Tagged: art

NOMINATIONS NOW OPEN FOR PULP ARK 2012 AWARDS!

  • News
  • November 8, 2011
Nominations for the PULP ARK Awards are now open and will close January 15th, 2012. The awards are given in conjunction with Pulp Ark, the convention/creators’ conference and the official New Pulp Convention to be held in Batesville, AR, April 20-22, 2012!  The Awards are given for excellence in the field of Pulp, including books, stories, comic books, magazines, and characters as well as creators. 
To determine if a work or creator qualifies for these awards the definition for works that qualify is as follows-New Pulp is fast-paced, plot-oriented storytelling of a linear nature with clearly defined, larger than life protagonists and antagonists, creative descriptions, clever use of turns of phrase and other aspects of writing that add to the intensity and pacing of the story.
Tommy Hancock, Coordinator of Pulp Ark explains additions to the Awards this year.  “We have,” Hancock stated, “added two awards, both by popular requests and thanks to our donor who supports and provides the awards.  Best Book has now been broken into two separate awards-Best Novel and Best Collection/Anthology.  Also, there is now a category for Best New Character.  This can include any New Pulp character created in 2011.”
Hancock also states, “We will also give a Lifetime Achievement Award again this year as well.  A Ten Person committee selected from well-known Creators in New Pulp currently will decide the recipient of this award.  This award is given to someone who has contributed to Pulp, not simply New Pulp, but to the continuation of the interest and promotion of Pulp in all its forms.” Last year’s winners of the first Pulp Ark Lifetime Achievement Award were Tom and Ginger Johnson.
The only works eligible for the Pulp Ark 2012 Awards are those produced between January 1, 2011 and December 31, 2011. Anyone can make a nomination and anyone that makes a nomination will receive a ballot. The only people voting in these eleven awards will be those who made a minimum of one nomination. Also, each individual is allowed only ONE NOMINATION PER CATEGORY. A person may nominate someone in all nine categories, but may only nominate once in each category. All nominations are confidential and sources of nominations will not be revealed. All nominations should be mailed to Tommy Hancock at proseproductions@earthlink.net.The categories open for nomination are (in no particular order and this can be cut and pasted for your nominations ballot):
1. Best Novel (This includes E-books as well as print books)
2. Best Collection/Anthology (This includes single author story collections and multi author anthologies.  This includes E-publications as well as print books)
3. Best short story (this includes stories that appear in short story collections, anthologies, magazines, and e magazines. If from an e-mag, the story must appear on a site identified as an e-magazine, not simply be posted on a site or blog. It includes e-publications as well as traditionally printed works.
4. Best Cover Art (This is restricted to prose book publications, including e-books)
5. Best Interior Art (This is restricted to prose book publications, including e-books)
6. Best Pulp Related Comic (This refers to a series, complete run, one shot, etc. This award is for art, writing, and all other work associated with the nominated comics and the winner. This includes e-publications as well. )
7. Best Pulp Magazine (This award is for art, writing, and all other work associated with the nominated comics and the winner. This includes e-publications as well, but the e-publication must be identified as an e-magazine on the site supporting it. )
8. Best Pulp Revival (The Revival nominated must be published within the calendar year of 2010. This includes epublications as well.)
9.  Best New Character (This must be a character that debuts in a New Pulp work published in 2011.  This included e-publications as well)
10. Best Author (This reward refers to the author and any published author is eligible, including novels, short stories, etc. This includes e-publications as well).
11. Best New Writer (To be nominated, a writer must have been published for the first time in the pulp field in the calendar year of 2011. This includes e-publications as well).

PULP ARK 2012! DATES, LOCATION, AND MORE!!

  • Uncategorized
  • October 26, 2011

PRO SE PRODUCTIONS announces today that PULP ARK 2012, The Official New Pulp Convention, will be held April 20-22, 2012.  PULP ARK will be held once again in the scenic Ozark Mountains in Batesville, Arkansas, a town with a rich history and full of life all its own that sets it apart from other small town venues.  PULP ARK 2012 will be held at the Independence County Fairgrounds in Batesville with ample room for vendors, guests, panels, and multiple outside activities!
“This is our second year,” Tommy Hancock, PULP ARK Founder and Coordinator states, “and even though our first year was in many ways indicative of the first year of anything, we actually have quite a lot to live up to.  With our 30 or so guests last year, we found the perfect mix of Convention and Creators’ Conference.   We found a formula that works for PULP ARK that is a little different than other conventions and conferences and we have to make sure we continue that aspect of it.  Also, though, we have to make sure PULP ARK 2012 is an event that brings in fans from all over Arkansas, nearby states, and from wherever else, fans that will interact with our guests and make it a successful weekend for all.  So, with our eye on keeping some of the closeness that developed on the conference side of PULP ARK, this is all going to be a full blown Fan’s Convention experience as well.  Guaranteed.”
Hancock states that announcements will be forthcoming with details regularly concerning PULP ARK 2012 and can be found at http://www.prosepulp.com/#!pulp-ark.  
“We have,” Hancock said, “returning guests and will be revealing those in the next day or so.  We are also pleased to announce we have many new guests  attending, including writers, publishers, artists, and several cool enthusiasts and performers.  One such group is the Clockwork Mechanalists, a fantastic Steampunk group out of Memphis, Tennessee.  Steampunk is an exciting area of interest and, in my opinion, as pulp as anything can be and the Mechanilists will be at PULP ARK to entertain and educate us all!”  Hancock stated that future announcements would provide more information on the  Mechanalists, Steampunk, and even a surprise announcement related to the Mechanalists and the Convention/Conference.  Hancock also promised that other guests and performers would receive similar spotlights as given the Mechanilists here in coming announcements.
PULP ARK 2012 will also have several contests going in association with the event.  “We will once again,” Hancock stated, “present the Pulp Ark Awards for excellence in Pulp Fiction in the previous year.  But there’ll be other awards presented in an unique way as well.  We’ll be announcing several writing and art contests within the next week and the prizes for some of them are actually exciting prospects for the winning creators.”
A major selling point of PULP ARK 2012 to guests, exhibitors, vendors, and performers who may be interested in attending is that there is no charge for single table space and no membership fee for vendors, guests or performers.  “We want these people to come and entertain and meet fans.  At this point in our life as a convention/conference, it’s most important to us to make sure PULP ARK has a great lineup of guests and talent.”
With the promise of releases and announcements rather consistently from now until PULP ARK 2012, Pro Se Productions invites you as fans, writers, creators, performers, exhibitors and vendors to be a part of PULP ARK 2012!  Email Hancock at proseproductions@earthlink.net or call 870-834-4022 for more information and remember to check out http://www.prosepulp.com/#!pulp-ark for regular updates!

