Adventureman #2 by Matt Fraction and the Dodsons

 So we're back for issue 2 and when issue #1 ended insects were crawling all over our heroine's house and a beam of light or something shoots out of the house.

So what happened next?  Uh not sure.  What was the beam of light? No idea.

The issue opens in some sort of scary dimension where a voice with scary borders chastises Phaedra Phantom.  Phaedra was one of Adventureman's team and she is being held in this dimension by Adventureman's archnemesis Baron Bizarre and Baroness Bizarre.  It's implied that she escaped and visited Claire in the first issue but that's not clear.  Baron Bizarre is made of bugs. There's a hint that if people remember Baron Bizarre it gives him more power.

That interlude ends and Claire and her son Tommy are walking to school.  Tommy is reading the Adventureman guidebook from last issue.  Tommy advises that they gave the address of Adventure Worldwide - Adventureman's headquarters.  Like Doc Savage's 86th floor headquarters the building is never identified in the pulps, but they give the address in this guidebook.

(This came from Philip Jose Farmer's Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life where Farmer made a confincing case that Doc's Headquarters was the 86th floor of the Empire State Building, a fact never revealed in the pulps) 

Tommy has to race to school and Claire has an appointment with two of her sisters.  One is baking souffles and the other arrives late, makes noise and ruins the souffles and bugs crawl out of them. Could they be connected to Baron Bizarre and the bugs from last issue?

During the exchange with her sisters, Claire is reading the guidebook and the test is in white writing accross the page.  In at least one point, one of the sister's talks to Claire and her speech bubble covers the text - I get that it shows that this is interrupting the reading but it hides the words.  The white words also appear over the top of the panels even over lighter parts of the picture where the words are lost and impossible to read.  This happens several times in this issue and it is so annoying.

After the souffle incident, Claire decides to visit Adventure Worldwide - so she jumps on her vespa and  zips through the city.  She snatches a coffee from a cop and we discover that Claire Connell used to be an NYPD cop.  We have no idea why she stopped - it may be when she lost her hearing or when she had her son or someother reason.   2 pages about how cool Claire looks on the Vespa but just the hint about her past.

She gets to building and there's a giant art deco skyscraper there, that she doesn't remember being there before.  She texts her son in class for the street view of the address.  Tommy gets into trouble and can't respond.

Claire then accosts a passerby and he tells her that the building there is a dump.  Clearly Matt Fraction has seen the 1994 Shadow movie starring Alec Baldwin where Shiwan Khan hides an entire hotel which serves as his headquarters in a similar fashion - and Alec Baldwin accosts a passerby in the same fashion.

Claire walks to the door but there is no handle but she remembers how one of Adventureman's assistants first finds the building - another place with white writing where it gets lost in the image.  This time the information is important to the story. 

It turns out that Phaedra Phantom phases you thorugh the door - the place is in ruins but the security system still works as Phaedra warns before she disappears.  Claire immediately sets off the security system and has a fight with two robots where Claire uses brains and brawn to defeat them.  Claire takes the elevator to the top of building (shades of Doc Savage's flearun elevator) and calls out that she has the book.

We then skip to the family Friday night dinner - Tom is there but his mother isn't.  His grandfather is about to ask about Claire when she charges in with her shirt and pants torn (in a likely homage to covers to the 1960s Doc Savage reprints that featured Doc in a torn shirt) 

And the issue ends.

Argh, there is so much to like in this book but it frustrates me in so many ways.  It seems like there is information that we should be getting but aren't and transitions that aren't quite working for me.  

And the timing of events is confusing.  Every Friday night the family gathers for dinner.  This happens in issue 1.  What appears to be the next day, (Saturday) she gets the guidebook from Phaedra and that night the bugs over the house and the light.

But that can't be right as what appears to be the next day (Sunday) Claire is dropping her son to school - she visits her sister, visits Adventure Inc and then turns up late for Friday night dinner.    

But that timeline can't be right clearly she got the book on Thursday of that week, then took Tommy to school on Friday morning and spent the day at Adventure Inc.  but it's not clear.  I'm not even sure that the events of issue two take place the day after the end of issue 1. 

Let's see if issue 3 solves some of these issues.

   

Pulp Heroes: More Than Mortal & The Khan Dynasty by Wayne Reinagel

Originally published Tuesday, June 5, 2012 7:51:27 PM

I’ve chosen to review these two epics together because I read them closely together and for these two related novels, what I’ll say about one will mostly be repeated for the other.

