NAKED CITY: DVD Update

A couple of years ago I posted about the detective/crime drama NAKED CITY. At the time there were a few "Best of" DVD collections. But now the complete series is out in a boxed set (four seasons on 29 DVDs!).  From the episodes I've sampled so far the image and sound quality is great. amazon has it on sale at $99 which is 44% off retail.

I have nothing to complain about since this is presented in excellent quality and at a decent price. I do wish there had been an effort at some behind the scenes features or a few commentary tracks. Be that at is may, this is an extraordinary chance to get all 138 episodes.

Wellman Audiobooks

As of October 22nd 2013 audible.com will be releasing two audio adaptations of what looks to be the NightShade Books collections of Wellman stories. Volumes 1 & 2 will be THIRD CRY TO LEGBA AND OTHER INVOCATIONS and THE DEVIL IS NOT MOCKED AND OTHER WARNINGS. The producers seem to promise that all five of the NightShade collections will be adapted. Special thanks to Bill Ekhardt for the heads up!

THIRD CRY TO LEGBA is described thus: "This audiobook collects Wellman’s John Thunstone and Lee Corbet stories, written between 1943 and 1979. These stories combine the mystical and horrific with traditional Southern folk tales and legends. These stories also reveal a post-World War II modernism that make them much more then pulp romanticism. The paranoia and cynicism of modern weird icons, such as The X-files, may well have had their genesis in the pulp musings of Manly Wade Wellman. Indeed the intensely driven, idealistic occult investigator, John Thunstone, could be a pulp/noir stand-in for Fox Mulder. ©2000 Frances Wellman (P)2013 Audible, Inc."

And THE DEVIL IS NOT MOCKED as: "Wellman’s work will be remembered, and should be preserved because it combines the dark gothic tradition of the American pulps with a detailed snapshot of regional history and culture. This mixture is shown through the lens of the American modernist tradition, revealing something that is larger than the sum of its parts. Volume two of a five volume set collecting all of Wellman's Appalachian fantasy stories. ©2001 The Estate of Manly Wade Wellman (P)2013 Audible, Inc."

Also available now are GIANTS FROM ETERNITY in the audio collection A GALAXY TRILOGY Vol 3 and an audiobook adaptation of the single Wellman adaptation to THE TWILIGHT ZONE, Still Valley.
This article is re-posted from manlywadewellman.com

The Mill at Calder's End

Whether you've been lucky enough to see it in full at festivals or at least the trailer, you may have been drawn to Kevin McTurk's curious puppet show-turned-short film called THE NARRATIVE OF VICTOR KARLOCH.  The imagery is stark and powerful, the atmosphere electric with fear of the unknown. All of the major visuals and characters brought to life via puppets, practical effects and miniature sets.

Karloch was produced by Heather Henson's Handmade Puppet Dreams project and the Jim Henson Foundation. The film hit the festival circuit and on special occasions had live performances.

If you have been aching to see this supernatural puppet show but hadn't the chance. Soon you will, and even more, you'll be able to help contribute to the next installment of the "Spirit Cabinet" series, of which Karloch is the first.  McTurk is now raising funds for THE MILL AT CALDER'S END. Another Victornian ghost story cut from the clothe of Poe, Lovecraft, Bava and Hammer films.

Artistic contributors to the project include Hellboy's Mike Mignola and B.P.R.D. and The Marquis Guy Davis. Karloch starred the voices of Elijah Wood and Christopher Lloyd while Calder's Mill stars Barbara Steele and Jason Flemyng.

Head over to the kickstarter page to check out more in-depth info on the production!

Mysteries of Myra UPDATE!

Deep contrast and wide spectrum of mid-tones.
A framegrab from the surviving footage

Below this nerd-out rant is the original Pulp Reader post about the silent serial The Mysteries of Myra. It has been considered long lost but The Serial Squadron's Eric Stedman edited together the novelized story and press materials into a book. And a mighty fine book it is too.

Well there is now an update to the status of Myra. On the tail of the announcement that Trail of the Octopus will be out on DVD any time now (exciting news indeed!), it was also announced that some found footage of Myra will be shown at the Serial Squadron's streaming website "Chapters" just in time for Halloween, starting on October 27th.

The "Thought Monster" escapes!
Another frame from the footage.

I was honored to be able to preview the footage and it is pretty outstanding to see. It once again reaffirms (in my opinion at least) that the era of the silent serials was truly the height of the art form. At the time, made more for adults than children, the subject matter was more daring and psychologically intense, with more artful cinematography and story-lines you would find in the best of the thriller pulps. Those stark Noirish tonal ranges and shadows you may associate with the likes of Fritz Lang are common in many of the early silent serials. And speaking of visuals, a lot of this footage seen here is in really great shape, with very sharp image, great contrast and very stable. 

I won't spoil anything that goes on in the footage you will see, but will say that it is more than worth seeing. The only regret is that it leaves me wanting to see the rest of the serial. But it is an amazing and rare opportunity to see what still exist and who knows, as Eric states below, even more footage will hopefully, eventually show up. Many serials have been previously considered lost and have since not only turned up but have been made available to the public.

