A Cowboy, a Space Captain, a Private Investigator, and a Barbarian Walk Into a Bar... [Guest Post]

By GW Thomas

That could be the beginnings of a really lame joke, but it's something more. All four of these characters, these separate genre icons, share something in common. They are all cut from the same bolt of cloth... the American hero.

The Cowboy grew out of the nostalgia for a Wild West that never really existed outside the imagination of Buffalo Bill Cody and his Wild West Show. You can see the beginnings of him in the fiction of James Fenimore Cooper (1820-1850s), but it is Owen Wister who gets credit for the first official Western novel, The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains (1902). After him come all the rest, from Zane Grey to Louis L'Amour, along with his near cousin, the Northern hero: Mounties to gold-miners in the fiction of writers like Jack London or Rex Beach. North or West, the trappings of the Western and Northern include the tough, solitary cowpoke who enforces his own stern code with a shooting iron or a hanging rope. Locales where you'll find him include the wilderness and smoky saloons.

The second of these true, American heroes is the hardy Space-faring Captain. Pinpointing an exact creator is a little harder, for science fiction heroes begin with John Carter of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs in February 1912 in "Under the Moons of Mars," acquiring all the fighting skill of the old romantic heroes, but then moving on to Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, Hawk Carse, Eric John Stark, and the list goes on and on... Best of all of them was CL Moore's Northwest Smith, who hung around the seedy bars of Mars with his pal, Yarol the Venusian. These tough spacers drank segir, slept with alien chicks, and could shoot or punch their way out of any situation. They lead the way to the final icon, Captain Kirk of Star Trek.

The Private Eye was invented by Carroll John Daly in "The False Burton Combs" in Black Mask (December 1922). Daly may have been first, but his work was expanded by Dashiell Hammett, who had actually been a Pinkerton agent, and later by Raymond Chandler, who elevated noir pulp fiction to the highest level. The central hero is, of course, a private detective, who knows the mean streets and follows his own code of justice. This doesn't always match that of the police, who are often as corrupt as the criminals. Mystery tales date back to at least Edgar Allan Poe's "The Murder in the Rue Morgue" (Graham's Magazine, April 1841), but was made hugely popular by British author Arthur Conan Doyle and his Sherlock Holmes in The Strand. The Private Eye was America's response to the effete murders in the vicarages over tea that the British cozy mystery was at the turn of the century. None of that middle class snobbery for the PI. He is a creature of independence, often found drinking in an illegal speakeasy.

The barbarian hero of sword-and-sorcery is our last of the foursome. The author who created him was Robert E Howard, in January 1929 with "The Shadow Kingdom," starring King Kull. Kull, like his replacement, and by far, the quintessential icon of S&S, Conan the Cimmerian, was a rough, deadly warrior, who claws his way to kingship. The barbarian is skilled with weapons, a hater of sorcery and evil magic, and a hero, but on his own terms and for his own price, which is often taken in gold, booze, or sex. He marches to the beat of his own drum, whether in a desert, a jungle, a filthy city with its steamy dens of iniquity. Conan walks a dark path and no furry little hobbits need apply.

So why do all these heroes exist, and why America? All of these characters are products of pulp fiction, whether in the early days when they were called weeklies, or in the later, true pulps. Magazine fiction since the 1880s had been driving genre with specialized types of reading. In America, this looked a little different than elsewhere, for North America was a land of pioneers. The sedate, well-established, Oxford-educated type good guy was seen as suspiciously too civilized for a land such as the US. American heroes had to be tough, whether they were in the Yukon or the Arizona desert or in imaginary lands or the quickly growing cities with the new problems of gangsterism and corruption. Only a hard man could walk the line between right and wrong.

World War II and later the Cold War would turn these heroes into sadly dated characters; no longer in style. They could have died in the pages of the pulps that folded and blew away by 1955. But was that really the case? Look at paperback sales in the 1950s and 1960s, and there they are again: the cowboy (Zane Grey and Louis L'Amour sold millions), the PI (whether he was Mike Hammer, Shell Scott, or Mike Shayne), the space captain (he fell on hard times in print but made it on radio and the small screen), and the barbarian (who sold millions of purple-edged Lancer paperbacks with the help of Frank Frazetta).

These characters all became icons, part of our collective culture along with the jungle lord and lady, the avenging swordsman, the secret agent, and the superhero. Love them or hate them, they all serve the same function: a plot Christopher Booker calls "Overcoming the Monster." The hero takes on the the "Big Bad" and wins, whether that is Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Beowulf. These heroes tells us we are not small, but can win; that our personal code is worth protecting, that there are reasons to charge "once more unto the breach." The hanging around in bars... well, what else is a hero going to do while waiting for that next adventure?

GW Thomas has appeared in over 400 different books, magazines and ezines including The Writer, Writer's Digest, Black October Magazine and Contact. His website is gwthomas.org. He is editor of Dark Worlds magazine.

James Rosenquest: Man or Pseudoman? [Guest Post]

By GW Thomas

If you read a lot of old SF mags like I do, you will surely come across names you aren’t familiar with. A quick look on ISFDB usually tells me which major writers or associate editors wrote the story under a pseudonym. Some that did a lot of this were Paul W Fairman, Milton Lesser, David Wright O’Brien, Randall Garrett, and Henry Kuttner. I mean somebody had to write all those Will Garth, CH Thames, Alexander Blade, and Ivor Jorgenson stories, right? But occasionally, just once in a while, you come across a name that wasn’t a pseudonym and you wonder: who was this wordsmith who wrote a half dozen stories, then gave up the game?

Such a writer for me is James Rosenquest. Never heard of him, right? Nor are you ever likely to. Unlike Cordwainer Smith, who is a pseudonymous author who began in the low-to-no-pay magazines, James Rosenquest is no genius waiting to be discovered. In fact, most of his stories appeared in Super-Science Fiction, one of the worst SF publications of the 1950s. At the end of the magazine’s run, for five issues in a row, James Rosenquest provided a story in a magazine filled with writers who would become famous in the decade ahead: Robert Silverberg, Harlan Ellison, and Jack Vance, as well as a few old pros like Isaac Asimov and Robert Bloch. The magazine was filled with hastily composed stories written on auto-pilot (Silverberg was pumping out 10,000 words a day) or unsellable clunkers from the reject pile. But neither necessarily applies to Rosenquest, as he was not a regular contributor elsewhere.

Are the James Rosenquest stories so bad? Obviously, this is a matter of taste. I enjoy monster fiction, so the cheesy, gigantic beasties and killer robots are right up my alley. The big magazines were Astounding, Galaxy and Fantasy & Science Fiction. I personally find '50s Astounding even more dull than '40s Astounding; Galaxy has many individual gems, but also many stories that haven’t dated well. Only Fantasy & Science Fiction remains enjoyable to read and that is because it was intended as a fairly literary mag from the beginning, so I don’t go there for my monster thrills. (That being said, they did publish Fritz Leiber’s “The Pale Brown Thing,” the novella that became Our Lady of Darkness in 1977.)

