Super-Powered Prose: Virals by Kathy Reichs

Super-powered fiction in prose form has come along way from Weird Heroes and Wild Cards first made the idea work in the seventies and eighties. Many writers have tried their hands at characters with super powers since, but it took even me by surprise when one of those names was Kathy Reichs.

If you do not recognize the name, you’ve probably not read too many forensic mysteries. Ms. Reichs has a successful series of books focused around the character of Temperance Brennan. Tempe sometimes goes by the nickname of Bones, or in the case of the successful television show based on the series, always goes by the name Bones. I have never really been a fan of the series in either form, but when I heard the concept for her new young adult book I knew I needed to give it a read.

Virals is the story of Brennan’s grand niece (she’s older in the books by a bit) Tory, a young girl living on a small island off the coast of Reichs’s home city of Charlotte. Tory only recently moved to the city following her mother’s death, but quickly finds herself embroiled in a mystery.

The story takes two interconnected paths as she finds a dog tag on the island where her father works for a scientific facility. It is while she investigates the tags that she discovers and rescues a captured dog in a remote lab of the facility. That rescue will alter Tory and her three friends Hi, Shelton, and Ben forever.

The dog has been infected with a lab-created parvovirus, designed to infect not just dogs but humans as well. The virus has unintended consquences for the four teenagers, as they all suddenly end up with powers closely linked to the animal they rescued.

While they all suffer through the transformation their new power brings to them, the dog tags lead them in to a murder mystery with huge ramifications for them and their city. In the end, only their powers will allow them the freedom and skill needed to uncover the secrets of the crime.

Ms. Reichs uses her background in forensic science to help shape the continuing story, but unlike the Bones novels never lets it overwhelm the tale. While I could nitpick about a few sudden (if minor) leaps in logic or the skills of the four teenagers being just a bit much to believe, none of that really matters in the end. Ms. Reichs crafts a quick, easy to read story that just flashes by page after page. The tale flows extremely well and makes the entire book hard to put down. I actually read the last two hundred pages in one sitting, an odd occurence for someone so used to reading different things at once. But Tory and friends’ tale is just compelling enough to keep you turning that page.

This book seems clearly set to be the beginning of a series (and maybe a set up for another TV pilot as I could definitely see it easily turned in to a overly-pretty-cast mix of Gossip Girl and Veronica Mars. Still on its own, Virals is an enjoyable read and that’s why it is Recommended.

Super-Powered Pulp Prose: Resurrecting Midnight by Eric Jerome Dickey

This is the fourth in a series of novels by Dickey featuring his character Gideon, an international assassin whose mind has been utterly messed up by years of killing, sex, and living on the wrong side of the law. I have long considered reviewing the previous books in this series as I read the, but never did. I think its time to remedy that.

Eric Jerome Dickey has been writing fiction for fifteen years now, but perhaps more people in superhero circles would know him as the writer of the 2006 retcon miniseries Storm that established a larger back story between Storm and Black Panther leading up to their soon to be totally perfect marriage. I was by no means a fan of that storyline, though I am unsure how much of the mess that was the Black Panther plot can really be put on Dickey. He did what he could with the project he was given, and did an all right job with it.

I bring up Storm simply as a way of pointing out the clear comic book inspiration that Gideon clearly originates from. Though still human, Gideon has become almost a superman over the four books he has appeared. Though beaten, he always perseveres, does what it takes to survive and win the day. Dickey actually acknowledges his comic book influences in the bakc of Resurrecting Midnight, mention crime and superhero writers like Ed Brubaker, Brian Azzarello, Frank Miller, and Garth Ennis. He also shows it in the casual mentions of characters and locations from many of his other novels. The Gideon novels actually extends out of a previous set of character’s from his novel Thieves Paradise so I guess you can say this brings it altogether.

I could also argue Resurrecting Midnight’s pulp influences. Gideon is clearly a descendant of morally ambiguous characters from Arsene Lupin to The Avenger. He seems to want to do the right thing, even when his profession constantly forces him in to a path of murder and destruction. There essentially lies the conflict deep in Gideon’s soul that Dickey has played out over four novels.