Entrance to the Lair.
Click on the pic to see more of the crisp detail

Here's what Eric has to say about the footage and what is being done with it:

...there's about a half hour's worth of footage left which I've already put together and restored, including the last reel which is knock-out amazing, and the quality of the transfer is eye-popping, without question the highest quality transfer of any serial I've ever seen, done in new digital HD/Blu-ray quality, with an image size about 8 times larger than regular DVD resolution. One reel is in another archive which we're expecting to get ahold of later on. We may not have it by Halloween but it's not impossible. Anyway what exists has already been put together and is ready to go in case the new reel comes in and has to be added more quickly. We're not going to put it all on DVD at the moment pending decisions as to how to handle possible re-creation of the rest of the serial, which we want to do a good job of if we embark upon such a major project.

It was a thrill to see the footage and I'm inspired to re-read the book in time to catch the official stream release at Halloween time.  The cool thing is that you can too!  And no, I don't work for Eric or the Squadron, but I love to share cool stuff (that's what the blog is all about after all) and this is really cool!

Aleister Crowley  would be proud!
Another frame grab and another amazing scene.

Original Post about the publication of the book:

I love pulps. I also love cliffhanger serials. And maybe more than anything, I love behind the scenes info and history about movie and television production. As my poor suffering wife can attest, my bookshelves are jammed with reference books and guides about pulp characters, old movies, radio dramas and T.V. shows.

Enter Eric Stedman, an entrepreneur who dedicates long hours to the restoration and preservation of many cliffhanger movie serials. At The Serial Squadron you can get a taste of the massive amount of work he has put into the genre through his line of restored movie DVDs along with relevant books and audio.

One of Eric's latest projects (one of many ongoing productions) is the novelization of a lost serial from 1916. THE MYSTERIES OF MYRA is a strange brew of action, intrigue, magic, spiritualism, monsters and zombies. As Eric put it "an X-Files of 1916". Unfortunately quite possibly all prints of MYRA were lost in a warehouse fire. At least at this date it is still considered a lost serial. This is truly unfortunate as from the evidence at hand and eloquently shown in this book, MYRA may be one of the most astoundingly put together serials of the silent and talkie era. From the looks of the stills and behind the scenes photos and info, this was a lavish production with impressive sets and intriguing special effects.

The process of this production was a painstaking one, as Eric explains:

Tracy Burton ... took on the job of interpreting fuzzy microfilm versions of the newspaper serializations of the story -- virtually all of which were incomplete, damaged, or otherwise messed up, which means after her pass through it and interpretations she was able to make, it took two other guys (me and Dr. Daka) hours and hours to fill in the missing words and correct errors. Daka discovered ... that there were about 5 different versions of the text, also, which all appeared in different newspapers, with different illustrations.

Along with reconstructing the various newspaper serializations of the story into a coherent novel, Eric delved deeply into researching the production history of MYRA, which is contained in a lengthy introduction and includes many production photos and biographies of cast and crew.

So here we have it; a novel that any pulp writer would dream to write, which is based on a legendary serial that no longer exists, along with a lot of tasty background info and photos. A perfect storm of entertainment for anyone who is into pulps, serials and movie history bound into one handsome tome.

This is the sales blurb for the book, which concisely explains what it's all about:

BEWARE THE BLACK ORDER! So comes the warning from the spirit of Myra Maynard's father, who reaches out to her from beyond the grave to warn her of danger from the masters of the occult arts that lurk in the shadows and mark her for murder on her eighteenth birthday. Only the world's first psychic detective, Dr. Payson Alden, and his friend Haji the Brahman mystic, can save clairvoyant Myra from the terrors of The Grand Master of the Order, who tries to claim not only her fortune but her life by means of suicide-inducing spells, invasion of her chamber by spirit assassins, and even reanimation of the dead by a fire elemental. Originally a fifteen-episode serial shot in Ithaca, New York (before Hollywood became the center of American movie-making) in 1916, painstakingly reconstructed from the original screenplay, novelization, and existing stills. Includes background information, behind-the-scenes photos and cast biographies.

At $25 it is well worth the price of admission and I urge you to head over to the Serial Squadron and pick up a copy.

Jonny Quest: The Stop Motion Episode

In my humble opinion, the absolute pinnacle of pulp adventure translated to a visual medium was the 1964 cartoon Jonny Quest. There's been nothing like it before and nothing that has measured up to it since.

Also, as a kid who grew up fascinated by the wonders of Willis O'Brien's King Kong, the works of Ray Harryhausen and the stop motion animated dinosaurs of Land of the Lost, I've had a life long passion for animation and especially stop motion.

Now the two have come together.  Roger Evans, who did the scene by scene recreation of the Jonny Quest intro which went viral last year, has put some thought behind "converting" an entire episode. I think that would be fantastic! The thing is, is that he'll need some help as it will be a full time job to pull it off. This is something that I think is truly worthy of any pulp adventure fan's efforts.

 Take a look at this behind the scenes diary of everything that went into making the opening credits happen. I tell ya it is a LOT of work!  If you click on a picture, it will open to a page showing a whole in depth look at the process of how that scene was constructed.

Jonny Quest Opening Titles from Roger D. Evans on Vimeo.

Please check out his kickstarter campaign and help out if at all possible! Unfortunately I had not heard about this earlier as this campaign seems to have gone much less viral than the original opening credits film did. There are only 8 days left as of today September 18, 2012.

