Savage Tales

2013 Pulp Factory Awards - Winners!

2013-04-16T12:39:00.000-07:00

2013 PULP FACTORY AWARDS ANNOUNCED

For the fourth consecutive year, the Pulp Factory Awards were presented at this year’s Windy City Pulp & Paper Convention.

These awards are given to the best in new pulp fiction and art published during the previous year as voted on by the 111 members of the Pulp Factory; an internet group made up of pulp writers, artists, editors, publishers and dedicated fans.

Writer William Patrick Maynard and artist Rob Davis once again co-hosted the award presentations, handing out the sculptured trophies done in the shape of a quill pen set against factory-like gears.

The pen represents both writers and artists, the gears paying homage to the assembly-line production of the old pulps of the 1930s.

This year’s winners for the best in fiction and art for 2012 were:

For Best Pulp Novel –
THE LONE RANGER – VENDETTA by the late Howard Hopkins, published by Moonstone Books.

For Best Pulp Short Story –
"The Ghoul" by Ron Fortier from the anthology, “Monster Aces,” published by Pro Se Productions.

For Best Pulp Cover –
Joe Devito for THE INFERNAL BUDDHA published Altus Press.

For Best Interior Illustrations –
Rob Moran for THE RUBY FILES published by Airship 27 Productions.

This year’s preliminary nominations and final ballot represented a total of twelve New Pulp Fiction publishers.

The Pulp Factory membership congratulates all the winners for their exceptional work.

Congratulations to the winners!

Pulp of the Week - Doc Savage #36

2013-03-02T11:00:00.000-08:00

MYSTERY UNDER THE SEA - FEBRUARY 1936

This adventure starts with another great Doc Savage story opener. A fully clothed man comes ashore on Long Island Sound and refuses help. He manages to grab a train into the city and escapes his would be rescuers. Shortly thereafter, a boatload of pursuers arrives at the same beach.

After a number of chases and an unpleasant journey on an ocean liner, Doc and his men Monk, Ham, and Renny arrive at the destination just after two factions of sea borne skallywags. There is much fighting and underwater adventure in this novel. I found the premise far more compelling than the telling and the rich treasures more interesting and clever than usual. The femme fatale, Diamond Eve is also charming and interesting.

What is beginning to bother me about some of the stories (like this one) is that just when we finally get to some wondrous place, in this case a lost city called Taz, the story is almost over. There is little time to explore, no time to enjoy the incredible place the writers have (at least partially) imagined. There is often far too much getting there and not enough there. I will have to remember this in my own stories.

The ideas within this story are fantastic and I wish we could have spent far more time in these fantastic undersea ruins. Further research shows that 30 issues later, Doc returns to the underwater lost city of Taz...

Here are the paintings that Walter Baumhofer and James Bama did for their covers of the February 1936 issue of Doc Savage Magazine. It is rare that I can find the paintings for both publications of the novels.

For this review I read my copy of the Bantam paperback from August 1968 that I bought used for $2 in the late 1970s...

I'll give Mystery Under The Sea a 7.5 out of 10. The story had much promise and some good ideas, but just didn't get there... Research for this post was aided by Chris Kalb's great site and by a new to me post on SCRIBD that is great.

Doc and Kong are 80... together

2013-02-17T19:00:00.000-08:00

HAPPY 80th

KING KONG

DOC SAVAGE

Through the persistence and talents of Will Murray and Joe De Vito we get to celebrate the creation of two enduring legends...

Altus Press says on their blog, "Eighty years ago in February, 1933, the Street & Smith company released the first issue of Doc Savage Magazine, introducing one of the most popular and influential pulp superheroes ever to hit the American scene. Doc Savage was the greatest adventure and scientist of his era, and while his magazine ended in 1949, he influenced the creators of Superman, Batman, Star Trek, The Man from UNCLE and the Marvel Universe—to name only a few.

"While that first issue of Doc Savage was fresh on Depression newsstands, RKO released one of the most important fantasy films of all time. Everyone knows the story of how King Kong was discovered on Skull Island and hauled back to New York in chains, only to perish tragically atop the world’s tallest skyscraper, the Empire State Building.

"As it happened, that was where Doc Savage had his world headquarters. For decades, fans have wondered: Where was Doc the day Kong fell?

"On the eightieth anniversary of these fictional giants, Altus Press is proud to release the first authorized clash between The Man of Bronze and the Eighth Wonder of the World—Doc Savage: Skull Island. Written by Will Murray in collaboration with Joe DeVito, creator of KONG: King of Skull Island, Doc Savage: Skull Island is a new pulp epic."

This is big news to me and I will be picking this book up.

Oscar 2012 - Les Miz and final recap

2013-02-11T12:46:00.001-08:00

Les Misérables is the last of the 9 Best Picture Nominees that I screened. While it is not what I would choose for Best Picture out of the field, it has some very good qualities...

What stands out in Les Miz... The performances by Hugh Jackman and Anne Hathaway were spellbinding. Amanda Seyfried was a revelation. The production was spectacular—beautiful in its lived-in splendor and glorious in the detail of the design and photography. I don't know exactly what I was expecting, but I was surprised by the scale and sheer breathtaking audacity of it all. Well done.

