Australis Incognito: Behind the curtain.

So as promised here's a peak behind the curtain for the story behind the story of Australis Incognito.

Now I'd love to say the whole thing came to me in a one big hit but that's not true.  Some of the ideas had been floating around in my head for some time.  The Rusting Death had been a title that been waiting since the mid 90s when I mistyped the Doc Savage novel The Rustling Death for my book list.

But the story really started on Watchmen's 25th anniversary in around 2011.  Like many fans I wondered how things would have went after the events of Moore and Gibbons' story.  It's a world now without a superman just people in costumes.  Was there a third wave/generation of heroes, did the peace last?  What might a third wave look like?

I let myself imagine.  Silk Spectre II and Nite-Owl II would have kids The Nite Spectre, Silk and Nite-Owl III.  There would be a Rorschach II, the daughter of the original's landlady who believes that Walter Kovacs is her father.  There would be original characters like the Cutlass.

I never wrote anything down and at some point reality set in assuming that DC was going to do anything they wouldn't be hiring me anytime soon (and shorly after we got the Before Watchmen collection of miniseries)

As any Watchmen fan worth their salt knows the story was written with the Charlton characters.  DC looked at the story and realised that it would render their newly acquired characters unusable.  Moore then created new characters who if you squint looked a little like the Charlton Characters,

So I squinted - The third generation Watchmen siblings became The Dingo, Risque and Risk.  Rorschach II became The Question Mark II.  I left the Cutlass alone.  I dropped several characters and created new ones.

One of my new characters was the Aggressor, a veteran of Afghanistan or Iraq and fighting a bloody crusade against organised crime.  Then I found the Cutter series by James Hopwood - and also published by Pro Se Press.  Hopwood did what I was planning and in all honesty did it better.  So I changed tack The Agressor was active in the 1980s and was involved in The Fitzgerald Inquiry into corruption in the Queensland Government and police force, which worked much better for me.  So James if you read this - Thank you.

Around the same time, I was looking at myself as an Australian new Pulp writer and what I wanted to write.   I discovered a history of Australians creating pulp and pulp adjacent characters and I met several other creators who were crafting new stories in the same vein.

I wanted to write a big Australian pulp story. I had the basis for my story.  I pitched the idea to Pro Se as Oz Pulp.

The good news they liked the idea, the bad - they were not so keen on Oz Pulp.  I wasn't keen on their suggested replacement Aus Pulp.

I sat brainstorming when  I remembered that on old maps Australia was called Terra Australis Incognita - and Australis Incognito was born.  (Several Australian horror anthologies have used Terror Australis)

Australis Incognito became more than the title of the story but the collective name of my heroes and would go back to the settlement of New South Wales in 1788 allowing me to weave a backstory that allowed me to reference several characters I had read about.  It also gave me a reason that these characters all knew each other.

I had the idea for a villian so big that these characters couldn't battle them alone.  I distinctly recall the idea that one of the heroes was suggesting the unknown villian was a Moriarty-type.  The mysterious villian lurking over the skyline of Brisbane on the cover.

Around this time I had been invited to contribute to Sherlock Holmes and Dr Was Not (IFWG, 2019) an anthology that paired Sherlock Holmes with a different doctor instead of Watson.  I selected Dr Nikola, the villian of five novels by Australian writer Guy Boothby that were just as popular as the Sherlock Holmes stories back in the 1890s.  Nikola became a large piece of the this new story and his actions in the past served as a catalyst for this modern day adventure.

I had a great time building a world where modern pulp heroes could operate and link in with other Australian pulp and pulp-adjacant characters.

New from Me!

SHERLOCK HOLMES

CONSULTING DETECTIVE Vol 12

Airship 27 Productions is thrilled to announce the release of the 12^th volume in their internationally recognized bestselling series, “Sherlock Holmes – Consulting Detective.” 

Why do people cheat, rob and murder?  Why are people tempted to commit dark deeds?  These are the questions that have always plagued the great detective, Sherlock Holmes. In this, the 12^th Volume of the best selling series, Consulting Detective, he and his faithful companion, Dr. Watson take on five new cases that will challenge their intellect and lead them through the twisted minds of nefarious souls.