SUSPENSE, SUSPICION & SHOCKERS

While perusing Steven Reid Harbin's Facebook group "Pulp Magazine Authors and Literature Fans", one Patricia Boeckman posted about her husband's (Charles Boeckman AKA Charles Beckman Jr) now available collection of past pulp stories; SUSPENSE, SUSPICION & SHOCKERS.  I asked if she wouldn't mind posting more info about Charles' work and Mr. Boeckman himself generously gave us some biographical history:

Boeckman shared ink with other pulp
legends such as Mickey Spillane and
William Irish (AKA Cornell Woolrich)

I sold my first pulp suspense story in 1945 to Mike Tilden the editor of Detective Tales. Once I broke into the pulps, I had a steady stream of short stories and novelettes published by Popular Publications both suspense stories and Westerns and other publishers such as "Pursuit, Malcolms, Manhunt, Alfred Hitchcock, Publishers paid one cent a word for stories in those days. One could make a good living if he or she could turn out a lot of stories. I wrote all of my stories first draft (as did other pulp writers I knew). I could write a 5,000 word story in a day. (One day I wrote a 9,000 word novelette in a working day.(no time for much revising.) We used mechanical typewriters. The Royal portable was the choice of many of the writers I knew.

I grew up in Texas so knew a lot about rattle snakes so I used that for a basis of my first story, STRICTLY POISON. Once I was making a living from full time writing I visited many of the big cities, San Francisco, New Orleans and New York. My favorite was Manhattan where I had leased a small apartment a block from Central Park west. New York was the center of the publishing business so I became friends with many of the best known editors of the pulps. I also got to know the top writers in the field, such as Day Keene (he was on the cover of almost every pulp story magazine) Talmage Powell, Gil Brewer, Harry Whittington, and others.

If you haven't read Boeckman
before and are eager to start
one of his stories is on amazon
as book and audiobook.

In the 1920's,30s, and 40s a large segment of the population got their entertainment from radio and magazine stories. Every month the magazine stands were filled with fiction stories-- suspense, murder, action, love and science fiction stories and others. The pulp stories (so called because of the cheap pulp paper on which they were published) sold for ten or fifteen cents and had ten or fifteen stories. I started reading the pulps when I was ten years old. I grew up in the Great Depression. We had enough to eat but not any left over for music lessons. I taught myself to play clarinet and saxophone listening to phonograph records. When I left home I had $30 in my pocket, a used portable typewriter and some musical instruments from a pawn shop. I'd always liked the seashore so I took a bus to Corpus Christi, Texas. The next day I had a part time day job and a week-end job playing music. Those were the days of the big band era: Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Artie Shaw, Duke Ellington, Pete Fountain, Fatha Hines, Satchmo Armstrong. I later wrote a book on the history of jazz, Cool. Hot and Blue. I have a copy that was autographed by all of the above.

One of the first pulps Beckman appeared in.

My writing and music gave me an exciting life and the freedom to travel. I married a beautiful and talented young lady, Patti Kennelly who also had talent as a writer. We collaborated on 26 love stories for Silhouette and Harlequin that sold world wide over two million copies. I'm now 91 looking back over a creative and exciting life. Patti has encouraged me to make a collection of my short stories going back to my first pulp sale in 1945. The collection will be published soon.

Charles at his website had this to say about one of the stories in the upcoming collection:

This excerpt is from a story entitled, “Eddie Builds His Mouse Trap,” from my anthology of short stories that I wrote beginning in 1945.  The style of some of the stories in the collection is crisp, biting, and and punchy. Short sentences. Quick observations. Brief descriptions. Some are more in the Alfred Hitchcock style, with longer sentences and psychological twists and turns.

EDDIE BUILDS HIS MOUSE TRAP

It was ironic. All the beautiful dolls Eddie Price had on his string, and a plain little mouse like Ginny Potucek finally hashes him up.

The morning he was going to kill her, she came out of the kitchen, her face flushed and damp from the heat of the stove. She was untying her apron. “Eddie, we’re out of bread. I’ll have to run down to the grocery store.”

“Oh?” Eddie said. Not that he was really surprised, having just tossed their last loaf out in the alley.

SUSPENSE, SUSPICION & SHOCKERS
A collection of 24 short stories by Charles
Boeckman and is now available at amazon.com.

He stood in front of the dresser mirror, whistling, buttoning up a clean white shirt. It was easy to see why the dames fell all over Eddie Price. He was six feet of man, adequately spread out around the shoulders and chest. He had lazy, grey eyes that would drift over a girl, caressing her, sending shivers up her spine, and a shy, little-boy grin that twisted her heart. After that, she’d be a fit subject for Freud if she didn’t run her fingers through his thick black hair and whisper in his ear.

But he wasn’t thinking about dames at the moment. His fingers were all thumbs, knotting his tie, and there was a sick pit of nausea in his stomach. In a few min­utes he was going to kill his bride of two months, Ginny, in a very messy way. He wasn’t too enthusiastic about it.

You can read more about Patricia, Charles and more excepts from the new book at charlesboeckman.com

Trail of the Octopus hits DVD!

UPDATE!
The Trial of the Octopus is now up for pre-order, with a scheduled release of Oct 1st 2012. This is on three DVDs with 14 out of 15 episodes, missing episode 9.
Go to the order page here.
Below are segments from my original informational post from 2010:

Although we may never see the complete serial of THE MYSTERIES OF MYRA there are other serials that may be just as amazing from the silent movie era.  Serials where it is obvious that a lot of money, time and creativity went into the productions.  One that will hopefully be available in Spring 2011 is THE TRAIL OF THE OCTOPUS.  This is another revelation from the age of the silents; where an amazing globe-trotting adventure comes to life as we meet great detectives, evil cults and mysterious strangers, spanning from a lost city in Egypt to the streets of San Francisco.

