PULP ARK WEEKEND-GUEST INTERVIEW WITH WAYNE SKIVER!
AP: Why is knowledge of Doc important to pulpsters, particularly pulp creators?
AP: You’re also a publisher. As such, what does participation in events like PULP ARK mean to you?
AP: Why is knowledge of Doc important to pulpsters, particularly pulp creators?
AP: You’re also a publisher. As such, what does participation in events like PULP ARK mean to you?
I had the privilege of working with Tom Ziuko on such projects as Legends, Blackhawk and The History of the DC Universe; he’s worked on everything from Superman to The Flintstones to Hellblazer, and that’s just the tip of his iceberg of credits. Tom’s work speaks for itself; if you’re not familiar with his stuff, Google or GCD him. I’m sure you’ve got tons of it in your collection.
Tom’s got a problem. He’s suffering from kidney failure and is in his fourth week of hospitalization. There is hope: there are treatments available that might save his life. The trouble is, Tom’s a comic book freelancer and, like most comic book freelancers, he can’t afford health insurance. Let’s not mince words: that means that, in fairly short order, Tom Ziuko could die from his aliment.
There’s a whole political argument to be made here, one I’ve made before and one I rarely pass up. But you already know the spiel, and I’ve got more important stuff to talk about.
Tom needs your help. His pal Alan Kupperberg has started raising money for his health care. You can send any contributions to Alan’s PayPal account (kupperberg@earthlink.net) and he will pass every penny of it – and more – on to Tom. If you need verification or wish to offer Tom your support, he has email access in his hospital – Atomica999@aol.com.
Yes, there’s a lot of people out there in his position. Yes, I said I wouldn’t go political on you. So stop me before I go political again. Please contribute what to can to Tom.
Before we kick off this Panel, let’s explain how this will work since we’ve changed the set up of the site! Any of the Spectacled Seven who respond to the panel will have to add their responses to this post or send them to allpulp@yahoo.com and Tommy will add them! Also, something new, if you are an ALL PULP follower and want to weigh in on the PANEL topic, then either email your comment to allpulp@yahoo.com or post it on the comments page and it too will be added to the PANEL topic! So…with that said…here is the ALL PULP PANEL for this week!!
The GREEN HORNET film is debuting on 1/14/11. This movie has stirred up a nest of something within the pulp community, many fans not looking forward to it at all. However, an argument is being made that even if THE GREEN HORNET is as bad as many believe it will be, at least it is still exposing the public to Pulp like characters and stories. and that is a good thing….But is it? Are there positives for Pulp when someone produces something in another medium that is…not good and maybe even downright awful for whatever reason?
Let the Paneling ensue….
Tommy-I’ll weigh in more later…but my initial response is no, a bad pulp movie isn’t a positive for pulp in general. Some might say any exposure is good, even negative exposure…but in a field that is still somewhat fighting for legitimacy and its place in society, one example of bad may do a ton of harm to all the multiple, less seen examples of good within Pulp.
From Hank Brown on ALL PULP’S comments page-
Your Pulp Panel topic has touched on my own dilemma. While I think the characters are long overdue for a feature of their own and would love to see Kato thumping bad guys in 3D, I’m reluctant to waste a big chunk of change to watch a formulaic special effects extravaganza conceived by a bunch of beancounters and their yes-man director who have no respect or understanding of the source material or characters. I will probably wait for it to come to Redbox and watch it then with my 3-year-old. I might could handle it being a comedy, but from what I’ve seen so far, they’ve written the title character as a pathetic loser. I’m all for emphasizing what a badass Kato is, and for demonstrating he has brains as well as martial arts skills. But at the expense of making Britt Reid/the Green Hornet a hapless boob? Hey Hollywood: Your cognitive/creative limitations are showing again! Here’s a clip that demonstrates a creative effort respecting the characters: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Rjm53J1G4M
From Adam Garcia-
Everyday all pulp and comic book writers adapt and rework classic characters. Some of these changes are minor, some are major. Characters like the Shadow went through a variety of iterations, as did Batman or Superman. We can accept “Batman: the Brave and the Bold” in the era of “The Dark Knight;” I myself am writing a version of the Green Lama noticeably different than that of Jim Krueger or Mike Barr, or even, for that matter Kendell Foster Crossen.
The new Green Hornet film is only one of many interpretations of the character that has appeared over the years, from the original radio to TV Series to Ron Fortier’s fantastic work for Now Comics. In this interpretation, the creators choose to make a more comedic-action adventure, one that highlights Britt Reid’s arc from spoiled playboy to hero and his relationship with Kato. The notion that this is a “bad” film originates in the purist distaste for the interpretation, the leads, and tone; not in the quality of the film, which based on early reviews has been noted to be flawed but overly positive. While I am firmly in the camp supporting this film, (I am a fan of Seth Rogen and feel the character arc of slovenly playboy redeeming himself as hero makes for a better narrative) and plan on seeing it opening weekend with my father, himself an old school fan of the character, my defense the project originates from belief that we as pulp/comic writers constantly ask our readers to at least give our interpretations a chance and to hopefully accept them as legitimate adaptations. This negative wave against the film from the original fans — some of which are themselves creators — is at best hypocritical.
With public domain and licensed characters there is ultimately no “right” version; they are evolving, adapting, changing every year. That’s what keeps them alive. Why has Batman remained one of the top sellers for 72 years? Because various creators have been given the chance to give their interpretation that was appropriate for the time. Some were successful, some weren’t, but he remained in the public consciousness constantly since his inception. You don’t have to enjoy the film but you should at least respect the creator’s right to make it. Again the reviews are positive, and if that upsets purist fans, then that’s unfortunate, but in order for this character — and every character we write — to survive, they must be allowed to evolve and adapt or they will become stagnant and disappear from public consciousness like so many fantastic, but forgotten heroes.
And how bad can it be now that you can buy a Green Hornet costume for Halloween?
Not that bad at all.
ESCAPE FROM LOKI
Written by Philip Jose Farmer
Bantam Books
0-553-29093-2
This novel has interested me for years. PJF writing the story of a 16-year old Doc Savage, telling how he met the men would become his aides in his war on crime? How could you go wrong? And yet, I’d heard many complaints over the years — that it was “boring,” “out of character” and “plodding.” So I wasn’t sure what to expect.
Doc, as presented here, is a much more human character than Lester Dent portrayed. He has failings and has yet to become the superman he’d destined to be. He has sexual yearnings and briefly falls prey to the femme fatale in the story. He loses his temper. He displays a fear of germs. All of these are modernized additions to his character but none of them changes the essential core of the classic Doc — and so, for me, they work by adding layers to him. I can’t stand people who alter characters without reason — but I don’t feel that’s the case here.
The focus is on Doc, though his aides are presented well. The villains are interesting and the addition of a little sex spices things up: PJF does not go over-the-top as he did in his pastiches of Doc.
I found this book to be a wonderful addition to Doc Savage lore. One of the best reads I’ve had in awhile. The only drawback was an ugly depiction of Doc on the cover.
I give it 5 out of 5!
Congratulations to the happy couple. Neil, to no one’s surprise, wrote it up in his journal.
And yes, that’s Batman and Superman looking on approvingly in the background.
And with this final FLASHBACK, ALL PULP’s archiving is complete!! Enjoy news from the earliest days of ALL PULP!!
PULP ARK
MAY 13-15, 2011
BATESVILLE, ARKANSAS!!!
Pro Se Productions, LLC. (www.proseproductions.com) in conjunction with Main Street Batesville of Batesville, AR announces PULP ARK 2011!! Pro Se Productions, a company specializing in pulp storytelling in various mediums, primarily magazines and comics, made its debut in March, 2010! Pro Se also seeks to bring all the over the top, grandiose, slam-bang impact of pulp to the South! PULP ARK, scheduled for May 13-15, 2011 will be a convention dedicated to the Pulp Genre as well as a conference made up of panels, workshops, and activities to appeal to the Pulp writer, the Pulp fan, and that most unique creature, The Pulp Writer/Fan!
PULP ARK will be held in the historical town of Batesville, AR. Nestled in the scenic Ozark foothills, Batesville provides most definitely a small town charm, but has facilities of all sorts, including hotels, major and local restaurants, and several venues for hosting panels, conferences, and vendors. Batesville also affords a relaxed setting, different from most large cities where conventions are held, but also conducive to creativity, relaxation, and a furthering of Pulp fandom!
MAY 13-15, 2011-Prepare for the Flood of All that is Pulp-Get your place on the PULP ARK today!
For more information, contact Tommy Hancock, Editor in Chief and Audio Director for Pro Se Productions at proseproductions@earthlink.net or call or text at 870-834-4022
CAPTAIN FUTURE FLIES AGAIN, THANKS TO MOONSTONE BOOKS!
Prior to the 1939 World Science Fiction convention, editor Mort Weisinger dreamed up a new character to present to the hordes of ravenous science fiction fans: Mr. Future. Weisinger handed the idea over to young and talented writer, Ed Hamilton, who retooled the initial concept into Captain Future: Wizard of Science. Wiesinger knew they were on to something, but had little idea his initial idea would lead to the birth of the space opera sub-genre that spawned such undying favorites as Flash Gordon, Star Trek and Star Wars.
Over 70 years later, Captain Future returns to serialized fiction in the pages of Moonstone Books with stories penned by Mike “Phantom” Bullock with spectacular art from Norm Lanting and Bullock’s fellow Phantom creator Silvestre Szilagyi. Look for the first Captain Future tale, Voices, in the upcoming Moonstone Pulp Magazine.
FIRST EVER PULP THEMED RESTAURANT OPENS DOORS FOR FIRST TIME TODAY!!
Pulp writer and Owner/Publisher of Age of Adventure Publishing, Wayne Skiver announces today that his dream project (He’s also a master chef as well!) will be opening its doors for a special preview party tonight! Skiver is owner and proprietor of RAYGUN CAFE (Rue St. Francois, in Historic, Old Town. Florissant, Mo. That’s St. Louis basically, folks!). This experience is described as “AMAZING Food served in an explosion of Retro Sci-Fi, Super Hero, and Pulp Art. You won’t believe your tastebuds or your eyes!”
The preview party being held this evening at 6 PM is the (invited) public’s first look at this exciting dining adventure! It is also a fundraiser for a very worthy cause. According to Skiver, “A $10 Donation (Not necessary for kids 12 and under) gets you any menu item, side and drink as well as mountains of appetizer sized versions of our other menu items! Part of the proceeds from this event will go towards St. Judes Childrens Hospital.” In a ‘sort of’ All Pulp exclusive, Skiver has provided the menu for tonight’s event as follows:
Raygun Cafe will be open to the public in October and All Pulp will carry the news of the grand opening!! The intent as Skiver noted, is for Raygun to be more than eating, but to be education and truly an experience. “Where can you learn about the history of the Pulps? The forgotten heroes of the Golden Age? Where can you experience Science Fiction art from the 1930’s to the 1970’s? Online? Sure…But why not LIVE and IN PERSON? RAYGUN Cafe’ will feature a constantly rotating dreamscape of art and exhibits from Pulp, Comic, and… Pop culture! Its a place to meet, explore, and of course EAT! Feed your body and your imagination!”
EPISODES FROM THE ZERO HOUR! DELIVERS ADVENTURE WITH VOLUME 3
NEW JERSEY – Modern pulp publishers Episodes from the Zero Hour! are proud of their latest installment, Volume Three, featuring globe-trotting adventure with Rex Rockwell, Weird Game Hunter and Mac Samson: The Secrets of the Lost City.
Written by Jason Butkowski and S.E. Dogaru
Cover by Rich Woodall
Illustration by Rich Woodall and Duane Spurlock
Production and design by Anthony Schiavino
180 Pages
PRICE: $14.00 for paperback / $21.60 for hardcover
FOLLOW UP TO GREEN HORNET ANTHOLOGY ANNOUNCED BY MOONSTONE!!
Cover by Ruben Procopio |
Cover by Kaluta |
Moonstone Books announces the title and cover art to its follow-up to The Green Hornet Chronicles. The Green Hornet Casefiles will feature more great stories featuring the fabulous ’60s version of The Green Hornet and Kato.
Rubén Procopio’s cover effectively teases the mysterious and thrilling tales to be found on the pages between the covers.
And Moonstone doesn’t stop there! The alternate cover is by none other than Michael Wm. Kaluta!
Co-Editors Joe Gentile and Win Scott Eckert are currently hard at work editing the stories. The book is due out in April 2011.
In the meantime, be on the lookout for Volume One, The Green Hornet Chronicles, hitting shelves any day now!
NEED ACTION, MYSTERY, ADVENTURE?? THEN VISIT SOVEREIGN CITY FROM PRO SE PRODUCTIONS!
Barry Reese’s LAZARUS GRAY (Art by Tarik El) |
“I’m thrilled to be a part of this collaboration” reported Barry Reese begin_of_the_skype_highlighting end_of_the_skype_highlighting, “and think that my new character, Lazarus Gray, will have a lot of legs. The idea of a shared universe is something that I think a lot of pulp fans will really embrace and the nice thing about it is that all three of us have the freedom to maintain our own natural styles, while simultaneously sharing the load of building a whole new world!”
THE ROOK FLIES AGAIN IN HIS FIFTH VOLUME!
Wild Cat Books is proud to announce the fifth volume in The Rook Chronicles. Thrills and chills galore, featuring many characters, both old & new, and villains & enemies from The Great Old Ones to Count Dracula himself… Not to mention the death of a Pulp Hero!
The book will be 6″x9″, 316 pages, and priced at $14.95. Great artwork by Anthony Castrillo and a special bonus “Rook” story by Stacy Dooks… and there’s even have a Pin-Up by the legendary Fred Hembeck!
Springfield, Ohio played host to the second annual Champion City Comic Con this past weekend. A show dedicated and focusing not only the collecting of comics, but the independent creators who make and self-publish their own books. Among the half-dozen guests invited to the show was comics veteran (and pulp writer and publisher), writer Ron Fortier. Later, during the awards ceremony, the Champion City Comic Con Award for Best Continuing Independent Series went to Mr.Jigsaw – Man of a Thousand Parts, by Ron and artist Gary Kato. Mr.Jigsaw, a comedy super hero has been around for over twenty years and has appeared in a half dozen comic publications in that now. This is the first on-going series of his adventures and is published by Rob Davis’ Redbud Studio through on-demand facilities of Ka-Blam.
The books are sold via the Indy Planet internet store and by Ron and Gary at their con appearances.
There have been seven issues released in the past year and a half with number eight currently in production.
PULP 2.0 PRESS UPDATE: 13 September, 2010
RADIO WESTERN ADVENTURES TO INCLUDE NEVER-BEFORE-SEEN LESTER DENT WESTERN TALE “SNARE SAVVY!”
Los Angeles, CA : Pulp 2.0 Press Mad Pulp Bastard Bill Cunningham announced today that the publisher is adding a never-before-seen Lester Dent tale to its upcoming wild west book release RADIO WESTERN ADVENTURES (RWA). Dent of course is the world-famous pulp writer of the 30’s and 40’s who created the legendary DOC SAVAGE and THE AVENGER pulp characters. This wild west tale, “Snare Savvy” written in 1932 will join Donald F. Glut’s cover tale, “Who Really Was That Masked Man?” to create a western “double feature” tribute to Jim Harmon, the Old Time Radio historian and author, to whom this special book is dedicated.
The contract for “Snare Savvy” was negotiated by the author’s agent, noted pulp writer and historian Will Murray on behalf of the Dent estate. The story is a classic western featuring Dent’s smart alec cowboy character Haw Kain who rides into town and a whole mess of trouble when he goes up against greedy land grabbers looking to strike it rich.
“We are pleased as punch to be able to add Dent’s ‘Snare Savvy’ to Radio Western Adventures,” said Cunningham. “ It makes an already unique book like RWA that much more special to western and pulp fans. As I read it I could easily see Roy Rogers and Dale Evans as the lead characters Haw Kain and Genie Quayle. Their banter matched perfectly, each giving as good as he or she got. I’m ecstatic over the prospect of publishing a pulp master like Dent’s work, and grateful that Will Murray thought Pulp 2.0 would be a good publisher for the tale.”
Radio Western Adventures will be published on Amazon’s Kindle platform for digital reading and will later come out as a print release via Createspace. The Kindle edition will feature both stories as well as an essay tribute to Jim Harmon whose love for radio western heroes was well known amongst fans. This digital edition will also include several photos resurrected from Don Glut’s archives showing the profound influence these radio cowboys had on the author and his peers. Pulp 2.0 Press’s print edition will include all of the above plus even more bonus features exclusive to the print version. Both versions will feature a stunning cover by artist Nik Macaluso (www.scripttease.tv) who created the fantastic blaxploitation cover art for Pulp 2.0’s first release BROTHER BLOOD (also by Glut).
For more information on this book please visit our website at: www.pulp2ohpress.com
About Pulp 2.0 Press:
Pulp 2.0 Press, headquartered in Los Angeles, CA was initially formed to republish classic pulp and paperback series which had fallen out of print. The company’s mandate is to place affordable pulp entertainment into eager fans’ hands using the latest internet technology. This includes print, ebooks, video, audio, merchandise and games. To us, ‘pulp’ is not a particular genre, format, medium nor literary time frame. Pulp is an attitude.
In this way, Pulp 2.0 Press is positioned in a slightly different, more expansive manner than other publishers. The company is poised to create, develop and distribute ‘pulp entertainment’ across a variety of media through the portal of the internet and mobile devices.
BLACK COAT PRESS ANNOUNCES SEPTEMBER RELEASES!!
Black Coat Press, a publisher known for its international pulp fiction, announces the following releases for September, 2010.
In Helgvor of the Blue River (1929), two desperate women flee their barbarous tribe, and cross paths with a prodigious warrior. The Giant Feline (1918) features two friends of different races who set off in search of greener pastures for their tribe, befriend a wild creature, and ally themselves with Wolf-Women… Rosny’s final, action-packed prehistoric adventure novels chart the domestication and integration of savage human instincts into sympathetic culture. Together with Vamireh and Quest for Fire, they combine the restless vigor of youth, the violence and wisdom of ages, the species-imperative of accepting difference and diversity, and the exhilarating joy of defying tyranny and death.
Chronolysis is one of the most important French SF novels of the 1970s. It deals with time and its manipulation through the use of chronolytic drugs. Its protagonists are psychronauts, helpless explorers of a confusing, multidimensional universe, facing threats from alternate realities, such as Harry Krupp Hitler 1st, Emperor of the Undetermined, or the mysterious Phords from the future world of Garichankar. They search for secret paradises, hidden within the folds of space and time, away from their bleak realities, such as the tropical realm of Oblivion-by-Ruaba.
This volume also includes a foreword by Theodore Sturgeon, a biography and illustrated bibliography of Jeury and a never-before-published short story translated by Jean-Marc & Randy Lofficier.
A team of spelunkers is found dead in mysterious circumstances in the shadow of the once-proud Cathar redoubt of Montségur, in Southern France. What mysterious treasure were they seeking–and did they find it? A ruthless battle over long-buried secrets is going to pit the Roman Catholic Church against an ancient secret society and descendents of the Nazis who once looked for the Holy Grail in Montségur, with the very future of Humanity at stake…
Published in France two years before the world-famous Da Vinci Code, The Song of Montségur is an award-winning, fast-paced supernatural thriller which blends elements from French history with modern-day conspiracies.
Brian M. Stableford has been a professional writer since 1965. He has published more than 60 science fiction and fantasy novels, as well as several authoritative non-fiction books. He is also translating the works of Paul Féval and other French writers of the fantastique for Black Coat Press which also published his most two recent fantasy novels: The New Faust at the Tragicomique, The Wayward Muse and The Stones of Camelot.
VAMPIRES VS. WEREWOLVES!
To get a taste of what it’s all about, visit Pulpwork Press’ UPCOMING RELEASES page at http://www.pulpworkpress.com/upcomingreleases.htm. Then stop by our store and order your copy today!
And later on this month, ALL PULP will be interviewing Joel Jenkins about not only The Sea-Witch but his other Pulpwork Press projects, including the acclaimed Dire Planet series.
Written by BRIAN AZZARELLO & IVAN BRANDON · Co-feature written by JASON STARR · Art by NIC KLEIN · Co-feature art by SCOTT HAMPTON · Cover by J.G. JONES · Variant cover by JOHN CASSADAY
The US government has offered Doc and his men a deal: run a secret mission in the war-ravaged, blockaded ruins of the Middle East, and they’ll wipe the slate clean of the frame-up job that the Secretary of State ran on them. Doc Savage is nobody’s errand boy – but if the mission involves saving the life of one of his former compatriots, he might just have to cut a deal with the men who set him up! Eisner Award-winner Brian Azzarello joins Ivan Brandon for a six-part epic that reveals the most dangerous corner of the FIRST WAVE world!
And in the JUSTICE, INC. co-feature, a new story sheds light on the criminal past of Smitty, one of Benson’s most trusted detectives… and sets both men on a bloody odyssey that will clearly draw the line between “Vengeance and Murder!”
NEVER BEFORE SEEN IMAGES FROM MOONSTONE’S FROM THE VAULT: THE PULP FILES!!
Before Batman, Superman, Daredevil, Punisher and Wonder Woman there was a group of heroes who influenced those who created today’s icons. From Gladiator, Spider, Black Bat and Golden Amazon to Captain Future, Phantom Detective, Rocketman and many more sprung all that comic readers know and love today. Now, Moonstone Books is bringing back those original characters, some for the first time in comics, so you can enjoy what laid the foundation for the entire comic book medium. As a primer to this new originals universe, Moonstone is releasing the Pulp Handbook, packed from cover to cover with everything you need to know in order to embrace the characters Stan Lee, Joel Simon, Jack Kirby and many other comic book pioneers loved.
CLICK ON THE IMAGES BELOW FOR HANDBOOK PAGES ON THE BLACK BAT AND DEATH ANGEL!!
(Written by Mike Bullock, Art by Mike Metcalf, Layout/Assembly by Josh Aitken)
On Sale Now!
THE PHANTOM UNMASKED #2, Written by Martin Powell, illustrated by Hannibal King, cover by Franchesco.
Investigator Laughton Brice, brilliant as she is icily beautiful, traces the true origins of The Phantom into the Deep Woods, ultimately meeting the Ghost Who Walks face to face. In a deadly cat-and-mouse game of deceitful double-crosses and unexpected alliance, the Man Who Cannot Die finally faces his most evil and ancient adversary. Conclusion of the Moonstone series.
Coming October 1, 2010 – the newest pulp thriller from author Bill Raetz: SIN CITY SPY!
“Las Vegas. It’s known as the city of sin. But beneath all the sleaze lies the underworld of shady deals, thugs, and double-crosses—the stomping ground of a spy!”
More details on the author ad his works can be found at The World Espionage Bureau!
Dateline: Friday, September 3, 2010
BROTHER BLOOD is now on Kindle! The modern horror classic by Donald F. Glut is now electronic! Only $2.99 delivered direct to your devices. Yes, this book is DRM free. Its publisher, Pulp 2.0 Press wants you to read it how and where YOU want to read it.
Pulp 2.0 Press is also readying BROTHER BLOOD, as well as other books in its catalog, for other devices like the IPad.
http://www.amazon.com/Brother-Blood-ebook/dp/B0041KL61W/ref=sr_1_16?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1283565109&sr=1-16
Check out Pulp 2.0 Press’ website, http://pulp2ohpress.com/, for more information in coming days!!
The Green Hornet Chronicles is at the printer and is shipping soon from Moonstone Books!
Edited by Joe Gentile and Win Scott Eckert
Covers by Glen Orbik and Rubén Procopio/interior illustrations by Procopio
CONTENTS:
“Reflections on The Green Hornet”: Introduction by Van Williams
“The Night Car” by Will Murray
“I Had The Green Hornet’s Love Child!” by Greg Cox
“Weakness” by C.J. Henderson
“Topsy-Turvy” by James Chambers
“Nothing Gold Can Stay” by Richard Dean Starr
“Just a Man” by Thom Brannan
“The Cold Cash Kill” by James Reasoner
“Flight of the Yellow Jacket” by Howard Hopkins
“By Scarab and Scorpion” by Mark Ellis
“You Can’t Pick the Number” by Rich Harvey
“Eyes of the Madonna” by Ron Fortier
“Stormy Weather” by Patricia Weakley
“The Auction” by Terry Alexander
“Go Go Gone” by Robert Greenberger
“Mutual Assured Destruction” by Bill Spangler
“The Crimson Dragon” by Mark Justice
“Fang and Sting” by Win Scott Eckert
“The Inside Man” by Matthew Baugh
“The Soul of Solomon” by Harlan Ellison(R)
“Life at 90 MPH”: Afterword by Dean Jeffries
“The Green Hornet’s Hunch” by Dennis O’Neil (bonus story in Limited Editions only)
The Green Hornet Chronicles is at the printer and is shipping soon from Moonstone Books!
Domino Lady Noir
Apr101013
(W) Nancy Holder (A) Shawn Van Briesen (C) Michael J. Williams
Great jumping on point! Bram Stoker Award-winner and New York Times best-selling author Nancy Holder tells of bad love gone bad in the comic novella “D.O.A.” Steamy white hot passion, the business of violent crime, and a girl who should know better! Gorgeous greyscaled art by Shawn Van Briesen!
Coming from Moonstone Books in September 2010! Part of Moonstone’s “Return of the Originals” line! By the team of Bullock and Metcalf!
DA Anthony Quinn is sick of watching criminals slip through his fingers due to legal technicalities. When a mobster’s attempt to destroy evidence goes horribly wrong, Quinn finds himself blinded by acid and hopelessly broken. Now sightless, Quinn sharpens his other four senses to near superhuman levels and develops a sixth ‘radar’ sense. He vows to work outside the law to do whatever it takes to bring criminals to justice.
Before the caped crusader patrolled the streets, before horn head prowled the back alleys, the original dark avenger hunted evil men. The Black Bat is back and hell’s coming with him!
The second feature stars Death Angel, the avenging hand of justice. The critically acclaimed new pulp character co-stars in this gritty, noir battle of good versus evil on the mean streets and in the darkest recesses of the human mind.
Dateline Friday, September 3, 2010
PRESS RELEASE –
Lance Star: Sky Ranger comic book “One Shot!” now available!
Lance Star: Sky Ranger “One Shot!” is now available at Indy Planet: http://www.indyplanet.com/store/product_info.php?products_id=4019
November, 1941. Ace Air Adventurer Lance Star accepts a dangerous mission into an enemy stronghold to stop the Nazi’s from uncovering plans for a weapon long believed destroyed. Lance flies a solo mission to Kiev where he is to plant explosives and destroy a weapons facility when he runs into an old enemy. Now, Lance is faced with a choice. Complete the mission? Or take down the Sky Ranger’s greatest adversary? He’s only going to get one shot at this. Will he choose the mission or revenge?
Featuring high-flying adventure, aerial dog fights, explosive action, and stunning artwork, Lance Star: Sky Ranger “One Shot!” is pure pulp fun from start to finish.
“Lance Star: Sky Ranger “One Shot!” is exactly the sort of high-flying, action-packed air war yarn I really enjoy. It’s fine pulpish fun from start to finish. Bobby Nash and James Burns are aces!”
— James Reasoner
Lance Star: Sky Ranger
“One Shot!”
Written by Bobby Nash
Art/Letters/Colors by James Burns
24 pages
$3.00
Read Bobby Nash’s work. Your life will be better because of it. Trust me, I know!
–Beau Smith
Based on the characters created for the Airship 27/Cornerstone Books Lance Star: Sky Ranger pulp anthologies that can be found at http://www.gopulp.info or wherever your favorite pulp fiction is sold. More high-flying action is on the way with the Lance Star: Sky Ranger novel, “Cold Snap” by Bobby Nash. Coming soon.
Since 2006, Lance Star and his air aces, the Sky Rangers have thrilled readers with their amazing adventures. The first Lance Star: Sky Ranger pulp anthology was published by Wild Cat Books in 2004. Vol. 1 was reissued in 2006 by Airship 27 Productions and Cornerstone Books where they remain available today. A second volume of anthology tales was released in 2009 and is also still available. You can find out information on the Lance Star: Sky Ranger Pulp Anthologies, volumes 1 and 2 on the site. Additionally, Bobby Nash is currently working on the first Lance Star: Sky Ranger novel, “Cold Snap.” Nash says that he hopes “Cold Snap” and “One Shot” will be the first of many Sky Ranger projects to come.
Keep watching www.lance-star.com and http://bobby-nash-news.blogspot.com for updates.
Lance Star: Sky Ranger and all related characters are © copyright 2010 Bobby Nash. All Rights Reserved.
Dateline Friday, September 3, 2010
PRESS RELEASE –
TALES OF THE BAGMAN
(A New Hero in Old Chicago)
Airship 27 Productions & Cornerstone Book Publishers are happy to announce the release of their thirtieth title, TALES OF THE BAGMAN by B.C. Bell. This book features the debut of a brand new pulp hero, the Bagman, and he’s unlike any other crime buster you’ve ever seen before.
In the 1930s, Chicago was one of the fastest growing metropolises in the country. Situated on mighty Lake Michigan, it was the home to millions of hard working Americans looking to a better themselves. The Windy City was also shackled by its bootleg history, a time of violent gang wars that had permanently established a brutal underworld empire second to none. Corruption was the order of the day and both the police and government were in the pay of the mob bosses.
Frank “Mac” McCullough was a foot-soldier in one of the city’s toughest families until he was ordered to rough up his uncle; a decent man with a gambling problem. The innate decency in Mac rebelled and suddenly he found himself up against the very men he had once admired and followed. Determined to put an end to their lawlessness, he put a bag over his head as a crude disguise only to become labeled the Bagman by the press.
Now writer B.C. Bells tells the amazing stories of old Chicago’s most unique hero. Aided solely by a tough, black WW I veteran named Crankshaft, Mac wages war against the mobs in these fast pace, non-stop action tales pulp fans will cheer. “Bell’s writing is a terrific mix of pulp action and wry humor,” applauds Airship 27 Productions’ Ron Fortier. “It’s really a breath of fresh air in the pulp genre and we know our fans are going to love the Bagman.” Designed by Rob Davis, the book features nine illustrations by Kelly Everaert and a gorgeous cover by Laura Givens. Airship 27 Productions is thrilled to present pulpdom’s newest avenger, THE BAGMAN.
AIRSHIP 27 PRODUCTIONS – PULP FICTION FOR A NEW GENERATION!
ISBN: 1-934935-76-X
ISBN 13: 978-1-934935-76-7
Produced by Airship 27
Published by Cornerstone Book Publishers
Release date: 09/03/2010
Retail Price: $21.95
Remember that movie Derrick reviewed? Or that series Barry called ‘one of the best out there’? No? Well, below you will find reviews from our first month in our continuing effort to save our work and revamp our little home here!! Re-read them as if it were the first time!!
REVIEWS FROM THE 86TH FLOOR – Book Reviews by Barry Reese
FIRST WAVE #4
DC Comics
Brian Azzarello & Rags Morales
The fourth issue in the First Wave “kick-off” limited series is finally here, despite the fact that the line has progressed far beyond it at this point. As with the first three issues, the art is stellar — Rags Morales is one of the best working in comics today and I enjoyed his interpretations of Doc Savage, The Spirit, Rima and The Bat Man quite a bit.
Unfortunately, the story is still a bit of a mess, with an unclear plot-line and some unlikeable characterization along the way. How does Doc Savage know the Golden Tree is evil? Because they claim to be interested in promoting peace but they haven’t invited him to be a member, and he’s practically the face of fighting for peace! I’ve seen some reviewers online who seem to like that reasoning but it stopped me in my tracks and made me wonder just how big Doc’s ego is supposed to be. They must be evil because they didn’t invite me to join? What?
I did enjoy The Bat Man’s internal narration at the end and there is an undeniable thrill to seeing Doc alongside The Spirit and Bat Man but if this is the best DC can do with these characters, I think the First Wave isn’t going to be around much longer.
20th Century Fox
Produced by Trevor Albert and Don Murphy
Directed by Stephen Norrington
Screenplay by James Robinson
Based on the graphic novel by Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill
The concept of THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN is so simple that I’m honestly surprised nobody before Alan Moore thought of it. Here it is in a nutshell: From time to time many of the great fictional heroes (and sometimes villains) of the past and present have found it necessary to come together to form an alliance against evil so overwhelming that it threatens to conquer or destroy the world. They do so under the authority of a special Branch of The British Secret Service, under the direction of a mysterious figure known only as M. This alliance is known as The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. It is rumored that members of Leagues past and present have included Dr. Syn, Sherlock Holmes, Captain Blood, Lemuel Gulliver, Robin Hood, Tarzan, Doc Savage, The Shadow, James Bond, and many, many others. But for the purposes of this review we’re going to look at a particularly unique grouping of The League, one led by the world famous adventurer Allan Quatermain (Sean Connery)
THE LONG MATINEE – Movie Reviews by Derrick Ferguson
TIPPIN’ HANCOCK’S HAT-Reviews by Tommy Hancock
FROM THE VAULT: THE PULP FILES
MOONSTONE BOOKS-THE RETURN OF THE ORIGINALS
Wow. If it were kosher to leave one word reviews, then that would be my one word. This fine compendium of fact sheets on pulp characters that will appear in Moonstone’s RETURN OF THE ORIGINALS line does not tell a story in a traditional comic sense, but it sure weaves a tale of heroes, tragedy, justice, and redemption like none you’ve ever read. From The Spider to the Green Lama to The Golden Amazon and Death Angel (Who? Why new additions to the genre of course), the breadth of pulp history that is covered in these 36 pages is astounding. The file like look of the fact sheets is awesome and the accompanying art, pretty much a pin up with each fact sheet, makes me not only want to see this line of books, but wants Moonstone to tackle ALL the pulp heroes AND villains in this format, just for informational purposes for us writers!
Five out of Five Tips of Hancock’s Hat-and if you didn’t hear me the first time…wow.
TIPPIN’ HANCOCK’S HAT-Reviews by Tommy Hancock
Although this story is not newly published, it is one that bears reviewing, primarily because several people have mentioned it to me as ‘a story you just have to read’ or ‘the best Spider story ever.’ With praise like that, I had to look for myself.
Is it the best Spider story ever? Maybe, maybe not, but it’s close. Did it turn out to be something I just had to read. You bet your pointed teeth and spider ring it did!
In ten pages, Martin Powell twists a tale that in all honesty comes in at the middle. It’s a typical Spider and pulp type tale, Bad guy has the Spider’s beloved captured and is delivering chemical vengeance on the city and it’s up to the Spider to stop him. But what Powell works into this in a short space is pathos, action, romance, and character education as well as development. If you read this story and know nothing of the Spider, this ten pages gives you enough to say you know something about the character.
The art of Tom Floyd blends well with the storytelling in this tale. It’s classic art on one hand, yet disturbing on the other. The reason it’s disturbing is even though the Spider’s world is dark and scary, Floyd’s art makes it look very much like..our world. This story because of its art and its human portrayal of this most inhuman acting character hits a really poignant note of realism.
ALL PULP REVIEWS By Ron Fortier
BLACK ORDER
By James Rollins
Harper Books
506 pages
When a book mixes science, religious philosophy and secret societies dating back to the Nazis, you can expect a real spicy pulp stew. Veterinarian turned thriller novelist James Rollins delivers just that and the meal is absolutely scrumptious for the first page bite to the last closing line morsel. Easily one of the best modern pulp adventures I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading.
The adventure opens during the closing days of World War II when allied forces are racing against each other to lay claim to Germany’s scientific innovations developed during the war to include everything from rocket propulsion to medical experimentation.
Amidst this chaos, one German commando unit is attempting to flee the invaders and smuggle out the results of an amazing breakthrough in quantum physics that could alter the shape of mankind forever. Along with these papers and artifacts is a baby unlike any other in the world; the first of a race of true supermen.
Like any good thriller writer, Rollins then jumps ahead in time to the present where members of a special Washington based group known as Sigma Force are involved with what they believe to two distinct missions. The first is an antique book auction being held in Copenhagen and the second is a distress call from a Tibetan monk residing in a monastery located deep in the Himalayas. Commander Gray Pierce follows the European case which centers around a group of killers eager to get their hands on Darwin’s Bible. It supposedly contains secret runes put their by a former German scientist involved with a secret project known only as the Bell. At the same time, Sigma Director Painter Crowe arrives in Tibet, only to find the monks have somehow gone insane and murdered each other. No sooner does he uncover this horror then he is captured and taken to a hidden mountain lair operated by the descendants of the very same German researchers who developed this mysterious Bell.
Rollins’ genius is that he keeps both plot threads moving at breakneck speed, constantly putting Pierce and Crowe in cliffhanger perils and then deftly jumping from one to the other. Thus the action seems to flow non-stop, scene after exciting scene. He also glues these action set pieces with thought provoking debates on what is evolution and where do science and religion meet in its process. Is there a grand design and will quantum physics someday open the blueprint to creation? That these weighty dissertations occur while men are being shot at, mountains exploding and mutated monsters roam the jungles of South Africa is all part of the roller-coaster ride BLACK ORDER delivers.
Recently a friend wrote asking me to passing along names of people I considered to be top-notch modern day pulp writers. James Rollins was at the top of the list I passed along and BLACK ORDER reaffirms that choice beautifully.
So I’m at home taking care of some chores since Patricia and I are trying to get the house in order for Labor Day Weekend. I take the opportunity to burn some movies from one of my DVRs to DVD and free up some recording space and two of those movies happen to be the Tim Burton “Batman” and DICK TRACY. Patricia is curious as to why I put the both of them on the same DVD. I shrug. I dunno. Just worked out that way.
She has a different theory. “Maybe because your subconscious made the connection that if Bruce Wayne had decided to be a cop instead of Batman he’d be Dick Tracy?”
Actually, I think it had more to do with the fact that both movies together had enough running time to fit on one four hour DVD but I have to admit that Patricia may just have a point. Batman and Dick Tracy have an awful lot in common. Both men have sacrificed normal lives to wage an unending war on crime. Both fight bizarre villains with outrageous physical and psychological deformities. Both utilize advanced technology in their work and both wear distinctive outfits that identify them immediately so you have no doubt whom you’re dealing with.
This is never more apparent than in the scene where we first see Dick Tracy (Warren Beatty) clearly when he steps out of a police car wearing a black suit, white shirt, red tie and yellow trench coat with matching hat. Now no self-respecting cop in the real world is going to wear a getup like that but hey, this is DICK TRACY we’re talking about and the way Warren Beatty wears the clothes and plays the character, we buy into it with no problem. He’s Dick Tracy.
Dick Tracy has been summoned to a massive mob rubout. Big Boy Caprice (Al Pacino) has made his move to take over The City. He’s rubbed out his major rival Lips Manliss (Paul Sorvino) and seized all of his assets, including his sizzling hot girlfriend Breathless Mahoney (Madonna) who’s also the best singer in The City, backed up by her master pianist 88 Keys (Mandy Patinkin)
Dick Tracy isn’t able to get the goods on Big Boy, not even after sweating Big Boy’s stooges Mumbles (Dustin Hoffman) Flattop (William Forsythe) and Itchy (Ed O’Ross). But he’s not about to let Big Boy have his way in his town and he goes on a crime busting crusade that would make The Dark Knight himself envious. While Dick Tracy is cleaning up the town against such miscreants such as The Brow (Chuck Hicks) Pruneface (R.G. Armstrong) and Spud Spaldoni (James Caan). He’s also got to deal with other matters such as his relationship with his longtime girlfriend Tess Trueheart (Glenne Headley) who’s starting to think that maybe there’s not much future in being involved a man whose true love is fighting crime. And then there’s The Kid (Charlie Korsmo) a street urchin who comes to live with Dick Tracy after
DICK TRACY originally showed up in theatres the year after the wildly successful Tim Burton “Batman” and it was pretty obvious that Touchstone Pictures/Disney was trying to generate the same kind of hysteria “Batman” had generated and they came pretty close. The DICK TRACY logo was almost as ubiquitous as the Bat symbol had been the summer before and the media hype generated was at a fever pitch, fueled mostly by the Madonna/Warren Beatty romance that had begun while they were filing this movie. But despite all the hoopla that DICK TRACY would be another “Batman”, it stands up as a unique interpretation of the character. I like how everything in this world has only primary colors and most of the time everything is staged as if the action is supposed to be in individual comic panels. And there’s no product placement at all here. When
That’s not to say that there’s not things about the movie I don’t like. Much as I love Madonna I wish the movie had spent less time with her trying to vamp Dick Tracy and more time with him going toe-to-toe with the various bizarre crime bosses of The City in tommy-gun shootouts. I mean, this movie has great visual bad guys like Littleface, The Brow, Influence and Mumbles and most of them we see only enough of to get us interested in and then they’re either bumped off or we never see them again. I also don’t like the music by Danny Elfman. He’d just done the soundtrack for “Batman” the year before and indeed, a lot of the music in DICK TRACY sounds like music left over from “Batman”
But then there’s the extraordinary visual style of the movie, which suckers me in every time. And the performances of Warren Beatty and Al Pacino. Warren Beatty really seems to be having fun playing Dick Tracy and I wished he could have made a sequel. He manages to be unbearably square and awfully cool at the same time and as I said earlier, I don’t think there’s another actor who could wear a bright yellow coat and hat while looking cool. Glenne Headly as Tess Trueheart is really good. I like how she lets
And there’s a remarkable amount of talent in DICK TRACY. You oughta see it just for the cast alone. You’ve got Warren Beatty, Al Pacino, James Caan, William Forsythe, Ed O’Ross, Glenne Headly, Seymour Cassel, Charles Durning, Allan Garfield, John Schuck, Charlie Fleischer (we all love him as the voice of Roger Rabbit) Mandy Patinkin, Madonna, Paul Sorvino, James Tolkan, Dustin Hoffman, Kathy Bates, Dick Van Dyke, fer crying out LOUD! Colm Meany (from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) Catherine O’Hara, Henry Silva, Mary Woronov, Michael J. Pollard (Warren Beatty’s co-star from “Bonnie & Clyde”) and Mike Mazurki….whew….and that’s not even half of the cameos you can spot when you really try.