The bigger question for me is: who was James Rosenquest? No famous author has claimed him or been found out to be him, so we have to assume he was an actual person. The Internet guides say little. SFE: The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction says of the Rosenquest story “Dreadnight” in Shock Mystery Tales:

“…No notable authors appeared, at least not under their actual names; suspicions of multiple pseudonyms are fueled by the fact that bylines tend to be unique to this magazine (an exception being James Rosenquest, with previous credits in Super-Science Fiction and Fantastic Universe)…”

One possibility was that Rosenquest was WW Scott, the editor of the magazine. Quite often, when an editor can’t find enough material, he will write some himself, usually under a pseudonym. Harry Bates did it as Anthony Gilmore. Ray Palmer was Edgar Rice Burroughs knock-off JW Pelkie. Howard Browne was no less than twelve different pseudonyms. The same company did not own the three magazines that Rosenquest appeared in. Super-Science Fiction was published by Headline, Shock Mystery Tales by Pontiac, and Fantastic Universe by Leo Marguiles. Scott worked on Man-To-Man for Official Com Inc. in 1950, before heading to Headline where he edited Trapped (1956-60) and Guilty along with Super-Science Fiction.

Lawrence Bloch tells on the Mystery Scene website:

“…Manhunt was hard to hit, but WW Scott bought a batch of stories from me for his alternating bimonthlies, Trapped and Guilty. He paid a cent and a half a word, and the stories he passed on went to Pontiac Publications, where the rate was a cent a word….”

Since the Super-Science Fiction stories appear first, Scott may have written them at the magazine’s end, then kept the pseudonym when he wrote stories for the other two. What makes this unlikely is that Scott has no writing credits under his own name like most SF editors did, and he stayed on with Headline for at least two more years. Why sell to the competition? Why write SF at all, since the majority of his work was in men’s and mystery magazines? It is unlikely James Rosenquest was WW Scott.

I did a little poking around and found another author with the name J Wesley Rosenquest, who appeared in Weird Tales with “Return to Death” (January 1936) and “The Secret of the Vault” (May 1938). Did the J stand for James? Was Rosenquest a Weird Tales reader who contributed two stories as a teenager (perhaps) then went off to college and work, but returned to the typewriter in 1959? Who knows? I did some reading and a little detective work and came to this conclusion: it is quite possible they are the same writer. They both like semi-colons (but less in 1959, which could be a sign of improvement on a young writer.) They both see horror as a scientifically explained scenario rather than a supernatural one. In “Return to Death," a university-trained nobleman becomes paralyzed only to recover and be staked as a vampire by his less educated villagers. “The Secret of the Vault” has less obvious science to it, with weird eldritch tomes, but for all its talk of the liquid of essence, it isn’t so far away either. If J Wesley is James, his style became more dialogue-oriented, his SF themes more hackneyed, and in the end, not much of a better writer. The poor ending of “The Secret in the Vault” could come from the same one who wrote the poor ending of “Man-Hunting Robot.” (Despite this, it appears “The Secret of the Vault” was used for an episode of The Night Gallery in 1972, called “You Can Come Up Now, Mrs. Milikin” starring Ozzie and Harriet Nelson.)

Whether James Rosenquest was WW Scott, a pseudonymous writer, or J. Wesley Rosenquest, we may never know. What we do know is it that James Rosenquest wrote seven tales that stand or fall on their own merits. I personally found them worth a read, though no tears at the thought of him hanging up his quill pen in 1962.

“Horror in Space” (Super-Science Fiction, February 1959)
“The Huge and Hideous Beasts” (Super-Science Fiction, April 1959)
“Creatures of Green Slime” (Super-Science Fiction, June 1959)
“Man-Hunting Robot” (Super-Science Fiction, August 1959)
“Asteroid of Horror” (Super-Science Fiction, October 1959)
“Rope” (Fantastic Universe, February 1960)
“Dreadnight” (Shock Mystery Tales, October 1962)

GW Thomas has appeared in over 400 different books, magazines and ezines including The Writer, Writer's Digest, Black October Magazine and Contact. His website is gwthomas.org. He is editor of Dark Worlds magazine.

How To Get Your Name on a Magazine [Guest Post]

By GW Thomas

Magazines have been around for over 350 years. The first general interest magazine in English was The Gentleman's Magazine, beginning in 1731. Magazines with people's names have been around since at least 1817 when Blackwood's Magazine was a standard publication in most middle-class English homes. So how do you get that prestigious name on a magazine? There are several ways. Let's look at each one:

One: Be the publisher of the magazine.

If you want them to remember your name you'd better get it out there. The first magazines were used as promotional flyers for book publishers. Excerpts from current volumes could be plugged there. Later the titles promoted a whole line of publications, such as Munsey's Weekly (February 1889-October 1929) the flagship of the Munsey empire, that produced the first pulp magazines.

In England, the magazine business exploded with the first appearance of The Strand (named after its location, not a person) and the short stories of Sherlock Holmes. There were many imitators but the most famous was Pearson's Magazine (1896-1939) named after the publisher, C Arthur Pearson. Pearson's published many of the classic HG Wells stories and novels. Other named magazines of the era included Ainslee's, Hutchinson's, and Flynn's Weekly. The Pall Mall Gazette changed its name to Nash's Magazine to finish its run.

Two: Become really famous.

The pulp era was furiously competitive. Any angle magazines could find to edge out the competition was worth a try. Celebrity became such a ploy when the short-lived Jack Dempsey's Fight Magazine (May - Aug 1938) tacked on the name of the former heavy weight champ. Though the magazine failed, the idea caught on.

The first mags to use celebrity names were the mysteries. With writers becoming synonymous with the genre, their name implied that all that would follow would meet similar heights of excitement and puzzle-solving. Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine (Fall 1941-present) is the premiere mystery magazine to this day, originally edited by Fredric Dannay, half of the Ellery Queen team. Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine (December 1956-present) was unusual in that the celebrity was not a writer but from the film industry. The magazine only used the director's name and image, and Hitchcock had no connection with the editing. This was largely done by Robert Arthur, who would also write many books as Hitchcock as well. The magazines tried to make lightning strike thrice with Mary Higgins Clark Mystery Magazine (1996 - Summer 2000), but it was no more successful than any of these other magazines using names such as John Creasey, Rex Stout, Don Pendleton, Edgar Wallace, or Ed McBain. (The oddity here was Mackill's Mystery Magazine (Sep 1952-June 1954) which had a name but not of a famous writer.)