I’m sure I’ve mentioned my love for Philip Jose Farmer’s A Feast Unknown in the past where Lord Grandith (a Tarzan stand in) and Doc Caliban (Doc Savage stand in) meet and discover some shocking revelations about their histories. Wayne Reinagel takes Farmer and goes beyond, throwing in some Wold Newton speculations for good measure and adding some of his own theories.

Both stories features analogues of many of hero pulps but focuses on Doc Titan (Doc Savage), The Darkness (The Shadow with a smidge of Marvel’s The Shroud), The Guardian (the Avenger) and The Scorpion (The Spider).

More than Mortal in essence is an epic adventure that reveals that Doc Titan, The Guardian and several other characters (or their analogues) are shown to have a connection in case that serves as grand finale for a number of pulp heroes – that’s not a spoiler as the opening of More Than Mortal is the death of one of minor pulp heroes.

The Kahn Dynasty is an earlier tale that serves as the semi prequel to The Avenger Justice Inc and a sequel to Doc Savage: Brand of the Werewolf (the introduction of Pat Savage) revealing more interconnections between the great heroes as an earlier adventure in the 1880’s impacted on our heroes today.

I enjoyed these two adventures and it was fun to read these as alternate versions of heroes I know and love with some surprising revelations.

If I had any complaints, Reinagel could do with some tighter editing – there is a tendency to reuse some of the phrasing. Two examples spring to mind from The Kahn Dynasty.

In one scene Pam Titan is packing her belongings to travel to New York and she describes her grandfather’s gun in detail to the friend helping her pack. A couple of chapters later, the story has Simon Titan getting the gun as a gift with nearly the same description.

In another scene Henry Jekyll is talking with his father and he thinks about their relationship, the point of view then changes to Jekyll’s father and he describes his relationship with his son in the exact same terms.

Crossovers Expanded Volumes 1 & 2 (2016) by Sean Levin published Meteor House

A few years back Win Scott Eckert published Crossovers: A Secret History of the Universe which made connections to many different characters through the links of crossovers. 

I reviewed these back on the old blog (which will have to be reposted here soon)  and found them to be excellent works that were well researched.  However, by its very nature such a work is incomplete - new crossover stories are written all the time and older ones await rediscovery.  Win handed the title of Crossover Chronicler to Sean Levin who after several years of work has published these two new volumes.

Levin has taken Win's format and built two new volumes that have the same breadth and scope of history as Win's works.  Indeed if all four volumes were to reedited into one giant sized telephone sized work I may have some trouble identifying which entries were by which author but this is a good thing it makes Crossovers Expanded feel like an organic outgrowth of the original volumes.

 Looking through both volumes I was frequently surprised by crossovers I was unaware of and pleased to see some familiar authors and names appear in this book.  Full disclosure, several of my stories are referenced in this work and Sean has done a great job at spotting the connections I have sprinkled through my stories. 

I bow to Sean's knowledge of pulp and adventure fiction.  I must also compliment the artwork that littered the work that provided a visual link to the works.  Keith Howell has done a great job on the covers illustrating several heroic archetypes.

As a fan of pulp and adventure fiction these are invaluable reference works.

Wold Newton Day: Death Comes to Pemberley (2014) TV mini-series

More by luck than good management the final episode of this miniseries aired on December 12 here in Australia so I sat down and binge watched all three episodes together on Wold Newton Day.

I'd heard of the P.D. James novel it was based on but I hadn't read it.  There are hints that someone was aware of Farmer's theories,  The Darcys have a son named Fitzwilliam after his father and during Wickham's trial there is mention of his service in the late 1790s which lines up with Farmer's dating

As a fan of the Colin Firth/Jennifer Ehle six episode Pride and Prejudice Miniseries from 1995, I was a little disappointed that the cast from that didn't return for this follow up but I can understand the difficulty with that given that Colin Firth seems to be in a heap of movies (especially excited for Kingsman: The Secret Service).

Matthew Rhys made a good Mr Darcy, older and wiser.  I wasn't as fond of Anna Maxwell Martin as Elizabeth Darcy, that comes more from the fact that I was madly in love with Jennifer Ehle than any problems with Martin's acting.  Jemma Coleman was a fun Lydia Wickham as was Matthew Goode as her husband.  And it was a pleasure to see Penelope Keith as Lady Catherine.

