BATTLESTAR GALACTICA: BLOOD & CHROME is finally here, but you don’t know the whole story on how this all came to be. Executive Producer David Eick shares some surprising facts (and a few sneaky spoilers) with us, plus October was another good month in the comic stores, but for which company and THE KILLING rises from the dead.
We’ve got more with THE WALKING DEAD‘s two latest casualties, Sarah Wayne Callis and IronE Singleton. We cover it all from Lori’s Haters, IronE’s surprise at his fate and the possibility that Sarah might have a chance to return to the show. Plus DC goes digital in an even bigger way and we move two steps closer to that ELFQUEST movie.
Airship 27 Productions is excited to announce the release of their third MYSTERY MEN (& Women) anthology celebrating the creations of brand new pulp heroes to follow in the steps of the classic avengers of old.Managing Editor, Ron Fortier explains it this way, “After doing new stories of classic pulp heroes for nearly four years, many of our writers starting getting the itch to invent their own original pulp characters.This anthology series addresses that need and has been a huge hit with all our readers.”
As in the first two volumes in this series, a quartet of today’s most ambitious pulp writers put on their creative caps and have whipped up four thrilling brand new pulp adventures crammed with wall-to-wall action. In MYSTERY MEN (& Women) Vol III we get to meet three brand new characters and have the pleasure of enjoying the return of a familiar character from volume two.
THE SKEIN – A black veteran of World War One returns home to the bayou country only confront an evil practitioner of the voodoo magic is turning living people into lifeless zombies.Donning his old doughboy uniform and a gasmask, the Skein is born to protect the innocent and defeat the wicked, written and created by Kevin Noel Olson
THE BROWN RECLUSE – Next, in the grand tradition of the old pulp magazines comes a new series that focuses not on the stalwart heroes of the tale but rather on its dastardly villain.A mad scientist whose genius is capable of inventing the most bizarre weapons, the Brown Recluse has but one goal in mind, the complete domination of all mankind under his heel. He is the invention of writer by Greg Gick
KIRI – A beautiful female samurai comes to New York in the early 1930s employed as the personal aid to a newspaper business woman wanting to clean up the city from vice and corruption.Along the way, Kiri stumbles on a white slavery ring connected to a former ally who murdered her teacher back in Japan.Suddenly her mission becomes that of personal vengeance and before it is over blood will be spilled.Airship 27 Productions is thrilled to welcome gifted writer Curt Ferlund to our ranks and premier this truly wonderful new pulp hero.
MONGREL (Chapter Two) – And lastly the saga of the modern day action hero, Mongrel, continues in this second chapter picking up where the first ended.There is a conspiracy to destroy Mongrel’s family, the owners of a multi-faceted high tech communications empire.Using disguised, sophisticated cyborg assassins, the enemy strikes from the shadows.This is Airship 27 Productions’ first on-going chapter serial and is presented by the creator of Dillon, the one and only Derrick Ferguson.
Airship 27 Productions’ 14th title of the year features a stunning cover by artist Marco Turini with interior illustrations and designs by Art Director Rob Davis.Here once more are four fast-paced, colorful heroes created in the spirit of the golden age pulp avengers and brought to you by the publisher where adventure reigns.Airship 27 Productions.PULP FICTION FOR A NEW GENERATION!
If you aren’t caught up on this week’s episode of WALKING DEAD, then we got two words for you – SPOILER ALERT. We begin our talk with the most casualty and how this death veered away from the one seen in the comic, plus Tom Hanks (along with Halle Berry) help us figure out CLOUD ATLAS and DC piles on 52 new variant covers!
There’s been a lot happening on the NBC comedy, PARKS AND RECREATION including an out-of-the-blue marriage proposal. Co-creator & star, Amy Poehler catches up on all of it plus odds are Jamie Foxx will be Electro and more speculation on Disney and Star Wars.
During a recent in-house editorial discussion here, the notion was floated that we should be showing naked female breasts on this website, as part of an attempt to increase search engine rankings and site traffic.* To address this lack of undress, we’d like to present you with The Outdoor Co-ed Topless Pulp Fiction Appreciation Society, whose slogan is “Making Reading Sexy”. Their raison d’etre:
We’re a group of friends, and friends of friends, and friends of friends of friends, and complete strangers, who love good books and sunny days and enjoying both as nearly in the altogether as the law allows. Happily, in New York City, the law allows toplessness by both men and women. So that’s the way we do our al fresco reading. If you’re in New York and the weather’s good, won’t you join us sometime…?
And yes, you can go to their website, which features many photos of them in Bryant Park and other New York City locales fulfilling their organizational mission. (Of course, the site is probably Not Safe For Work.) They’ve been working their way through a recent contribution from Hard Case Crime who generously supplied them with free copies of some of their latest, including [[[Seduction of the Innocent]]] from our good friend Max Allan Collins. We hope he got a good back cover blurb out of it.