So should you see DICK TRACY? Sure. I don’t see why you wouldn’t. Yeah, it may not have a lot of over-the-top violence and sex and cussing and all of those things. But it’s just plain old fun to watch. It’s a movie you can pop into the DVD player, sit back with your beverage and snacks of choice and just have a good time watching. And it’s for that reason that I suspect it’ll be a favorite of many for a long time. I know it’ll be one of mine. Enjoy.RATED PG
103 minutes
THE PHANTOM UNMASKED is a very complex, yet very fast tale. The Phantom, although it is about him, plays more of a backseat role initially to the quest for information about him. An old enemy desires to know all he can of the Phantom and hires a well known lady investigator for hire to gather the information. Laughton Brice, one of the most striking female characters I’ve seen in a long time, both in artistic rendering and overall development, overlooks the holes in her employer’s story and dives into the search. Why? Not just for the money, but for her own reasons. Powell captures well the purpose of this story. It is about searching, finding oneself. Finding the good, the bad, the hero, the villain. That is done extremely well in the first issue. What is done even better in the second issue is the other half of the point. Once you find what and who you are, the hardest part is actually looking upon your true self. The second issue sees some stripped clean of any camouflage, others forced to face their own secrets, and still others refusing to understand. And the title of the series holds a very special literal meaning that was not only expected, but also angered me in a very, very positive way. You’ll see when you read it.
As concise and tight as the writing is, the art is built to match. King’s images are sleek, suggestive, and move the story along wonderfully. Both issues gallop along with the speed of a 1940s serial cast in stark bright color. The team that took Powell’s tale and drew from it these wonderful images deserves as much credit as the storyteller himself.
In no way does THE PHANTOM UNMASKED disappoint. It is a taut, revealing story that touches all the right places to make one care for or despise characters, or maybe a little of both for some.
Five out of Five Tips of Hancock’s Hat (Five tips are reserved only for those who have channeled Dent, Gibson, Page, or one of the long gone, but not forgotten greats.)
THE LONG MATINEE-Movie Reviews by Derrick Ferguson
THE PHANTOM
1996
Paramount Pictures
Produced by Robert Evans and Alan Ladd, Jr.
Directed by Simon Wincer
Written by Jeffrey Boam
Based on “The Phantom” created by Lee Falk
I have absolutely no idea why some movies become major hits and others fail miserably. Especially a movie such as THE PHANTOM which ranks right up there with “Superman: The Movie” Tim Burton’s first “Batman” “Batman Begins” “Spider-Man” “The Rocketeer” and “The Hulk” as one of the best superhero movies ever made. Hell, it’s a damn good movie, period. The cast is outstanding, the locations beautiful, the action non-stop, the music appropriately heroic and romantic. This was a movie that should have been a blockbuster hit in theatres. But it failed to find an audience. I was one of those who saw it during the original theatrical run. I went during a matinee and there was just myself and two guys in their seventies who remembered reading “The Phantom” in the newspapers as kids. We all had a great time watching the movie. Since then I’ve recommended THE PHANTOM to a lot of people who have seen it and loved it. They claim that they never saw advertisements for the movie but that may be just as well. The tagline for the movie was so colossally stupid I hope the egg roll that thought of it was demoted to Junior Washroom Attendant (What the hell was ‘Slam Evil!’ supposed to mean?)
It may be that people just looked at the ads and assumed that The Phantom was a rip-off of Batman set in the jungle. Actually, The Phantom debuted in 1936 and Batman didn’t appear until 1939. Indeed, The Phantom is credited as being the very first costumed superhero. But so many things that made The Phantom unique has been taken as adopted by creators of other superheroes that it’s not surprising that many modern day viewers dismissed the movie as being an attempt to cash in on the popularity of Batman and Spider-Man. Which is really a shame. THE PHANTOM is remarkably faithful to the source material and a movie done with a tremendous amount of respect and love for the character.
The origins of The Phantom are told to us during the credits: In 1516 a young boy named Kit Walker is serving as cabin boy aboard his father’s ship. During a routine voyage to Africa to trade goods the ruthless Singh Brotherhood, a feared band of pirates, attacks the ship. The boy Kit is the only survivor and escapes to be washed up on the shores of Bengalla. The Bandar tribe who teach them his language befriends him. Kit finds the body of his father, partially eaten by scavengers. He takes his father skull and swears an oath upon it: Kit and all his descendants will combat piracy in all its forms. And so The Phantom is born. When one Phantom dies, his eldest son takes on the role of The Phantom. As a result, there is a myth that The Phantom cannot die and is immortal. He is known the world over as The Ghost Who Walks and it is this belief that is The Phantom’s strongest weapon in his battle against evil. Only the Bandar tribe, the wives and family of the various Phantoms know the true secret.
THE PHANTOM takes place in 1936 where the current Phantom/Kit Walker (Billy Zane) finds himself up against Xander Drax (Treat Williams) a millionaire industrialist/crimelord who is searching for the Three Skulls Of Togunda: mystical artifacts that when brought together will give him ultimate power. Drax has two formidable henchmen in the mercenary Quill (James Remar) who killed the 20th Phantom (Patrick McGoohan) and female martial arts expert/pilot Sala (Catherine Zeta-Jones). But The Phantom has help from the equally formidable Diana Palmer (Kristy Swanson, the original Buffy The Vampire Slayer, yay!) who has uncovered a connection between Drax and The Singh Brotherhood. Diana’s a plucky, adventurous girl with a mean right hook that still carries a big torch for a boy she loved in college. They had thought about getting married but his father died and he had to leave The United States to take over the family business. The boy’s name was Kit Walker.
Diana and The Phantom meet after Diana’s plane is forced down by Sala and her crew of female fighter plane pilots and The Phantom has to rescue her from a tramp steamer crewed by merciless killers. From then, it’s on to New York where Diana and Kit have a reunion that’s both painful and touching. But then Diana is once again kidnapped by Drax and his crew and taken to the horrifying island fortress of The Singh Brotherhood located in The Devil’s Vortex, from which no man ever returns. But it’s there that the third skull is located, held by the bloodthirsty Kabai Sengh (Cary Hiroyuki Tagawa) the current leader of The Singh Brotherhood. And they have their own plans for the Three Skulls…a plan that will also end their 400-year-old war with The Phantom…
Anybody who knows me knows I eat up this stuff and totally choke on it. I’ve seen THE PHANTOM perhaps a dozen times and I’ll gladly watch it a dozen more. It’s simply terrific superhero stuff that has a thick layer of pulp action adventure that is presented in such a fun way that I honestly don’t see how anybody couldn’t watch this movie without a goofy grin of delight on his or her face. Billy Zane is totally perfect in the role of The Phantom/Kit Walker in the same way Michael Keaton was perfect for Batman/Bruce Wayne and Christopher Reeve was perfect for Superman/ Clark Kent.
I really like how The Phantom is presented in this movie. First of all, Billy Zane insisted that the suit not be padded. So those muscles you see are actually his. And yeah, Billy Zane wears a purple bodysuit and makes it look damn cool. But the suit isn’t a bright purple. It’s a dark, muted purple that is even darker by what appears to be black tribal markings/tattoos on the suit that brings down the purple even more. It gives The Phantom’s costume the appearance of a tribal ceremonial garb he’s adopted for his purposes which works well with the jungle background of the character. And The Phantom is wonderfully low tech. He gets around on a magnificent Arabian stallion named Hero. His enforcer is a wolf named Devil. He carries no gadgets, just two black .45 automatics that he uses with such skill that he can knock a gun out of a man’s hand with a single shot. His radio is operated by his faithful servant/boyhood chum Guran (Radmar Agana Jao) who has to pedal the electric motor to give it power. Guran also won’t let you smoke in The Phantom’s base of operations, The Skull Cave.
It makes for a terrifically physical hero who relies more on his wits, brains and athletic abilities to get out of scrapes than we’re used to in these kind of movies. The Phantom can’t pull stuff out of his utility belt to get out of trouble which makes for a lot of really tense action scenes where you’re really wondering: “How’s he going to get outta this one?”
If you don’t know that I totally love Kristy Swanson, then be advised now that I do. I remember seeing the original “Buffy The Vampire Slayer” movie she starred in back in 1992 and I immediately became infatuated with her. And I love her in THE PHANTOM. She’s a vastly underrated actress who should have had a bigger career. She deserves it. She’s gorgeous, she’s intelligent and every time she’s on screen you believe what she’s doing. James Remar and Catherine Zeta-Jones have a great deal of fun with their badguy roles. And Patrick McGoohan is wonderful as the former Phantom who might be an actual ghost coming back to advise his son on how to handle the family business or he might be a psychological quirk that Kit needs to get through his job.
So should you see THE PHANTOM? Without a doubt, yes. In my opinion it’s one of the best superhero movies ever made and should be seen just for the performances and production values alone. It’s an awesome looking movie, period. The costumes the cars, the whole 1930’s period is recreated in fantastic style. And the damn movie is just so much fun. The Phantom is a hero is actually enjoys being a hero and it’s a change to see a hero who enjoys doing what he’s born to do to. He doesn’t angst about it or moan and cry or worry about paying rent or whatever. Simon Wincer directs this movie with a great sense of style and you get the feeling that everybody had a wonderful time making this movie.
If you’ve been reading my reviews and trust my opinion at all then go get yourself a copy of THE PHANTOM this weekend, get the snacks and drinks of your choice and have yourself a great time watching a great movie. Enjoy.
100 minutes
Rated PG
Reviews from the 86th Floor by Barry Reese
DOC SAVAGE # 6 (DC Comics)
By Ivan Brandon, Brian Azzarello & Nic Klein (Doc Savage); By Jason Starr & Scott Hampton (Justice Inc.)
This series is part of DC’s First Wave line, which puts classic pulp characters alongside some re-imagined versions of DC’s own heroes on an alternate earth. The time-frame is “today” but with design elements meant to invoke the classic pulp period (zeppelins roam the skies of New York, for instance). First Wave got off to a rocky start with pulp fans after the line’s overseer, Brian Azzarello, made a handful of comments that insulted the core fans of Doc Savage and The Avenger. Why anyone would want to launch a line by insulting the people who are already engaged by the property is beyond me but I suppose I’m not as smart as Mr. Azzarello seems to think he is. Also hurting the line is the fact that the kickoff limited series (entitled First Wave, of course) still hasn’t finished, thanks to several lengthy delays.
Early on, I tried all the First Wave titles but I dropped The Spirit after one issue, realizing that all the joy of the Eisner version had been stripped out of it. I’ve kept up with Doc Savage, though, mostly out of an inability to stop buying anything with Doc on the cover. I share this shame with all of you, like an alcoholic admitting his problem.
And it is a problem. Because this series is awful.
Issue six gives us our third and fourth writers on the series. I’ll repeat that – six issues and four writers. Right away, you see that stability hasn’t been a strong point. Now, I will give Brandon and Azzarello credit here — this is the best issue so far, but that’s not really saying a whole lot.
Because Doc’s blamed for the destruction of the Empire State Building (don’t ask), the government has brought him in for questioning and is strong-arming him, implying that he’s going to be treated as a terrorist if he doesn’t agree to take on a mission for them. Now, normally the Doc I know would love to help out the government, especially if it involves a horde of weapons aimed at the West. But in this case, Doc says no. The government ropes him back in by telling him that a supposedly dead friend of his has been spotted alive and well, in the heart of the Middle East — which is where the government wants to send Doc. After a scene in which Doc beats up a bunch of guards and uses one of them as a human shield (thankfully, the poor guard was just shot full of mercy bullets), Doc and his aides take off for the Middle East, where we see the area where “The War” ended five years before. Since Doc and his gang seem to avoid anything resembling a plan, they’re quickly in hot water and Doc is left to fend for himself, whereupon he’s quickly taken prisoner. End of story.
The sad thing is, as I’ve pointed out, this is the high-water mark for the series. This book failed on several rather important levels: 1) It’s boring. Doc Savage may have been many things, but I don’t recall it ever being boring. 2) Who are these people? If you know Doc and the gang, you can mostly figure out who the aides are from the pictures but not always. The script doesn’t refer to most of them by name nor does it tell you anything about why they do these things. Back when Jim Shooter was at Marvel, he frequently pointed out that every issue was someone’s first, so you should find a way to remind people who your characters are, what their motivations are, and why people should care about them. Obviously, Azzarello and Brandon figure that you should already know these things, which is ironic given Azzarello’s stated opinion that nobody remembers Doc and his ilk anyway. Seems like he’d want to explain it all to people, then. He doesn’t.
Ah, but there’s still room for the issue to be saved — there’s a backup feature, after all. In part one of a new serial entitled “Murder and Vengeance,” we find out about Justice Inc. ‘s Smitty. To be honest, I wasn’t sure this story was about Smitty but that’s what it says on DC’s website: “And in the JUSTICE, INC. co-feature, a new story sheds light on the criminal past of Smitty, one of Benson’s most trusted detectives.” It’s funny, ’cause in the books Smitty was a giant of a man. Here, he looks like a tough guy but he’s not huge by any means. They never refer to him by name, either, which is just amazingly dumb for any writer to do. It turns out that this version of Smitty became a gangbanging killer at age 16, then was framed for the murder of his stripper girlfriend. He was sent to prison, where he murdered somebody to prove his toughness and people left him alone in the aftermath. When he was released, Benson offered him a job and we move on up to the present day. Smitty takes a job from a guy whose wife was sexually assaulted and murdered in front of him, leading the man to seek revenge on the assailant. Smitty is so incensed by the description of these crimes that he plans to find the rapist and kill him, despite Benson telling him to remember Justice Inc.’s # 1 rule: no killing.
Now, The Avenger is my all-time favorite pulp series. This backup isn’t all that bad — but it’s not The Avenger. This Smitty bears no resemblance to the original. Gone is the sweet back-and-forth patter between him and Nellie Gray (heck, Nellie isn’t even mentioned in this story). Gone is everything that made Smitty a fun character, in fact. Thankfully, the writer has dispensed the disturbing tendency for people to refer to Richard Benson as “Benny,” but that’s not much a saving grace. This story leaves you feeling dirty, like the ‘heroes’ are almost as grimy as the men they’re chasing.
It’s obvious that the people behind First Wave have read the old stories — they just simply didn’t get them. They’ve missed the heart and the soul of these characters and the fast-paced stories that they were a part of. The Avenger wasn’t noir and that’s obviously what they’re going for here. There was plenty of pathos in the old stories but it was mixed in with humor and the obvious respect between the members of Justice Inc. All of that is leeched away in this version.
I know some folks who are really enjoying the First Wave books — but almost all of them are unfamiliar with the classic versions. I can only hope they’ll be inspired to discover the real Doc Savage and the real Avenger.
Doc Savage # 6 earns a whopping 1 out of 5 on the ratings scale.
Book Reviews by Derrick Ferguson
THROUGH THE GROANING EARTH:
A TALE FROM THE CITY OF BATHOS
BY JOEL JENKINS
FROM PULPWORKS PRESS
ISBN-10: 1450505112
ISBN-13: 978-1450505116
I suspect a lot of you reading this that were around in the 70’s got turned onto the sub genre of heroic fantasy called sword and sorcery the same way I did: The re-discovery of Robert E. Howard thanks to the Lancer Conan paperbacks with the exquisite Frank Frazetta covers. I devoured all the Howard I could get and once I was through gobbling all of his stories I quickly moved onto Charles R. Saunders, Fritz Leiber, Michael Moorcock, Jack Vance and Lin Carter. Carter was a little bit too slavish in his homage’s to Howard in his Thongor series, though. But still, at that age I didn’t care. If it was sword and sorcery, I wanted it.
Never got into J.R.R.Tolkien, though. To me, Tolkien was all about the world building and creating a mythology and he’s certainly done that as “The Lord of The Rings” is still going strong to this day. Not that I have anything against that kind of fantasy. I would just rather read about working class barbarians and warriors who hack and slash their way through the day and spend their nights wenching and partying.
Which is probably why my interest in sword and sorcery dropped severely once the popularity of Tolkien style heroic fantasy seemed to me to have taken over. Nobody really was writing meat and potatoes sword and sorcery and the trend appeared to have swung over to what I call, for lack of a better way to put it; more ‘literate’ high fantasy. None of which appealed to me as I simply can’t slog through 1,000 page books that really have just enough story and plot for 150/200 pages.
Knowing Joel Jenkins as I do I think he misses that kind of straightforward, testosterone laden sword swinging tale. And Joel’s the kind of guy who doesn’t lay back and wish somebody would write the kind of story he wants to read. He goes ahead and writes it himself. And in his two books set in the legendary City of Bathos that’s exactly what he’s done: write about blue collar, working class barbarians and warriors in “Escape From Devil’s Head” and THROUGH THE GROANING EARTH.
Both books, but especially THROUGH THE GROANING EARTH aren’t ‘novel’ novels. Instead, they’re like a sword and sorcery version of that old television series “Naked City” that always started off with the narrator saying that “there are eight million stories in the naked city”. I don’t know how many inhabitants of Bathos there are but they include courtesans, thieves, disgruntled godlings, out-of-work mercenaries, farmers, innkeepers, outlaws, priests, schemers, cowards, cutthroats and they all have their own stories to tell.
And by this method of telling various stories set within this city, with some characters occasionally crossing over from one story to another, Bathos itself becomes a character in its own right. A marvelously decadent city that at once and the same time is wonderfully sleazy as well as gorgeously thrilling.
A large part of adding to the City of Bathos taking on a life of its own and becoming a character is Joel’s lush descriptions and dialog. One thing that turns me off from a lot of modern day fantasy is that the writers will have the most amazing characters populating their stories but those characters talk as if they’ve been watching MTV and CNN for the past 10 years or so. Joel’s characters have a richness to how they speak and how they phrase their sentences that immediately let you know that you’re reading about people who live in a mythical place and time.
And these are people, no doubt about it. Nobody’s going on some impossible quest to save the world from an all powerful wizard or to save the world from an ancient evil. Bathos isn’t that type of city and the people who inhabit Joel’s story are just trying to get through another day without getting killed. For the most part, a lot of the characters in THROUGH THE GROANING EARTH are minding their own business when they get caught up almost without knowing it into a wild adventure. And they rise to the challenge with an enormous amount of well written fight scenes in which Joel runs riot with the description. I strongly suspect Joel has just as much fun writing those scenes of carnage as I did reading them.
And Joel does go in for world building just as much as Tolkien or Stephen R. Donaldson or Robert Jordan. But he doesn’t give you these honkin’ huge pages and pages of back history or have characters relate what you need to know through info dumps. Joel weaves and integrates the geography, history and political dynamics of Bathos into the story and into the dialog of his characters. It’s an effective technique that I really like to see writers use. You get your world building but the story itself it’s put on hold while the writer attempts to impress with how much effort he’s put into thinking out this imaginary world. And in fact, I’m of the school of thought that says if you’ve put enough into this imaginary world then the information can’t help but find its way into the mouths of the characters. Which is where it should be in the first place.
So should you read THROUGH THE GROANING EARTH? I don’t see why you shouldn’t. If you like Old School sword and sorcery like Robert E. Howard used to make then I heartily recommend this book as well as “Escape From Devil’s Head”. Joel has a sincere love and respect for this genre and if you’ve read Joel’s other books set in the modern day then here’s an excellent chance for you to experience another aspect of the marvelous talent of Joel Jenkins.
THROUGH THE GROANING EARTH is available from Amazon.com or through Pulpwork Press http://www.freewebs.com/pulpworkpress/
Reviews from the 86th Floor by Barry Reese
IN THE SHADOW OF FALCON’S WINGS: THE ADVENTURES OF DODGE DALTON by Sean Ellis
ISBN 978-0982609927
I received this review copy from the author and was immediately intrigued when I saw that one of the quotes on the book was from Rob MacGregor, the author of my favorite Indiana Jones novels. While a positive word from an established author doesn’t always ensure you’re about to read something good, it certainly caught my eye since I’m such a fan of Mr. MacGregor. So I dove into this book with high hopes and they were richly rewarded. This is a tour de force that deserves a spot on the shelves of anyone who calls themselves a fan of pulp adventure. When it comes time for nominations for pulp awards, this one deserves a spot on each and every ballot.
The story revolves around David “Dodge” Dalton, who scripts stories about Captain Zane Falcon. These stories were initially dictated to him by an alleged associate of Falcon’s, one “Hurricane” Hurley. When Hurley’s remembrances run out, Dalton begins fabricating stories out of whole cloth and the character becomes immensely popular with the reading public. When a mysterious villain appears on the scene, threatening to kill the President unless Falcon himself comes forward, Dalton is put into a conundrum: How can he produce someone that he’s always considered a fictional construct of himself and “Hurricane” Hurley? Dalton and Hurley end up traveling around the globe in search of the true Zane Falcon and along the way Dodge becomes the kind of hero that he’d always written about. There’s tremendous humor, great characterization and the kind of by-the-seat-of-your-pants adventure that I associate with old movie serials and Indiana Jones. The ending of the book is both touching and inspirational, clearing the way for further adventures of Dodge. Thankfully, a preview of the next book in the series is included in my advance review copy, assuring us that the series will, indeed, be continuing.
From page one, I was engaged and I’m certain that you will be, as well. Highly recommended and one of the best “new” pulp novels to come along in quite awhile. 5 stars out of 5.
Reviews from the 86th Floor by Barry Reese
TUNED FOR MURDER (The Avenger # 9)
Folks who know me are well aware that The Avenger is my favorite pulp hero. I frequently break out the old paperbacks and read through them when I’m looking for something relaxing and enjoyable — the latest one that I finished going through is the ninth in the series and, while far from the best in the series, it’s still a quality piece of pulp fiction.
There are two plot lines in this one that quickly converge: a scientist has developed a mystery super-weapon that he refuses to sell. He says that he’ll only share it with small nations that are being attacked by bigger ones and then he’ll give it to them for free. In other words: it’s not so much a weapon as a deterrent to war. Meanwhile, a man whose company manufactures parts for the government (and who is also funding the scientist’s research) becomes the focus of The Avenger’s investigations when a large number of people who come into contact with the man go insane. The only clue involves the fact that any dogs in the area just before the men go insane howl in pain.
As always, the supporting cast shines but that’s actually the biggest regret I have about this one: unlike the Doc Savage series, where I sometimes gritted my teeth while Monk and Ham were given the spotlight instead of Doc, I actually really enjoy seeing Smitty, Josh, Nellie, etc. take the active role. They’re each given their parts in this story but it’s not nearly as much as in some other stories and I missed their interplay at times. The secret behind all the mischief is a bit goofy but it’s good fun and I’d recommend this one. 4 out of 5 stars!
Rank and File Reviews by Sarge Portera
PULP HEROES: MORE THAN MORTAL authored by Wayne Reinagel, published by Knightraven Studios and available at Amazon.com.
Felt like I slipped through a ripple in time when I began reading Wayne Reinagel’s PULP HEROES: MORE THAN MORTAL! Found myself in a mind blowing parallel Pulpdom that goes unparalled from beginning to end. It’s a Big Rock Candy Mountain for pulp enthusiasts with just the right blend to want to read it, again and again! If you like Fu Manchu, Indiana Jones with nefarious fascists and mummies on the loose than you will get a positive energy boost that can power up pulsars.
All crossovers, bronze and silhouette pastiches are masterfully blended together in the hands of Wayne Reinagel. Soon as you begin reading his PULP HEROES: MORE THAN MORTAL (published by Knightraven Studios and available at Amazon.com) you’ll be swept up in a frenetically paced story that pays tribute to every pulp hero that was ever published before! I’ll even dare to say that you can shove the Wald Newton meteorite out of the way for speculative fiction fresh from the imagination behind Knightraven Studios. Doc Titan, the Darkness, the Guardian and the Scorpion team up for a megadose of mayhem, menace and mystery!
You’ll not only meet Doc Titan but a fighting legion of pulp heroes in the closing days of World War II! This first entry into Wayne’s PULP HEROES trilogy is peppered with flashbacks that effectively tie together numerous plot threads that the pulp writers of yesteryear never had the time to answer in the unique way Wayne Reinagel has answered them!
Rank and File Reviews by Sarge Portera
PULP HEROES: KHAN DYNASTY was authored by Wayne Reinagel, published by Knightraven Studios and available at Amazon.com.
WARNING: This tome is riddled with danger packed alleyways, conspirational power struggles and decade spanning romance and mystery that will leave you breathless.
With its similar size and heft expect an adventure of Biblical proportions as you page feverishly through Wayne Reinagel’s KHAN DYNASTY. This rippin’ yarn was written for armchair adventurers like you and me. Wayne took me on a rollicking trip thru time without me even having to step through the portals of a time machine. Let Wayne serve you as the most capable captain with a handpicked crew that will fire your imagination as you set sail for high octane high adventure in the second volume of his PULP HEROES trilogy.
If Wayne Reinagel’s KHAN DYNASTY was required reading in high school or college there would be lot less complaining and much more applause for literature. This rollicking compilation gets an A+ as it weaves together a decades spanning tapestry of high adventure!
Reviews from the 86th Floor by Barry Reese
Sun Koh: Heir of Atlantis Volume One
Written by Art Sippo
I’m not usually one for hyperbole, but this was one of the best pulp novels I’ve read in a long, long time. The main character is somewhat controversial in that he was the “Nazi Doc Savage” and many people are hesitant to root for such a protagonist. But Art Sippo manages to make the characters both appealing and repugnant at the same time, which is quite a feat. Sun Koh’s views on the “servant races” are disturbing but it would be wrong to really dub him a Nazi — in many ways he was using Hitler’s forces to pursue his own agenda (which, again, is disturbing — he wanted to save the world for the Aryans with everyone else serving them). The first three stories … More >are the origin of Sun Koh but the last two are the most interesting because they’re Doc Savage-style adventures and we get to see the team in the field. The rape scene with Shani in the fourth tale was one of the most disturbing things I’ve seen in a pulp novel. I really can’t wait for the continuation of Sun Koh’s adventures but I do yearn to see a truly great antagonist introduced for him. In other words, Sun Koh needs his own John Sunlight character, someone worthy of combating him. Truly a great book! 5 out of 5 on the rating scale!
Reviews from the 86th Floor by Barry Reese
Ghosts of the Sargasso by Bill Craig
A small word of warning for those who might purchase this title from Amazon.com: Despite the fact that the title listing on amazon includes the words volume 1 — this is NOT volume 1 in the series! It’s actually volume four. Because of this, I ended up reading this book without having read the first three — it didn’t really hurt my enjoyment of the book, though.
I don’t think I’ve encountered someone who channels Lester Dent quite as much as Bill Craig in this book. The pacing and storytelling was very, very reminiscent of Dent. I mean that in the best of ways — though there are flaws in the style and formatting (more on that to come), the enthusiasm of the author and the great pulpy ideas (a floating ghost city of lost ships; an undersea warlord bent on destroying all life on land; etc.) more than makes up for the flaws. The characters are vibrant — Hannigan is your prototypical hero, Abigail is a wonderful girlfriend/partner who nearly stole the book and so forth. The main villain (Kraken aka The Sea Devil) is deliberately similar to Captain Nemo but that’s okay. It lends the whole affair a definite sense of the epic.
As for the flaws… the formatting of the book is really messed up. Some chapters begin on the lower third of the page with the top two-thirds blank space. Page 35 of the book is blank. I can only assume that something in the conversion process of the book went awry. It’s distracting but not so much that I couldn’t still enjoy things. About the Dent comparison: I mean that both in the good sense and the bad. Like Dent, Craig sometimes re-uses the same words and phrases a tad too much. One of the characters calls Hannigan “old friend” four times in the space of two paragraphs, for instance. And the jokes about Hannigan’s bad luck are amusing but there’s a few too times many that the joke is used.
Overall, I really liked the book. I would have given it a 4 out of 5 except for the formatting issues. As it is, it still manages a 3 out of 5.
Tippin’ Hancock’s Hat-Reviews by Tommy Hancock
2010
PULP WILL EAT ITSELF, VOL. 2, No. 1
General Jack Cosmo Productions
Writers-Robbie Hibbs, Adam M. Lahners, Jim McKern
Artists-Michael Shiroda, Apri Kusbiantoro, Mike Cody, Matthew Weldon, Carla Wyzgala, Jim McKern, and Michal Szyksznian
One of the fantastic things about the Pulp genre is just how wide its boundaries are. Multiple genres can live and prosper within Pulp Fiction. Also, Pulp is an area open to any and all willing to offer suspense, thrills, and all around good storytellin’ to the general reader. A book, comic, or story doesn’t have to come from one of the “Big Whatever” to draw a fan in and hold onto them.
The above statements are proven upon reading PULP WILL EAT ITSELF from General Jack Cosmo Productions. This is a flipbook that debuted at the 2010 Wizard World Chicago Con and is chock filled with what one of its creators, Adam M. Lahners calls “SouthernFried SuspenStories.” This description fits as the two stories involve Southern themes, culture, and characters, albeit from decidedly different directions.
Mournin’ At the Grave, the comic story in this tome, stars a character created by Lahners and McKern, a masked Southern hero known as Crawdaddy. Although this is just a short story, Crawdaddy is the type of character that I want to see more of. Part Errol Flynn/Part Clark Gable/Part Hero on a quest, he translates well both visually and within the story. This is a little Gothic ghost story of sorts and as that, stands pretty well. The only issue is that the story gets confused in the middle, making understanding what takes place a little difficult. This may be in pacing or simply in the art not being narrative enough to convey the thought. Having said that, the ending is poignant and is a fine resolution.
The other side of this flipbook moves from heroic fiction to horror fiction. O Wicked Wendy by Lahners and McKern is a prose story with some awesome illustrations provided, illustrations of lyrics of a song the story is built around. Based on a monster legend from Fouke, Arkansas, this story follows a special type of government official on his quest for music. Yes, music. This story makes good use of history and lore, mixing the two together deftly. Also, the connection made between traditional Southern music and the accompanying art adds a depth to the tale of violent love and even more violent retribution that is just awesome.
The singular issue with this tale, particularly the prose side of it, was the editing. Some of the phrasing was awkward, but the biggest problem was the punctuation, or absence of punctuation for the most part. This definitely does not affect how good the story is, but it does prove distracting to the reader, well, this reader anyway.
PULP WILL EAT ITSELF overall is an enjoyable romp through Southern culture and legends and, even though a bit uneven at times, paints a grand picture and makes me hope the crew at General Jack Cosmo will be doing even more of this sort of Deep South Pulp. The character images of what I suppose are future story subjects are intriguing and only add to the desire that PULP WILL EAT ITSELF will continue.
Three out of Five Tips of Hancock’s Hat (Three tips are generally reserved for those that I like and see potential in for more tips of the hat in the future.)
Reviews from the 86th Floor by Barry Reese
Captain Hazzard: Cavemen of New York by Ron Fortier
This series is an interesting little thing. The ‘real’ Captain Hazzard appeared in exactly one story back in the golden age of the pulps and was an obvious rip-off of Doc Savage. Veteran author Ron Fortier took that story and rewrote it for a modern audience (volume 1) and then has collaborated or written by himself three new adventures. His version of Hazzard is still heavily influenced by Doc Savage but has enough unique elements to stand on his own.
In this story, the good Captain crosses paths with Lester Dent, who created Doc Savage, while dealing with a couple of mad scientists, one of whom is a relative of the infamous Doctor Moreau. So you get weather-controlling machines and innocent people transformed into throwback cavemen… it’s a fun romp that doesn’t take itself too seriously. Unlike the old pulps, Forttier is careful to avoid anything that smacks of racial stererotyping and several of the characters in this story are refreshingly treated as equals, where in the old days this probably wouldn’t have been the case (outside of the Avenger series, where characters of all races contributed equally).
There are a few typos that stop the flow of the narrative but in the world of small press, that’s to be expected. If you love Doc Savage and the other old-school pulp heroes, you could do a lot worse than checking out these Captain Hazzard books by Ron Fortier. I’ve enjoyed them all so far, with this one probably being the second-best in the series.
In terms of things that I didn’t like so much, I’d have to say that I’d like to see more of Hazzard himself and less of the fabulous five who adventure with him — even in the old Doc Savage tales, I sometimes grew very tired of the Ham & Monk scenes and wanted more Doc!
Tippin’ Hancock’s Hat-Reviews by Tommy Hancock
September 2010
BLACK BAT DOUBLE SHOT
Writer-Mike Bullock
Artist-Michael Metcalf
(NOTE-This review is for the first of two stories in this issue. A review of the second story starring Death Angel will appear at ALL PULP soon!)
Black Bat in BLACK DEATH
It’s always tricky when a creative team tackles a character who has a strong fan following and an established history with the intent of making that character a hit with modern audiences. And I don’t mean tricky like pulling a rabbit out of a hat. I mean more like passing through a series of booby traps and running from rolling boulders and ducking from razor sharp blades tricky. If a writer attempts to modernize a known character, even one whose publication history has been spotty at best in the last fifty years, and doesn’t stay true enough to a fan’s concept, then that writer has committed a major faux pas. If the artist takes liberties with an icon’s costume, he runs the risk of angering those he hopes will buy his book. Suffice it to say, any team undertaking this challenge walks an extremely fine line, a tight rope most can’t stay on.
It’s a good thing the team on Moonstone’s Black Bat: Black Death, Bullock and Metcalf, have such great balance.
This is an origin story. This is a black and white with jarring splashes of red portrait of a great man damaged by the very crime he swore to fight. This is a psychological expose’ of that man, torn apart by his personal injury, remade into something that before just bubbled under the surface, but now has exploded outward all over society. This is The Black Bat flying straight out of faded pulp pages. This is The Black Bat of tomorrow.
Bullock has crafted a great way to jump right into the violent career of the Bat and still let new readers in on how he went from Tony Quinn, D. A. to conflicted animal themed crime fighter. It reads like a rapid fire barrage of good and evil with pathos flowing under it like a crimson stream. Metcalf’s art, gritty when it needs to be and clean when the tale needs that, not only compliments the story, but gives it brass knuckles.
The story has a couple of chinks in its armor. Storytelling gets uneven a couple of times as action takes place in a few panels that surely hints at things to come, but causes some confusion currently. There’s a spot or two where the art is a bit too dark, mostly in shade. These points, though, do not take away from the fact that this initial journey into this version of The Black Bat is much more than a walk. It’s a breakneck, flat out run into Pulp.
Now, the question that hangs in the air is just how true to the original Bullock’s and Metcalf’s take on this character is. As a reader and fan of the Black Bat (actually of both the masked Bat and the hilariously driven public hero of the same name in pulpdom), I must say I am very satisfied with this version of Tony Quinn’s alter ego. In twelve pages, we have the origin and we have a sample of the drive motivating this man to put on his mask and take his vengeance wholesale. There are even hints at his supporting cast, which is one of the favorite parts of the original Bat. So, is it exactly like the original Pulp yarns…exactly? No. Does it hold its own in comparison? You bet your Bat it does.
Four out of Five Tips of Hancock’s Hat (which is a fedora, by the way, and four tips are usually reserved for heads of state, arresting officers, and little old ladies, which is pretty darn good.)
ALL PULP REVIEW – By Ron Fortier
RABBIT HEART
By Barry Reese
Wild Cat Books
149 pgs.
Modern day pulp writer, Barry Reese, eschews the traditional hero avenger fare for something much darker and violent with this thriller that borders on the sensational. One has to imagine he dove into this adult orientated tale with both trepidation and a palpable sense of unfettered freedom. There is plenty of gore, sexual brutality and blatant acts of depravity all meticulously embellished with not a gruesome detail omitted. If you’ve the stomach for it, Rabbit Heart is a savage reading experience but it is not for the timid.
The adventure begins with the death of the protagonist, a young girl named Fiona Chapman. She’s murdered by an outdoor serial killer who fancies himself the next Jason from the Friday the 13th movies. But Fiona doesn’t die, or at least in the same way normal people expire. Instead she somehow biologically evolves into another state of being, one in which she is incredibly strong and powerful. She soon learns that she is one of a handful of mythological spirits who have roamed the world for centuries known as the Furious Hosts.
These semi immortal deities exist only to kill and be killed. They are all players in a bizarre, savage game known as the Hunt. Each is filled with an unquenchable lust compelling them satiate their dark passions by preying on innocent humans while at the same time battling each other until eventually only one will remain. This is of course reminiscent of the Highlander movie series, but with a neat twist. When a Furious Host is killed by another, he or she will be reborn into another body at a later date to resume the contest. Thus killing them permanently is a problem.
Fiona, whose archetype figure she becomes when fighting is that of a sexy bad-girl warrior, is different in that she is actually repulsed by her new supernatural identity. She truly wants to no part of it but doesn’t know how to escape her fate. Then she meets an occult detective from the past who has been tracking the activities of the Furious Host and has come to her with an offer. His name is Ascott Keane and he wants to help Fiona take on the task of finding and destroying all the Hunters, ridding the world of them once and for all.
RABBIT HEART is by far the most accomplished of Reese’s writing to date. Unlike his earlier, fanciful pulp adventures, there is a steadier prose here that is precise and confident. The excess sex and violence is never gratuitous, serves the plot and avoids being pornographic by that masterful writing. I strongly recommend this book to my adult readers looking for something new. Final warning, this is a superior effort but NOT for the squeamish.
THE LONG MATINEE-Pulp Movie Reviews by Derrick Ferguson
ALL THROUGH THE NIGHT
1942
Warner Brothers
Produced by Hal B. Wallis
Directed by Vincent Sherman
Screenplay by Leonard Spiegelgass and Edwin Gilbert
Based on a story by Leonard Spiegelgass and Leo Rosten
I am so confident that you’re going to want to see ALL THROUGH THE NIGHT when this review is over that I’m just going to give you the plot and the characters and I’m going to bet my mint condition #1 of DC Comics ‘Black Lightning’ that by the end of this review, this movie will be on your Netflix list. Ready? Okay, here we go:
Well-known man-about-town and professional gambler Alfred “Gloves” Donahue (Humphrey Bogart) is summoned from Yankee Stadium by his mother (Jane Darwell). Papa Miller who runs the neighborhood bakery has gone missing which upsets Gloves to no end as he won’t eat any other cheesecake except for Papa Miller’s. A search of the bakery’s basement soon turns up the dead body of Papa Miller. Mother Donahue won’t rest until her son gets involved to find out who killed Papa Miller even though Gloves keeps insisting he’s just a ‘sports promoter’ and not a cop. With the assistance of his trusty sidekicks Sunshine (William Demarest) Starchy (Jackie Gleason) and Barney (Frank McHugh) Gloves tracks down a mysterious girl who had come to the shop to see Papa Miller and was highly upset about hearing about his death. The girl is the torch singer Leda Hamilton (Kaaren Verne) who works with the pianist Pepi (Peter Lorre) whose disarming charm masks a soul filled with bloodthirsty sadism.
It isn’t long before Gloves and his boys find themselves up their stylish fedoras in a nest of Nazi Fifth Columnists led by the sinister Franz Ebbing (Conrad Veidt) and his assistant Madame (Judith Anderson) who along with Pepi make as ruthless a trio of villains as you could ever imagine. Turns out that the Fifth Columnists were blackmailing Papa Miller into working with them and when he couldn’t take it anymore and threatened to go to the cops, Pepi killed him. Gloves is framed for murder by Pepi and having nowhere else to turn, appeals to New York’s underworld element. Gloves has discovered that Ebbing has a plot in the works to blow up an experimental prototype battleship docked at The Brooklyn Navy Yard and there’s no time to convince the cops of what’s going to happen. And it’s on as New York’s criminal underworld throws itself into the race against time to stop the Nazis while Gloves has a no less dangerous task: save Leda from the clutches of the villains in order to clear his good name and still get home in time for dinner with his beloved mother.
You’re going to tell me you don’t want to see this movie? ALL THROUGH THE NIGHT has a screwball plot that is so wonderful I wish I’d thought of it myself. Humphrey Bogart is terrific as Gloves Donahue. He’s totally charming when he has to be and when he has to be tough, well…let’s just say that for me, Bogart is the living embodiment of ‘tough’. I really liked the scenes he has with Jane Darwell who plays his mother. Even though Gloves insists he’s juts a gambler and a ‘promoter’ his mother knows her son is a gangster. But she loves him to death anyway. The rapport between them is wonderfully to see on screen.
Conrad Veidt, Judith Anderson and Peter Lorre make a formidable trio of villains and it’s fun to see Bogart’s street-smart gangster match verbal wits with Veidt’s sophisticated European intellectual. There’s an interesting subplot where we see that Judith Anderson’s character is clearly jealous of the attention Ebbing shows Leda. Another subplot that is played for very effective laughs is that Barney has just gotten married but he can never get to spend time with his wife because Gloves and the boys are always dragging him off on a new escapade.
William Demarest (Uncle Charlie from ‘My Three Sons’) Frank McHugh and Jackie Gleason (yes, that Jackie Gleason) are all terrific as Bogart’s sidekicks with personalities, quirks and mannerisms that are as distinctive as those of Doc Savage’s Amazing Five or Buckaroo Banzai’s Hong Kong Cavaliers. The whole movie is a weird type of action/comedy that we like to think is a modern movie convention but ALL THROUGH THE NIGHT proved that they did back then in 1942 and did it well. The dialog is absolutely fantastic and delivered in a Damon Runyonesque style that will make you think of ‘Guys And Dolls’. There’s a wisecrack thrown off in almost every sentence and the use of a type of Pig Latin doubletalk is used to hilarious effect in what is probably the funniest scene in the movie: Gloves and Sunshine infiltrate a secret Nazi meeting by posing as German demolition experts. I won’t even spoil it for you by explaining how Gloves and Sunshine get there.
Just take my word for it: ALL THROUGH THE NIGHT is a lot of fun and it’s a great movie. It’s been one of my favorite films for years. If you’re a Bogie fan you’ve probably seen it already and if you’re not, you will be after you see it.