Mark Maddox covers The Thing!

  • News
  • October 24, 2011

Pulp Artist Mark Maddox has been named cover illustrator for HorrorHound Magazine issue #31, which is currently available on newsstands and bookstores everywhere. The cover art by Mark Maddox features images from the 1982 version of The Thing.

Mark’s illustrations have appeared on multiple books and magazines including Kolchak: The Night Stalker, Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective, Captain Hazard, The Heap, That Man Flint, Undying Monsters, Lance Star: Sky Ranger, Little Shoppe of Horrors magazine, Mad Scientist magazine, Hammer Fantasy & Sci-Fi for Hemlock Books, The Last Bus To Bray: The Unfilmed Hammer, the first volumes in Don Glut’s New Adventures Of Frankenstein series, and more.

For more on Mark Maddox and his art, visit http://maddoxplanet.com.
Click on artwork for a larger view.

JOHN OSTRANDER: Comic Book Math

ostrander-column-art-111016-8593828Math. Ugh. Hate it. Too real world for me. Unyielding, unforgiving, no sense of humor, and numbers don’t talk to me the way words do. My brain isn’t wired for it. However, numbers are a part of comics and comic book writing.

Certainly there are the important numbers regarding sales, but they also figure into telling a story. Let’s go through some of them. First number: the number of pages. Right now, your monthly comic book is 22 pages long. Let’s say you’ve been asked to do a fill-in story or a complete in one story for a given book. There are certain space limitations you need to take into account.

How many panels are in a page? Well, your first page is usually the splash page which means one big panel. This page also usually has the title of the story and the credits box for the creators. Here’s some rules of thumb for the other pages: when there’s a lot of action, you use fewer panels per page. If it’s a talk scene, you can have more. I generally figure that it will average out to five panels a page. The splash page is one panel so you have 21 pages times five panels. We do the match and the whole thing totals 106 panels in which to tell your story.

There are also limits to how much you can put in a panel. This includes speech balloons, thought balloons, captions, and sound effects, if you have them. You don’t want to crowd the art. I generally figure the limit of all of the above is three per panel.

Nor can you do that every single panel. If you do that, you have a wall of words and the reader usually will just ignore it and go on to the next page that hopefully has less verbiage. The exception to this rule is Brian Michael Bendis and, trust me, unless you are in fact Brian Michael Bendis, you’re not Brian Michael Bendis.

There are also limits to how much you can put into each word balloon, thought balloon, or caption. Again, I use a rule of thumb and it’s based on my font type and size. I tend to use Geneva 14 point (my eyes aren’t great and that’s what I can most easily see). So I figure the maximum is three typed lines per balloon or caption. Again, you can’t do that with every panel or you’ll wind up with the Wall of Words that gets ignored. Again, the Bendis Exception applies.

So, being generous, let’s say you average about 1.5 balloons/captions per panel. Do the math. If you have 106 panels per issue, that comes out to 159 balloons/captions with which to tell your story. That’s it. 21 pages, 106 panels, 159 balloons/captions in all. That’s plot, plot twists, characterization, theme, and snappy banter. Ladies and germs, that’s not a lot of space.

There’s a bit more math with telling a story as well. Each panel should have one clear definable action per panel. Batman leaps but he does not leap, land, spin, and hit the Joker in one panel. Asking your artist to draw that is grounds for justifiable homicide. I’m kidding. Your artist won’t kill you; he/she will simply ignore your instructions and find a way to make it work. But they will hate you… with justification.

You can have a secondary character do something in the panel as well but you can’t do that a lot unless your artist is George Pérez who will add more action if you haven’t. The Pérez Exception is the artist corollary to the Bendis Exception.

And you have to do all this without making it seem crowded or rushed.

That’s the mathematical reality to writing a single issue comic book, kids. If you’re doing an arc, then you multiply by the number of issues. The number of issues you’re allowed will depend on the price point (again, a number) the company figures the public will pay. It’s usually four or five issues. So, for an arc, you can multiply the above totals by those numbers. Still not a lot of space. Finally, there are deadlines, which are another set of numbers, namely the date by which it’s all due. Violate that at your peril.

And that, as our friends in the newspaper trade were wont to say, is -30-.

MONDAY: Mindy Newell

King Conan: The Phoenix on the Sword Coming in January

  • News
  • October 8, 2011
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Dark Horse Comics has announced a Jan. 25 release for King Conan: The Phoenix on the Sword #1. The next installment is written by Tim Truman, with art by Tomas Giorello.
 
About King Conan: The Phoenix on the Sword #1:
 
“First hailing Conan as a liberator after he annihilated Aquilonia’s foes on the battlefield, common folk and politicians alike now rally to unseat the Cimmerian from his stolen throne. Conspirators plot to kill King Conan and take the crown for themselves, but their schemes pale in comparison to a terror waiting quietly in the wings — an enemy who has haunted Conan his whole adult life and whose wicked aspirations dwarf those of maneuvering politicians! It’s the return of Thoth-Amon!”