They don’t appear to have gotten around to comics and graphic novels yet, but we’re sure we can find something for them by the time the weather in New York gets nice again. And no, despite what you might think, we’re not going to send them a bunch of mini-comics. We just aren’t cynical enough for Cynicalman.
* Yes, this is what goes on in our workplace when we aren’t figuring out how many dimensions Cynosure intersects with. Arguing about whether Thor is stronger than the Hulk is for newbies.
Ever since Friday, the media have been telling New Yorkers to prepare for the storm. Be sure to have candles and batteries and water.
I do.
Still, I am not prepared. I am too high maintenance to function without electricity. If this was the NBC series, Revolution, I would have died before the opening credits began.
It is not until the power goes out that I realize how much I depend upon it. My hand automatically goes to the light switch when I walk into the bathroom. I know the coffee-maker won’t work, but I don’t know that the gas stove also requires electricity to light. I have to drink my coffee cold, like a Neanderthal. Luckily, I have a friend who only likes instant coffee, so I do not have withdrawal.
There is also no cable, no Internet, no cell service. My iPad is fully charged, but I can’t watch anything on Netflix because I can’t stream.
I can’t send in my column by deadline. With no subways or buses, I can’t go to a Starbucks for the WiFi because no place is open. I can’t even buy a newspaper.
Things are happening outside. I can hear sirens. Because I am old-fashioned and have a landline, I can talk to people. Friends and family from California, Michigan, Ohio and Brooklyn, all exotic foreign lands that have power, have called to tell me what is happening across town.
It would be a quiet day except for the wind blowing over the scaffolding on the building across the street. I have been reading the pile of graphic novels on my coffee table, saving my Kindle battery for later, when there is less natural light.
Then I will hunker down in the darkness, with candles and backlighting. I will eat my cold food and drink my room-temperature water.
There are rumors of light and power uptown. I may gather my devices for recharging and walk the three or four miles necessary to ascertain if this is true. If you are reading this, then I was successful.
Since the day DOCTOR NO exploded on the screen, the fates and fortunes of James Bond has been in the hands of the Brocceli Family, first with Albert “Cubby” Brocceli and now his daughter Barbara. We sat down with Barbara to talk about the rich history of Bond and how they work out each detail from tone of the story to the Bond Girls, even before the cameras roll – plus G4 gets overhauled and Arnold is CONAN again – really?
Back about a half-century past, when the streets of New York were grimy and enchanted and I first tiptoed into the supply side of popular culture, I would occasionally ride the subway to alien parts of the city to socialize with science fiction fans. Nice folk, these were. Sometimes they’d ask me about the science fiction books I was reading – and I read a lot of them in those days – and we’d chat. But, I eventually wondered, why weren’t they reading the stuff that I was? Didn’t they identify themselves as science fiction fans?
My memory is, as always, hazy, but I think I finally decided that what they called fanac had become more important than the fiction that had originally inspired it. The clubs, the meetings, and amateur publications – fanzines, of course – and the conventions occupied their leisure minds and the genre that was identified with the fanac – fan activity, as you have by now guessed – had a lesser place in their concerns. It was useful – it provided a reason for the gatherings and magazines – but the fanac was the thing. Fandom took on a life of its own and there was nothing wrong with that.
Much, much later, when I was seeing socially a lovely young woman who was part of that world (and whom I should have treated way better, and if she’s reading this, I apologize) I realized that fanac served noble purposes: it gave the participants private mythologies to share and elaborate; it gave them a social sphere in which to meet and sometimes mate like-minded others; it gave them places to go and things to do. In short: it gave them a tribe.
I remembered my fanacking friends and their tribal rites when, a couple of days ago, I read that over a thousand Boy Scout leaders were accused of sexual misconduct and their supervisors very seldom blew the whistle on them. Getting to be an old song, isn’t it? Clergymen and educators, make room on the bus for the BSA, and it’s off to hell we’ll go…
Evolution wants us to have tribes and most of us need them. The problems arise when the tribe becomes, to its leaders, more important than the reasons for which the tribe was formed: the football program is a vital part of the university and any young athletes who are harmed are collateral damage, and that is too bad; the church is God’s earthly avatar and its well-being, including its reputation, must be protected at all costs; and don’t the Scouts teach our youth proper values and skills and surely a bit of psychological damage here and there is justified by all the good…
Yeah.
Let us agree: we need tribes. But now, let us ask most earnestly: what do the tribes need?
RECOMMENDED VIEWING: The Meaning of Life – Perspectives from the World’s Great Intellectual Traditions, presented by Jay Garfield and available from The Great Courses. If you take only one philosophy course…