107 Minutes
AP: Who is Adam Garcia?
AG: Trick question, there are several Adam Garcia’s. But, if you look on IMDB you’ll find at least four. One of them is me. We often battle every few years to determine who will reign supreme, ala Highlander.
I’m Adam Lance Garcia—sometimes Adam L. Garcia—and recently, “That Kid Who Writes the Green Lama.”
AP: Tell us a little about yourself. Family, job, background… you know the routine.
AG: I was born in late 20th Century, 1983 to be exact, and raised in the small town called Brooklyn, NY, just east of Manhattan. My father sold cold cuts. My mother was a homemaker before returning to teaching. Times were simpler back then. The Cold War was cooling. Eddie Murphy was two years away from telling us about how his girl liked to party all the time. The Internet had yet to be invented. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were about to take television by storm. Comic books were printed on substance called “paper.” Simpler times.
My father raised me on comics and movie serials, so I knew who the Green Lama was before I knew who the President was. You think I’m kidding. If you walk into my parents’ living room you’ll find on the wall, in place of family photo, original comic book artwork from artists such as Alex Ross and Shelly Moldoff; in place of fine china, there are maquettes of Captain Marvel, Mighty Mouse, Captain America, etc. Whenever my friends visit they look around and softly say: “Oh. It all makes sense now.” My mom is a saint for putting up with this. Though considering my parent’s first date was McDonald’s and a comic book convention I think she knew what she was getting into. My dad’s a charmer.
I attended Abraham Lincoln High School in south Brooklyn where my main focus was photography, thanks to an incredible teacher named Howard Wallach. My work has been on display at the Brooklyn Museum and across the country. After that I went to film school at New York University. I studied under some amazing professors such as James Gardner and Terence Winter—his show Boardwalk Empire will premiere on HBO very soon.
Currently, I work in television for a daytime show staring a famous female mogul. Not Oprah.
AP: What got you started writing?
AG: I wanted to impress a girl, so I figured stories about superheroes wouldmake her like me.
Honestly, I really don’t know. That’s kind of like asking a fish why he swims or the bears in Jellystone National Park why they like to steal pic-a-nic baskets. I’ve found notebooks and folders filled with stories from when I was incredibly young. The earliest story I could find was “The Land of Nowhere” from when I was eight. My first attempt at a novel was when I was 16, called Justice’s Kingdom. I had ideas and it seemed natural to write them, there’s not much more to it. I liked telling stories.
It wasn’t until my senior year of college that a light bulb appeared over my head and I realized that I wanted to be a professional writer and, more importantly, that I was halfway decent. It wasn’t just my mom who liked my writing.
AG: I’ve always been aware of pulp. You simply couldn’t grow up in my house and not be, I knew of Doc Savage and the Shadow, the hero pulps, the westeRns, etc., but it wasn’t something I was very well versed in. It wasn’t untIl I met Ron Fortier of Airship 27 Productions at the 2009 New York Comic Con by puRe happenstance that I began really becoming entrenched in the world of pulp.
So I suppose you could say Pulp found me, but I knew it was looking.
AP: I suppose we ought to get down to what people really want to hear about Tell us who The Green Lama is.
AG: I think it’s partly due to his increased exposure thanks to Dynamite’s Project: Superpowers and Airship 27’s releases, but I honestly believe it has to do with the fact that Jethro is simply a fascinating character. Of all the pulp heroes out there, Jethro fights for justice solely because of what he believes. For him it’s an issue of faith. He doesn’t want to fight, he’s not looking for revenge—he’s fighting because he truly believes there is no other choice.
AP: Where do you plan to go with the character? Can we expect to find=you still writing Green Lama novels five or even ten years from now?
AG: Green Lama: Unbound is the first of trilogy of novels that takes place after the original pulps (treating them as canon) and will follow a tight continuity, building towards a very definitive ending. At the core of this series are Jethro Dumont and Jean Farrell. Each book will reflect where these two characters are in their relationship.
The next novel is Green Lama: Crimson Circle. In many ways it will be a direct sequel to the Green Lama’s very first pulp story “Case of the Crimson Hand” and will hopefully act as the de facto conclusion to Crossen’s original pulp stories. While Unbound was a major crossover with the Cthulhu Mythos, Crimson Circle is solely a Green Lama story and isn’t so much about the Green Lama facing a new threat, rather his past victories will be coming back to haunt him. All of the Lama’s original associates will appear and not all will survive. I know that might upset some purists, but=as I’ve mentioned, these novels are set after the pulps and won’t go against established canon. I feel that if these stories are to really resonate with readers (both old and new) it is important that Jethro and his ilk to face the darker side of heroism, and paying the price for their actions. (I’ve included a teaser image for the book by artist Mike Fyles exclusively to ALL PULP).
The final novel in the trilogy will be Green Lama: Legacy. Since it’s still two years away I don’t want to spoil too much of this novel, but the story is centered on Jethro coming to terms with his birthright set against the backdrop of the lead up to America’s entering World War II. My goal is to make this novel to both act as the epilogue to the pulp era and the dawn of a new era for the characters.
After that I might be taking a break from the character but I’m considering writing an anthology of Green Lama stories or a novel set during World War II. Let’s call it Green Lama: War Torn for now. It would probably feature stand-alone adventures of Lama working with other pulp and comic heroes at the time fighting on the frontlines. If there’s enough of a demand for it I might write it. With that in mind I do have a very specific direction for the characters. I can tell you where they going to be in 1942, in 1945, in 1950, in 1970, etc. (Be on the lookout for Andrew Salmon’s book for a clue as to what happens to the Lama after the War).
So while I can’t say for certain I’ll be writing Green Lama five years from now, Jethro Dumont will be keeping me busy for at least the next two years or so.
AP: What other pulp characters do you like? And do you have plans to=write stories or novels about them?
AG: I would like one day write Sherlock Holmes, and a few other name characters… I would kill to write the Phantom or Conan, but to be honest none hold my heart like the Green Lama. I do have ideas for a several original characters and stories that will take a more post-modern bent on the pulps.
AP: What’s a typical Day In The Life of Adam Garcia like?
AG: I usually spend my days heavily inebriated beneath the Verrazano Bridge fighting the C.H.U.D.s.
AP: Here’s your chance to give somebody a shoutout or pimp something. Go.
AG: Someone once told me to add “um’s” and “ah’s” to my interview so as to sound more natural. Rather than place them in interview itself here they all are in order of appearance: “Uh, mm, uh, ahem, ah, uh, yub, nub, eee, chop, yub, nub.”
AP: Radio Western Adventures features your story, “Who Really Was That Masked Man?” Please tell us a little about the story.
DG: Well, it started out kind of small – maybe Matt Dillon meeting Paladin or whatever. But then I started noticing certain similarities between certain Western characters. For example, both the Lone Ranger and Hopalong Cassidy rode white horses, Straight Arrow and Hoppy had old geezer sidekicks, Tonto and Straight Arrow were both Indians, and so forth. I started to wonder what would happen if a character like the Lone Ranger got waylaid and had to be impersonated for a brief time by some other Western hero. From that point on the story just grew and took on its own life, with more and more characters from various Western radio shows participating. When the cast of characters grew sufficiently big I decided to pull out all the stops and bring in characters from virtually every Western radio show that ever existed, those set in the modern as well as Old West.
AP: Radio Western Adventures is dedicated to radio historian and author, Jim Harmon, who passed away earlier this year. How did Mr. Harmon’s legacy impact this book?
DG: Yes, that dedication was my idea and Bill Cunningham, the publisher and editor and now good friend, agreed that it was appropriate. Well, remember that “Masked Man” was originally intended for Jim’s series of “cross-over” books. But even though Jim found the story I’d written for him “very charming” (his exact words), it was way too long for inclusion within the format he’d established…and brought in too many characters (Jim wanted to stick pretty much to crossing-over just two programs). Also, even though my story was essentially a parody and protected as such by law, Jim was somewhat nervous about my using so many copyrighted and trademarked characters. (In the version I sent to Jim I’d used all of the characters real names.) Then, to put the final nail into the coffin, Jim’s book series did not continue. So that left me with a story but nowhere to place it – that is until Bill came along.
AP: I’ve noticed something of a resurgence of western prose beginning to happen, especially in the United States, where westerns have not been hot sellers as they are in other parts of the world. Do you think it’s time for the western novels to make a comeback?
DG: It’s time for Westerns in all media to make a comeback, as far as I’m concerned.
AP: Where can readers find information on your books?
DG: On my website,
www.DonaldFGlut.com. Go to the page called “writing credits.”AP: What upcoming projects do you have coming up that you can tell us about at this time?
DG: I have a number of new pulp-style novels coming out from Bill’s company, including reissues in various deluxe formats of my 11-book “NEW ADVENTURES OF FRANKENSTEIN” series, and a pulp-style masked hero adventure titled JAWBREAKER VS. THE SCARLET SKULL. I’m also still writing my “DINOSAURS: THE ENCYCLOPEDIA” series of semi-technical non-fiction books, motion picture scripts and other things, always keeping busy.
AP: Thanks, Don. If there’s any other information you’d like, let me know and we can add more questions.
DG: Will do. And if you have any other questions, feel free to ask.
COVER FOR THE FIRST FRANKENSTEIN NOVEL, ART BY MARK MADDOX (http://www.maddoxplanet.com/)
Bill Cunningham, Publisher, Pulp 2.0 Press |
STAY TUNED FOR THE INTERVIEW WITH VETERAN WRITER DON GLUT, A COMPANION TO THIS EXCELLENT CONVERSATION WITH BILL CUNNINGHAM!!
BILL CRAIG, Author of the Hardluck Hannigan series, the Jack Riley books and more!
AP: You have several series that are ongoing but let’s start with Hardluck Hannigan. Tell us how you came up with the character and a little bit about his adventures?
AP: You’ve done other books besides the Riley and Hannigan ones — can you let our readers know about the other genres you like to dabble in?
AP: When it comes to the pulp market right now, what are your favorite “new” authors and characters? Or do you usually stick to the classics?
AP: Can you tell us how your writing process works? Do you outline extensively or are you one of those who likes to wing it?
AP: If our readers would like to find out more about you and your writings, where should they go?
RON HANNA, Editor-in-Chief and Publisher of Wild Cat Books
AP: Thanks for joining us, Ron! Can you tell us about your history with the pulps — how did you first discover them and what led to the founding of Wild Cat Books?
RON: Well, like most people my age, I first discovered pulps through the many paperback reprints in the 1960’s and ‘70’s, especially the Doc Savage Bantam books. I’ll never forget the first ones I saw on the newsstand. “Land of Terror”, “Lost Oasis”, “Brand of the Werewolf” all had awesome covers, and when I first saw James Bama’s art, well, that intrigued me even more. I had never heard of Kenneth Robeson before, but he quickly became my favorite author. I read a lot when I was a kid, from Comic Books to the Classics. I always had something to read with me wherever I went. But it wasn’t until many years later that I decided to take my love of books, and pulp fiction in particular, to the next level by starting a fanzine in 1997. It was called “Secret Sanctum” and was probably the first “fan publication” that had glossy full-color artwork. My partner at that time worked in a printing company and he had all the pages printed at work, mailed them to me, where I then collated and stapled them, and then mailed them out to people who had heard about us on the Internet. This was before Facebook, MySpace and other social-networking sites. Back then I used the Prodigy network and everything was just a text message board and Usenet groups. Eventually, my partner and I parted ways, and I began Wild Cat Books, using my experience to try and make something even better than before. It was also in those early days that I discovered pulp fandom and met a variety of people who had the same interests as me. I still work with some of those people to this date.
AP: In the early days of WCB, the Internet was quite different. What’s the biggest change you’ve seen in pulp fandom over the years?
RON: I would have to say the social-networking sites such as Facebook, Yahoo and others. They opened up a much wider world and the vast advances in technology and software allowed much more discourse and interaction between fans all over the world. Although there have been many various conventions for over a generation, I believe it was some of these changes that really changed a lot of things. It used to be that only very wealthy people could afford a Web Site, but nowadays it seems the costs are much more reasonable, and it can really help a small-press publisher when they have their own page where they can showcase their work and attempt to attract new fans and readers. I say this with a caveat however: There is a big push toward everything becoming digital these days and the eBook format has become extremely popular. I have nothing against that, and we even have produced some digital books of our own, but to me there is nothing like holding a book or magazine in your hands. The tactile sensations, the smell of the paper or newsprint, the ability to have something really tangible to hold and treasure is something that is very important to me, and as a publisher I will never stop producing “hard copy” as my main source of publishing. Maybe it’s because of the generation I grew up in, but to me, an eBook could never replace an actual, real book… Besides, I also collect old pulps, comics and books and they are something I proudly display in my home. To me, those are repositories of adventure and imagination that I will never tire of, and I can re-read them even if the power goes out to the Internet or the batteries die on an eBook reader. Yes, everything does eventually decay or die, but the books on my shelf will always hold a special place in my heart.
AP: The pulp market is getting rather crowded these days — what makes WCB stand out from the rest?
RON: That’s a good question. I’d have to say it’s because of the passion we have for what we do, not to mention the ever-improving quality of our publications. A lot of other companies concentrate on reprints in various genres, which is great for the collector who can’t afford the original issues, and others publish new fiction and characters, but I believe that we are one of the few who are actively publishing both classic and new fiction, and more importantly, history and art reference books as well. We try to offer something for everyone.
AP: Ver Curtiss and Bill Carney are both key members of the WCB production family — can you tell us how they became involved with the company and what their duties are?
RON: Ver is my Art Director, and he has been with me from the very start back in 1997. He submitted some Doc Savage pieces he had done, and as soon as I saw the first one, I begged for more. He and I are totally different people in terms of personality, beliefs and lifestyles, but we have one thing in common: Our love of the pulps and popular culture. That is the bond that has kept us together after all these years, and even despite some clashes and disagreements. I consider him my brother, and I even moved to Virginia from California back in 2001 to live near him. He is an entirely self-taught artist and he works in many different areas: Sculpture, Photography, and he’s now also working as a comic book artist for Moonstone Comics illustrating the “Black Angel” series for their Air Fighters title, which is written by Martin Powell. Ver has also done the interior art for Moonstone’s “Domino Lady” prose anthology. His work is in high demand, but he always will find the time to do something new for me if I need something special done on a moments notice. He is one of the most talented and wonderful person I’ve ever known.
Bill Carney joined WCB about 3-4 years ago when he and his brother Chris submitted their original creation “The Scarlet Shroud” to me for possible publication. Both of them are talented artists, and while Chris does most of the story writing, Bill is also a fine writer who has written some fine historical reference pieces, especially dealing with Science Fiction and Fantasy. He’s one of the most knowledgeable people in those areas that I’ve ever met. And like Ver, he’s also a great person to be around. He and I have gone to conventions together, I spend a few days each year visiting him in Upstate New York, as well as both of us going to visit his brother Chris in Pennsylvania. We all get along great, and I look forward to each of my trips to visit them. However, the best thing that Bill does is Graphic Design. I used to do all the book formatting for our titles myself, and while they were “acceptable” they were nowhere near as good as what Bill can do. He’s a professional designer by trade, and has even won some national awards for his Production Design work, and I finally approached him about becoming the head designer for WCB and he has really delivered the goods! I’ve had several people tell me that our titles are some of the most professional and beautifully designed books on the market today, and I owe all that to Bill… which is one of the reasons I recently promoted him to Managing Editor. He’s not only a voracious reader, but he knows how to best edit stories that are submitted to us. And, to tell the truth, what with all the “management” details I have to deal with as the publisher, it made perfect sense to have him edit our books as well. He’s much better at it than I ever was! He’s also in charge of our revival of the old pulp “Startling Stories”. He has full editorial control over that project, and I’m very thankful that he loves doing it. It really is one of our finest on-going projects.
AP: Looking back, what books has WCB published in the past that you think are ones you’re particularly proud of?
RON: Well, I love all my children equally (joke!) but I would have to say I’m really proud of some of our Pulp History reference books by Award-winning historian Wooda “Nick” Carr. He grew up with the pulps (he’s in his mid-80’s now) and, like Ver, has been with me from the beginning. Each issue of my various fanzines always had a new article by him… but it’s the book collections I’m most proud of: “The Pulp Hero”, “Master of the Pulps”, and “The Pulp Magazine Scrapbook”… All of these belong on any pulp fan’s bookshelf… “Pulp Hero” is an encyclopedia of over 100 heroes and villains, plus a complete bibliography of all of Nick’s articles and books. “Master” contains a variety of some of his finest articles gathered over the years from various publications. But the “Pulp Magazine Scrapbook” is something totally different. This contains copies of the letters that Nick received over the years from many of the original pulp writers and artists: Walter Gibson, Robert G. Harris, Harry Steeger, Ryerson Johnson, and many more. It’s a historian’s dream to actually go back in time and read what the creators had to say about their work and what it was like back in the days of pulp fiction.
Another one of my favorites is “The Captain Future Handbook” by Chuck Juzek. It’s a hard-cover full-color book that contains everything you could possibly want in regards to this classic space hero. It has complete story summaries, the very rare first chapter written by Edmond Hamilton that was only published previously in a small-press fanzine, and it’s lavishly illustrated with every pulp and paperback cover, including all the German and Japanese editions, and is probably one of the most comprehensive and beautiful books we’ve ever published. It retails for $75.00 but in today’s marketplace, that’s a steal when you consider the high-quality product that you’ll receive. It’s a true masterpiece!
Another book I’m very proud of is K.G. McAbee’s “Bewitched by Darkness”, a collection of some of this Award-winning writer’s finest short stories with Cover and Interior Art by the fantastic British artist Nick Neocleous. Nick has illustrated a lot of our book covers, and every one of them has been a winner. He’s one of my favorite artists, and he’s always willing to pitch in and do wonderful work for us. He’s been involved with some high-profile characters such as “Doctor Who” and “Indiana Jones”, so he’s always in demand, but I’m very happy he is able to find the time to work with a small-press company such as WCB. We even published a full-color art book of his finest pieces called “Cosmic Eye”, which is another book I’m very proud of. It’s absolutely beautiful…
Another character I really enjoy is “The Rook” created and written by Barry Reese. I can’t name just one book as there are now five volumes in the series, each one better than the last. These books are pure pulp action and adventure, and some of the Cover Artists include Storn Cook, Frank Brunner, Norm Breyfogle and Anthony Castrillo. Not only are there some great original characters in these tales, but the author also brings in some classic pulp heroes that are in Public Domain, which makes this series so much fun for all of us fans… These are some really great tales!
I could go on and on, but I really do like all our books, and the weird thing is that some of our best, and my personal favorites, are not always our best-sellers… Go figure…
AP: One of WCB’s key components is STARTLING STORIES, a revival of a classic pulp magazine. Can you tell us about the magazine and are you accepting submissions for it at the present time?
RON: “Startling Stories” is a mutant. We not only reprint classic Golden Age Science-Fiction in each issue, but we even include some of the advertisements that appeared back then. We also include new stories by some of the most talented new writers on the market today such as K.G. McAbee, S. Clayton Rhodes, and others. We also have a Retro-Review section, and in our first issues we were very pleased to offer a comic story written and illustrated by the very talented Ron Wilber. A lot of people really loved his “Saucy Blaine” strip, but that will be ending soon. Ron Wilber is one of the few people on the planet who does not have a computer and has never used the Internet, so he doesn’t get the feedback that all creators desire. Despite the fact that I call him and tell him how much everyone loves “Saucy”, he has apparently lost the desire to continue on with it past the sixth story, which really disappoints me. I hope he regains his enthusiasm again at some point, as I enjoy working with him very much.
As for submissions, yes, we are always accepting submissions for “Startling Stories” of any length. Although it’s only a quarterly magazine, we need to have a supply of tales on hand to give us ample time to plan and pace each issue. We try to maintain a certain page count, and sometimes it’s tough to find just the right story to balance both the texture and variety we try to offer. Not everything has to be Sci-Fi or Fantasy, as we also accept Horror and, well, pretty much anything that could be called “Startling”!
AP: What new titles are on the way and what you can tell us about each?
RON: We have a few books in various stages of development. “Zombies in Time and Space” (an anthology) was recently released, as well as the massive Sword and Sorcery novel “Legends” by Tim Jones with a Cover by a new artist on our team, Gary McCluskey. His work is awesome, and we hope to have a lot more from him in the future. Coming soon is a new book by Rick Lai called “Shadows of the Opera” and “The Halloween Legion” by Martin Powell with Cover and Art by Danny Kelly. And the next issue of “Startling Stories” is always in the works as it’s our one on-going publication that comes out on a quarterly basis. By the time people read this, “The Rook – Volume Five” will be available at Amazon, and we already have the files for Volume Six. I’m hoping to one day see a “Rook” comic book… That would be fantastic. But I’m not holding my breath on that one!
AP: If fans want to purchase WCB books or learn more about the company, where can they do so?
RON: We have a website that I try to keep updated at _www.wildcatbooks.net <http://www.wildcatbooks.net/>_ and it has various pages listing our books at Amazon, as well as our other store that we maintain at lulu.com. You’ll find most of our earlier works at Lulu, but when we had the chance to move to Amazon we discovered that the quality was just as good, if not better, but the production costs were a lot lower so we were able to start pricing our books at a more affordable price in today’s economy than if we had stayed at Lulu.
AP: What’s your stance on public domain characters? WCB has used a few in the past but it’s emphasis now seems to be on original heroes.
RON: I’ve always enjoyed the Public Domain (PD) characters, and have no problem using more of them, but a lot of that depends on what is submitted to us. We recently published a book called “The Good, The Bad, and The Unknown” written by Mike Frigon and lavishly illustrated by Verne Anderson that featured The Moon Man, Doctor Satan, and Secret Agent X… It’s quite good, and I’d love to see more of the same by the creative team. They work quite well together. However, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, there are a lot of other companies using the PD characters so we try to offer more of a variety. A few PD heroes and villains make some appearances in the “Rook” tales, but as far as a new collection of stories or even a full-length novel is concerned, well, it all depends on the writers out there! As I’ve said, if it’s good, we’ll certainly consider publishing it, whether it’s PD characters, original creations or whatever. I will give you a little teaser though… Sometime down the road we plan on publishing the adventures of “Major Toad”, the frog from “The Wind in the Willows” in his own series of pulp adventures! This will hopefully be an on-going series, and the artist is working on the first book’s art even as we speak… We hope that this title will appeal to a wide cross-section of fans, both old and new, and for all ages… From what I’ve seen so far, I’m really excited about it…
AP: At one point, Airship 27 was associated with WCB… there have been many rumors about why the schism occurred, including tales that you and Ron Fortier now hated one another. Can you tell us what happened and what the current state of relations between creators and companies are now?
RON: Well, it’s a long story, but I’ll try to condense it. A few years ago, Ron Fortier of Airship 27 discovered WCB and submitted some really great stuff, and of course I immediately accepted, and even asked for more. Although we were the publisher, RF was the producer and he insisted on total editorial control. For a while that division worked well but eventually I found myself not having a say in anything: writers, artists, even the logo being used were not anything I had a say in, and even some of my suggestions were shrugged off. When he kept rejecting my ideas and insulted one of my best artists, well, that’s when I decided we needed to part ways. I returned all control and rights to his books back to him to re-release under his own publishing company, although some changes were made when he couldn’t get everyone who had been involved before to go along with the changes. I freely admit that there were a lot of hard feelings for quite a while. Too many people in the pulp world know what happened for me to even try to deny it, so I won’t. Yes, I was angry and hurt and he and I didn’t speak for a couple of years. But as they say: “Time heals all wounds” and since the pulp community is so close knit, I realized that there was no way we could, or should, continue under that veil of anger… It was time to let bygones be bygones, water under the bridge and all that. So we finally buried the hatchet (and not in each other’s heads) and agreed that we both had made mistakes and to let it go. He’s doing very well now with his Airship 27 titles, and I wish him all the best. He even told me that if it wasn’t for WCB he probably wouldn’t even be in the pulp business in the first place, and he obviously loves what he’s doing, so in a way, I guess, everything happens for a reason. We’re friends again… and that’s where it stands today. Heck, we’re even friends on Facebook!
AP: Have you read any of DC’s First Wave revivals? What do you think about the changes to the heroes that they’ve made? For that matter, where do you stand on making changes to classic heroes in general?
RON: I have read some of the First Wave revivals and, except for the cover art, I was really not impressed at all. In fact, as much as I love the characters (Doc Savage, The Avenger, The Spirit, etc.) I think DC has made a terrible blunder in how they are presenting these classics. Supposedly, everyone involved wanted to remain true to the “roots” of the pulp heroes, but it seems to me that they basically revamped them to the point that they are no longer recognizable to me. However, that being said, I really don’t have many problems with making some changes to the classics. But it has to be done with respect and love, and I didn’t get that feeling at all from DC’s revisionist take on them. They pretty much ruined the characters for all of us long-time fans, and by presenting them in the way they have, I doubt if new readers would be willing to read the original tales (which were so much fun), and that’s too bad, because the original tales make for very fine reading. In fact, I wish they would have adapted all those great stories to comics rather than see them turn out to be a miserable tragedy, and epic failure, for everyone involved with them.
AP: On a related note, how do you feel about Moonstone’s Return of the Originals?
RON: Now those are something I’m looking forward to reading because I know that Moonstone has a very high regard for keeping the faith! I haven’t read any of them yet (I don’t get to the local comic store as much as I used to) but from all I know about the creators involved, I have much higher expectations for this project than any others I’ve seen recently. In fact, I’m pretty much disgusted with all comics today. There’s only a few out there that I would even consider buying on a regular basis. DC and Marvel have both become gross distortions of their former selves, bloated from their greed, and I’m at the point where most comics no longer have the attraction to me that they did before. I’d rather spend my money on old Silver Age comics that I grew up with as a child. Those were inspiring and bring back many wonderful memories. Today’s comics pretty much just suck…
AP: As one of the elder statesmen in pulp and a Munsey Award Nominee, your words carry a lot of weight in the community. Does this ever influence your publishing decisions in any way?
RON: Well, thanks for the kind words, but I don’t consider myself as anything special. I’m just someone who really loves the pulps, the heroes, comics, and pretty much everything related to our Popular Culture. The only thing that I ever consider when making publishing decisions is: Do I like it?… I try to print the type of things that I would personally want to read. Not all of our books sell like gangbusters, but I’ve never been in this for the money… I do this because I really and truly love doing it… and I only hope our fans enjoy our books as much as I do!
DAVID BURTON, Pulp Artist
yourself, both personally and as an artist, background and such?
DB: You’re welcome, its my pleasure. As far as my personal life goes, I’m a pretty private person. I’ve been drawing and painting pretty much all of my life. I’m mostly self taught but have had some of the best people in the industry, who also happen to be friends of mine both
encourage me and give my pointers over the years. The nice thing is that I’ve been able to help them as well.
AP: Now, looking at your site (www.davidburtonart.net) you have a particular interest and affinity for pulp themed work. How did you
get into painting pulp? Have you always been a fan or did you come to it some other way?
DB: I’ve always been a fan and still am. That all started with THE SHADOW radio show, which my dad got me interested in when I was about 7. Than at about 12 I started reading DOC SAVAGE and was hooked. I started getting my work published in fanzines, most notably ECHOES and THE BRONZE GAZETTE. When I can I’ll do a piece for the BG. From there the subject matter has pretty much been fantasy, science fiction, and horror. Lately though its been pin-up and female figure work. I’m dealing with a few galleries right now about carrying that line of work.
AP: What appeals to you about painting pulp themed figures and works? Is there something about the characters and setting themselves or is it more about the stories?
DB: The sense of action and suspense mostly. The characters and the stories both offer something that just gets my imagination really
going.
AP: Can you share with us a little about the process you use when painting a pulp piece? Do you do research, any special preparation,
go in any particular order, like with pencils and such, or do you just go straight to paints?
DB: Each piece is different and I approach them accordingly. Regardless of the piece, unless the client wants something very specific, I’ll do research. I’m a stickler for getting things right. I’m working on a piece right now for an upcoming DOC SAVAGE painting that will feature both Doc and Princess Monja. I went to great lengths contacting Dr. Richard D. Hansen, who is one of the leading authorities on Mayan culture and was the advisor on the film, “Apocalypto”, who was a great help in getting me currect information on how a Mayan Princess would be dressed.
As far as my approach to how I work goes, I always start with pencils sketches and then work them out into a full drawing if needed,
then go to the paints.
AP: Is there a pulp character, series, etc. that appeals to you over the others as an artist? If so, why?
DB: Its a toss up between Doc Savage and The Shadow. They have a lot more of offer more in the way of potential than any of the others. Though I also like The Spider because he’s so over the top.
AP: The classic pulp covers were, of course, all painted works. That’s sort of a staple for classic pulp. Do you think that its
important to establish the same sort of link between painted work and modern pulp? If so or if not, why?
DB: I’d like to think that any media could make that connection. But I’ve seen hundreds of pulp related stuff done in electronic and it
just doesn’t have the same impact, so for now anyway, painting in traditional media is the only way to go.
AP: Any tips for artists who are working on pulp projects?
DB: Know your subject and know your history. Study the old overs and ask yourself, what colors did they use and why, look at how they lit scenes and how they managed their composition. And don’;t copy or rip them off, if you can’t come up with something on your own, then you need to practice more to see what you’re doing wrong. Copying or ripping another cover off is a fool’s journey. You think no one has
ever seen any of the covers you’re taking stuff from, but they have and if they don’t call you on it now, they will. That’s inevitable. It will
only give you a poor rep and that’s nearly impossible to overcome. Be known for YOU and let your work stand out that way. You’ll shine and that alone is priceless.
AP: Do you have anything in the works that would be of interest to pulpsters everywhere?
DB: Other than the above mentioned Doc painting, I’ve got a few things that are in various stages. Something with The Shadow again, it’s been a long time since I’ve done anything with him. I’ll be working on a Doc drawing from my friend TOM JOHNSON that will feature Doc and Big Foot and there are some others, but I’d like to share those as they come along.
AP: Awesome! Thanks so much, David!
BCB: Byron Christopher Bell is a work in progress; a writer who hopes he never stops learning, or at least being curious; a bundle of contradictions. Mostly I’m a guy that likes a good yarn, something a little bit different that will still keep me on the edge of my seat. I love comics, heroes, hard boiled crime, horror, science fiction and pulp.
AP: What’s your background?
BCB: I was born a seventh generation Texan, and moved out while everybody else was moving in. I’ve worked as a musician, ranch hand, retail manager, construction worker, print salesman, artist and writer. I’ve also worked as Senior Resident at a halfway house, and both sides of the mental health desk. I’m from one of those families where the kids raised themselves, and I made a lot of mistakes on the way, so I’m probably one of the few hard-boiled pulp guys writing that has actually lived on the street. Hell, there’s a part of me that’s still dreaming up crooked schemes in my head—I’ve mentally pulled off at least three armored car jobs in the last year. But hey, that’s all for art, right? Hmmmm, well, at least part of it. The biggest thing as far as pulp goes is that without the heroes of my youth I know I’d be in jail.
AP: Where do you live?
BCB: My adopted hometown of Chicago, North Side. I think I’m in my fifteenth year here. Don’t even ask me about Cubbies vs. White Sox.
AP: How long have you been writing?
BCB: Since I learned the alphabet, in one form or another. Before I wrote, I wanted to be a cartoonist, so I wrote what I drew. I majored in journalism at the University of North Texas, but when I saw what was happening to American media, I dropped out and started working as a musician (bass, vocals, and blues harp). All through my years as a musician, I was writing songs and lyrics. Then one day in my thirties I read a lousy book by a famous writer, and said, “I can do better.” Subconsciously, I’m pretty sure I was aiming at the fact that Raymond Chandler (of Philip Marlowe fame) had started really writing at about the same age. Not that I’m comparing myself to Chandler, even though I’d love to.
AP: Share with us your thoughts on the current boom in pulp action/adventure fiction.
BCB: I love it, other than the fact that I can’t keep up with all the characters. Seriously, this is one of those weird moments in history where we get to see things change. Adventure fiction kind of got forgotten by all the big publishers, and I love being one of the guys to pick up the slack. I also think with my particular background, I have the chance to inject a voice that others might not know about. I’d seriously love to see a homegrown pulp movement that while still holding the moral virtues of the past, can also grow into a whole different new animal. In a way that’s what I tried to do with TALES OF THE BAGMAN, create a character, who in a world gone corrupt, still has a moral compass—even it is a little bit wonky. In the book I refer a lot to his “moral flexibility,” a nice way of saying legal, illegal, and extralegal.
AP: You’ve written SECRET AGENT X, JIM ANTHONY & DAN FOWLER, G-MAN for Airship 27 Productions. Who’s your favorite character of those three?
BCB: Tough question, I’ll try not to use the phrase “apples and oranges,” but it certainly applies. Secret Agent X is a man so dedicated to his mission he doesn’t even have his own identity. That takes a lot of commitment. On the other hand we have Fowler, who’s also a Federal Agent, yet is so recognizable that he really can’t go undercover—and his entire identity is wrapped up in being the stereotypical Hoover FBI man. Meanwhile, Jim Anthony, especially in his new Airship 27 tales, has vast potential. So part of me wants to say Dan Fowler, because I love the image of the thirties G-Man and want to write another one of those. But, since we’ve already been exposed to Elliot Ness, Dick Tracy and a host of others, Dan might not seem too original—there’s a lot of work left to be done by the author. So, OK, X is probably the best character, but I have to go with Dan Fowler because I still have my Melvin Purvis, Junior G-Man badge.
AP: Is it safe to say that TALES OF THE BAGMAN is your most ambitious project to date?
BCB: Definitely Maybe. Obviously, it’s my most ambitious to be published, and it’s definitely the most fun thing I’ve ever written—fun to write, fun to read. But my first novel, Bipolar Express, was pretty ambitious, too. Picture a Science Fiction/Noir story written like a 1950’s Gold Medal paperback, starring three dually-diagnosed, mentally ill, homeless men, trying to survive the worst winter in Chicago history—and all the while the magnetic poles are shifting.
Of course, what I’ve learned in the last few years is that I better think every project is my most ambitious; you stop aiming high, you’re going to start digging a rut. That’s my big lesson for 2010. And yes, I’d definitely love to write a few more Bagman books. I’m thinking Chicago World’s Fair and Dillinger, since The Bagman’s living in June of 1933.
AP: Who is The Bagman?
BCB: The Bagman is Frank “Mac” MacCullough, a criminal just on the edge of climbing organized crime’s corporate ladder. Then one day they send him to break his uncle’s legs, and he can’t do it. In the end he has to take on the mob, and deal with the cops at the same time. But in the beginning the only thing he has on hand to disguise himself is a paper bag that he wedges on under his fedora. Thus a man who was a bagman for the mob becomes, The Bagman. He uses a gun because so does everybody else, and he prefers a revolver to an automatic—that alone ought to tell you he’s a little bit different.
Working with him, and every bit his equal, is “Crankshaft” Jones, an ace mechanic and WWI vet who served with The Harlem Hellfighters, to win the French Medal of Honor. So here he we have a black man who’s a war hero in France, but comes back to the states and he’s just another face lost in the crowd. Crankshaft is practically Mac’s foster dad, but his best friend, too. Also a bit of a cynic.
And, I’d also like to point out that Mac is a character who I plan to evolve, so his future could get a whole lot weirder, and there are some definite signals toward that in the book.
AP: What works in progress can you tell us about?
BCB: Well, let’s see… I’ve got two novelettes for Airship 27 coming out sometime soon here. RAVENWOOD, STEPSON OF MYSTERY, the only occult character in the pulps to actually have supernatural powers. Another, newer BAGMAN story to appear in an anthology of all new pulp heroes. And a novel I’ve started, but have no idea where it’s going, that features Elizabethan playwright and spy Christopher Marlowe coming back to earth as a modern demon hunter.
But, I have to say now, as of this second, I just decided I’m going to do another Dan Fowler. How many opportunities am I going to get in this life to write G-Man stories? Which I think kind of brings us back again to this whole pulp revolution. I love this stuff!
AP: What do you think are your strengths as a writer and what are your weaknesses?
BCB:I think one of my best strengths is visualization—at least that’s what I’ve been told. Being a visual thinker, it seems, makes it easier for the writer to pass that picture along to the reader. I’m pretty good with dialogue, and I’m also pretty big on history. Put it this way, I actually enjoy doing research.
As far as what I’m not good at? I think plotting might be my weakest point. I like having a general idea of where the story’s going, but I hate writing outlines. Sometimes I finish an outline and there’s a part of my brain that says “Why write the story? You already know what’s going to happen?” Then again, Dashiell Hammet thought plotting was his big weakness, and it didn’t stop him from defining a whole new genre.
AP: Hobbies? Other Interests?
BCB: I like baseball, anybody that reads The Bagman book ought to figure that out. I have to admit I really do spend a lot of my spare time reading. Writing is such an imperfect art form, in that it’s never perfect, and I like to see how other people pull it off. I also ride a bike. I don’t drive. My wife and I buy and sell vintage goods so I always like looking at old stuff. Of course, there’s the whole musician thing, and music is like food: you got to try all kinds. Anybody that knows me also knows I’m a bit of a political activist; I really do hate injustice.
AP: Here’s your chance to give somebody a shoutout or plug something. Go.
BCB: I’ve got a story you can read for free up at SFReader.com, on their annual short story contest page, “How Pappy Got Five Acres Back and Calvin Stayed on the Farm.” It’s got monsters. And you need to check out Andrew Salmon’s The Light of Men. Not your average pulp novel.
AP: What’s a typical Day In The Life Of B.C. Bell like?
BCB: Oh, I wake up. Have a Pop-Tart. Go back to bed—wait, I think that was an episode of Lifestyles of the Poor and Decrepit…
AP: What else should we know about B.C. Bell?
BCB: I think we should just go right back to “he’s a bundle of contradictions.” Yeah, I may be conflicted, but I’m never boring.
JOHN MORGAN NEAL
Co creator/writer of AYM GERONIMO AND THE POST MODERN PIONEERS
All concepts and artwork is copyright John Morgan Neal and Todd Fox.
AP: Before we find out who Aym Geronimo is, tell us who John Morgan Neal is.
JMN: John Morgan Neal is a Texan Scot/Cherokee who grew up in the county seat of Grayson County on the edge of the Red River and who has always dreamed about being a storyteller such as the ones that entertained me in my youth in vibrant four colors and on yellowed paged paperbacks. I’m also a bit of a crusty ol’ kook as the regulars over at the Dixonverse, the official message board of Chuck Dixon where I help moderate can attest.
AP: Now, describe Aym Geronimo as a character. Who is she? Where’d the idea come from? What influenced you?
JMN: Aym Geronimo is a quintessential adventurer. She doesn’t do what she does as a job. She isn’t a spy or Tomb Raider or any other occupation that itself brings her to adventure. She herself seeks it out in various ways. Her motivations are to help people and investigate strange things and to basically find things out. And this leads to all sorts of danger. Which she enjoys. It’s why someone with Aym’s abilities doesn’t stay in a lab. She would wither and die there.
The idea came from Doc Savage of course. By way of Buckaroo Banzai. The idea was originally to try and get the license to do Buckaroo after a group of other creators and myself had tried to do the same with the Evil Dead property. But soon it became obvious we should just do our own. So start with the original Doc Savage, toss in some Jonny Quest, Challengers of the Unknown and Fantastic Four and shake well. And tons of other influences as well to be sure. Aym comes from a rich and full pedigree.
AP: Now, although there are a few, there are not a tremendous amount of female lead characters in the pulp genre, particularly in the hero-leader mold you’ve cast Aym in. Tell us how you came to create the character as female.
JMN: To be utterly honest. It came from the name. I wanted a name like Savage and Banzai and we knew we were going with the American Southwest. So I came up with Geronimo and thought about what would work with that and came up with the slightly altered and misspelled short name for Amethyst and came up with Aym. Which for the readers of this interview’s sake is pronounced aim. So Aim Geronimo. Or Aym Geronimo. And it had to be a woman. Very quickly Aym herself started to take shape and form.
AP: Aym has her own cast of characters all around her. Tell us about the Post Modern Pioneers.
JMN: The PostModern Pioneers are Aym’s fellow adventurers, compatriots, allies, and pals that operate with her out of the Wonder Wall, which is located in a wall of the Grand Canyon near the Havasupi reservation. They are all experts and specialists in their respective fields except for one. And he is just Odd. Otis Delacroix to be exact. He has been an adventurer for many years prior to Aym and is her mentor now. He is a mysterious figure of advanced age and copious skills and knowledge that even Aym doesn’t know the full story about. We also have Bird the pilot, driver and mechanic. He had served in the military with Aym’s father and sort of looks out for her as his proxy. His real name is Charlton Portamayne and he tends to try and serve as the voice for reason in Aym’s ear. Which usually is deaf. Esmeralda Kausoulos is a former tomb raiding archeologist and geologist who Aym has given a new lease on life due to Aym’s loyalty to her as her former instructor. Pebbles tends to be saucy and sassy and sexy despite her more mature years starting to show. Danielle Roh, or Granny tinkers in her ‘Kitchen’ in the Wonder Wall as the resident technical and computer genius. She is by far the youngest of the PMP as she is barely out of her teens. She tends to be sardonic sometimes and can be distracted by her many youthful interests but is supremely capable and loyal. Erica ‘Flipper’ Ra is Aym’s best friend and a denizen of the Ocean since she was a little girl and first saw it. It has been a hopeless cause to get her out of it very long since then. Flipper is the provider of boats and diving equipment and information on the watery depths of the planet due to her talents as an Oceanographer. And finally last but not least is Aym’s big brother Granite. Going by his spiritual name of Wind. Aym serves as the expert on Legend Lore and the more esoteric non scientific side of things, many times in opposition to Aym’s point of view. Wind serves as Aym’s conscious and connection to her people. Wind also is an expert tracker and hunter.
AP: You’re working on a major project now concerning Aym and her crew, a story collection. Can you let us in on that?
