In a few days (January 4th to be exact), ABC lauches the second season of V with a lot of new cast members and a few surprises as well. Cast member Laura Vandervoort talks about what we can expect in the next run, plus a bit on the future of her role as Supergirl. Plus a bad week(month?) for poor ol’ Spider-Man.
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As the old year draws to a close, ALL PULP wants to know what you as publishers, writers, and artists have coming up for Pulp in 2011!!!! Send us a snippet, a release, heck, a manifesto telling us about what you’ve got coming up for the next year! Send us images, works in progess, whatever and we’ll post it on the first day of the New Year along with a special recently written holiday Pulp story from Mark Halegua!! Send all your 2011 stuff to allpulp@yahoo.com
So, that’s it for 2010. And what have we learned tonight, Craig?
Digital is coming, hard and fast. Comixology just announced (via press release) that at the moment there are more than five thousand comics in its store, and that that application has been downloaded over one million times from iTunes. You know what they aren’t saying? How many comics they’re actually selling. Heck, it’d be interesting to find out how many comics they’ve been giving away for free.
We do have some industry numbers: while graphic novel sales fell an estimated 20%, digital comics sales increased over 1000%. And it’s not just comics, either; Amazon announced that the Kindle has now outsold Harry Potter at their site– best guesses say they’ve sold 5.4 million to date. Barnes & Noble has announced that the Nook line of eReaders has become the company’s biggest bestseller ever in almost 40 years. And the iPad was the most wished for and most given (in dollar volume) Christmas gift this year, adding to a total of over 10 million sold in less than a year since its debut.
Archie’s polyamorous. Betty, Veronica, and Valerie? Daaaaaaaamn.
It seems there’s actually a price point at which the fan base will say, en masse, “Holy cow, that’s just too expensive for me to buy.” DC says that’s $3.99. Marvel says that’s for DC Comics, their readers will gladly pay $3.99. We’ll see.
We all wondered what would happen when the best selling comics dipped below 100,000 a month. Now we’re wondering what will happen when the best selling comics dip below 50,000, the industry-leading Life With Archie magazine notwithstanding.
That’s the story of the year. Life With Archie goes magazine-sized, gets distributed to WalMart and Toys R Us and Target and such,and rapidly becomes the best-selling comic in America!
We also used to wonder when the manga boom would end or the market would become oversaturated. That would be “2010.”
DC President Paul Levitz may be too young to retire, even after having been in the industry for four decades. But he only quit his day job, as the legion of Legion readers are gladly aware.
America still loves zombies. We guess they’re deathless.
Nothing, apparently, can kill Batman – short of Joel Schumacher, of course. Nevertheless, he feels he now needs backups of himself all over the world.
Conventions are still going strong, and can make a huge impact. NYCC is hitting San Diego attendance numbers of three years ago, and Chicago’s one year-old C2E2 is hitting numbers of NYCC two years ago.
If superhero themed porno movies is all the rage, how come no one’s made one for Iron Man? You would think it’s just waaaay too easy to do. And let’s not even get started on Captain Hammer. Heck, Nathan Fillion might even reprise the role himself– he’s done porn before. Kinda.
What’s the biggest story of 2011? Ha! Watch this space.
What about you? What do you think were the big stories of 2010 in comics?
AP: Thanks for being with us! Can you tell us a little about yourself and how you became a writer?
JWL: First thank you for the review and the interview. It is difficult for the novice to learn marketing and you guys are great to work with.
Y’know everyone says they started writing as a kid, and I know that’s true for me. I started telling and then writing stories as soon as I could hold a pencil. I learned to read and to write very early, and was reading a lot of classic literature late in elementary school. I used to drive my English teacher crazy with this very literary stuff when all she wanted was a theme about my weekend adventures. I wrote my first screenplay in Sixth grade, it was an episode of The A Team, it was terrible… Through High School I wrote a lot of Sci-Fi and combat stuff, war fiction and the super soldier stuff was big in the late 1980s. I didn’t write much when I was in the Army, but I did put on a lot of mileage.