The negatives are particular to me and my likes and dislikes. I don't care for Russell Crowe in general and didn't care for him here, either. His acting was good, but his singing voice is not of the caliber of the rest of the cast.

While I enjoy musicals, I am not a fan of the modern use of the word for shows like Phantom, Miss Saigon, and Les Misérables. To me, musicals have songs and dialog. Opera is all singing. The (what I would call) songs in Les Misérables are good. However... the dialog songs, the ones where a regular musical would just have the people talk, are not. The melodies are weak and not necessary. Just let the characters talk.

So, to recap, other than the dialog songs, and the sometimes dragging pace, I thought the film was outstanding, but not Best Picture.

Here is my personal (and really hard to do with this many really good movies) ranking of the choices for Best Picture:

Argo

Lincoln

Zero Dark Thirty

Django Unchained

Silver Linings Playbook

Beasts of the Southern Wild

Les Misérables

Life of Pi

Amour

None of these are bad movies, in fact, they are all really good and this is a tough choice this year. All of these movies are very good. It was fun pushing myself to watch all nine nominees this year and something I haven't done in many years...

More Love For Studio Spectre

2013-02-06T18:01:00.000-08:00

The All Pulp Blog has taken over the New Pulp Print Bestseller list from the overworked Barry Reese and The Studio Spectre is ranked #7!

The list goes up every Monday and covers New Pulp titles published in the last three months.

Here's the list - Visit All Pulp for the full list.

1) Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Detective, Volume 4 by Various (Airship 27)

2) Finn’s Golem by Gregg Taylor (Autogyro)

3) Fight Card: Bluff City Brawler by Heath Lowrance as Jack Tunney (Fight Card)

4) Prohibition by Terrence McCauley, (Airship 27)

5) The Fangslinger and the Preacher by Bret Lee Hart (Western Trail Blazer)

 6) The New Adventures of the Griffon by Various (Pro Se Productions)

7) The Studio Spectre by W. Peter Miller (Uchronic Press)

8 ) Sentinels: Metalgod by Van Plexico (White Rocket Books)

 9) Three Against the Stars by Joe Bonadonna (Airship 27)

10) Pro Se Presents # 16 by Various (Pro Se Press)

There is a rumor that an eBook list may be next...

Pulp Ark Awards!

2013-02-05T13:08:00.001-08:00

The Pulp Ark Award nominations were announced today on the All Pulp blog and I am proud to say that Mike Fyles was nominated for his cover of The Claim!

Congratulations, Mike!

2012 Oscar Nominations PT 3

2013-01-28T15:56:00.000-08:00

LIFE OF PI

This adventure story features the journey of a young man who survives a shipwreck and ends up trapped in a lifeboat with a Bengal Tiger. I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of the movie that did not take place on the boat. There were many places visited in the story of a young boy nicknamed Pi, whose family owned a small zoo in India. When the family moves, they pack up the whole zoo, load it up on a ship, and head off to Canada.

It is no spoiler to say that that the boy and the tiger end up in a lifeboat and there spend many months adrift at sea and learn to survive together.

The film is quite beautiful and much visually richer than one might imagine given such a confining sounding premise. However, in the final analysis, I found the film good, but not great.

AMOUR

This official Austrian entry which is also a nominee for Best foreign language film also got nominated in a number of other categories including Best Picture. The story follows an elderly couple as the wife slides into the decline of old age and her husband struggles to care for her. The film is wonderfully acted and starkly honest in dealing with the issues of aging. However, I found it leaning toward dull.

Just one more Best Picture Nominee to go - Les Misérables...

2012 Oscar Nominations PT 2

2013-01-23T11:07:00.000-08:00

DJANGO UNCHAINED

Quentin Tarantino's tip of the hat to Sergio Leone is fast and nasty. Like most Tarantino films Django is full of strongly drawn characters, goofy cameos, wildly creative dialog, plot twists, overlong, and thoroughly entertaining. This is why he is brilliant and maddening at the same time. There are several sequences that could have just gone away and many others that could have been shorter.

I have a feeling that Django Unchained uses the 'N' word about 5000 times too many to actually win the Best Picture Oscar. Christoph Waltz certainly should win for his astonishing portrayal of a bounty hunter that hates slavery and takes Django under his wing. However, it is absurd that he is nominated for Actor in a Supporting Role. The only conceivable reason this isn't a lead role is that he is not the title character. Jamie Fox is terrific as well, but Waltz soars. Tarantino is also nominated for the Original Screenplay and may earn that, but I find it equally likely that award will go to Zero Dark Thirty.

SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK

The damaged people at the center of this Philadelphia-based quirky romantic comedy give this film a depth and humanity usually missing from mainstream romcoms. Bradley Cooper stars (and also Executive Produces) as the just sprung from psych ward Pat who snapped upon finding his wife in the shower with another man. He is sent home to live in his parents (Robert De Niro and Jacki Weaver) attic and to learn to adjust to his new life. Pat desperately loves his estranged wife and yearns to have her back.

