Tagged: novel

Howard Hopkins Brings Hell On Hoofs!

  • News
  • November 15, 2011

New Pulp Author Howard Hopkins (writing as Lance Howard) has a new novel coming from UK publisher Hale Book’s Black Horse Western line. Hell On Hoofs is set to debut in January 2012.

About Black Horse Westerns:
Black Horse Westerns can be requested at public libraries or ordered at bookstores. They can be bought online from the publisher at http://www.halebooks.com/, or from other retailers including  Amazon, Amazon UK, WH Smith, Blackwells and The Book Depository (“free delivery worldwide”).

Also, Howard’s Lone Ranger novel, “Vendetta” debuts in February 2012 from Moonstone Books.

For more on Howard Hopkins, visit http://www.howardhopkins.com/

COMING FROM MOONSTONE MARCH 2012

  • News
  • November 13, 2011

The LONE RANGER Chronicles
Authors: James Reasoner, Johnny D. Boggs, Denny O’Neil
Edited: Matthew Baugh, Tim Lasiuta
Cover: David Palumbo
6″ x 9″, 288pgs, $18.95
978-1-936814-23-7

THE FIRST EVER COLLECTION of NEW Lone Ranger prose stories!
The masked ex-Texas Ranger and his Native American companion Tonto fight injustice in the Wild West!
Stories include meetings with The Cisco Kid, Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, as well as the origin of Tonto and the origin of Silver!

Authors include Spur Award winner Johnny D Boggs, James Reasoner, Alex Award winner Mel Odom, Anthony Award winner Bill Crider, Matthew Baugh, Tim Lasiuta, Joe Gentile, Paul Kupperberg, Denny O’Neil, Kent Conwell, David McDonald, Thom Brannon,  Spur Award winner Troy D. Smith, Chick Dixon, and Richard Dean Starr.

The LONE RANGER Chronicles HCAuthors: James Reasoner, Johnny D. Boggs, Denny O’Neil
Edited: Matthew Baugh, Tim Lasiuta
Cover: Ruben Procopio
6″ x 9″, 304pgs, $29.95
978-1-936814-22-0

Exclusive HC Bonus: “75 years of the Lone Ranger”

The SPIDER: Shadow of Evil Author: CJ Henderson
Cover: J. Anthony Kosar
4″ x 6″, 190pgs, $6.99
978-1-936814-20-6

The first new Spider novel in 65 years picks up where the last left off, packed to the gills with the greatest slam-bang action ever penned by master pulpster CJ Henderson!

Richard Wentworth, the Spider, wonders if his long struggle against the forces of evil has been worth it? Should he continue, or grab for personal happiness before his time runs out? Then, at the moment he makes his decision, fate unleashes the most hellish horrors against New York City of all time!

The SPIDER: Shadow of Evil HC6″ x7″, 210pgs, $22.99
978-1-936814-19-0
Author: CJ Henderson
Cover: J. Anthony Kosar

Bonus HC feature: an exclusive brand new hard-boiled Ed Race (“the Masked Marksman”) story by Rich Harvey!

The SPIDER: Slaughter, Inc. Author: Donald Cormack
Cover: Stephen Bryant
6″ x 9″, 190pgs, $14.95
978-1-936814-21-3

For the FIRST time anywhere…the last Spider pulp novel ever written…is published as an actual Spider novel!

A criminal genius has created an organization to sell murder where innocents are fingered for the crimes. When Nita Van Sloan is framed for murder, the Spider must infiltrate the cartel in disguise and clean house!

The HONEY WEST files vol.1 sc Author: G. G. Fickling
600pgs, 6″ x 9″, SC, $23.99
978-1-93681-17-6

The first female private eye is back in action: a volatile combination of Marilyn Monroe and Mike Hammer!
First appearing in 1957, Honey went on to star in eleven novels and the successful 1965 TV show starring Anne Francis, as well as the current series of comic books from Moonstone!

For the FIRST TIME anywhere, the original Honey West novels will be reprinted in one series of books!
Most of the books are long out of print, so here’s your chance to catch her!
In this volume: “This Girl for Hire”, “A Gun for Honey”, and “Girl on the Loose”.

PHASES of the MOON: Full Moon Conclusion!Story: Paul D. Storrie, CJ Henderson, Earl Mac Rauch
Art: Nathan Stockman, Glen Fernandez
Cover: Andy Black
48pgs, PC, $4.99
The conclusion to the decade-spanning craziest serial-killer saga of all time, starring SHEENA: QUEEN OF THE JUNGLE! What started with The Spider, Domino Lady, Honey West, Kolchak and others…ends here!

*Plus a recently uncovered BUCKAROO BANZAI part of this tale!
*Plus an epilogue starring KOLCHAK, as years later he uncovers the even more startling truth behind the lies!