By maybe 1999 or 2000 I was looking at taking it to the next level but I wasn’t quite sure what that was… I was writing a lot of very over the top stuff, but you don’t really know how to write anything beyond a few thousand words until you do it. My first real book project was an editing and rewriting gig with an old friend who was into mythos fiction. After that I was cranking out a lot of flash fictions and short stories over at www.zoetrope.com. It was one of those flash fiction contests that prompted my first novel.
AP: Who were some of the early influences on your writing style?
JWL: Good question, because I believe in a lot of ways you are what you read. I wasn’t allowed to play sports as a kid, so I spent a lot of time in my books and in my head. I read everybody from Judy Blume to Emile Zola. I loved comics, particularly horror and detective stuff. I read my way through Burroughs, Tarzan was my favorite. Robert Heinlein was and is a favorite, matter of fact I’m reading Glory Road right now. I discovered pulp in a box of comics and detective magazines bought for a dollar at a garage sale in the mid 1980s. It was racy stuff compared to David Copperfield. I still remember reading Paul Cain’s One, Two, Three for the first time. Wow.
When you’re a kid though, there’s a certain pressure to have an eye on what’s popular at the time, even if you’re not particularly concerned, and so I got into the fictional accounts and history of the Vietnam War. I read Platoon, Hamburger Hill, and Deadly Green, but the one that hit me hardest and still resonates is Body Count, by William Turner Huggett. He was writing a contemporary, gritty, war novel, but it was graphic in both its language, and depiction. He was a year out of Vietnam when he wrote it, the war hadn’t sat on his shelf long enough to mellow and age. In the service I read a ton of biographies about military people, all the bigger than life generals anyhow.
In the last 10 years or so it has been a mixed bag, Spider Robinson, pulp anthologies, Becky Benston, Bobby Nash, and the dystopian stuff like Fahrenheit 451.
AP: Your first book, Frank Testimony, was released in 2006. Can you tell us a bit about what it’s about and how readers can get ahold of it?
JWL: Frank Testimony is a legal thriller set in 1950s Mississippi. I didn’t even know that book was inside me until it sort of exploded. It was about this time (December 29, 2005) when I was gearing up for the weekly flash over at Zoetrope. As it turned out there was no regular contest because of the holiday weekend. Another regular poster who hosted a site called The Redrum Tavern, posted a prompt, ‘Death’. The very second I started writing I knew something was up because it was just pouring out on the page. 40 days and 144,000 words later I had something that I had a sense was very special, to me at least. It wasn’t until I started getting reader feedback that I realized that I’d turned a corner as a writer.
Frank Testimony is the story of jealousy gone bad. Frank Burchill is implicated in the murders of his would be sweetheart Mae Whitaker and her father. If it was up to Sheriff Cobb, the prosecutor and other good ol’ boys Frank would have a one way ticket to the gas chamber. But Judge Hull smells a rat, a big one named Bobby Lee Russell who is almost genealogically predisposed to criminal mischief, Klan violence, and just being generally hateful and nasty.
It is a big story, big characters, with a pretty good recipe for pulled pork and gatorbacks. Available at www.createspace.com/3352654
AP: A Week in Hell is your newest release and is the first in the Champion City series. What led to the development of this novel and how will future books carry the story forward?
JWL: Spade, Marlowe, and Hammer are all detectives in big cities, Gothams, Metropolises, everyone knows those places are dens of scum. Thurman Dicke is a big Slavic/German cop in a dying Midwestern blue collar city. Champion City is a big bowl of the low parts of Americana. It has a Tammany-esque political machine, restrictive ethnicity in neighborhoods, both Irish and Italian organized crime, dying industry, and dirty business. There are varying degrees of justice and as the top cop says: There’s a right way, a wrong way and the CCPD way.
The series will chronicle Thurman’s rise to glory, his fall from grace, and his redemption. Thurman won’t always be a beat cop, he won’t always work for CCPD, and there will be points when his white hat turns a very dark gray. He’s a bigger than life guy, and thus his highs are higher and his lows will be catastrophic. He isn’t a one man army, but he does what he has to do to get things done. I hesitate to say that each book builds on the last building up steam for the big finish, but the last book is already written, not set in stone… But I pretty well have it.