The idea of a murder in Pemberley isn't new (The Wild Hunstman by Win Scott Eckert, The six Mr & Mrs Darcy Mysteries by Carol Bebris) but I liked this story bringing Lydia and Mr Wickham back into the lives of the Darcys.  There was an extra darkness to some of the characters from the original novel but the events of the intervening years makes sense.

I also liked the new characters, Henry Alveston, a suitor for Georgiana Darcy and Sir Selwyn Hardcastle the magistrate and coroner investigating the murder with a history with the Darcy family. (one wonders if he was an ancestor to Judge Milton C Hardcastle from the 1980s TV series Hardcastle and McCormick). 

I'll have read the book now but this was a nice way to spend Wold Newton Day.

Pat Wildman news

Not only is The Scarlet Jaguar now available in ebook for Kindle and soon for nook

 

but The Evil in Pemberley House is being issued as a trade paperback by Meteor House - if you missed the original hard cover this is your chance and I'd recommend pre-order as soon as possible

 

I should add that there is another new Meteor House novella

 

Phileas Fogg and The War of Shadows by Josh Reynolds which is a sequel to The Other Log of Phileas Fogg if it's half as good as The Exiles of Kho and The Scarlet Jaguar it's worth getting

 

 Also available for Pre order

 

The Scarlet Jaguar (2013) by Win Scott Eckert Meteor House

Previously posted Tuesday, August 27, 2013 3:51:31 PM

Evil In Pemberley House, Wold Newton, Novel, Win Scott Eckert ...

 

This is the sequel to The Evil in Pemberley House which I reviewed earlier

Let me start by saying that the cover is beautiful. Pat Wildman looks amazing. Mark Sparacio does an amazing job on the cover that pales compared to the piece he did for the signature page which took my breath away. Meteor House has done an amazing job on this book (just as they did for their previous novella Exiles of Kho).

So to quote the proverb, you can't judge a book by its cover. So how does the book measure up to the cover? For me, the cover is a great ad for the book that hints at the awesomeness that we find in the book. When the book arrived, I was in the middle of The Complete Domino Lady (which reprints the seven pulp stories and a new story by Steranko who also provides some amazing artwork). I put it to one side to read The Scarlet Jaguar, fully intending to go straight back. I finished The Scarlet Jaguar with a big grin on my face and proceeded to reread the whole thing again. That's how much I enjoyed the book.

When we left Pat Wildman at the end of The Evil in Pemberley House, she had founded Empire Investigations with Charles Peter Parker. The Scarlet Jaguar opens a year later with Empire Investigations being hired to investigate the disappearance of a British Diplomat in a South American country that was moving towards democracy. What follows is a slam bang pulp ride with Wildman and Parker joined by Helen Benson, the daughter of The Domino Lady and The Avenger. Our trio of heroes face a weapon that can turn people and objects into red glass and The Scarlet Jaguar has threatened to use the weapon on the Panama Canal. Pat Wildman and her team race to stop this from happening.

Eckert has given us another exciting story, liberally sprinkled with references to other stories series and characters. One of Win's great talents is that he can drop these easter eggs and not bog the story down. I was pleasantly surprised to see an appearance of another of Philip Jose Farmer's creations in a cameo role with a hint of an earlier adventure with Pat Wildman. (which I want to read now - The Midget Airplane Heist is such a tantalising hint)

If The Evil in Pemberley House left us wanting more adventures of Pat Wildman, The Scarlet Jaguar lives up to that promise and further whets our appetite. In The Foreword, Eckert tells of his 2009 meeting with Lady Patricia and how he got permission to edit and publish the Memoirs of Pat Wildman and how she gave him notes that form the basis for a number of other stories (his three Avenger stories, The Adventure of the Falling Stone, The Wild Huntsman and Honey West/T.H.E. Cat: A Girl and her Cat.)

Win's stories are like those photo mosaics; each picture is complete but when you step back and look at the big picture it is a part of the larger tapestry.

The scene on the cover does happen in the story. If I had to make a complaint it would be that Mark Sparacio didn't give us a drawing of Helen Benson (who I'd also like to see in a solo adventure).

This is a great story and well worth getting if you can. 

 

**Update: This won The New Pulp Awards Best Novella & Best Cover Art **