This novel takes the character and his extended supporting cast farther down the path tread by the previous three books, even as Gideon is drawn by his old friend and lover Arizona in to a bloodbath in Argentina. In the process, he meets Medianoche, the resurrected Midnight of the title, and learns that the enemy assassin has far closer ties to him than Gideon could ever believe. Gideon ends up once again embroiled in a world of sex and violence, two things Dickey can write better than many other authors.

My praise heaped on already, I will get at the flaws of the novel. I have to limit the plot synopsis to one paragraph for a very important reason: without reading Sleeping With Strangers, Waking With Enemies, and Dying For Revenge any reader would be utterly lost by Resurrecting Midnight. Any details of the plot are just building on previous established character interactions but for the added new enemies in Medianoche and the Four Horsemen. While Dickey created a great character with Gideon, his continuing adventures are anything but new reader friendly. Much like Sleeping With Strangers (a novel designed as a beginning of a duology), Resurrecting Midnight also ends on a far two open ended note, especially when its been a year without a sequel (and his newest book Tempted By Trouble a new standalone). It would be one thing if we were left with a solid place to stop, but instead the reader is pretty much hanging along with all of Gideon’s life.

Still none of that takes away from how good Eric Jerome Dickey is at what he brings to the page here. Very few modern authors can combine sex, violence, action, and dialogue as beautifully as Dickey puts it on the page. Much like Stephen King, I find a lot to study in just the formation of the words he puts on the page.

In case you don’t know it yet, Resurrecting Midnight (and the three novels that come before it) comes Highly Recommended,. Whether a fan of the pulps or the supers, you will find something to love in these pages.

Super-Powered Prose: Nobody Gets the Girl by James Maxey

I am wholly unfamiliar with the works of James Maxey. Apparently, he’s the official Dragon Age novelist, but I would never know he existed if it wasn’t for the recommended reading page on Amazon. It’s from there that I discovered his first novel Nobody Gets the Girl. Behind a lackluster cover penciled by famed inker Bob Wiacek, we get a decidedly super-powered novel.

Jim Shooter, strangely called James here for one of the few times I remember, provides a highly unnecessary introduction to talk about Maxey’s work here before we get to the meat of the story.

The alliteratively named Richard Rogers is just a normal guy albeit one with dreams of being a stand up comic. He’s in an unhappy marriage, doesn’t like where his life is going, and seems to be sinking in to a wave of depression.

And that’s before everyone in the world suddenly stops being able to see him.

That basic premise pulls him in to a world altered by a handful of superheroes and supervillains, all with their own plans for making the world a better place. Doctor Knowbokov, super genius, explains the nature of Richard’s new powers. He is superhuman in his own right, as are his two daughters Amelia (Rail Blade) and Sarah (The Thrill). They are on a quest to fufill Knowbokov’s vision of a better future. Their ability to see Richard is enough to quickly draw him in to their super-powered world.

Richard’s own actions bring the mess of violence between Knowbokov and his archrival Rex Monday to a head, and ultimately lead to plenty of death. More than that would drop far too many spoilers along the way.

At points, the author seems far too obsessed with explaining the nature of super powers in his world as if thsi work needs to be taken seriously as a work of hard science fiction. It doesn’t always work, but he does use his own ideas to bring the story full circle. Still the most important part of a novel is basic character interactions and in this Maxey both excels and fails. He does an excellent job of giving us a normal man’s view of a super-powered world. He sets up exactly how uncomfortable it would be for a normal jabroni to suddenly fall in to a world of heroes. He also gets in to the head of the heroes quite well and looks hard at a mixed up world of justice and fame.

When the action comes though, Maxey sometimes falls apart. I can detect that he visualizes action scenes quite well, but often it feels like he is so focused on getting the action on the page that he forgets to lay it out in a way that remains gripping for the reader. His superhero battles come off like sex scenes written by Tom WOlfe. They don’t keep you engaged and just make you feel uncomfortable by scenes end. Okay, they aren’t as bad as Wolfe’s sex scenes, because very little in fiction can be that painful.