The new girl, wonderfully played by Jennifer Lawrence, is a bundle of mess herself having lost her husband. Together they meet and push each other's buttons and settle into a messy friendship. The supporting cast is interesting and I was never sure if or how the story would ever get to a happy ending. The film is one of the best romantic comedies I have seen in a long time and worthy of the Best Picture nomination.

One thing that is very cliche in Hollywood films is the age difference between the two main characters. Cooper is 15 years older than Lawrence. She is just 22 now, so was 20 or 21 when the movie was made. That difference is how Hollywood operates, cycling through an endless series of 20-something leading women. Few last long before being replaced with younger stars.

That said, Lawrence plays the role with strength and charm. She fully earned the Golden Globe she won and should have as long a career as one can have in Hollywood.

De Niro and Jacki Weaver were great as Pat's harried parents annoyed at their son for his circumstances for returning to their home (yet lovingly concerned), and Chris Tucker is better than I have ever seen him (usually annoys me with the manic).

Odds makers will probably rate Silver Linings Playbook a longshot at winning the Best Picture award. I agree. Currently, I would put Lincoln and Argo at the front of the pack - but I still have not seen Life of Pi, Les Miserables, and Armour.

Pulp of the Week - The Inexplicables

2013-01-22T14:47:00.002-08:00

Cherie Priest
The Inexplicables
The Clockwork Century Book 5

The zombie filled, blight ridden, great-walled Seattle returns in this 5th book in the Clockwork Century series by Cherie Priest. The story focuses on the young Rector Sherman, a victim of the blight, though he grew up in the region of Seattle outside the walls. That giant wall did not protect him enough, as he grew into an addict of that most addictive byproduct of the blight, its distilled and cooked up form called sap.

I found this tale a delightful return to the city that we first saw in Boneshaker, the first and best of the series, and Priest picks up the characters lives farther down their road of life, but she focuses on the young'uns - Rector, Zeke, and the Chinese boy inventor, Huey. That trio of friends propel the book through several new mysteries that shake up the landscape of the walled city. Where are the rotters (the zombies) going? Who are the strange newcomers and what are they doing to the wall? What is the Inexplicable?

The answers to those questions power this highly enjoyable novel that begins taking the walled city into a new era, and provide hope for the future.

The amazing cover painting of The Inexplicables is by Cliff Nielsen and I was thrilled to find that it is an illustration of a scene in the book as opposed to a thematic piece. When Rector and his pals reach this point, I flipped the book to the cover and marveled at the view.

Now for the rating... In terms of this series (which I like quite a bit) I would rank The Inexplicables as third favorite of the series, right in the middle, though only by the smallest fraction above Clementine. I would rank the books in this order [the bracketed number is the series number] from best to least best (I won't say worse, because these books are all good.)

Boneshaker [1]
Ganymede [4]
Inexplicables [5]
Clementine [3]
Dreadnought [2]

With all that said, I give The Inexplicables an 8.75...

2012 Oscar Nominations PT 1

2013-01-10T12:10:00.002-08:00

Well, the Academy Award Nominees have been announced and it is no shock that Lincoln got the most nominations. It's a Spielberg movie, it's Daniel Day Lewis, and it's historical drama. Sally Field doesn't hurt your chances either...

I'm not going to run the list of all the nominees, but will give my take on the Academy's picks.

Here are the Best Picture nominees and the number of nominations they received:

2012 BEST PICTURE NOMINEES

Lincoln - 12

Life of Pi - 11

Les Mis - 9
Argo -7
Silver Linings Playbook - 7
Django - 5
Amour - 5
Zero Dark Thirty - 5
Beasts of the Southern Wild - 4

First of all, I have to applaud the selection of the startling performance of Quvenzhané Wallis, the young girl in Beasts of the Southern Wild. She was amazing. She went from joyful to sad to thoughtful to triumphant over the course of the story. She may be a natural, but she was great and the movie was good. She is the youngest Best Actress nominee ever. Coincidentally, Quvenzhané happens to be 76 years younger than one of her fellow Best Actress nominees, Emmanuelle Riva from Amour, who at 85 is the oldest nominee ever.

The pundits will cry "SNUBBED!!!" for the exclusion of Argo, Django, Les Miserables, Zero Dark Thirty from the Best Director category, but when you have 9 Best Picture plus 5 Best Animated Feature nominees and only 5 Best Director nominees, there are going to be 9 people 'snubbed'. Not to mention the thousands who weren't nominated for anything...

The snub that I will decry is the utter exclusion of Cloud Atlas, especially in the Hair and Makeup category. I mean really. This wonderful film of interwoven stories spanning time and space has multiple actors playing multiple parts and there were times when the makeup was so well done that I had no idea it Tom Hanks or Susan Sarandon or Halle Barry playing the part. The ambition and variety of the character makeup is astonishing and well done. Actors play multiple ages, genders, and ethnicities. In addition, Cloud Atlas should have received nominations for editing, makeup, costumes, and production design. Instead, they got zero. Conspiracy theorists—get busy...