AP: The language and situations in A Week in Hell are pretty mature — was there ever a point when you were writing the story where you felt you were pushing the envelope too far?
JWL: It is a bit more than edgy. I count the book as a victory, but in the future my narrative can be accomplished with much more ferocity with less explicit display. I don’t think it oversteps its bounds much more than any of the so called Neo-Pulp, but I’m trying to do something more traditional that loosing a hedonistic gorilla on an idyllic hamlet. The masters of the style got it there without the use of such devices and I should endeavor to do so.
AP: What do you think about the modern pulp revival? What role do you think the hardboiled genre has to play in its resurgence?
JWL: I think it’s about time. There was so much great stuff written that laid the ground work for people who are writing now. I think the best stuff is yet to come, and there’s some guy or gal out there writing right now, something that will get passed on by a big house that will turn the pulp community on its ear, just like pulp did to so called polite society 70 years ago.
I think that when a lot of people think of pulp they think of the hardboiled genre. They don’t consider that it was ever about Heroes, Villains, or Characters other than those considered on the fringe. I guess I fall in that camp also because I equate the hardboiled style to a language and landscape painted in shades of noir with the good guys and the bad guys being varying shades of gray, and evil being true black.
I think that hardboiled stories are going to be an introduction to pulp for a lot of people. A resurgence or renaissance of traditional pulp is a great thing, and opened the genre for a brand new generation of readers and writers, ushering in a new era. I think that there are also some negatives, depraved things that masquerade as pulp that aren’t are where warning labels and censorship will come into play.
AP: What’s next for you?
JWL: Rewriting and editing the second book in the Champion City Series. Then I have a WWII story that I am very interested in, that came to me first as an April Fools shaggy dog in a small town newspaper. I’m a history nerd, and the story of Operation Pastorius is an excellent foil for plausible deniability, gets good mileage for the war effort, and makes great conspiracy… Fiction with firm foundations in real history make for very gripping stories…
There’s also an opportunity to write another pulp horror story. A hardboiled mythos thing. Not sure of a lot of detail about that at this point its still written ona napkin with a coffee ring…
AP: If readers want to find out more about you and your work, where can they do so?
JWL:I’m easy to find, Author J Walt Layne on facebook. I’m being pushed to relaunch my blog at www.championcityontheweb.blogspot.com but I don’t know that I have enough going on to devote an entire blog to it.
TIPPIN’ HANCOCK’S HAT-Pulp Reviews by Tommy Hancock
SKY GIRL AND THE SUPERHEROIC LEGACY by Joe Sergi Available in Ebook and Trade Paperback from iEnovel.com Retail Price: $4.99 in ebook format; $11.99 for print version ISBN:1451530137 EAN-13: 9781451530131 LCCN: 2010903747
Many writers, myself included, have pondered, thought on, and even struggled with the concept of having a comic book idea and trying to translate it into prose or the reverse. It seems to be a thorn in many of our paws that either forces us to give up or we fight our way through and the end product isn’t what we expected. It would be great to find a prose work that captures the colors, imagery, and description of a comic book, striking that perfect balance.
Thanks to Joe Sergi, I think I found it.
SKY GIRL AND THE SUPERHEROIC LEGACY, the first of a planned trilogy, focuses on DeDe Christopher, a young fifteen year old aspiring gymnast who lives with her widowed mother, goes to high school, has a best friend, Jason, who is the ultimate geek and proud of it. While preparing for National competition, which is being hosted at her high school, DeDe discovers she has super powers. It turns out these super powers are the exact powers of Sky Boy, a popular supposedly fictional character. As the story unfolds, DeDe and Jason deal with her issues of not wanting to do anything but be a teenager along with supervillains, intelligent apes, robotic menaces, and a strange conglomerate of aliens!