JMN: That would be Aym Geronimo and the PostModern Pioneers: Tall Tales. It is a collection of prose short stories from various writers who I invited and they knocked it out of the park. The book is currently in the last stages of editing and will then go to the design stage and hopefully will be ready to debut very soon. I am very excited about this book.
(JMN also had his editor on this project, Sarah Beach comment on this question as follows) John asked me (Sarah Beach) as editor of the prose project to comment about this. Since he and Todd had hit some delays in getting a new graphic novel version of Aym and her team into print, John wanted to keep Aym in front of the audience. So some time ago he approached me about writing a prose story using the characters. He said he’d asked a number of other friends to do one as well. He gave us free rein, to use whichever characters we wanted and any type of story. Sometime later, I got involved as editor, proofreading the stories as they came in and doing a little bit of editing. It’s been a lot of fun, because there’s quite a variety of stories in the collection: character pieces, action adventures, mysteries and even a dash of some comedy. And yet, they are all credibly stories of Aym and the PostModern Pioneers. It’s a credit to John in the creation of the characters and the strength of Todd’s artwork that has given them real shape, that so many different writers have caught the nature of them.
AP: Your characters in Aym run pretty much the ethnic gamut. Was that because the characters just developed that way or was there a greater purpose?
JMN: No grand design really. Only that I knew she would have a team and that I wanted to avoid them all being WASP males. Other than that they pretty much came organically without much prior thought. Some of it came from mental casting. Like Bird is a combo of Yaphet Kotto and Morgan Freeman. And I knew I wanted Danille to be a cute little Asian college age girl and I wanted the Archeologist to be from Greece. And Wind had to be Apache like his sister. So that leaves Odd. Who’s just a typical old man. Or is he?
AP: What is in the future for Aym? More comics or other mediums? And as far as stories, anywhere you’re going to take her that we’d like to know about, any interesting locales or situations awaiting Aym that you can share?
JMN: Todd Fox and I are working on 12 page comic story for a special project I can’t mention yet and then we will get back to work on the epic Aym tale “The Devil’s Cauldron” which will be a huge comic volume. Or graphic novel as they are called. We also have wanted to do something online with her and I imagine I will be revisiting the prose world with her. As for locales and situations. There could be a certain large footed mammal missing link in her life and a trip to the ‘Ring of Fire’ in the Pacific to stop a cataclysm. And a trip to Russia to track down what might be a Werewolf. I think that’s good enough to whet the appetite for now.
AP: Do you have any other projects that would interest the pulp realm?
JMN: I have a western called Death and Texas that concerns a group of various folks who for one reason or another have “gone to Texas’ either to run from something or run to something. Primary among them is the Chinese American gunslinger named Ran Wu, dubbed The Yellow Devil by the Dime Novels. I also soon will have with my English partner from across the Pond a little number called Them: Atomic Age Heroes. Which is set in the 50’s and concerns the mutinous crew of various aliens on a flying saucer that attempts to save the Earth from their despotic masters.
AP: Thanks for your time and we can’t wait for the further adventures of Aym Geronimo and her Post Modern Pioneers. Any final thoughts?
JMN: Long Live All Pulp. And Aym for Adventure!
To find Aym Geronimo on the web, check out www,aymgeronimo.com And on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Aym-Geronimo-and-the-Post-Modern-Pioneers/105564933516
AP: For folks who might want to find out more about you or your works, where should they go?
MARTIN POWELL AND ‘THE HALLOWEEN LEGION’
THE HALLOWEEN LEGION are TM and copyrighted by Martin Powell and Danny Kelly
Longtime author Martin Powell recently sat down with All Pulp contributor Barry Reese to talk about his upcoming book THE HALLOWEEN LEGION. THL will be released in October from Wild Cat Books. All images shown are rough preliminary sketches and are not finished artwork.
BR: Tell us a little bit about The Halloween Legion and how it came about.
POWELL: Be glad to. THE HALLOWEEN LEGION is a concept and group of characters that I originally dreamed up many years ago, way back in the vacuous days of high school. One day, during a mind-numbing semantics class, I started sketching these figures in my notebook: a Skeleton, Witch, Devil, Ghost, and a Black Cat, the iconic archetypes of All Hallows Eve.
I remember getting a mild chill when I first drew them all together, a sort of jolt of anticipation. Suddenly I began imagining a whole series of adventures for the weird little group.
Of course, they’ve been simmering in my subconscious until recently, never quite forgotten, and patiently waiting for their chance to be born. I’m actually very glad that I waited this long. I needed the last couple decades of writing experience to prepare me for their debut. This is a very important, very personal project for me.
I’ve always loved the autumn and Halloween in particular. I wanted to somehow capture that feeling of magic and mystery, the sort of thrill you get as a kid when the falling orange and yellow leaves appear to follow you down the street. It’s too brief a season and I suppose in some crazy way I wanted to have that feeling with me always. THE HALLOWEEN LEGION is the result of that yearning.
BR: You’re collaborating on this project with Danny Kelly — what is he bringing to the table that you think will enhance the experience for readers?
POWELL: I hand-picked Danny from a number of artists that I had to choose from. There is something raw and elemental in his artwork that mixes perfectly with what I had in mind for these characters. I look at Danny’s drawings and I immediately smile. I wanted his sense of energetic, creepy fun.
Although I had lots of suggestions, and directed him a little, Danny essentially designed the visuals of THE HALLOWEEN LEGION himself. The fact that he gives the Ghost such amazing expressions, in spite of the fact that he’s a kid wearing a simple sheet with eye-holes cut out, is phenomenal.
I didn’t want this group to be photo-realistic, and the works of Edward Gorey and Charles Addams were closer to what I had in mind. Danny fits that sort of style perfectly, while also maintaining his own artistic identity.
BR: The promotional artwork by Danny Kelly suggests a somewhat fanciful tone to the book. Is this an all-ages story or something a bit darker?
POWELL: Hmm. It’s tough to describe. Sounds ambitious, I know, but I’ve always wanted THE HALLOWEEN LEGION to appeal to everyone, kid and grown-up alike. I suppose I can safely compare the book to John Bellairs’ eerie mysteries in its tone. I love his scary novellas.
There is a certainly a whimsical side to my story, but it’s pretty dark, too, even terrifying in some places, I hope. Fans of the pulps, Harry Potter, and Baum’s Oz books will probably feel quite at home here, but I like to think that THE HALLOWEEN LEGION is unique and original.
BR: Again, just by looking at the promotional images, it seems like this is perfectly suited to become a continuing series and even has possibilities for multimedia usage. Any plans for any of this?
POWELL: That’s exactly what I’ve always had in mind for them. Although Danny and I are starting THE HALLOWEEN LEGION off with an illustrated novella, we have lots of other plans, too. I’d love to do HL comic books, animation, action figures, lunch boxes, t-shirts, Halloween masks, radio shows, newspaper comic strips, feature films, and even a gentler picture book version for younger kids, too. I’m going to do my best to make all of that happen.
BR: This is your first foray into the Wild Cat Books publishing line. How long have you known publisher Ron Hanna and what led to WCB becoming the home for The Halloween Legion?
POWELL: Actually, I first worked for Wild Cat Books several years ago, co-writing the Captain Hazzard novel, “The Citadel of Fear”, with Ron Fortier. I’d wanted to do something more for quite a long while, but I could never manage to free up enough time in my schedule.
I’m a full-time freelance writer, and in order to make a living at this I need to write constantly. Luckily, my desk is usually happily swamped with contracted projects, but there just never seemed to be time for anything more.
Then, several months ago, Ron Hanna made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. He offered to publish anything I wanted to write. Anything. Anything at all. In over two decades as a professional writer, no one has ever done that for me. I’ve always been lucky enough to get to write for many terrific characters, like Superman, Batman, The Spider, and Sherlock Holmes, but I’ve very rarely ever been given the opportunity to create, and to own, my own characters.
Well, I doubled up on my writing schedule, working twelve hour days and more, including weekends. Fortunately, I hardly ever sleep. After a few months, I’d finally cleared the space necessary to devote to Wild Cat Books. I thought about what I wanted to do for a few weeks. Ron had stressed “anything” I wanted, after all. That’s quite a situation to wrap your mind around.
Then, THE HALLOWEEN LEGION reacquainted themselves to me, from the back corners of my brain. Of course! I thought, with a distinct, rather giddy thrill. It had to be them. Just had to be. They had been waiting so long for me to get my act together. So, I dusted the cobwebs off my little group and contacted Danny Kelly almost immediately. And now here we are.
BR: You’re also busy these days with Moonstone’s Return of the Originals project. Any information you’d like to share on that front?
POWELL: Thanks for mentioning that. I’m the writer on the new comic book series for THE SPIDER, with artist Pablo Marcos, which is a dream come true for me. In addition to the regular comic book series, I’m also writing a semi-regular illustrated SPIDER prose pulp ‘zine, too. I’ve lots of plans for THE SPIDER.
Also, I’m writing KI-GOR THE JUNGLE LORD, in collaboration with artist, Tom Floyd. I should mention that Tom is the recent recipient of the Golden Lion Award from the Edgar Rice Burroughs Bibliophiles, in recognition of his Tarzan and other Burroughs work. Past recipients have been folks like: Hal Foster, Russ Manning, Harlan Ellison, Johnny Weissmuller, Joe Jusko, and Frank Frazetta, so I’m honored to be working with Tom. He’s also my best friend.
BR: For folks who might be interested in learning more about you and your work, where should they go?
POWELL: Well, I post lots of news about my current and upcoming projects on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/martin.powell1). I also keep a blog for those purposes (http://martinpowell221bcom.blogspot.com/). And I have an Amazon Author’s Page, too, which lists many of my current books (http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001JRXRSU). Soon THE HALLOWEEN LEGION will be lurking among them!
STAY TUNED FOR THE INTERVIEW WITH VETERAN WRITER DON GLUT, A COMPANION TO THIS EXCELLENT CONVERSATION WITH BILL CUNNINGHAM!!
BILL CRAIG, Author of the Hardluck Hannigan series, the Jack Riley books and more!
AP: You have several series that are ongoing but let’s start with Hardluck Hannigan. Tell us how you came up with the character and a little bit about his adventures?
AP: You’ve done other books besides the Riley and Hannigan ones — can you let our readers know about the other genres you like to dabble in?
AP: When it comes to the pulp market right now, what are your favorite “new” authors and characters? Or do you usually stick to the classics?
AP: Can you tell us how your writing process works? Do you outline extensively or are you one of those who likes to wing it?
AP: If our readers would like to find out more about you and your writings, where should they go?
RON HANNA, Editor-in-Chief and Publisher of Wild Cat Books
AP: Thanks for joining us, Ron! Can you tell us about your history with the pulps — how did you first discover them and what led to the founding of Wild Cat Books?
RON: Well, like most people my age, I first discovered pulps through the many paperback reprints in the 1960’s and ‘70’s, especially the Doc Savage Bantam books. I’ll never forget the first ones I saw on the newsstand. “Land of Terror”, “Lost Oasis”, “Brand of the Werewolf” all had awesome covers, and when I first saw James Bama’s art, well, that intrigued me even more. I had never heard of Kenneth Robeson before, but he quickly became my favorite author. I read a lot when I was a kid, from Comic Books to the Classics. I always had something to read with me wherever I went. But it wasn’t until many years later that I decided to take my love of books, and pulp fiction in particular, to the next level by starting a fanzine in 1997. It was called “Secret Sanctum” and was probably the first “fan publication” that had glossy full-color artwork. My partner at that time worked in a printing company and he had all the pages printed at work, mailed them to me, where I then collated and stapled them, and then mailed them out to people who had heard about us on the Internet. This was before Facebook, MySpace and other social-networking sites. Back then I used the Prodigy network and everything was just a text message board and Usenet groups. Eventually, my partner and I parted ways, and I began Wild Cat Books, using my experience to try and make something even better than before. It was also in those early days that I discovered pulp fandom and met a variety of people who had the same interests as me. I still work with some of those people to this date.
AP: In the early days of WCB, the Internet was quite different. What’s the biggest change you’ve seen in pulp fandom over the years?
RON: I would have to say the social-networking sites such as Facebook, Yahoo and others. They opened up a much wider world and the vast advances in technology and software allowed much more discourse and interaction between fans all over the world. Although there have been many various conventions for over a generation, I believe it was some of these changes that really changed a lot of things. It used to be that only very wealthy people could afford a Web Site, but nowadays it seems the costs are much more reasonable, and it can really help a small-press publisher when they have their own page where they can showcase their work and attempt to attract new fans and readers. I say this with a caveat however: There is a big push toward everything becoming digital these days and the eBook format has become extremely popular. I have nothing against that, and we even have produced some digital books of our own, but to me there is nothing like holding a book or magazine in your hands. The tactile sensations, the smell of the paper or newsprint, the ability to have something really tangible to hold and treasure is something that is very important to me, and as a publisher I will never stop producing “hard copy” as my main source of publishing. Maybe it’s because of the generation I grew up in, but to me, an eBook could never replace an actual, real book… Besides, I also collect old pulps, comics and books and they are something I proudly display in my home. To me, those are repositories of adventure and imagination that I will never tire of, and I can re-read them even if the power goes out to the Internet or the batteries die on an eBook reader. Yes, everything does eventually decay or die, but the books on my shelf will always hold a special place in my heart.
AP: The pulp market is getting rather crowded these days — what makes WCB stand out from the rest?
RON: That’s a good question. I’d have to say it’s because of the passion we have for what we do, not to mention the ever-improving quality of our publications. A lot of other companies concentrate on reprints in various genres, which is great for the collector who can’t afford the original issues, and others publish new fiction and characters, but I believe that we are one of the few who are actively publishing both classic and new fiction, and more importantly, history and art reference books as well. We try to offer something for everyone.
AP: Ver Curtiss and Bill Carney are both key members of the WCB production family — can you tell us how they became involved with the company and what their duties are?
RON: Ver is my Art Director, and he has been with me from the very start back in 1997. He submitted some Doc Savage pieces he had done, and as soon as I saw the first one, I begged for more. He and I are totally different people in terms of personality, beliefs and lifestyles, but we have one thing in common: Our love of the pulps and popular culture. That is the bond that has kept us together after all these years, and even despite some clashes and disagreements. I consider him my brother, and I even moved to Virginia from California back in 2001 to live near him. He is an entirely self-taught artist and he works in many different areas: Sculpture, Photography, and he’s now also working as a comic book artist for Moonstone Comics illustrating the “Black Angel” series for their Air Fighters title, which is written by Martin Powell. Ver has also done the interior art for Moonstone’s “Domino Lady” prose anthology. His work is in high demand, but he always will find the time to do something new for me if I need something special done on a moments notice. He is one of the most talented and wonderful person I’ve ever known.
Bill Carney joined WCB about 3-4 years ago when he and his brother Chris submitted their original creation “The Scarlet Shroud” to me for possible publication. Both of them are talented artists, and while Chris does most of the story writing, Bill is also a fine writer who has written some fine historical reference pieces, especially dealing with Science Fiction and Fantasy. He’s one of the most knowledgeable people in those areas that I’ve ever met. And like Ver, he’s also a great person to be around. He and I have gone to conventions together, I spend a few days each year visiting him in Upstate New York, as well as both of us going to visit his brother Chris in Pennsylvania. We all get along great, and I look forward to each of my trips to visit them. However, the best thing that Bill does is Graphic Design. I used to do all the book formatting for our titles myself, and while they were “acceptable” they were nowhere near as good as what Bill can do. He’s a professional designer by trade, and has even won some national awards for his Production Design work, and I finally approached him about becoming the head designer for WCB and he has really delivered the goods! I’ve had several people tell me that our titles are some of the most professional and beautifully designed books on the market today, and I owe all that to Bill… which is one of the reasons I recently promoted him to Managing Editor. He’s not only a voracious reader, but he knows how to best edit stories that are submitted to us. And, to tell the truth, what with all the “management” details I have to deal with as the publisher, it made perfect sense to have him edit our books as well. He’s much better at it than I ever was! He’s also in charge of our revival of the old pulp “Startling Stories”. He has full editorial control over that project, and I’m very thankful that he loves doing it. It really is one of our finest on-going projects.
AP: Looking back, what books has WCB published in the past that you think are ones you’re particularly proud of?
RON: Well, I love all my children equally (joke!) but I would have to say I’m really proud of some of our Pulp History reference books by Award-winning historian Wooda “Nick” Carr. He grew up with the pulps (he’s in his mid-80’s now) and, like Ver, has been with me from the beginning. Each issue of my various fanzines always had a new article by him… but it’s the book collections I’m most proud of: “The Pulp Hero”, “Master of the Pulps”, and “The Pulp Magazine Scrapbook”… All of these belong on any pulp fan’s bookshelf… “Pulp Hero” is an encyclopedia of over 100 heroes and villains, plus a complete bibliography of all of Nick’s articles and books. “Master” contains a variety of some of his finest articles gathered over the years from various publications. But the “Pulp Magazine Scrapbook” is something totally different. This contains copies of the letters that Nick received over the years from many of the original pulp writers and artists: Walter Gibson, Robert G. Harris, Harry Steeger, Ryerson Johnson, and many more. It’s a historian’s dream to actually go back in time and read what the creators had to say about their work and what it was like back in the days of pulp fiction.
Another one of my favorites is “The Captain Future Handbook” by Chuck Juzek. It’s a hard-cover full-color book that contains everything you could possibly want in regards to this classic space hero. It has complete story summaries, the very rare first chapter written by Edmond Hamilton that was only published previously in a small-press fanzine, and it’s lavishly illustrated with every pulp and paperback cover, including all the German and Japanese editions, and is probably one of the most comprehensive and beautiful books we’ve ever published. It retails for $75.00 but in today’s marketplace, that’s a steal when you consider the high-quality product that you’ll receive. It’s a true masterpiece!
Another book I’m very proud of is K.G. McAbee’s “Bewitched by Darkness”, a collection of some of this Award-winning writer’s finest short stories with Cover and Interior Art by the fantastic British artist Nick Neocleous. Nick has illustrated a lot of our book covers, and every one of them has been a winner. He’s one of my favorite artists, and he’s always willing to pitch in and do wonderful work for us. He’s been involved with some high-profile characters such as “Doctor Who” and “Indiana Jones”, so he’s always in demand, but I’m very happy he is able to find the time to work with a small-press company such as WCB. We even published a full-color art book of his finest pieces called “Cosmic Eye”, which is another book I’m very proud of. It’s absolutely beautiful…
Another character I really enjoy is “The Rook” created and written by Barry Reese. I can’t name just one book as there are now five volumes in the series, each one better than the last. These books are pure pulp action and adventure, and some of the Cover Artists include Storn Cook, Frank Brunner, Norm Breyfogle and Anthony Castrillo. Not only are there some great original characters in these tales, but the author also brings in some classic pulp heroes that are in Public Domain, which makes this series so much fun for all of us fans… These are some really great tales!
I could go on and on, but I really do like all our books, and the weird thing is that some of our best, and my personal favorites, are not always our best-sellers… Go figure…
AP: One of WCB’s key components is STARTLING STORIES, a revival of a classic pulp magazine. Can you tell us about the magazine and are you accepting submissions for it at the present time?
RON: “Startling Stories” is a mutant. We not only reprint classic Golden Age Science-Fiction in each issue, but we even include some of the advertisements that appeared back then. We also include new stories by some of the most talented new writers on the market today such as K.G. McAbee, S. Clayton Rhodes, and others. We also have a Retro-Review section, and in our first issues we were very pleased to offer a comic story written and illustrated by the very talented Ron Wilber. A lot of people really loved his “Saucy Blaine” strip, but that will be ending soon. Ron Wilber is one of the few people on the planet who does not have a computer and has never used the Internet, so he doesn’t get the feedback that all creators desire. Despite the fact that I call him and tell him how much everyone loves “Saucy”, he has apparently lost the desire to continue on with it past the sixth story, which really disappoints me. I hope he regains his enthusiasm again at some point, as I enjoy working with him very much.
As for submissions, yes, we are always accepting submissions for “Startling Stories” of any length. Although it’s only a quarterly magazine, we need to have a supply of tales on hand to give us ample time to plan and pace each issue. We try to maintain a certain page count, and sometimes it’s tough to find just the right story to balance both the texture and variety we try to offer. Not everything has to be Sci-Fi or Fantasy, as we also accept Horror and, well, pretty much anything that could be called “Startling”!
AP: What new titles are on the way and what you can tell us about each?
RON: We have a few books in various stages of development. “Zombies in Time and Space” (an anthology) was recently released, as well as the massive Sword and Sorcery novel “Legends” by Tim Jones with a Cover by a new artist on our team, Gary McCluskey. His work is awesome, and we hope to have a lot more from him in the future. Coming soon is a new book by Rick Lai called “Shadows of the Opera” and “The Halloween Legion” by Martin Powell with Cover and Art by Danny Kelly. And the next issue of “Startling Stories” is always in the works as it’s our one on-going publication that comes out on a quarterly basis. By the time people read this, “The Rook – Volume Five” will be available at Amazon, and we already have the files for Volume Six. I’m hoping to one day see a “Rook” comic book… That would be fantastic. But I’m not holding my breath on that one!
AP: If fans want to purchase WCB books or learn more about the company, where can they do so?
RON: We have a website that I try to keep updated at _www.wildcatbooks.net <http://www.wildcatbooks.net/>_ and it has various pages listing our books at Amazon, as well as our other store that we maintain at lulu.com. You’ll find most of our earlier works at Lulu, but when we had the chance to move to Amazon we discovered that the quality was just as good, if not better, but the production costs were a lot lower so we were able to start pricing our books at a more affordable price in today’s economy than if we had stayed at Lulu.
AP: What’s your stance on public domain characters? WCB has used a few in the past but it’s emphasis now seems to be on original heroes.
RON: I’ve always enjoyed the Public Domain (PD) characters, and have no problem using more of them, but a lot of that depends on what is submitted to us. We recently published a book called “The Good, The Bad, and The Unknown” written by Mike Frigon and lavishly illustrated by Verne Anderson that featured The Moon Man, Doctor Satan, and Secret Agent X… It’s quite good, and I’d love to see more of the same by the creative team. They work quite well together. However, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, there are a lot of other companies using the PD characters so we try to offer more of a variety. A few PD heroes and villains make some appearances in the “Rook” tales, but as far as a new collection of stories or even a full-length novel is concerned, well, it all depends on the writers out there! As I’ve said, if it’s good, we’ll certainly consider publishing it, whether it’s PD characters, original creations or whatever. I will give you a little teaser though… Sometime down the road we plan on publishing the adventures of “Major Toad”, the frog from “The Wind in the Willows” in his own series of pulp adventures! This will hopefully be an on-going series, and the artist is working on the first book’s art even as we speak… We hope that this title will appeal to a wide cross-section of fans, both old and new, and for all ages… From what I’ve seen so far, I’m really excited about it…
AP: At one point, Airship 27 was associated with WCB… there have been many rumors about why the schism occurred, including tales that you and Ron Fortier now hated one another. Can you tell us what happened and what the current state of relations between creators and companies are now?
RON: Well, it’s a long story, but I’ll try to condense it. A few years ago, Ron Fortier of Airship 27 discovered WCB and submitted some really great stuff, and of course I immediately accepted, and even asked for more. Although we were the publisher, RF was the producer and he insisted on total editorial control. For a while that division worked well but eventually I found myself not having a say in anything: writers, artists, even the logo being used were not anything I had a say in, and even some of my suggestions were shrugged off. When he kept rejecting my ideas and insulted one of my best artists, well, that’s when I decided we needed to part ways. I returned all control and rights to his books back to him to re-release under his own publishing company, although some changes were made when he couldn’t get everyone who had been involved before to go along with the changes. I freely admit that there were a lot of hard feelings for quite a while. Too many people in the pulp world know what happened for me to even try to deny it, so I won’t. Yes, I was angry and hurt and he and I didn’t speak for a couple of years. But as they say: “Time heals all wounds” and since the pulp community is so close knit, I realized that there was no way we could, or should, continue under that veil of anger… It was time to let bygones be bygones, water under the bridge and all that. So we finally buried the hatchet (and not in each other’s heads) and agreed that we both had made mistakes and to let it go. He’s doing very well now with his Airship 27 titles, and I wish him all the best. He even told me that if it wasn’t for WCB he probably wouldn’t even be in the pulp business in the first place, and he obviously loves what he’s doing, so in a way, I guess, everything happens for a reason. We’re friends again… and that’s where it stands today. Heck, we’re even friends on Facebook!
AP: Have you read any of DC’s First Wave revivals? What do you think about the changes to the heroes that they’ve made? For that matter, where do you stand on making changes to classic heroes in general?
RON: I have read some of the First Wave revivals and, except for the cover art, I was really not impressed at all. In fact, as much as I love the characters (Doc Savage, The Avenger, The Spirit, etc.) I think DC has made a terrible blunder in how they are presenting these classics. Supposedly, everyone involved wanted to remain true to the “roots” of the pulp heroes, but it seems to me that they basically revamped them to the point that they are no longer recognizable to me. However, that being said, I really don’t have many problems with making some changes to the classics. But it has to be done with respect and love, and I didn’t get that feeling at all from DC’s revisionist take on them. They pretty much ruined the characters for all of us long-time fans, and by presenting them in the way they have, I doubt if new readers would be willing to read the original tales (which were so much fun), and that’s too bad, because the original tales make for very fine reading. In fact, I wish they would have adapted all those great stories to comics rather than see them turn out to be a miserable tragedy, and epic failure, for everyone involved with them.
AP: On a related note, how do you feel about Moonstone’s Return of the Originals?
RON: Now those are something I’m looking forward to reading because I know that Moonstone has a very high regard for keeping the faith! I haven’t read any of them yet (I don’t get to the local comic store as much as I used to) but from all I know about the creators involved, I have much higher expectations for this project than any others I’ve seen recently. In fact, I’m pretty much disgusted with all comics today. There’s only a few out there that I would even consider buying on a regular basis. DC and Marvel have both become gross distortions of their former selves, bloated from their greed, and I’m at the point where most comics no longer have the attraction to me that they did before. I’d rather spend my money on old Silver Age comics that I grew up with as a child. Those were inspiring and bring back many wonderful memories. Today’s comics pretty much just suck…
AP: As one of the elder statesmen in pulp and a Munsey Award Nominee, your words carry a lot of weight in the community. Does this ever influence your publishing decisions in any way?
RON: Well, thanks for the kind words, but I don’t consider myself as anything special. I’m just someone who really loves the pulps, the heroes, comics, and pretty much everything related to our Popular Culture. The only thing that I ever consider when making publishing decisions is: Do I like it?… I try to print the type of things that I would personally want to read. Not all of our books sell like gangbusters, but I’ve never been in this for the money… I do this because I really and truly love doing it… and I only hope our fans enjoy our books as much as I do!
JOE GENTILE, Publisher and Editor-In-Chief, Moonstone
JOE GENTILE (on right) |
AP: Joe, first off, thanks a lot for sitting down with All Pulp! We definitely understand how busy you are with all the irons in the fire that Moonstone has, so this interview is definitely much appreciated. To kick this off, give us some background on you, as much as personal info as you want to give as well as your background in the publishing industry.
JG: Ah, starting off with the not-so pulp adventure life I have led, eh?
Well, lets see…briefly…I have been a freelance writer for many (many) years now, have a book retail background, a television production background, and I play bass guitar in a working band.
AP: Now that we know all about its brain and backbone, give us a brief history of Moonstone. Where it started, what Moonstone’s overall mission and purpose has been, etc.
JG: Moonstone started from the ashes of a company that never quite made it off the ground about 15 years ago. A bunch of us creators in the Chicagoland area suddenly had a bunch of projects without homes.
I was interested in having another publisher pick up those titles, but we didn’t really find what we were looking for, so my partner Dave Ulanski talked me into doing it ourselves. Dave, Rafael Nieves, and myself started up Moonstone at that point there. We published a bunch of small press b/w creator-owned comics. This went on this way for years.
One day, on the day before I was leaving for a Vegas vacation…(!)…I thought “hey. Why aren’t there comics about the White Wolf Games stuff?’’…and “what about all of these other cool characters…and pulps that I like? Someone should do something with those guys!
So, even though I left for vacation, this was pressing on my brain. When I got back, I started with the phone calls…cold…never having had to track down licensors, contracts, creative teams, etc. Just jumped in. Saying this out loud…now….the idea seems insane.
So our purpose became “telling good stories” foremost, and bringing NEW fans to comics (or fans who left) by having material based on sources OUTSIDE of comics (like the pulps, old time radio, newspaper strips, TV, etc.
AP: Moonstone is known largely for bringing established characters from the past, most if not all of them in the Public Domain, and introducing them to a modern audience. Moonstone has done this in a volume that no other publisher really has. The question is, why? Why the focus on these characters that some say may have outlived their own value?
JG: Well, first, I must set you straight a little…MOST of what we do is licensed. Very few characters of interest are public domain. You would be surprised to know who owns what.
If we thought these characters have outlived their value…um, we wouldn’t be doing them, right?
We fervently believe that these characters are more than vital…they have resonance today.
These characters had hundreds and hundreds of stories told about them, and some lasted for decades. But, even if you never heard of these characters, thats cool, because it really doesn’t matter either way. We tell interesting stories about unusual characters. We don’t necessarily need more superhero comics per se…the market is still quite full of them. Why put out more of the same?
AP: Some fans of Moonstone found your early comics years ago. At that time, you had titles like ‘Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar,’ ‘Boston Blackie’, and ‘Pat Novak For Hire.’ Those titles, among others, were based on characters drawn from old time radio programs, popular in the 1930s-50s. This is a fascinating, still largely uncultivated area for new fiction. What drew you and Moonstone to tackle these stories and bring a modern take to them?
JG: Well, quite honestly, it was an area of interest of mine that had not been tried much in comics.
Johnny Dollar sold out, Boston Blackie’s GN sold out, and Pat Novak was in that “1000 Comics you need to read” book by Tony Isabella!
AP: Any future plans for further OTR treatments? If not, why not?
JG: Well, those characters do appear in other books from time to time…like our “crime team up novel” PARTNERS in CRIME…and our crime prose anthology “Sex, Lies, and Private Eyes”.
And there is always talk of further adventures. We do have some characters coming up that have appeared on radio, but wasn’t what they were primarily known for….stay tuned.
AP: Moonstone just didn’t resurrect radio characters. Talk to us about some of the other early characters you brought to an audience who may have not been familiar with them, such as The Phantom and Kolchak, among others? Are there other TV or comic characters you’d like to pull under the Moonstone banner?
JG: There is always more we want…we are insatiable that way! If you check our website, we are always leaving hints of whats coming…although we will have a press release about this soon, we have THE SAINT, The JUSTICE MACHINE, FLINT, and SHEENA…!
Kolchak…way ahead of its time, inspiration behind the XFILES, and is one of the highest rated TV movies OF ALL TIME! This was horror on primetime network television, my friends…unheard of!
There has been a cult following of Kolchak for many years, and a strong one as evidence by Columbia’s DVD sales of the movies and TV shows.
The Phantom is one of those characters that has been around for a long time…1936 (predating Batman and Supes)…I think people know of him…but we needed to tell some stories about TODAy to showcase this guy for all to read! He’s a well thought out character that still holds up today.
Buckaroo Banzai…cult movie of the 80’s with GREAT stars like John Lithgow, Ellen Barkin, Jeff Goldblum, Peter Weller…all in one crazy neo pulp adventure!
It is a movie like no other…I mean, Banzai is a renown brain surgeon, rock star, adventurer…c’mon, how cool is that?)
AP: It seems that some of the characters you’ve taken on over the years, both early on and currently, were originally created for one medium only (prose largely, but we’re also thinking of the radio shows again). Yet when Moonstone gets them, they show up in comics, prose, etc. What goes into deciding what medium Moonstone puts an established property into?
JG: Well, that depends on some of the legalities, Some contracts specify. Sometimes a character just calls to us in that way…like Kolchak….and others.
AP: Speaking of processes, can you share a little bit of what goes into your daily job? What are your responsibilities and who within Moonstone do you delegate things to?
JG: OMG…what I do on a daily basis? Well…I contact creative teams for progress on ongoing projects or to set up new ones, I talk to the printers about scheduling and book details, I talk to distributors about PR and such, I create in house ads, I gather monthly solicitations, handle all incoming email, update the website, edit stories, write…scream!
*In addition to my insanity, we have Art Director Dave Ulanksi (also edits, writes, invoicing, and does cover set up),
*we have Editor Lori G (who handles both comics and prose projects, as well as administration),
*and Erik Enervold, Marshall Dillon, and Bernie Lee- who handle everything from prepress, lettering, and design.
*Mike Bullock (writer, group editor, project coordinator)
*We have Tim Lasiuta…research and development.
*Richard Dean Starr and Matthew Baugh (editors, writers, and project leads)
AP: We’ve asked a lot of questions about established properties Moonstone has handled and we’ll talk more about some Moonstone is now handling. But before that, what about original characters, newly created concepts? What’s Moonstone’s history with stepping off into the new and original arena?
JG: Original creation from a non M/DC/I/DH company is very difficult…and these lean times make it even more so. With a couple exceptions, Moonstone no longer handles projects we don’t completely control.
Our history with this has been a very rock road…we have had some successes, but not nearly as many as we would like.
Exceptions to the rule: “ROTTEN”, “VAMPIRE, PA” and the upcoming “SAVAGE BEAUTY”
AP: All right, now to the modern day meat and potatoes. It has been no secret over the years that Moonstone Books has been one of the biggest promoters and supporters of Pulp genre fiction. In the last few years, though you’ve really stepped up to the forefront, providing anthologies of known pulp types as well as the new comics line you have now. Before we get into specifics, why do you feel like pulp is such an important genre that needs to be introduced to a modern day audience?
JG: I just think the times we live in scream out for this.
Its adrenaline escapism roller coaster rides…
It’s justice being served…without legal technicalities. Who doesn’t want some justice, when most feel powerless in an escalating crazy society?
It’s also about folks with little to no powers, per se…just guts, guile, skill, and indomitable will.
There is an emotional impact that comes with these stories because these folks aren’t invulnerable…or whatnot…
Pulps are an important part of American history…it was a huge step up (from the penny novels)in fiction for the masses…selling to a people during the time of great strife….like today.
Without pulps, there would be no paperbacks…think about that…and all of the things that paperbacks have spawned (including increased literacy).
Without pulps, there would be no comic books…and all that they have inspired, from movies, to video games, etc!
AP: Let’s tackle the prose anthologies first. What characters has Moonstone spotlighted in prose collections?
JG: Ok, here we go…
The Green Hornet (any day now), Kolchak, The Avenger, The Spider, Doc Savage, Domino Lady, The Phantom, Zorro…and these do not include the characters that appeared in the anthologies with multiple characters.
Upcoming we have…more Avenger, more Green Hornet, more Spider, Sherlock Holmes, “Chicks in Capes”, and one surprise looming…
AP: Some would say that printed prose is no longer the way to go, yet Moonstone is still turning out anthologies. What is it about the print format that keeps Moonstone putting out these collections, instead of sending them all straight to e-book or in some other medium?
JG: Well, some people still read books of course…not sure that’s going away entirely. And we also do E-book stuff. You need both to make it work.
AP: A major emphasis for Moonstone right now is its new comics line. Tell us about Moonstone’s RETURN OF THE ORIGINALS. How did the idea develop? Who was involved on the front end? And why populate this idea with characters that people may not recognize, some of them not seen for over fifty years?
JG: It started as a one shot graphic novel…then turned into a MOVEMENT!
And again, while some of these characters haven’t been seen in a while…does not mean they are not interesting for gosh sakes!
We did try to have some recognizable faces in there as well.
Many people encouraged us here…and Mike Bullock was probably one of the earliest “idea man” behind this.
AP: What is the general plotline behind RETURN? Who character wise is involved?
JG: It all starts with “The Battle for L.A”, which as some know, was a historical event. The history fascinated me.
Briefly…during WW2, near LA…a strange object is seen in the night skies (there is a newspaper photo on line), and no one knows what it is (to this day). Planes were scrambled…shore batteries opened fire…direct hits were scored by thousands of bullets…thousands…but to no avail. The odd thing just kept moving slowly until is disappeared. Just an odd little piece of history (WHICH WILL BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE) that was the catalyst.)
AP: The history of pulp characters being translated to the comic page has been spotty at best, especially with recent efforts by other companies. What is Moonstone doing to make sure that RETURN OF THE ORIGINALS is an appealing concept that will bring in new readers, while maintaining the characters and history that pulp fans truly enjoy in their characters?
JG: That, my friend is the rub. We have VERY unique characters that I think comic fans will dig in a refreshing way…and we didn’t feel that these guys needed to be changed to be cool.
AP: The collection of writers and artists you have assembled for RETURN is truly staggering. We won’t force you to list all of them, but how did you get this stellar crew together? From so many different fields you have drawn top talent. What brought them to a pulp comic project? Did they all come for their own reasons or was there some sort of underlying theme that drew them to this concept?
JG: The creators kept coming…like a snowball rolling down a hill…all of them love the pulps and were just as excited as I was!
AP: So, what are the future plans regarding the cast of RETURN? Will there be ongoing series for all of them, more specials, what?
JG: At the present…there will be the one shot BATTLE that I mentioned, and ongoings for Black Bat, Secret Agent X, Phantom Detective, The Spider, and Rocket Man.
We are also putting together a “non-team” team ongoing series.
Some big mini series that will feature all of the characters…!
There are various Spider specials in the loop INCLUDING A NEW SPIDER NOVEL… an AIRBOY-G8 mini series,
A Domino Lady-Golden Amazon one shot…
A “all female team up” with Domino Lady, Golden Amazon, Blue Bulleteer (courtesy of AC comics), Valkyrie, Black Angel, Bald Eagle, and more!
AP: Joe, it’s been a blast! Stop by All Pulp anytime you want to chat!
Aaron Shaps, Writer of The Phantom Detective for Return of the Originals, Moonstone
AS: Well, my background is in film, so I began my writing adventure as an aspiring screenwriter before getting into comics and prose.
I have only been writing for comics since 2006, and I am probably best known at this point (if I am known at all) for my creator-owned character General Jack Cosmo, a kind of cross between Hunter S. Thompson and Flash Gordon, and for my studio/creative collective, General Jack Cosmo Productions. In addition to the comics starring General Jack Cosmo himself, our stable includes creator Mike Beazley’s series The Grimm, and also Pulp Will Eat Itself, which you folks were kind enough to review on this very site.
For Moonstone specifically, I have also done a few stories starring the Lee Falk Phantom, and I am currently having a blast writing their licensed series Zeroids, which is based on the classic line of robot toys from the 60s and 70s.
Like Batman, the Phantom Detective was orphaned at a young age and inherited a vast fortune. At the encouragement of a close family friend, he turned his listless but formidable mind to criminology, and ultimately became the world’s greatest sleuth, a two-fisted nocturnal avenger, master of disguise, and escape artist extraordinaire who aided law enforcement all over the globe. None of that has changed for my version of the character. He is essentially the same Phantom Detective that he was in those original stories, he has just…let’s call it “evolved”.
AP: Now that you’re taking on the Phantom Detective’s story, what are your plans? Will the setting remain in the glory days of the pulps or is this a more modern tale? What do you bring to this character as a modern writer that you think will make him both viable with today’s readers and still faithful to what pulp fans expect?
AS: My Phantom Detective stories are all set during the pulp era, and more specifically the early- to mid-1940s. For a long time now, I have wanted to tell a story about a heroic character, an ordinary human, who straddles the line between the age of the pulp heroes and the age of the super heroes. What would it be like to be that man, that hero, and see the world changing around you…to see the explosion of technology and science that was sparked by WWII, and all the fundamental changes that new science and tech affected in the way we live our lives? What would it be like to be an ordinary man like the Spider or the Shadow and see someone like Captain America or Superman or Green Lantern come onto the scene? Would you begin to feel obsolete? Or would you do everything in your power to remain relevant in a world that threatened to pass you by?
These are big questions, and this is the kind of stuff that the Phantom Detective is giving me the opportunity to explore. As for relevance, we deal with feelings like this every day in the real world…the fear of being left behind by changing times, of not being able to keep up with the way the world is moving forward, of becoming obsolete. You ask any American blue-collar worker in manufacturing if he or she worries about becoming obsolete—if they haven’t already—and see what they say. Ask the people who own record stores how they felt when iTunes came along, or the people who own video stores how they feel about Netflix and Redbox. Whether we like it or not, time marches on. So what do we do? Do we lie down and let it march over us, or do we lean into the wind and try to keep up? These are the questions that the Phantom Detective has to answer for himself.
AP: The Phantom Detective had a cast of supporters, even a dear friend who knew his secret identity as well as a signal beacon. Are you bringing any of these extras associated with the character into your version and if so, which ones? And if not, why not?
AS: Yes, I am definitely plugging a solid chunk of his classic supporting cast into this new series. Frank Havens, publisher of The New York Clarion newspaper (among many others), will be there for sure. For those unfamiliar with Phantom Detective lore, Havens is sort of a surrogate father to Richard Curtis Van Loan, the true identity of the Phantom Detective. It was actually Havens’ idea for Van Loan to assume the identity of the Phantom Detective, and in my series he remains the hero’s closest and most trusted confidant. And, yes, the spotlight signal on the roof of the Clarion building is still there. Obviously, that single gimmick was the one most clearly cribbed by the early Batman writers, so I had to include it. In fact, two early Batman editors, Jack Schiff and the legendary Mort Wesinger, had previously worked as editors at Thrilling Publishing, the home of the Phantom Detective, and had even edited Phantom Detective stories…so there you have it.
But back to the characters, Frank’s daughter, Muriel Havens, is basically the love of Van Loan’s life, and she is in there, too, although she does not know Van Loan’s secret in my stories, at least not right from the get-go. Also familiar to fans of the classic stories will be the character of Steve Huston, the young, crack Clarion reporter who, in my mind, and in the minds of many others, was a likely inspiration for Superman’s pal Jimmy Olsen. So it’s those three—Frank, Muriel, and Steve—who will be the most significant imports from the classic stories, although other characters will pop up here and there.
