather, Paul S. Powers. Here, she has gathered six of his stories that have seen print and six that were previously unpublished in a handsome trade paperback edition. The first story is a reprint, the second unpublished, and so on in that order. There is one Sonny Tabor story. The stories are a delicious mix of action, humor, and colorful characters. All are infused with simple morality and the need for justice in a land where the law is sparse and sometimes suborned by evil. What struck me most about the stories were their seeming freshness, as though they’d been written this year and not 60 or so years ago. Their most pulpish attributes are the titles, which glow purple and proud. A few favorites: “Guns at Jailbird Ranch;” “Buzzards Hate Bullets;” “Judgment Day on Whiskey Trail.”
A huge vote of thanks goes to Laurie Powers for discovering the lost manuscripts, resurrecting the old stories, and making them available in a handsome package. She also contributes an informative introduction detailing her discovery of Paul S. Powers’ career, previously unknown to her, and how she came to gather the stories for this volume. Let’s hope it’s the first of many.
If you you’re inclined to keep an eye out, heroes pop up like Kleenex. Steve Niles just made the cut.
At the 2010 Baltimore Comic-Con Harvey Awards dinner, Mark Waid offered a courageous keynote address which offered a simple message: digital comics are here to stay, there is an international bootlegging community and we as creators and industry doyens must learn to deal with it. For this, Mark was roundly booed, hassled and harassed by his peers. Astonishingly, one of his tormentors was the otherwise quite gentlemanly Sergio Aragonés.
I don’t recall if Steve Niles was at the dinner, but if not, it’s likely he heard about it. Suggesting that any acknowledgement of those who pirate comics is akin to taking a dump on the bible. This is true throughout the media: records (yeah, it’s okay to call them “records;” look it up), movies and teevee shows, even books. And you thought nobody was reading.
The media industry’s response to this has been to advocate passage of the Stop Online Piracy Act, a.k.a. SOPA. Simply put, SOPA allows any intellectual property (IP) owner to legally compel any Internet Service Provider (a.k.a. ISP; we’re shooting for the entire alphabet this week) to kick off any website suspected of copyright infringement.
Well, here’s a clue for you. Well over 99% of the websites on the Internet infringe copyrights and trademarks. Pick-ups of news items, graphics used to illustrate anything, sound bytes and even some You Tube links – they are all infringing upon somebody’s IP. You rip off the Superman logo font because you’re artistic and just being cute? Well, that logo is a registered trademark, and you are now Lex Luthor.
So Steve, bless his 30 Days of Night heart, took a stand. “SOPA does more than go after so-called ‘piracy’ websites,” said he. “SOPA takes away all due process, shuts down any site it deems to be against the law without trial, without notification, without due process… Nobody seems to give a shit, or either they’re scared. Either way, very disappointing. I guess when it affects them they’ll get mad… I know folks are scared to speak out because a lot of us work for these companies, but we have to fight. Too much is at stake.”
He tweeted all these comments; I got them from our pals at Digital Spy, except they asterisked “shit.” We here at ComicMix are beneath that.
Here’s some facts. Every time somebody unlawfully downloads IP – and note I said “unlawfully” because it is unlawful – the media racket sees that as a lost sale. This is overwhelming bullshit. People sample, people are curious, people’s friends make a recommendation and said people check ‘em out. There’s plenty of stuff that you’d check out before laying down your plastic sight unseen. The actual number of downloads that defraud the owner (which is usually not the creator) is a fraction of the total. These downloads are still illegal, but IP moguls should pull the stick out of their ass and tell the truth when they are babbling about how much bootlegging is costing them. They are liars.
There are a great many services that allow you to legally purchase IP, and the largest of these is Apple’s iTunes, which offers music, television, movies, books, magazines, newspapers, software (a.k.a. “apps”) and probably jpg’s of papyrus scrolls. As of around October 2011 – the date varies by category – iTunes has sold over 16 billion songs, about one half-billion movies, videos and teevee shows, some 20 billion apps, and Crom knows how many books, magazines and newspapers.