The Westerns weren't far behind the mysteries. The first was Zane Grey's Western Magazine (November 1946-January 1954). Zane was so famous that a revival of the title was tried over a decade later from October 1969 - September 1974. Top hands like Max Brand, Walt Coburn, and Luke Short blazoned titles with their names. Louis L'Amour became famous after the pulps ended, but even he got a magazine: Louis L'Amour Western Magazine (March 1994-Jan 1996).

Science fiction and fantasy magazines were not to be left out. The publishers of Famous Fantastic Mysteries tried the idea with the only writer well-known enough in the relatively small arena of the fantastic, with A. Merritt's Fantasy Magazine (December 1949-October 1950). Nobody tried it again for thirty years but the Good Doctor, Isaac Asimov, got two magazines: Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine (Spring 1977-present) and its short-lived companion, Isaac Asimov's SF Adventure Magazine (Fall 1978-Fall 1979). Rod Serling's Twilight Zone (April 1981-June 1989), like Alfred Hitchcock brought a celebrity from outside publishing to serve up weird horror, just as Marion Zimmer Bradley Fantasy Magazine (Summer 1988-Summer 2000) did with heroic fantasy. The Cthulhu Mythos-style horror gave us HP Lovecraft's Magazine of Horror (Spring 2004-Spring 2009). Jim Baen's Universe and Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show looked back to the old days and named themselves after the publishers and editors.

Three: Create a famous character.

A strange mutant of the celebrity mystery writers was the famous characters who got magazines. Unlike a magazine named for the character, such as Doc Savage or The Lone Ranger, these magazines did have stories of these famous characters, but they also did more. The other stories that appeared with them had a similar feel or approach. In this way, the famous character almost acted like an editor, telling the buyer what to expect. The first of these was The Saint Mystery Magazine (Spring 1953-October 1967), what might have been called the Leslie Charteris Mystery Magazine, but Charteris was not the household name that Simon Templar was. The same idea worked for Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine (Sept 1956-Aug 1985), which could have been Brett Halliday's Mystery Magazine, but since he didn't exist, the character would do fine. Richard Prather had Shell Scott Mystery Magazine (Feb-Nov 1966), and coming full circle, we have Sherlock Holmes' Mystery Magazine (Winter 2008-present), which nobody thought to call the A. Conan Doyle Mystery Magazine. This magazine, like the others, features some new Sherlock fiction, but is actually aimed at readers who enjoy the Gaslight era, not just Holmes and Watson.

So there you go. Pretty easy really. Just get rich and famous and they'll be naming magazines after you. (Just ask Oprah!) But you better hurry. The paper magazines are fading, becoming as scarce as the buffalo. Who wants to buy Michael May's Digital Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Magazine in .epub format only? How will we get the excitement of having subscription cards falling out as you peruse them in the drugstore?

GW Thomas has appeared in over 400 different books, magazines and ezines including The Writer, Writer's Digest, Black October Magazine and Contact. His website is gwthomas.org. He is editor of Dark Worlds magazine.

Ted White's Fantastic: Short Heroic Fantasy [Guest Post]

By GW Thomas

The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction began its life as The Magazine of Fantasy. By the second issue the words "and Science Fiction" had been added. Why? Because no pure Fantasy magazine had ever made it past five issues. Weird Tales had been more Horror than Fantasy. Unknown published John W Campbell's version of Fantasy, but a brand for Science Fiction readers, almost an anti-Fantasy at times. Cele Goldsmith and the long-running Fantastic knew this too and the mix had always been heavier to the SF side. During the early 1960s Goldsmith cultivated Sword and Sorcery writers like Fritz Leiber, bringing him back to magazine publishing with new Fafhrd and Grey Mouser tales. She also brought in new writers like John Jakes with Brak the Barbarian and Roger Zelazny with Dilvish the Damned. This continued until June 1965 when Goldsmith (now Lalli) left the publication when Fantastic was sold to Sol Cohen, with a change from monthly to a bi-monthly schedule.

Laili was replaced by Joseph Ross (Joseph Wrzos) who inherited a huge stockpile of stories from the old days of the Pulps. Fantastic became a reprint magazine, its first new issue containing only one original story, the Fafhrd and Gray Mouser tale "Stardock". Ross published the small reserve of Fantasy tales purchased before the switch that included Avram Davidson's classic novel The Phoenix and the Mirror and "The Bells of Shoredan" by Zelazny. Amongst the reprints was the Pusadian tale "The Eye of Tandyla" by L Sprague de Camp (from Fantastic Adventures, May 1951). But Ross wasn't long for the position, being replaced by Harry Harrison and later Barry N Malzberg. Both Harrison and Malzberg would leave over the reprints that plagued the magazine. They wanted to edit a magazine of new, modern Science Fiction and Fantasy.

Fantastic needed a new editor. One who could present both quality Science Fiction and Fantasy. Cohen was willing to sell his reprints in other formats and leave the new editor to his work. A choice was found with Robert Silverberg's help: junior editor from FaSF, Ted White. For ten years White would create a magazine that featured intriguing works of Fantasy as well as decorate it with great artists including Jeff Jones, Mike Kaluta, Ken Kelly, Harry Roland, and Stephen Fabian (and occasionally Joe Staton's pieces that remind me of DoodleArt). And this with the major handicap of low pay, for Fantastic offered its writers only one-cent a word in a marketplace that usually paid three to five cents. By cultivating new writers and snapping up gems where he could, White offered stories that often were chosen for the Year's Best Fantasy collections and even won the occasional award.

White's debut was April 1969 and its contents were not spectacular, chosen by others. The only hint of what was to come was Fritz Leiber's review column on ER Eddison's The Worm Ouroboros. It would have to wait until December 1969 before a truly interesting Fantasy would appear. This was Piers Anthony's Arabian Nights inspired Hasan, which Anthony supported with an essay on Arabesque Fantasy.

April 1970 saw another Fafhrd and Gray Mouser tale, a series dating back to Goldsmith but one that White was happy to continue. "The Snow Women" is a tale of Fafhrd's youth set in the cold north. Two more would follow in later years, "Trapped in the Shadowlands" (November 1973) and "Under the Thumbs of the Gods" (April 1975). At this time Leiber was collecting his tales into the first collections of Lankhmar and the new material would later be included.

Also in the April 1970 issue was John Brunner's "The Wager Lost by Winning," part of his Traveller in Black series, of which he would continue with "Dread Empire" (April 1971). Brunner, a British author known for his Science Fiction, created something different in these tales of the odd little wizard who roams the world, and they would win him a place in the Thieves' World alumni eight years later.

June 1971 featured a new non-fiction series, "Literary Swordsmen and Sorcerers" by L Sprague De Camp. This series of articles looked at classic Fantasy authors including Robert E Howard, HP Lovecraft, Fletcher Pratt, William Morris, L Ron Hubbard, TH White and JRR Tolkien, running off and on until 1976. These pieces offered intriguing insight into the lives and trials of Fantasy writers, leading de Camp to write the first major biographies of both Lovecraft (Lovecraft: A Biography), 1975) and Howard (Dark Valley Destiny, 1983).

