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THE ROOK VOLUME 2-SPECIAL EDITION DEBUTS FROM REESE UNLIMITED AND PRO SE PRODUCTIONS!

Reese Unlimited, an author centered imprint of Pro Se Productions, proudly announces the release of the special edition second volume collection of one of New Pulp’s best known  and loved heroes!  THE ROOK VOLUME 2 SPECIAL EDITION by multiple award winning author Barry Reese is now available in print and ebook format!

THE ROOK VOLUME 2-SPECIAL EDITION is a newly edited, newly formatted Pro Se edition of the second volume of Reese’s Rook Series.   The adventures of Max Davies, tortured masked hero and defender against evil of all kinds, continue intypical Reese two fisted, double barreled action in this collection of stories.  Continuing his battle against the supernatural, The Rook discovers more about his own tragic destiny while battling darknesses vile and ancient!   He also discovers he is not alone in his fight, teaming up with Classic Pulp heroine, The Domino Lady, and the Russian near superman Leonid Kaslov, another one of Reese’s wonderful New Pulp Heroes.
Even with companions, though, The Rook continues a solitary war, striking out at villains because he has been given no other choice!
“The Rook,” Tommy Hancock, Editor in Chief and Partner in Pro Se stated, “is one of the first names people bring up when a discussion of New Pulp heroes starts.  Barry struck such a necessary chord with the creation of Max and company, combining classic Pulp sensibilities with his love for the expansiveness comic books allowed with cast and such, and adding his own very unique twist to the mix.  Pro Se is proud to be able to put its own unique touch on the early adventures of The Rook in these Special Edition collections from Reese Unlimited.”
THE ROOK VOLUME 2-SPECIAL EDITION features the six originalstories of the collection, all newly edited by David White, as well as an updated timeline of Reese’s shared universe in which he writes!  The edition also includes a stunning new cover and accompanying brand new illustrations by award winning Pulp Artist George Sellas!  With logo and cover design and print formatting by Sean Ali and ebook formatting by Russ Anderson, THE ROOK VOLUME 2-SPECIAL EDITION is the second from Pro Se in the SPECIAL EDITION series collecting the classic tales of Reese’s seminal creation!

THE ROOK VOLUME 2 – SPECIAL EDITION is now available at Amazon at http://tinyurl.com/d3ctcus, at Barnes and Noble at http://tinyurl.com/bq4ns9q and through Pro Se’s own store at http://tinyurl.com/bpmtega for $18.00.  Available via Kindle WITH INTERIOR ILLUSTRATIONS INCLUDED at http://tinyurl.com/cxxoblr and available at www.smashwords.com and via the Nook at http://tinyurl.com/bq4ns9q for $4.99!



Mindy Newell: Live Fast… Die Never!

Newell Art 130513Plenty of individual panels have been freeze-framed in my head all afternoon, but none of them have led to any kind of sequential storytelling. This is the worst part of being a writer with a weekly column – watching the hands on the clock inexorably winding down to zero hour, the time by which I need to get the thing e-mailed to Mike and Glenn.

You never know where ideas come from. My column Baby’s First Fooprints came about from a little joke I made at Alix’s sonogram; today I was listening to the soundtrack of Angel and I realized that, while I’ve talked a lot about the intrepid Slayer, I’ve hardly ever mentioned it’s a spin-off; in fact, few people ever talk about it, which in its own way was just as riveting as its parent show. Angel continued the story of Buffy Summer’s vampire lover, played by David Boreanaze, who left Sunnydale at the end of season 3 of Buffy because he realized that he and the Slayer had no future. Her path was one of growth and exploration, and his was of acknowledging the past and seeking redemption for its sins.

It was a dark, gritty, film-noir type of show, with its main character struggling for atonement from his evil past. The first episode opened in a bar, and the first time we see Angel he is apparently drunk, which, not too subtly, set the tone of the series – just as the recovering alcoholic is always just one drink away from losing his or her life to the bottle, Angel will forever be just “one drink away” from losing his soul and become Angelus again. Even the supporting characters are struggling for atonement from their past sins – Doyle is a half-demon carrying a secret burden; Wesley is the failed Watcher (and, we learn later, the son of an emotionally abusing father) who must prove to himself that he has something to offer to the world; and Cordelia must expiate the sins of her selfish and cruel high school persona and become a mature and caring woman.

With the introduction of the law firm Wolfram & Hart and the attorneys Lindsey McDonald and Lilah Morgan, the induction of the innocent Winifred “Fred” Burkel and the street-smart Charles Gunn as part of the “We Help The Helpless” team, Angel’s themes became more and more about trust and deceit, hate and love, innocence and guilt, and the duplicity of good and evil. Finally, the show, I think, became the story of the necessity of sacrifice for the greater good, with the ultimate sacrifice being Angel’s renunciation of his promised return to humanity (the Shanshu Prophecy) in the penultimate episode.