For more on Moonstone Books, visit http://www.moonstonebooks.com/.

Martians Go Home Sneak Peek

  • Uncategorized
  • November 11, 2011



Artwork © Lowell Isaac.

New Pulp Author Martin Powell shared a new preview page by artist Lowell Isaac from their upcoming graphic novel, MARTIANS, GO HOME, based on the sci-fi classic by Fredric Brown. The invasion begins in 2012 from Sequential Pulp/Dark Horse Comics.

You can learn more about Sequential Pulp Comics at http://www.sequentialpulpcomics.com/

Bobby Nash’s DEADLY GAMES! Nook Edition Now Available At Barnes & Noble.

  • News
  • November 11, 2011

Bobby Nash and BEN Books are proud to announce that Bobby’s latest novel, Deadly Games is now available as an ebook for the Nook Book from Barnes & Noble for the low price of $3.00. You can purchase the Nook Book Edition of Deadly Games! through Barnes & Noble’s Nook Book Store at http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/books/1107149904?ean=2940013554849&itm=2&usri=bobby%252bnash

DEADLY GAMES! is also available in these other formats:

Print Direct Sale – $11.99: https://www.createspace.com/3704764

Print at Amazon – $11.99: http://www.amazon.com/Deadly-Games-1-Bobby-Nash/dp/0615553435/ref=sr_1_17?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1319831122&sr=1-17

Kindle ebook – $3.00: http://www.amazon.com/Deadly-Games-ebook/dp/B005ZN8VPS/ref=sr_1_3?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1319820451&sr=1-3

Smashwords ebook – $3.00: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/101814

Plus, you can always ask your favorite bookseller to order a copy for you.

For more information on Deadly Games!, please visit BEN Books at http://ben-books.blogspot.com/ or Deadly Games! author Bobby Nash at http://www.bobbynash.com/.

25 YEARS LATER… SCARLET IN GASLIGHT RETURNS!

  • News
  • November 10, 2011

Pulp 2.0 Press is pleased to announce the upcoming December release of the 25th anniversary edition of SCARLET IN GASLIGHT, the classic graphic novel starring two of literature’s immortal characters, SHERLOCK HOLMES and DRACULA. Written by Martin Powell and illustrated by Seppo Makinen this thrilling supernatural mystery-adventure has been reviewed by no less than the Washington Post who said that SCARLET IN GASLIGHT is “…more satisfyingly cinematic than many of the movies.”

This special collector’s edition features:

– remastered artwork from the artist

– a special introduction from noted pulp writer and scholar Win Scott Eckert (CROSSOVERS 1&2, THE EVIL IN PEMBERLEY HOUSE)

– a comprehensive interview with Martin Powell on the origins of SCARLET IN GASLIGHT conducted by Michael Leal.

For more on the 25th Anniversary Edition of Scarlet In Gaslight, visit the Pulp 2.0 Press website at http://pulp2ohpress.com/scarlet-in-gaslight-the-25th-anniversary-edition-due-in-december-2011/

DYNAMITE ENTERTAINMENT LAUNCHES WARRIORS OF MARS IN FEBRUARY 2012!

  • News
  • November 9, 2011

PRESS RELEASE

THE NEWEST HIT-SERIES IN DYNAMITE’S WARLORD OF MARS LINE OF COMICS!

Cover Art: Joe Jusko

November 9, 2011, Runnemede, NJ – After the incredible critical and commercial success of Dynamite’s Warlord of Mars, Warlord of Mars: Dejah Thoris, and Warlord of Mars: Fall of Barsoom series, comes Warriors of Mars #1! Before John Carter another earthman visited the Red planet: Lt. Gullivar Jones. Now these legendary warriors are brought together for the first time! When Lt. Guillivar Jones happens upon a mysterious old man with a beautiful carpet he soon finds himself transported through space and time to the planet Mars where he meets the beautiful Princess Hera and a ferocious tribe of Red Martians bent on capturing her! Warriors of Mars is written by Warlord of Mars: Fall of Barsoom writer Robert Napton, drawn by Jack Jadson, with covers by the legendary Joe Jusko and will hit comic stores February 2012!

“Gullivar was written first, but Carter cornered the market and became a legend,” says writer Robert Napton. “It’s Gullivar Vs. John Carter-let the battle begin! It’s a thrill to bring these two southern gents together on the same stretch of red turf and let them have at it. But it won’t be all blood and guts. There’s a story to be told. Many have heard of Gullivar of Mars, but don’t know who he is and how he’s a different sort of man from Carter despite being caught in the same otherworldly circumstances. This is one mash-up fans of pulp won’t want to miss.”
“We’ve found a smart and clever way to tie these two pulp heroes together and rescue Gullivar from relative obscurity and place him up on the dais among the greats,” adds Dynamite Editor Joe Rybandt. “We’re going to explore more of the eras of Mars with Gullivar, the past, present and future and Robert Napton has proven himself more than capable of spinning some excellent Barsoomian tales and we’ve paired him with a great new artistic find in Jack Jadson.”