THE TRAIL OF THE OCTOPUS (not to be confused with the book by Goddard & Coleman) is a serial from 1919 consisting of 14 episodes totaling 7 hours. From the Serial Squadron's page the story goes:

Dr. Reid Stanhope, a noted scientist, and Raoul Bornay, a Frenchman of questionable standing, set out upon an expedition to explore the mysteries of ancient Egypt. With their caravan of natives and camels, they pierce the very heart of the great Sahara Desert in their search for the Temple of Death and the sacred Talisman of Set, both considered mythological by everyone except Dr. Stanhope.

After weeks of searching they discover a sarcophagus upon which hieroglyphics read: “He that toucheth or taketh away the Sacred Talisman of Set will bathe his hands in human blood.” Reaching inside the sarcophagus, Stanhope takes out the Sacred Talisman which is also known as the Devil's Trademark – the cloven hoof of Satan.

From the moment the Talisman is released, murder and destruction run rampant. Stanhope is forced to kill Bornay when attacked by him and Bornay's final words are “Don't think you killed a friend – they sent me to get you and the Talisman.” Who “they” are provides the foundation for the story of the rest of the serial, which takes place after Stanhope returned to civilization.

When we pick up the story from there, we see Stanhope telling his niece Ruth he has never had a moment's peace since he hid the Devil's Trademark in a rock vault – he's been haunted by the sudden mysterious appearance of a pair of uncanny looking eyes. While Dr. Stanhope tells the story, a thunderstorm arises and the “eyes” appear outside. He tells Ruth she must get rid of the Talisman as it endangers her life. He takes a dagger from a drawer and says, “Eight other daggers like this are in the hands of eight fellow scientists for safe-keeping. You must have all of them to get the combination of the rock vault, in which is hidden the sacred Talisman.”

When Stanhope receives a telephone call from the mysterious masked Monsieur X, who tells him that his friend, Professor Hubbard, one of the scientists, is dead, Ruth runs across the street to call on Carter Holmes, the criminologist, taking the dagger with her.Stanhope's scream in the distance begins a chain of events that leads to the kidnapping of Ruth by a clan of Devil Worshippers headed by a sorceress named Madame Zora, and a three-way battle between Holmes, the Devil-cult, and an Asian mastermind known as the Octopus to possess the Talisman by collecting the remaining daggers and placing them together in a cliffside vault that will reveal its secret.

An extremely atmospheric serial, heavily influenced by aspects of THE MYSTERIES OF MYRA (the Devil-cult with its crystal ball, and characters who disappear into astral form), and anticipating DRUMS OF FU MANCHU in its noir-ish look, THE TRAIL OF THE OCTOPUS changes location and emphasis many times but remains generally in early pulp/detective/horror mode throughout, with more than the occasional element of the paranormal thrown in to kick the mystery up a notch.

This serial is being restored by the Serial Squadron and even some missing scenes are being re-filmed with contemporary actors in order to have the story be as complete as possible.

TRAIL OF THE OCTOPUS is $40 for 2 double-sided DVDs.  This is a very fair and reasonable price for a micro-production which is putting out a small run, but professionally restored and extremely rare serial.  You won't find this serial anywhere else because it does not exists anywhere else. This DVD set is being digitally remastered from a 35mm print from the Library of Congress.

Along with the visual restoration the Squadron's Eric Stedman has mixed a new sound track including music that is scene relevant along with sound effects for important points of nuance.  This in my opinion really adds a layer of watchability and entertainment value to the whole project. You can see and hear the results in a sample posted at the bottom of this entry.

Check out the first 15 minutes of the first episode of TRAIL here:

The SPIDER and the Black Dog

I have this thing, this quirk you might say.  When I get interested in a book, a movie, a literary character, a created world and so on, I am interested in the workings of how and why it was created. I probably have more non-fiction books on the history and makings of fictional worlds, characters and movies than I have fiction books now. 

But there's one that has always eluded me.  And that was Robert Sampson's seminal work on the pulp hero The Spider.  Published in 1987, over the next decade it disappeared off of booksellers' shelves. I searched literally for years to find that book (at a sane price).  Even at insane prices it was not easy to find.

Thanks to a heads up by Lucas Garrett about some Spider books on ebay, and some news via Ralph Grasso at at the Spider-Master of Men FB page, two things have come to light: One is that it seems many soft and hard backs of the original 1987 printing have recently turned up at online bookshops.  I don't know why this has happened. I've emailed Popular Press about it so if they know why then I'll amend this post with the answer.

As fate would have it (and fate always has it this way doesn't it?), literally as soon as I had happily, even gleefully, purchased SPIDER for $13 plus shipping, Ralph G mentioned a new edition would be coming out in the near future from Black Dog Books. This edition will not have new written content but will have editorial fixes and added pics of magazine covers and illustrations.  No price or release date is set yet.

Black Dog Books has some other rarities and surprises dear to the heart of The Pulp Reader coming up soon.  There is another Robert Sampson pulp treatise reprint coming up based on The Shadow called THE NIGHT MASTER which will also be expanded with pics and cover scans.