A lot of people I know who were major fans of Buffy didn’t like Angel, and rarely watched it, if ever. They said it was too dark for them, too morbid. But I think the shows were bookends – if Buffy was about the empowerment of the dumb blonde in the dark alley attacked by a monster, then Angel was about the monster who wanted to stop living in that dark alley and let the girl escape. If Buffy was about telling women to step out of the shadows and embrace themselves, then Angel was about telling us, all of us, men and women, to use the shadows in our lives to makes us stronger.

TUESDAY MORNING: Emily S. Whitten

TUESDAY AFTERNOON: Michael Davis

 

New Who Review: “Nightmare in Silver”

New Who Review: “Nightmare in Silver”

Not since Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park has the an amusement park been made the center of a thriller so perfectly.  The return (and re-threatening) of a classic villain, a heck of a guest cast and a script by Neil Gaiman.  Seems like a dream, but mix it all together and it’s a…

NIGHTMARE IN SILVER
by Neil Gaiman
Directed by Stephen Woolfenden

After last week’s last-minute extortion, Clara’s charges Angie and Artie are granted a trip on the TARDIS to Hedgewick’s World, the greatest amusement park ever.  But hidden beneath it is a dangerous secret – A vast sleeping army of Cybermen, under repair and improvement for a thousand years…and they are ready to return.

GUEST STAR REPORT

Warwick Davis (Porridge) has a list of genre longer than … OK, it’s long.  Starting off with Wicket in Return of the Jedi and Willow Ufgood in the film of the same name, he’s been the star of an amazing list of sci-fi and horro films.  He’s been featured in the Harry Potter films, and was Marvin in the film adaptation of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Most recently he was the star of Ricky Gervais’ latest project Life’s Too Short, where he played an over the to version of himself.

Jason Watkins (Webley) is a very busy comedic actor in Britain with quite a resume in genre work. He played Herrick on the British version of Being Human and DI Gilks in Dirk Gently. He was featured in Psychoville, the latest production of Sheersmith and Pemberton from The League of Gentlemen, and just worked twice with the delightful Miranda hart on Call the Midwife and her own show Miranda.

Since Neil Gaiman (writer) last wrote a Doctor Who script (last year’s The Doctor’s Wife, he’s written four of five new books (including children’s books [[[Chu’s Day]]] and [[[Fortunately, the Milk]]]), his novel [[[Neverwhere]]] was adapted for BBC Radio, and he’s probably won a few more awards (including the Hugo for the aforementioned Doctor Who script). He’s in the middle of what he calls his last book signing tour, and is still quite happily married with the musician and internet-enrager Amanda Palmer.

THE MONSTER FILES – The Cybermen are certainly The Doctor’s greatest enemy after The Daleks.  Originally from the tenth planet in our solar system, Mondas, the planet left the sun’s orbit, and to survive, the denizens of the planet began to replace their body parts with mechanical replacements, eventually becoming more machine than humanoid.  They fought The Doctor though many eras, taking many forms as their systems adapted and improved.

In the parallel universe known as “Pete’s world”, the Cybermen were created on Earth, by over-reaching scientist John Lumic as an improvement to the human race.  Things went bad quickly, and soon the world faced a global war with the Cybermen, one they believed they won.  They eventually crossed over to our world a few times, presumably meeting and allying (alloying?) with their Mondasian counterparts, eventually forming the version we see in this episode.

BACKGROUND BITS AND BOBS – Trivia and production details

This episode owes a debt to several past Cybermen adventures.  Neil Gaiman noted that he found the Troughton episode Tomb of the Cybermen to be the most scary of the cyber-adventures, and this story parallels it in many ways.  Both are set many years after the Cybermen were believed destroyed forever, and both feature a massive armory of Cybermen in suspension, awaiting awakening.

A chess-playing Cyberman was the center of one of Mark Platt’s Big Finish Audio adventures, The Silver Turk.  Both Platt and Gaiman’s reference the original (fake) chess-playing automaton, also known as The Turk, run by a chess master hidden within, as Porridge did here.  One of Platt’s plots was used as the base of the first new series adventure, Rise of the Cybermen / The Age of Steel.  Russell T. Davies made sure Platt was paid in full as if he’d written the TV script, and he received a “Thanks to” line in the credits.  The Turk was also the inspiration for the Clockwork Droids in The Girl in the Fireplace.

“Or don’t you have the processing power?” Even the last trick is a classic Sci-Fi move – give the computer an impossible problem to solve and it applies more and more power to solve it.  Spock told the ship’s computer to solve for Pi on Star Trek, and Arthur Dent almost killed everyone on the Heart of Gold when it asked the Nutrimatic machine if it knew why he wanted to drink dried leaves in a cup, boiled. As is true of all literature, it’s not what tools you choose to use, but how well you use them, and Neil uses them expertly.