February 1972 saw the first of the Michael Moorcock stories to appear in Fantastic, with "The Sleeping Sorceress" starring the albino superstar, Elric of Melnibone. Later the same year, Count Brass featuring Dorian Hawkmoon would appear in August 1972. Both characters would become one as Moorcock melded his multiverse together to include everyone from Elric to Sojan to Jerry Cornelius.

White published the magazine versions of several good heroic fantasy novels during his decade: The Crimson Witch (October 1970) by Dean R Koontz, which feels more like Sword and Planet, like Ted White's own "Wolf Quest" (April 1971), "The Forges of Nainland are Cold" by Avram Davidson (Ursus of Ultima Thule in book form) in August 1972, The Fallible Fiend by L Sprague de Camp (December 1972-February 1973), part of his Novaria series, "The Son of Black Morca" by Alexei and Cory Panshin (Earthmagic in paperback) in April-July 1973, The White Bull by Fred Saberhagen (November 1976) who was moving away from the robotic Berserkers to become a Fantasy bestseller, and The Last Rainbow by Parke Godwin (July 1978). All of which would populate the book racks of the 1980s.

August 1972 saw the beginning of a series of new Conan pastiches by L Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter. "The Witches of the Mist" (August 1972), "The Black Sphinx of Nebthu" (July 1973), "Red Moon of Zembabwei" (July 1974), and "Shadows in the Skull" (February 1975), all of which form Conan of Aquilonia. Lin Carter groused in his intros to Year's Best Fantasy about this book, which had been stuck in legal limbo with the collapse of Lancer. Finally free, it appeared serially in Fantastic then in paperback in 1977.

Several other Sword and Sorcery series got a new start or a first start in Fantastic. Lin Carter wrote new tales of Thongor's youth with "Black Hawk of Valkarth" (September 1974), "The City in the Jewel" (December 1975) and "Black Moonlight" (November 1976). He also offered posthumous collaborations with masters Robert E Howard in "The Tower of Time" (June 1975) - a James Allison reincarnation story - and with Clark Ashton Smith in verbose Mythos-heavy pieces, "The Scroll of Morloc" (October 1975) and "The Stair in the Crypt" (August 1976). The February 1977 issue featured an interview with Lin Carter that was informative about his days on the Ballantine Fantasy series and other Fantasy goings-on in the 1960s and 1970s.

Brian Lumley published some of his first Primal Lands tales, part Lovecraftian horror, part Sword and Sorcery in Fantastic. These included "Tharquest and the Lamia Orbiquita" (November 1976) and "How Kank Thad Returned to Bhur-esh" (June 1977) . Lumley's Fantasy harkens back to Weird Tales and the works of HP Lovecraft's Dreamlands and Clark Ashton Smith's sardonic fantasies.

Another good start was made by Australian writer Keith Taylor, who wrote about wandering singer and swordsman Felimid mac Fel. These stories were the embryonic form of the book Bard, which Taylor began under the pseudonym Denis More. "Fugitives in Winter" (October 1975), "The Forest of Andred" (November 1976), and "Buried Silver" (February 1977) form the first part of the series that went on to contain five volumes with further tales in the new Weird Tales in the 1990s.

Other heroic fantasy pieces included "The Holding of Kolymar" (October 1972) by Gardner F Fox, "The Night of Dreadful Silence" (September 1973) by Glen Cook, destined for fame with his Black Company in the 1980s, "Death from the Sea" by Harvey Schreiber (August 1975), "Two Setting Suns" (May 1976) by Karl Edward Wagner, part of the Kane series , and "Nemesis Place" (April 1978) by David Drake, featuring Dama and Vettius, Drake's two Roman heroes.

Not all of White's choices were Sword and Sorcery. He published the wonderful "Will-o-Wisp"(September-November 1974) by Thomas Burnett Swann, "War of the Magicians" (November 1973) by William Rostler, "The Dragon of Nor-Tali" (February 1975) by Juanita Coulsen, "The Lonely Songs of Loren Dorr" (May 1976) by George RR Martin (long before Game of Thrones) and "A Malady of Magicks" (October 1978) by Craig Shaw Gardner, beginning the popular humorous Fantasy series featuring Ebenezum.

By the end of 1978 Fantastic was on a quarterly schedule and losing readership. White had grown more dissatisfied with Sol Cohen, wanting to take the magazine into the slick market. He also wanted a raise. January 1979 was his last issue before he left to edit Heavy Metal magazine. He was replaced with neophyte Elinor Mavor. Another period of reprints followed and the look of the magazine declined. Mavor was finding her feet with new authors like Wayne Wightman, Brad Linaweaver and artists like Janny Wurts. She published Stephen Fabian's graphic story "Daemon" (July 1979-July 1980), but the only gem to appear before amalgamation with Amazing Stories was the two part serial of The White Isle by Darrell Schweister, with illustrations by Gary Freeman, in the April and July 1980 issues. A last gasp of wonder before Fantastic was gone. It was the end of an era, but too few even knew what was lost. Other magazines would attempt to do what Ted White had done, through self sacrifice and continuous networking, but none would ever be such a haven for short heroic fantasy again.

GW Thomas has appeared in over 400 different books, magazines and ezines including The Writer, Writer's Digest, Black October Magazine and Contact. His website is gwthomas.org. He is editor of Dark Worlds magazine.

The Terror of the Sea Caves: An Adventure in Publishing [Guest Post]

By GW Thomas

Jan Laurvik stumbles upon a knife fight in the streets of Singapore. An Englishman and his Lascar mate have taken the worst of it in a fight with several Chinese attackers. The six foot two Scandinavian has to fight for his life as well:

Startled and furious at this novel attack, Jan reached for his knife. But before he could get his hand on it the Chinaman had leaped into the air like a wild-cat, wound arms and legs about his body, and was struggling like a mad beast to set teeth into his throat. The attack was so miraculously swift, so disconcerting in its beast-like ferocity, that Jan felt a strange qualm that was almost akin to panic. Then a black rage swelled his muscles; and tearing the creature from him he dashed him down upon the floor, on the back of his neck, with a violence which left no need of pursuing the question further. Not till he had examined each of the bodies carefully, and tried them with his knife, did he turn again to the wounded Lascar leaning against the wall.

Laurvik is given a map to a sunken junk containing a fortune in pearls. To avoid a possible assassination, he copies the map, introduces an error into it and puts it back in the pirate's pocket. The adventure has begun! Avoiding competition, Jan assembles a crew on a little scow called the Sarawak and follows the map to the treasure. There he uses his diving suit to locate the sunken ship. Unfortunately for him a giant squid has made a home of the derelict. The fight between man and squid is one of the best I've ever read.