All Pulp Interviews – Will Meugniot

  • News
  • October 5, 2011
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Prolific artist Will Meugniot has worked in comic book, animation, picture books, and more. All Pulp recently sat down with Will to talk about his career, his artistic influences, the differences between working in animation and comics, plus his pulp interests.

Click on the art for a larger view.

AP: Tell us a little about yourself and your pulp interests.

WM: I grew up in the 60s. It was a great time to be a kid interested in adventure fiction. Marvel and DC’s superhero revivals spurred many other publishers to enter the field, so you never knew what great comics you’d find when they finally opened the bales at the grocery store.

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N.E.D.O.R. Agents

A similar thing happened in paperback books. Ace discovered that some editions of certain Edgar Rice Burroughs books had fallen out of copyright, published them, and triggered a pulp revival, which brought everything from Otis Adelbert Kline to Doc Savage back into print.

Doc was my favorite of the pulp heroes, though I bought as many reprints of The Shadow, The Spider, Phantom Detective and Dusty Ayres as I could find and afford. Related to this, I’m also a big fan of the sound serials and have a collection of most of the non-westerns on DVD.

AP: What does pulp mean to you?

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Spider-Man Unlimited Vulture

WM: It means stories which focus on fast paced action in exotic locales and feature larger than life heroes and villains. On a personal note, I grew up in a small farming town and yearned for a larger life full of adventure. The pulp heroes pointed the way, and while I’ve never taken down a globe conquering miscreant, I have had a few interesting overseas experiences in my travels as a producer/director.
AP: When I think of Will Meugniot comics, I think of DNAgents (I’m proud to say I have the entire run) and FemForce. How did you get your start in comics and what is it that excites you about working in comics?
WM: First, thanks for thinking of my comics! So much of my time has been tied up doing animation that I really haven’t done as many comics as I intended.

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Tarzan. Dave Stevens inks

I first broke into the comics in the 1970s doing strips for undergrounds like The OK Comics tabloid and ‘ground level’ early direct sales books like Faeiry Star. My big break came when I sent Marvel a batch of sample pages featuring characters which didn’t have their own strips at the time: Guardians of the Galaxy, Ka-Zar, Nick Fury, and the one that paid off, Tigra. I did a couple of issues of that, then Marvel imploded and I was out, but fortunately, Tony Isabella showed Mark Evanier some of my uninked pencils. Based on them, Mark gave me work on the Tarzan and Korak comics he was editing for Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. That lasted for almost a year, but Marvel took the Tarzan license and the ERB line was cancelled, which was what sent me into animation.

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DNAgents

A few years later, my friend Dave Stevens came by the Marvel animation offices to score some free Xeroxes of his as yet unpublished Rocketeer. (Which was OK with the company, BTW – it was very ‘family’ oriented and Dave had worked for its previous incarnation, DePatie Freleng.) Dave told Rick Hoberg, Russ Heath and me about the new creator-owned comics movement, and got us excited by it. I phoned up Mark to see if he was interested, and that’s how DNAgents and the second phase of my comics career began.
The things I love most about comics are the creative freedom, and the ability to do a piece of art which is identifiably your own. Animation requires you to blend into the style of the series, and by its nature results in work which is largely anonymous by design. I’m thankful and surprised that so many people recognize my work in that field.

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Golden Girl

AP: I assume you get this question from time to time, but has there been any consideration of you and Mark Evanier doing more DNAgents stories?

WM: We’ve come close a few times, and I suspect we’ll do something with them in the next few years. Mark and I have stayed friends, but our careers have gone down different paths and it’s rare for us to have a big block of time free simultaneously.

I’m tightly booked for the next year or so with the N.E.D.O.R. Agents, a graphic novel of The Land That Time Forgot, Caspak (written by the great Martin Powell), and it looks like the pilot for an animated series I directed this summer clicked and the show will be in production as well.

The Land That Time Forgot: Caspak. The Step-By-Step Process
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Zombie Monkey Monster Jamboree

AP: The Zombie Monkey Monster Jamboree book by you and J. J. Hart looks to be a pulpy fun ride. Tell us a bit about the book and what inspired it.

WM: My friends Shannon Denton and Patrick Coyle started a line of picture books under their Actionopolis imprint and invited me to do one. Zombie Monkey was already written, and I loved the subject matter of boy scouts versus zombified monkies, so of course I said yes! I’ve also illustrated a couple of other children’s books for Actionopolis, Pandora, and my favorite, The Boy Who Cried Wolf. I think you can still get all of them on Amazon.

AP: Where do you, or would you like to, see the comic book industry in 5 or 10 years?

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Zombie Monkey Monster Jamboree

WM: I’d like to see it alive! This is a moment of incredible danger and opportunity for the industry. There is a clear shift in the way the medium will be distributed and that is going to ultimately affect its form. I don’t think print is going away, but I suspect we’re going to see a lot more print on demand and print to preorder books with the bulk of the distribution going electronic. Luddite that I am, I’m focusing on print at the moment, just because I love the feel of the physical product.

AP: With the advent of digital comics, the way many read comics has changed. What are your thoughts on digital comics and their impact on the industry and readers?

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Pyro-Girl Animation Promo Art

WM: There is a need to adapt to the market, and it’s clear many younger readers prefer reading on a screen. The upside is that distribution costs should be less in the long run. The downside is that many publishers seem to be ignoring their responsibility and need to help the current and very important to the industry’s long term health distribution system with the shift.