AP: I noticed that the word ‘psychedelic’ is used in some of the promotional material for your take on the Detective. That’s an interesting word in relation to a pulp character. Can you shed some light on that?
AS: Sure. Basically, as someone on the Moonstone forums astutely pointed out when the project was first announced, one of the reasons that the Phantom Detective is kind of a forgotten pulp hero, even though he had such a long and historic run, is that he is sort of generic. The Shadow had his Eastern secrets and gimmicks, Doc Savage had his super science and physical perfection, the Spider had the horror angle and ultra-violence…but what did the Phantom Detective have? He was a super-detective and a master of disguise…and how many times did we hear that, you know? How many other characters of the era put those two skillsets on their resumes? Practically all of them.
So my challenge was, how do I make this character stand out from Secret Agent X and Moon Man and some of the other, ostensibly very similar, characters in the Return of the Originals line? The answer was a single word: Steranko.
Although I am writing new prose adventures for the character, the lynchpin of the new Phantom Detective saga is his comic series, and Danilo (the artist) and I decided very early on that Jim Steranko was going to be our primary influence in terms of aesthetics: both his noir stuff, which I think has yet to be equaled, and his more psychedelic stuff from the 60s and beyond. And the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. Not only is the new Phantom Detective going to star in stories that are visually psychedelic, but in terms of content, some of them are quite trippy as well. A lot of them deal with era-appropriate fringe science, and Van Loan himself has taken to using what I suppose I would describe as performance-enhancing drugs to help maintain an edge in his rapidly evolving world.
To that end, one new addition to his mythology is something he calls his “Elixir”, which is a potion he drinks that allows him to see things ordinary men cannot see…it expands and enhances his senses, and all kinds of other weird and cool stuff. It makes him a better detective, and more of a creature of the night as well. I don’t want to give the impression that he’s like Jekyll and Hyde or something…it’s not like that. It’s more like, if you remember the movie Big Trouble in Little China, when Jack Burton and Wang and their whole crew drink that magic potion before they descend into the underworld to fight Lo Pan, it’s more like that. That’s the direct inspiration.
AP: A lot of classic characters come with their own trademarks, a team of supporters, certain gadgets they always use, etc? Does the Phantom Detective have any of this baggage and if he does, what of it are you bringing into your stories?
AP: The Phantom Detective stories had a habit of introducing something in one story, then forgetting it in the next. Although this can be an issue for continuity buffs, it also sometimes offers freedom to someone like you taking the reins on the character? Did you rely on the source material much? Did you feel hampered by the loose way the character’s history was written?
AS: I didn’t feel hampered at all. One of the very first things I decided, as soon as I knew I was going to set these stories in the early 40s, was that I was going to treat the Phantom Detective’s stories from the 30s as canon, at least whenever possible. So unless it comes into direct conflict with stuff I am planning to do with the character, much of what the Phantom Detective experienced in his first seven to eight years of adventures is considered history and backstory for my version of the hero.
Now there are definitely some continuity conflicts in those early stories, when you view them as a body, a mythology, as you mentioned, so there are certain places where I will have to embrace one story and ignore another, but in planning the first few years’ worth of storylines for this new incarnation, it hasn’t been too difficult to settle on which stuff I want to use and which stuff I want to discard. Basically, if I want to draw from a previous story, and that story conflicts with another, whatever the coolest stuff is stays, and everything else gets cast back into the ether.
AP: This is a major project for Moonstone and for you. What else do you have going on that pulp fans can look forward to?
AS: Pulp fans will definitely be interested in a creator-owned project called New Dreaming Men that I am putting together with artist Douglas Klauba for Olympian Publishing. We just released a special, limited edition preview at Chicago Comic Con, so some of your readers might have picked that up. New Dreaming Men is an epic, pulp-flavored adventure saga for children ages eight to eighty, a serialized story to be told through a seamless marriage of prose, sequential art, and alternative storytelling means such as mock newspaper clippings and vintage playbills. It is the story of a group known as the Brotherhood of Forgotten Worlds, a fraternity of men that for centuries has fought to protect mysterious and exotic locales—on this world and far beyond—from all those who would seek to exploit or destroy them. You can fan New Dreaming Men on Facebook for more info.
And of course, as I mentioned at the very beginning, General Jack Cosmo Productions has Pulp Will Eat Itself, which is kind of like what would happen if Moonstone’s Return of the Originals line and the Coen Bros. movie O Brother, Where Art Thou? had a baby. It’s the twisted progeny of two of my Jack Cosmo cohorts, writer Adam Lahners and writer/artist Jim McKern. General Jack Cosmo Productions and Pulp Will Eat Itself are both on Facebook, too, so you can fan those for updates, info, and announcements.
AP: Thank you for your time, Aaron!
HOWARD HOPKINS, Writer of
THE GOLDEN AMAZON, for RETURN OF THE ORIGINALS, Moonstone
WIN SCOTT ECKERT AND ERIC FEIN, Writers of
THE GREEN GHOST, for RETURN OF THE ORIGINALS, Moonstone
AP: First, gentlemen, let All Pulp welcome you to Moonstone Monday! Now, this interview is a bit different, in that it’s being done sort of in tandem. So, each you will just give your answers and in the final copy they will run together. So, first, introduce yourself to the audience and give them a bit of background, especially about your history in Pulp.
WIN SCOTT ECKERT (WSE): Howard Waldrop has said, “Like most things from the Seventies, this is Philip José Farmer’s fault… If you don’t like it, don’t write me. Write Philip José Farmer.” I was born in the Sixties, but the mid-Seventies marked the beginning of an eight-year-old’s lifelong fascination with pulp fiction. No doubt that fascination sprang, in greater part, from the fact that I received a bunch of the Bantam Doc Savage paperbacks and a copy of Phil’s Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life in 1975 when I was eight years old. That spurred me on a two-decade quest to collect all the Bantam Doc Savage paperbacks. Phil’s Doc Savage “biography” and his Tarzan Alive: A Definitive Biography of Lord Greystoke had also left me with an undying hunger to read all the other characters he had referenced in the books—The Shadow, Sherlock Holmes, Fu Manchu, The Spider, Philip Marlowe, Nero Wolfe, Sam Spade, James Bond, Travis McGee, and so on.
Along with that, I became fascinated with crossovers, and with Phil’s shared-universe Wold Newton mythos, the “Wold Newton Family” (outlined in the two “mock biographies” listed above) and pretty soon I was compiling a shared-universe timeline of my own, which I called the Wold Newton Universe Crossover Chronology. I posted it on my Wold Newton Universe site (the first of its kind), and after that readers began sending in their own Wold Newton articles. So I created online essay section. A few years later a couple other contributors started their own sites, and a few years after that we had such a great stockpile of Wold Newton-inspired articles, it seemed a natural move to put together a print anthology, which I edited: Myths for the Modern Age: Philip José Farmer’s Wold Newton Universe (MonkeyBrain Books, 2005) (a 2007 Locus Awards finalist).
With a fairly encyclopedic background on pulp and other characters, fiction writing seemed the next logical step. I was lucky enough to be invited to contribute to Black Coat Press’ anthology Tales of the Shadowmen, and have been in every annual volume since then (six so far; Volume 7 is forthcoming). I’ve penned tales featuring the Scarlet Pimpernel, Doc Ardan (a version of Doc Savage), Dr. Natas (a disguised version of Fu Manchu), Antinéa, and Sexton Blake. I wrote a tale for Airship 27’s Lance Star—Sky Ranger, and since then my time has been fully booked writing pulp fiction! For Moonstone Books: The Green Hornet Chronicles (co-editing with Moonstone’s Joe Gentile, as well as a contributing writer), The Avenger Chronicles, The Phantom Chronicles 2, The Captain Midnight Chronicles, and More Tales of Zorro (forthcoming). I also was invited to write the Foreword to the new edition of Farmer’s seminal “fictional biography,” Tarzan Alive (Bison Books, 2006) and am writing a series of tales about the origin of the Wold Newton Family, the first of which appeared in the just-released The Worlds of Philip José Farmer 1: Protean Dimensions (Meteor House, 2010). I dived back into “non-fiction” with the encyclopedic Crossovers: A Secret Chronology of the World 1 & 2 (Black Coat Press, 2010), and somehow also found time to write a novel that Philip José Farmer began back in the ’70s, but never had a chance to finish himself: The Evil in Pemberley House (Subterranean Press, 2009), about Patricia Wildman, the kick-ass daughter of a certain bronze-skinned pulp hero—if you know what I mean.
That’s a lot of background—sorry about that.
Eric Fein (EF): I discovered and fell in love with Pulp characters around the same time I started to read and collect comic books. Like Win, I was a kid in the mid-Seventies so there was plenty of pulp related books in bookstores and candy stores. One of my favorite all time comic book characters is Batman and I remember having the two issues (Batman #’s 253 and 259) of his series that guest-starred The Shadow. That led me to seek out DC’s original Shadow comic book series and around the same time I discovered the Pyramid/Jove Shadow reprints with those gorgeous Steranko covers. After reading a couple of those, I was hooked and started collecting anything pulp related. During this time, I also got my hands on Walter B. Gibson’s Shadow Scrapbook and was just fascinated by every aspect of the character and what went into creating him. The fact that Gibson was able to write more than 1 million words on a manual typewriter year after year is just amazing to me. . My fascination with The Shadow led me to Doc Savage, The Avenger, and The Spider. I’m also a big fan of the James Bond novels and movies, the Mike Hammer novels, film noir, crime novels and private eye novels, anything by or with Orson Welles, and Old-Time Radio.
In college, I landed an internship at Marvel Comics, which led to a job as an assistant editor after graduation. I eventually became one of the editors in the Spider-Man group and at one point I was editing three of the then four monthly titles: Spider-Man, The Web of Spider-Man, and The Spectacular Spider-Man. I also edited several Spider-Man one-shots and limited series including the very first team-up between Spider-Man and Batman. After Marvel, I worked at DC Comics in their licensed publishing department doing How-to draw books, coloring and activities books, and storybooks.
After DC, I moved into educational publishing writing and editing nonfiction and fiction books for kids who have trouble reading.
Recently, thanks to Joe Gentile and Moonstone Books, I’ve had the opportunity to write some pulp stories. I have a story slated for an upcoming volume of The Avenger Chronicles and another story scheduled to appear in The Green Hornet Chronicles, Volume 2. I also wrote a Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar story for Moonstone’s Sex, Lies, and Private Eyes anthology.
AP: You both are involved with THE GREEN GHOST, a fairly obscure pulp character, which is featured in Moonstone’s RETURN OF THE ORIGINALS line. Give us some history on this character, focusing on the parts you feel are important for readers to know.
WSE: Sure. The Green Ghost—magician sleuth George Chance—started out as The Ghost in the Winter 1940 issue of a self-titled pulp magazine, with a novel called, appropriately enough, Calling the Ghost. Over the next four years Chance appeared in thirteen additional tales, all penned by master pulpsmith G.T. Fleming-Roberts, in The Ghost Super-Detective, then Green Ghost Detective, finally migrating to Thrilling Mystery, and making his final appearance in the October 1944 issue of Thrilling Detective.
Chance equals his mentor, the late Harry Houdini, in the art of escape. He’s also a renowned skeptic and debunker of fakes and frauds, as well as a master criminologist, excelling in makeup and disguise, lock-picking, knife-throwing, illusion—anything and everything a top-notch magician knows. Chance puts his expertise to use as a relentless crusader for justice, donning a skull mask to become “The Ghost” (shortly after changing his name to “The Green Ghost”), and aiding Police Commissioner Standish against criminals everywhere, solving impossible crimes. Chance is aided by a select band of six agents and friends who know his secret and share in his mission for justice.
EF: I think Win covered all the bases on this question.
AP: What makes the Green Ghost a viable hero for a modern audience? Clones of characters, stereotypes, don’t typically appeal to readers today, but so many of the classic pulp characters were simply different riffs on Doc Savage, the Shadow, etc. What about The Green Ghost makes him more than just another avenging detective hero type?
WSE: The covers to the pulps that carried his stories depicted a character with a ghoulish visage—one that Eric has noted harkens back to Lon Chaney in The Phantom of the Opera. Our new stories in Moonstone’s Return of the Originals will match the mood and intensity promised by the pulp covers. The Green Ghost strikes terror in the hearts of criminals and even civilians due to his horrific skull-like appearance and his seemingly supernatural abilities.
And for the first time, The Green Ghost is going to face a few real supernatural menaces. We won’t go overboard, but the idea of a Houdini-type skeptic facing the real occult, as opposed to charlatans, and how he responds to it, is intriguing. In addition, his girlfriend Meriem “Merry” White had “flashes of intuition” in the original pulps, i.e. she’s psychic. How does her skeptic boyfriend deal with that? We’re going for a Mulder/Scully in reverse vibe here.
EF: Certainly from a visual perspective The Green Ghost falls into The Shadow end of the spectrum with his dark fedora and trench coat. However, there are several things that make him stand apart from being just another Shadow knockoff. One, his creator, G.T. Fleming-Roberts, made him a magician and gave him a drive to expose phony spiritualists. The other thing that separates him from The Shadow and Doc Savage is the relationship he had with his girlfriend Meriem White and his assistants. He wasn’t portrayed as some mysterious or awe-inspiring character when he interacted with them. Chance is very down to earth. His associates knew who he was and why he did what he did. It gave the stories a different dynamic.
AP: Now, each of you is working primarily in different media on the Green Ghost. Tell the audience what medium you are focusing on and how you go into adapting your version of the Green Ghost to said medium.
WSE: Eric is tackling the comic scripts, while I handle the prose stories, which will be featured in Moonstone’s “wide vision” format with spot illustrations. It turned out my time constraints necessitated collaboration on the first prose story, as well: I wrote the detailed outline, Eric wrote a first draft, and I wrote a second draft from that. We had fun with it, and we hope you’ll enjoy the results.
EF: Writing comic book stories allows you the freedom to play up more of the visual effects of the character – having him perform magic tricks, getting in and out of deathtraps, and other cool things that might not translate as well in just a prose story. And let me say that we have a wonderful artist illustrating both the comic book stories and the prose stories – David Niehaus. He shares our enthusiasm for the character and it shows in his artwork for the series.
AP: Two people sharing the reins on an idea with an already established history must be quite interesting. How do you two work this combined effort? Is someone the Senior Partner? Who contributes what? And how do you as a team tackle the fact that The Green Ghost has a history when you come to it?
WSE: I made the original pitch to Joe Gentile at Moonstone (the seed of the idea having been planted by my pal and fellow writer Martin Powell several years back) and did the initial draft of the series bible. Then I decided that I had too many projects going to write both the comics stories and the prose stories so Joe brought in Eric, a very talented writer, to write the comics scripts. Eric contributed several great ideas and we revised the bible; it’s a collaborative effort. We rarely disagree, and if we do, we resolve it quickly.
As far as the history and keeping things straight…. I am a continuity geek. I’m not slavish to it if the story dictates a different direction, but I do everything I can to accommodate and account for continuity. The history of the character matters to me. Look, for the co-editing duties for The Green Hornet Chronicles books, I created a timeline of the ’60s television series, and then inserted each and every story I read/edited into the timeline, based on textual clues and other references in the stories. This was purely for my own use so I could keep things straight. In some cases I asked the writers to make slight changes so as not to create a continuity gaffe with the timeline. So, yeah…a little OCD, maybe, but if you’re going to work on a character, or a shared universe, it’s worth the effort to take care of these little details, as well as the overall storytelling. Because believe me, someone will notice. J We’re bringing the same sort of effort and care and attention to The Green Ghost.
EF: From the first time we spoke and began trading ideas it was clear that we shared very similar sensibilities when it came to the character and our approach to storytelling so it has been a lot of fun working together.
As far as The Green Ghost’s history, Win wanted to make sure that we respected it and didn’t radically change it and I totally agreed. The main thing we adjusted was the tone of the stories. Ours have a harder edge to them than the original pulps did. At the same time, we have been careful not to contradict or negate any of the events in the original stories.
AP: Does the Green Ghost come with any supporting cast, special weapons, things that are identified with him? If so, are you adapting them for your stories?
WSE: All of the Green Ghost’s original supporting cast is back with our series. I’ll let Eric give the particulars on the cast. Chance also has the same bag of tricks, plus a bit more. In our continuation, Chance served in the OSS during World War II for a few years, and has returned home with a few additional things up his sleeve, but nothing radical.
EF: As mentioned earlier, The Green Ghost is a magician so we’ve worked in some magic tricks, such as gloves coated with a flash powder that emit a blinding green light when he snaps his fingers. The other thing we did is that we gave him a mask. In the original pulps every time he became the Green Ghost he had to put on makeup. We figured that might become cumbersome for some of the stories we wanted to tell. I had suggested that since the stories were going to be set just after the end of WWII that someone with Chance’s talents could have done secret missions for the government during the war, so we decided to establish the fact that he served in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and that their scientists fashioned a mask for him that has special lenses that glow green, allow him to see in the dark, and also has an apparatus inside it that functions as a mini-oxygen tank.
As for his supporting cast, we are using all of them. However, not everyone will appear in every story. We just don’t have the space for that. Here’s a rundown of The Green Ghost’s associates:
Meriem White is George Chance’s girlfriend and sometimes assistant. She is very smart and strong willed and, as Win pointed out, has some psychic abilities.
Ned Standish is the New York City Police Commissioner. Standish was the one who encouraged Chance to cultivate his interest in criminology into actual crime fighting.
Tiny Tim Terry is a childhood friend of George Chance. They both lived and worked in the circus as children.
Joe Harper is a racetrack bookmaker, a theatrical booking agent, and gambler. He’s got contacts in every strata of society, which makes him quite valuable to The Green Ghost.
Dr. Robert Demarest is the New York City Chief Coroner and works closely with Chance and Standish when needed.
Glenn Saunders is Chance’s assistant and a dead ringer for Chance.
AP: Some pulp purists believe updating characters like Moonstone is doing is being unfaithful to them, not keeping true to what they originally were. What is your response to this in terms of The Green Ghost?
WSE: Our approach is not to create an alternate neo-pulp universe where the characters are radically different. We see no reason to change what works—just provide a logical continuation, a view into what The Green Ghost’s adventures could have been had they continued in the pulps.
We are not changing the characters’ general backgrounds, although certain details are certainly being elaborated and expanded upon. As I said, George Chance has been off to war and back, so this is a continuation—not a “reboot.” For the modern audience, we can also ramp up the action quotient a bit, and where appropriate, provide a more frank and honest portrayal of characters’ sex lives.
Let’s face it, in The Spider, you knew Richard Wentworth and Nita Van Sloan were having sex. They weren’t celibate for the eleven years that were “engaged.” Similarly, the Green Ghost (George Chance) and Merry White (now a more grown up, Meriem White) are not a perpetually celibate couple: they wind down from their adventures and celebrate their victories, and living to fight another day, in bed. I know this may alienate a few folks who feel their pulp heroes should not have sex lives, but this doesn’t alter the basic premise of The Green Ghost—it just provides a window, another angle, into his life, and his relationship with Meriem. It rounds them out as characters. We don’t plan to be explicit—I’ll save that for when I collaborate with Mr. Farmer J—but we do plan to be a bit more realistic in a way that the original pulps weren’t.
Another difference with our Green Ghost is that he is actually part of a wider universe and continuity. The beauty of a shared pulp universe is that, unlike superhero universes, it could actually be our universe, the world outside our window. Yes, maybe occult menaces or mad scientist death rays really couldn’t happen in our world—but if one squints, or puts on the 3-D glasses, perhaps they could be rationalized away. Unlike the cosmic and world-altering events shown in the superhero universes, a shared pulp fiction universe is relatable to the “everyman.”
EF: I certainly understand their concerns and as a fan myself I am leery when any character with a long history is reinvented. We went took great care to make sure we didn’t throw away or contradict any part of The Green Ghost’s history. Again, the major change we did make has to do with the tone of the stories. In the original pulps, the stories were not as hardboiled or as spooky as you would have thought from looking at the covers. Win and I both wanted to do edgier stories without making wholesale changes to the character and we both feel that we’ve accomplished that. Hopefully, the readers will agree.
AP: OK, what about future plans for the Green Ghost, any hints? And what other irons do you have in the works you’d like to mention?
WSE: Eric’s two comic stories (so far) are called “The Mystery Named Rosabelle” and “Of Monsters and Men.” There a lot of fun, with art by the talented David Niehaus. The stories are set to appear as backups in Moonstone’s The Phantom Detective # 1 and 2, respectively. Both issues are already available for order (The Phantom Detective # 1 hits the shelves on October), so get out there and buy ’em!
Our “wide vision” prose story is called “Zombies under Broadway,” and is chock full of undead mayhem, with spot illustrations by the aforementioned Mr. Niehaus. It hasn’t been scheduled yet, so keep an eye out!
For my part, I’ve just submitted my second Avenger story to Moonstone. It’s an Avenger/Domino Lady crossover story, and I had a blast writing it. Next is an as-yet untitled story for Black Coat Press’ Tales of the Shadowmen Volume 7: Femmes Fatales; then editing Moonstone’s The Green Hornet Chronicles Volume 2 and possibly writing a sequel to my tale “Fang and Sting” which is in volume 1; then an as-yet untitled crossover story for a Sherlock Holmes anthology; and finally researching and taking notes for a novel I intend to write in 2011—wish I could say more about that, but the timing isn’t right. I hope you’ll have me back to discuss it when it is. J
EF: Well, the first comic book story, “The Mystery Named Rosabelle” concerns someone from Chance’s past trying to kill him and involves him attempting Houdini’s Chinese Water Torture Cell escape trick. “Of Monsters and Men” pits The Green Ghost against an escaped Nazi scientist and his man-made monstrosities and introduces a new member to his cast, an associate from his days with the OSS.
As for me, I have a novel I am shopping around as well as a couple of screenplays and of course more pulp stories, including more Green Ghost adventures, that I hope will see print real soon.
AP: Once again, guys, thank you for your time and your work in the pulp field!
WSE: And thank you for having us, and for the great work you’re doing promoting pulp fiction and keeping the genre alive!
EF: Yes, thank you for the opportunity to talk to you and your readers about The Green Ghost. It was a pleasure.
TIM LASIUTA, Line Editor, RETURN OF THE ORIGINALS, Moonstone
TL: I must have been born with a book in my hands, since I could read, my father would buy comic books (in the mid to late 1960’s), and we would read them at home. When he ‘grew’ up, I inherited a small collection of X Men, Spiderman, Superman, Batman, and Richie Rich. Today, I still have most of them. However, once reading bit me, I began to read his paperbacks too. I can still see his book shelf, double filled with mystery, western, and pulp. Doc Savage was probably my first ‘adult’ book, and what an introduction. I rabidly ate up any Doc, Shadow, Ace Doubles, while still reading and by now buying my own comics with newspaper money.
It is a strange truth that what you imagine, you can become. When I was 14, I remember reading a Batman comic, and seeing the first ads for Kuberts School of Art. From that point on, I began to illustrate my own adaptation of Stokers “Jewel of Seven Stars”. It was terrible, but my limitations in art led me to begin writing, and my first novel was drafted out. I wrote short stories, and illuminated my social assignments with elements of the fantastic. Tarzan even flew through one of my Psych papers in grade 11.
That aside, I wanted to be a comic book something. It was not to be, and I ventured into university, still buying and reading. Marriage kind of stopped that, and when I approached CBG about doing an article on Tom Gill, my mentor, I was ‘in’. From there I worked reviewing books, comics and doing articles for them for 4 years. Along the way, I found that a company called Moonstone was doing the Phantom, I emailed the publisher who actually responded.
As a young(er) writer, I was thrilled. Joe sent me copies and for 3 years I stuck to mainly Indy books and Moonstone. When I approached Joe with an idea to help him, he accepted, and I have written short fiction, edited, arranged PR, negotiated for properties, written bibles, and promoted Moonstone in Calgary and elsewhere.
TIM LASIUTA (on left) |
AP: What do you believe has been the motivating factor for Moonstone’s recent attraction to classic pulp heroes?
TL: Every publisher has an audience, and the DC audience is not the same as Marvels’, or IDWs’ or Archie. With our focus on the pulps and adventure characters, it is almost like we have re-introduced the ‘First’ Wave into the media. DC may have the splash, but we are the real thing.
One thing that I am learning is that the concept of our pulp lines is a recurrent theme. For decades westerns were the preferred genre due to the quick justice and characterizations. My grandfather and father shared a love of books for decades. I share the same tastes, and have re-read the same books. Today, it seems that vengeance driven characters (ie pulp) are popular. Where else can you be so politically incorrect and solve a drug lord problem with a pipe bomb??? This may be the new release for society’s pent up anger and hostility.
In terms of the genre, and our Originals line, our authors are true fans. They may write a good mystery in their day job but I suspect at night when the Black Bat flies, or the Green Ghost wanders the night, trench coats, gloves and weapons of all sorts come out of the hidden compartments. Need therapy, write a Spider tale. No need for valium…
Joe and I have always said that we are cut from the same cloth, and our interests are almost identical. I love the concept of the ‘old’, and the new at the same time. For me, the Phantom, and Doc Savage are highlights of my time so far, but I can hardly wait until the New Originals mature and take off.
AP: Why do you think pulps are becoming popular again and will today’s comic readers embrace them or give them the cold shoulder?
TL: The wave of pulp reprints from the numerous houses, the new books from Airship 27, DCs’ First Wave, and our New Originals, all contribute to a genre that is growing. There is some kind of appeal to the vintage art that adorns the books, and with increased scholarship into the artists, writers, and industry, it is developing a momentum.
In some instances, pulp readers are comic readers. An Archie reader will not pick up Phantom Detective, but someone who reads Sanctums’ Doc Savage, Avenger, or Shadow, will. However, while that book is on the coffee table, it may catch the eye of a parent, or friend. Someone who reads an adventure or team book may pick these up.
Any new line or character is a literary crap shoot.
That is the beauty of this line. We are not new. But I can guarantee that any reader who buys these books will love them.
Characters from IV FROST, edited by Tim Lasiuta |
AP: Joe Gentile has a reputation for running a tight ship and in the past handling the majority of the editorial chores. With Return of the Originals, both you and Mike Bullock seemed to have assumed Associate Editor roles. What exactly are your responsibilities in this capacity?
TL: Joe is a one man army. With my growing interest in Moonstone, and some as of yet unannounced properties, I have been recruited to read, track, and do whatever Joe asks me to do. Mike is busy writing for the line, and with that, his duties will be what I cannot do. For instance, he is doing the Pulp Manual due out soon. I had no time, but I did read and edit 30 plus stories already. If you’re asking what my duties really are, I would tell you, and have to shoot you!
I would love to write A Richard Diamond piece, and perhaps another Captain Midnight tale, but the New Originals take up a good amount of time.
AP: For those readers having been lost in the Amazon all year, would you please explain exactly what Return of the Originals is?
TL: The Return of the New Originals is an event unlike any other we have done at Moonstone. A long, long time ago, in a galaxy far away, pulp characters were everywhere. You could not look at a newsstand and not be assailed without a lurid cover, and often trashy fiction. We have taken the best of those, and asked one question.
“How can we turn these characters into viable icons for our time?”
The result is a 20 plus character mix that ranges from occult to adventure. There are tough secret agents, strong teams, pilots, gutsy avengers, and dangerous sirens. They all share one commonality, Stamp out crime!
We even tackle the issue of racism with Decimator Smith.
One thing about our staff of writers, artists, and production personnel is that we share a love for the genre and medium. Every author, as Joe put it, was invited to play in our sandbox with his/her favorite character. They came with their own pails and shovels. The result is a stable of creators who write with passion. We all get to enjoy that.
AP: Which of these characters are you involved with personally and were you familiar with them before taking on this assignment?
TL: I was familiar with many of the characters before. I knew G-8, the Spider, Honey West, Domino Lady, Phantom Detective, Green Llama, KiGor and others, but once I saw the entire line-up, I was shocked. We have one busy setting, and by mid 2025, it should be free of crime. Until then, there are many stories to tell, and many crimes to correct.
AP: Tim, are there any plans for any Originals Universe crossovers between any of these great characters? Aside from the C.J. Henderson book, that is. And are you free to divulge those yet?
TL: As of this point, there are no plans that I am aware of, but only the Shadow knows…
AP: Any last words you like to leave the All Pulp readers with concerning Return of the Originals?
TL: Pulp fiction will never die as long as readers continue to support great writers! I love this job!
AP: Tim, this has been a pleasure. Thank you so much.
DAVID BURTON, Pulp Artist
yourself, both personally and as an artist, background and such?
DB: You’re welcome, its my pleasure. As far as my personal life goes, I’m a pretty private person. I’ve been drawing and painting pretty much all of my life. I’m mostly self taught but have had some of the best people in the industry, who also happen to be friends of mine both
encourage me and give my pointers over the years. The nice thing is that I’ve been able to help them as well.
AP: Now, looking at your site (www.davidburtonart.net) you have a particular interest and affinity for pulp themed work. How did you
get into painting pulp? Have you always been a fan or did you come to it some other way?
DB: I’ve always been a fan and still am. That all started with THE SHADOW radio show, which my dad got me interested in when I was about 7. Than at about 12 I started reading DOC SAVAGE and was hooked. I started getting my work published in fanzines, most notably ECHOES and THE BRONZE GAZETTE. When I can I’ll do a piece for the BG. From there the subject matter has pretty much been fantasy, science fiction, and horror. Lately though its been pin-up and female figure work. I’m dealing with a few galleries right now about carrying that line of work.
AP: What appeals to you about painting pulp themed figures and works? Is there something about the characters and setting themselves or is it more about the stories?
DB: The sense of action and suspense mostly. The characters and the stories both offer something that just gets my imagination really
going.
AP: Can you share with us a little about the process you use when painting a pulp piece? Do you do research, any special preparation,
go in any particular order, like with pencils and such, or do you just go straight to paints?
DB: Each piece is different and I approach them accordingly. Regardless of the piece, unless the client wants something very specific, I’ll do research. I’m a stickler for getting things right. I’m working on a piece right now for an upcoming DOC SAVAGE painting that will feature both Doc and Princess Monja. I went to great lengths contacting Dr. Richard D. Hansen, who is one of the leading authorities on Mayan culture and was the advisor on the film, “Apocalypto”, who was a great help in getting me currect information on how a Mayan Princess would be dressed.
As far as my approach to how I work goes, I always start with pencils sketches and then work them out into a full drawing if needed,
then go to the paints.
AP: Is there a pulp character, series, etc. that appeals to you over the others as an artist? If so, why?
DB: Its a toss up between Doc Savage and The Shadow. They have a lot more of offer more in the way of potential than any of the others. Though I also like The Spider because he’s so over the top.
AP: The classic pulp covers were, of course, all painted works. That’s sort of a staple for classic pulp. Do you think that its
important to establish the same sort of link between painted work and modern pulp? If so or if not, why?
DB: I’d like to think that any media could make that connection. But I’ve seen hundreds of pulp related stuff done in electronic and it
just doesn’t have the same impact, so for now anyway, painting in traditional media is the only way to go.
AP: Any tips for artists who are working on pulp projects?
DB: Know your subject and know your history. Study the old overs and ask yourself, what colors did they use and why, look at how they lit scenes and how they managed their composition. And don’;t copy or rip them off, if you can’t come up with something on your own, then you need to practice more to see what you’re doing wrong. Copying or ripping another cover off is a fool’s journey. You think no one has
ever seen any of the covers you’re taking stuff from, but they have and if they don’t call you on it now, they will. That’s inevitable. It will
only give you a poor rep and that’s nearly impossible to overcome. Be known for YOU and let your work stand out that way. You’ll shine and that alone is priceless.
AP: Do you have anything in the works that would be of interest to pulpsters everywhere?
DB: Other than the above mentioned Doc painting, I’ve got a few things that are in various stages. Something with The Shadow again, it’s been a long time since I’ve done anything with him. I’ll be working on a Doc drawing from my friend TOM JOHNSON that will feature Doc and Big Foot and there are some others, but I’d like to share those as they come along.
AP: Awesome! Thanks so much, David!
BCB: Byron Christopher Bell is a work in progress; a writer who hopes he never stops learning, or at least being curious; a bundle of contradictions. Mostly I’m a guy that likes a good yarn, something a little bit different that will still keep me on the edge of my seat. I love comics, heroes, hard boiled crime, horror, science fiction and pulp.
AP: What’s your background?
BCB: I was born a seventh generation Texan, and moved out while everybody else was moving in. I’ve worked as a musician, ranch hand, retail manager, construction worker, print salesman, artist and writer. I’ve also worked as Senior Resident at a halfway house, and both sides of the mental health desk. I’m from one of those families where the kids raised themselves, and I made a lot of mistakes on the way, so I’m probably one of the few hard-boiled pulp guys writing that has actually lived on the street. Hell, there’s a part of me that’s still dreaming up crooked schemes in my head—I’ve mentally pulled off at least three armored car jobs in the last year. But hey, that’s all for art, right? Hmmmm, well, at least part of it. The biggest thing as far as pulp goes is that without the heroes of my youth I know I’d be in jail.
AP: Where do you live?
BCB: My adopted hometown of Chicago, North Side. I think I’m in my fifteenth year here. Don’t even ask me about Cubbies vs. White Sox.
AP: How long have you been writing?
BCB: Since I learned the alphabet, in one form or another. Before I wrote, I wanted to be a cartoonist, so I wrote what I drew. I majored in journalism at the University of North Texas, but when I saw what was happening to American media, I dropped out and started working as a musician (bass, vocals, and blues harp). All through my years as a musician, I was writing songs and lyrics. Then one day in my thirties I read a lousy book by a famous writer, and said, “I can do better.” Subconsciously, I’m pretty sure I was aiming at the fact that Raymond Chandler (of Philip Marlowe fame) had started really writing at about the same age. Not that I’m comparing myself to Chandler, even though I’d love to.
AP: Share with us your thoughts on the current boom in pulp action/adventure fiction.
BCB: I love it, other than the fact that I can’t keep up with all the characters. Seriously, this is one of those weird moments in history where we get to see things change. Adventure fiction kind of got forgotten by all the big publishers, and I love being one of the guys to pick up the slack. I also think with my particular background, I have the chance to inject a voice that others might not know about. I’d seriously love to see a homegrown pulp movement that while still holding the moral virtues of the past, can also grow into a whole different new animal. In a way that’s what I tried to do with TALES OF THE BAGMAN, create a character, who in a world gone corrupt, still has a moral compass—even it is a little bit wonky. In the book I refer a lot to his “moral flexibility,” a nice way of saying legal, illegal, and extralegal.
AP: You’ve written SECRET AGENT X, JIM ANTHONY & DAN FOWLER, G-MAN for Airship 27 Productions. Who’s your favorite character of those three?
BCB: Tough question, I’ll try not to use the phrase “apples and oranges,” but it certainly applies. Secret Agent X is a man so dedicated to his mission he doesn’t even have his own identity. That takes a lot of commitment. On the other hand we have Fowler, who’s also a Federal Agent, yet is so recognizable that he really can’t go undercover—and his entire identity is wrapped up in being the stereotypical Hoover FBI man. Meanwhile, Jim Anthony, especially in his new Airship 27 tales, has vast potential. So part of me wants to say Dan Fowler, because I love the image of the thirties G-Man and want to write another one of those. But, since we’ve already been exposed to Elliot Ness, Dick Tracy and a host of others, Dan might not seem too original—there’s a lot of work left to be done by the author. So, OK, X is probably the best character, but I have to go with Dan Fowler because I still have my Melvin Purvis, Junior G-Man badge.
AP: Is it safe to say that TALES OF THE BAGMAN is your most ambitious project to date?
BCB: Definitely Maybe. Obviously, it’s my most ambitious to be published, and it’s definitely the most fun thing I’ve ever written—fun to write, fun to read. But my first novel, Bipolar Express, was pretty ambitious, too. Picture a Science Fiction/Noir story written like a 1950’s Gold Medal paperback, starring three dually-diagnosed, mentally ill, homeless men, trying to survive the worst winter in Chicago history—and all the while the magnetic poles are shifting.
Of course, what I’ve learned in the last few years is that I better think every project is my most ambitious; you stop aiming high, you’re going to start digging a rut. That’s my big lesson for 2010. And yes, I’d definitely love to write a few more Bagman books. I’m thinking Chicago World’s Fair and Dillinger, since The Bagman’s living in June of 1933.
AP: Who is The Bagman?
BCB: The Bagman is Frank “Mac” MacCullough, a criminal just on the edge of climbing organized crime’s corporate ladder. Then one day they send him to break his uncle’s legs, and he can’t do it. In the end he has to take on the mob, and deal with the cops at the same time. But in the beginning the only thing he has on hand to disguise himself is a paper bag that he wedges on under his fedora. Thus a man who was a bagman for the mob becomes, The Bagman. He uses a gun because so does everybody else, and he prefers a revolver to an automatic—that alone ought to tell you he’s a little bit different.
Working with him, and every bit his equal, is “Crankshaft” Jones, an ace mechanic and WWI vet who served with The Harlem Hellfighters, to win the French Medal of Honor. So here he we have a black man who’s a war hero in France, but comes back to the states and he’s just another face lost in the crowd. Crankshaft is practically Mac’s foster dad, but his best friend, too. Also a bit of a cynic.
And, I’d also like to point out that Mac is a character who I plan to evolve, so his future could get a whole lot weirder, and there are some definite signals toward that in the book.
AP: What works in progress can you tell us about?
BCB: Well, let’s see… I’ve got two novelettes for Airship 27 coming out sometime soon here. RAVENWOOD, STEPSON OF MYSTERY, the only occult character in the pulps to actually have supernatural powers. Another, newer BAGMAN story to appear in an anthology of all new pulp heroes. And a novel I’ve started, but have no idea where it’s going, that features Elizabethan playwright and spy Christopher Marlowe coming back to earth as a modern demon hunter.
But, I have to say now, as of this second, I just decided I’m going to do another Dan Fowler. How many opportunities am I going to get in this life to write G-Man stories? Which I think kind of brings us back again to this whole pulp revolution. I love this stuff!
AP: What do you think are your strengths as a writer and what are your weaknesses?
BCB:I think one of my best strengths is visualization—at least that’s what I’ve been told. Being a visual thinker, it seems, makes it easier for the writer to pass that picture along to the reader. I’m pretty good with dialogue, and I’m also pretty big on history. Put it this way, I actually enjoy doing research.
As far as what I’m not good at? I think plotting might be my weakest point. I like having a general idea of where the story’s going, but I hate writing outlines. Sometimes I finish an outline and there’s a part of my brain that says “Why write the story? You already know what’s going to happen?” Then again, Dashiell Hammet thought plotting was his big weakness, and it didn’t stop him from defining a whole new genre.
AP: Hobbies? Other Interests?
BCB: I like baseball, anybody that reads The Bagman book ought to figure that out. I have to admit I really do spend a lot of my spare time reading. Writing is such an imperfect art form, in that it’s never perfect, and I like to see how other people pull it off. I also ride a bike. I don’t drive. My wife and I buy and sell vintage goods so I always like looking at old stuff. Of course, there’s the whole musician thing, and music is like food: you got to try all kinds. Anybody that knows me also knows I’m a bit of a political activist; I really do hate injustice.
AP: Here’s your chance to give somebody a shoutout or plug something. Go.
BCB: I’ve got a story you can read for free up at SFReader.com, on their annual short story contest page, “How Pappy Got Five Acres Back and Calvin Stayed on the Farm.” It’s got monsters. And you need to check out Andrew Salmon’s The Light of Men. Not your average pulp novel.
AP: What’s a typical Day In The Life Of B.C. Bell like?
BCB: Oh, I wake up. Have a Pop-Tart. Go back to bed—wait, I think that was an episode of Lifestyles of the Poor and Decrepit…
AP: What else should we know about B.C. Bell?
BCB: I think we should just go right back to “he’s a bundle of contradictions.” Yeah, I may be conflicted, but I’m never boring.
JOHN MORGAN NEAL
Co creator/writer of AYM GERONIMO AND THE POST MODERN PIONEERS
All concepts and artwork is copyright John Morgan Neal and Todd Fox.
AP: Before we find out who Aym Geronimo is, tell us who John Morgan Neal is.
JMN: John Morgan Neal is a Texan Scot/Cherokee who grew up in the county seat of Grayson County on the edge of the Red River and who has always dreamed about being a storyteller such as the ones that entertained me in my youth in vibrant four colors and on yellowed paged paperbacks. I’m also a bit of a crusty ol’ kook as the regulars over at the Dixonverse, the official message board of Chuck Dixon where I help moderate can attest.
AP: Now, describe Aym Geronimo as a character. Who is she? Where’d the idea come from? What influenced you?
JMN: Aym Geronimo is a quintessential adventurer. She doesn’t do what she does as a job. She isn’t a spy or Tomb Raider or any other occupation that itself brings her to adventure. She herself seeks it out in various ways. Her motivations are to help people and investigate strange things and to basically find things out. And this leads to all sorts of danger. Which she enjoys. It’s why someone with Aym’s abilities doesn’t stay in a lab. She would wither and die there.
The idea came from Doc Savage of course. By way of Buckaroo Banzai. The idea was originally to try and get the license to do Buckaroo after a group of other creators and myself had tried to do the same with the Evil Dead property. But soon it became obvious we should just do our own. So start with the original Doc Savage, toss in some Jonny Quest, Challengers of the Unknown and Fantastic Four and shake well. And tons of other influences as well to be sure. Aym comes from a rich and full pedigree.
AP: Now, although there are a few, there are not a tremendous amount of female lead characters in the pulp genre, particularly in the hero-leader mold you’ve cast Aym in. Tell us how you came to create the character as female.
JMN: To be utterly honest. It came from the name. I wanted a name like Savage and Banzai and we knew we were going with the American Southwest. So I came up with Geronimo and thought about what would work with that and came up with the slightly altered and misspelled short name for Amethyst and came up with Aym. Which for the readers of this interview’s sake is pronounced aim. So Aim Geronimo. Or Aym Geronimo. And it had to be a woman. Very quickly Aym herself started to take shape and form.