ARGO
I thought this film about the Iranian Hostage Crisis was great. While I remember the events of the Embassy standoff well, Argo tells a true story of an amazing rescue that no one had ever heard of (classified for decades) and it involved an epic science fiction film that was never made... Ben Affleck made a great movie and his third film shows that he is not a one (or even two) trick pony. He is a real director. I guess he'll have prove it to the Academy by not starring in his next movie, although I understand why he casts himself... He's a movie star!

LINCOLN
I was thrilled to find this is not a biography, but rather a Congressional thriller about the passing the 13th amendment and Lincoln's struggles with the war as well as his government. Lincoln is Steven Spielberg's best movie in years and the opposite of the cloying, vacuous, and frankly terrible War Horse. Lincoln will be seen in schools for decades to come as both a history lesson and a primer on how difficult it is for our messy government to get anything done. Daniel Day-Lewis is very good as Lincoln and Tommy Lee Jones is his man that gets things done in the houses of government.

BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD
Not surprisingly, this is another great film, but Beasts is the wild card of the Best Picture choices, The Little Engine That Could, the underdog indie film that somehow achieved enough noise to get noticed. The movie is a little rambling, but the story is good and the performances exemplary. It is a bit fable, a bit magic realism, and wholly charming. Quvenzhané Wallis as the adorable, plucky Hushpuppy carries the film and anchors it with her mesmerizing force of will.

ZERO DARK THIRTY
Tense. Dramatic. Dangerous. ZD30 is by far the most talked about film of the year with the news and the election forcing the release date to be delayed until after the election. The film is a wonder of making the mundane thrilling, and the nominated performance of Jessica Chastain is well deserved. Kathyrn Bigelow has delivered a unflinchingly raw, engrossing thriller.

Part two of this series will follow...

Studio Spectre is now in print!

2013-01-08T15:40:00.002-08:00

Here is the final cover with the front and back 'unfolded'. Once again, Mike Fyles has delivered a nifty cover evoking mystery and suspense...

Yes, it's true. You can now get the print version of The Studio Spectre at Amazon in print form - just use one of those handy Amazon links to the right...

Coming Soon... The Claim - the Novella length version of the story that started all this pulp madness. Here is a sneak peek at the Mike Fyles cover...

Merry Christmas!

2012-12-25T09:09:00.000-08:00

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

from

The Savage Tales Blog

art by Uchronic Cover Artist

Mike Fyles

2012-12-23T11:37:00.000-08:00

Uchronic Tales: The Studio Specter is now available!

The Uchronic Press is proud to release Uchronic Tales: The Studio Spectre. This action packed novella by W. Peter Miller (Jungle Tales Vol. One) features cover art by Mike Fyles (Amazing Spider-Man, Iron Man Noir.)

Investigator Clark Tyler is joined by a new hero—The Jade Monk—as they are thrust behind the scenes and into the line of fire in Hollywood's Golden Age.

A spirit is on the loose and terrorizing the cast and crew of The Mayan Mummy and it is up to these unlikely allies to get to the bottom of the secrets behind… The Studio Spectre.

The third exciting pulp adventure featuring Ace Insurance investigator Clark Tyler is now available in ebook form on the following platforms:
Kindle
Nook
Kobo
Smashwords

The iBook and Sony stores should follow soon...

Now, I'm waiting for the printed proofs to arrive and it they are ok then Amazon will be selling the printed version as well.

Pick the cover contest winners Bixby and Erwin will each be getting one of those proofs.

Here is a look at the front and back of the final cover layout and you will notice that I used both covers for the printed version!

Next up - Uchronic Tales: The Claim - it all comes full circle as I finally release the expanded version of the first thing I wrote that got me into this whole pulp writing thing.

Pulp is back, bigtime!

2012-12-23T00:03:00.000-08:00

The genre of Pulp, the fiction with no genre, is making strong inroads in many aspects of pop culture. This is most apparent to the public at large in comics. The number of new and classic pulp characters that are available in new adventures in comics and prose fiction on a monthly basis is staggering. Here is a partial list:

New Characters:

Comics

Hellboy

Lobster Johnson

Rocketeer

Avengers 1959

Atomic Robo

Jim Broadmore's Lord Cockswain

Mystery Men

The Black Beetle

Athena Voltaire

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

Tom Strong
Fatale

Comics Publishers

Sequential Pulp

Prose Publishers
My Uchronic Tales series

Wild Cat Books
Find Many New Pulp publishers here...

Classic Characters:

Comics

Tarzan

John Carter / Dejah Thoris

Zorro

Conan

Red Sonja

Green Hornet

Lone Ranger

Masks (team up of Shadow, Green Hornet, Kato, The Spider, Black Bat, Miss Fury, Black Terror, Green Lama)

Sherlock Holmes

Spider

Prose

Doc Savage

Green Hornet

Captain Midnight

Captain Action

Moon Man

Secret Agent X

Lone Ranger

So get out there are read some New Pulp

Presentation Review - The Hobbit Imax HFR 3D

2012-12-22T23:31:00.000-08:00

Tonight I screened The Hobbit at the AMC Burbank in Imax HFR 3D. (HFR= High Frame Rate) How was it? The movie is good, but long. With getting there early enough to get a good seat I was sitting there from 6:45 to 10:10. That's 3 hours and 25 minutes.