Now, that description is a thumbnail and covers it pretty well. What it didn’t cover is CHAPTER 0. Being a comic inspired novel, it has to start with 0 of course. Chapter 0 introduces us to Professor Z, Donna Dominion, and other supervillains all teamed up to stop Sky Boy. Yes, Sky Boy. The opening chapter assumes that the characters thought fictional by DeDe and her entire world are real and that chapter sets a tone for the whole book. This is, in prose, a silver age like experience like no other. Homages, pastiches, and nods aplenty to all sorts of comic, pulp, and other popular culture concepts abound. If you’re a fanboy/girl and want to get your geek on, just finding the easter eggs that you’ll recognize in this book will keep you busy!
What is most endearing, though, about Sergi’s work is, even though some have super powers, some wear capes, and monkeys and aliens abound, these characters are very real. DeDe is not a superficial image of a girl, she is real flesh and blood with insecurities, strengths, weaknesses, and frustrations. This goes for all the characters, even those who go through ‘changes’ as the book continues. They are not mere two dimensional contrivances to tell a super hero story. They are real people affected by all the good comic book weirdness going on around them.
The language does get a bit laborious at points, sounding a bit too comic booky, even though that is what this is, a comic book world in prose. That is a minor drawback to what in all ways is a fantastic, fun, exciting read and although aimed at younger readers, SKY GIRL AND THE SUPERHEROIC LEGACY can really be enjoyed by all ages and all level of geek.
FOUR OUT OF FIVE TIPS OF THE HAT-This is a book worth reading again to yourself and then to your family and then again to yourself. Gift this to your kids, to your library, and even to your favorite reviewer if you want!
Airship 27 Productions & Cornerstone Book Publishers bring back another classic pulp hero from the 1930s in an all new collection of fast paced, macabre adventures of the supernatural. Meet Ravenwood – Stepson of Mystery!bring back another classic pulp hero from the 1930s in an all new collection of fast paced, macabre adventures of the supernatural. Meet Ravenwood – Stepson of Mystery!
He is an orphan raised by a Tibetan mystic known only as the Nameless One. As an Occult Detective he has no equal and is called upon by the authorities when they are challenged by supernatural mysteries. One of the more obscure pulp characters, Ravenwood – The Stepson of Mystery appeared as a back-up feature in the pages of Secret Agent X magazine. There were only five Ravenwood stories ever written, all by his creator, the prolific pulp veteran, Frederick C. Davis.
Now he returns in this brand new series of weird adventures, beginning with this volume in which he combats Sun Koh, a lost prince of Atlantis, battles with monstrous Yetis in Manhattan and deals with murderous ghosts and zombie assassins. Four of today’s finest pulp storytellers Frank Schildiner, B.C. Bell, Bill Gladman and Bobby Nash offer up a quartet of fast paced, bizarre thrillers that rekindle the excitement and wonder that were the pulps.
With a stunning cover by Bryan Fowler and dramatic interior illustrations by Charles Fetherolf, Ravenwood – Stepson of Mystery was designed by Rob Davis and edited by Ron Fortier. Once again Airship 27 Productions presents pulp fans with another one-of-kind quality pulp reading experience like no other on the market today.
AIRSHIP 27 PRODUCTIONS – Pulp fiction for a new generation!
I am now taking pitches for stories to be published in How the West Was Weird, Vol. 2 in 2011.
What am I looking for?
I’m looking for stories that qualify as “weird westerns” – basically a western mixed with some other genre. This usually means a western with a horror or sci-fi twist, but feel free to play with the concept. I’ll consider anything that’s both a western and weird. The less obvious, the better. If you need some more coaching on what a weird western is, Wikipedia has a pretty good article on it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weird_western.
Stories should be between 1K and 8K words. I’ll consider stories up to 10K, but it really better be something special if you’re going that long. Shoot for 8K.
Your deadline for the completed story is March 31, 2011. However, some time before that I’m going to need a pitch. This is just a couple of sentences or paragraphs that gives me an idea of what your story is going to be about. This is so I don’t get three stories that have essentially the same plot (zombie cowboys vs. vampire indians, for example), and you don’t spend a couple months writing a story that I then have to pass on. There is no deadline to get me your pitch, but the earlier I get it, the more likely someone isn’t already doing that sort of story.