AP: Aym has her own cast of characters all around her. Tell us about the Post Modern Pioneers.
JMN: The PostModern Pioneers are Aym’s fellow adventurers, compatriots, allies, and pals that operate with her out of the Wonder Wall, which is located in a wall of the Grand Canyon near the Havasupi reservation. They are all experts and specialists in their respective fields except for one. And he is just Odd. Otis Delacroix to be exact. He has been an adventurer for many years prior to Aym and is her mentor now. He is a mysterious figure of advanced age and copious skills and knowledge that even Aym doesn’t know the full story about. We also have Bird the pilot, driver and mechanic. He had served in the military with Aym’s father and sort of looks out for her as his proxy. His real name is Charlton Portamayne and he tends to try and serve as the voice for reason in Aym’s ear. Which usually is deaf. Esmeralda Kausoulos is a former tomb raiding archeologist and geologist who Aym has given a new lease on life due to Aym’s loyalty to her as her former instructor. Pebbles tends to be saucy and sassy and sexy despite her more mature years starting to show. Danielle Roh, or Granny tinkers in her ‘Kitchen’ in the Wonder Wall as the resident technical and computer genius. She is by far the youngest of the PMP as she is barely out of her teens. She tends to be sardonic sometimes and can be distracted by her many youthful interests but is supremely capable and loyal. Erica ‘Flipper’ Ra is Aym’s best friend and a denizen of the Ocean since she was a little girl and first saw it. It has been a hopeless cause to get her out of it very long since then. Flipper is the provider of boats and diving equipment and information on the watery depths of the planet due to her talents as an Oceanographer. And finally last but not least is Aym’s big brother Granite. Going by his spiritual name of Wind. Aym serves as the expert on Legend Lore and the more esoteric non scientific side of things, many times in opposition to Aym’s point of view. Wind serves as Aym’s conscious and connection to her people. Wind also is an expert tracker and hunter.
AP: You’re working on a major project now concerning Aym and her crew, a story collection. Can you let us in on that?
JMN: That would be Aym Geronimo and the PostModern Pioneers: Tall Tales. It is a collection of prose short stories from various writers who I invited and they knocked it out of the park. The book is currently in the last stages of editing and will then go to the design stage and hopefully will be ready to debut very soon. I am very excited about this book.
(JMN also had his editor on this project, Sarah Beach comment on this question as follows) John asked me (Sarah Beach) as editor of the prose project to comment about this. Since he and Todd had hit some delays in getting a new graphic novel version of Aym and her team into print, John wanted to keep Aym in front of the audience. So some time ago he approached me about writing a prose story using the characters. He said he’d asked a number of other friends to do one as well. He gave us free rein, to use whichever characters we wanted and any type of story. Sometime later, I got involved as editor, proofreading the stories as they came in and doing a little bit of editing. It’s been a lot of fun, because there’s quite a variety of stories in the collection: character pieces, action adventures, mysteries and even a dash of some comedy. And yet, they are all credibly stories of Aym and the PostModern Pioneers. It’s a credit to John in the creation of the characters and the strength of Todd’s artwork that has given them real shape, that so many different writers have caught the nature of them.
AP: Your characters in Aym run pretty much the ethnic gamut. Was that because the characters just developed that way or was there a greater purpose?
JMN: No grand design really. Only that I knew she would have a team and that I wanted to avoid them all being WASP males. Other than that they pretty much came organically without much prior thought. Some of it came from mental casting. Like Bird is a combo of Yaphet Kotto and Morgan Freeman. And I knew I wanted Danille to be a cute little Asian college age girl and I wanted the Archeologist to be from Greece. And Wind had to be Apache like his sister. So that leaves Odd. Who’s just a typical old man. Or is he?
AP: What is in the future for Aym? More comics or other mediums? And as far as stories, anywhere you’re going to take her that we’d like to know about, any interesting locales or situations awaiting Aym that you can share?
JMN: Todd Fox and I are working on 12 page comic story for a special project I can’t mention yet and then we will get back to work on the epic Aym tale “The Devil’s Cauldron” which will be a huge comic volume. Or graphic novel as they are called. We also have wanted to do something online with her and I imagine I will be revisiting the prose world with her. As for locales and situations. There could be a certain large footed mammal missing link in her life and a trip to the ‘Ring of Fire’ in the Pacific to stop a cataclysm. And a trip to Russia to track down what might be a Werewolf. I think that’s good enough to whet the appetite for now.
AP: Do you have any other projects that would interest the pulp realm?
JMN: I have a western called Death and Texas that concerns a group of various folks who for one reason or another have “gone to Texas’ either to run from something or run to something. Primary among them is the Chinese American gunslinger named Ran Wu, dubbed The Yellow Devil by the Dime Novels. I also soon will have with my English partner from across the Pond a little number called Them: Atomic Age Heroes. Which is set in the 50’s and concerns the mutinous crew of various aliens on a flying saucer that attempts to save the Earth from their despotic masters.
AP: Thanks for your time and we can’t wait for the further adventures of Aym Geronimo and her Post Modern Pioneers. Any final thoughts?
JMN: Long Live All Pulp. And Aym for Adventure!
To find Aym Geronimo on the web, check out www,aymgeronimo.com And on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Aym-Geronimo-and-the-Post-Modern-Pioneers/105564933516
AP: For folks who might want to find out more about you or your works, where should they go?
MOONSTONE MONDAY INTERVIEW
MICHAEL METCALF
Artist on BLACK BAT and DEATH ANGEL
AP: Michael, welcome to All Pulp’s first ever Moonstone Monday! Before we jump right into the excellent work you’re doing at Moonstone, give us some background on you and what work you’ve done up until now.
MICHAEL METCALF: Glad to be here. Moonstone Monday is one of my favorite days! I’ve been drawing for as long as I can remember. Before I became a part of these Moonstone projects, I worked on various children’s graphic novels such as Timothy and the Transgalactic Towel and The Secrets of the Seasons: Gimoles. Before those I worked on a strange mix of pinups, covers, one panel cartoons, catalog illustrations, and what I like to call “not-yet-published” comics.
AP: You’re working with writer Mike Bullock on two characters involved in Moonstone’s RETURN OF THE ORIGINALS. One is an original character, Death Angel. Having looked at some of the images of this character, it’s clearly a frightening avenger type. Tell us something about the Death Angel and give us some insight into what goes into your art on this particular concept.
MM: Yeah, Death Angel is a dark, vengeful character born out of a tortured, abused childhood. The Death Angel costume is all black with a white skull mask and large tattered wings so there is a terrific opportunity to play with heavy shadows and the contrast of light and dark areas in the comic panels. An important part of the costume is the pulsing light and sound devices concealed in both gloves. These devices induce disorientation and hallucinations in Death Angel’s foes so I like to use alot of swirling flowing lines and trippy distorted images during the fight scenes.
AP: Switching gears, but only slightly, you’re also bringing a pulp icon to life on the comic page, The Black Bat, as written also by Mike Bullock. Pulp fans know how the Black Bat is and he’s also a dark avenger night type of hero, but the styles seem different from your BLACK BAT to your DEATH ANGEL. Can you point out the differences and explain why you’ve sort of approached each of these from different angles artistically?
MM: I think that both of these characters are psychologically damaged. They both want to fight evil, and they are doing it in a very violent way that is outside of the normal limits of the law. The Black Bat once worked within the legal system and knows how the system works. Readers will notice that the Black Bat’s mind is now fractured into different personalities, the defender, prosecutor, judge and executioner, and it’s these four distinct voices that determine how he deals with the bad guys. The Black Bat has heightened senses and a huge need for justice. On the other hand, Death Angel’s roots are in twisted religion and a childhood of horrifying abuse. The result is a tortured soul seeking to punish the wicked. I think Death Angel is particularly obsessed with avenging crimes against women and children. Death Angel doesn’t have any superhuman abilities, just deep psychological scars, some powerful but horribly skewed religious convictions and a freaky costume armed with mind warping devices.
AP: With the Black Bat, you’re treading on what some would consider sacred ground. The costume the Bat wears in your work is slightly different from what most pulp aficionados would say he originally wore. Can you explain some of the changes and your reasons for them as well as wade in on the discussion of whether or not original characters should be changed/updated for modern readers or left as they were originally conceived?
MM: Mike B and I love the Black Bat, so hopefully we won’t be spoiling anyone’s enjoyment by making some changes. Mike B is the driving force here and he has a great deal of respect for the source materials. With the Black Bat making his way back into the visually driven comic format, I think it’s a great opportunity to add some new details and show him off to a whole new fan base while hopefully providing something new and enjoyable to the existing fans. Readers will find that he now sports a cowl similar to the traditional one but with no eye holes. His boots, gloves and other costume parts are all combat-durable and quite scarred because he has a tendency to brawl and break through windows, walls or crooks that get in his way. I’d say we approached the creation of the first issue from the point of view that “wow! this is what we’d like to see the Black Bat doing, and this is what he might wear to scare that crap out of some thugs before he beats them to a pulp.”
AP: What appeals to you about working with pulp characters in a comics medium?
MM: I think pulp fiction and comics are branches of the same family. It’s always a blast to draw dynamic characters having sensational adventures so I guess that’s what appealed to me.
AP: Any pulp characters you’d like to try your hand at, either those currently being played with at Moonstone or otherwise?
MM: The Shadow and Doc Savage spring to mind and there are many, many others that would be a hoot to draw.
AP: Do you have anything else in the works now, either within Moonstone or beyond?
MM: Mike and I just finished separate Black Bat and Death Angel pulp tales for the widevision books. These feature a different size/shape format and some very moody art. I’m working on the next ish of BLACK BAT DOUBLE SHOT and we have a four issue mini series called Lions Tigers and Bears Volume Three that is awaiting a print date and volume IV waiting in the wings. As far as other projects, I’m illustrating a mystery novel and a mini-series that I’m dying to talk about but I can’t yet! Hopefully I’ll chat with you again soon about the other stuff.
AP: Michael, your time and work is really appreciated!
MM: Hope you enjoy the BLACK BAT DOUBLE SHOT!
MOONSTONE MONDAY INTERVIEW
Martin Powell-Writer of Ki-Gor and The Spider for Moonstone’s RETURN OF THE ORIGINALS
AP: Martin, thanks for sitting down with All Pulp again so soon (For Martin’s first interview with All Pulp, actually All Pulp’s debut interview, click on the INTERVIEWS page on this site). Aside from the Halloween Legion, you mentioned other projects you’re working on. Can you tell us something about the RETURN OF THE ORIGINALS from Moonstone and your part in that?
POWELL: THE RETURN OF THE ORIGINALS is a pulp-packed event coming soon from Moonstone, resurrecting many of the classic pulp characters of the 1930s in both comics and pulp fiction form. It’s going to be really cool. I’m writing THE SPIDER’s new comic book series and prose adventures, as well as KI-GOR THE JUNGLE LORD.
AP: Wow, not only one but two classic characters. Of the two, Ki-Gor is probably the least familiar to most people. He has been identified as a ‘Tarzan clone’ by some. Is this a true description? If not, tell us about him? What if anything makes him stand out from the more famous Lord of the Jungle?
POWELL: He isn’t as well known today, and I’m going to try to fix that. There’s no doubt that Ki-Gor was originally created as a Tarzan imitator, and, in fact, the earliest Ki-Gor novels are very similar to the Tarzan movies of that same period, starring Johnny Weissmuller and Maureen O’Sullivan. But Ki-Gor quickly developed his own unique personality as the orphaned child of a missionary, rescued and adopted by a powerful jungle shaman. Ki-Gor appeared as the lead feature in Fiction House’s Jungle Stories magazine, from 1938 all the way through to 1954, for a total of fifty-nine adventure novels, which significantly outnumbers Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan novels.
The most striking differences between Ki-Gor and Tarzan are that Ki-Gor’s stories are much, much weirder and they are far more sensually charged. Ki-Gor and Helene, his red-haired mate, have a very intimate relationship—and it shows in the stories, quite unlike Tarzan and Jane. Their adventures abound with deep passion, marauding prehistoric monsters, and terrifying black magic, with a touch of science fiction thrown in, too. It’s almost as if the concepts of Burroughs and Robert E. Howard came together in a macabre mix. Having said all that, I am a devoted Tarzan fan, by the way, and as such I’m working hard to make Ki-Gor very different from him.
AP: The concept of a ‘Jungle Lord’ doesn’t really fit well in the modern world where you can look at any point on the globe from a home computer. As the writer, how do you intend to make Ki-Gor resonate with a modern audience? What will you bring to the character that maybe hasn’t been there before?
POWELL: Well, I somewhat disagree with the notion that our “modern world” no longer offers any mystery or adventure. There are vast jungles in Africa and South America which have never been explored by so-called civilized humans. A lot of the planet is still completely unmapped and unknown, even in the 21st century. Within just the past couple years a vast “lost world” was discovered in Indonesia containing over 200 unknown species of animals, include a bizarre tree-climbing kangaroo. Our planet still has her secrets.
Ki-Gor’s tales occur in the late 1930s, when Africa was even more mysterious than it is today. Mind you, this isn’t the same place as described in our geography books. It’s a strange world of terrible beauty and nature run amok, insidiously inhabited by witch doctors, cryptic creatures, missing links, and lost alien cities. Ki-Gor’s personality and, especially, his relationship with Helene will continue to evolve in my stories. This is not only a series of high adventure, it’s also an epic love story, which I’m enjoying very much.
AP: What, if any, concepts are you bringing forward from the original Ki-Gor tales? Any supporting cast, recurring themes, etc.?
POWELL: Helene Vaughn, from the original pulps, plays a very important role in this series. We sort of see the Jungle Lord, and his world, through her eyes. She is an extraordinary woman from civilization who has become Ki-Gor’s moral conscience and his mate. I’m also retaining N’kuni the Pygmy Warrior, and bringing in a lot of my own characters and concepts, too. My artist partner in this is Tom Floyd, who recently received the prestigious Golden Lion Award from the Edgar Rice Burroughs Bibliophiles. Past recipients of the award have been folks like, Harlan Ellison, Johnny Weissmuller, and Frank Frazetta, so I’m really lucky to have Tom. It’s been great fun working with him on this grand, sweeping jungle adventure.
AP: Let’s go to your other character. To do that we go from the little known (Ki-Gor) to the pulp icon (The Spider). For many, writing the further adventures of Richard Wentworth would be a dream job. Was it that way for you and what appeals to you about the Spider as a writer?
POWELL: Oh, absolutely. I love the Spider. I’ve been a Spider fan since I was a teenager. It is a dream job. I’ve never thought of it as anything less, and I’m very grateful that Moonstone chose me to write this new series.
Richard Wentworth, the Spider’s alter-ego (or…is it the other way around?), is a fascinating character. Arguably, he’s the most three-dimensional, fully realized personality of the pulps. I certainly consider him the most interesting of all the other contemporary pulp heroes. Those who superficially think of him merely as a killing machine, are missing the point of the Spider, in my opinion. I’m striving to remain as close to Norvell Page’s creation as possible by portraying Wentworth as highly intelligent, possessing lightning-fast deductive skills, and as a brilliantly commanding strategist. He also possesses nearly superhuman physical prowess, extraordinary endurance, and an incredible tolerance to pain. His fearsome reputation as the “Master of Men” is fully warranted, and yet he is also sorely afflicted with a messiah-complex. The Spider is wanted by the Law and the criminal Underworld alike, with most people believing that he is out of control and murderously insane. Privately, Wentworth himself is haunted by this terrifying possibility.
AP: What about the Spider will ring true with a modern crowd? Is it really just the violent way in which Wentworth handles his business or is there more to it?
POWELL: There is much more to the Spider than merely his body-count Alone among the pulp heroes on his day, the readers were privy to the Spider’s inner thoughts, his crazed obsessions, his astonishing genius, and his tormented and dreadful self-doubts. I will be preserving this and also adding to the concept considerably.
Ultimately, the Spider is more terrible than the fiends he fights. In Wentworth’s nightmarish world, New York City teeters forever upon the brink of oblivion. It’s 911 every day. He boldly faces hordes of monstrous madmen with a venomous laugh and a thunderous brace of blasting automatics. No villain, no matter how diabolical, has ever defeated the Master of Men. He has become a monster in order to vanquish the devils that would destroy us. It is a transformation that will demand a terrible price, as we shall see, by the climax of my first year’s storyline.
AP: Writing pulp prose is one thing, but crafting a script to bring any pulp character to life in comic form is a tricky proposition, as we’ve seen from other companies in recent months. Tell us how you feel about the work you’ve done so far on both characters, how you feel they translate to the comic page and how telling these stories in this form brings anything different to them?
POWELL: I’ve been doing this sort of thing a long time, almost twenty-five years. Whether writing prose, or comic scripts, the classic concepts themselves must be preserved and maintained. My feeling is that the fans all want these iconic characters to be the same as from the source material. The readers are expecting to find themselves in a familiar world once they open these books. Anything less is disappointing and disrespectful. Visualize, for example, someone who has obtained, say, a Superman license, then hires a writer who immediately proceeds to change the costume, the powers, and the origin into something utterly unrecognizable. I’ll never understand that kind of thinking. There is nothing that needs to be fixed, rebooted, or re-imagined about the Spider. He is what he is, and that’s more than enough for his fans. And for me.
AP: The Spider has companions and recurring characters as well as techniques that are almost as recognizable as he is to pulpdom? What bits from the Spider’s original run are making it into your version?
POWELL: I’m using all of it. Nita Van Sloan, Ram Singh, Jackson, Commissioner Kirkpatrick, Professor Brownlee, and even a couple classic Spider villains—they will all be returning in my series. I’m focusing on Nita especially. As the only woman to share the Spider’s darkest secrets, her role, fighting alongside with him amid all this chaos and madness, fascinates me. There was no other romantic couple in the pulps quite like Wentworth and Nita. I will be delving deeper into their bizarre relationship with each story.
AP: What about pressure? Do you feel any obligations to handle an iconic character like The Spider in any certain way? Any fears or misgivings about taking on such a task?
POWELL: There’s always pressure, of course, and a certain amount of stress with any creative endeavor. I do feel a serious obligation to properly present an authentic version of the Spider. That is of the upmost importance to me as a writer and as a fellow Spider fan.
AP: Pulp is on an upswing, according to most of us in the pulp community. Obviously, this project from Moonstone is a major sign of that. Why should people, both pulp nuts and pulp newbies, pick up your books, or any of the RETURN titles?
POWELL: Well, the main reason I would want to buy them is because both the Spider and Ki-Gor are being illustrated by two very fine artists. Tom Floyd, as I’ve already said, is rendering KI-GOR THE JUNGLE LORD, and the legendary Pablo Marcos—and a long-time favorite of mine—is drawing THE SPIDER. Both series look spectacular.
AP: Any hints of future developments for Ki-Gor or the Spider?
POWELL: Tom and I will be re-visiting Ki-Gor’s origin in an upcoming story, and the conclusion of my first year’s worth of Spider adventures will team him, for the very first time, with another classic pulp hero—G-8 and his Battle Aces. That’s just the beginning, but the rest are secret. I have a lot of plans for the Spider.
AP: It’s been great, Martin! Thanks again!
POWELL: Not at all. I’m always happy to discuss the pulps. Thank you.
MOONSTONE MONDAY INTERVIEW
Mike Bullock-writer of Black Bat
for Moonstone’s RETURN OF THE ORIGINALS
AP: Mike, welcome to ALL PULP and thanks for taking time to answer a few questions. First, for those who don’t know your background, tell us about Mike Bullock.
MB: I’ve been writing since I was four years old, unprofessionally that is. I learned to read with Batman comics when I was three and always dreamed of a day when I could tell stories in comic books. When I was a teenager, I joined my first band as a singer/lyricist and quickly discovered I had a talent for poetry. I spent the next decade or so as a professional musician and when the day came to call it quits, I decided it was time to get serious about writing. A year later I was working for Broken Frontier and Panzer, a music magazine, writing articles and reviews. Soon thereafter, I landed my first comic work at Image and then took over writing The Phantom for Moonstone. After that, I woke up this morning and found this interview waiting for me. Sorry I’m late.
AP: You play a major role in Moonstone’s latest project, RETURN OF THE ORIGINALS, which focuses on new comic stories featuring classic pulp characters. Can you give us any details on this project as a whole and specifically why you are glad to be a part of it?
MB: Back in 2007 Moonstone’s El Jeffe, Joe Gentile and I were tossing ideas back and forth and I suggested making a fictional city where we could tell stories featuring many of Moonstone’s characters like Domino Lady, Spider, Black Shirt and some new characters like Death Angel and one Joe had dreamed up whose name escapes me at the moment. We decided to do a team book to launch this idea, but Joe wasn’t sure that was the right time to push it, since they had the Twilight War series amping up. We continued discussing the idea and it soon evolved into a pulp city/universe, where we’d bring back a lot of original pulp characters and put them into a cohesive environment. It would also allow us a vehicle to introduce new characters that were exclusively under the Moonstone banner.
Well, time went on and one day Joe emailed me and said he thought it was time to get the ball rolling on this idea. Pretty soon he handed me a list of characters and asked which one I’d like to pen. I wrote back and told him Black Bat, Gladiator, Golden Amazon and I tossed in Captain Future and Sign of the Crimson Dagger, as well as Death Angel. Joe loved the enthusiasm but realized that was too much for one writer to tackle all at once, especially since we were still going to co-write the team book and we settled on Black Bat, Death Angel, Gladiator and Captain Future. I was thrilled to say the least, especially with Black Bat and Captain Future. I’ve always held a love for characters like Black Bat, Batman and Moon Knight and this was a chance to guide the adventures of the one who started it all.
The first prose book I ever read was the original Star Wars novelization. When I was done, I loved it so much I went to the book store looking for more and stumbled on a series about a Virginian who suddenly found himself on Mars fighting giant green men to save the most beautiful woman in the universe. Right then and there, I discovered the magic that is pulp fiction. I devoured every one of those John Carter books in less than a month and then branched out to Conan, Carson of Venus, etc. With that in mind, and my lifelong love of comic books, it’s no wonder that writing pulp comic books is a dream come true.
AP: One of the characters you’re tackling for RETURN is one that is known to most pulp fans, The Black Bat. Briefly, acquaint those who might not be so familiar about whom the Black Bat was in his original appearances. Also, weren’t there two pulp Black Bats? If so, which one are you writing?
MB: Anthony Quinn was a man on a mission, driven to make sure justice was done in the courtroom. However, just as often happens today, criminals slipped through the loopholes of our judicial system on technicalities time and time again, which brought with it a level of frustration that only motivated Quinn further. One day, in an attempt to destroy evidence, a mobster hit Quinn in the face with acid, blinding him and leaving horrific scarring around his eyes. Quinn’s career as a DA was over, and for a brief time, so was his life, as far as he was concerned. However, as the saying goes, ‘you can’t keep a good man down’ and Quinn was certainly a good man. As he sat in his parlor one night, contemplating his new found course of action, the smell of beautiful perfume wafted into the room. A gentle voice told Quinn of a secret operation that would restore his sight. Quinn and his right-hand man, Silk Kirby, drove out to the countryside where a doctor transplanted the eyes of a dead police officer into Quinn’s head, returning his eyesight. However, Quinn had already heightened his other senses and could now effectively see in the dark, as well as hear in a manner akin to bats, where minute air pressure changes alerted him to motion in his surroundings.
Quinn took up the mantle of Black Bat, swearing to fight evil men with their own weapon: treachery, intimidation and terror. There were indeed two Black Bats, one a private investigator in search of the unknown and another, more successful version, which I’ve just detailed. Additionally, there were several other ‘Bat’ characters in the pulps as well as DC comics’ most famous one, Batman.
AP: As most pulp characters do, The Black Bat has a cast of helpers, a team of sorts, and a cast of recurring characters and even themes. What of these trappings are you bringing into your version of this masked avenger?
MB: We see Carol Baldwin in the first issue, Silk Kirby appears in #2 and Butch O’Leary enters in #4. Additionally, a new member of his inner circle, Langston Walker will join the ranks soon.
AP: There’s always a concern that a writer will ‘change’ an established character if he takes over the writing chores. What changes if any are you making in the Black Bat? Anything about his history or changes maybe in storytelling, tone, etc?
MB: I’m not sure what I’m doing necessarily falls under the heading of change, but more of deeper exploration of what came before. I did a lot of research on the impact of traumatic events, such as being hit with a face full of acid, and what it does to the human psyche and introduced my findings to the lore. I’ve also expounded on the heightened senses in a more realistic manner than what others did, (re: Marvel Comics’ Daredevil). Beyond that, the only real updates have been to the costume and storytelling style. On the costume front, I think artist Michael Metcalf has done a wonderful job bringing the Black Bat’s wardrobe into the 21st century. Hopefully, your readers agree.
AP: One aspect of your Black Bat that stands out is his deadly dedication to his mission. He intends to see justice done and sometimes that’s not so pretty. This is a trait, in my opinion, that he had even in his original stories, but it’s also a hot button with critics who claim that such violence is gratuitous, that it gives readers the wrong ideas about how to handle things. How would you handle such criticism if you received it for your Black Bat?
MB: I’ve already had such criticism and all I can say to the critics is wait and see. At first glance some of the ultra-violence in the first issue might seem gratuitous, but once a bigger picture unfolds, there’ll be more to the story than just a few two-dimensional thugs getting whacked.
AP: Let’s talk about time period. What era does your Black Bat take place in and why that particular period?
MB: We’ve intentionally left the time period for most of the Return line vague. While the Battle For LA story by pulp master C.J. Henderson obviously nails it down to the WWII era, this is an alternate earth where these tales take place, so you may see things in the books that defy chronological structures as we know them. Expect the unexpected, especially in the pages of Aaron Shaps’ Phantom Detective and the aforementioned team book Joe Gentile and I are doing.
AP: There seems to be two camps of pulp writers as well as pulp fans. Some want writers who take over established characters to stick right to the model already established, same costume, same friends, etc. Others allow that the modern writer may bring something different to the table and are more tolerant of change? Where do you fall as a writer and as a fan?
MB: I love new. No one will ever write stories exactly like the original authors and as a reader I’d rather not see someone try because they’ll ultimately fail. Instead, I think it’s the duty of writers to build on what came before. If you’re a professional writer and you have nothing new to say, your career will last as long as a mobster in Black Bat’s world. A lot has changed in our collective consciousness since these tales were first crafted; including the way we as a society look at storytelling. So, I’m excited to read Martin Powell’s new Spider tales, thrilled about what Aaron is doing in Phantom Detective and can’t wait to read Secret Agent X, Rocketman and the litany of other stories like I.V. Frost, Ki-Gor, G8 and more. I handed the reins of Gladiator over to Josh Aitken and can’t wait to see what he does with earth’s mightiest mortal, also.
While I get the desire by purists to never have anything change, for those who subscribe to that mindset, there’s a litany of existing work to read. If nothing was to change, why bother doing anything new? On the flipside, if you’re going to do something new, to quote the cliché ‘Go big or go home’, which is a mantra I think a lot of Return writers are embracing.
AP: Depending on whom you talk to or what you read, The Black Bat had quite an influence on several modern day characters and concepts. Does that fact put you under any particular pressure to one up the original? What are your intentions with your Black Bat, to tell a great story or is there more?
MB: I don’t see any pressure from that angle; I do feel a pressure to live up to a great character and series of existing stories, just as I did when I took over the Phantom. Lee Falk was a master of speculative fiction and to walk in his shoes was quite intimidating at first, however I soon was able to spread my wings and fly with his great creation. I think with Black Bat, I’m revisiting those early Phantom days to some extent. I’ll make some mistakes, just as I did with The Ghost Who Walks, but hopefully the enjoyable parts will outweigh everything else. In the end, I just want to tell stories that I’d enjoy reading. Hopefully, they’ll be great stories and remembered as such, but I’m simply praying God allows me to do the best job humanly possible. I think if I do that and the book reaches a wide enough audience, it’ll all work out in the end.
AP: Other than breathing life back into a pulp icon, do you have anything else in the works that would make pulp fans sit on the edge of their seats?
MB: Well, Death Angel debuted in Phantom Doubleshot #1 last year and garnered some real excitement from readers. I’m hoping the character’s further appearances in Black Bat Doubleshot will build on that until ‘Angel can survive as the headliner.
Captain Future is another pulp character I’m working with that has me really excited. The idea that this character is so overlooked today boggles my mind. For those who aren’t aware, the good Captain was one of the originators of the space opera sub genre, popularized originally by Flash Gordon and later by Star Wars. Some describe Cap as Doc Savage in space, which is more than enough to get me jazzed. The original stores, penned by Edmond Hamilton, have all the excitement found in Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter stories and they harken back to a time when our society was more innocent and captivated with imagination. Look for the first Captain Future tale in the Moonstone Pulp Fiction magazine’s first issue.
Outside the pulp arena, I’m writing a new “jungle girl” book called Savage Beauty which takes the sensibilities of my Phantom stories and infuses them into an old genre desperately in need of modernization. Savage Beauty #1 hits shelves in early 2011.
AP: Mike, thanks a lot for taking the time to spend Moonstone Monday with ALL PULP!
MB: Thanks for the interview, Tommy, it’s greatly appreciated.
MOONSTONE MONDAY INTERVIEW
Ron Fortier-writer of I.V FROST
for Moonstone’s RETURN OF THE ORIGINALS
AP: Ron, you’ve made a name for yourself in comics and recently in pulps. Now the two fields are coming together for you with your work for Moonstone. Let us in on the project overall that you’re a part of and how it came about.
RF: Well, I’m a small (note very, very small) part of Moonstone’s new pulp inspired comic book line, Return of the Originals spearheaded by Managing Editor Joe Gentile with able assistance from Mike Bullock and Tim Lasiuta. For the past several years Moonstone Books has been creating a really substantial presence in the pulp community with their excellent prose anthologies featuring such characters as the Spider, the Avenger and from the comic ranks, the Phantom. With this next step into pulp comics, Joe set about recruiting those writers who had contributed to the prose books and I am happily one of those.
AP: With the Pulp resurgence going as it is, fans are aware of Doc Savage, the Shadow, and even some of the lesser known names like the Black Bat and The Phantom Detective. But you’re putting your talents to a hero only die hard pulp fans may know. Just what is the story behind I.V. Frost? What’s his history?
RH: Honestly, the more obscure, the better where I’m concerned. These lesser known heroes are real gems. I.V. Frost was invented for Clues Detective Stories by veteran pulp writer Donald Wandrai. Between Sept. 1934 and Sept. 1937, Wandrai wrote a total of eighteen stories starring this scientific criminologist. Frost is best described as a cross between Sherlock Holmes and the two-fisted private eye Sam Spade. A genius who puts his intellect to use solving bizarre crimes, he is not above getting his hands dirty to bring the bad guys to justice. Frost is aided by a platinum blond beauty named Jean Moray who is not only sexy and street smart, but also a scientist with a college degree. They make a fantastic crime solving team.
AP: You’re known for your desire to stay as true to the history of the public domain characters you write as you can, but you are obviously a modern era writer. What do you think you bring to this idea that will make Frost appealing to readers who pick it up today?
RF: After writing comics for thirty years, I’d like to think I’ve learned what a graphic story requires to make it both interesting and fun for the average comic reader. Although a lot of what happens in Frost’s adventures is indeed cerebral, I’m well aware no one wants to read a comic made up mostly of the hero locked in his lab simply staring off into space thinking. Thus far all of my scripts have made a concentrated effort to get Frost out of his lab and out where the action is. As long as I remember to the keep the fists and bullets flying, hopefully no one will get bored with him.
AP: There are just some ideas from pulp that may not translate well from the written word to the comic panel. What do you think there is about Frost that makes comics a good medium for him to return in?
RF: One of the things I know for a fact is Sherlock Holmes’ lasting personality was never really about how he solved any of his cases, but what a truly unique and colorful personality he was given by Arthur Conan Doyle. Both I.V. Frost and the delectable Miss Moray are such original, different characters. I’m using this as a base line and then writing exotic, fantastic crimes to get them involved with. That combination of bizarre cases and Frost’s eclectic persona will hopefully be very appealing to comic readers. There really aren’t any other pulp heroes quite like him.
AP: A lot of classic characters come with their own trademarks, a team of supporters, certain gadgets they always use, etc? Does I. V. Frost have any of this baggage and if he does, what of it are you bringing into your stories?
RF: Well, I’ve already spoken quite a bit of Jean Moray. There were a few police detectives who worked with Frost and I will be incorporating one or two of these, plus others of my own invention. As for gadgets and gizmos, Frost’s own brownstone in New York City is filled with all manner of recording devices, electric surveillance equipment etc. It is practically a fortress. There is also his personal laboratory where he can whip up all manner of fiendish cocktails and contraptions to aid him in cracking a case, such as his bullet-proof plastic suit. Many of these I’ve lifted right out of the original stories.
AP: Those of us that are pulp fans as well as pulp writers and artists see a major push in not only the creation of new pulp characters, but also the revitalization of older characters. A question to ask, though, is why? Why do you think now is the time for a character like Frost to return to the public scene? Why do you think there’s a reading public interested in him and his fellow pulp characters?
RF: I’ve been thinking about this on and off for the past several years, watching this Renaissance of Pulps if you will, and trying to fathom its meaning. I may be all wet, but I just cannot accept that it is mere coincidence that the pulps were born during the Great Depression and now, when our country is once again undergoing economic woes, readers find themselves hungry for escapist entertainment to help them forger their troubles, if even for a few hours or minutes even. Pulp literature is a purer form of action adventure than what evolved over the past thirty years in this country. From the late sixties to the present, we’ve been given “realistic” anti-heroes who in the end are often indistinguishable from the villains they battle. I hate the word anti-hero, it’s a joke. The anti-hero is the villain. Always had been. People today are fed up with this narcissistic junk and want real old fashion heroes again and that’s why pulps are making a strong comeback in all mediums. Because the pulps were never afraid to create heroes people could look up to, emulate and find hope in. Pulps have always been a literature of hope.
AP: Any plans for Frost you can let your adoring fans in on ?
RF: Well, so far I’ve turned in one prose story and three comic strips, all of which are being beautifully illustrated by Jake Minor, a super talented artist whose work reminds me of Brian Bolland. Fans are going to love it. As for future plans, only to keep writing more of these as I’ve grown really fond of these characters. Hopefully so will the fans as it will be their vote that determines their future from here on out.
AP: I. V. Frost is not all you have cookin’ on the pulp stove. What else do you have your hands in currently that we can look forward to in the future?
RF: Well, I mentioned some of the prose stuff from Moonstone. I’ve an Avenger story due out in the second volume of that series and a Green Hornet story in the first volume of that set due out any day now. I’ve also written an Athena Voltaire prose story for creator Steve Bryant’s anthology book now in the works. There are several pulp and radio heroes that have never been translated to comics that I’m hoping to develop for various publishers next year. Obviously I’m not at liberty to divulge their names, but I think fans will be pleasantly surprised. I’m also working on my fifth Captain Hazzard novel for Airship 27 Productions and hope to start writing another set of stories for Pro Se Productions featuring another of my characters that’s been sitting on the shelves way too long. I guess you might say I’m kind of busy.
AP: Thanks a lot, Ron!
RF: My pleasure. Thanks for the opportunity.
MARTIN POWELL AND ‘THE HALLOWEEN LEGION’
THE HALLOWEEN LEGION are TM and copyrighted by Martin Powell and Danny Kelly
Longtime author Martin Powell recently sat down with All Pulp contributor Barry Reese to talk about his upcoming book THE HALLOWEEN LEGION. THL will be released in October from Wild Cat Books. All images shown are rough preliminary sketches and are not finished artwork.
BR: Tell us a little bit about The Halloween Legion and how it came about.
POWELL: Be glad to. THE HALLOWEEN LEGION is a concept and group of characters that I originally dreamed up many years ago, way back in the vacuous days of high school. One day, during a mind-numbing semantics class, I started sketching these figures in my notebook: a Skeleton, Witch, Devil, Ghost, and a Black Cat, the iconic archetypes of All Hallows Eve.
I remember getting a mild chill when I first drew them all together, a sort of jolt of anticipation. Suddenly I began imagining a whole series of adventures for the weird little group.
Of course, they’ve been simmering in my subconscious until recently, never quite forgotten, and patiently waiting for their chance to be born. I’m actually very glad that I waited this long. I needed the last couple decades of writing experience to prepare me for their debut. This is a very important, very personal project for me.
I’ve always loved the autumn and Halloween in particular. I wanted to somehow capture that feeling of magic and mystery, the sort of thrill you get as a kid when the falling orange and yellow leaves appear to follow you down the street. It’s too brief a season and I suppose in some crazy way I wanted to have that feeling with me always. THE HALLOWEEN LEGION is the result of that yearning.
BR: You’re collaborating on this project with Danny Kelly — what is he bringing to the table that you think will enhance the experience for readers?
POWELL: I hand-picked Danny from a number of artists that I had to choose from. There is something raw and elemental in his artwork that mixes perfectly with what I had in mind for these characters. I look at Danny’s drawings and I immediately smile. I wanted his sense of energetic, creepy fun.
Although I had lots of suggestions, and directed him a little, Danny essentially designed the visuals of THE HALLOWEEN LEGION himself. The fact that he gives the Ghost such amazing expressions, in spite of the fact that he’s a kid wearing a simple sheet with eye-holes cut out, is phenomenal.
I didn’t want this group to be photo-realistic, and the works of Edward Gorey and Charles Addams were closer to what I had in mind. Danny fits that sort of style perfectly, while also maintaining his own artistic identity.
BR: The promotional artwork by Danny Kelly suggests a somewhat fanciful tone to the book. Is this an all-ages story or something a bit darker?
POWELL: Hmm. It’s tough to describe. Sounds ambitious, I know, but I’ve always wanted THE HALLOWEEN LEGION to appeal to everyone, kid and grown-up alike. I suppose I can safely compare the book to John Bellairs’ eerie mysteries in its tone. I love his scary novellas.
There is a certainly a whimsical side to my story, but it’s pretty dark, too, even terrifying in some places, I hope. Fans of the pulps, Harry Potter, and Baum’s Oz books will probably feel quite at home here, but I like to think that THE HALLOWEEN LEGION is unique and original.
BR: Again, just by looking at the promotional images, it seems like this is perfectly suited to become a continuing series and even has possibilities for multimedia usage. Any plans for any of this?
POWELL: That’s exactly what I’ve always had in mind for them. Although Danny and I are starting THE HALLOWEEN LEGION off with an illustrated novella, we have lots of other plans, too. I’d love to do HL comic books, animation, action figures, lunch boxes, t-shirts, Halloween masks, radio shows, newspaper comic strips, feature films, and even a gentler picture book version for younger kids, too. I’m going to do my best to make all of that happen.
BR: This is your first foray into the Wild Cat Books publishing line. How long have you known publisher Ron Hanna and what led to WCB becoming the home for The Halloween Legion?
POWELL: Actually, I first worked for Wild Cat Books several years ago, co-writing the Captain Hazzard novel, “The Citadel of Fear”, with Ron Fortier. I’d wanted to do something more for quite a long while, but I could never manage to free up enough time in my schedule.
I’m a full-time freelance writer, and in order to make a living at this I need to write constantly. Luckily, my desk is usually happily swamped with contracted projects, but there just never seemed to be time for anything more.
Then, several months ago, Ron Hanna made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. He offered to publish anything I wanted to write. Anything. Anything at all. In over two decades as a professional writer, no one has ever done that for me. I’ve always been lucky enough to get to write for many terrific characters, like Superman, Batman, The Spider, and Sherlock Holmes, but I’ve very rarely ever been given the opportunity to create, and to own, my own characters.
Well, I doubled up on my writing schedule, working twelve hour days and more, including weekends. Fortunately, I hardly ever sleep. After a few months, I’d finally cleared the space necessary to devote to Wild Cat Books. I thought about what I wanted to do for a few weeks. Ron had stressed “anything” I wanted, after all. That’s quite a situation to wrap your mind around.
Then, THE HALLOWEEN LEGION reacquainted themselves to me, from the back corners of my brain. Of course! I thought, with a distinct, rather giddy thrill. It had to be them. Just had to be. They had been waiting so long for me to get my act together. So, I dusted the cobwebs off my little group and contacted Danny Kelly almost immediately. And now here we are.
BR: You’re also busy these days with Moonstone’s Return of the Originals project. Any information you’d like to share on that front?
POWELL: Thanks for mentioning that. I’m the writer on the new comic book series for THE SPIDER, with artist Pablo Marcos, which is a dream come true for me. In addition to the regular comic book series, I’m also writing a semi-regular illustrated SPIDER prose pulp ‘zine, too. I’ve lots of plans for THE SPIDER.
Also, I’m writing KI-GOR THE JUNGLE LORD, in collaboration with artist, Tom Floyd. I should mention that Tom is the recent recipient of the Golden Lion Award from the Edgar Rice Burroughs Bibliophiles, in recognition of his Tarzan and other Burroughs work. Past recipients have been folks like: Hal Foster, Russ Manning, Harlan Ellison, Johnny Weissmuller, Joe Jusko, and Frank Frazetta, so I’m honored to be working with Tom. He’s also my best friend.
BR: For folks who might be interested in learning more about you and your work, where should they go?
POWELL: Well, I post lots of news about my current and upcoming projects on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/martin.powell1). I also keep a blog for those purposes (http://martinpowell221bcom.blogspot.com/). And I have an Amazon Author’s Page, too, which lists many of my current books (http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001JRXRSU). Soon THE HALLOWEEN LEGION will be lurking among them!
MOONSTONE MONDAY FLASHBACK!!
ALL PULP is taking some time to share with you readers, new and old, some of the first interviews done with Moonstone staff, writers, and artists some three months and almost 45,000 individual views ago!! This is in part to remind some of you of these great interviews, to introduce the new pulpsters to these guys, and in all honesty to add these classic interviews to the ALL PULP archives in view of our upcoming site changes!! So, enjoy a blast from the past!!