Princess of Mars is an Edgar Rice Burroughs science fiction novel, the first of his famous series, which initially began publication in serialized form within the pages of All-Story Magazine in February 1912. It is also Burroughs’ first novel, predating his Tarzan stories. Full of swordplay and daring feats, the story is considered a classic example of 20th century pulp fiction.

Edwin Lester Arnold’s Gullivar of Mars novel, originally published as Lieutenant Gullivar Jones: His Vacation in 1905, bears a number of striking similarities to Burroughs’ Princess of Mars. Both Gullivar and Burroughs’ protagonist John Carter are Southern United States soldiers who arrive on Mars by apparently magical means (magic carpet in the case of the former, astral projection in that of the latter) and have numerous adventures there, including falling in love with Martian princesses. Gullivar is a more hapless character, however, paling beside the heroic and accomplished Carter. Gullivar, in contrast, stumbles in and out of trouble and never quite succeeds in mastering it.

Robert Napton has written hundreds of comics. He is currently writing WARLORD OF MARS: THE FALL OF BARSOOM for DYNAMITE. In 2008, he adapted Terry Brooks’ DARK WRAITH OF SHANNARA as a graphic novel and wrote the new BATTLESTAR GALACTICA.
Join the conversation on Twitter with #WarriorsOfMars

To learn more about Dynamite Entertainment, please visit: www.dynamite.net

MICHAEL DAVIS: The Art of the Deal

MICHAEL DAVIS: The Art of the Deal

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…

That line has nothing to do with this column. I just love starting a piece with “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…” I mean how cool is that?

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…

I started to look at comics differently. Up until that moment, comics were just a great vice in my life. Sure, I wanted to work in comics. Sure I loved comics but until that moment, comics to me were a simple, can’t do without, pleasure.

But… One day I was sitting in my study…what? yes, I had a study! That’s where I went to… study. So, one day I was sitting in my study when a bat smashed through my floor to ceiling window. At that moment I knew my path. My path was clear… That freakin’ bat must die!

Have you any idea how much a floor to ceiling window costs? A lot!

The bat was bouncing off my very expensive walls! Hey! When you see this shit in the movies and by this shit I mean people chasing a bat, rat, bird or whatever around their house, it’s all bullshit. In the movies the point is to get rid of the nuisance and provide comedy relief. The reality? It’s about killing the nuisance and avoiding bat blood on the walls of your Manhattan loft. After securing the bat, I started to…

Oh, you want to know what happened to the bat? Look, PeTA would be up my ass if I wrote what happened to that bat. I really don’t need to hear from those people so I’ll just say this, my .38 is missing a bullet and replacing a door is not that hard.

However, none of that is important. What is important is, at the very moment when my bat problem was over I realized that comics were not just a way to spend another lonely night after masturbating.

What? Oh, like you don’t!

At that moment I stuck upon an idea.

That idea?

The Art Of The Deal.

To put it another way, a step-by-step overview of a comic book deal.

So… starting next week I’m going to share with you in detail the inner working of one of my comic book deals. From idea to printed graphic novel.

I’ll use an existing but not yet finished deal from start to finish so if it goes south you will know why.

So fasten your seat belts, it’s going to be a realistic ride.

WEDNESDAY: Mike Gold

Review: The Mr. Monster trilogy by Dan Wells

John Wayne Cleaver is not a serial killer; he wants you to know that up front. He’s also not, sadly, a typical American teenager, though he somewhat wishes that he could be. Thirdly, he’s not officially a sociopath — that diagnosis can only be given to an adult, and John is only fifteen. What he has is instead called Antisocial Personality Disorder — he has an almost complete lack of empathy, simply not understanding what other people’s emotions are or connecting with them directly.

So John has to work his way through life by intellectually building models of what he thinks people are feeling, and of how he should respond to those feelings, and continually adapting his models to get closer to reality. He’s not all that good at it at the beginning of I Am Not A Serial Killer, the first novel he narrates, but give him a break: he’s a fifteen-year-old boy from a small town, and his brain doesn’t work the way everyone else’s does.

To make matters worse, he’s obsessed with violent death and with serial killers — and he’s smart enough to have noticed that he has all of the standard characteristics of a serial killer: a distant, abusive father who abandoned him, high IQ, frequently bullied, a fascination with fire, even bedwetting. And he doesn’t really want to get too far away from death — the most soothing thing in his life is helping out his mother and aunt in their family business, the mortuary downstairs from their apartment. But he definitely doesn’t want to kill people, and has built up a regimen of rules and avoidance techniques to keep the thoughts of torture and death at bay.