I have no problem with you using series characters that you’ve used in other stories or books, but there are a couple of rules with that. I want a story that hasn’t been published elsewhere yet, with a gentleman’s agreement that it won’t be republished until at least a year after our book’s publication. Also, the story has to be fully understandable outside the context of your character’s other stories. Even if I’ve never read the book you introduced Robo-Sheriff Z9 in, I shouldn’t have any problem following the story you write about him for HOW THE WEST WAS WEIRD.
What’s in it for you?
Unfortunately, I’m not offering any upfront pay. If the book breaks even, any profit it makes will be split evenly between the contributors on a quarterly basis, minus 10% for the publisher, Pulpwork Press. Please keep in mind that the last sentence contains a very big IF. How the West Was Weird, Vol. 1 has been out for 9 months now, and even though it continues to sell steadily every month, it hasn’t made its money back yet.
This isn’t to discourage you – I truly believe in the long-term lifespan of these books – but I don’t want anybody planning to go buy a car with the proceeds.
So with that pie in the sky stuff out of the way, what do you realistically get?
A nifty little book with your name on it, mostly. Unlike the last volume, I will also be providing a contributor copy for everybody this time around.
What else?
As with the last volume, Jim Rugg has signed on to create another cover for us. I’m really looking forward to seeing what he comes up with, and I’ll share it with the contributors as soon as I’ve got it.
12/30/10 ON THE BOOK CAVE!! The Book Cave Episode 107:The End of the Year Check out ALL PULP’S official podcast, THE BOOK CAVE here- http://thebookcave.libsyn.com/
Ric and Art review and wrap up 2010 with their thoughts, reviews, and comments on a year of THE BOOK CAVE!
Next week..and next year-The Book Cave goes to Mars!!
TIPPIN’ HANCOCK’S HAT-Pulp Reviews by Tommy Hancock HARDLUCK HANNIGAN: THE SPEAR OF GOLIATH Written by Bill Craig Cover by Laura Givens Published by Craig Enterprises 304 Pages
When I read pulp, I’m not simply reading as a reviewer. First and foremost, I’m a lifetime fan of the field and thoroughly enjoy pulp. Especially when that pulp centers around a well defined, multilayered, two fisted protagonist that I can get behind and want to stand alongside of.
Hardluck Hannigan is that type of hero.
SPEAR OF GOLIATH is the sixth adventure of Hardluck Hannigan written by Bill Craig. It is also the only novel I have read of the series, so bear that in mind. In this tale, Hannigan, just off of his most recent adventure and having turned away from two women in his life, finds himself in Africa and, after saving Musio, a Chinese woman who also owns a bar, Hannigan and a team of new and old allies end up racing to find the fabled Spear of Goliath, brought to Africa after the giant’s death. I say racing because there are several people pursuing Hannigan and/or the Spear, including Nazis, citizens of a lost city, and monster men from mineral mines! Yup, I said it.
This book is rich and vibrant with character. Hannigan is definitely cast in the pulp adventure mode as is most of the friends and enemies Craig sprinkles around him. He’s also complex, not simply relying on his fists or wild ideas to get through the day. He has worries, concerns, even self doubt and these play so well into his motivations, into what makes him a hero, that they aren’t weaknesses, but strengths of a different sort. Craig pours heart and soul into the lead as well as the cast around him.
Craig also paints the surroundings well. Whether or not its on the beach, in the bar, in a jeep, or in the opulent lost city, the reader feels as if they are there. Craig’s use of phrases and description make it very easy to imagine the ruins of the city being stalked by a lion or tribes of natives attacking Hannigan from one side with Nazis on the other. Craig’s handle on both his characters and his settings is top notch. The fantastic cover by Laura Givens only adds to the level of beauty that Craig generates in his descriptions.