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Ultimate Avengers 2

AP: You’ve produced and directed several animation projects from The Real Ghostbusters, G.I. Joe, X-Men, EXOsquad, Jem and the Holograms, Conan, Captain Planet, Spider-man, Stargate, and more. How did you make the transition from comics to animation and what are the similarities and differences between them?

WM: The shift was an economic necessity for me at the time, and was achieved by dumb luck.
It started when Mark Evanier ran into Don Jurwich, producer of the Super-Friends cartoons. Don knew Mark had done comics and mentioned that Hanna Barbera was looking for artists with comics experience to help on the new action shows they’d sold for the 1978 TV season. Mark suggested I cold call HB and ask about it, so I did. The girl at the switchboard asked me whom I’d like to talk to and I said, “The producer doing the action shows.”

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FemForce 158

She hooked me up with Doug Wildey (creator of Jonny Quest), which resulted in my being hired as a layout artist on his Godzilla series. Doug was a huge influence and a great teacher. I started drawing storyboards on the side for him, and we both realized that doing boards came naturally to me, so Doug brought me in house as his assistant, handing out and editing boards on Godzilla and Jana of the Jungle. He even let me do the retakes and meet with the clients on some episodes, which was a rare and generous thing. My next boss after Doug was Tex Avery who was the storyboard supervisor on The Thing, a comedy cartoon about Marvel’s Thing. I had great basic training.

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Zombie Monkey Monster Jamboree

While they are similar in some respects, film and comics are two different beasts. One of the things I’m really enjoying about my current strips is going back to form with them and using all of the classic devices which are unique to the comic book: varying panel sizes (the aspect ratio is constant in film, but it doesn’t have to be in comics), internalized dialogue via thought balloons (much more fluid that doing a voiceover to convey thought in a film), and even visualized sound effects via display lettering.

AP: Who are some of your artistic/creative influences?

WM: Kirby, Wood, Ditko, Williamson, Colan and Frazetta are the main ones. I particularly admire Wood as an artist/writer.

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X-Men Storyboards

AP: What does Will Meugniot do when not making comic books?

WM: Professionally a lot of cartoons, either storyboarding or directing. Privately, I love old movies and non-fiction books about comics, movie serials and biographies. I also like just hanging out with my wife of 40 years, Jo.

AP: Where can readers find learn more about you and your work?

WM: I have a website: http://www.storyboardpro.com of which I’ve been very negligent, but features a lot of my art. My blog is www.maskedmayhem.blogspot.com I write about my interests there.

AP: Any upcoming projects you would like to mention?

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Zombie Monkey Monster Jamboree

WM: N.E.D.O.R. Agents is the big one at the moment. It has a 3 page preview in FemForce 156, a 26 page story in FemForce 157, and its own cover and 20 pages of story in FemForce 158. PREVIEWSworld is doing a Facebook promotion with me for the strip. If you ‘like’ their page, you’ll be able to follow the strip there and enter some contests to win original art, too.

AP: Are there any upcoming convention appearances or signings coming up where fans can meet you?

WM: I’m sorting that out now as part of the PREVIEWSworld promotion. Follow them on Facebook for updates about my appearances.

AP: You have served as a writer, artist, producer, and director. Are there any creative areas you’ve not been worked in that you would like to try your hand at doing?

WM: At some point, I’m going to do some low budget live action work as a director. It’s been offered me in the past, but I’ve just been too busy to take it on.

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Meet Vanity

AP: And finally, what advice would you give to anyone wanting to work in comics, animation, and/or art?
WM: The main thing is to DO IT. You’re not a writer unless you write. You’re not an artist if you don’t create art. Don’t let your fear of rejection stand in your way of doing.

AP: Thanks, Will.

SURF PULP-As Told to Chuck Miller!

  • News
  • September 30, 2011


AS TOLD TO CHUCK MILLER-Pulp Interviews

Chuck’s Guest today- Craig Lockwood 

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CHUCK MILLER:  Surf Pulp is something that not too many of my colleagues who have loosely banded together under the “New Pulp” umbrella have been exposed to. And it’s a wonderful thing, since we are looking to broaden the definition of “pulp fiction,” and expand its visibility and appeal. Could you just give us a brief synopsis of how you got the idea and what steps you took to see it through all the way to Hard-Boiled Surf Pulp Fiction #1?

CRAIG LOCKWOOD:  I’ve often wondered if the term “New Pulp” or “neo-Pulp” isn’t misleading. While the great pulp publishing and fiction industry died out forty years ago, Ellery Queen and Analog are still published. So at least a tenuous thread to the pulp-past was maintained. And the pulps have been an enduring and arguably profound influence on America and Europe’s popular literary culture.


What’s telling is that when I started this project with Rick we had no idea that there was anything like a pulp revival.


I’d had the idea of publishing an all-surfing-related fiction magazine for years. And I loved the old pulp form. I’d done a pulp paper book The Whole Ocean in 1986.


Twenty-three years later I’d just finished writing a big book for a publisher, and decided to see if I couldn’t put an inexpensive magazine—a real pulp—together.


Rick’s a talented illustrator who had been an aficionado of the American pulp illustrative style of the 1930s and ‘40s and ‘50s. I’d read the sci-fi pulps like Galaxy and Analog, and the mystery mags like Back Mask and Ellery Queen, as a kid and been entranced the storytelling and action. My first published fiction – and the piece was wholly an adventure pulp sory — was in SURFER Magazine—despite SURFER being a “slick.”


Both of our mutual interests and our livelihoods center around surfing and the surfing sub-culture.

 That term may seem like an anomaly, but today there is an entire sub-culture—which is something like car-culture—but based around surfing, that had been growing in California since the 1930s. And I’m not talking “Gidget.”