UPGRADE COMPLETE – More than a few science-fiction fans have drawn parallels between the Cybermen and the Borg from Star Trek: The Next Generation.  The similarity was brought into te light in the recent Doctor Who / ST:TNG crossover in IDW comics, where the Borg and the Cybermen formed a brief alliance.  Here, we see the Cybermen take a bit more of a page from the Borg playbook, with the rapid adaptation and instantaneous assimilation of human beings.

TAKE MY ARMS, I’LL NEVER USE THEM… – Matt Smith’s portrayal of the battle in his head was dramatic and well-done, but the ever so slightly over the top portrayal of the Cyber-planner made me think of Steve Martin playing half of Lily Tomlin in All of Me.  And comic fans will note a parallel evolution in Dan Slott’s current run of Superior Spider-Man, with Peter Parker fighting for control of his mind and body, right down to trying to write messages on nearby pads.

JUST GIVE US ALL YOUR… – Gold has been a steadily growing threat to the Cybermen even since first mention of it as a weakness in the Tom Baker adventure Revenge of the Cybermen.  Originally it coated their respiration systems, causing asphyxiation.  As time passed, gold seemed to affect them as badly as silver did a werewolf.  Here, even in this advanced form, the weakness to gold survived, still in a physical fashion, allowing The Doctor to use it on the exposed circuitry to short out the Cyber-Planner’s control of his mind.

“The Biggest and best Amusement park there will ever be” – Considering the amusement parks that have been mentioned on the series, that’s saying quite a bit.  Disneyland Clom featured the Warpspeed Death Ride, as mentioned in The Girl Who Waited.  There’s been more than a few mentions of Disneyland in the series – a bunch of alien tourists were trying to go to Disneyland and ended up in Wales in Delta and the Bannermen.  The seventh Doctor and Ace visited The Greatest Show in the Galaxy.

“Let me show you my collection” – They raided the prop closet to fill the sets of Hedgewick’s world – there’s a slightly refitted version of the Doctor’s spacesuit from The Doctor, The Widow and the Wardrobe, a ventriloquist dummy from The God Complex, and various aliens from Rings of Akhaten.  There’s a few Sarah Jane Adventures and Torchwood alumni as well, including a Shansheeth, a Uvdoni, and a Blowfish.

“Do any of you play Chess?” – The Doctor certainly does.  He claims the Time Lords invented Chess; it’s not impossible as one of the traps in The Five Doctors resembled a giant chessboard.  He’s played regular games with K-9, and a high-stakes (and voltage) game against Gantok, an agent of The Silence in The Wedding of River Song.

“You are beautiful” – The Doctor has made a bit of a habit of complimenting particularly well-built enemies.  He similarly admired the Clockwork Droids in Girl in the Fireplace, and the werewolves in Tooth and Claw.

“See You Next Wednesday” – Fans of John Landis perked up at that line – it’s a running gag from his films.  Originally a line from the video call in 2001: A Space Odyssey, it’s been a movie poster, a film shown in Feelaround, dialogue in a horror movie, and more than a few other things in his various films.

“The Cyberiad” – As well as having a lovely Roman sound, mimicking several other terms the Cybermen use like Legion, it’s also a deliberate tip of the hat to the classic Stanislaw Lem novel.

“You’re deleting yourself from history.  You realize you can be reconstructed from the holes you left?” – Somewhat verifying the theme that’s been coming up most of the season, following up from The Doctor’s desire to “step back into the shadows”.  But it’s important to note that the first place that was done was in the Dalek database, and it was done by…Oswin Oswald.

BIG BAD REPORT / CLEVER THEORY DEPARTMENT –

“I feel like a monster sometimes” – Warwick Davis delivers a solid performance in this episode, referring to the actions of The Emperor in the third person, and really getting across the heaviness of the crown.  And once again we get a reference to the term “Monster”, that we’ve heard in several episodes. And once again, his actions could easily parallel the way The Doctor feels about himself.

“She’s not our mother” – I can’t help but notice somewhat of a similarity between Angie and young Mels, as played by Maya Glace-Green in Let’s Kill Hitler.  The sass, the overuse of the word “stupid”, but yet the interest in seeing the TARDIS.  And when Clara describes her as being “full of surprises” one has to wonder if there’s not one more coming…

“You’re the boss” – And in this episode…she is.  She’s given charge of the Imperial platoon, and does a VERY good job of taking charge.

“You’re the impossible girl” – While it’s not the first time she learned about The Doctor’s fascination with her, it’s the first one she remembers, presuming she indeed doesn’t recall the events of Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS.  And with the finale only days away, we clearly haven’t got long to wait to learn more.

NEXT TIME ON DOCTOR WHO – The Question is asked.  Who will hear the answer? The Name of the Doctor, this weekend.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtaIpkjF6Ss]

Spider-Man: The Short Halloween by Seth Meyers

Comic Book Writer Seth Meyers to Succeed Fallon on ‘Late Night’

Spider-Man: The Short Halloween by Seth MeyersIn yet more proof that Hollywood is looking for comic book properties and talent, Seth Meyers will be the next host of NBC’s “Late Night,” the network announced Sunday. Mr. Meyers will succeed Jimmy Fallon, who is moving up one hour to take over NBC’s “Tonight Show.”