Despite its rough patches, Nobody Gets the Girl remains a rather engaging novel though at times just feels like it has been overly trimmed at only 242 pages. Still it shows his love of the superhero genre, if not quite the ability required to translate it perfectly to the printed page. I know from experience it isn’t always an easy translation. Superheroes often scream for a visual medium. Sometimes you can’t express your super-story quite the right way with just words. (My own Mean Streets, which died an early death, comes to mind.) Even with its few flaws, Nobody Gets the Girl remains an entertaining read for any lover of superheroes. And that’s why it comes Recommended.

Pulp-Powered Prose: Tales of the Shadowmen volume one

Created by J.-M. & Randy Lofficier to revive classic French pulp heroes, Tales of the Shadowmen Volume 1: The Modern Babylon is an English language pulp anthology. Strange it seems at first, until you realize it is meant as a tie in to their two books Shadowmen, which give the history of these characters in details. But I digress, this is about Tales, so let’s focus on it.

The first thing you see is an excellent cover by Mike Manley featuring Judex, something of a French version of the Shadow (though he appeared years before the American character), and Frankenstein's Monster. The illustration clearly comes from Matthew Baugh’s opening tale “Mask of the Monster”. The story gets the anthology off to an exciting, action-packed start while introducing me (and I am sure many others) to some new classic characters.

Bill Cunningham continues the excitement with his story of an obscure pulp figure of France, Fascinax, in “Cadavres Exquis”. The story is another Shadow-esque riff, but it takes the character and puts him through hell as he faces his arch-foe Numa Pergyll.

The next high light is Wold Newton grandmaster Win Scott Eckert’s “The Vanishing Devil”. It takes French pulp character Francis Ardan and makes his similarities to Doc Savage more than just similarities. He is clearly Clark Savage, although Win always slides just a step away from saying it out right (probably do to copyright issues). He goes on a rip-roaring French adventure that puts him up against Yellow Peril villian Doctor Natas, a character Eckert makes clear is actually Sax Rohmer’s Fu Manchu. And this still isn’t the craziest bit of crossover storytelling this book has!

The editors write “Journey to the Center of Chaos”, a story combining H.P. Lovecraft created characters with an entire band of obscure characters, including the rather strange Sar Dubnotal. And of course a Cthulhu Mythos horror manages to pop up its evil head.

Two tales of Edgar Allen Poe’s original detective (and Frenchman) C. Augustine Dupin follow. Samuel T. Payne’s “Lacunal Visions” is somewhat disappointing. John Peel’s “The Kind-Hearted Torturer” is a much more entertaining and well written affair as the detective teams up with none other than the Count of Monte Cristo.

Chris Roberson does give us the story even stranger than Eckert’s with “Penumbra”. Framed around a French silent film from 1915 called Les Vampires, it stars the same director’s Judex. As he seeks to uncover the origins of the vampires, he encounters one Kent Allard, later the similarly attired Shadow. He also meets a young couple named the Waynes, Thomas and Martha. In the process you get a secret of a certain caped crusader’s origin that is only possible in a Wold Newton book such as this.

The book closes with Brian Stableford’s “The Titan Unwrecked”, a story starring Allan Quatermain, Ayesha, Dracula, and numerous literary and business figures of the turn of the century. Bad things start happening and things get almost as crazy as “Penumbra”.

A few more lesser stories round out the book, but even these so-so tales at least feature some truly unique figures. The writers really do cover the spectrum of pulp figures from obscure to quite common.

All in all, this book is a fun and exciting bit of pulp fiction. Though it’s a little pricy for a trade paperback at $22.95, I would say it was definitely worth it. Strongly Recommended.

Now Available: The Collected Metahuman Press Volume One

It's been long in the works, but now it is finally here! The Collected Metahuman Press Volume One is now available through Lulu! This beautiful trade paperback is nearly 250 pages for the low, low price of only $13.95!

