Let’s take a look at the fifth collection of The Rook stories by Barry Reese, “The Rook, Vol. 5.”
For those who are familiar with the character (i.e., you’ve read the previous four collections), there is no need for an introduction. For those new, The Rook is a pulp-hero-style character created by Barry. The Rook fights crime and evil in the 1930s and ’40s (and later). Barry mixes in pulp hero, comic book and comic strip characters, along with occult horror/weird menace, and does a good job.
In this volume, we get the introduction of the Claws of The Rook, a team of Barry’s original characters that he’s created over the past few volumes who will work as a team with The Rook. So far, this group consists of Catalyst and Esper, his superhero couple from volume three, Victor (the Frankenstein’s Monster from volume four), and The Revenant (his female Phantom from volume four).
“The Diabolical Mr. Dee” introduced the Claws, and has them go up against Mr. Dee. Also introduced is a new villainess based on the golden age comic book character Valkyrie from Airboy comics.
“A Plague of Wicked Men” has the Claws, with the assistance of some other characters such as Ki-Gor (an old Tarzan clone from the pulps that is now public domain) and Prof. Stone (Wayne Skiver‘s Doc Savage pastiche) goes up against a trio of evil: Professor Moriarty, Warlike Manchu and Dr. Satan. A new hero, Jackdaw, is also introduced, and a minor pulp hero is killed. Maybe Jackdaw will join the Claws in future stories.
“Devil’s Spear” is more a Rook story, though it has him helped by Leonid Kaslov (Barry’s “Russian Doc Savage” pastiche) and Jenny Everywhere (an “open-source” character by comic book artist Steven Wintle), with the Claws coming in later, going up against the evil of Count Dracula and another.
“The Ivory Machine” is another story of the Rook helped by the Claws, now joined by a quartet of public-domain comic book characters: The Black Terror and Tim, The Flame, and Ms. Mask (these have been used by DC in the Terra Incognito series and by Dynamite in their Project: Superpowers titles). A new nemesis is introduced for the Rook, with a connection to an old foe.
“Devil’s Due” by Stacy Dooks, is set in the 1960s, and focuses on the son of The Rook, now operating as the new Rook. It also shows the return of an old foe of his father’s.
Artwork is by Anthony Castrillo, who did the cover and interior artwork in the original volume 3. I like his work, as it’s very John Byrne-ish, but do wish he’d do The Rook’s mask correctly.
This volume was originally published by Wild Cat Books, and is no longer available from them now that Barry is at Pro Se Press. They will probably be working to bring this back into print, but probably with a new cover, which is unfortunate, as the original cover is great.