Ed Catto, Retropeneur, C & A Enterprises, LLC, partnered with Moonstone Books
Savage Beauty will take you on an exciting journey as the Rae sisters discover their purpose in life, even as they make a real difference in the world.
Plus the comic book series intends to make a difference too – each issue will donate a full page to partner causes such as Oxfam, Just A Drop and Invisible Children, among others.
WILL MURRAY-Pulp Legend/Writer/Creator
AP: Will, ALL PULP really appreciates this opportunity to visit with you. Let’s pretend that there are people reading this who know little to nothing about pulps and don’t know who you are. Give us some personal and professional background on Will Murray.
WM: I am this lost soul who stumbled into the world of The Shadow, Doc Savage and the pulps and never found my way back to my True Path. Consequently I am the author of over 50 novels, most featuring the indomitable Remo Williams and Chiun. A smattering star Doc Savage and his merry misfits, The Executioner, and others. Somehow, through diligent research and omnivoracious reading of pulps, I am became an expert on All Things Pulp.
AP: This interview is a part of our MOONSTONE MONDAY. What specifically have you written/are you writing for Moonstone?
WM: I’ve contributed to many of the Moonstone hero anthologies of the last few years. Right now, I’m trying to finish my third Spider prose story, “Clutch of the Blue Reaper,” for Spider Chronicles Vol. 2. It’s my favorite so far, being full of frenetic Norvell Page-style hyper-action in which for a change Nita van Sloan ends up in slammer, charged with being the infamous Spider!
Also on the horizon, I’m pleased that my Green Hornet tale, “The Night Car,” leads off The Green Hornet Chronicles Vol 1. I tried to write it exactly like an episode of the ’66 TV show, and it appears that I pulled it off. What happens when a computer whiz designs a program which will track the Black Beauty back to its lair?
I came up with a really wild premise for my contribution to Avenger Chronicles Vol. 2. Originally, the character of Smitty was a Black guy. What if, I thought, a Black Smitty shows up at Justice Inc. HQ, acting like he’s the real deal? Then what if he WAS the real deal? I called that dark tale “The Changeling.”
There’s a Sherlock Holmes story scheduled for in a Holmes crossover anthology. Rather than team him up with another fictional character, I matched him with Colonel Richard Henry Savage, the real-life inspiration Doc and The Avenger. Savage was so larger than life that he plays well as an semi-fictitious person. That’s “The Adventure of the Imaginary Nihilist.” It’s based on a true event in Savage’s remarkable life.
My first Secret 6 story, “The Meteor Men” will reintroduce Robert J. Hogan’s intrepid band of adventurers as they plunge into a maelstrom of horror which results after a green meteorite crashes near their Long Island headquarters and suddenly the surrounding towns are filled with green-eye Zombies shooting death beams from their unblinking eyes. For the sequel, it will be up to the Canadian border for an old-fashioned Wendigo hunt. After that, Mole Men start pouring out of caves and cracks in the Earth. Life is never dull for the wanted fugitives who call themselves the Secret 6!
AP: You are closely associated with Doc Savage and the Lester Dent estate. Can you share a little background on “Doc Savage: The Lost Radio Scripts of Lester Dent” recently published by Moonstone. Many pulp fans may not be aware of scripts actually written by Dent. How were they ‘lost’, were they ever recorded, could you just share a bit about this project?
WM: Doc creator Lester Dent scripted back in 1934 26 episodes of a syndicated Doc radio show. No recordings survive, but I have the scripts. We put them all together, including some unproduced scripts, like the one adapting The Man of Bronze, in a nice fat illustrated book of Doc Savage tales that never made it into the pulp magazine. It’s a must-have for all Doc fans. I’m really proud of it.
AP: It was announced sometime back that you would be working on new Doc Savage novels? Can you discuss anything about where you are in terms of that project currently?
WM: I’m talking to two publishers right now. The reintroductory novel, The Desert Demons, is finished. Joe DeVito has painted a magnificent cover, using a 1960s photo of model Steve Holland as Doc. Horror in Gold is drafted and Joe is working on that cover. Five other Docs are in various stages of construction. It’s only a matter of landing a deal that works for everyone. Stay tuned.
AP: Although Doc is tied to your name quite tightly, you are also noted as an overall Pulp Historian as well as a writer. You’ve written stories for Moonstone centering around two other pulpy type characters that never actually appeared in the pulps: The Phantom and The Green Hornet. What about heroic characters in masks appeals to the prose writer in you?
WM: If you are what you eat, you become what you read as a kid. I was always a fan of comic book superheroes and similar supermen. So I naturally gravitated to their literary ancestors, the pulp heroes. Writing about ordinary people bores me, I guess, because I’m not very ordinary. So out of my imagination have come novels and stories starring characters ranging from The Destroyer to Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD. It’s a living. I’m not sure the mask is key, since Doc Savage is my favorite character. But I do like mystery men. They never disappoint.
AP: In no way are you sexist when it comes to pulp. You are the creative force behind HONEY WEST, a revival of a character, yet again for Moonstone. Who is the ‘historical’ Honey West?
WM: Honey was a hot LA private eye back in the 50s and 60s, and the star of a series of top-selling paperback originals by the husband and wife team who called themselves G. G. Fickling—the true creative force behind Honey. She had her own TV show which I watched faithfully back in ’65. When Joe Gentile offered me a menu of characters to write, I skipped over favorites like The Spider to do Honey, Why? Well, I had written the first new Honey West story in almost 40 years for Moonstone’s planned Honey West Chronicles, and it just wrote itself. That fact that they are told in the first person meant that I could do a better job in the short story length than say, Operator #5, another favorite of mine.
I agreed to pen 3 prose stories and 3 comics scripts per year. I had done one of each, and out came the HW comic book by Trina Robbins! So I don’t know where my stuff stands at the moment. But I will resume writing them once Joe figures it all out. I have plotted ‘em all, btw.
AP: Now that we know where Honey West came from, where do you plan to take her now that you’re writing her adventures?
WM: Well, I’d like to take her out to dinner. But Moonstone’s license prohibits fraternization between writers and characters. J Since I’m setting these new stories back in her heyday and they are petty lean, my sole focus is in getting her right and keeping her real. If the series goes anywhere, it will be because Honey is leading me. J Stories written so far are “Cat’s-Paw in Heat,” “Seer Suckers,” and “Tapestry in Teal.”
AP: The term ‘pulp historian’ is associated often with your name. This may seem like a silly question, but what do you do as a ‘pulp historian’?
WM: Over the years, this has covered activities such as interviewing survivors of the pulp era to get their stories, and reading through decades of old magazines like Writer’s Digest and Author & Journalist to ferret out cool pulp lore. All of this is poured into articles for the Sanctum Books’ Doc and Shadow reprints, not to mention introductions to volumes like Altus Press’ massive Norvell Page collection, When the Death-Bat Flies, just about out. I’ve written about 30 intros for Altus, Black Dog Books and Off-Trail Books in the fast three or four years. I’m a busy historian.
AP: Why is pulp relevant at all? I’m not asking in terms of time periods, really, just overall. Why is pulp relevant?
WM: Pulp is relevant because entertainment is always relevant. Prose styles, means of delivery, types of heroes and their opposite numbers may change with each half-decade, but pulp stories and pulp heroes will always be with us. Always. Check back in a 100 years and you’ll find I am correct.
AP: You have been involved with multiple pulp characters. Are there any you haven’t worked with/researched enough/been involved with in some way that are on your to do list?
WM: I suppose The Shadow is the top one. But with so many unreprinted Walter Gibson Shadow novels, why bother? Still, it’s my dream to write an authentic Doc Savage-Shadow crossover novel. Maybe some day….. I once plotted a Bill Barnes novelette with original author Chuck Verral. I’d love to write that one. A Spider novel would be fun too.
AP: There seems to be two camps when it comes to writing new adventures of established characters. One camp feels that new adventures should simply continue on in the tradition of the original tales, preserving feel, characters, time period, etc. The other camp, although not throwing the entire baby out with the bath water, feels that new adventures of old characters need to be modernized, made different to give them extra whatever. As a writer, where do you fall in this discussion and why?
WM: People read certain characters—Sherlock Holmes, Doc Savage and The Shadow to name three—because they want to be taken back to the specific time period of those heroes. Other characters like Superman, Batman and James Bond have been around continuously for so long that they have naturally evolved with the times. So both approaches can work, depending on the hero. As a writer, it interests me most to step into the shoes of a dead writer and write his hero as closely to the way he would have done it as possible. It’s a bigger, better challenge. A Will Murray Doc Savage mav or may not be interesting in itself, but a Will Murray-Lester Dent Doc collaboration is, I hope, the best of both worlds. Some day I may stumble upon a vintage hero who begs to be updated. Hasn’t happened yet.
With Secret 6, I hew straight to the original stories in their time. The series didn’t last very long, so I thought I would see where it might go in its own era. You could update them, but I suspect Joe asked me to write this series because it was a weird analogue to Doc Savage. And why waste Will Murray on an update? Anybody could write that.
About Honey West, I feel the same say. She’s an expression of her time. I had never read any of the original novels, but I did for this project and I was delighted to discover that she has the same voice as Anne Francis. Another reason the stories write themselves.
When I did the Phantom, I jumped around. But the most recent version was set in the 30s—even though he’s the same Phantom sitting on the Skull Throne today.
Having written a 60s Green Hornet, I’m planning to tackle the radio version in a story I’m calling “The Black Torpedo.”
AP: Any upcoming projects you haven’t discussed that you care to share with the readers?
WM: Yes, I can officially announce for the first time, the October 1 release on CD and in downloadable formats the 25th anniversary rerelease of Roger Rittner’s Adventures of Doc Savage radio show from 1985. Roger has remastered the series, which adapts Fear Cay and The Thousand-Headed Man, along with a Bob Larkin cover and a new audio documentary on the making of this now-classic series. Doc Savage is rarely done right. This is one time we got it right. I say, “we” since I scripted Thousand-Headed Man. Check out Radioarchives.com for ordering info.
Beyond that, I have a lot of Cthulhu stories coming up in various anthologies like Mythos Books’ Cthulhu 2012 and others yet untitled. Watch for them.
AP: Thank you again so much for your time on this MOONSTONE MONDAY!
WM: It’s been real. Real pulpy. J
JOE GENTILE, Publisher and Editor-In-Chief, Moonstone
JOE GENTILE (on right) |
AP: Joe, first off, thanks a lot for sitting down with All Pulp! We definitely understand how busy you are with all the irons in the fire that Moonstone has, so this interview is definitely much appreciated. To kick this off, give us some background on you, as much as personal info as you want to give as well as your background in the publishing industry.
JG: Ah, starting off with the not-so pulp adventure life I have led, eh?
Well, lets see…briefly…I have been a freelance writer for many (many) years now, have a book retail background, a television production background, and I play bass guitar in a working band.
AP: Now that we know all about its brain and backbone, give us a brief history of Moonstone. Where it started, what Moonstone’s overall mission and purpose has been, etc.
JG: Moonstone started from the ashes of a company that never quite made it off the ground about 15 years ago. A bunch of us creators in the Chicagoland area suddenly had a bunch of projects without homes.
I was interested in having another publisher pick up those titles, but we didn’t really find what we were looking for, so my partner Dave Ulanski talked me into doing it ourselves. Dave, Rafael Nieves, and myself started up Moonstone at that point there. We published a bunch of small press b/w creator-owned comics. This went on this way for years.
One day, on the day before I was leaving for a Vegas vacation…(!)…I thought “hey. Why aren’t there comics about the White Wolf Games stuff?’’…and “what about all of these other cool characters…and pulps that I like? Someone should do something with those guys!
So, even though I left for vacation, this was pressing on my brain. When I got back, I started with the phone calls…cold…never having had to track down licensors, contracts, creative teams, etc. Just jumped in. Saying this out loud…now….the idea seems insane.
So our purpose became “telling good stories” foremost, and bringing NEW fans to comics (or fans who left) by having material based on sources OUTSIDE of comics (like the pulps, old time radio, newspaper strips, TV, etc.
AP: Moonstone is known largely for bringing established characters from the past, most if not all of them in the Public Domain, and introducing them to a modern audience. Moonstone has done this in a volume that no other publisher really has. The question is, why? Why the focus on these characters that some say may have outlived their own value?
JG: Well, first, I must set you straight a little…MOST of what we do is licensed. Very few characters of interest are public domain. You would be surprised to know who owns what.
If we thought these characters have outlived their value…um, we wouldn’t be doing them, right?
We fervently believe that these characters are more than vital…they have resonance today.
These characters had hundreds and hundreds of stories told about them, and some lasted for decades. But, even if you never heard of these characters, thats cool, because it really doesn’t matter either way. We tell interesting stories about unusual characters. We don’t necessarily need more superhero comics per se…the market is still quite full of them. Why put out more of the same?
AP: Some fans of Moonstone found your early comics years ago. At that time, you had titles like ‘Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar,’ ‘Boston Blackie’, and ‘Pat Novak For Hire.’ Those titles, among others, were based on characters drawn from old time radio programs, popular in the 1930s-50s. This is a fascinating, still largely uncultivated area for new fiction. What drew you and Moonstone to tackle these stories and bring a modern take to them?
JG: Well, quite honestly, it was an area of interest of mine that had not been tried much in comics.
Johnny Dollar sold out, Boston Blackie’s GN sold out, and Pat Novak was in that “1000 Comics you need to read” book by Tony Isabella!
AP: Any future plans for further OTR treatments? If not, why not?
JG: Well, those characters do appear in other books from time to time…like our “crime team up novel” PARTNERS in CRIME…and our crime prose anthology “Sex, Lies, and Private Eyes”.
And there is always talk of further adventures. We do have some characters coming up that have appeared on radio, but wasn’t what they were primarily known for….stay tuned.
AP: Moonstone just didn’t resurrect radio characters. Talk to us about some of the other early characters you brought to an audience who may have not been familiar with them, such as The Phantom and Kolchak, among others? Are there other TV or comic characters you’d like to pull under the Moonstone banner?
JG: There is always more we want…we are insatiable that way! If you check our website, we are always leaving hints of whats coming…although we will have a press release about this soon, we have THE SAINT, The JUSTICE MACHINE, FLINT, and SHEENA…!
Kolchak…way ahead of its time, inspiration behind the XFILES, and is one of the highest rated TV movies OF ALL TIME! This was horror on primetime network television, my friends…unheard of!
There has been a cult following of Kolchak for many years, and a strong one as evidence by Columbia’s DVD sales of the movies and TV shows.
The Phantom is one of those characters that has been around for a long time…1936 (predating Batman and Supes)…I think people know of him…but we needed to tell some stories about TODAy to showcase this guy for all to read! He’s a well thought out character that still holds up today.
Buckaroo Banzai…cult movie of the 80’s with GREAT stars like John Lithgow, Ellen Barkin, Jeff Goldblum, Peter Weller…all in one crazy neo pulp adventure!
It is a movie like no other…I mean, Banzai is a renown brain surgeon, rock star, adventurer…c’mon, how cool is that?)
AP: It seems that some of the characters you’ve taken on over the years, both early on and currently, were originally created for one medium only (prose largely, but we’re also thinking of the radio shows again). Yet when Moonstone gets them, they show up in comics, prose, etc. What goes into deciding what medium Moonstone puts an established property into?
JG: Well, that depends on some of the legalities, Some contracts specify. Sometimes a character just calls to us in that way…like Kolchak….and others.
AP: Speaking of processes, can you share a little bit of what goes into your daily job? What are your responsibilities and who within Moonstone do you delegate things to?
JG: OMG…what I do on a daily basis? Well…I contact creative teams for progress on ongoing projects or to set up new ones, I talk to the printers about scheduling and book details, I talk to distributors about PR and such, I create in house ads, I gather monthly solicitations, handle all incoming email, update the website, edit stories, write…scream!
*In addition to my insanity, we have Art Director Dave Ulanksi (also edits, writes, invoicing, and does cover set up),
*we have Editor Lori G (who handles both comics and prose projects, as well as administration),
*and Erik Enervold, Marshall Dillon, and Bernie Lee- who handle everything from prepress, lettering, and design.
*Mike Bullock (writer, group editor, project coordinator)
*We have Tim Lasiuta…research and development.
*Richard Dean Starr and Matthew Baugh (editors, writers, and project leads)
AP: We’ve asked a lot of questions about established properties Moonstone has handled and we’ll talk more about some Moonstone is now handling. But before that, what about original characters, newly created concepts? What’s Moonstone’s history with stepping off into the new and original arena?
JG: Original creation from a non M/DC/I/DH company is very difficult…and these lean times make it even more so. With a couple exceptions, Moonstone no longer handles projects we don’t completely control.
Our history with this has been a very rock road…we have had some successes, but not nearly as many as we would like.
Exceptions to the rule: “ROTTEN”, “VAMPIRE, PA” and the upcoming “SAVAGE BEAUTY”
AP: All right, now to the modern day meat and potatoes. It has been no secret over the years that Moonstone Books has been one of the biggest promoters and supporters of Pulp genre fiction. In the last few years, though you’ve really stepped up to the forefront, providing anthologies of known pulp types as well as the new comics line you have now. Before we get into specifics, why do you feel like pulp is such an important genre that needs to be introduced to a modern day audience?
JG: I just think the times we live in scream out for this.
Its adrenaline escapism roller coaster rides…
It’s justice being served…without legal technicalities. Who doesn’t want some justice, when most feel powerless in an escalating crazy society?
It’s also about folks with little to no powers, per se…just guts, guile, skill, and indomitable will.
There is an emotional impact that comes with these stories because these folks aren’t invulnerable…or whatnot…
Pulps are an important part of American history…it was a huge step up (from the penny novels)in fiction for the masses…selling to a people during the time of great strife….like today.
Without pulps, there would be no paperbacks…think about that…and all of the things that paperbacks have spawned (including increased literacy).
Without pulps, there would be no comic books…and all that they have inspired, from movies, to video games, etc!
AP: Let’s tackle the prose anthologies first. What characters has Moonstone spotlighted in prose collections?
JG: Ok, here we go…
The Green Hornet (any day now), Kolchak, The Avenger, The Spider, Doc Savage, Domino Lady, The Phantom, Zorro…and these do not include the characters that appeared in the anthologies with multiple characters.
Upcoming we have…more Avenger, more Green Hornet, more Spider, Sherlock Holmes, “Chicks in Capes”, and one surprise looming…
AP: Some would say that printed prose is no longer the way to go, yet Moonstone is still turning out anthologies. What is it about the print format that keeps Moonstone putting out these collections, instead of sending them all straight to e-book or in some other medium?
JG: Well, some people still read books of course…not sure that’s going away entirely. And we also do E-book stuff. You need both to make it work.
AP: A major emphasis for Moonstone right now is its new comics line. Tell us about Moonstone’s RETURN OF THE ORIGINALS. How did the idea develop? Who was involved on the front end? And why populate this idea with characters that people may not recognize, some of them not seen for over fifty years?
JG: It started as a one shot graphic novel…then turned into a MOVEMENT!
And again, while some of these characters haven’t been seen in a while…does not mean they are not interesting for gosh sakes!
We did try to have some recognizable faces in there as well.
Many people encouraged us here…and Mike Bullock was probably one of the earliest “idea man” behind this.
AP: What is the general plotline behind RETURN? Who character wise is involved?
JG: It all starts with “The Battle for L.A”, which as some know, was a historical event. The history fascinated me.
Briefly…during WW2, near LA…a strange object is seen in the night skies (there is a newspaper photo on line), and no one knows what it is (to this day). Planes were scrambled…shore batteries opened fire…direct hits were scored by thousands of bullets…thousands…but to no avail. The odd thing just kept moving slowly until is disappeared. Just an odd little piece of history (WHICH WILL BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE) that was the catalyst.)
AP: The history of pulp characters being translated to the comic page has been spotty at best, especially with recent efforts by other companies. What is Moonstone doing to make sure that RETURN OF THE ORIGINALS is an appealing concept that will bring in new readers, while maintaining the characters and history that pulp fans truly enjoy in their characters?
JG: That, my friend is the rub. We have VERY unique characters that I think comic fans will dig in a refreshing way…and we didn’t feel that these guys needed to be changed to be cool.
AP: The collection of writers and artists you have assembled for RETURN is truly staggering. We won’t force you to list all of them, but how did you get this stellar crew together? From so many different fields you have drawn top talent. What brought them to a pulp comic project? Did they all come for their own reasons or was there some sort of underlying theme that drew them to this concept?
JG: The creators kept coming…like a snowball rolling down a hill…all of them love the pulps and were just as excited as I was!
AP: So, what are the future plans regarding the cast of RETURN? Will there be ongoing series for all of them, more specials, what?
JG: At the present…there will be the one shot BATTLE that I mentioned, and ongoings for Black Bat, Secret Agent X, Phantom Detective, The Spider, and Rocket Man.
We are also putting together a “non-team” team ongoing series.
Some big mini series that will feature all of the characters…!
There are various Spider specials in the loop INCLUDING A NEW SPIDER NOVEL… an AIRBOY-G8 mini series,
A Domino Lady-Golden Amazon one shot…
A “all female team up” with Domino Lady, Golden Amazon, Blue Bulleteer (courtesy of AC comics), Valkyrie, Black Angel, Bald Eagle, and more!
AP: Joe, it’s been a blast! Stop by All Pulp anytime you want to chat!
Aaron Shaps, Writer of The Phantom Detective for Return of the Originals, Moonstone
AS: Well, my background is in film, so I began my writing adventure as an aspiring screenwriter before getting into comics and prose.
I have only been writing for comics since 2006, and I am probably best known at this point (if I am known at all) for my creator-owned character General Jack Cosmo, a kind of cross between Hunter S. Thompson and Flash Gordon, and for my studio/creative collective, General Jack Cosmo Productions. In addition to the comics starring General Jack Cosmo himself, our stable includes creator Mike Beazley’s series The Grimm, and also Pulp Will Eat Itself, which you folks were kind enough to review on this very site.
For Moonstone specifically, I have also done a few stories starring the Lee Falk Phantom, and I am currently having a blast writing their licensed series Zeroids, which is based on the classic line of robot toys from the 60s and 70s.
Like Batman, the Phantom Detective was orphaned at a young age and inherited a vast fortune. At the encouragement of a close family friend, he turned his listless but formidable mind to criminology, and ultimately became the world’s greatest sleuth, a two-fisted nocturnal avenger, master of disguise, and escape artist extraordinaire who aided law enforcement all over the globe. None of that has changed for my version of the character. He is essentially the same Phantom Detective that he was in those original stories, he has just…let’s call it “evolved”.
AP: Now that you’re taking on the Phantom Detective’s story, what are your plans? Will the setting remain in the glory days of the pulps or is this a more modern tale? What do you bring to this character as a modern writer that you think will make him both viable with today’s readers and still faithful to what pulp fans expect?
AS: My Phantom Detective stories are all set during the pulp era, and more specifically the early- to mid-1940s. For a long time now, I have wanted to tell a story about a heroic character, an ordinary human, who straddles the line between the age of the pulp heroes and the age of the super heroes. What would it be like to be that man, that hero, and see the world changing around you…to see the explosion of technology and science that was sparked by WWII, and all the fundamental changes that new science and tech affected in the way we live our lives? What would it be like to be an ordinary man like the Spider or the Shadow and see someone like Captain America or Superman or Green Lantern come onto the scene? Would you begin to feel obsolete? Or would you do everything in your power to remain relevant in a world that threatened to pass you by?
These are big questions, and this is the kind of stuff that the Phantom Detective is giving me the opportunity to explore. As for relevance, we deal with feelings like this every day in the real world…the fear of being left behind by changing times, of not being able to keep up with the way the world is moving forward, of becoming obsolete. You ask any American blue-collar worker in manufacturing if he or she worries about becoming obsolete—if they haven’t already—and see what they say. Ask the people who own record stores how they felt when iTunes came along, or the people who own video stores how they feel about Netflix and Redbox. Whether we like it or not, time marches on. So what do we do? Do we lie down and let it march over us, or do we lean into the wind and try to keep up? These are the questions that the Phantom Detective has to answer for himself.
AP: The Phantom Detective had a cast of supporters, even a dear friend who knew his secret identity as well as a signal beacon. Are you bringing any of these extras associated with the character into your version and if so, which ones? And if not, why not?
AS: Yes, I am definitely plugging a solid chunk of his classic supporting cast into this new series. Frank Havens, publisher of The New York Clarion newspaper (among many others), will be there for sure. For those unfamiliar with Phantom Detective lore, Havens is sort of a surrogate father to Richard Curtis Van Loan, the true identity of the Phantom Detective. It was actually Havens’ idea for Van Loan to assume the identity of the Phantom Detective, and in my series he remains the hero’s closest and most trusted confidant. And, yes, the spotlight signal on the roof of the Clarion building is still there. Obviously, that single gimmick was the one most clearly cribbed by the early Batman writers, so I had to include it. In fact, two early Batman editors, Jack Schiff and the legendary Mort Wesinger, had previously worked as editors at Thrilling Publishing, the home of the Phantom Detective, and had even edited Phantom Detective stories…so there you have it.
But back to the characters, Frank’s daughter, Muriel Havens, is basically the love of Van Loan’s life, and she is in there, too, although she does not know Van Loan’s secret in my stories, at least not right from the get-go. Also familiar to fans of the classic stories will be the character of Steve Huston, the young, crack Clarion reporter who, in my mind, and in the minds of many others, was a likely inspiration for Superman’s pal Jimmy Olsen. So it’s those three—Frank, Muriel, and Steve—who will be the most significant imports from the classic stories, although other characters will pop up here and there.
AP: I noticed that the word ‘psychedelic’ is used in some of the promotional material for your take on the Detective. That’s an interesting word in relation to a pulp character. Can you shed some light on that?
AS: Sure. Basically, as someone on the Moonstone forums astutely pointed out when the project was first announced, one of the reasons that the Phantom Detective is kind of a forgotten pulp hero, even though he had such a long and historic run, is that he is sort of generic. The Shadow had his Eastern secrets and gimmicks, Doc Savage had his super science and physical perfection, the Spider had the horror angle and ultra-violence…but what did the Phantom Detective have? He was a super-detective and a master of disguise…and how many times did we hear that, you know? How many other characters of the era put those two skillsets on their resumes? Practically all of them.
So my challenge was, how do I make this character stand out from Secret Agent X and Moon Man and some of the other, ostensibly very similar, characters in the Return of the Originals line? The answer was a single word: Steranko.
Although I am writing new prose adventures for the character, the lynchpin of the new Phantom Detective saga is his comic series, and Danilo (the artist) and I decided very early on that Jim Steranko was going to be our primary influence in terms of aesthetics: both his noir stuff, which I think has yet to be equaled, and his more psychedelic stuff from the 60s and beyond. And the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. Not only is the new Phantom Detective going to star in stories that are visually psychedelic, but in terms of content, some of them are quite trippy as well. A lot of them deal with era-appropriate fringe science, and Van Loan himself has taken to using what I suppose I would describe as performance-enhancing drugs to help maintain an edge in his rapidly evolving world.
To that end, one new addition to his mythology is something he calls his “Elixir”, which is a potion he drinks that allows him to see things ordinary men cannot see…it expands and enhances his senses, and all kinds of other weird and cool stuff. It makes him a better detective, and more of a creature of the night as well. I don’t want to give the impression that he’s like Jekyll and Hyde or something…it’s not like that. It’s more like, if you remember the movie Big Trouble in Little China, when Jack Burton and Wang and their whole crew drink that magic potion before they descend into the underworld to fight Lo Pan, it’s more like that. That’s the direct inspiration.
AP: A lot of classic characters come with their own trademarks, a team of supporters, certain gadgets they always use, etc? Does the Phantom Detective have any of this baggage and if he does, what of it are you bringing into your stories?
AP: The Phantom Detective stories had a habit of introducing something in one story, then forgetting it in the next. Although this can be an issue for continuity buffs, it also sometimes offers freedom to someone like you taking the reins on the character? Did you rely on the source material much? Did you feel hampered by the loose way the character’s history was written?
AS: I didn’t feel hampered at all. One of the very first things I decided, as soon as I knew I was going to set these stories in the early 40s, was that I was going to treat the Phantom Detective’s stories from the 30s as canon, at least whenever possible. So unless it comes into direct conflict with stuff I am planning to do with the character, much of what the Phantom Detective experienced in his first seven to eight years of adventures is considered history and backstory for my version of the hero.
Now there are definitely some continuity conflicts in those early stories, when you view them as a body, a mythology, as you mentioned, so there are certain places where I will have to embrace one story and ignore another, but in planning the first few years’ worth of storylines for this new incarnation, it hasn’t been too difficult to settle on which stuff I want to use and which stuff I want to discard. Basically, if I want to draw from a previous story, and that story conflicts with another, whatever the coolest stuff is stays, and everything else gets cast back into the ether.
AP: This is a major project for Moonstone and for you. What else do you have going on that pulp fans can look forward to?
AS: Pulp fans will definitely be interested in a creator-owned project called New Dreaming Men that I am putting together with artist Douglas Klauba for Olympian Publishing. We just released a special, limited edition preview at Chicago Comic Con, so some of your readers might have picked that up. New Dreaming Men is an epic, pulp-flavored adventure saga for children ages eight to eighty, a serialized story to be told through a seamless marriage of prose, sequential art, and alternative storytelling means such as mock newspaper clippings and vintage playbills. It is the story of a group known as the Brotherhood of Forgotten Worlds, a fraternity of men that for centuries has fought to protect mysterious and exotic locales—on this world and far beyond—from all those who would seek to exploit or destroy them. You can fan New Dreaming Men on Facebook for more info.
And of course, as I mentioned at the very beginning, General Jack Cosmo Productions has Pulp Will Eat Itself, which is kind of like what would happen if Moonstone’s Return of the Originals line and the Coen Bros. movie O Brother, Where Art Thou? had a baby. It’s the twisted progeny of two of my Jack Cosmo cohorts, writer Adam Lahners and writer/artist Jim McKern. General Jack Cosmo Productions and Pulp Will Eat Itself are both on Facebook, too, so you can fan those for updates, info, and announcements.
AP: Thank you for your time, Aaron!
HOWARD HOPKINS, Writer of
THE GOLDEN AMAZON, for RETURN OF THE ORIGINALS, Moonstone
WIN SCOTT ECKERT AND ERIC FEIN, Writers of
THE GREEN GHOST, for RETURN OF THE ORIGINALS, Moonstone
AP: First, gentlemen, let All Pulp welcome you to Moonstone Monday! Now, this interview is a bit different, in that it’s being done sort of in tandem. So, each you will just give your answers and in the final copy they will run together. So, first, introduce yourself to the audience and give them a bit of background, especially about your history in Pulp.
WIN SCOTT ECKERT (WSE): Howard Waldrop has said, “Like most things from the Seventies, this is Philip José Farmer’s fault… If you don’t like it, don’t write me. Write Philip José Farmer.” I was born in the Sixties, but the mid-Seventies marked the beginning of an eight-year-old’s lifelong fascination with pulp fiction. No doubt that fascination sprang, in greater part, from the fact that I received a bunch of the Bantam Doc Savage paperbacks and a copy of Phil’s Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life in 1975 when I was eight years old. That spurred me on a two-decade quest to collect all the Bantam Doc Savage paperbacks. Phil’s Doc Savage “biography” and his Tarzan Alive: A Definitive Biography of Lord Greystoke had also left me with an undying hunger to read all the other characters he had referenced in the books—The Shadow, Sherlock Holmes, Fu Manchu, The Spider, Philip Marlowe, Nero Wolfe, Sam Spade, James Bond, Travis McGee, and so on.
Along with that, I became fascinated with crossovers, and with Phil’s shared-universe Wold Newton mythos, the “Wold Newton Family” (outlined in the two “mock biographies” listed above) and pretty soon I was compiling a shared-universe timeline of my own, which I called the Wold Newton Universe Crossover Chronology. I posted it on my Wold Newton Universe site (the first of its kind), and after that readers began sending in their own Wold Newton articles. So I created online essay section. A few years later a couple other contributors started their own sites, and a few years after that we had such a great stockpile of Wold Newton-inspired articles, it seemed a natural move to put together a print anthology, which I edited: Myths for the Modern Age: Philip José Farmer’s Wold Newton Universe (MonkeyBrain Books, 2005) (a 2007 Locus Awards finalist).
With a fairly encyclopedic background on pulp and other characters, fiction writing seemed the next logical step. I was lucky enough to be invited to contribute to Black Coat Press’ anthology Tales of the Shadowmen, and have been in every annual volume since then (six so far; Volume 7 is forthcoming). I’ve penned tales featuring the Scarlet Pimpernel, Doc Ardan (a version of Doc Savage), Dr. Natas (a disguised version of Fu Manchu), Antinéa, and Sexton Blake. I wrote a tale for Airship 27’s Lance Star—Sky Ranger, and since then my time has been fully booked writing pulp fiction! For Moonstone Books: The Green Hornet Chronicles (co-editing with Moonstone’s Joe Gentile, as well as a contributing writer), The Avenger Chronicles, The Phantom Chronicles 2, The Captain Midnight Chronicles, and More Tales of Zorro (forthcoming). I also was invited to write the Foreword to the new edition of Farmer’s seminal “fictional biography,” Tarzan Alive (Bison Books, 2006) and am writing a series of tales about the origin of the Wold Newton Family, the first of which appeared in the just-released The Worlds of Philip José Farmer 1: Protean Dimensions (Meteor House, 2010). I dived back into “non-fiction” with the encyclopedic Crossovers: A Secret Chronology of the World 1 & 2 (Black Coat Press, 2010), and somehow also found time to write a novel that Philip José Farmer began back in the ’70s, but never had a chance to finish himself: The Evil in Pemberley House (Subterranean Press, 2009), about Patricia Wildman, the kick-ass daughter of a certain bronze-skinned pulp hero—if you know what I mean.
That’s a lot of background—sorry about that.
Eric Fein (EF): I discovered and fell in love with Pulp characters around the same time I started to read and collect comic books. Like Win, I was a kid in the mid-Seventies so there was plenty of pulp related books in bookstores and candy stores. One of my favorite all time comic book characters is Batman and I remember having the two issues (Batman #’s 253 and 259) of his series that guest-starred The Shadow. That led me to seek out DC’s original Shadow comic book series and around the same time I discovered the Pyramid/Jove Shadow reprints with those gorgeous Steranko covers. After reading a couple of those, I was hooked and started collecting anything pulp related. During this time, I also got my hands on Walter B. Gibson’s Shadow Scrapbook and was just fascinated by every aspect of the character and what went into creating him. The fact that Gibson was able to write more than 1 million words on a manual typewriter year after year is just amazing to me. . My fascination with The Shadow led me to Doc Savage, The Avenger, and The Spider. I’m also a big fan of the James Bond novels and movies, the Mike Hammer novels, film noir, crime novels and private eye novels, anything by or with Orson Welles, and Old-Time Radio.
In college, I landed an internship at Marvel Comics, which led to a job as an assistant editor after graduation. I eventually became one of the editors in the Spider-Man group and at one point I was editing three of the then four monthly titles: Spider-Man, The Web of Spider-Man, and The Spectacular Spider-Man. I also edited several Spider-Man one-shots and limited series including the very first team-up between Spider-Man and Batman. After Marvel, I worked at DC Comics in their licensed publishing department doing How-to draw books, coloring and activities books, and storybooks.
After DC, I moved into educational publishing writing and editing nonfiction and fiction books for kids who have trouble reading.
Recently, thanks to Joe Gentile and Moonstone Books, I’ve had the opportunity to write some pulp stories. I have a story slated for an upcoming volume of The Avenger Chronicles and another story scheduled to appear in The Green Hornet Chronicles, Volume 2. I also wrote a Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar story for Moonstone’s Sex, Lies, and Private Eyes anthology.
AP: You both are involved with THE GREEN GHOST, a fairly obscure pulp character, which is featured in Moonstone’s RETURN OF THE ORIGINALS line. Give us some history on this character, focusing on the parts you feel are important for readers to know.
WSE: Sure. The Green Ghost—magician sleuth George Chance—started out as The Ghost in the Winter 1940 issue of a self-titled pulp magazine, with a novel called, appropriately enough, Calling the Ghost. Over the next four years Chance appeared in thirteen additional tales, all penned by master pulpsmith G.T. Fleming-Roberts, in The Ghost Super-Detective, then Green Ghost Detective, finally migrating to Thrilling Mystery, and making his final appearance in the October 1944 issue of Thrilling Detective.
Chance equals his mentor, the late Harry Houdini, in the art of escape. He’s also a renowned skeptic and debunker of fakes and frauds, as well as a master criminologist, excelling in makeup and disguise, lock-picking, knife-throwing, illusion—anything and everything a top-notch magician knows. Chance puts his expertise to use as a relentless crusader for justice, donning a skull mask to become “The Ghost” (shortly after changing his name to “The Green Ghost”), and aiding Police Commissioner Standish against criminals everywhere, solving impossible crimes. Chance is aided by a select band of six agents and friends who know his secret and share in his mission for justice.
EF: I think Win covered all the bases on this question.
AP: What makes the Green Ghost a viable hero for a modern audience? Clones of characters, stereotypes, don’t typically appeal to readers today, but so many of the classic pulp characters were simply different riffs on Doc Savage, the Shadow, etc. What about The Green Ghost makes him more than just another avenging detective hero type?
WSE: The covers to the pulps that carried his stories depicted a character with a ghoulish visage—one that Eric has noted harkens back to Lon Chaney in The Phantom of the Opera. Our new stories in Moonstone’s Return of the Originals will match the mood and intensity promised by the pulp covers. The Green Ghost strikes terror in the hearts of criminals and even civilians due to his horrific skull-like appearance and his seemingly supernatural abilities.
And for the first time, The Green Ghost is going to face a few real supernatural menaces. We won’t go overboard, but the idea of a Houdini-type skeptic facing the real occult, as opposed to charlatans, and how he responds to it, is intriguing. In addition, his girlfriend Meriem “Merry” White had “flashes of intuition” in the original pulps, i.e. she’s psychic. How does her skeptic boyfriend deal with that? We’re going for a Mulder/Scully in reverse vibe here.
EF: Certainly from a visual perspective The Green Ghost falls into The Shadow end of the spectrum with his dark fedora and trench coat. However, there are several things that make him stand apart from being just another Shadow knockoff. One, his creator, G.T. Fleming-Roberts, made him a magician and gave him a drive to expose phony spiritualists. The other thing that separates him from The Shadow and Doc Savage is the relationship he had with his girlfriend Meriem White and his assistants. He wasn’t portrayed as some mysterious or awe-inspiring character when he interacted with them. Chance is very down to earth. His associates knew who he was and why he did what he did. It gave the stories a different dynamic.
AP: Now, each of you is working primarily in different media on the Green Ghost. Tell the audience what medium you are focusing on and how you go into adapting your version of the Green Ghost to said medium.
WSE: Eric is tackling the comic scripts, while I handle the prose stories, which will be featured in Moonstone’s “wide vision” format with spot illustrations. It turned out my time constraints necessitated collaboration on the first prose story, as well: I wrote the detailed outline, Eric wrote a first draft, and I wrote a second draft from that. We had fun with it, and we hope you’ll enjoy the results.
EF: Writing comic book stories allows you the freedom to play up more of the visual effects of the character – having him perform magic tricks, getting in and out of deathtraps, and other cool things that might not translate as well in just a prose story. And let me say that we have a wonderful artist illustrating both the comic book stories and the prose stories – David Niehaus. He shares our enthusiasm for the character and it shows in his artwork for the series.
AP: Two people sharing the reins on an idea with an already established history must be quite interesting. How do you two work this combined effort? Is someone the Senior Partner? Who contributes what? And how do you as a team tackle the fact that The Green Ghost has a history when you come to it?
WSE: I made the original pitch to Joe Gentile at Moonstone (the seed of the idea having been planted by my pal and fellow writer Martin Powell several years back) and did the initial draft of the series bible. Then I decided that I had too many projects going to write both the comics stories and the prose stories so Joe brought in Eric, a very talented writer, to write the comics scripts. Eric contributed several great ideas and we revised the bible; it’s a collaborative effort. We rarely disagree, and if we do, we resolve it quickly.
As far as the history and keeping things straight…. I am a continuity geek. I’m not slavish to it if the story dictates a different direction, but I do everything I can to accommodate and account for continuity. The history of the character matters to me. Look, for the co-editing duties for The Green Hornet Chronicles books, I created a timeline of the ’60s television series, and then inserted each and every story I read/edited into the timeline, based on textual clues and other references in the stories. This was purely for my own use so I could keep things straight. In some cases I asked the writers to make slight changes so as not to create a continuity gaffe with the timeline. So, yeah…a little OCD, maybe, but if you’re going to work on a character, or a shared universe, it’s worth the effort to take care of these little details, as well as the overall storytelling. Because believe me, someone will notice. J We’re bringing the same sort of effort and care and attention to The Green Ghost.
EF: From the first time we spoke and began trading ideas it was clear that we shared very similar sensibilities when it came to the character and our approach to storytelling so it has been a lot of fun working together.
As far as The Green Ghost’s history, Win wanted to make sure that we respected it and didn’t radically change it and I totally agreed. The main thing we adjusted was the tone of the stories. Ours have a harder edge to them than the original pulps did. At the same time, we have been careful not to contradict or negate any of the events in the original stories.
AP: Does the Green Ghost come with any supporting cast, special weapons, things that are identified with him? If so, are you adapting them for your stories?
WSE: All of the Green Ghost’s original supporting cast is back with our series. I’ll let Eric give the particulars on the cast. Chance also has the same bag of tricks, plus a bit more. In our continuation, Chance served in the OSS during World War II for a few years, and has returned home with a few additional things up his sleeve, but nothing radical.