Who is the author of this adventurous brawl? Is it one of Robert E. Howard's Pulp tales for Top-Notch? Is it a Talbot Mundy yarn for Adventure? No, it is the work of "The Father of Canadian Poetry" and author of the private lives of animals. Shades of Bambi! What is going on?

The story is "The Terror of the Sea Caves" from Everybody's Magazine (January 1907), predating Howard's punch ups by twenty years, and Mundy's by ten. The author is Sir Charles GD Roberts who included it in his The Haunters of the Silences (1907), a collection of animal stories featuring a polar bear on its cover. Of this adventure yarn and a few others, he writes in the Introduction:

But when I write of the kindreds of the deep sea, I am relying upon the collated results of the observations of others. I have spared no pains to make these stories accord, as far as the facts of natural history are concerned, with the latest scientific information. But I have made no vain attempt at interpretation of the lives of creatures so remote from my personal knowledge; and for such tales as "A Duel in the Deep," "The Terror of the Sea Caves," or "The Prowlers," my utmost hope is that they may prove entertaining, without being open to any charge of misrepresenting facts.

This explanation makes sense for in the story the author dedicates what feels like a long time on the squid's thought processes, allowing us to see the underwater world from his view. In most Pulp tales this would not happen. But the tone of Haunters of the Silences is not that of pulse-pounding adventure tales but another genre altogether, the Naturalist movement of the turn of the century. Authors like Roberts, Ernest Thompson Seton (Wild Animals I Have Known (1898) and James Curwood (The Grizzly King, 1916) paved the way for books like Felix Salten's Bambi: A Life in the Woods (1923). None of which reads like a Disney movie. These authors wanted to show animals in their real habitats, doing what they really do, without Victorian sentiment or inaccurate science.

So why did Roberts write "The Terror of the Sea Caves" instead of another installment of Red Fox or another poem like "Canadian Streams"? Not all of Roberts work is dedicated to poetry and animal tales. He wrote several books about the men and women who live in the wilds like Around the Campfire (1896), The Forge in the Forest (1897) and The Backwoodmen (1909). Like Jack London in America, Roberts work goes in many directions but his fame lies in only some of these. To academics Roberts is a poet. To popular readers he wrote animal stories.

Still, this only partly explains why he'd write an adventure yarn for an American magazine. The other half of the explanation is the world of magazines between 1880 and 1920. Many Canadian writers penned stories like this for British and American magazines, which flourished during that forty year period, before the coming of the Pulps. The Strand, Pearson's, The Pall Mall Gazette, The Idler in the UK, The Atlantic, Colliers, Munsey's, Argosy, and many others in America furnished markets to hungry writers. The animals of Roberts' fiction may have lived in the Canadian wilds, but their publishers did not. Many Canadians wrote for these publications (though they usually ended up moving to either London or New York); writers such as Sue Carleton, Robert Barr, Grant Allen, Hulbert Footner, Sir Gilbert Parker, RTM Scott, WA Fraser, and Frank L Packard. Even the Governor-General of Canada and British peer John Buchan wrote adventure novels; The Thirty-Nine Steps being the most famous.

Charles GD Roberts

So it was for money. And why not? If Roberts wanted to do something more elevated he had his poetry. If he wanted to write something more in line with his interests he could pen the tale of lynx or a salmon or a grouse. If he wanted cash, he could write a yarn with pirates and diving and all manner of things he knew nothing about. He probably included it in Haunters of the Silences as filler. He was a successful author by 1907 and he moved to Paris that year. He would not return to Canada until 1925.

Does this make "Terror of the Sea Caves" a bad story? Not at all. It is written as an adventure story should be, with brash fights and hidden dangers and growing excitement. If Roberts hadn't become the godfather of Bambi or the Father of Canadian Verse, he would certainly have had a career in the Pulps. He probably preferred being Knight Commander of the Order of St. Michael and St. George (and that wonderful moustache) to the gritty urban streets and a penny a word grind. How would that compare with getting the cover illo for Thrilling Adventure or a three-part serial in Blue Book with John Hamberger illustrations? Tough choice. Fortunately, Chuck doesn't have to make it.

GW Thomas has appeared in over 400 different books, magazines and ezines including The Writer, Writer's Digest, Black October Magazine and Contact. His website is gwthomas.org. He is editor of Dark Worlds magazine.

James Blish of the Jungle [Guest Post]

By GW Thomas

James Blish won his place in Science Fiction history through the critical and the popular. On the critical side, his novel A Case of Conscience won the Hugo for Best Novel of 1959, telling the tale of a Jesuit priest and his struggle with religious belief in an age that includes space flight and aliens. On the popular side he wrote the first novelizations of Star Trek episodes along with the first new novel, Spock Must Die in 1970. Whether you enjoy his original classics like Black Easter or Cities in Flight or are just a trekker, James Blish left his mark on SF. But every good SF icon has to start somewhere. You would not be surprised to know Blish wrote for the Pulps: Super Science Stories, Cosmic Stories, Astonishing Stories, Thrilling Wonder Stories, none of these would be hard to believe. But Jungle Stories?

Blish sold two stories to Jungle Stories, "The Snake-Headed Spectre" (Summer 1949) under the pseudonym VK Emden and its sequel "Serpent Fetish" (Winter 1948-49) under his own name. Confusingly, the sequel appeared first.

"The Snake-Headed Spectre", a 112 page novella, begins with Kit Kennedy, known by the local tribes as K'tendi, being hired to lead a group of arrogant Europeans into the jungle on a mysterious quest. These outsiders are lead by Paula Lee, a beautiful but cold Englishwoman, and the fat and toady Stahl. Along for the ride are Bleyswijck and his marines. The local Africans are lead by Tombu, prince of the Wassabi and friend of K'tendi.

The safari does not go well as the major players all try to take control. Stahl boorishly strikes Tombu and the Africans are close to deserting when they discover a strange plain and then an unknown mountain, higher than Everest. The people who live beyond the plain play a loud work drum, frightening the locals. Kit and Tombu leave the party to scout ahead and run into Manalendi, the giant python. The snake is curious about Kit and they become friends after a fashion. The Europeans are captured by the strangers, who are cannibals, and Kit, Tombu and the giant snake go in search of them.

What the rescuers find in the jungle under the mountain is a village surrounded by a palisade and slaves who are working a strange mine. These poor devils are covered in sores and are missing fingers. Finding Stahl and Paula, Kit discovers the safari's real purpose, to investigate the appearance of radioactive pitchblende on the black market. Since the substance is lethal to mine, Stahl had suspected that slave labour was being used. Kit also discovers the man behind the operation is none other than Bleyswijck. The marine is in league with an Arab woman named Nanan, who acts as high priestess to the local Rock God. To save Paula and Stahl, Kit boldly walks into the village, with Tombu and Manalendi the giant python at his side, to challenge the king of the tribe, N'mbono. They fight on the giant drum with spears. The desperate battle ends with N'mbono dead and Kit now king of the tribe. During the conflict, Kit uses the drum's rhythm to send a message to the Wassabi warriors far away, asking for help.