Also they are collecting selected later tales of hard-boiled Pulp Reader favorite Carroll John Daly.  This tome will include four previously uncollected Race Williams tales, one Satan Hall and a few others.

Obviously, I've been away from the blog for a while. I have been what you might call... busy.  But I've not abandoned you, dear Reader. 

GO SEE JOHN CARTER!

If you're reading this you are probably a pulp fan. If you are a pulp fan you might have read at least a couple of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom books. If you have and you liked them, go see the movie. It's a well-done, thoughtful orchestration of elements of the first three books that help shape a serialized story into one solid movie.  If you have been on the fence because of some poor reviews, then all I can tell you is that I don't know what those people saw.

I've waited 35+ years to see this movie.  It has a LOT to live up to for me because 35 years is a long time to let expectations ferment. I think they did a good job and it didn't let me down.  I don't know what Disney's problem with their marketing department is, but they completely and absolutely failed to present this movie the way it should have been.  John Carter is not a one-off of Prince of Persia. It is not a rip off of Star Wars.  It is not one long brainless battle as the trailers would lead you to believe. Any of the heart that you find in the books, even more, really... is in the movie.

Get off of your computer and go see it right now for cryin' out loud!

Spacehawk and the Creeping Death from Neptune

Below is a quote from the Fantagraphics webpage for CREEPING DEATH FROM NEPTUNE, a collection of Basil Wolverton's weird scifi tales.  This and the SPACEHAWK book have been in the making for ages.  It seems 2012 will finally be the year these come out.  Though Wolverton is known to the 60s and 70s generation as the artist who drew ugly and weird caricatures in Mad Magazine, Plop! and Topps Cards, many years before, he did more straightforward scifi/adventure/horror comics. 

Basil Wolverton’s work refuses to die. Following a well-received exhibit of original art in New York City’s Gladstone Gallery (which The New York Times called “exuberantly grotesque”) came 2009’s publication of The Wolverton Bible (Fantagraphics Books). Though his comic book work has been reprinted endlessly, it has either been “modernized” with digital colors or presented in austere black and white. The time has come for a robust volume of Wolverton’s comics taken from their original printed source — the comic books themselves.

A pioneer from the first generation of comic book artists, Wolverton arrived just as publishers began embracing original material, turning away from the newspaper-strip reprints that had been sustaining the industry since its inception four years earlier. One of the first to realize the value of “in-house” features was Centaur Publications, whose art director Lloyd Jacquet gave Wolverton his big break in comics in 1938, accepting “Meteor Martin” for Amazing Man Comics and “Space Patrol” for Amazing Mystery Funnies. Jacquet soon established an independent comics packager, Funnies, Inc., for which he asked Wolverton to invent a new science-fiction character. The artist came up with the iconic “Spacehawk,” who made thirty appearances in Target Comics. Prime examples of Wolverton’s iconic space hero will be featured in Creeping Death from Neptune.

Fed up with the publisher’s constant meddling with “Spacehawk,” Wolverton dropped his creation in 1942 and concentrated on humorous features for the rest of the decade. His short-lived return to serious subjects in 1951 resulted in some of the most intense horror and science-fiction stories of the pre-code era, including the classics “Brain Bats of Venus,” “Escape to Death,” and “Robot Woman,” all of which appear in this volume.

Created with the full cooperation of the Wolverton estate, Creeping Death from Neptune will also examine, for the first time, the artist’s personal ledgers and diaries, shedding new light on his working methods and his day-to-day life as a freelance comic book artist. The digital restoration of the printed art will be performed with subtlety and restraint, mainly to correct registration and printing errors, with every effort made to retain the flavor of the original comic books.

Both volumes will be full color and both are on preorder through amazon.com. 
CREEPING DEATH FROM NEPTUNE (coming in May)
SPACEHAWK (coming in August)

You can check out (preview) three SPACEHAWK stories at Golden Age Comics.

New Pulp Comics: THE BLACK BEETLE

While on the subject of pulp comics, I would also like to point out that Francesco Francavilla, who in my eyes is easily one of the best of the modern pulp comic artists, will be seeing his original creation BLACK BEETLE printed in a new story via Dark Horse Presents.  He was interviewed about this upcoming publication at Newsrama.com

Artist Francesco Francavilla has quietly become one of the most dynamic and speedy artists in comics as seen from his work in DC Comics’ Detective Comics, plus Marvel’s Black Panther: Man Without Fear and the current Captain America & Bucky arc, and even regular covers for Dynamite Entertainment. And now he’s spreading his wings with a story of his own as he writes and draws a three part pulp-noir story in the pages of the prestigious anthology Dark Horse Presents.

Scheduled to launch in April’s Dark Horse Presents #11, the three-part story Night Shift follows the Italian artist back into the world of his enigmatic hero Black Beetle and the crime-ridden burgh of Colt City. Francavilla first explored this hero and his world in an ashcan preview for a still-unreleased graphic novel as well as a webcomic short, but this venture in Dark Horse Presents poses his biggest platform yet, and possibly the beginning of a new future for Black Beetle. Newsarama spoke with the artist about Black Beetle and this anthology story, as well as his ambitions for writing and drawing comics both here and at Marvel and DC.

Newsarama: Francesco, you’ve written comics before, but never on this big of stage – what’s it like to be able to do it here at Dark Horse Presents and now with your own creation, the Black Beetle?