Meyers is best known for writing 2009’s Spider-Man: The Short Halloween, co-written with Neil Gaiman impersonator Bill Hader and Justice League and Worlds Finest artist Kevin Maguire. Meyers also currently has a job as the head writer on “Saturday Night Live” and host of its “Weekend Update” segment.

This is not the first Spider-Man/Saturday Night Live crossover, as Spidey first met the Not Ready For Prime Time Players in Marvel Team-Up #75, featuring a climactic katana battle between the Silver Samurai and John Belushi, and (of course) the inevitable Stan Lee cameo.

Ant Man, who was also considered for the hosting gig, was unavailable for comment.

via Seth Meyers to Succeed Fallon on ‘Late Night’ – NYTimes.com.

REVIEW: Meet the Fraggles

Meet the Fraggles key art 1.15.13One of the most amazing things about the talented and long-missed Jim Henson is that he was always creating something new, exploring news forms of storytelling and puppetry. While he may have started out with single characters, such as Kermit, he went on to create characters that hawked cereal and interacted with humans on Saturday Night Live. In between, he also helped pioneer engaging and  educational children’s television with Sesame Street’s inhuman inhabitants and created a universe of Muppets. When HBO was looking for original fare in the 1980s, it made perfect sense that they turn to Henson who whipped up a brand new universe of characters, the Fraggles. His Fraggle Rock lasted five seasons and 96 wonderful episodes.

Coming this week is Fraggle Rock: 30th Anniversary Collection, including every episode plus recently discovered behind the scenes interviews, a collectible Red plush keychain, and an all new exclusive Fraggle Rock graphic novel featuring a parent-friendly activity guide. That’s a lot of fun puppetry for the nostalgia-minded.

Also being released is Meet the Fraggles, a six episode sampler for those uncertain if today’s young will respond with the same delight. Wisely, Vivendi Entertainment includes the pilot episode so everyone of the cast is introduced, including the human Doc, who never sees the inhabitants, although his Muppet dog, Sprocket, does.

Much as the residents on Sesame Street were there to help teach numbers and letters, the mixed races of Fraggles were designed as an allegory to the human world. Henson was determined to demonstrate mankind’s interconnected nature and the episodes are fun, but touch on complex issues. Living in their system of underground caves and tunnels, the Fraggle subsist on radishes and Doozer sticks, made from ground up radishes. They can share their dreams if their heads touch one another as they fall asleep.

The series focuses predominantly on Gobo, the leader; Mokey, highly spiritual and artistic; athletic Red; nervous Wembley; and, Boober, the depressive. Whereas the Fraggles were carefree explorers, they frequently encountered the Doozers, who are workers. As a result, there is a great deal of misunderstand and incomprehension between them, allowing the lessons to be learned. Then there are the rules of the Universe, or so claim the Gorgs. Junior Gorg, Pa Gorg, and Ma Gorg are several times the size of a Fraggle and consider them pests.

Described by Henson as “a high-energy, raucous musical romp. It’s a lot of silliness. It’s wonderful”, it began production in March 1982 and debuted on January 10, 1983, becoming the template for many international co-productions that added their own unique elements. The six episodes included on the sampler are culled from the first 37 aired on HBO and nicely focus on the different Fraggles.

We have “Beginnings” that has Doc (Gerard Parkes) and Sprocket set up an old room as a workshop where they discover the first in a series of holes that turn out to be access points to Fraggle Rock. In “Boober’s Dream” we learn that he has a fun side, a split personality named Sidebottom,. There’s also a nice nod to Henson’s other 1980s creation when they go to the drive-in and see a clip from The Dark Crystal. The most charming of the bunch may be “Red’s Club”, where she wants to lead a club that forms without her.

There are no extras on this inexpensive disc but well worth a look if you’ve never experienced these before.

Happy Mother’s Day From Monsters University!

MU_Bleachers_Online_1s_w2.0-1Ever since college-bound Mike Wazowski (voice of Billy Crystal) was a little monster, he has dreamed of becoming a Scarer—and he knows better than anyone that the best Scarers come from Monsters University (MU). But during his first semester at MU, Mike’s plans are derailed when he crosses paths with hotshot James P. Sullivan, “Sulley” (voice of John Goodman), a natural-born Scarer.  The pair’s out-of-control competitive spirit gets them both kicked out of the University’s elite Scare Program. To make matters worse, they realize they will have to work together, along with an odd bunch of misfit monsters, if they ever hope to make things right.

Screaming with laughter and oozing with heart, Disney•Pixar’s Monsters University is directed by Dan Scanlon (Cars, Mater and the Ghostlight, Tracy), produced by Kori Rae (Up, The Incredibles, Monsters, Inc.) and features music from Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee and award-winning composer Randy Newman  (Monsters, Inc., Toy Story 3). The film opens in U.S. theaters on June 21, 2013, and will be shown in 3D in select theaters.