There’s a multi-million dollar sustaining “surfing industry” that includes surfing apparel, surfboard manufacture, surf-related destination travel, surfing fine art with prestigious museum exhibitions, surfing cinema, TV shows, surfing music, surfing literature—including surfing journalism, with books and magazines—and even occasional surfing theater, and believe it or not, a nascent surfing academia.

And of course, there’s surfing crime. Which some older readers may recall getting both national notoriety and tabloid ink during the 1960s with a Florida criminal character nicknamed “Murph the Surf.”

Rick is academically trained, and a graduate of Art Center, here in Pasadena, California, which is one of he nation’s finest art schools. I studied creative writing at the University of California, Los Angeles. Rick’s work hangs in both private collections and at McKibben Gallery in Laguna Beach as well as in Rémi Bertoche, in France.


I’ve been a journalist and editor since college, mainly surfing but in the beginning the pickings were slim so I also worked as a lifeguard and deputy sheriff. Later I served as a war correspondent in Southeast Asia, Balkans, the Middle East and Afghanistan, a crime reporter, and a surfing historian whose last book “Peanuts” An Oral Biography Exploring Legend, Myth and Archetype In California’s Surfing Subculture” was reviewed last year by surfing’s most prestigious magazine, The Surfer’s Journal, as “This year’s Best book on Surfing, 2010.” Currently I serve as co-chair of the Oral History Committee of the Surfing Heritage Foundation, which is an endowed institution and museum. But I also shape surfboards and racing paddleboards – it’s all handwork – as a hobby/business.


We were well into the project when we started discovering you guys.


We looked at each other and went “Wow! Here’s real talent, good writing, and great storytelling.”

And you—the pioneers—were all out there taking great waves and cranking these stylish pulpy bottom turns and looking good. 


It was like wandering through the desert thirsty and alone and discovering this well-supplied big wagon train with the Bonanza cast at the reins.

CHUCK:  What would you say to potential readers who might be leery of your work because of their unfamiliarity with surf culture and the perception that this is a very specialized area that they just wouldn’t “get?” I think this could be really significant in terms of opening up new connections and exposing people to familiar concepts in a new context. That can be a difficult barrier to break through, which is sad because I think there are far more things in common than not.


Chuck, you nailed it. There are definitely more things in common in pulp fiction than not. To paraphrase Marshall McLuhan: The medium is the milieu.


I suspect we both see pulp fiction as a wonderful dimensional door through which readers are transported by writers into other realities. The vehicle of transmission is the combination of the author’s words and the reader’s imagination.


Surfing, and surfing fiction does reflect aspects of surfing’s specialization, just as espionage fiction is specialized. But specialization need not be exclusionary, and it’s never a reason to neglect the opportunity of an exciting read.


The English mystery writer Dick Francis, himself a jockey, set all his stories against a background of horse racing—which is like surfing, a kind of sub-culture. I’ve only been to one horse track in my life, and know nothing about horse-racing, betting on horses, or horse-racing as an occupation. But I’ve read and enjoyed at least a dozen Dick Francis mysteries, full of racetrack jargon, and enjoyed them.  


Reading masters of a specific genera—such as spy fiction’s John Le Carre´, or Alan Furst—means being immersed in that specific fictional world. This is a world the author has created. And when the author is good, and when the narrative’s coherent and the drama compelling we’re exposed and become both intellectually and emotionally involved in a very specialized environment—say Carré’s Cold War London in 1965, or Furst’s Eleventh Arrondissement in 1940 Paris, during the Nazi Occupation.


And in that fictional environment the magic of a reader’s imagination, a skilled author’s description, narrative and dialog—all provide enough information for the reader to understand and personally assimilate the  political climate, the geography, the tradecraft and techniques, the idiom and argot of espionage.


Compared to this kind of complex arcana, surfing’s lexicon is relatively easy. Especially when the format’s a short-story or novella. Here the author is going to be focusing less on some incidental technical aspect—such as a specific surfboard’s design limitations in a given wave—than say, on the protagonist’s efforts to get to the exotic location where a previously un-ridden but fabled wave exists. And—as in all adventure fiction—that requires an author’s commitment to narrative and a reader’s exercise of imagination.

And, if the author is skillful, he or she provides the reader sufficient expository detail so their imagination takes over. This, after all, is how we are able to read and immerse ourselves in—and find credible and enjoyable enough, and thus continue reading—our pulp fiction superheros.

Surfing is an activity rooted in American culture. Surfing comes out of that culture, and so much of what surfing authors are writing about is at least familiar. Most of us have either been to a beach, or seen film or stills of the ocean, and waves, and surfers. We have a sense of the beauty, power and grandeur of the sea. 

I’m not a skier, have never skied, hate snow, don’t know the precise meaning of terms like “mogul” or “screamin’ starfish” or “slow-dog noodle turn” and have never experienced the thrill of flying down a mountainside in deep powder. Yet I’ve read and enjoyed skiing-related fiction. So it wasn’t what I knew that entertained me, it was the author’s skill in creating a literary door through which I could venture in imagination.


I didn’t have to be an anthropologist like Colin Trumbull, living with the m’Buti, in the Congo and having to learn an entire non-cognate language to figure out the sub-culture. If I didn’t know the terminology, the story carried me along.


In one of our Vol. 1 No. 1 issue’s stories, “Sorcerer of Siargao” by Susan Chaplin, her surfer-protagonist is described this way:


“Marla was tall, with big shoulders and clear blue eyes. At forty-seven and recently divorced she was living out some pre-divorce impulse to surf her way around the world.”


There is nothing very exclusionary here for a non-surfing reader. You get her logline. Restless middle aged woman seeks adventure. The rest is storytelling—through a surfer’s eyes.


In “The Big Deep” hard-luck hard-boiled surfing private eye Sam Sand tells  surf syndicate enforcer Gang Lopez who’s bringing him an impossible-to-solve case: “Gang, you been laminating without a mask?”