Francesco Francavilla: I have written short stories here and there for a few anthologies, but this is definitely a new experience for me in terms of structure (longer story, divided in three acts) and audience, and I am very thrilled and thankful for the opportunity. As someone who has still lots of stories to tell, I consider this debut in Dark Horse Presents to be very important and possibly something that could set a new path for my future career as a full-on storyteller.  

Nrama: For people that may be following you to this from your Marvel and DC work, who is Black Beetle?

Francavilla: Black Beetle is the protector and hero of our story. His mission is to fight crime in Colt City. We don’t know who he is, not yet anyway. When we meet him in my three-part Dark Horse Presents story Night Shift, we learn that he’s patrolling the city streets and protecting the citizens the best he can. How he came to be in this position and why he feels compelled to protect others is something we’ll discover as we go along. This is definitely an action-packed thriller with lots of twists and turns, so I hope fans will come along and enjoy the ride! Continued...

Check out the full interview at Newsrama!

Check out Francesco's online comic of BLACK BEETLE here.

Don't forget to "like" The Pulp Reader on Facebook. There's plenty going on over there too!

McLevy The Edinburgh Detective Series 8

The latest season of McLevy came out last month. I missed some of it, but it looks like BBC Radio 4 is currently rerunning their McLevy catalog. I don't know if they will be running all 8 seasons, but they are right now on season 1.

Click here to do a search for the latest episodes. 

Don't know about McLevy?  Check out the Pulp Reader's McLevy subsite to learn about Edinburgh's 19th Century beat detective.

McLevy

A Pulp Holiday Gift Guide

There has been a lot going on in the retail world of the pulps this year and I would like to offer some suggestions for holiday gift giving:

First off, pulp historian and fictioneer Will Murray has been full steam ahead in his new Doc Savage novel writing and pulp audio adaptations.  Radio Archives has been adapting several pulp classics to audio this year. You will find THE SPIDER: PRINCE OF THE RED LOOTERS, THE BLACK BAT: BRAND OF THE BLACK BAT, DOCTOR DEATH: 12 WILL DIE and of course DOC SAVAGE in THE JADE OGRE, PYTHON ISLE, WHITE EYES plus a digitally restored CD of the Doc Savage radio dramas FEAR CAY and THE THOUSAND HEADED MAN. All of these can be bought as CDs or digital downloads from RADIO ARCHIVES.

Also in the aural zone is film director Larry Fessenden's new horror audiodrama label Tales From Beyond the Pale.  These are tales of horror inspired by the classic Old Time Radio shows and star the voice talents of many genre favorites such as Vincent D'Onofrio, Ron Perleman and Doug Jones.  The full season 1 (10 episodes) is available as DVD packs, a complete boxed set or digital downloads. For more info and samples please check out their website at talesfrombeyondthepale.com/

In the visual landscape there are a few DVDs to take note of.  One is the nutty mashup of Raymond Chandler's FAREWELL, MY LOVELY and apocalyptic mad scientist genre, The BIG BANG, directed by Tony Krantz and starring Antonio Banderas.  Probably an either love it or hate it movie, it has a daring and brazen edge to it that keeps it visually and plot-wise quirky. I thought it was a lot of fun.

I have to mention one of my favorite modern hard-boiled flicks, GIVE 'EM HELL MALONE which is an over the top action mystery that is part Will Eisner's THE SPIRIT and part fevered action romp as seen in the writings of The Spider's author Norvell Page. This is a really fun movie that doesn't take itself seriously but hits all the right buttons for super pulpy action.

And finally for DVDs, as I mentioned on Facebook, what I consider the must have movie of the year for the Weird Menace pulp aficionado is Vincent Cortez's The HUSH.   This is an indie movie made on $8000. But don't let that fool you into thinking it is not a quality production.  The Hush has everything hitting the right marks. It is a dark, brooding, supernatural hard-boiled neo-Noir with loads of action, drama and phantasmagorical effects.  I have a full review here.  You can now buy a signed DVD for $15 straight from the director.  If you want to have a really interesting stocking stuffer for your pulpy friends this year, I highly recommend this film!

A late breaking entry for DVD is the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society's latest film THE WHISPERER IN DARKNESS. Previously the HPLHS produced the silent short movie THE CALL OF CTHULHU and they have now produced a feature length "talkie" adaptation of Whisperer.  It is now on sale at their website.

And then we have the books and magazines!  First off, we have the holiday issue of The STRAND magazine which is printing a lost Cornell Woolrich story "Never Kick a Dick" which is set in a hotel overlooking Biscayne Bay. The STRAND also rediscovered a lost Dashiell Hammett story "So I Shot Him" published in the Feb 28th 2011 issue.

As mentioned above, Will Murray has a new line of Doc Savage novels being published. These can be found at Adventures in Bronze.

Also, earlier this year I talked about Donald Keyhoe's Philip Strange, WWI flying ace. Strange fought demons and dinosaurs on the European battlefront. How can you not love biplanes vs pterodactyls!

There is also a whole world of pulp reprints and new material being published these days. The best place to keep track of it all is at Coming Attractions.

Tang Dynasty's Judge Dread

van Gulik illustrated his own books.

I was going to write a big article on the historical figure Di Ren Jie.  He was a magistrate during Tang Dynasty (7th Century via Western calender) China. But I keep coming across articles and blogs that have already covered the territory I was going to cover. So I have a brief review of two books and then for the more curious, a few links at the bottom of the page to the most enlightening articles.