Overthrowing Bleyswijck and Nanan, Kit's victory is interrupted by the sudden appearance of a triceratops, one of the night shapes rumored to live in the area. The drumming has infuriated it, causing it to crash through the log palisade. In the confusion, the Europeans depart. Paula, her husband dead, is very sick but throws herself on Kit: "...I want someone to make me back into a woman again..." The two become lovers. In the sequel it is suggested they lived together in the jungle a short while but split. Both stories were combined, refitted and republished in 1962 as the novel The Night Shapes. In the novel version, Blish inserts a short reunion conveniently at the end, and Paula returns to Ktendi to live happily ever after .

"Serpent's Fetish" is much shorter than its prequel. It finds K'tendi and his friend Tombu facing a second safari of whites invading their jungle, looking for dinosaurs in the Valley of Dragons, for rumours of Kit and Paula's first expedition have leaked out. Kit Kennedy tries to tell the invaders to leave but they won't. Kennedy knows it is not enough to simply kill the whites, for more would follow and the local tribes would be punished. Instead he concocts an elaborate plan to dispel the rumours of dinosaurs living in the jungle. To do this he pits Tombu's tribes against his neighbor, knowing the two armies would meet near the valley. He also gets a witch doctor to bring the rains early so that the lightning will start a forest fire near the dinosaurs, driving them out. The two armies then join forces to drive the beasts back into the valley before Kit seals it forever with dynamite. The safari and all those after will hear that the dinosaurs were dispersed into the jungle, making them near impossible to find.

There are some mysteries that surround Blish's jungle tales. First off, why was the sequel published first in the Winter 1948-49 issue then followed by the longer prequel in the Summer 1949? The use of the pseudonym VK Emden seems unnecessary if Blish had already published the sequel under his own name. One has to remember that pulp publishing was fast and loose. Perhaps the Winter issue needed a hole filled and Jerome Bixby (fellow SF author and editor) may have plugged it with the shorter sequel? It's confusing, but much of the Pulp business was. Unless an editor survives today to recall what happened, no one left any real evidence for us to sift through. Pulps were ephemera and not worth documenting.

Blish is of the HR Haggard school of jungle writing, presenting a more realistic version of Africa than Edgar Rice Burroughs does. Blish is familiar with Swahili and the customs and actions of Tombu and his people are less stereotypical than much of what appeared in Jungle Stories. K'tendi is not Tarzan, swinging through the treetops naked. Like Allan Quatermain, he wears clothes and carries a large bore rifle. How Blish learned about Africa I don't know. Looking at his bio I was prepared to see he had spent time in Africa, perhaps in the war, but he served in 1942 as a medical technician in Fort Dix. No jungle adventures there. Ultimately, he was a Science Fiction writer from New Jersey, so I have to assume he was a good researcher.

Blish's novel version is a weird combination of 1940s sexism and the growing freedoms of the 1960s. Paula Lee throws herself at Kit like any Pulp heroine while Blish inserts graphic (and gratuitous) descriptions of female circumcision and other details that do not further the plot. While you can make the argument that the idea of the "white hero" is racist (part and parcel of the genre), the relationship between Kit and Tombu is one of virtual equality. (This said Tombu hides Paula from Kit as a joke and Kit is willing to set Tombu's village against another in battle. Strange friends!) The sense of humor between the two friends is much more endearing than the icy cold romance with Paula Lee.

Kit's weird alliance with the giant snake Manalendi is also one of the story's best features. It's not surprising that their meeting was chosen for one of the edition's covers rather than a dinosaur picture. Despite the presence of dinos in the book, there are few good scenes with them. (To misquote Jurassic Park: "Ah, now eventually you do plan to have dinosaurs in your... in your dinosaur novel, right? Hello?") Again I suspect the fact that Blish was writing for Jungle Stories and not Thrilling Wonder is to blame. The editors would tolerate a small amount of dinosaura, but the major portion of the story would have to be a "jungle" story. The legend of "Mokele-mbemba" is irresistible to a Science Fiction writer and James Blish does as good a job as any (and better than some, ie: 1985's Baby, Secret of the Lost Legend). Ultimately, Kit Kennedy is an odd but charming part of Jungle Pulp history.

GW Thomas has appeared in over 400 different books, magazines and ezines including The Writer, Writer's Digest, Black October Magazine and Contact. His website is gwthomas.org. He is editor of Dark Worlds magazine.

Ground to a Pulp card set on Kickstarter

I don't usually talk about other people's Kickstarter campaigns on this blog, but it's not because I have anything against doing that. I just don't typically think to blog about them. But Evan Driscoll of Studio Hades has a unique project that deserves some extra attention even though he's blown past his goal.

I'm embedding the Kickstarter video below, but basically Driscoll is creating a set of retro, '30s-inspired bubble gum cards featuring pulp heroes and sports stars from the era. As he hits stretch goals, he's adding cards to the base set, so a C'thulhu card has already been unlocked and with just under a week left in the campaign, there's a Phantom card on the line if additional backers pledge less than $300.

Anyway, check out the video and the Kickstarter page. There are some great reward levels and I'm sure this is right in the wheelhouse of a lot of people who read this blog.

Cities condemned to Hell hate cephalopods

Suggested by Shad Daly.

Create your own pulp covers with the Pulp-O-Mizer

Writer/illustrator Bradley W. Schenck has put a cool thing called the Pulp-O-Mizer on his Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual website. It lets you create pulp magazine covers with your own text, like this one I made of an alternate take on Kill All Monsters.

Once you've created your piece, you can save it in a couple of different formats, including one designed especially for Facebook. And if you really like what you made, you can order stuff with your cover on it, from posters to mugs to shirts to iPad cases.

I'm not getting anything for pimping the Pulp-O-Mizer; I just saw it and thought it was fun enough to mention.

Go! Play!

Got a New Book Coming | The Avenger: Roaring Heart of the Crucible

I've got a story in the upcoming Avenger anthology: Roaring Heart of the Crucible. Not Marvel or Mrs. Peel, but the Avenger; singular.

He's a classic pulp character from the '40s, created by the guys who created Doc Savage and The Shadow, and written mostly by a man named Paul Ernst. The Avenger has a powerfully touching origin story in which his wife and small daughter are passionlessly murdered in an unbelievably horrifying way, simply for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Unlike, say, Batman, where that tragedy is usually played out in a few panels, the first Avenger story is all about his attempt to uncover what happened, take his revenge, and come to terms with his own role in their deaths. That last part may be mostly in subtext, but it's heart-wrenching stuff nevertheless.