EF: As mentioned earlier, The Green Ghost is a magician so we’ve worked in some magic tricks, such as gloves coated with a flash powder that emit a blinding green light when he snaps his fingers. The other thing we did is that we gave him a mask. In the original pulps every time he became the Green Ghost he had to put on makeup. We figured that might become cumbersome for some of the stories we wanted to tell. I had suggested that since the stories were going to be set just after the end of WWII that someone with Chance’s talents could have done secret missions for the government during the war, so we decided to establish the fact that he served in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and that their scientists fashioned a mask for him that has special lenses that glow green, allow him to see in the dark, and also has an apparatus inside it that functions as a mini-oxygen tank.
As for his supporting cast, we are using all of them. However, not everyone will appear in every story. We just don’t have the space for that. Here’s a rundown of The Green Ghost’s associates:
Meriem White is George Chance’s girlfriend and sometimes assistant. She is very smart and strong willed and, as Win pointed out, has some psychic abilities.
Ned Standish is the New York City Police Commissioner. Standish was the one who encouraged Chance to cultivate his interest in criminology into actual crime fighting.
Tiny Tim Terry is a childhood friend of George Chance. They both lived and worked in the circus as children.
Joe Harper is a racetrack bookmaker, a theatrical booking agent, and gambler. He’s got contacts in every strata of society, which makes him quite valuable to The Green Ghost.
Dr. Robert Demarest is the New York City Chief Coroner and works closely with Chance and Standish when needed.
Glenn Saunders is Chance’s assistant and a dead ringer for Chance.
AP: Some pulp purists believe updating characters like Moonstone is doing is being unfaithful to them, not keeping true to what they originally were. What is your response to this in terms of The Green Ghost?
WSE: Our approach is not to create an alternate neo-pulp universe where the characters are radically different. We see no reason to change what works—just provide a logical continuation, a view into what The Green Ghost’s adventures could have been had they continued in the pulps.
We are not changing the characters’ general backgrounds, although certain details are certainly being elaborated and expanded upon. As I said, George Chance has been off to war and back, so this is a continuation—not a “reboot.” For the modern audience, we can also ramp up the action quotient a bit, and where appropriate, provide a more frank and honest portrayal of characters’ sex lives.
Let’s face it, in The Spider, you knew Richard Wentworth and Nita Van Sloan were having sex. They weren’t celibate for the eleven years that were “engaged.” Similarly, the Green Ghost (George Chance) and Merry White (now a more grown up, Meriem White) are not a perpetually celibate couple: they wind down from their adventures and celebrate their victories, and living to fight another day, in bed. I know this may alienate a few folks who feel their pulp heroes should not have sex lives, but this doesn’t alter the basic premise of The Green Ghost—it just provides a window, another angle, into his life, and his relationship with Meriem. It rounds them out as characters. We don’t plan to be explicit—I’ll save that for when I collaborate with Mr. Farmer J—but we do plan to be a bit more realistic in a way that the original pulps weren’t.
Another difference with our Green Ghost is that he is actually part of a wider universe and continuity. The beauty of a shared pulp universe is that, unlike superhero universes, it could actually be our universe, the world outside our window. Yes, maybe occult menaces or mad scientist death rays really couldn’t happen in our world—but if one squints, or puts on the 3-D glasses, perhaps they could be rationalized away. Unlike the cosmic and world-altering events shown in the superhero universes, a shared pulp fiction universe is relatable to the “everyman.”
EF: I certainly understand their concerns and as a fan myself I am leery when any character with a long history is reinvented. We went took great care to make sure we didn’t throw away or contradict any part of The Green Ghost’s history. Again, the major change we did make has to do with the tone of the stories. In the original pulps, the stories were not as hardboiled or as spooky as you would have thought from looking at the covers. Win and I both wanted to do edgier stories without making wholesale changes to the character and we both feel that we’ve accomplished that. Hopefully, the readers will agree.
AP: OK, what about future plans for the Green Ghost, any hints? And what other irons do you have in the works you’d like to mention?
WSE: Eric’s two comic stories (so far) are called “The Mystery Named Rosabelle” and “Of Monsters and Men.” There a lot of fun, with art by the talented David Niehaus. The stories are set to appear as backups in Moonstone’s The Phantom Detective # 1 and 2, respectively. Both issues are already available for order (The Phantom Detective # 1 hits the shelves on October), so get out there and buy ’em!
Our “wide vision” prose story is called “Zombies under Broadway,” and is chock full of undead mayhem, with spot illustrations by the aforementioned Mr. Niehaus. It hasn’t been scheduled yet, so keep an eye out!
For my part, I’ve just submitted my second Avenger story to Moonstone. It’s an Avenger/Domino Lady crossover story, and I had a blast writing it. Next is an as-yet untitled story for Black Coat Press’ Tales of the Shadowmen Volume 7: Femmes Fatales; then editing Moonstone’s The Green Hornet Chronicles Volume 2 and possibly writing a sequel to my tale “Fang and Sting” which is in volume 1; then an as-yet untitled crossover story for a Sherlock Holmes anthology; and finally researching and taking notes for a novel I intend to write in 2011—wish I could say more about that, but the timing isn’t right. I hope you’ll have me back to discuss it when it is. J
EF: Well, the first comic book story, “The Mystery Named Rosabelle” concerns someone from Chance’s past trying to kill him and involves him attempting Houdini’s Chinese Water Torture Cell escape trick. “Of Monsters and Men” pits The Green Ghost against an escaped Nazi scientist and his man-made monstrosities and introduces a new member to his cast, an associate from his days with the OSS.
As for me, I have a novel I am shopping around as well as a couple of screenplays and of course more pulp stories, including more Green Ghost adventures, that I hope will see print real soon.
AP: Once again, guys, thank you for your time and your work in the pulp field!
WSE: And thank you for having us, and for the great work you’re doing promoting pulp fiction and keeping the genre alive!
EF: Yes, thank you for the opportunity to talk to you and your readers about The Green Ghost. It was a pleasure.
TIM LASIUTA, Line Editor, RETURN OF THE ORIGINALS, Moonstone
TL: I must have been born with a book in my hands, since I could read, my father would buy comic books (in the mid to late 1960’s), and we would read them at home. When he ‘grew’ up, I inherited a small collection of X Men, Spiderman, Superman, Batman, and Richie Rich. Today, I still have most of them. However, once reading bit me, I began to read his paperbacks too. I can still see his book shelf, double filled with mystery, western, and pulp. Doc Savage was probably my first ‘adult’ book, and what an introduction. I rabidly ate up any Doc, Shadow, Ace Doubles, while still reading and by now buying my own comics with newspaper money.
It is a strange truth that what you imagine, you can become. When I was 14, I remember reading a Batman comic, and seeing the first ads for Kuberts School of Art. From that point on, I began to illustrate my own adaptation of Stokers “Jewel of Seven Stars”. It was terrible, but my limitations in art led me to begin writing, and my first novel was drafted out. I wrote short stories, and illuminated my social assignments with elements of the fantastic. Tarzan even flew through one of my Psych papers in grade 11.
That aside, I wanted to be a comic book something. It was not to be, and I ventured into university, still buying and reading. Marriage kind of stopped that, and when I approached CBG about doing an article on Tom Gill, my mentor, I was ‘in’. From there I worked reviewing books, comics and doing articles for them for 4 years. Along the way, I found that a company called Moonstone was doing the Phantom, I emailed the publisher who actually responded.
As a young(er) writer, I was thrilled. Joe sent me copies and for 3 years I stuck to mainly Indy books and Moonstone. When I approached Joe with an idea to help him, he accepted, and I have written short fiction, edited, arranged PR, negotiated for properties, written bibles, and promoted Moonstone in Calgary and elsewhere.
TIM LASIUTA (on left) |
AP: What do you believe has been the motivating factor for Moonstone’s recent attraction to classic pulp heroes?
TL: Every publisher has an audience, and the DC audience is not the same as Marvels’, or IDWs’ or Archie. With our focus on the pulps and adventure characters, it is almost like we have re-introduced the ‘First’ Wave into the media. DC may have the splash, but we are the real thing.
One thing that I am learning is that the concept of our pulp lines is a recurrent theme. For decades westerns were the preferred genre due to the quick justice and characterizations. My grandfather and father shared a love of books for decades. I share the same tastes, and have re-read the same books. Today, it seems that vengeance driven characters (ie pulp) are popular. Where else can you be so politically incorrect and solve a drug lord problem with a pipe bomb??? This may be the new release for society’s pent up anger and hostility.
In terms of the genre, and our Originals line, our authors are true fans. They may write a good mystery in their day job but I suspect at night when the Black Bat flies, or the Green Ghost wanders the night, trench coats, gloves and weapons of all sorts come out of the hidden compartments. Need therapy, write a Spider tale. No need for valium…
Joe and I have always said that we are cut from the same cloth, and our interests are almost identical. I love the concept of the ‘old’, and the new at the same time. For me, the Phantom, and Doc Savage are highlights of my time so far, but I can hardly wait until the New Originals mature and take off.
AP: Why do you think pulps are becoming popular again and will today’s comic readers embrace them or give them the cold shoulder?
TL: The wave of pulp reprints from the numerous houses, the new books from Airship 27, DCs’ First Wave, and our New Originals, all contribute to a genre that is growing. There is some kind of appeal to the vintage art that adorns the books, and with increased scholarship into the artists, writers, and industry, it is developing a momentum.
In some instances, pulp readers are comic readers. An Archie reader will not pick up Phantom Detective, but someone who reads Sanctums’ Doc Savage, Avenger, or Shadow, will. However, while that book is on the coffee table, it may catch the eye of a parent, or friend. Someone who reads an adventure or team book may pick these up.
Any new line or character is a literary crap shoot.
That is the beauty of this line. We are not new. But I can guarantee that any reader who buys these books will love them.
Characters from IV FROST, edited by Tim Lasiuta |
AP: Joe Gentile has a reputation for running a tight ship and in the past handling the majority of the editorial chores. With Return of the Originals, both you and Mike Bullock seemed to have assumed Associate Editor roles. What exactly are your responsibilities in this capacity?
TL: Joe is a one man army. With my growing interest in Moonstone, and some as of yet unannounced properties, I have been recruited to read, track, and do whatever Joe asks me to do. Mike is busy writing for the line, and with that, his duties will be what I cannot do. For instance, he is doing the Pulp Manual due out soon. I had no time, but I did read and edit 30 plus stories already. If you’re asking what my duties really are, I would tell you, and have to shoot you!
I would love to write A Richard Diamond piece, and perhaps another Captain Midnight tale, but the New Originals take up a good amount of time.
AP: For those readers having been lost in the Amazon all year, would you please explain exactly what Return of the Originals is?
TL: The Return of the New Originals is an event unlike any other we have done at Moonstone. A long, long time ago, in a galaxy far away, pulp characters were everywhere. You could not look at a newsstand and not be assailed without a lurid cover, and often trashy fiction. We have taken the best of those, and asked one question.
“How can we turn these characters into viable icons for our time?”
The result is a 20 plus character mix that ranges from occult to adventure. There are tough secret agents, strong teams, pilots, gutsy avengers, and dangerous sirens. They all share one commonality, Stamp out crime!
We even tackle the issue of racism with Decimator Smith.
One thing about our staff of writers, artists, and production personnel is that we share a love for the genre and medium. Every author, as Joe put it, was invited to play in our sandbox with his/her favorite character. They came with their own pails and shovels. The result is a stable of creators who write with passion. We all get to enjoy that.
AP: Which of these characters are you involved with personally and were you familiar with them before taking on this assignment?
TL: I was familiar with many of the characters before. I knew G-8, the Spider, Honey West, Domino Lady, Phantom Detective, Green Llama, KiGor and others, but once I saw the entire line-up, I was shocked. We have one busy setting, and by mid 2025, it should be free of crime. Until then, there are many stories to tell, and many crimes to correct.
AP: Tim, are there any plans for any Originals Universe crossovers between any of these great characters? Aside from the C.J. Henderson book, that is. And are you free to divulge those yet?
TL: As of this point, there are no plans that I am aware of, but only the Shadow knows…
AP: Any last words you like to leave the All Pulp readers with concerning Return of the Originals?
TL: Pulp fiction will never die as long as readers continue to support great writers! I love this job!
AP: Tim, this has been a pleasure. Thank you so much.
MICHAEL METCALF
Artist on BLACK BAT and DEATH ANGEL
AP: Michael, welcome to All Pulp’s first ever Moonstone Monday! Before we jump right into the excellent work you’re doing at Moonstone, give us some background on you and what work you’ve done up until now.
MICHAEL METCALF: Glad to be here. Moonstone Monday is one of my favorite days! I’ve been drawing for as long as I can remember. Before I became a part of these Moonstone projects, I worked on various children’s graphic novels such as Timothy and the Transgalactic Towel and The Secrets of the Seasons: Gimoles. Before those I worked on a strange mix of pinups, covers, one panel cartoons, catalog illustrations, and what I like to call “not-yet-published” comics.
AP: You’re working with writer Mike Bullock on two characters involved in Moonstone’s RETURN OF THE ORIGINALS. One is an original character, Death Angel. Having looked at some of the images of this character, it’s clearly a frightening avenger type. Tell us something about the Death Angel and give us some insight into what goes into your art on this particular concept.
MM: Yeah, Death Angel is a dark, vengeful character born out of a tortured, abused childhood. The Death Angel costume is all black with a white skull mask and large tattered wings so there is a terrific opportunity to play with heavy shadows and the contrast of light and dark areas in the comic panels. An important part of the costume is the pulsing light and sound devices concealed in both gloves. These devices induce disorientation and hallucinations in Death Angel’s foes so I like to use alot of swirling flowing lines and trippy distorted images during the fight scenes.
AP: Switching gears, but only slightly, you’re also bringing a pulp icon to life on the comic page, The Black Bat, as written also by Mike Bullock. Pulp fans know how the Black Bat is and he’s also a dark avenger night type of hero, but the styles seem different from your BLACK BAT to your DEATH ANGEL. Can you point out the differences and explain why you’ve sort of approached each of these from different angles artistically?
MM: I think that both of these characters are psychologically damaged. They both want to fight evil, and they are doing it in a very violent way that is outside of the normal limits of the law. The Black Bat once worked within the legal system and knows how the system works. Readers will notice that the Black Bat’s mind is now fractured into different personalities, the defender, prosecutor, judge and executioner, and it’s these four distinct voices that determine how he deals with the bad guys. The Black Bat has heightened senses and a huge need for justice. On the other hand, Death Angel’s roots are in twisted religion and a childhood of horrifying abuse. The result is a tortured soul seeking to punish the wicked. I think Death Angel is particularly obsessed with avenging crimes against women and children. Death Angel doesn’t have any superhuman abilities, just deep psychological scars, some powerful but horribly skewed religious convictions and a freaky costume armed with mind warping devices.
AP: With the Black Bat, you’re treading on what some would consider sacred ground. The costume the Bat wears in your work is slightly different from what most pulp aficionados would say he originally wore. Can you explain some of the changes and your reasons for them as well as wade in on the discussion of whether or not original characters should be changed/updated for modern readers or left as they were originally conceived?
MM: Mike B and I love the Black Bat, so hopefully we won’t be spoiling anyone’s enjoyment by making some changes. Mike B is the driving force here and he has a great deal of respect for the source materials. With the Black Bat making his way back into the visually driven comic format, I think it’s a great opportunity to add some new details and show him off to a whole new fan base while hopefully providing something new and enjoyable to the existing fans. Readers will find that he now sports a cowl similar to the traditional one but with no eye holes. His boots, gloves and other costume parts are all combat-durable and quite scarred because he has a tendency to brawl and break through windows, walls or crooks that get in his way. I’d say we approached the creation of the first issue from the point of view that “wow! this is what we’d like to see the Black Bat doing, and this is what he might wear to scare that crap out of some thugs before he beats them to a pulp.”
AP: What appeals to you about working with pulp characters in a comics medium?
MM: I think pulp fiction and comics are branches of the same family. It’s always a blast to draw dynamic characters having sensational adventures so I guess that’s what appealed to me.
AP: Any pulp characters you’d like to try your hand at, either those currently being played with at Moonstone or otherwise?
MM: The Shadow and Doc Savage spring to mind and there are many, many others that would be a hoot to draw.
AP: Do you have anything else in the works now, either within Moonstone or beyond?
MM: Mike and I just finished separate Black Bat and Death Angel pulp tales for the widevision books. These feature a different size/shape format and some very moody art. I’m working on the next ish of BLACK BAT DOUBLE SHOT and we have a four issue mini series called Lions Tigers and Bears Volume Three that is awaiting a print date and volume IV waiting in the wings. As far as other projects, I’m illustrating a mystery novel and a mini-series that I’m dying to talk about but I can’t yet! Hopefully I’ll chat with you again soon about the other stuff.
AP: Michael, your time and work is really appreciated!
MM: Hope you enjoy the BLACK BAT DOUBLE SHOT!
MOONSTONE MONDAY INTERVIEW
Martin Powell-Writer of Ki-Gor and The Spider for Moonstone’s RETURN OF THE ORIGINALS
AP: Martin, thanks for sitting down with All Pulp again so soon (For Martin’s first interview with All Pulp, actually All Pulp’s debut interview, click on the INTERVIEWS page on this site). Aside from the Halloween Legion, you mentioned other projects you’re working on. Can you tell us something about the RETURN OF THE ORIGINALS from Moonstone and your part in that?
POWELL: THE RETURN OF THE ORIGINALS is a pulp-packed event coming soon from Moonstone, resurrecting many of the classic pulp characters of the 1930s in both comics and pulp fiction form. It’s going to be really cool. I’m writing THE SPIDER’s new comic book series and prose adventures, as well as KI-GOR THE JUNGLE LORD.
AP: Wow, not only one but two classic characters. Of the two, Ki-Gor is probably the least familiar to most people. He has been identified as a ‘Tarzan clone’ by some. Is this a true description? If not, tell us about him? What if anything makes him stand out from the more famous Lord of the Jungle?
POWELL: He isn’t as well known today, and I’m going to try to fix that. There’s no doubt that Ki-Gor was originally created as a Tarzan imitator, and, in fact, the earliest Ki-Gor novels are very similar to the Tarzan movies of that same period, starring Johnny Weissmuller and Maureen O’Sullivan. But Ki-Gor quickly developed his own unique personality as the orphaned child of a missionary, rescued and adopted by a powerful jungle shaman. Ki-Gor appeared as the lead feature in Fiction House’s Jungle Stories magazine, from 1938 all the way through to 1954, for a total of fifty-nine adventure novels, which significantly outnumbers Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan novels.
The most striking differences between Ki-Gor and Tarzan are that Ki-Gor’s stories are much, much weirder and they are far more sensually charged. Ki-Gor and Helene, his red-haired mate, have a very intimate relationship—and it shows in the stories, quite unlike Tarzan and Jane. Their adventures abound with deep passion, marauding prehistoric monsters, and terrifying black magic, with a touch of science fiction thrown in, too. It’s almost as if the concepts of Burroughs and Robert E. Howard came together in a macabre mix. Having said all that, I am a devoted Tarzan fan, by the way, and as such I’m working hard to make Ki-Gor very different from him.
AP: The concept of a ‘Jungle Lord’ doesn’t really fit well in the modern world where you can look at any point on the globe from a home computer. As the writer, how do you intend to make Ki-Gor resonate with a modern audience? What will you bring to the character that maybe hasn’t been there before?
POWELL: Well, I somewhat disagree with the notion that our “modern world” no longer offers any mystery or adventure. There are vast jungles in Africa and South America which have never been explored by so-called civilized humans. A lot of the planet is still completely unmapped and unknown, even in the 21st century. Within just the past couple years a vast “lost world” was discovered in Indonesia containing over 200 unknown species of animals, include a bizarre tree-climbing kangaroo. Our planet still has her secrets.
Ki-Gor’s tales occur in the late 1930s, when Africa was even more mysterious than it is today. Mind you, this isn’t the same place as described in our geography books. It’s a strange world of terrible beauty and nature run amok, insidiously inhabited by witch doctors, cryptic creatures, missing links, and lost alien cities. Ki-Gor’s personality and, especially, his relationship with Helene will continue to evolve in my stories. This is not only a series of high adventure, it’s also an epic love story, which I’m enjoying very much.
AP: What, if any, concepts are you bringing forward from the original Ki-Gor tales? Any supporting cast, recurring themes, etc.?
POWELL: Helene Vaughn, from the original pulps, plays a very important role in this series. We sort of see the Jungle Lord, and his world, through her eyes. She is an extraordinary woman from civilization who has become Ki-Gor’s moral conscience and his mate. I’m also retaining N’kuni the Pygmy Warrior, and bringing in a lot of my own characters and concepts, too. My artist partner in this is Tom Floyd, who recently received the prestigious Golden Lion Award from the Edgar Rice Burroughs Bibliophiles. Past recipients of the award have been folks like, Harlan Ellison, Johnny Weissmuller, and Frank Frazetta, so I’m really lucky to have Tom. It’s been great fun working with him on this grand, sweeping jungle adventure.
AP: Let’s go to your other character. To do that we go from the little known (Ki-Gor) to the pulp icon (The Spider). For many, writing the further adventures of Richard Wentworth would be a dream job. Was it that way for you and what appeals to you about the Spider as a writer?
POWELL: Oh, absolutely. I love the Spider. I’ve been a Spider fan since I was a teenager. It is a dream job. I’ve never thought of it as anything less, and I’m very grateful that Moonstone chose me to write this new series.
Richard Wentworth, the Spider’s alter-ego (or…is it the other way around?), is a fascinating character. Arguably, he’s the most three-dimensional, fully realized personality of the pulps. I certainly consider him the most interesting of all the other contemporary pulp heroes. Those who superficially think of him merely as a killing machine, are missing the point of the Spider, in my opinion. I’m striving to remain as close to Norvell Page’s creation as possible by portraying Wentworth as highly intelligent, possessing lightning-fast deductive skills, and as a brilliantly commanding strategist. He also possesses nearly superhuman physical prowess, extraordinary endurance, and an incredible tolerance to pain. His fearsome reputation as the “Master of Men” is fully warranted, and yet he is also sorely afflicted with a messiah-complex. The Spider is wanted by the Law and the criminal Underworld alike, with most people believing that he is out of control and murderously insane. Privately, Wentworth himself is haunted by this terrifying possibility.
AP: What about the Spider will ring true with a modern crowd? Is it really just the violent way in which Wentworth handles his business or is there more to it?
POWELL: There is much more to the Spider than merely his body-count Alone among the pulp heroes on his day, the readers were privy to the Spider’s inner thoughts, his crazed obsessions, his astonishing genius, and his tormented and dreadful self-doubts. I will be preserving this and also adding to the concept considerably.
Ultimately, the Spider is more terrible than the fiends he fights. In Wentworth’s nightmarish world, New York City teeters forever upon the brink of oblivion. It’s 911 every day. He boldly faces hordes of monstrous madmen with a venomous laugh and a thunderous brace of blasting automatics. No villain, no matter how diabolical, has ever defeated the Master of Men. He has become a monster in order to vanquish the devils that would destroy us. It is a transformation that will demand a terrible price, as we shall see, by the climax of my first year’s storyline.
AP: Writing pulp prose is one thing, but crafting a script to bring any pulp character to life in comic form is a tricky proposition, as we’ve seen from other companies in recent months. Tell us how you feel about the work you’ve done so far on both characters, how you feel they translate to the comic page and how telling these stories in this form brings anything different to them?
POWELL: I’ve been doing this sort of thing a long time, almost twenty-five years. Whether writing prose, or comic scripts, the classic concepts themselves must be preserved and maintained. My feeling is that the fans all want these iconic characters to be the same as from the source material. The readers are expecting to find themselves in a familiar world once they open these books. Anything less is disappointing and disrespectful. Visualize, for example, someone who has obtained, say, a Superman license, then hires a writer who immediately proceeds to change the costume, the powers, and the origin into something utterly unrecognizable. I’ll never understand that kind of thinking. There is nothing that needs to be fixed, rebooted, or re-imagined about the Spider. He is what he is, and that’s more than enough for his fans. And for me.
AP: The Spider has companions and recurring characters as well as techniques that are almost as recognizable as he is to pulpdom? What bits from the Spider’s original run are making it into your version?
POWELL: I’m using all of it. Nita Van Sloan, Ram Singh, Jackson, Commissioner Kirkpatrick, Professor Brownlee, and even a couple classic Spider villains—they will all be returning in my series. I’m focusing on Nita especially. As the only woman to share the Spider’s darkest secrets, her role, fighting alongside with him amid all this chaos and madness, fascinates me. There was no other romantic couple in the pulps quite like Wentworth and Nita. I will be delving deeper into their bizarre relationship with each story.
AP: What about pressure? Do you feel any obligations to handle an iconic character like The Spider in any certain way? Any fears or misgivings about taking on such a task?
POWELL: There’s always pressure, of course, and a certain amount of stress with any creative endeavor. I do feel a serious obligation to properly present an authentic version of the Spider. That is of the upmost importance to me as a writer and as a fellow Spider fan.
AP: Pulp is on an upswing, according to most of us in the pulp community. Obviously, this project from Moonstone is a major sign of that. Why should people, both pulp nuts and pulp newbies, pick up your books, or any of the RETURN titles?
POWELL: Well, the main reason I would want to buy them is because both the Spider and Ki-Gor are being illustrated by two very fine artists. Tom Floyd, as I’ve already said, is rendering KI-GOR THE JUNGLE LORD, and the legendary Pablo Marcos—and a long-time favorite of mine—is drawing THE SPIDER. Both series look spectacular.
AP: Any hints of future developments for Ki-Gor or the Spider?
POWELL: Tom and I will be re-visiting Ki-Gor’s origin in an upcoming story, and the conclusion of my first year’s worth of Spider adventures will team him, for the very first time, with another classic pulp hero—G-8 and his Battle Aces. That’s just the beginning, but the rest are secret. I have a lot of plans for the Spider.
AP: It’s been great, Martin! Thanks again!
POWELL: Not at all. I’m always happy to discuss the pulps. Thank you.
MOONSTONE MONDAY INTERVIEW
Mike Bullock-writer of Black Bat
for Moonstone’s RETURN OF THE ORIGINALS
AP: Mike, welcome to ALL PULP and thanks for taking time to answer a few questions. First, for those who don’t know your background, tell us about Mike Bullock.
MB: I’ve been writing since I was four years old, unprofessionally that is. I learned to read with Batman comics when I was three and always dreamed of a day when I could tell stories in comic books. When I was a teenager, I joined my first band as a singer/lyricist and quickly discovered I had a talent for poetry. I spent the next decade or so as a professional musician and when the day came to call it quits, I decided it was time to get serious about writing. A year later I was working for Broken Frontier and Panzer, a music magazine, writing articles and reviews. Soon thereafter, I landed my first comic work at Image and then took over writing The Phantom for Moonstone. After that, I woke up this morning and found this interview waiting for me. Sorry I’m late.
AP: You play a major role in Moonstone’s latest project, RETURN OF THE ORIGINALS, which focuses on new comic stories featuring classic pulp characters. Can you give us any details on this project as a whole and specifically why you are glad to be a part of it?
MB: Back in 2007 Moonstone’s El Jeffe, Joe Gentile and I were tossing ideas back and forth and I suggested making a fictional city where we could tell stories featuring many of Moonstone’s characters like Domino Lady, Spider, Black Shirt and some new characters like Death Angel and one Joe had dreamed up whose name escapes me at the moment. We decided to do a team book to launch this idea, but Joe wasn’t sure that was the right time to push it, since they had the Twilight War series amping up. We continued discussing the idea and it soon evolved into a pulp city/universe, where we’d bring back a lot of original pulp characters and put them into a cohesive environment. It would also allow us a vehicle to introduce new characters that were exclusively under the Moonstone banner.
Well, time went on and one day Joe emailed me and said he thought it was time to get the ball rolling on this idea. Pretty soon he handed me a list of characters and asked which one I’d like to pen. I wrote back and told him Black Bat, Gladiator, Golden Amazon and I tossed in Captain Future and Sign of the Crimson Dagger, as well as Death Angel. Joe loved the enthusiasm but realized that was too much for one writer to tackle all at once, especially since we were still going to co-write the team book and we settled on Black Bat, Death Angel, Gladiator and Captain Future. I was thrilled to say the least, especially with Black Bat and Captain Future. I’ve always held a love for characters like Black Bat, Batman and Moon Knight and this was a chance to guide the adventures of the one who started it all.
The first prose book I ever read was the original Star Wars novelization. When I was done, I loved it so much I went to the book store looking for more and stumbled on a series about a Virginian who suddenly found himself on Mars fighting giant green men to save the most beautiful woman in the universe. Right then and there, I discovered the magic that is pulp fiction. I devoured every one of those John Carter books in less than a month and then branched out to Conan, Carson of Venus, etc. With that in mind, and my lifelong love of comic books, it’s no wonder that writing pulp comic books is a dream come true.
AP: One of the characters you’re tackling for RETURN is one that is known to most pulp fans, The Black Bat. Briefly, acquaint those who might not be so familiar about whom the Black Bat was in his original appearances. Also, weren’t there two pulp Black Bats? If so, which one are you writing?
MB: Anthony Quinn was a man on a mission, driven to make sure justice was done in the courtroom. However, just as often happens today, criminals slipped through the loopholes of our judicial system on technicalities time and time again, which brought with it a level of frustration that only motivated Quinn further. One day, in an attempt to destroy evidence, a mobster hit Quinn in the face with acid, blinding him and leaving horrific scarring around his eyes. Quinn’s career as a DA was over, and for a brief time, so was his life, as far as he was concerned. However, as the saying goes, ‘you can’t keep a good man down’ and Quinn was certainly a good man. As he sat in his parlor one night, contemplating his new found course of action, the smell of beautiful perfume wafted into the room. A gentle voice told Quinn of a secret operation that would restore his sight. Quinn and his right-hand man, Silk Kirby, drove out to the countryside where a doctor transplanted the eyes of a dead police officer into Quinn’s head, returning his eyesight. However, Quinn had already heightened his other senses and could now effectively see in the dark, as well as hear in a manner akin to bats, where minute air pressure changes alerted him to motion in his surroundings.
Quinn took up the mantle of Black Bat, swearing to fight evil men with their own weapon: treachery, intimidation and terror. There were indeed two Black Bats, one a private investigator in search of the unknown and another, more successful version, which I’ve just detailed. Additionally, there were several other ‘Bat’ characters in the pulps as well as DC comics’ most famous one, Batman.
AP: As most pulp characters do, The Black Bat has a cast of helpers, a team of sorts, and a cast of recurring characters and even themes. What of these trappings are you bringing into your version of this masked avenger?
MB: We see Carol Baldwin in the first issue, Silk Kirby appears in #2 and Butch O’Leary enters in #4. Additionally, a new member of his inner circle, Langston Walker will join the ranks soon.
AP: There’s always a concern that a writer will ‘change’ an established character if he takes over the writing chores. What changes if any are you making in the Black Bat? Anything about his history or changes maybe in storytelling, tone, etc?
MB: I’m not sure what I’m doing necessarily falls under the heading of change, but more of deeper exploration of what came before. I did a lot of research on the impact of traumatic events, such as being hit with a face full of acid, and what it does to the human psyche and introduced my findings to the lore. I’ve also expounded on the heightened senses in a more realistic manner than what others did, (re: Marvel Comics’ Daredevil). Beyond that, the only real updates have been to the costume and storytelling style. On the costume front, I think artist Michael Metcalf has done a wonderful job bringing the Black Bat’s wardrobe into the 21st century. Hopefully, your readers agree.
AP: One aspect of your Black Bat that stands out is his deadly dedication to his mission. He intends to see justice done and sometimes that’s not so pretty. This is a trait, in my opinion, that he had even in his original stories, but it’s also a hot button with critics who claim that such violence is gratuitous, that it gives readers the wrong ideas about how to handle things. How would you handle such criticism if you received it for your Black Bat?
MB: I’ve already had such criticism and all I can say to the critics is wait and see. At first glance some of the ultra-violence in the first issue might seem gratuitous, but once a bigger picture unfolds, there’ll be more to the story than just a few two-dimensional thugs getting whacked.
AP: Let’s talk about time period. What era does your Black Bat take place in and why that particular period?
MB: We’ve intentionally left the time period for most of the Return line vague. While the Battle For LA story by pulp master C.J. Henderson obviously nails it down to the WWII era, this is an alternate earth where these tales take place, so you may see things in the books that defy chronological structures as we know them. Expect the unexpected, especially in the pages of Aaron Shaps’ Phantom Detective and the aforementioned team book Joe Gentile and I are doing.
AP: There seems to be two camps of pulp writers as well as pulp fans. Some want writers who take over established characters to stick right to the model already established, same costume, same friends, etc. Others allow that the modern writer may bring something different to the table and are more tolerant of change? Where do you fall as a writer and as a fan?
MB: I love new. No one will ever write stories exactly like the original authors and as a reader I’d rather not see someone try because they’ll ultimately fail. Instead, I think it’s the duty of writers to build on what came before. If you’re a professional writer and you have nothing new to say, your career will last as long as a mobster in Black Bat’s world. A lot has changed in our collective consciousness since these tales were first crafted; including the way we as a society look at storytelling. So, I’m excited to read Martin Powell’s new Spider tales, thrilled about what Aaron is doing in Phantom Detective and can’t wait to read Secret Agent X, Rocketman and the litany of other stories like I.V. Frost, Ki-Gor, G8 and more. I handed the reins of Gladiator over to Josh Aitken and can’t wait to see what he does with earth’s mightiest mortal, also.
While I get the desire by purists to never have anything change, for those who subscribe to that mindset, there’s a litany of existing work to read. If nothing was to change, why bother doing anything new? On the flipside, if you’re going to do something new, to quote the cliché ‘Go big or go home’, which is a mantra I think a lot of Return writers are embracing.
AP: Depending on whom you talk to or what you read, The Black Bat had quite an influence on several modern day characters and concepts. Does that fact put you under any particular pressure to one up the original? What are your intentions with your Black Bat, to tell a great story or is there more?
MB: I don’t see any pressure from that angle; I do feel a pressure to live up to a great character and series of existing stories, just as I did when I took over the Phantom. Lee Falk was a master of speculative fiction and to walk in his shoes was quite intimidating at first, however I soon was able to spread my wings and fly with his great creation. I think with Black Bat, I’m revisiting those early Phantom days to some extent. I’ll make some mistakes, just as I did with The Ghost Who Walks, but hopefully the enjoyable parts will outweigh everything else. In the end, I just want to tell stories that I’d enjoy reading. Hopefully, they’ll be great stories and remembered as such, but I’m simply praying God allows me to do the best job humanly possible. I think if I do that and the book reaches a wide enough audience, it’ll all work out in the end.
AP: Other than breathing life back into a pulp icon, do you have anything else in the works that would make pulp fans sit on the edge of their seats?
MB: Well, Death Angel debuted in Phantom Doubleshot #1 last year and garnered some real excitement from readers. I’m hoping the character’s further appearances in Black Bat Doubleshot will build on that until ‘Angel can survive as the headliner.
Captain Future is another pulp character I’m working with that has me really excited. The idea that this character is so overlooked today boggles my mind. For those who aren’t aware, the good Captain was one of the originators of the space opera sub genre, popularized originally by Flash Gordon and later by Star Wars. Some describe Cap as Doc Savage in space, which is more than enough to get me jazzed. The original stores, penned by Edmond Hamilton, have all the excitement found in Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter stories and they harken back to a time when our society was more innocent and captivated with imagination. Look for the first Captain Future tale in the Moonstone Pulp Fiction magazine’s first issue.
Outside the pulp arena, I’m writing a new “jungle girl” book called Savage Beauty which takes the sensibilities of my Phantom stories and infuses them into an old genre desperately in need of modernization. Savage Beauty #1 hits shelves in early 2011.
AP: Mike, thanks a lot for taking the time to spend Moonstone Monday with ALL PULP!
MB: Thanks for the interview, Tommy, it’s greatly appreciated.
MOONSTONE MONDAY INTERVIEW
Ron Fortier-writer of I.V FROST
for Moonstone’s RETURN OF THE ORIGINALS
AP: Ron, you’ve made a name for yourself in comics and recently in pulps. Now the two fields are coming together for you with your work for Moonstone. Let us in on the project overall that you’re a part of and how it came about.
RF: Well, I’m a small (note very, very small) part of Moonstone’s new pulp inspired comic book line, Return of the Originals spearheaded by Managing Editor Joe Gentile with able assistance from Mike Bullock and Tim Lasiuta. For the past several years Moonstone Books has been creating a really substantial presence in the pulp community with their excellent prose anthologies featuring such characters as the Spider, the Avenger and from the comic ranks, the Phantom. With this next step into pulp comics, Joe set about recruiting those writers who had contributed to the prose books and I am happily one of those.
AP: With the Pulp resurgence going as it is, fans are aware of Doc Savage, the Shadow, and even some of the lesser known names like the Black Bat and The Phantom Detective. But you’re putting your talents to a hero only die hard pulp fans may know. Just what is the story behind I.V. Frost? What’s his history?
RH: Honestly, the more obscure, the better where I’m concerned. These lesser known heroes are real gems. I.V. Frost was invented for Clues Detective Stories by veteran pulp writer Donald Wandrai. Between Sept. 1934 and Sept. 1937, Wandrai wrote a total of eighteen stories starring this scientific criminologist. Frost is best described as a cross between Sherlock Holmes and the two-fisted private eye Sam Spade. A genius who puts his intellect to use solving bizarre crimes, he is not above getting his hands dirty to bring the bad guys to justice. Frost is aided by a platinum blond beauty named Jean Moray who is not only sexy and street smart, but also a scientist with a college degree. They make a fantastic crime solving team.
AP: You’re known for your desire to stay as true to the history of the public domain characters you write as you can, but you are obviously a modern era writer. What do you think you bring to this idea that will make Frost appealing to readers who pick it up today?
RF: After writing comics for thirty years, I’d like to think I’ve learned what a graphic story requires to make it both interesting and fun for the average comic reader. Although a lot of what happens in Frost’s adventures is indeed cerebral, I’m well aware no one wants to read a comic made up mostly of the hero locked in his lab simply staring off into space thinking. Thus far all of my scripts have made a concentrated effort to get Frost out of his lab and out where the action is. As long as I remember to the keep the fists and bullets flying, hopefully no one will get bored with him.
AP: There are just some ideas from pulp that may not translate well from the written word to the comic panel. What do you think there is about Frost that makes comics a good medium for him to return in?
RF: One of the things I know for a fact is Sherlock Holmes’ lasting personality was never really about how he solved any of his cases, but what a truly unique and colorful personality he was given by Arthur Conan Doyle. Both I.V. Frost and the delectable Miss Moray are such original, different characters. I’m using this as a base line and then writing exotic, fantastic crimes to get them involved with. That combination of bizarre cases and Frost’s eclectic persona will hopefully be very appealing to comic readers. There really aren’t any other pulp heroes quite like him.
AP: A lot of classic characters come with their own trademarks, a team of supporters, certain gadgets they always use, etc? Does I. V. Frost have any of this baggage and if he does, what of it are you bringing into your stories?
RF: Well, I’ve already spoken quite a bit of Jean Moray. There were a few police detectives who worked with Frost and I will be incorporating one or two of these, plus others of my own invention. As for gadgets and gizmos, Frost’s own brownstone in New York City is filled with all manner of recording devices, electric surveillance equipment etc. It is practically a fortress. There is also his personal laboratory where he can whip up all manner of fiendish cocktails and contraptions to aid him in cracking a case, such as his bullet-proof plastic suit. Many of these I’ve lifted right out of the original stories.
AP: Those of us that are pulp fans as well as pulp writers and artists see a major push in not only the creation of new pulp characters, but also the revitalization of older characters. A question to ask, though, is why? Why do you think now is the time for a character like Frost to return to the public scene? Why do you think there’s a reading public interested in him and his fellow pulp characters?
RF: I’ve been thinking about this on and off for the past several years, watching this Renaissance of Pulps if you will, and trying to fathom its meaning. I may be all wet, but I just cannot accept that it is mere coincidence that the pulps were born during the Great Depression and now, when our country is once again undergoing economic woes, readers find themselves hungry for escapist entertainment to help them forger their troubles, if even for a few hours or minutes even. Pulp literature is a purer form of action adventure than what evolved over the past thirty years in this country. From the late sixties to the present, we’ve been given “realistic” anti-heroes who in the end are often indistinguishable from the villains they battle. I hate the word anti-hero, it’s a joke. The anti-hero is the villain. Always had been. People today are fed up with this narcissistic junk and want real old fashion heroes again and that’s why pulps are making a strong comeback in all mediums. Because the pulps were never afraid to create heroes people could look up to, emulate and find hope in. Pulps have always been a literature of hope.
AP: Any plans for Frost you can let your adoring fans in on ?
RF: Well, so far I’ve turned in one prose story and three comic strips, all of which are being beautifully illustrated by Jake Minor, a super talented artist whose work reminds me of Brian Bolland. Fans are going to love it. As for future plans, only to keep writing more of these as I’ve grown really fond of these characters. Hopefully so will the fans as it will be their vote that determines their future from here on out.
AP: I. V. Frost is not all you have cookin’ on the pulp stove. What else do you have your hands in currently that we can look forward to in the future?
RF: Well, I mentioned some of the prose stuff from Moonstone. I’ve an Avenger story due out in the second volume of that series and a Green Hornet story in the first volume of that set due out any day now. I’ve also written an Athena Voltaire prose story for creator Steve Bryant’s anthology book now in the works. There are several pulp and radio heroes that have never been translated to comics that I’m hoping to develop for various publishers next year. Obviously I’m not at liberty to divulge their names, but I think fans will be pleasantly surprised. I’m also working on my fifth Captain Hazzard novel for Airship 27 Productions and hope to start writing another set of stories for Pro Se Productions featuring another of my characters that’s been sitting on the shelves way too long. I guess you might say I’m kind of busy.
AP: Thanks a lot, Ron!
RF: My pleasure. Thanks for the opportunity.