SPEAR OF GOLIATH starts off extremetly well. The introduction to Hannigan’s new situation, the way that characters are brought in and explained well, but not overdone, and the pacing of the action is all very tight and dead on. Unfortunately, that tightness, the control of plot and action and flow seems to almost disappear later in the book. I noticed this quite significantly when the plot concerning citizens of the lost city came into play. One instance concerned the origins of Goliath’s birth. Not wanting to spoil anything, Craig identified Goliath’s parentage and unless the timeline we understand from Biblical studies has been altered by Craig, his proposed heritage for Goliath doesn’t click. Also, it seems that Craig is trying to juggle too many dangling plotlines toward the end of the book and although issues are resolved, said resolutions are not as satisfying as they could have been if possibly less attention was paid to throwing in several mini plots and more was given to keeping the primary ones introduced early on flowing and tight. I was particularly intrigued by the build up of the Nazis and the mercenary for hire working for them, but was somewhat disappointed in how that particular line was tied up.
Even with that, HARDLUCK HANNIGAN: THE SPEAR OF GOLIATH is a fun read and totally engaged me with its descriptions and its exciting, colorful characters. I will definitely read the other books in the series simply to be able to ride along with Hannigan and crew a few more times.
THREE OUT OF FIVE TIPS OF HANCOCK’S HAT-An enjoyable read, one definitely worth adding to your collection.
We’re now taking submissions for our upcoming anthology, Golden Age Good Girls. This is a collection of short stories(text, not comics!)about “Good Girl” characters from the Golden Age of comics and pulp magazines. This includes superheroines, jungle girls, femme fatales, sexy sleuths, space vixens, & more. Only characters in the public domain are being accepted. Any writer wishing to contribute to the project needs to email us on which characters are available for them to use. The first edition is being planned for a Spring 2011 release.
This article may be apocryphal considering that the most expensive Broadway production is still in previews, and its start date has been held up by a litany of horrendous accidents, injuries, and plot elements that would make Scooby-Doo go “Aroo?”
As a die-hard comic book geek and as someone who loves a Costco-sized serving of schadenfreude, I have been following news about Julie Taymor’s musical fiasco, Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark. I’m sure I’m not the only one who upon reading report after report of injury or “WTF” reviews would come to the conclusion “How the HELL can this continue?
In the event that it does continue, here’s a list of things that must happen altogether for me to see Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark:
Julie Taymor, Bono, & The Edge must issue a formal apology for the accidents, the ridiculous plot elements, uninspired songs, and a second act that makes about as much sense as Nick Nolte and Tom Waits on a bender.
There must be a permanent restraining order forbidding Julie Taymor, Bono, and The Edge from ever working together again. The restraining order must further stipulate that Bono and The Edge must never work in musical theater.
Get rid of the Greek Chorus of Geeks. It’s an interesting device, and a nod to fans, but it’s a bloated appendix: superfluous and in dire need of being excised immediately.
Get rid of Arachne. It’s one of the first things to screw with comic book canon. Ms. Taymor may think it’s adding a new dimension to the story, but the inclusion of the Greek mythological figure is little more than an elaborate, long-winded non sequitur.
Rewrite Uncle Ben’s death. In changing Ben Parker’s death, a huge part of Spider-Man’s impetus has been changed as well. Spider-Man is driven by guilt for not doing the right thing. In Julie Taymor’s version, the impetus is in less direct fashion that has no obvious bearing on Peter Parker and what he should have done. In ANY version of the established origin, Spider-Man is a better hero for having incorporated this guilt.
Remove all the superfluous villains in the second act including Swiss Miss. The inclusion of so many villains lessens the importance of any one of these famous bad guys. Carnage, Electro, The Lizard, and Kraven are no minor figures to Spider-Man. Grouping them altogether makes it seem like Spider-Man is Moe against a group of Shemps. And how the hell do you have a character like Carnage without first explaining who Eddie Brock was? It’s almost like Julie Taymor never heard about one of the most fundamental rules of superhero movies: NEVER load up a project with a buttload of villains. Then again, maybe she thought she could pull it off.
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and 
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So, that’s it for 2010. And what have we learned tonight, Craig?