I want to encourage all our blog readers, all our site’s supporters, and all lovers of good fiction to pick up a copy!

Super-Powered Prose: Iron Man Femmes Fatales

When Iron Man heated up the box office two years ago, I expected a flood of mass market tie-ins over the next year or so. I got... a little. Lots of t-shirts, a few strange collectibles, and all the collections Marvel could figure out to produce.

It wasn’t until a few months ago that we finally got the first original Iron Man novel in over a decade. The author, Robert Greenberger, is probably familiar to long time comic fans as an editor at DC, most notably on their line of Star Trek comics. Since those days he has wrote several Star Trek novels, and that apparently made Del Rey and Marvel pick him as the best bet to write Iron Man: Femmes Fatales.

The first thing I want to say is I don’t really no the plural to femme fatale, but even if it is femmes fatales, that seems rather awkward. I would choose Femme Fatales and let those who know better nitpick while the rest of us don’t have to look at what seems like a very strange title.

That aside, Iron Man: Femmes Fatales, takes an interesting ploy to its production. It is cleary an attempt to tell an “untold tale” of the Marvel Comics Iron Man from very early in his career. He is helping SHIELD through its formation and armament which includes meeting the likes of Nick Fury, Dum Dum Dugan, and Gabe Jones for the first time. This fits in to silver age continuity, albeit a bit awkwardly, as when SHIELD first appeared, Tony Stark was their weapons provider. But if feels very strange to establish Iron Man and the Avengers in a world where SHIELD hasn’t yet formed. Perhaps it’s the movie or Ultimates continuity twisting things around, but it seems like SHIELD should come first, but I digress.

Tony’s involvement with SHIELD brings Stark Industries under attack by two separate threats, both lead by a beautiful young woman in disguise. One is the woman known as Madame Hydra, a.k.a. the future Viper. She has taken control of a faction of Hydra in Strucker’s absence and is bent on bringing it as much power as she can muster. Meanwhile, Madame Masque uses her mastery of disguise to sneak in to Stark Industries and steal technological secrets for her father Count Nefaria and his Maggia.

These two incidents cause repeated problems for both Tony Stark and his alter ego of Iron Man, but one of this novel’s biggest flaws is that the threats never seem big enough. Iron Man has been established as immensely powerful, but he rarely fights anything past skilled soldiers and terrorists in this book, A more powerful or technological threat would have done wonders.

The other flaw is the huge continuity hole Greenberger acknowledges in his afterword. Despite being a clear attempt at insertion in to regular Marvel Comic, Greenberger decided to drop Tony’s secret identity, much like the film did at its completion. In the comics, Tony would not reveal his identity for several more years (or decades in real world time). It comes off as very disconcerting for any long time comic reader.

Iron Man: Femmes Fatales is a mixed bag. The storytelling is good and Greenberger can write spy intrigue quite well. But the meat of the plot and character progression feels hollow at best. The story’s tendency to wander between characters at random occasionally causes problems as well.

All in all, Femmes Fatales isn’t a bad novel, but it never really strives to achieve any level of greatness. If you’re a true blue, dyed red and gold, Iron Man fan I would say go get this one. Otherwise go pick up one of the new Wild Cards novels instead. Not Recommended (unless you’re an Iron Man fan).

Out For Vengeance 9 Notes

This chapter starts the build-up to our first year bang-up with issue twelve that will in turn set up the big bad to finally reveal himself later in the year. I think this one came together quite nicely with a few good character points.

Gasman, sadly enough, took more time to name than a lot of characters so far. I wanted a character with a gas gun, but it took me hours before the mildly painful name came to me.

Having only recently revived Rulah, Jungle Goddess in the pages of Timeline, I have brought back another jungle girl in this chapter with Rima. Rima is a rather unique South American jungle character. In the public domain for some years, she first appeared in W.H. Hudson’s 1904 novel Green Mansions. (Read it here.) DC Comics gave her a book in the seventies and will soon revive their version in the pages of First Wave, but I thought my more mystic take would be fun for this chapter of Out For Vengeance.