“The demand for our new Holmes mysterious has never waned since we began the series almost ten years ago,” says Airship 27 Productions Managing Editor, Ron Fortier. “And in that time, those devoted Holmes fans have recognized the consistent quality of both our stories and art featuring Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous characters.”

All the art for this volume was provided solely by Airship 27 Productions own, award winning Art Director, Rob Davis. For the first time in the series, Davis delivered detailed pencils only for each illustration and also produced the stunning color cover. “This one is clearly a collector’s item,” Fortier smiles. “Fans of the series are not going to be disappointed.”

From chasing after a notorious confidence man to solving the death of a twin; a stolen tattoo or a murder of a bride before her wedding day, writers I.A. Waston, Barbara Doran, Fred Adams Jr. and Brad Mengel have produced truly remarkable mysteries  guaranteed to keep Holmes and Watson fans up late night.

As ever, the game is afoot!!

AIRSHIP 27 PRODUCTIONS – PULP FICTION FOR A NEW GENERATION!

Available now from Amazon in paperback and on Kindle.

Mr Holmes (2015) starring Ian McKellen

Based on the novel "A Slight Trick of the Mind" by Mitch Cullen.
Watching the Hobbit trilogy, I realised that Bilbo was played by Martin Freeman who played Dr Watson in Sherlock and Gandalf was played by Ian McKellen who played Holmes in this.  I had the idea of the Gandalf and Bilbo Mysteries.

I have seen many, many Sherlock Holmes films over the years and I've enjoyed several of McKellen's films. (Okay the X-Men and Middle Earth films).

The idea of an older retired Holmes in his 90's trying to recall the details of his last case is an interesting one.  The idea that the Holmes' mind will ultimately betray him is a scary one because dementia like all diseases doesn't discriminate. I'd heard that the author Mitch Cullen wrote his novel to help deal with his father's dementia.

Holmes in this is the most human in this movie I have ever seen. This is Holmes looking back on his last case the one that caused him to retire to beekeeping.  Holmes realises that he can logically deduce problems and give them a logical solution but people aren't necessarily logical and the last case ended badly and ended in the death of someone involved in the case. This lead Holmes to fall into a funk and eventually become estranged from Watson.

Holmes is unable to emotionally relate to people and later hear a horrible piece of advice given to someone that causes a third plot line.

This movie really brought a tear to my eye.

I have to give full credit to McKellen for such an emotional performance for a character who is not normally associated with emotions.  Another great feature is the makeup where we can visibly see the difference between "younger" and older Holmes.

There is a great Easter Egg at one point Holmes goes to the movies to see a movie based on one of his cases (in this instance based on Watson's write up of his last case) the actor playing Holmes was Nicholas Rowe who had played Holmes in 1985s Young Sherlock Holmes (also known as Young Sherlock Holmes and the Pyramid of Fear) which was a pleasant surprise to see him revisit the role thirty years later even though sadly there was no dialogue.

2014 - a year in writing

Oddly for a year where I did a fair bit of writing the only thing published was "The Roads not Taken." in More Blood: A Sinanju Anthology - available in paperback now from Amazon!  Subtle Plug I know.  What's it about?  The basic idea is that while in Viet Nam, Remo first hears the legends of the Masters of Sinanju and what he thinks they are like.  I manage to include references to several other paperback vigilante series, TV shows and movies  I actually wrote this back in 2005 for the New Blood Anthology So it's interesting to see how much I've grown in the decade or so between then and now.

So what did I write this year?

For DREAMER'S SYNDROME: NEW WORLD NAVIGATION  edited by Mark Bousquet, I wrote "The Case of the Hooded Shark".  This is set in the same universe as Mark's DREAMER
S SYNDROME novels and short stories/  The basic premise is that God gave an order that everyone got to live out their dreams of what they wanted to be at ten years old.  Naturally Mark's stories only cover a small part of the world and this anthology opened up for other stories taking place around the world.  My starting point was at ten I was obsessed with teen detectives, The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, The Three Investigators, The Dana Girls and Trixie Belden, so I created a character who wanted to be a detective. I gave him a "Watson" an ex-military man, the idea for him was he had dreamt of being in the army at ten - joined at 18 served around the world and came back from Afghanistan with PTSD and found a new dream job.    Then the world changed and he finds himself back in the army.  I played with a lot of Holmesian tropes as well as the nature and perception of Australia. Part of my inspiration was the Taiwanese news coverage of The Buxom Bandit

 

 

The idea that she would ride a kangaroo to a robbery just made me laugh.

