Black Pulp edited Tommy Hancock, Gary Phillips & Morgan Minor, Pro Se Productions 2013

It is appropriate that this is the first book to be reviewed here.  As a Pro Se author I'd heard about Black Pulp and as I listened to podcasts various writers spoke about this anthology and a lot of what was said about this anthology gave me food for throught as an author and creator.  I'll talk about that some more in my next post but today's post is about the anthology.

Damn this is a fine anthology. Not surprisingly given the title the unifying link between the stories is that they must have black central character, either from Africa or be African- Americans.

If you went into this expecting a dozen Shaft knock-offs expect to be disappointed, as this book is populated by pirates, cowboys, occult detectives, a hip hip dynamic duo, space adventurers, aviators, soldiers of fortune, jungle lords and criminal masterminds.

This anthology is not just equal opportunity pulp but rather it is a collection of great pulp stories that have black characters.   From the introduction by Walter Mosley to the last story The Hammer of Norgil each piece is really good.  I found that Ron Fortier's The Lawman was especially moving considering that the main character Bass Reeves was a real Texas lawman who has been unsung by history just for the colour of his skin.

The characters in this anthology deserve to be just as much a part of the public consciousness as Indiana Jones, Luke Skywalker, Wyatt Earp and Tarzan.

This a collection of great new characters I'd love to see more of and great pulp stories that I will no doubt reread again.

Welcome to my new blog

Hello and welcome to the latest version of my blog.  It was formerly hosted over at Opera Blogs but with the decision to close those down I decided to move the blog over to Blogger.

As you can see I've changed the name of the blog from The Serial Vigilante Blog to Brad's pulpy blog.  Recently, I've felt that the scope of the Serial Vigilante Blog was somewhat too limited focusing as it was on the characters who appeared in the paperback racks of the 70s and 80s.  I'd been reading and thinking about those characters for nearly a decade and was starting to feel a little burnt out.  I found that my interests and tastes had expanded somewhat beyond that framework.

Serial Vigilantes will always be part of this blog but I want to expand beyond that especially with my involvement in the New Pulp Movement.  I was always able to justify that there was some tangential connection when I posted about New Pulp, Classic Pulp,or even Pulp Precursors (the amount of justification I felt the need to make for Don Pendleton's introduction to a Sherlock Holmes story).  With the change to Brad's Pulpy Blog if I want to post about something pulpy I can.  Something I may not have posted about on the old blog such as Katy Perry's jungle girl as seen in the videoclip for Roar is fair game here.

Hopefully for you the reader this means a more interesting blogging experience with a greater variety of material and more frequent blogging from me.

What becomes of the material on the old opera blogs?  Well I've tried to import them across but for whatever reason it hasn't worked so I'll be grabbing some of the posts off there and reposting here. Some will be posted as is (the two interviews being the first to come to mind)  others may be rewritten and new photos added but I'll make it obvious what is being reposted and what is new.