Fortune McCall is a New Pulp hero created by writer Derrick Ferguson. I haven’t read much by him, but have heard a lot of good things about his work.
Derrick writes different pulp heroes. By and large, classic pulp heroes and most pulp secondary characters were white. There were but occasional non-white characters: a couple of The Shadow‘s agents, and a couple of The Avenger‘s associates, and that’s about it. (Of course, many pulp villains were the “yellow peril” type.) Derrick has been working to change this among the New Pulp characters. And Fortune McCall is his latest.
Derrick’s “The Adventures of Fortune McCall” is part of Pro Se‘s Sovereign City project, stories that take place in a fictional town playing host to their many New Pulp characters. So far we have Lazarus Gray and his Assistance Unlimited by Barry Reese. I look forward to seeing a Doc Daye collection; and we hear the names of several other characters that are set in this city, so who knows?
McCall, as a character, is more in the line with adventurers with great skills — but with a mysterious past — who has gathered a group of multi-talented associates around him. He is thankfully not a 1930s version of a “blaxploitation” character. It’s not clear what motivates him to be an adventurer. We get hints about his past and background, but don’t have the full picture. He is independently wealthy, owning a gambling ship that serves as his headquarters. He has about a half-dozen associates whom we met in these stories.
This book has four stories. The first serves as his introduction to Sovereign City, and to us. The other stories are each different, dealing with different issues and groups of people in Sovereign City.
It will be interesting to see where we go with this character. Will we learn more of McCall’s background? Will he have adventures outside of Sovereign City (as has Lazarus Gray)? Will he meet other characters in Sovereign City other than Captain John Lawman? We’ll see.
Look forward to the next volume.
I’m hard at work now on THE RETURN OF FORTUNE McCALL and hope to have it finished in time for publication by the end of the year. Thank you so much for taking the time to read and review THE ADVENTURES OF FORTUNE McCALL. It’s greatly appreciated.