The Avenger doesn't actually go by that name in the stories I've read. His real name is Richard Benson and that's pretty much what people call him. He gathers together a small team of like-minded people who've also been treated unjustly by criminals and they form an organization called Justice, Inc. They all have their areas of expertise, so it's kind of like a super team, though only Benson has what you might call super powers.

Due to the shock of losing his family, Benson's lost all pigment in his skin and hair, and his facial muscles have been paralyzed. He's able to do this thing where he can move his face around with his fingers and change his appearance. That's tough to explain scientifically, but before he became the Avenger, Benson was kind of wealthy, globe-trotting, Indiana Jones-like adventurer, so I imagine that something he encountered in those days combined with his shock to give him his ability. I wonder if anyone's told that story. I still have a lot of Avenger reading to do.

What fascinates me about the character is the theme of emotional vulnerability. He has so much rage and hurt inside him, but he's physically incapable of expressing it. I'm intrigued by how that affects his team, who have their own heartaches, but seem to follow Benson's lead in keeping that stuff swallowed up.

My story takes place really early in Justice, Inc.'s career, just after my favorite member of the team has joined. Her name is Nellie Gray and she's an awesome butt-kicker with a deceptively fragile appearance. She's also my emotional hook into the team, so I wanted to tell a story from before she's fully assimilated. If I get the chance to write other Avenger stories, I'd love to follow her some more and explore how Benson's team affects the way she expresses herself and relates to people.

Not that it's all character stuff for me. This is a pulp hero after all, so there's also plenty of action and a string of robberies committed by a murderous, bulletproof scarecrow.

Anyway, the book comes out in March and has stories by lots of cool writers: Matthew Baugh, James Chambers, Greg Cox, Win Scott Eckert, CJ Henderson, Matthew Mayo, Will Murray, Bobby Nash, Mel Odom, Barry Reese, Chris Sequeira, John Small, and David White. It'll be over 300 pages of Avenger action for only $19 (less than $13 on Amazon). There's also going to be a limited edition hardcover for $33.

Here's how Moonstone describes the collection:

The greatest crime-fighter of the 40’s returns in a third thrilling collection of original action-packed tales of adventure, intrigue, and revenge. Life was bliss for millionaire adventurer Richard Henry Benson until that fateful day crime and greed took away his wife and young daughter…and turned him into something more than human.

Driven by loss, compelled by grief, he becomes a chilled impersonal force of justice, more machine than man, dedicated to the destruction of evildoers everywhere. A figure of ice and steel, more pitiless than both, Benson has been forged into an avatar of vengeance, possessed of superhuman genius supernormal power. His frozen face and pale eyes, like a polar dawn, only hint at the terrible force the underworld heedlessly invoked upon itself the day they created…The Avenger!

Pulp Dames Hate Cephalopods

By Pinturero.

Pulptacular!

If you're a fan of adventure writing, you might be interested in my Pulptacular column at the New Pulp website. I think I mentioned the column here when I first started writing it, but it took me a while (and some great help from Mike Bullock) to find my focus for it. It's a different animal now and I'd love it if you gave it another look.

It started with a post about how inexperienced I am with pulp. Or at least, with the specific characters and stories that most people associate with pulp. I know the hell out of James Bond and Tarzan, but little about Doc Savage and The Shadow. For that reason, I've traditionally resisted calling the kind of fiction I like "pulp," preferring "adventure fiction" instead. It created a mental barrier for me in exploring the world of New Pulp. Though New Pulp encompasses a wide variety of genres and sub-genres that I'm interested in reading, it has deep roots in the classic hero-pulps that I'm most unfamiliar with. How was I supposed to write a column about that?

After talking it over with Mike, I decided to own my inexperience and make Pulptacular a column for New Pulp beginners. I outlined my plan of attack and went to work exploring the various New Pulp publishers from a high level perspective; creating a sort of primer to these companies and trying to figure out what each of them uniquely contributes to the New Pulp landscape. Many of the companies I've been profiling self-identify as New Pulp endeavors, but not all of them do. What's interesting to me is their shared love of adventure fiction and the extremely different ways they choose to express it. Some produce prose, some produce comics, and one group I talked to produces audio plays. Some reprint (or translate) classic pulp in new formats, some tell new stories with classic characters, and some create new characters inspired by the old ones.

Following is a list of the publishers I've talked to so far and if you visit the New Pulp publishers page, you'll see the list I'm working through for future columns. I hope you'll find it useful.

Airship 27 (new prose stories featuring classic characters)
Pro Se (new prose stories featuring new characters inspired by the classics)
Age of Aces (primarily prose reprints of classic air-combat stories)
Altus (prose reprints of classic adventure stories of many genres with a special love of Lost Civilization stories)
Black Coat (English translations of classic, French adventure stories; mostly prose, but some comics as well)
BrokenSea (audio plays ranging from original creations to fan fiction and straight adaptations)
Dark Horse (new comics stories featuring classic and new characters)
Dynamite (new comics stories re-interpreting classic characters for a new audience)

New Pulp

I've tended to describe the kinds of stories I love to write and talk about as "adventure fiction," but another way of labeling them is Pulp. In fact, I've pretty much abandoned the more-encompassing Sci-Fi as a genre that I like. I dig Space Pulp: robots, aliens, rayguns; that kind of thing. Jungle adventure stories started in the pulps too. As of course did Robert E Howard's Conan, and Lovecraftian horror. So many of the stories I've enjoyed my entire life fall under the Pulp umbrella. Depending on how broadly you define Pulp, maybe all of them do.

At SpringCon a couple of weeks ago I got to sit next to Mike Bullock (The Phantom, Lions Tigers and Bears), someone I've known for a long time, but didn't know that well. Mike's one of the major writers in the current Pulp revival and one of the best things about that weekend was getting to know him better and just chatting about Pulp for a couple of days. I left the weekend excited about the genre (or, more accurately, the collection of genres) and determined to do more writing in it. Especially prose, which I've been neglecting for comics projects the last few years. Comics projects are fun and I'm going to keep doing them (especially Kill All Monsters, of course), but they take a while to get going and there's no reason I couldn't be cranking out some short stories at the same time.

Something else that came from my conversation with Mike was the discovery that he and Tommy Hancock (another long-time acquaintance and current Pulp revivalist) have started a New Pulp blog dedicated to talking about today's Pulp fiction. So of course I asked if I could chip in. Mike and Tommy graciously accepted and my first post (part of a new column called "Pulptacular") went up at the end of last week. It's about some of the new Pulp TV shows coming out next season and there are some good ones. So check out the post and if you like adventure fiction, follow the site. It's going to be a great place to stay caught up on this stuff.

Kolchak: The Night Stalker Files #2

Earlier this week I reviewed The Spider #1 for Robot 6, but it’s not the only recent Moonstone book I’ve read. Nor is it the only one that offered an encouraging introduction to a character I’ve heard a lot about, but don’t have much personal experience with.