After writing this, I really wanted my own combat spider monkey. Anyone else?

Living Legends 25 Notes

I am going to remain mostly mum for this one. But we do finally meet the villains of our first volume in the flesh and I think I should go in to more detail on the members of the Cabal.

Dominique is, of course, the Sorceress of Zoom, an adventure of whom can be found on Tales of the Living Legends. A villain turned Nazi fighting anti-hero, she seemed perfect for the story.

American Crusader has popped up repeatedly over the course of the series, and we can clearly see here that his goals go well beyond just apprehending Atoman. His motivations still remain vague however.

Manowar (or Man Of War) in his original incarnation was a warrior literally created by Mars to fight during World War II.

The Face makes his first appearance in Living Legends here. Reporter Anthony Trent hated crime and donned a fright mask to fight against it. We will quickly learn over the course of this and the next chapter that it is far more than a simple mask. In a team of corrupted heroes, he is clearly the worst. He revels in causing pain and misery now.

And Lash Lightning’s true intentions finally come clear.

Next month, we hit our big climax as the heroes and the Cabal finally face off once and for all!

Living Legends 24 Notes

Not going to say much this time around, as most of this chapter is build for the explosive conclusion to our first book.

This is the one and only chance in this book to really get a good feeling for the young heroes in action. But the Newgen will get some more face time in book two (and possibly a spin-off). Manowar is the golden age Man of War, a Centaur character revived once before by Malibu for their Protectors series. I am going back to the original concept of a figure literally created to serve war with this incarnation, but his origins are a little more complicated than they first appeared back in the early forties.

I do love the idea that Fire-Eater can turn his spit into napalm. Honestly, I am surprise how much fun a fire-breathing character can prove to be.

The heroes finally start to come together again this chapter. Expect more to arrive in a couple weeks.

Timeline 20: The Rise of Rulah Notes

I am going to be straight up with everyone here. I love Tarzan. It doesn’t even matter how many terrible reinventions or terrible actors play him, I love him. The entire concept of the jungle hero is something I truly love. And it’s not just Tarzan. I absolutely love the new Sheena material from Devil’s Due. I still miss Bruce Jones, Mark Waid, and Priest on Ka-Zar. I go to newspaper websites well out of my area just to read Phantom strips online. Heck, I love Disney’s Atlantis: The Lost Empire for its jungle hero Atlanteans. So it should come as no surprise after I say all that, that I wanted my own jungle hero. Generally, I try to use literary characters wherever I can to avoid pastiches. I didn’t want Torzo, Jungle King, or anything equally preposterous.

So, what should I see, while cruising Toonepedia. for info on more golden age heroes for Tales of the Living Legends, but Rulah, Jungle Goddess. A quick surf of my favorite public domain download site quickly found her first and subsequent appearances. All with art by the amazing Golden Age artist Matt Baker!


So my jungle hero choice was made clear, Rulah was the one for me.

My plans are to continue irregularly writing new Rulah stories for the foreseeable future, but I will cover more on that at another time. Before I could really start making original stories, I thought it would be best to adapt her origin story from the horrendously title Zoot Comics #7. I updated a few bits and tried to clean up the dialogue. I also took the time to explain why all these African tribemen spoke perfect English. And finally I inserted Tembo, a character that will play an important role in my stories for the next few years.

As to the means for Rulah’s new stories to appear. I will just say that an old sister site, dating all the way back to MHP’s days as a subsite, will be making its return in a big way come 2010.

Living Legends 21 Notes

The contest from last chapter is still going by the way. If you can figure it out, I will have that fancy piece of clothing shipped right out. Spoilers ahead, so go read the chapter first!