Just briefly: Di Ren Jie was a judge who it turns out like most judges of the time, were more like Judge Dread than Judge Judy. They were out in the field doing detective work and police procedurals with investigating, interrogating, torturing and convicting criminals.  The only thing they didn't do by hand was the physical act of torturing or capital punishment.There is apparently a long history in China of these judges being written about in fictionalized accounts.  Sort of like epic pulp fiction, as the cast of characters ranged into the hundreds along with an even higher number of chapters, with each chapter being hundreds of pages. These books were huge and full of intricate information.

This is something that went by the Western world without anyone ever noticing.  But then, enter Robert Hans van Gulik.  He was a mid-20th Century Dutch diplomat whose work brought him to Japan and China where he became an expert on Chinese history. He stumbled across an anonymously written 1800s pulp story about one of these judges from the 600s.  Because of the brevity of this story, being shorter than thousands of pages with much less than hundreds of characters (so being more close to what the modern world would consider a book), he felt it would be great material to translate for a modern audience.

The result was THE CELEBRATED CASES OF JUDGE DEE (Dee Goong An 1949). In this book three crimes are unfolded. Each case is completely separate from the other but completely intertwined in the telling of the story.  Again, I'll let someone else speak for me, in this case wikipedia, about the plot:

There are three cases in this book. The first might be called The Double Murder at Dawn. The case describes the hazardous life of the traveling silk merchant and the murder which is committed to gain wealth.
The second is The Strange Corpse which takes place in a small village, a crime of passion which proves hard to solve. The criminal is a very determined woman.
The third case The Poisoned Bride contains the murder of the daughter of a local scholar who marries the son of the former administrator of the district. This case contains a surprising twist in its solution.

All three cases are solved by Judge Dee, the district magistrate - Detective, prosecutor, judge, and jury all wrapped up into one person.

First edition of Celebrated Cases.

I found this book to be really grippingly intriguing all the way through. The way the plot elements intertwine and van Gulik's knack for writing very clear prose is highly enjoyable and very easy to digest. The penchant for torture being pretty much the answer for everything was a bit unnerving. But then that was the way of things at that time and van Gulik did not whitewash the original prose.  A very in-depth and fascinating introduction puts the torture, the way of life of Magistrates and how the Chinese legal system itself worked into historical perspective.  All in all, if you want to maximize your experience with Judge Dee on a historical and fictional level, this first book is definitely the one to read.

van Gulik went on to write 17 original novels and collections about Judge Dee. Since CELEBRATED CASES was a direct translation of another author's work I wanted to try one of van Gulik's original titles and jumped on JUDGE DEE AND THE HAUNTED MONASTERY (1961).  This is from about mid-way through van Gulik's Judge Dee series. It seems to have its basis in the "Old Dark House" mysteries of the 1920s-50s, where a group of people typically become trapped in a single maze-like location and as bodies pile up, the hero has to figure out whodunnit. This book definitely has that feel.

For the plot this is again from wikipedia:

Judge Dee and his three wives are on their way back from a visit to family in the capital accompanied by the Judge's aid Tao Gan when a terrible storm forces the party to take shelter for the night in an isolated Taoist monastery of sinister repute. The wives go directly to bed but the Judge is required to pay a courtesy visit to the Abbot. Thus begins an endless night of murder, mayhem and madness as the Judge, suffering from the beginnings of a head cold, solves the mysterious deaths, punishes the guilty and brings two star-crossed young couples together.

This book, a completely original tale, has no torture to speak of and Judge Dee comes off more as an everyman detective as you might find in contemporary (1950s) fiction than as the high and mighty Magistrate portrayed in CELEBRATED CASES.  Though there is no problem with the first book and it is completely enjoyable, this shift in focus on Dee's personality makes it less troublesome to get through.  Judge Dee is fairly likable in this. I just have to admit that anyone who uses torture is probably not going to seem that amiable or likable, so the character has a one-up in HAUNTED MONASTERY.  Though these two books are different animals, they are both eminently readable.  I will absolutely continue reading further Judge Dee adventures. Next will be THE CHINESE MAZE MURDERS.

I have to admit I'd never heard of Judge Dee until a movie about him came out last year. DETECTIVE DEE AND THE MYSTERY OF THE PHANTOM FLAME is an original story by Lin Quinyu and filmed by the legendary director Tsui Hark (Chinese Ghost Story-1987, Once Upon a Time in China -1991).  This big budget epic intrigued me about the character and the more I researched the more I realized how much Judge Dee there was out there to read and learn about!



Reference materials:
The movie DETECTIVE DEE AND THE MYSTERY OF THE PHANTOM FLAME is out in various DVD formats but I believe the valid Region 1 DVD comes out in December (2011).  It is also currently touring the US at art house theaters.  Roger Ebert's review is here. There is also a movie from 1974 that is an adaptation of THE HAUNTED MONASTERY, called JUDGE DEE AND THE MONASTERY MURDERS which you can find a review here.

There is a chronology of the stories along with lots of background data here.

And there is an excellent and in-depth essay on van Gulik and Judge Dee here.

If all of this fires your sparkplugs and you can't get enough, then be advised that a Chinese TV series on Judge Dee will be available on DVD with English subtitles starting in November.