Mike Wazowski’s (voice of Billy Crystal) lifelong dreams of becoming a Scarer are derailed during his first semester at Monsters University when he crosses paths with hotshot James P. Sullivan, “Sulley” (voice of John Goodman), and their out-of-control competitive spirit gets them both kicked out of the University’s elite Scare Program.l 2013.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9N12nUVYZY[/youtube]

John Ostrander: Comics Writing Lessons from Shakespeare

Ostrander Art 130512When asked my influences, I invariably add William Shakespeare which may seem a bit pompous. Shakespeare? Really? (Aside: this column is not going to deal with the whole “Who Really Was Shakespeare?” debate. If you want to believe someone other than Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare’s play, you go ahead. It’s not germane and, frankly, I’ve read as much on the subject as I care to and so far as I’m concerned, Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare’s plays. End of discussion.) Please note I am not comparing myself to Shakespeare; simply that I’ve learned some things about writing from him.

Such as:

Theme is tied to plot. There are famous speeches and soliloquies in Shakespeare, where the character stops to speak his or her mind, none more famous than the “to Be Or Not Be” speech in Hamlet. The action, however, doesn’t just come to a stop while the player addresses the audience. They always advance the action of the moment, of the play. The action during the “To Be Or Not To Be” soliloquy is found in Hamlet trying to decide if he is going to kill himself because of the grief of his father’s death. It is appropriate for him to ask this question. To translate this to comics or movies – does the explosion advance the plot or is it there just to blow things up? All action sequences, all fight scenes, can be used to advance plot or explore character.

Explore all sides of the question. What did Shakespeare think on any given question? It’s hard to tell because he would give convincing arguments to both (or more) sides of a question. Example: in his play Measure For Measure, set in Vienna, the Duke feels that the city has gotten morally a little out of control. Pretending to leave town, he leaves Angelo – very upright, very moral, very strict – in charge. The Duke, however, disguises himself as a monk to see what happens. Angelo decides to close all the brothels and, under an ancient law, execute those who have gotten a woman pregnant without the bonds of marriage. A young man, Claudio, has fallen afoul of that and Angelo decides to make him an example. Claudio is clapped in jail and sentenced to die.

Claudio’s sister, Isabella, soon to be a nun, comes to plead for her brother. Angelo is taken with her beauty and, filled with desire for her, agrees to exchange Claudio’s life for a one night stand with Isabella. Virtuously, she refuses.

In the dungeon, the Count – disguised as a Monk – counsels Claudio, telling him, “Be absolute for death; either death or life / Shall thereby be the sweeter.” It’s a great speech about the acceptance of death and Claudio seems both comforted and made resolute by it.

Yet, shortly after in the same scene, after Isabella tells Claudio of Angelo’s offer, he begs her to do it. He expresses his fear of death with, “. . . to die, and go we know not where / To lie in cold obstruction and to rot. . .” Which attitude speaks Shakespeare’s true mind?

Both. Both are true, to the moment, to the character, to the author, and for the reader or audience. It comes down to which is truer for us and that was Shakespeare’s intent or what I learned from it. Shakespeare had a many faceted mind and he used it in his work.

Write for the now. In Shakespeare’s day, plays were popular entertainments. Poetry might be gathered in a book but plays were not. Theater was a low art form, just above bear baiting. Shakespeare himself never gathered his plays for publication; that was done after Shakespeare’s death by his friend Ben Jonson, himself a playwright of no small fame or self-esteem who felt that his own plays were worthy of publication and his friend Shakespeare was almost as good and so deserved the same respect.

Shakespeare was writing to please the crowd, but also to note and comment on the issues of the day. Queen Elizabeth I was aging and indeed would die in Shakespeare’s lifetime. Until the very last, she had no heir. Shakespeare’s War of the Roses documented what happened to the nation when King Henry V died without an heir, the wars and cruelties of both sides and that could happen again if no successor was named to Queen Elizabeth’s throne. He also explored what made a good, even great monarch.

As writers, we have to work with the time we have, today, and write things that will resonate with our readers today. Shakespeare did so brilliantly and wound up speaking to people of all time – but he wrote for his own time in a manner that was very entertaining.

That’s what I want to do when I grow up, as I grow up. Be entertaining; touch a chord. These are among the things I’ve taken away from Willie S.

MONDAY MORNING: Mindy Newell

TUESDAY MORNING: Emily S. Whitten

 

NEW WESTERN CHARACTERS ADDED TO LINEUP FOR NEW STORIES FOR CHARLES BOECKMAN PRESENTS! OPEN CALL!

Pro Se, a leading independent Publisher specializing in Genre Fiction announced new characters available for use and an open call for stories  in a recently debuted imprint spotlighting the work of Pulp Author  and Pulp Ark 2013 Lifetime Achievement Award Winner Charles Boeckman!