 

 

Next up was "The Adventure of the Empty Throne" for Chris Sequera's SHERLOCK HOLMES AND DR WHAT?  which had Sherlock Holmes working with a Doctor other than Watson.  I had Holmes working with Guy Boothby's Doctor Nikola to investigate a plot to destroy the British Empire.  I used another Boothby creation as the villain and referenced some EW Hornung.  Thankfully The Hooded Shark got the Study in Scarlet references out of my system and I was able to craft a different take on the Holmes/Nikola fused universe.  Nikola is a great character and I will return to him one day, as I will with  Sherlock Holmes.

 

I'm not sure if I can share Paul Mason's awesome and amazing artwork for the story. (but I got the original for Christmas and there's a picture on my Facebook page.

 

I also wrote "The Domino Lady's Triple Threat" for Airship 27 which looks like it will appear in Domino Lady volume 2.  Domino Lady versus the American-German Bund who are keen to kidnap an old friend of Ellen Patrick's father.  I took inspiration from the opening of the Sydney Harbour bridge in 1932.  I slipped a few classic and new pulp references into the story and some ancestors of my favourite characters.

 

 

 

 

That brings us to the final three and a bit stories which form my own shared universe that I call "Australis Incognito"  (Above is the awesome cover painting by Jeffrey Hayes a print can be bought here.

 

The first story that I wrote (mostly in 2013) was Risqué: Strip Poker which introduced my 1920s Sydney vigilante Risqué.  A lot of the inspiration for her and this story came from Underbelly: Razor true crime series that ran on the Nine Network here in Australia.  (I recommend watching if you get the chance, Sydney in the 20s feels so pulpy - it's also an odd time where the two big criminal gangs were run by women Kate Leigh and Tilly Devine.)  Think of this as a prequel to the main Australis Incognito series.  I subtly foreshadowed a couple of things that will become important in the main series.  This story will be published in POKER PULP by Pro Se Productions

 

(As an aside I also wrote a short comic story featuring Risque's daughter Jasmine who works as a spy in the 1960s under the code name Risqué Brent with her partner codenamed "Flynn" as a homage to Modesty Blaise.  I submitted the story to Ashcan, a Brisbane based comic book anthology but it didn't find an artist.)

 

The first contemporary Australis Incognito story I wrote was Bus Bait Blues starring The Question Mark.  The Question Mark is a young woman who investigates why a Russian mob boss would be in a bar picking up a girl fresh off the bus.  Of course she discovers a much larger criminal conspiracy.

 

The Second story "Thunderstruck" features the third generation Risqué facing against an opponent who can appear anywhere at will.  the only way you know you've been hit is the sound of thunder and a calling card that reads "You've been Thunderstruck".

 

 

The third Australis Incognito story "The Rusting Death" is currently being written.  The title came from the misreading of a Doc Savage adventure The Rustling Death.

 

These are part of Pro Se's Single Shot line of stories and will be published in the near future.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



Professor Moriarty: The Hound of the D'Urbervilles (2011) Kim Newman Titan Books

Every now and then there come a fresh idea/perspective that in hindsight is so brilliantly obvious that it comes as a surprise that it took so long for someone to come to that conclusion.  I remember thinking "why hadn't someone thought of that before." when I read the premise for 30 Days of Night.

The same thought came to me when I read Hound of the D'Urbervilles, if Professor Moriarty was the dark reflection of Sherlock Holmes, then it stood to reason that Col Moran was his Watson.  This was something Doyle never used and certainly it hadn't appeared in any of the Moriarty centred pastiches I had read, certainly not in the two John Gardner works The Return of Moriarty and The Revenge of Moriarty.

Kim Newman is a genius.  This fresh perspective on Moriarty and his organisation was a breath of fresh air and Newman manages to make a number of connections to other works of fiction the obvious one from the title is Tess of the D'Urbervilles.  I regret not reading this sooner it was so much fun.  I loved the appearance of Irene Adler, with her getting the better of Moriarty.  "To Professor Moriarty she was always That Bitch" tells Col Moran.