Now a non-surfer may not have a clue that this wisecrack refers to the manufacturing process of saturating the “laminate,” the two fiberglass layers of a hand-shaped surfboard blank’s skin with catalyzed polyurethane resin, but you know he’s skeptical—and is obviously saying it in a colorful way.


One thing those of us who are attracted to the pulp milieu share is that we love imaginative storytelling. So if Hard-boiled Surf Pulp which is aimed at a primarily surfing audience has any chance of attracting non-surfing readers we think it will be because our writers can tell stories well.


CHUCK:  Name two or three of the biggest influences on your writing. Not necessarily limited to authors, but including ANYTHING that you think has shaped your style and the worldview that your fiction is built on.


My biggest initial influences in desire to be a writer were genetic, i.e., my mother and father.


My dad was a hard-boiled, hard-core, hard-bitten, hard-case WW I combat veteran—a newspaperman/journalist, war correspondent, and occasional pulp writer during the 1920s and ‘30s. He became a wire-service bureau chief, in Lisbon. My parents had lived in the same Paris neighborhood as Ernest and Hadley Hemingway and were part of the same literary and artistic circles.


My mother was an artist, a sculptor of some renown, and the daughter of three generations of newspaper men. And she had the storyteller’s gift. She’d been a fashion illustrator for Vogue Magazine, so her artist’s eye missed nothing. Decades after an event she could recall the most precise details, inflect the tone of voice of someone who’d been speaking, mimic accents, and connect everything to the weather, the political climate, how the women and men were dressed, how the food was prepared, was served and tasted.


Just before World War Twice they returned to California and Hollywood where he became a screenwriter for Fox. I came along soon after. Then the war came along and my father was killed, soon after Pearl Harbor.


As a child without a father—growing up in Hollywood during the war—my mother would tell stories about her early life. I was fascinated with her accounts of her famous family’s history, of my father’s life, their travels—including some exciting adventures with narrow escapes—and the now all-but-forgotten literary figures they’d known such as John Dos Passos, Sinclair Lewis, Theodore Dreiser, Sherwood Anderson, Sylvia Beach, Gertrude Stein, Ford Maddox Ford, James Joyce, Raoul Whitfield, and Dashiell Hammett.


When I was very young my mother would tell me serial stories of characters she’d invent. Then, taking a big drawing pad and using charcoal pencils, she’d quickly illustrate them while she was telling the story, drawing the characters—horses, boats, cars, guns—and the most outrageous and weirdly costumed arch-villains. We had a house full of books, and a beach house in Laguna Beach and so I grew up reading and surfing.


Pulp magazines were still on the newsstands when I was a kid and I became interested in reading and collecting science fiction magazines. Without question, much of my interest in writing fiction came from that early pulp exposure.


Going to the local newsstand with my weekly allowance was a ritual. What a visual feast! There were dozens of lurid covers, adventures, detective mysteries, westerns, romances, creepy shudders, and the ones in the back at the top—beyond kid’s reach—the spicy pulps.


So I pictured myself being able to write for these kinds of exciting magazines. I was just learning to type and submitted a few science fiction shorts in my early teens—which were promptly rejected. 

Unfortunately, by the time I had begun to write well enough to perhaps be accepted, the pulps were approaching extinction, and everyone in my college writing classes was trying to write like Jack Kerouac, J.D. Salinger, Kurt Vonnegut or Joseph Heller.


Ray Bradbury’s fiction was a strong early influence, and he spoke frequently at Robert Kirsch’s Art of Fiction course and workshops at UCLA where I was a student. I’ve never forgotten his closing words at one of his lectures:

“Always quit while you’re hot. And don’t forget to put the cover on your typewriter.”

      

PRO SE STARTS YEAR TWO WITH TWO BOOKS AND A BANG!

  • News
  • September 21, 2011

PRO SE PRESS KICKS OFF SECOND PUBLISHING YEAR 
WITH NEW IMPRINT AND TWO NEW BOOKS!

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Pro Se Productions, a New Pulp Publisher debuted its first title in August, 2010.  Entering its second year of Publishing after publishing an average of one book a month in its first, Pro Se shows no signs of slowing down with two new titles and the premiere of its first in house imprint all this month!

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New Pulp Author Barry Reese, creator of the well known ‘ROOK’ series, works his storytelling magic once more with a whole new cast of characters! THE ADVENTURES OF LAZARUS GRAY is Reese’s entry into Pro Se’s The Sovereign City Project, showcasing a hero whose own life is a mystery to himself. On the road to discovering his own secrets Gray and his Assistance Unlimited team encounter weirdness, madness, and defend society from the evil that flows in the streets of Sovereign City and beyond! Come along for the ride for this new Barry Reese adventure, seven stories of mystery, action, and adventure that make up the first collection in The Sovereign City Project!  Thrill to THE ADVENTURES OF LAZARUS GRAY!

“There’s a lot,” Tommy Hancock, Editor in Chief of Pro Se Productions, “that goes into any concept, especially a shared universe such as the Sovereign City Project is going to be.  Barry being a part of this and actually laying the cornerstone of the whole world with THE ADVENTURES OF LAZARUS GRAY is not only a tremendous start, but its also the birth of another New Pulp Classic from Barry.  The characters, good and bad, jump off the page and the action moves at a breakneck speed, but there’s also this eerie disturbing undercurrent that puts a different spin on classic Pulp tropes.  This is one of Barry’s best works to date.”  Reese’s work is amplified by the fantastic cover art provided by Anthony Castrillo and the stylistic interior images  by George Sellas.