Another nice overview of the character is at this blog.

And here I thought this was going to be a brief article.

Arsene Lupin in: The Crystal Stopper

As promised on Facebook, The Pulp Reader is presenting Maurice LeBlanc's Arsene Lupin thriller THE CRYSTAL STOPPER.  After watching the first episode of the French 1971 television series starring Georges Descrieres, which is an adaptation of this story, I felt compelled to see how different it is from the book.  The TV adaptation was surprisingly good and imagine the novel to be even better.

Information from Wikipedia: The Crystal Stopper is a mystery novel by Maurice Leblanc featuring the adventures of the gentleman thief Arsène Lupin. The novel appeared in serial form in the French newspaper Le Journal from September to November 1912 and was released as a novel subsequently. Maurice Leblanc was inspired by the infamous Panama scandals of 1892 and 1893. The novel borrows from Edgar Allan Poe's short story The Purloined Letter the idea of hiding an object in plain sight.

Plot Summary:  During a burglary at the home of Deputy Daubrecq a crime is committed and two accomplices of Arsène Lupin were arrested by the police. One is guilty of the crime, the other innocent but both will be sentenced to death. Lupin seeks to deliver the victim of a miscarriage of justice, but struggles against Deputy Daubrecq's ruthless blackmailer, who has an incriminating document hidden in a crystal stopper.

* Head over to the Internet Archive
* Download the ZIPPED files (13 Chapters)
* Listen through your media player

* Listen to the stream right here:

The Phantom Ace

When I first started The Pulp Reader there were what I considered a top handful of interesting pulp heroes; Doc Savage, The Shadow, The Spider, Secret Agent X and G-8 and his Battle Aces.  Sure there's hundreds of pulp heroes out there, but those were the ones I was most interested in. 

G8 seemed to be one of the more oddball characters as he was a WWI ace pilot who was also a top spy and happened to fight giant bats, flying tentacled behemoths, panther men, animated skeletons, intelligent apes and a whole menagerie of bizarre and supernatural creatures conjured up by the madmen employed by the Kaiser.

The ideas were over the top and crazy and a lot of fun. The only hindrance to the reading experience was that though creator Robert Hogan had a fertile and unfettered imagination, his writing skills were pedestrian, suffering IMO mainly from direly wooden dialog and sometimes vague descriptions of action.

The story setup was so sweet but the execution was unexceptional.

Well, there's a lot of pulp history that I just don't know about. But I'm always happily discovering new information!  What I've discovered this week is that 2 years before the creation of G-8 there was another author writing about a pilot fighting the same type of Weird War...

The pulp reprinting publisher AGE OF ACES specializes in WWI aviation. They've been around for a few years now, putting out high quality collections that you just weren't likely to see anywhere else.  They've culled the stories of The Red Falcon (also written by Hogan and existing in G-8's universe), Captain Combat, The Three Mosquitoes, The Iron Ace, Smoke Wade and others.  

I was recently made aware that they would have a new book premiering at Pulpfest 2011 called Captain Philip Strange: Strange War written by Donald Keyhoe.  If you are into Ufology you may have heard of Keyhoe as he wrote a few books about and was heavily into the UFO phenomena scene.

Well before the UFOs he was a Major in the USMC as a fighter pilot.  And drawing from that experience he entered the pulp world, writing for magazines such as WEIRD TALES and notably FLYING ACES with stories of heroic pilots who fought weird menaces at the WWI Front lines.

AGE of ACES describes Captain Strange as such:

Welcome to a Strange War! In Donald E. Keyhoe’s imaginings, the stormy skies of World War I are filled with giant pterodactyls, mystic fireballs and demon aces. But America has it’s own unnatural secret weapon: Captain Philip Strange. A mental marvel from birth, he was so terrifyingly effective that the Allies referred to him as “The Phantom Ace of G-2.” But to the Germans he was “The Brain-Devil,” whose penetrating green eyes were both a legend and a nightmare. Keyhoe’s Philip Strange stories ran for nine years—from 1931 through 1939—in the pages of Flying Aces magazine. This first volume in our new series contains six exciting tales of terror skies! It also features an introduction by Sid Bradd and is beautifully wrapped up in an exciting new design by Chris Kalb!

Having my interest piqued I started roaming around the 'net and found a few of these Strange tales online. The one I'm reading right now is the short story The Skeleton From the Sky.  I have to tell you that having that true life experience in the deadly skies really set's Keyhoe's writing apart from Hogan's and probably most everyone else's.  Like Dashiell Hammett who was employed by the Pinkerton's before embarking on writing about The Continental Op and Sam Spade, Keyhoe's working knowledge of his subject matter comes through especially in the air combat.  His character studies are quick and concise but let you know each person remarkably well. This was somebody doing what Hogan got famous for with G-8, but doing it much better.

Captain Philip Strange: Strange War should be out at the regular online bookstores any time now.  I know I'm ready and waiting!

To whet your appetite, instead of an audiobook, I'm going to point you to The Skeleton From the Sky in PDF and HTML form.

Hop Harrigan

And for the aural aerial experience, the comic book turned Radio show turned cliffhanger serial Hop Harrigan can be found at my neighbor, archive.org.  This is a surprisingly good show that reminds me a lot of a cross between these weird aerial pulp adventures and the early adventures of Steve Canyon. The files at archive.org are a bit out of order, but it's the only place I've seen them around lately.