Chapter 21 is a big one. This serves as a major set up to actually move towards the finish of the Dominique storyline. We open with Ace and Fear Lass on Airlab. Airlab, like New Salem, will be making an appearance in upcoming chapters of Out For Vengeance but for now it is a mighty fine place for a battle between our heroes and a new team of super-villains. Unlike just about every other character that popped up in previous chapters, no legacy comes attached to the criminals. I just needed four thug villains. Usually I’ll plum the piles of old story plots I have dating back to my high school years, but I took a different tack with these ones. I pulled out my old copy of the classic TSR Marvel Super Heroes Role-Playing Game and randomly generated all four. After that, I designed personalities around their classes, powers, and talents, and voila, I had more than enough for a team of criminals. Sometimes one dimensional characters can stay one dimensional, and these four, much like the Lady Foulplays in chapters past, probably will. At least for now.

We leave Mary Lee in place for the time being as we move in to the continuance of Atoman’s saga. More next chapter.

We know Robert “Lash Lightning” Morgan has ties to Dominique. Now one of our heroes gets the first hints of what is actually going on at the Chateau. What Isobel can do about it during a fragile pregnancy remains to be seen.

And, finally, our lost heroes return to reality, months after they disappeared, but only a few minutes for them. Doctor Frost’s own arrogance works against him, and this little band of heroes is suddenly without a leader. But they are far from through. Ghost Woman and Blackout both have places to go still.

And they will do it over our next two chapters. Over the next two weeks, we will hit both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, as each of the characters celebrate (or at least survive) in a different way.

Living Legends 20 Notes (now with a contest!)

It’s hard to believe I am already up to the twentieth chapter.

For the first time in the book, I establish a group of potential spin-off characters. While the Next Gen will be appearing for the rest of the current story arc of Living Legends, I actually designed the team (in a slightly different form) as an entirely separate concept. As I fleshed out Dominique’s experiments and their results, I realized I could dove-tail the origins together quite nicely. A few name changes to tie them in with some really obscure Golden Age character names and voila! Yeah for syncronicity.

I didn’t forget about Purge. We will have more with the killer very soon.

We have an important moment in the progression of our first volume right here. The Atoman and Black Owl relationship is one I have built up over the last dozen chapters and I promise you that it is far from over yet.

Can you say team-up? I think you can. We will have a lot more with Fear-Lass and Ace the Amazing Boy in the first of three chapters next month! Yes, I did say three chapters! We have a special Christmas story coming up, and I am not going to delay that until after the holiday! So be ready for a triple dose of Living Legends next month.

Now for the contest of the day: can you tell me which nineties movie partially inspired the six young heroes that make up Buster’s Next Gen and their personalities? A first name or two may even have been lifted. I may just have a piece of Metahuman Press swag for whomever guesses correctly....

Out For Vengeance 7 Notes

Just a note: I am coming right along on Nanowrimo. I am at 8,400 words already, which puts me more than a day ahead so far! Wooo, me!

As for this chapter of Out For Vengeance, I think it came off really well. It does a great job of really building the mystery of who this Robert Benton may or may not be while also moving along his hunt for his identity.

Amanda will be popping up quite a bit in future chapters, as will several of the other support characters that have came and gone in the first few chapters. But Vengeance has a one track mind at this point, and we need to cover his quest before we can move on to the broader question of just what the hell is happening in New Salem.

Mean Streets 11 Notes: The Final Chapter

A quick warning: these notes may be a little more spoiling than regularly. So if you haven’t read the chapter yet, please go do so.


This is it: the end of Mean Streets. I started Mean Streets as an experiment, one that never quite came together the way I hoped it might. It turned in to something overly jumpy and even more crass than I originally planned. My concept was somewhat different: take the concepts and conflicts that ran through one of the most entertaining wrestling companies in history, ECW. I think I managed to channel some of Extreme Championship Wrestling’s spirit in to a few of the characters, but Mean Streets quickly became an uncontrollable beast to write.

So I decided to end it. And what better way to end a story than to destroy most of what I built?

Many of the characters’ endings were planned from the beginning, although in many cases I mean their stories to go on much longer. Jack Flash and Antagonist in particular had a much more detailed past. A good writer is never afraid to recycle discarded ideas, so for now I’ll keep the details to myself.

The mi-go’s super-creatures meet an ignoble end here, but they may yet find away to return in another story in the future. I like these characters a lot and think they may have untapped potential when they move past mindless killing machines.