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One of the most prolific writers in New Pulp, Reese has dozens and dozens of characters, adventures, and worlds that he has written or intends to write about, a wealth of ideas with plenty of room for more, both more stories and more people to write them.   “There are at least five books,” Hancock stated, “in the Pro Se Publishing pipeline that are either written by Barry or based on the cyclone of ideas whirling about in his head.  Barry’s also ready to see what others can do with some of his visions.  That combined with the general growth of Pro Se and the fact we intend to be an even bigger force in New Pulp in our second year made this next announcement an easy decision.  Pro Se is privileged to reveal its first in house imprint, Reese Unlimited!”

Reese Unlimited, an imprint centered around both the written work of as well as concepts created by Reese that may be written by others, debuts with THE ADVENTURES OF LAZARUS GRAY.  Already known for tales of action, adventure, fantastic characterization, and compelling storylines, Barry will bring his imagination and editing skills to bear as well with Reese Unlimited, acting as Imprint Editor and essentially being the creative force behind the entire endeavor.   This imprint will be the home of future Lazarus Gray adventures, as well as the upcoming Rook Trilogy written by Tommy Hancock and any other ideas from the fertile mind of Barry Reese.

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Pro Se continues its one-two punch launching its second year in print with the debut novel from author Chuck Miller.  CREEPING DAWN: THE RISE OF THE BLACK CENTIPEDE centers on the aforementioned Centipede, Miller’s pivotal character in a mad, wild world of magic, mystery, murder, and almost more mayhem than it has historical guest stars.  His dark origins tied to Lizzie Borden, The Black Centipede is a mysterious individual who has no life other than that of masked avenger, vigilante, and consort of weirdness.  

“This,” Hancock reported, “is not just a novel.  Chuck has breathed every bit of himself into the creation of not simply this book or this character, but the insane universe that the Centipede -populates isn’t a strong enough world.  He is the axis that the lunacy of everyone around him turns on and in response he’s a valiant hero at some turns, a madman at others, and even the deus ex machina at times.  CREEPING DAWN is an introductory ticket to one of the wildest rides New Pulp has ever seen!

CREEPING DAWN is a fast paced New Pulp mash up of noir, masked vigilantes, historical fiction, and more mystery and suspense than a centipede has legs.  With evocative cover art by David L. Russell and interiors by Peter Cooper, CREEPING DAWN: RISE OF THE BLACK CENTIPEDE by Chuck Miller is one experience not to be missed!

Both books display the fantastic Format and Design work of Pro Se’s Design master, Sean Ali.

Pro Se is thankful for the success thus far of its books and magazines and to all the supporters and fans that caused said success.  “That,” Hancock said, “is why Pro Se wants to make sure our second year kicks off in a way that our readers will enjoy, giving them a double dose of the New Pulp quality they expect from Pro Se.  And that’s not the only way we’re saying thanks.  Things to come this year from Pro Se will blow you all away and its all our way of saying Thank You to those who support New Pulp and Pro Se.”



Available now at https://www.createspace.com/3693399 and soon at www.Amazon.com!
THE ADVENTURES OF LAZARUS GRAY
By Barry Reese
Cover by Anthony Castrillo
Interiors by George Sellas
A Reese Unlimited Book
Published by Pro Se Press
List Price: $12.00
6″ x 9″
250 pages

ISBN-13: 978-1466358348



Available Now at https://www.createspace.com/3689977 and soon at www.Amazon.com
CREEPING DAWN: THE RISE OF THE BLACK CENTIPEDE
By Chuck Miller
Cover by David Russell
Interiors by Peter Cooper
Published by Pro Se Press
List Price: $12.00
6″ x 9″  
196 pages
ISBN-13: 978-1466338135 
 FOR MORE PRO SE -WWW.PULPMACHINE.BLOGSPOT.COM

Pro Se Productions
Fuller Bumpers, CEO
Tommy Hancock, EIC

Samurai! Zombies! The Supernatural! And Zorro! Oh my!

  • News
  • September 11, 2011

Sydney Australia’s Silver Fox Comics reimagines Zorro.
*Edited 9/22/11

PRESS RELEASE:

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Silver Fox Comics redefines Zorro in an all-new, all-original comic book series produced from Sydney Australia!

“This may be the boldest and most daring Zorro comic ever created! Could this be the basis of the next Zorro movie?”
John Gertz President Zorro Productions

Silver Fox Comics: Australia’s most action packed independent comic book publisher debuts with a new series for the legendary Zorro!  This is the first Zorro story written by an Aussie and features newly commissioned art, which will build into the most action packed Zorro comic ever produced. As Issue 1 proclaimed “SAMURAIS TO THE LEFT, ZOMBIES TO THE RIGHT. WILL ZORRO SURVIVE?”

ISSUE 2 OUT NOW!
Our 2nd issue of Zorro is now on sale at newsagents nationwide and select comic stores! Issue I on sale on this website and at all good comic stores. This comic is sold exclusively in Australia only.

WRITER SORAB DEL RIO DISCUSSES ZORRO
“This Zorro takes on many modern day themes, such as drugs, persecution of indigenous races, and the supernatural, whilst still retaining the classic iconography and swashbuckling action. This isn’t a safe licensed-to-Walt Disney mainstream Zorro, and it isn’t aimed at kids. This is Zorro, as it should be done. It’s pulp fiction style, rough, gritty and dangerous. It’s East meets West, with the supernatural, all-out fights, drugs, samurai warriors, beautiful women, zombies, guns and blades. This has opened a new path for the Zorro legacy which is the start of an epic, darker, action- packed Zorro, the likes of which have never been conceived before.