Newman has long been a favourite writer of mine.

If you enjoy Newman's other works, Sherlockian fiction or literary mashups this this book for you

The Soldier Legacy's Strange Tales: Night of the Warrior (2013) Chris Sequera and Paul Mason Black House

This story originally appeared as a back up feature in Sherlock Holmes; Dark Detective issue 7-9.

I've spoken before about The Soldier Legacy on this blog and how much I love that series.  This back up really opens up the universe of that series.

This story is set in 1887 before the events of the first Nikola book A Bid for Fortune.  in this story Nikola is hunting for a green opal set in a ring. It turns out that the man in possession of the ring, Jack Smeight, is responsible for the death of a friend of the current Soldier Legacy and we see Nikola and The Soldier Legacy battle over the ring's bearer.

It turns out that the ring has mystical properties - it is the Lifestone of Cantong and when Smeight kills a man it makes him stronger and he is able to overpower Nikola and Soldier Legacy.

In the end, Smeight is defeated and Nikola hands the ring over to Soldier Legacy for sale to benefit the family of Smeight's original victim. Nikola rejects the ring while it may prolong the life it steals the intellect.

Sequeria and Mason give us a Nikola who is an honourable man with hypnotic abilities, in a story that foreshadows many of the events in the Nikola books.  I read this before reading the Nikola books and I enjoyed it but rereading it after the Nikola books the story is that much richer as I picked up on the small hints that the pair dropped.

Mason's artwork is top notch and the 1887 Soldier Legacy is clearly similar to the designs seen in the WW2 and modern day Soldier Legacies seen in Mason's book yet is unique enough that this is a different man (unlike the various incarnations of Shi from that comic series)   I really like his Doctor Nikola drawings)

The Great Comic Re-read; The Soldier Legacy by Paul Mason

Back in 2010, I went into Comics Etc in Brisbane and saw this:

 

I was intrigued and interested enough  to grab a copy.

 

What we get is not one but two stories. The first story features the 1940's WWII adventures of the masked Digger known as The Soldier in New Guinea.  The back up story is set in contemporary Brisbane and features the grandson of The Soldier fighting crime in the same mask.

 

I went back a few months later to find issue 2 which I quickly grabbed and then issue 3.

 

Much to my great joy I saw that Paul Mason was going to be at Gold Coast Supernova and I have grabbed issues 4 & 5 as well as the spinoff - The Soldier Legacy's Strange Tales at various conventions since then.

 

This is a great series.  The WWII Soldier wears a mask in honour of a young soldier Kirby who saved The Soldier's life and Mason has created an interesting character who acts outside the traditional army chain of command to rescue POWs and stop the Japanese.

 

The modern Soldier similarly works outside the system and is trying to expose the various gangs causing havoc in Brisbane.

 

Each issue adds more to what we know about both men, with the revelation in issue 5, that the mask was intended for young Kirby and that Kirby was one of a long line of Soldiers dating back to the early militias.  Part of The Soldier's mission is to pass the mask onto Kirby's brother Chris.  Chris Kirby appears at the end of issue 5.

 

This addition to the back story allows for tales of past Soldiers and Strange Tales reprints the three part Doctor Nikola/Soldier Legacy crossover set in 1887 by Mason and Chris Sequeira which appeared as a back up in Sherlock Holmes: Dark Detective issues 7-9.  This Soldier serves in the Victorian Mounted Riflemen (as can be seen by the VMR on his epaulets) which was the first to wear the slouch hat. (I will talk more about this story later as I finish the original Nikola stories)

 

This is a series that is worth supporting - even YOUI insurance thought so when they ran this ad

 

YOUI Insurance Ad   This was a national campaign filmed in King's Comics in Sydney.

 

If you live in Australia get your local comic shop to order these from Black House Comics.

 

Internationally they can be ordered through www.blackboox.net

 

Mason is a good illustrator with his work appearing in the new Human Fly comic.  His style is slightly cartoon and would work well in an animated format.  He wears his influences proudly Kirby, Ditko, Everett, Buscema, Heck and Romita are all referenced in the first issue. As much as I enjoy his artwork I've found that his writing is just as good.

 

I look forward to seeing where the two stories go from here and how the Legacy continues.