Guns of the Black Ghost is a collection of Tom Johnson‘s original, modern, pulp hero The Black Ghost. Tom has been working in the New Pulp movement as a publisher and writer (Echoes and related zines) for many years. His writings has included new stories of classic characters and new characters.
Unlike many other New Pulp characters, The Black Ghost is set in modern times. Another change is that he marries his girlfriend, which was unknown with the pulp heroes who either had no girlfriends or were pinning for the time they could retire and settle down. And his now-wife helps him out in his activities as The Black Ghost, sometimes disguising herself as the Ghost to throw off the villians.
The Black Ghost is really young Jimmy Malone. His father was a cop, killed in the line of duty, and his stepfather is a police detective. At a young age, Malone was trained by an elderly couple, who were retired super-spies. (They are based on a pair of obscure pulp characters, the Red Finger and Rose. Since Altus Press has reprinted all of their stories, with a new one by Johnson, there is little excuse to be ignorant of them.)
Malone created the persona of Compere, but the underworld calls him The Black Ghost. He wear an all-black outfit, carries guns, and has other items to scare and throw off his foes, and he’s an expert fighter. In many ways, he is an attempt at creating an original, Shadow-like pulp hero.
“Guns of the Black Ghost” collects seven stories. The first three are reprints from Double Danger Tales, a zine published by Johnson that ran original pulp heroes. The next two stories in the collection have appeared elsewhere, including at the Filament Book Club website and in the anthology Tales of Masks and Mayhem, Vol. 3. The last two stories are original to this collection.
Each story stands alone, but it’s clear that each story follows the others in internal chronology. Further, in the later stories we see The Black Ghost starting to add agents in a small organization to assist him. Unlike most pulp heroes, he doesn’t reveal his identity to his agents, and they think his real-life identity is just another agent of The Black Ghost.
There are other Black Ghost stories. One is “Hunter’s Moon,” which was co-written with Debra Delorme story and has The Black Ghost teaming up with another New Pulp hero, Scarecrow. This one was reprinted in Tales of Masks & Mayhem, Vol. 1, available from Altus Press.
Another is “Black Ghost,” which takes place when the character was a kid. This combines four early stories into a single novelette. The four stories originally appeared in issues of Pulp Fiction Magazine, while the novelette appeared in an issue of Tom Johnson’s Classic Pulp Fiction Stories and is included in “The Spider’s Web” book.
“The Spider’s Web” is a sequel to one of the stories in this collection, now also available from Night to Dawn Books.