New characters emerge, such as Mirella, a gypsy fortune teller who becomes Zorro’s gateway into the supernatural world, the villainous General Cypher is introduced, who sets out to destroy the native Indians, The Beast – merciless tax collector, Yoshiko, the Empress of Opium, Ashikaga her samurai guard, and Carmelita – a dream of a woman you would kill for. 
 The first issue we released features two stories:  The first story, The Defeat of Destiny, sees Zorro uncover a plot, by the new Spanish regency Cypher, to begin importing and farming opium in California. The land of the natives is taken by force in order to clear land for opium. The Japanese arrive, an Indian princess is kidnapped, and will be killed unless Zorro reveals his true identity. I wanted to bring historical themes and parallels into the piece, such as with the opium wars in China, and the exploitation and destruction of indigenous races.
The second story, Love Never Ends, sees an ex-lover resurrected from the dead. When he learns his ex-wife is to be wed again, he seeks revenge. Unlike most zombie films, the zombie cannot simply be killed by a gunshot; it will take a lot more! I’ve also introduced new characters, such as the gypsy fortuneteller Mirella, and a new love interest, Carmelita. I also want to create more of an insight into Zorro over the series. Here, we learn of his penchant for seeing into the future.”

CONTACT DETAILS
Email: sorabdelrio@silverfoxcomics.com.au

For more information about Silver Fox Comics, please visit them on-line at http://www.silverfoxcomics.com.au/ and www.facebook.com/silverfoxcomics.

Zorro®, Zorro is © 2011 Zorro Productions Inc. All rights reserved. All names, characters, events and locales in this publication are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely fictional, events or places, is coincidental. No portion of this book may be reproduced by any means (digital or print) without the express permission of Silver Fox Comics except for review purposes.
*Edited by request of Publisher and Zorro Productions, Inc. 

Reviews from the 86th Floor: Barry Reese Looks at The Black Bat Graphic Novel

  • News
  • August 18, 2011



The Black Bat

Written by Mike Bullock

Art by Michael Metcalf and Fernando Peniche

Letters by Josh Aitken

Moonstone Books

ISBN 978-1-933076-96-6

$8.99

Longtime readers of my review column know that I’m a big fan of Mike Bullock’s run on The Phantom. So when Moonstone announced their “Return of the Originals” projects, I was intrigued to see Bullock’s name on both a revival (The Black Bat) and a new creation (Death Angel). This collection collects stories of both characters, though the cover is a bit misleading — it prominently features The Black Bat, with a relatively small “Also Starring Death Angel” logo on the lower right. There aren’t enough Black Bat pages to make it a graphic novel on its own so I understand the inclusion of Death Angel but I would have preferred a title that made it clearer that this was, in fact, a book with equal amounts of both heroes.

The front and back covers are by Tom Grindberg and are absolutely gorgeous. I really, really liked both images and I think the cover will definitely help sell a few copies. Super stuff.

Inside the book we get alternating Black Bat & Death Angel stories (both comic and prose), with one short teaming the two. In both cases, the heroes are tracking down drug pushers and the like. I was a little confused about the era these stories were set in — some things in the Black Bat stories definitely made me think this was set in the 1930s (fashion, the language used, etc.) but Death Angel seemed more modern, both in design and in terms of her hi-tech nano-fiber tachyon-shooting power suit. The two characters interact, so obviously they are in the same era, whenever that may be.

Let’s tackle The Black Bat first. This is not your father’s Black Bat. As in the original stories, this is District Attorney Anthony Quinn. Blinded by a criminal’s attack, Quinn later gets his vision restored and takes to the night as a vigilante. But in this version, The Black Bat suffers from multiple personality disorder and is as bloodthirsty as The Spider. While interrogating criminals, he uses various legal terms to question them, all the while arguing with himself for leading the witness, etc. It’s an interesting take on the character but purists will feel that this is not The Black Bat and perhaps should have been a new character instead. I’m okay with updating characters and this one retains enough of the original for me to recognize him but his willingness to kill (and kill graphically) was shocking. I wish there had been more time to show The Black Bat in his civilian identity, though. The profile that’s included implies that he’s relatively normal in his day-to-day affairs and that it’s only as The Black Bat that his mental instability comes to light. I’m curious how that would have played out. There were places in the story – and I’m not sure if the fault lies with the script or the art, or both — where things felt very, very disjointed and the scene jumps made me pause and flip back a few page to see if I’d missed something. It kinda felt like I was reading the Cliff note’s version of much cooler stories.

From an art standpoint… Hmm. Michael Metcalf does all but one of the Black Bat stories (Fernando Peniche does the one that teams The Black Bat with Death Angel) and I have to admit… I did not like it. The art is far too scratchy and actually looked unfinished in places. It detracted from the story. There were individual panels that looked kind of cool but overall, the story was not served well by this. The Peniche art was a step up and I liked it much better.

Death Angel is a far stronger package overall — perhaps because the burdens of our past expectations are not challenged here. With The Black Bat, pulp fans are constantly comparing and contrasting this version to the original — but Death Angel is a new character and is free from that. Strangely, Michael Metcalf does the art on these sections, as well, but the art looks much, much better. I can only assume that Metcalf deliberately used a different style on The Black Bat stories — this artwork is much stronger.

As with The Black Bat, Death Angel is a vicious character. Her stories all revolve around two things: drugs and sexual abuse. This latter plays well off her origin but I would have liked to have seen a little more variety in the threats she faces here. I found the Death Angel stories to be more interesting and would definitely like to see more.

The overall package… I will say that taken as a whole, this is probably my least favorite of Bullock’s works to date. If I separated out the character arcs, I’d give much higher marks to the Death Angel portions of the book.

Do I think it’s worth your time and money? If you’re looking for the classic Black Bat or if you like your heroes to be of the “don’t kill, but bring the bad guys in for justice” variety… No. If you’re looking for bloodthirsty vigilante types or want to sample a genuinely interesting New Pulp hero in Death Angel, I’d say yes.

I give it 3 out of 5 stars.

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