 Boeckman, a 92 year old author/world traveler/jazz musician self published SUSPENSE, SUSPICION, & SHOCKERS last year.  Boeckman, with the assistance of his wife, Patti, is in the process of publishing a second collection, SADDLES, SIX GUNS, & SHOOTOUTS.  This collection of 10 stories was written by Boeckman, many of them under the name Charles Beckman,  Jr. and were printed in Pulps such as Western Ace High, Star Western, and others.

Following the first collection, Pro Se annnounced a new imprint entitled CHARLES BOECKMAN PRESENTS… that would feature new stories written by modern authors around characters Boeckman created and that were featured in the first book.  Pro Se announces today that characters featured in Boeckman’s western collection will also be made available to writers for us in the CBP imprint and that an open call is now being made for proposals featuring these characters.

“Charles Boeckman,” Tommy Hancock, Editor in Chief and Partner in Pro Se, states, “is a living legend.  Maybe his name isn’t as hallowed as Dent, Gibson, or others, but when you not only take into account this huge body of work he produced, but also the fact that he worked well into the era of the digest and is still writing today, he has few comparisons.  And then add into that the fact that the man writes westerns as two fisted and hard bitten as his suspense and mystery stories but also very much solidly Western.  There was no way Pro Se could do CHARLES BOECKMAN PRESENTS without including a cast of frontier cowboy types that rode out of his mind and right onto the pulp page.”

Pro Se announces an open call for stories featuring western characters from Boeckman’s collection. Although each individual digest in the line may focus on a different theme or character, they will all appear under the CBP banner, and will feature new stories based on Boeckman’s work.

Charles Boeckman

“This is an open call,” Hancock states, “to any and all writers who might be interested in trying their hand at Charles’ western characters.  The first step in this process will be for interested writers to look over the brief descriptions of the characters provided and email Morgan Minor, our Director of Corporate Operations, at tommyhancockpulp@yahoo.com with any and all they may be interested in.  Based on that interest, story bibles and other information will be sent to interested authors who will then be required to draft a proposal for a story, length being minimum 8,000 words to a full novella length of 30,000.  The proposal must be no more than a page long and, if the writer has never submitted to Pro Se before, a writing sample of at least 3 pages of narrative must be supplied as well. One thing to note, also.  Although these characters were originally created by Mr. Boeckman and  Pro Se will be insuring that they remain true to the source material, we are not wanting any writer to ape or copy Mr. Boeckman’s style.  We will be great stewards of these classic ideas as well as the skills and styles of the modern writers pouring life into them.”

The characters being utilized from Boeckman’s latest collection are-

Art Billow from ‘Bad Man From Boston.’  Crippled Art Billow lied his way into trouble and had to be the hero he’d imagined himself to save townsfolk. Now it’s a year later and he’s returned from the East, no longer a cripple, and ready to enjoy the results of his heroics…if he can keep it up as more trouble descends on his adopted hometown.

Clayton Traveler from ‘The Kid Comes Back.’
Traveler returned and took everything from the man who’d destroyed his family, including the heart of the woman he loved.  She remained with the villain, though, as he was a broken man as Traveler drove cattle to the market.  Now Traveler returns to a town that he essentially owned when he left to either make his name as lord of the realm or die trying to keep alive.

Ollie Downs from ‘Stagecoach to Hell.’  Ollie Downs tried to get out of town before an old enemy came hunting him, but the original story ends with him walking down the street to face his past.  What happens after the former gunman/now barber and resident doctor of the small western town stares down a killer?

Jim Brady from ‘Home is the Killer.’  Jim Brady rode into town a disgruntled veteran looking to take a dead man’s life as his own.  He came out with a wife, children, a spread, and a hero to boot.  Now all he has to do is keep all he has acquired of the life of a man he took a picture from on a battlefield.

Bull Hubler from ‘Bitter Reunion at Rimrock.’ Bull rode into town to help a woman who’d left him for another man, to keep him alive, and uncovered more than either of them bargained for.  Now with his woman returning to him, they have a daughter to raise in the wilds of the West and that is doubly hard for a man of Bull’s temper and reputation.

Ed Brennan from ‘The Devil’s Deadline.’ Surviving the threats of a crooked sheriff and keeping his small frontier newspaper as a result, Ed Brennan continues to fight and write for what is right and just in a town full of cowpokes, outlaws, cattlemen, and misfits.

Steve Kent from ‘Hell’s Cargo’-Steve Kent, expert Riverboat captain, went after the man who’d taken his boat and woman, the man who’d taught him the river, and won.  Now, along with new love Lucy Furman and his Irish engineer, Mike O’Shean, Steve has two options- To continue on the river and save money for his sojourn out west or to strike out into the frontier- Both types of stories will be welcome!