Ahhh, you ask (or maybe not), but how was the presentation? Did the image look good? The 3D? Did the scenes look video-ish? The Hobbit was shot at 48 frames per second in 3D with the Red Epic camera and presented in Imax 4K. So how does the image stand up to a big screen, a silver screen at that?

The Imax passive 3D requires polarized glasses, which is not great considering I already wear eyeglasses, however, it is less cumbersome than the shutter glasses that Imax had used in the past.

The 3D is very good throughout, immersive and at times wonderous. However, the texture of the silver screen gives the bright areas a gritty texture (which is true of all polarized 3D). Unfortunately, shutter glass 3D is not succeeding like polarized, so everything is on a silver screen which results in a bright spot ("hot spot") in the center of the screen and that grittyness to the bright scenes.

Addressing the HFR - there is definitely something odd going on with the bright scenes and the 48fps. I don't know if I was convincing myself, or if I was actually seeing it, but in daylight skies and other very bright scenes I felt I could see the edgyness of the pixels - like TV scan lines. The overly bright sequences were mostly in the early parts of the movie, but as soon as we were in darker interiors, the movie looked great.

I have seen 70mm at 60fps and that indeed looks spectacular. The film grain just goes away and you are left with a beautiful image. Here, the 48fps images (provided they were not dominated by bright or white) looked great. The 3D was as good as I have seen it - well done and immersive. This is probably the best I have seen since Avatar, again probably due to the high res 4k image, but certainly the 48fps probably helped there.

My verdict? I think the 4k is reason enough to see the Imax version or the AMC ETX version and I would approve of the 3D as well. I would have to see it again to compare the ETX 3D to the HFR 3D to see if there really is a big difference. But... as I said, the 3D in the 48fps version was excellent.

The movie is good, the cast stellar, but keep in mind that this is part one of three... If you are a fan of BBCs Sherlock, the actors that play Holmes and Watson are both in the film.

Pulp of the Week - Rocketeer: Cargo of Doom

2012-12-03T15:06:00.002-08:00

The Rocketeer: Cargo of Doom
Rocketeer created by Dave Stevens
Written by Mark Waid
Art by Chris Samnee
Color by Jordie Bellaire

The miniseries, Rocketeer: Cargo of Doom recently finished its run from IDW Comics and man is this a fun read. This mini-series introduces a new character to the team, Peavy's niece, Sally. She's a spunky teenager with a knack for both flying and mechanics. The story starts when an aircraft inspector is in flight with Sally and he gets a bit fresh and the plane gets in trouble and Cliff has to bail her out.

WARNING - MASSIVE SPOILERS FOLLOW - DO NOT TAKE THE JUMP IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO KNOW - DON'T SAY I DIDN'T WARN YOU!

I enjoyed Cargo of Doom and I am happy the Rocketeer is back! I'll give the graphic novel an 8 out of 10 - very good, but things can get better and I hope they will as IDW continues with new adventures of the Rocketeer!

There are a lot off cool things in this miniseries. For one, Cargo of Doom remembers just who made the rocketpack. Though it never said outright in the comic, it was changed for the movie. In the great Joe Johnston film the inventor was Howard Hughes - a clever substitution for the one in the Dave Steven's comic - Doc Savage.

After the scene where Cliff rescues Sally, we go to a ship that is nearing Los Angeles Harbor. One of the crew (a big bullet headed guy named Duggan) asks why the Captain goes easy on one of the other men, a guy named, Guptmann. The Captain says, "...Guptmann's perpetually distracted, I know. Always struggling in his brain, like he's failing to remember something urgent. Well, that's true. But there is a reason for it. A horrifying reason. Guptmann was once captured by the Master's greatest enemy. Do you know what that entails? As he has done with so many others, the Master's enemy spirited Guptmann away to a secret laboratory—and subjected him to surgery. The Master's enemy stole vital portions of Guptmann's identity. Of his free will, his drive. He is Guptmann no longer..."

The reference to the Master is referring of course to John Sunlight and Sunlight's greatest enemy is... Doc Savage.

The story also features creatures returned from Skull Island, which, of course, go amok in Hollywood.

Mark Waid does a nice job writing this story, putting in a new character in Cliff's crew and adding a little conflict between Cliff and Betty. Chris Samnee also does good work with the art, capturing the spirit of the era, and the characters, without copying Dave Steven's style.

There is more Rocketeer to come and I am looking forward to it.

Pulp of the Week - Doc Savage #35

2012-11-29T17:49:00.001-08:00

January 1936 - Murder Mirage

Murder Mirage is one of the longer Doc Savage novels - 153 pages. The opening of this excellent novel by Laurence Donovan is classic pulp. It is the night of July 4th in Manhattan. The wind turns cold and snow begins to fall. The National Weather service calls it, "An all time mark in freakish weather." They are stymied and Doc and his team are watching with a careful eye. There is a full crew in this story - Doc, Renny, Long Tom, Johnny, Monk, Ham, and Pat Savage.