A couple characters in this story will pop up next year in the new series I will be working on next month for Nanowrimo. And yes, Demon Fox will be one of them. I can’t well leave a superhero carrying an Elder God inside her sit idle too long, can I?

While I am not entirely please with the way the saga finally ended, I hope everyone who read it enjoyed Mean Streets. It was a noble experiment with a decent story and some truly unique characters. Thanks for following it.

Out For Vengeance 6 Notes

This issue I went a different route with two flashbacks, one starring the original Rancor, one starring Vengeance.

Several important elements get introduced in this chapter: the aforementioned original Rancor, Jack O’Lantern, Phoenix Fire, and the Flannery clan. All will play important roles in upcoming chapters, starting with Amanda Flannery next month.

Robert’s flashback concludes his battle with Kimiko in the past and establishes more of the history between the two characters. We will see a lot more of it pop up as our first couple arcs progress.

Andre is an interesting character. As a mix of an angry street kid and a would-be hero trying to do his father’s legacy proud. Over the next few chapters, he will form a reluctant bond with Vengeance and prove to be one of the series’ most important characters.

Next month, we will see Amanda Flannery make her first appearance and learn more of the mystery of Vengeance’s lost memories.

Tales of the Living Legends: The Green Lama

Tales of the Living Legends starts a new story today, this one featuring the Green Lama versus a gang of goons on the city docks.

I do not know exactly what it is that draws me to the Green Lama, but I do know I thoroughly enjoy the simply designed costume but utter coolness of the character. Back in the golden age, the Lama was a fairly popular figure. He first appeared in the pulps as a more powerful variation of the Shadow (albeit much happier) before transitioning both in to comics and radio. He lasted well in to the late forties before disappearing along with the rest of his ilk.

Jethro Dumont often plays second fiddle to a lot of golden age revivals, usually either to Black Terror or Daredevil. But while I have used both those characters in Out For Vengeance and Living Legends, I think the Lama may be the most versatile. His powers open up a lot of room for storytelling which is why I think his stories range so freely between Batman-style street violence to cosmic craziness.

Expect the Lama to pop up semi-regularly in the pages of Tales as well as in future chapters of Living Legends. He has a big future ahead of him in the Quadrant Universe.

Timeline 19: Origin of Mister Haunt Notes

Just like Claus vs Kong before it, The Origin of Mister Haunt is a re-purposed, revised, and reformatted story from my old Pulp Stories Monthly e-magazine. Unlike Claus vs Kong this one needed a rather large rewrite from its much earlier version, which includes about fifteen hundred additional words in all.

Mister Haunt is my quintessential pulp character in the Quadrant Universe. Over his next couple appearances (I have more waiting to be rewritten), you will see elements of the Shadow, the Saint, and Doc Savage all pop up on the page. That being said, I want to make sure Haunt is his own man, and as we learn more about the mysterious character, I think you will find he is truly different.

I hope everyone enjoys the first shot of Mister Haunt. Let me know if and when you want more.

Living Legends 19 Notes

This is it: the chapter we finally see what happened to the heroes trapped in the abyss sphere.

Ghost Woman’s powers and identity get taken to a new level as we realize she is far more than we ever expected from her previous appearances. Her identity crisis and alter egos will become a major part of Living Legends in the months to come.

Blackout gets his own cure as the abyss sphere somehow remedies his loss of intelligence. The mute Blackout will also get to do more than act like an animal upon his return to the real world.

Hey, remember when Marcus Bennett was another spy for Dominique? No? Well, he is, the no good dirty rat! But now Doctor Frost is beginning to get the clues he needs to finally figure out the mystery behind Dominique and her allies. I think Frost has really started to gain a voice with this issue, even if that voice is Jack Bauer.

And it all comes down to the Green Lama. I’ve waited eighteen issues to finally introduce one of my favorite Golden Age characters to the story of Living Legends. Originally, I planned to make Lama one of the initial Legends, but as I worked my way through the characters I realized he could be far too powerful among the initial eighteen. We wouldn’t want him to show up Atoman, nor did I want to make a second hero in trouble with the government. So Lama got pushed back. But Jethro Dumont is finally here, and he is here to stay.