I do know a bit more about Kolchak than I did about The Spider. I have vague memories of watching a TV movie or two as a kid and I’ve checked out a couple of stories in one anthology or another, but none of those have actually helped the character for me. On the contrary, they gave me the impression that Kolchak’s misfortune and demoralization are such integral parts of the concept that there’s no hope that he’ll ever achieve any kind of success. I at least need the illusion that a hero may succeed, so when failure becomes a built-in part of the concept, I lose interest.

Still, enough people whose tastes are otherwise similar to mine enjoy Kolchak, so I keep trying to find a hook to grab onto. One of those people is Christopher Mills, so it’s appropriate that he’s writing Moonstone’s new comic series, which looks to be just the handhold I’ve needed.

I don’t know what happened in Kolchak #1, but I don’t need to because the second issue starts a new story arc. In it, Kolchak has been fired from yet another newspaper, but is on his way to Miami where he’s been offered a new job with a tabloid. One of the problems I’ve had with Kolchak in the past is that in the stories I’ve read he insists on being taken seriously as an investigative journalist, when he’s in fact Jack McGee from The Incredible Hulk. It might be overstating things to say that he’s embraced his McGee-ness in Kolchak #2, but he’s at least come to terms with it and is apparently being rewarded for it. Being rewarded – in my admittedly, very limited perspective – is something that’s long overdue for this character and it’s allowing me to move past Kolchak’s haplessness and enjoy the rest of the concept: a rumpled, unlikely monster-hunter.

And for his first case, he’s looking for a Florida skunk ape (in spite of the cover, which – while cool – has nothing to do with anything in the book), so I’m totally into that too.

The Awesome List: Batman vs. Sasquatch!

Gear Island



I have no idea what this project of Jeremy Vanhoozer's is, but whatever it is I can't wait for it.

Yuki 7 and the Gadget Girls



Kevin Dart's groovy spygirl has her own website with videos, a store, a blog, and more.

After the break: Pulp Girls, Batman meets Alpha Flight, lovey Frankenstein, and Atlantis' Avenging Sneakers.

Comics News Roundup: Wonder Woman's Waterloo?

The Return of Billy the Kid's Old Timey Oddities



I'm a big fan of both Eric Powell (The Goon) and Kyle Hotz (The Hood, Criminal Macabre), so it was no surprise that I enjoyed their collaboration, Billy the Kid's Old Timey Oddities, in which Billy teams up with a traveling freak show to fight Dr. Frankenstein and his foul creations. Now they're teaming up again to fight Jack the Ripper.

Pulp Comics and DC's First Wave



The Comics Journal has an excellent write-up about Pulp Hero comics in general and DC's First Wave project in particular. In Part One, writer Alex Boney presents a quick history of Pulp Hero comics and the troubles they've had finding traction with superhero fans. In Part Two, Boney looks at DC's current revival endeavor with some hope and excitement about its potential, but some disappointment in its "delays and ... general lack of focus." These are problems that also plague superhero comics, but they're especially troublesome when your genre is already a less popular one.

After the break: Hey, what about this whole Wonder Woman curfuffle? Also, SLG's new Oz comic.

Writing is Hard: The Master Fiction Plot

Even though it's been around longer than I've been alive, I don't think I've read Lester Dent's (Doc Savage) essay on how to write successful Pulp fiction before now. I'm much less fond of writing-formulas and templates than I used to be, but Dent obviously had a lot of luck with it. So while I can't see myself using it a lot, I do think it would be a fun exercise to at least try it out on an appropriate story.

The Awesome List: You! The one who is moving now!

Deep Green



I almost have all the technology I need to complete my ocean lair. I've got the floating city, the personal subs, and even cool helmets for my henchmen. And now I've got something to power it all with. According to CNN:

The technology comprises of a turbine attached to a wing and rudder which is tethered to the ocean floor by 100 meters of cable.

Anchoring "Deep Green" and steering the tethered "kite" enables the turbine to capture energy from the tidal currents at ten times the speed of the actual stream velocity...

When operational, the turbine is expected to generate 500 kilowatts of power.

[Admiral Cal]

Tarzan GelaSkin



Dark Horse has been making these gel laptop protectors for a while now and I've just been waiting on one to scream my name. This one's not screaming, but it's whispering very persistently. (There's an iPhone skin too, but I don't need one of those yet.) [Comic Book Resources]

After the break: Pulp Month, Jade Van Helsing, and the goofiest Klingon.

Comics News: Clunky Robots and Sorority Girls vs Alien Invaders

Zeroids and other Pulp



I forgot to mention last week's GRD column that covered the Moonstone panel at C2E2. Lots of good Pulp stuff coming out from them in the near future, like the clunky robots and sorority girls vs aliens comic Zeroids.

I also got a press release from them today with some cover art for some of the projects mentioned on the panel. I love both of these Honey West covers.





More Pulp, Mignola gets a website, and Bone gets a cartoon after the break.

Movie News: A Daring Escape from the Depths of the Sun!

Pirates 4 gets smaller budget



Pirates of the Caribbean 4 is feeling the effects of the economy and - along with other Disney films - is having to severely cut back on expenses, including location shooting and effects sequences. As /Film notes, this may not be a bad thing. I'm one of the few people I know who actually like At World's End, but I agree that it's a messy film and if scaling back On Stranger Tides means a tighter story, then good for Disney. [Los Angeles Times]

Sessy Mens in Atlantis



I'm adding She Blogged by Night to my reader. I discovered it thanks to this awesome review of Atlantis: The Lost Continent, but "She" won me over by appropriately being confused over Jamaica Inn. She's hilarious, uses lots of screen captures in her posts, and - most importantly - has great taste.

Meet your new Sub-Mariner (if Jin has anything to say about it)



Daniel Dae Kim would love to play Namor if a Marvel ever decides to do a Sub-Mariner movie:

Living in Hawaii, I’m always in the water – and I think Sub-Mariner looks Asian. So I feel like if there’s anyone I could play, it would be him. I’ve met with Marvel about a few other things, but if and when it becomes appropriate – sure, if they’d have me.

That man gets cooler every time he speaks. [UGO]

Max Neptune and the Menacing Squid



I love that we've reached the point where even amateur films can have special effects that look this good. [Undead Backbrain]

Mission: Incredible!



Brad Bird (The Iron Giant, The Incredibles) is all set to direct Mission: Impossible 4 based on an idea by JJ Abrams and Tom Cruise (who are also producing the film). I really hope Bird gets some story input too. If he does, there's no reason that this shouldn't easily be the best in the series. (About the image accompanying this post: I've got no idea if the M:I team from the last movie will be featured in the next one. I just needed to see Maggie Q again. [Empire]