After a chase, a woman is subjected to a bizarre flash of light and then she is gone - vanished or vaporized. However, in the large plate glass window of a music store, her dying form is frozen forever in time in the glass. The pulp cover illustrates Doc removing the image for safe keeping.

The story follows a villainous crew of Bedouins and gangsters from New York to the Middle East. The racism in this novel is more that many of the others and targets the middle easterner with some nasty stereotypes that haven't necessarily disappeared from popular fiction even today.

Murder Mirage utilizes yet another airship - a needle of a thing with no gondola hanging below. This one is streamlined for speed. (Doc must have warehouses full of airships - there have been at least 3 destoyed - one only a few issues earlier) This airship makes the transatlantic flight to the Syrian back-country in the Middle East. There the crew faces grave peril and emerges victorious.

Some things that stuck out to me - the word weasel is used in two paragraphs out of three; first in this quote - "The furtive youth that had been holding his hand under his coat was getting away with the speed of a weasel." Later, "The hammer-throwing weasel put on a burst of speed."

There are several uses of the word, "ferengi" which is described to mean foreigner in Arabic. Certainly the Star Trek writers knew this...

Here is a fun sentence - "The black fog of the morning in New York could not be compared to the pall that swiftly shrouded the silver sliver."

It is also revealed that Doc and Monk have devised a synthetic lifting gas that is "nonflammable and had greater lifting power than either helium or hydrogen." Well, no wonder Doc loved his airships.

I'll give Laurence Donovan's Murder Mirage an 8.5 out of 10 for the great opening and an exciting finish. The Pulp cover is by Walter Baumhofer and the Bantam Paperback (#71) is a wonderfully moody piece by Fred Pfeifer.

Pulp of the Week - The Burning Hand

2012-11-25T15:23:00.000-08:00

Cover art by Mike Mignola with Dave Stewart

The second Lobster Johnson graphic novel is out in one volume and it is a good one. Set concurrently with my own "The Horn," in 1932, this book sees mobsters in New York pitted against the Lobster and his crew.

However, since this is the Hellboy universe, it is not that easy and the gangsters have some unusual help. Throw in a plucky reporter and a mess of bullets and you get a pile of fun.

Gangster Arnie Wald is looking to make a killing in real estate by killing. All is going fine with his "haunted Indian burial ground" scheme until the Lobster steps in and reporter Cindy Tynan starts digging around. When the 'Indians' turn out to be gangsters, Wald brings in some help. Some 'Weird Tales' kind of help. Well, this being a Mignola universe story, you had to know that was coming.

There is some major mayhem and a bit of tragedy as the story unfolds. I really dig these Lobster Johnson stories. They have the perfect blend of horror, macabre, character, and pulp action.

I am pleased as can be with the New Pulp action in comics and books that is happening. There is more New Pulp than I can afford at this point, so I can pick and choose - but that is the topic of a future article.

Buy all things Lobster! Support New Pulp in comics and in prose.

For this review I read The Burning Hand trade paperback. The story is by Mike Mignola and John Arcudi. The Art is by Tonci Zonjic and the color is by Dave Stewart.

I'll give The Burning Hand a 9 out of 10. Check it out.

Pulp of the week - Wonderstruck

2012-11-19T15:45:00.003-08:00

The beautiful Wonderstruck is written and illustrated by Brian Selznick in the same style as his brilliant The Invention of Hugo Cabret. Wonder Struck ties together museums, silent films, wolves, loneliness, and dioramas with charm, grace and heart.

The tales follows two stories - one in the 1920's and one that is contemporary. In the modern story a boy from Michigan travels to New York searching for the secrets of his past and his identity. He soon finds that a Wolf Diorama in the New York Natural History Museum holds to the key to his identity.

In the past, the daughter of a flapper is struggling with similar issues and soon the two stories seems locked on a collision course.

The prose is lovely and the story touching. The art is, like in Hugo, sublime. It is the intersection of the two and the placement of the art pages with the text that makes Selznick's work so wonderfully compelling. At times the tension is so tight that you blast through the art and soak in the images eager to see what that next page turn will bring. The control Selznick has with the pacing, by controlling the reader with the art when needed and the text to slow down, to add detail, is brilliant.

Selznick seems to pick topics that I love (natural history museums and the early days of cinema) so I am sure that adds to my joy, but I think it would be the rare reader that would not be charmed by Wonder Struck.

I'll give Wonder Struck a 9 out of 10. This is another brilliant book.

Pulp of the Week - Doc Savage #34

2012-11-04T22:07:00.000-08:00

The Fantastic Island - December 1935

Written by Ryerson Johnson and Lester Dent

What do I love about the Pulps? Stories like this one…

Take an island in the Galapagos, add escaped Russian royalty, Komodo Dragons, and an active volcano… what do you get?

