I've been enjoying Moonstone Books' series of Phantom comics, so I'm especially looking forward to the upcoming Phantom prose anthology they've got coming out, The Phantom Chronicles.It'll be seventeen, never-before-published short stories covering a wide range of periods in the Phantom's long history. The press release promises "high adventure and intrigue in the African jungle, on the high seas, and in the city."
The authors are Craig Shaw Gardner, Jim Alexander, David Bishop, Mike Bullock, Ron Fortier, Steven Grant, Clay & Susan Griffith, CJ Henderson, Nancy Kilpatrick, Len Kody, Howard Mackie, David Michelinie, Will Murray, Mike Oliveri, Martin Powell, Ed Rhoades, Trina Robbins, and Dan Wickline. I'm familiar with a few people on that list, but I'm especially interested in reading stories by three of them. Mike Bullock is the new, current writer of The Phantom comic and I'm interested in getting more of his perspective on the character. Ron Fortier has a strong history of writing modern versions of classic pulp characters. I've reviewed some of his previous work for Comic World News. And Dan Wickline is a talented writer who's making a name for himself by writing the last couple of 30 Days of Night mini-series, but is also doing enough other stuff so as to not get labelled exclusively as a horror guy.
There will also be interior illustrations by Ruben Procopio and an Introduction by Valerie Falk, daughter of the Phantom's creator Lee Falk.
In similar news, one of the authors in this collection, CJ Henderson, is also writing an original novel for Moonstone based on Kolchak: The Night Stalker. I'm not as familiar with that character, so I'm not quite as excited, but prose books from Moonstone is a good trend. They've got a lot of great properties that I'd love to see developed into book series.
2 comments:
I think I told you, but the other gems that will probably be in the volume are Will Murray, who also has a strong history of pulp writing, including several Doc Savage novels in the mid-80s when Bantam tried to revitalize the franchise and Trina Robbins who beyond her underground comics career adapted Sax Rohmer for comic books and wrote a very good Golden Age Wonder Woman mini-series. Both too are great chroniclers of the history of pulps and comics as well, which makes them uniquely suited to this endevour.
In other words - I want to read it now. Today!
Blogger's been pretty sporadic about letting me reply to comments on my own blog (or maybe it's the filters on my work PC, I dunno), but I wanted to make sure and come back to this one when I had the chance and thank you for posting those notes about some of the other authors. I was hoping you would when I wrote the post. :)
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