Next month, it is back to the characters in the real world as we begin the progression in to the next stage of the mystery of the time-jump.

Super-Powered Comics: Rampaging Wolverine

With the release of X-Men Origins: Wolverine on DVD today, I thought I would go back and look at the single best release the movie gave to us. (I still haven’t watched the film yet; expect my review in the near future) That title is a one-shot called Rampaging Wolverine from just a week before the film. Behind a painted cover by Nelson are forty-eight pages of glorious black and white art. The concept harkens back to Marvel’s magazines of the seventies and eighties. I still miss Savage Sword of Conan, so I gave it a try as soon as I saw it in Marvel Previews.

Joshua Hale Fialkov and Paco Diaz Luque open the book with a tale called “Sense Memory”. The story details Logan’s first experience with Madripoor. Pirates get involved, and Wolverine uncovers secrets in both the present and the past. It brings back great memories of the early Claremont/Buscema days of Wolverine, a time period I still fondly remember.

“Unconfirmed Kill” by Chris Yost and Mateus Santolouco is by no means as strong a story, but it does offer a short and clever play on Logan’s healing factor.

“Kiss, Kiss” is a prose story by Robin Furth with spot illustrations by Nelson. Furth may have been reading Lord of the Rings before she wrote this one: it involves Wolverine’s battle with a giant spider. Even so, the story does have a couple clever bits in it, and just the embrace of superhero prose in the book makes me happy.

“Modern Primitive” by Ted McKeever closes out the book. The author of Metropol and Eddy Current seems like an odd choice for the Canadian mutant, but his art style actually offers a pretty cool Logan. The story is a rather straight forward affair about his battle with a giant baboon (no, seriously, it is a giant baboon), but the story really isn’t the star here. McKeever’s art is not for everyone, but if you enjoy it at all you will get some fine work in this one.

Though no story but the lead are rock-solid, Rampaging Wolverine offers a compelling and entertaining package. The art is beautiful through-out, and even in black and white, forty-eight pages with no ads for $3.99 is a steal in today’s market. A black and white follow-up book is on Marvel’s schedule in the near future, this one starring Shang-Chi, Master of Kung Fu. If it is as good as Rampaging Wolverine it too will deserve a Recommended.

Super-Powered Prose: Night Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko

Some people are probably familiar with the movie version of Night Watch, one of the best foreign films to appear in the last few years. But before it was turned in to a fine film by Timur Bekmambetov, it was equally entertaining in its original form: as a novel by Russian fiction writer Sergei Lukyanenko.

The premise of Night Watch is straight-forward: two secret societies exist unseen to human eyes. Locked in constant conflict, the sides of Light and Dark now sit in a truce to keep their war from destroying everything. The light sorcerers belong to the Night Watch and monitor the forces of the dark, which cover everything from sorcerers to vampires. The dark in turn have the Day Watch, which serve as an answer to the light. This leads to multiple political machinations. And these machinations unwitting pull several people, including Anton, our narrator.

I do not want to go in to plot points for those unfamiliar with the work, because I feel Night Watch in both its forms deserves a much large audience. But I will say that what at first seems like another supernatural thriller quickly morphs in to a battle of right and wrong played out by dozens of super-powered beings. I have long listed the movie as one of my favorite pieces of super-powered film-making. The novel equals, maybe exceeds it, as a look at a real world populated by metahumans.

Clocking in at well over four hundred pages, Night Watch the novel is a much deeper experience than the movie. If you have seen the film and wondered about the book, go out and read it. If you are unfamiliar with either work, go check out the book for a great combination of the supernatural and the super-powered. And if you’re worried seeing a Russian name in the author slot, don’t be. Andrew Bromfield gives the book an excellent translation. He keeps the depth the original novel clearly possesses while making sure it is readable as a modern American novel.

Night Watch is a novel not to miss. Highly Recommended.