Pure Pulp Goodness - that's what Johnson and Dent gave us in The Fantastic Island. The story begins with an expedition led by Johnny disappearing in the vicinity of the Galapagos Islands. Something happens to him and the Pat Savage, Monk, and Ham just happen to be on a yacht on vacation in Panama, so they head off to find Johnny…

There is an attempt to make a big deal out of a mysterious hole that appears periodically punching through people's skulls… This reveal was particularly uninspired. The best parts were The set up and the locale was quite evocative. There were good character bits when Johnny, Monk, and Ham were thrown into pits and forced to dig. Pat was taken to a castle on the mountainside where a Russian expat attempted to woo her. An ever-present active volcano added a nice ticking clock - I'll have to remember that one - and Pat Savage is always welcome.

Once again, Bantam's release order baffles me. The end of Fantastic Island (Bantam paperback #15) leads directly into the beginning of Murder Melody (Bantam #14.) All the Doc stories have a paragraph at the end and usually they were cut by Bantam. But not this one, so why not just publish them in the same order as originally published? If you read the Bantams in order, you couldn't help but notice.

Other things of note - Doc has a mechanical doppelganger called "Robbie the Robot!" This is the first known instance of the name. There are some scenes in this one where Doc gets Savage like he did in the early days. There is a cool crab swarm attack. I loved this phrase as a huge candelabra is knocked around - "Candles showered down, their flames whipping like tiny comets." There was a well written end of the 2nd act summary that launched us right into the third act.

On the whole this was a good, but not great story. I'll give it a 7 out of 10. The Bantam cover is by James Bama and the Pulp Cover is by Walter Baumhofer. The interior illustrations from the pulp are by Paul Orban. I have linked this art from Chris Kalb's site.

SPOILERS FOLLOW

Given all the crazy set up, I was disappointed that the horrible monsters ended up being 'merely' extra large iguanas. In the story (as in life), these beasts can be 10 feet long and weigh 150 pounds which is double the normal size. That's kimodo dragon size. I was hoping for triple size, massive, lost dinosaur stuff, but they went with a realistic choice - especially after the utterly fantastic elements in Murder Melody. I guess I'll see if this becomes a trend. This story was only missing Renny and Chemistry has yet to show up again. Phew.

NaNoWriMo - Day 4 report - B.O.T.

2012-11-04T21:40:00.001-08:00

Day 4 - 6050 words.

Hey kids, it's that time of year again. Though I skipped last year, this year I am writing a novel from beginning to end in a month as part of the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) event. The goal is to write a 50,000+ word novel in the month of November. That's an average of 1666 words per day.

I'm doing OK considering I didn't write much the first day. I am only about 600 words behind.

Shocking Announcement 1 - I am not writing pulp.

S. A. 2 - I have no outline. I wrote up a bunch of character bios and did some world building and figured out a basic plot. This is seat of the pants writing.

The book is called B.O.T. and guess what? Yep, it's about big (15-20 foot) fighting robots. Well, they're not really robots, they're more like two legged tanks, with a pilot at the controls. The world is kinda a cross between Mad Max and VOTOMS.

B.O.T. is a Young Adult Science Fiction Novel.

Free copy of the book (when finished) to the person who can correctly name the full, unabreviated title of the book.

Pulp of the Week - Death Star

2012-10-23T13:43:00.000-07:00


Japanese Book Cover that I like better as it highlights main characters.

Death Star
by Michael Reaves and Steve Perry - 2007

Death Star takes place in the moments just before and during the events of the original Star Wars - you know, the real one where Luke blows up the Death Star with a proton torpedo shot through a tiny vent the size of a womp rat.

What is interesting about this story is that the heroes of the original story are only minor characters here. The Imperial characters are the leads, especially Grand Moff Tarkin and Darth Vader. Leia is also featured.

One of the unique features of the book is that in each of the first twenty chapters a new character is introduced. These include (in no particular order) a bar owner, her bouncer, a prison guard, an architect, a smuggler, a librarian, an ace TIE Fighter pilot, a doctor, and the Superlaser trigger-man.

The tales follows the construction of the Death Star and follows through its life and death. I appreciated that the events of the original movie are not retold (mostly). The book sees those events through other eyes, and shows the effects of them on the characters. I liked the second half of the book far better than the first, but it is tough introducing that many characters without just having a lot of exposition. Once everyone is in place, the story hauls ass.

As I was reading, I first thought the book would be the story of the creation of the Deathstar, but it went farther that that and the characters were forced to consider their part in the war and the in the Empire and make some tough choices. If the authors, Reaves and Perry, had faltered here, the book would have been a bit of a dud. However, as the stakes grew higher, and the choices tougher, the book got better and better.

Grand Moff Tarkin is a strong presence throughout the story and he is written as a ruthless, driven man. Human, but heartless (almost) and played well. Tarkin is somewhat irritated by the presence of the Emperor's domineering foot soldier, Vader. But Tarkin is believable and well written. However, as with Vader, our sense memory of the film's classic performances by James Earl Jones, David Prowse, and Peter Cushing (?) help enormously with the characterizations. Especially Tarkin, who is given some backstory and relationships that are new (to me, anyway.)

This book takes place after Death Troopers and before (and during) Star Wars (the one you younger folks call A New Hope. To me it will always be Star Wars.) I would give Death Star a 7, but the last third gets an 8.5. This is a fun read.