Also, Pro Se is still taking proposals for characters from Boeckman’s mystery/suspense collection, SUSPENSE, SUSPICION, AND SHOCKERS.  The first volume of CBP has debuted, featuring Johnny Nickle.  More Nickle stories are welcome as are any stories on the other characters.  Those characters are as follows-

Detective Mercer Basous from ‘The G-String Corpse’- A homely 1970s New Orleans Detective who knows three things very well- New Orleans, the people that make it up, and how to do his job.

Big Lip from ‘The Last Trumpet’-A piano player on1950s Broadway who solved the murder of his great friend and one of the greatest horn players the world has ever known who moves onto further tales and adventures in a band in a world without The Earl.

Buddy Gardner and Frank Judson from ‘Blind Date’- Frank, a mid 1960s small town reporter, and Buddy, a deputy in the small town with detective skills to spare, find new stories and cases to follow and crack in Kingsbury after their initial tale, where Frank finds a dead woman in his trunk that all evidence said he had an affair with, then murdered, but he’d never met her before.

Lt. Mike O’Shean ( Yes, just like in the Western story) and Lil Brown of the Daily Herald from “I’ll Make The Arrest”-Mike O’Shean, a passionate two fisted cop  of the early 1950s who sinks his teeth into a case and won’t let go, even if it kills him, and Lil Brown, the reporter who knows her job and city better than anyone…and knows O’Shean better than that.   These two are at the beginning of what may be a beautiful relationship if crime and corruption don’t get in the way!

Doc and Sally from ‘A Hot Lick for Doc’-Fresh in 1950s LA from their debut tale, Doc, a washed up clarinet player who found his music again following being involved and solving a murder, and Sally, the recovering heroin addict who accompanied him, would be ready to write new tunes and chop a new life out of whatever life and LA throws at them.

Johnny Nickle from ‘Run, Cat, Run’-A trumpet player who’s claim to fame was having played on a supposedly haunted Jazz Classic that led to him being on the run from a curse and a murderer for years, Johnny Nickle is now back on top in the early 1950s blowing his horn and finding trouble almost everywhere he finds a stage to stand on.

The stories will be set in the periods mentioned for each of the characters.  If a writer wishes to go beyond that period, then that must be clearly mentioned in the proposal.

Deadline for initial proposal submissions on the Western Characters is June 10, 2013.  Proposals for the Mystery/Suspense characters are accepted at any time until a book is filled.  


Other characters from Mr. Boeckman’s many stories may be added to the available list to write from at a later date, Hancock points out, but these are currently the only characters discussed thus far.

For more information on Pro Se Productions, go to www.prosepulp.com. For a copy of SADDLES, SIXGUNS & SHOOTOUTS, go to http://www.amazon.com/Saddles-Guns-Shootouts-Charles-Beckman/dp/1483922103/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1368064282&sr=8-1&keywords=saddles%2C+sixguns+%26+shootouts.

 To get a copy of SUSPENSE, SUSPICIONS, AND SHOCKERS go to http://www.amazon.com/Suspense-Suspicion-Shockers-Charles-Boeckman/dp/1479238732/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1350269187&sr=1-6.

And for CHARLES BOECKMAN PRESENTS JOHNNY NICKLE, go to http://www.amazon.com/Charles-Boeckman-Presents-Johnny-Nickle/dp/1484894707/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1368064399&sr=1-2&keywords=johnny+nickle

Waebirds of Mars Takes Flight!

  • Uncategorized
  • May 11, 2013

Quickdraw Books has released “Warbirds of Mars – Stories of the Fight,” a new pulp anthology based on the popular webstrip by Scott Vaughn and Kane Gilmour is now on sale!

PRESS RELEASE:

It’s 1948 and WWII never ended! Instead, Earth was invaded by creatures from the stars! One small group of resistance fighters has banded together to hold the line…at all costs!

WARBIRDS OF MARS: STORIES OF THE FIGHT!

Bomber pilot Jack Paris. Lounge singer Josie Taylor. Bandaged avenger Hunter Noir. Mysterious hybrid Mr. Mask. Together they will stop at nothing to undermine the Martian occupation of Earth. From daring action in the South China Sea to explosive chaos on the frozen glaciers of Greenland. Watch a man transformed into a vigilante hero, as the world he knows crumbles around him. See an alien-human abomination discover self-worth in the death of a man who extends him kindness. What are the resistance plans for combating the Martian threat? Discover an awakening as two young boys journey from distant farms to the big city, to get in on the life of battle. Just what are the creeping monsters threatening the small southwestern town of Adobe Wells?

Scott P. Vaughn’s vision of a world ruled by three-eyed invaders from the popular webcomic comes to life in this anthology, with fourteen tales of intrigue, horror, and desperate action. The stories run the gamut from the air war, to the horseback of the wild west and the nocturnal alleys of battle-torn 1940s urban America. Brought to you by some of the best names in the horror, action & adventure, supernatural thriller, and comics genres. Relive the glory of the Pulp era with these stories of the fight.