Here’s the rub: in each and every one of these approximately 40,000,000,000 cases, the purchaser could have downloaded the damn thing for free. In most cases, it is far easier to illegally cop a boot than it is to purchase one. Let’s start with the fact that you don’t need to have a credit card or room left on your credit limit to procure your illegal bootie.
So. 40 billion downloads from just one – the biggest one – online merchant in a world that only houses seven billion people. That’s an average of four and one-half perfectly legal downloads for each and every person, including babies in the Amazon who don’t even have access to Amazon.
Hey! People are inherently good. Go know!
Of course SOPA is being supported by all the big IP companies, including Disney (Marvel) and Time Warner (DC). If only they were so moral about how they treat their creative talent, without whom both companies would constitute another real estate bust.
On the other side: Facebook, Google, Twitter and Wikipedia, the latter of which threatens to disappear should SOPA pass. Then students will actually have to do research, and we can’t have that.
Also standing proudly on the other side: Steve Niles. Good for you, pal.
Good grief. Now Mark Evanier is going to hate me.
Thursday: Dennis O’Neil
Van Allen Plexico chats with the Book Cave crew about his latest series, Blackthorn: Thunder on Mars from White Rocket Books http://www.whiterocketbooks.com/.
Listen now at http://thebookcave.libsyn.com/webpage
The ALL PULP website conducted a round-robin interview with the writers of Blackthorn: Thunder on Mars. You can read it at http://allpulp.blogspot.com/2011/12/all-pulps-blackthorn-thunder-on-mars.html
BLACKTHORN: THUNDER ON MARS PRESS RELEASE:
White Rocket Books proudly announces the release in trade paperback format of BLACKTHORN: THUNDER ON MARS, a science fiction action-adventure anthology set on far-future post-apocalyptic Mars.
Created by Van Allen Plexico (Sentinels, Lucian), the book features stories by New Pulp luminaries Mark Bousquet, Joe Crowe, Bobby Nash, James Palmer, Sean Taylor, I. A. Watson, and Plexico, along with six full-page illustrations by Chris Kohler (Sentinels). Cover art and design are by James Burns (Lance Star: One Shot).
In the spirit of “Thundarr the Barbarian” and “John Carter of Mars” comes the gripping saga of US General John Blackthorn. Betrayed and left for dead on the battlefield, Blackthorn awakens many thousands of years later to find himself trapped amidst the ruins of a post-apocalyptic Mars, his only companions a savage Mock-Man and a mysterious sorceress. They battle together to free this strange new world from oppression, but it won’t be easy, for arrayed against them are the deadliest foes imaginable: mutants, monsters, and robots, as well as treacherous teammates. And lurking behind it all are the fanatical forces of the First Men: the Black Sorcerer, the Sorcerer of Fatal Laughter, Lord Ruin, and the Sorcerer of Night—masters of magic and technology alike—the dreaded Sorcerers of Mars!
“The awesome array of talent assembled on this book really speaks for itself, and guarantees a fun time will be had by all,” promises Editor Van Allen Plexico. “Each of the writers jumped on the project with huge enthusiasm and each brought something unique and very exciting to the table. And there’s no question Chris Kohler, who is also interior artist on my Sentinels superhero novels, has done some of the best work of his career here with BLACKTHORN.”
Says noted New Pulp author Wayne Reinagel, “BLACKTHORN is one of the best sword-and-sorcery spaceman anthologies to arrive on Earth, or Mars, in the last century or more. Clearly inspired by an equal combination of Hanna-Barbera’s ‘Thundarr the Barbarian,’ DC Comics’ ‘Kamandi,’ and Edgar Rice Burroughs’ ‘John Carter of Mars,’ BLACKTHORN is an original, entertaining, action-packed saga.”
The new trade paperback edition follows on the heels of the successful Kindle launch, which immediately zoomed into the top rankings of all SF anthology e-books on Amazon. It presents all seven stories in their entirety, including the double-length origin, along with Chris Kohler’s interior artwork.
White Rocket Books is a leader in the New Pulp movement, publishing exciting action and adventure novels and anthologies since 2005, in both traditional and electronic formats. White Rocket books have hit the Amazon.com Top 15-by-Genre and have garnered praise from everyone from Marvel Comics Editor Tom Brevoort to Kirkus Reviews.