There was one boneheaded reference in the book where there is a blaster battle in a Death Star corridor and reference is made to the walls and floor being coated with a substance that prevents blaster fire from going through to other levels. I think the Empire might have won the war had they used this coating on their storm trooper armor...

For this review I read the hardcover novel from the Burbank Public Library. I'll give Death Star a 7.5 out of 10 for the weird every chapter is a new character for the first half of the book, but an 8.5 overall. This was a fun read and I'll be reading more Star Wars novels.

New York Comic Con Saturday

2012-10-18T14:44:00.000-07:00

On to Saturday... VERY crowded throughout the con. Artists Alley was very crowded, the IGN theater was always full, and the cosplay was over the top. They were everywhere, and it really helps make a con fun.

And the demographics - I think in 10 years I have watched cons have go from 90% male to (at least at NYCC) over half female. The cosplayers and steampunkers are all very much gender equal, if not leaning heavier to female. I like the trend and I hope that adding half the population as potential readers will help sustain the comics industry.

Twilight, Hunger Games, Doctor Who, and Harry Potter are major contributors to the gender balancing trend.And here are the pictures...

The Javits Convention Center in Manhatten

The calm before the Saturday onslaught.

The first panel of the day for me was for Sega's upcoming game for PS3 and X-Box 360 - Aliens: Colonial Marines - the authorized Alien universe sequel to James Cameron's Aliens. Fox considers the content of the game as part of the official canon of the Aliens universe. These fan Marines were ready and the man on the right had a fully articulated Smart Gun. Great stuff.

Lance Henriksen was a surprise guest. As you can see the fans were thrilled. He told lots of stories about Aliens and the game uses quite a few of the actors whose characters survived the events of Aliens. It was great to see him again since it had been so long since I edited him in Nature of the Beast. Lance is a great guy and a great actor.

No costume, just had cosplayers sign him...

Bruce Campbell came out for the Evil Dead (reboot) panel to massive applause. The footage played great as well.

Bruce Campbell and Jane Levy

Here's the scoop on the Aliens: Colonial Marines Collectors Edition. It releases Feb 12th and this fancy edition is $100...

Farewell, NYC! Maybe I'll be back again next year!

New York Comic Con Friday

2012-10-17T16:29:00.000-07:00

Here are some scenes from the massively crowded (100,000 plus total attendees) New York Comic Con. Wow. I will be captioning these... so be patient...

Friday Morning - The sea of humanity has not been unleashed yet.

Aliens: Colonial Marines is the one video game I am looking for. I went to a panel Sat - more info then...

Here they come...

The lil' Dalek

There was an art collective showing works and creating works right at the con.

Add caption


Singularity & Company ran a successful Kickstarter campaign to get classic SF books back into print. They also have a bookstore in Brooklyn.

The guy on the left ran this stand that had a massive collection of stickers representing all manner of geeky topics.

Booth Babe

4 Player PacMan

The Fortune 500 invasion of Comic Con is complete. Chevy, Intel, Kelloggs - there is no end.

Choose Brains

Yeah, she's cute, but $250?

Keomaka's art was fantastic - and not crazy pricey - but too much for me...

New Ninja Turtles cartoon is coming, and I think it will be good...

My Little Pony Cosplay

Vehicles from the new Heroclix sets

There was supposed to be a plane between the Batmobile and the police car, but I couldn't see it...

Portal figs - also by Wizkids, but not clix?

Yep. Craftsman at Comic-Con. They even had a DC produced comic hyping their new multi tool system.

Of course there is a huge video game presence with all 3 major players represented.

Lego Hulk

Iron Sky - The Nazis on the Moon Movie was selling DVDs.

Pretty sure this dino was wandering the hall promoting something, but I never did find out what.

Angel Storm Trooper - one of two feminized STs I saw (didn't get a pic of the other).

I guess Black Widow's had a fe Hi-Chews already...

I don't know if they have these everywhere, but the happy family cartoons on the back windows of minivans all over Los Angeles deserved to be mocked. I like it.

Doctor Who just grows and grows... Not bad for a show that will be 40 years old next year...

I guess these are for the Steampunk doctors.

WWII Dalek

Massive Mass Effect group

Gears of War couple

More pics coming...

X-Wing Miniatures Game - Expansion Set 1

2012-09-27T12:41:00.000-07:00

Fantasy Flight released the first wave of expansions for X-Wing simultaneously with the starter set. While two of the models are also in the starter set, all of the cards are new, so that means that there are lots of new pilots and upgrades!

The Big Gun in Wave 1 is the big man himself, the

Dark Lord of the Sith, Darth Vader flying in his TIE Advanced X1.

The other new ship in this wave is the Y-Wing.

Yes, we get Dutch, but no Porkins. Somebody start an internet petition...

The expansion versions of the X-Wing and the TIE Fighter include

new upgrades and pilots. Wedge is the big name here.

The TIE pack includes 6 new pilots, with 3 unique ones...

There is a lot of stuff included, and many hours of gaming ahead to figure out good combos of ships, pilots, and upgrades. And we are supposed to have Wave 2 by Christmas. Here's a few action shots to whet your appetite for more Star Wars...

So get out there and get gaming!