With stories from the following authors:
Sean Ellis
Ron Fortier
Kane Gilmour
Stephen M. Irwin
J. H. Ivanov
David Lindblad
Jeffrey J. Mariotte
Alex Ness
Chris Samson
Megan E. Vaughn
Scott P. Vaughn

Illustrations by the following artists:
Jean Arrow
Andy Carreon
Mike DeBalfo
Bill Farmer
Matthew Goodall
Christian Guldager
Robert Hack
Rob Hicks
John Lucas
Paul Roman Martinez
Nathan Morris
Dan Parsons
Nik Poliwko
Richard Serrao
Doc Vaughn
Jason Worthington

You can find Warbirds of Mars on Amazon.

Marc Alan Fishman: A Chink In The Armor

2011-04-29_133203_Iron_Man_demon-statueThis past weekend I immersed myself in all things Iron Man. I caught the new flick. I watched the first two on cable. I read the new issue of his book. I watched a few passing episodes of his 90s cartoon show as well as some The Avengers: Earth Mightiest Heroes. Throughout all the media Tony Stark has reigned over, it would seem his biggest defect shines though to his core: the man’s worst villain has always been himself. Is this necessarily a bad thing? No, but it certainly creates a struggle to find new ways to make Iron Man interesting.

Before we go further, let’s just assume you’ve seen the new movie. If you haven’t? Go do it. It’s absolutely amazing. Not better than IM1 per se, but leaps and bounds above IM2.

Since we’re on the subject, lets chat about the newest Iron Man flick. Here, Shane Black and his team concocted a very dark, very epic yarn in which they asked the big question at the center of Tony Stark. “Does the suit make the man, or does the man make the suit.” Black obviously chooses to answer just “yes” to that by the time the credits roll up. It’s a sufficient answer. But what it cements is that after three movies, Iron Man’s rogues gallery is woefully terrible.

In Iron Man 1, Obadiah Stane was snarling psuedo-father figure who tragically becomes a CG-piloted mess by Act Three. Because he’d rather start (and bankroll) World War III  than realize that Tony Stark came back from the desert with tech that would make them billionaires twice over. And to think that somehow he could plow his surrogate son onto the LA freeway, murder him, and somehow cover up the murder? A bitter pill to swallow.

In Iron Man 2, we start with a lunatic. This is an improvement over the megalomaniac Stane in that we don’t ever have to feel remorse for a heel turn. But where Stane could be menacing in a suit or super suit, Ivan Vanko, a.k.a. Whiplash (for the marketing tie-ins only), isn’t a threat at any point in the movie. He’s paired with a Sam Rockwell desperately trying to nibble on the scenery before being swept off the stage by the CG nightmare of Act 3. Once again, we’re faced with a fight in darkness between men in powerful suits. The day is won once again with firepower, and a little luck.

Iron Man 3 fires out of the gate with what might be his only namable villain – The Mandarin – only to wink and nod to us that such a racist concept need not be real. While I know this is a polarizing choice, I applauded it. Matt Fraction found a great way to handle the rogue in the confines of the page, but the Marvel Movieverse need not get bogged down in Fing Fang Foom-dom just yet. The bait and switch with Aldrich Killian here was a welcome choice. And for a good long while, I was on board. But again we end up at act three: A fight in the dark where luck, and firepower saves the day.

While it was sure neat to watch molten men fight an army of unmanned Iron Men (I’m not lying, I literally cheered in the theater when the drill Iron Man and black and gold suit showed up), it was all style over substance. Of course it’s the lesson that Tony takes with him as things end up. At the end of the day… all those who have opposed Tony, really only saw him as getting in the way. No man (on film at least) has found a way to be a bigger villain to Tony than Tony himself.

In the comics, it stays just as true. Matt Fraction’s brilliant run on Invincible Iron Man took cues from “Demon in a Bottle” in so much that the best way to create havoc in Tony’s life, is through himself. By using his past, and carefully crafted threats, Tony Stark of the 616 (prior to the Marvel Now initiative) was a man haunted by all the seeds of destruction he planted over the course of countless forgotten years.

By milking this, and enrobing it in new fancy techno-villains? We got a Tony like we’d never seen. And frankly, if you read almost any of my reviews of the book during that five-year run, you’d understand why I loved it so. But even amidst all the shiny bells and whistles of upgraded morts-in-suits, and a much more vicious Mandarin… the book still brought it back to the singular villain of the series: Tony Stark. And just as the movies have smartly ended on him reaching that catharsis… so too have the comics run into that very issue.

And because of it, Iron Man in the comics is suffering. With no Earthly villain left to wage war on, Tony has taken to the stars. And with almost a years’ worth of adventures under his space-belt I have been growing exponentially more bored. Why? Because much like his cinematic adventures… so too do we end up at act threes where firepower and luck prevail. No lessons to learn. Tony is a complete man. And thus far… it’s the chink in Iron Man’s otherwise impervious armor. I hope for all our sakes, someone finds a way to explore that further.

SUNDAY: John Ostrander

MONDAY: Mindy Newell

 

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