But then a real serial killer starts stalking John’s home town — Clayton, North Dakota [1] — and John can’t help but follow the case, working up his own profile of the killer. It gets worse when John accidentally sees the killer in action — and realizes not only that the murderer is his friendly elderly neighbor, Mr. Crowley, but that Crowley is some kind of supernatural creature, taking body parts from his victims to replace his own deteriorating organs and limbs. (more…)

Water for Elephants

Why are we reviewing this failed adaptation of Sara Gruen’s 2006 novel, Water for Elephants? Well, we like circuses and my wife enjoyed the novel. We think Christoph Waltz is one of the more interesting actors to watch these days and frankly, we just plain like Reese Witherspoon, who hasn’t made enough solid films the last few years. Then there’s director Francis Lawrence, whose Constantine I thought was underrated. With the box office disappointment out this week on disc from 20th Century Home Entertainment, it was time to give it a look.

This Depression-era story tells of Jacob Jankowski (Robert Pattinson), a would-be veterinarian whose studies at Cornell were cut short given the economy. He hits the road, as did so many others, but only he stumbled across the Benzini Brothers Circus, run by August (Waltz) and featuring his wife Marlena (Witherspoon). They need a doctor on the cheap and he gains invaluable practical experience caring for the menagerie being carted from town to town.

Jacob also gets a hard lesson in life as he watches August abuse both wife and elephant and Jacob tenderly fills the void for both. Things go awry when August learns of Jacob’s interference with his life and profession, setting up an inevitable confrontation.

There’s plenty of drama here, plenty of atmosphere and themes to explore, but the power of the novel is sapped by a labored film adaptation in the hands of screenwriter Richard LaGravenese and director Francis Lawrence. While he struggled to successful bring Constantine’s snark to film, ruined by the Americanization to accommodate Keanu Reeves, he did Richard Matheson a disservice with I Am Legend so the jury was still out on his skills. This third flawed adaptation proves the man is tone deaf to the beauty inherent in the prose. All three films call for unique settings and moods but rather than feast on a bleak 1930s America, this feels like a typical Hollywood vision of that time.

In adapting the book’s rich characters and psychological interrelationships, Lawrence comes up short, robbing every character of their depth. The attractive cast is also the wrong cast and doesn’t give them enough actual direction leaving Waltz in need of restraint and Pattinson and Witherspoon mismatched, lacking any real spark between them. He does his best work with Rosie the Elephant which isn’t saying a lot. Had the circus performers and crew been allowed to do anything in the story, it could have been a rich ensemble piece and more satisfying look at this life on the rails.

The Blu-ray edition, not sent for review, contains plenty of featurettes while the DVD comes with just a Robert Pattinson Spotlight (yawn), a by-the-numbers piece on Reese Witherspoon, and the most interesting piece The Traveling Show: From Page to Screen. There’s also an audio commentary from Lawrence and LaGravenese but I just couldn’t care enough to finish it.

For those interested, the Blu-ray comes with the above plus Working Without A Net – The Visual Effects of Water for Elephants; The Star Attraction; Raising the Tent; and, Secrets of the Big Top.

MARTHA THOMASES: Dragon Tattoo – Why A Graphic Novel?

Vertigo is slated to publish the graphic novel adaptation of Stieg Larsson’s [[[The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo]]]. The Swedish series has sold tens of millions of copies in dozens of languages. There are already Swedish movies based on the books, and the first of the American films is to be released later this year.

Why do we need a graphic novel?

The books are terrific. They take you inside the lives of computer hackers, crusading journalists and evil authority figures, with a glimpse of Swedish social mores and political intrigue. Larsson is an ardent feminist, a refreshing perspective on the bestseller lists.

I haven’t seen the movies, but people whose opinions I respect like them a lot. The American version is directed by David Fincher, of Fight Club and The Social Network.

Why do we need a graphic novel? What will it show us that we didn’t see in these other media?

There are stories I would like to see adapted. Bunches.

  • Angels in America, by Tony Kushner, with its leaps across times and across realities, is a natural. I have always imagined Phil Jimenez and Howard Cruse doing the art.
  • Norman Mailer’s Ancient Evenings, for the battle scene where the Pharaoh walks across the field, accompanied by lions who snatch gory snacks from the dead and wounded.
  • The Ghost of Tom Joad by Bruce Springsteen, as a series of inter-connected short stories, each with a different artist.

There are writers I would like to see work in comics because their prose suggests they know how to work with visual artists: Will Self, Patti Smith, Don Dellilo. They may not actually be any good at the form – they may need their words – but I would like to see them try.

But a book that has already been a great movie? That I don’t so much need. Gone With the Wind? The Maltese Falcon? What are they going to show me that I haven’t already seen?

That’s the challenge Vertigo has ahead of themselves. I hope they prove me wrong.

SATURDAY: Marc Alan Fishman

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