BLACKTHORN: THUNDER ON MARS is a $15.95, 6×9 format trade paperback from White Rocket Books.
On Amazon.com:
http://www.amazon.com/Blackthorn-Thunder-Van-Allen-Plexico/dp/0984139265
Also available digitally for the Kindle for $2.99 at http://www.amazon.com/Blackthorn-Thunder-on-Mars-ebook/dp/B006FBRHG8/ref=sr_1_15?ie=UTF8&qid=1322503101&sr=8-15
Listen to The Book Cave now at http://thebookcave.libsyn.com/webpage
For more information about White Rocket Books, visit http://www.whiterocktbooks.com/
For more information about Blackthorn: Thunder on Mars at www.whiterocketbooks.com/blackthorn.htm
Pulp Empire (http://www.pulpempire.com) is proud to announce that our next print anthology Heroes & Heretics is now available for purchase on all digital devices. The new book features 19 stories by a bevy of new and returning Pulp Empire authors. Almost every pulp genre is covered from Milo James Fowler’s western “Fool’s Gold” to Jack Mulcahy’s sword & sorcery saga “Into the Demesne of Dhuada”.
As a nice Jewish girl, I’ve always loved Christmas and Chanukah and Festivus for the rest of us.
We lived on a “not quite” cul-de-sac that had an island in the middle of the street. On that island was a huge old fir tree, and every holiday season all the “cul-de-sac’ers” would decorate it for Christmas. Yep, it was “National Brotherhood Week” on Hodges Place – I always wondered if the street was named for Gil Hodges of the Brooklyn Dodgers. I doubt it – this was on Staten Island, not Brooklyn – but it would make a nice story, wouldn’t it?
Anyway, my brother and I didn’t feel cheated in mid-December – like every snotty, young, selfish Jewish kid, Chanukah meant eight days of presents. And latkes ; potato pancakes for the uninitiated. But truth to tell, we also thought the story of the oil in the Temple miraculously burning for eight days was pretty cool, and the candlelight was so pretty. My brother and I didn’t lose on Christmas either.
Christmas Eve was when my mom took me, my brother, an done friend each into Manhattan for our annual visit to Rockefeller Center and the Christmas Tree, then to skate on the Rockefeller Center ice rink, then to Radio City Music Hall to see the movie and the Christmas show, then to walk down Fifth Avenue to see the fantabulously animated window, and finally to then meet up with our Dad at Macy’s, where we would all bundle into the car for a trip through the tunnel and home. And once at home, bathed and tucked into bed – with visions of sugarplums dancing in our heads – dad and mom would hang Lord & Taylor’s, or Saks Fifth Avenue, or Bloomindales or B. Altman ‘s (yeah, I’m that old) shopping bags for Santa to fill – I guess jolly ol’ St. Nick was kosher, but real stockings were trafe.
So here’re some suggestions for your shopping bags and/or stockings, trafe or not. Some political – hey, it wouldn’t be my column with at least one political comment, would it? – and some not.
With our troops “officially” coming home from Iraq – my girlfriend is in the Army and she knows soldiers who have gotten marching orders to Baghdad to help protect the nearly 20,000 “diplomats” who will remain in the Emerald City Otherwise Known As The United States Embassy, it’s time for you to really understand how the fuck we got involved there in the first place.
As for me? What do I want for Christmas, Chanukah, and Festivus for the rest of us? Oh, say, it’d be nice to part of the 1%, wouldn’t it? C’mon, you know you’d like it, too. I’m joking. (Or am I?) A guarantee that President Obama will have a second term, this time with a Congress that’ll work with him instead of demonizing everything about one of the smartest men to ever hold the office. Barring that, a Presidency for Hillary – and yes, I know she said she’s done with politics after winding up her term as Secretary of State. To write Wonder Woman again.
Peace on Earth, Goodwill to Men.
Yeah. I like that one.
Ho, Ho, Ho!
TUESDAY: Michael Davis