“Tales of the Shadowmen: Femmes Fatale” (2011) is the seventh volume of this eclectic anthology series from Black Coat Press.
This collection fits into Philip José Farmer‘s “Wold Newton” concept.
Included in this collection are:
• Matt Haley: “My Femmes Fatales” is an art portfolio on various femme fatales shown in this series, with a brief intro to each one.
• Xavier Maumejean: “My Femmes Fatales” is a brief foreword on the character of the femme fatale.
• Roberto Lionel Barreiro: “Secrets” is a short tale having Jean Valjean (of “Les Misérables”) meeting Zorro, though both are disguised.
• Matthew Baugh: “What Rough Beast” set during WWI, Judex (a French silent movie character who resembles The Shadow, see my posting on the recent translated adaptions) teams up with Sar Dubnotal (an early French pulp occult detective) and Hugo Danner (early American superman who may have influenced Doc Savage and Superman) against a supernatural threat.
• Thom Brannan: In “What Doesn’t Die,” Doctor Omega (an early French SF character who resembles the First Doctor from “Doctor Who”) encounters the Bride of Frankenstein, in a story that also includes Nicolas Tesla.
• Matthew Dennion: “Faces of Fear” is an interesting tale with Judex in the world of Freddie Kruger.
• Win Scott Eckert: “Nadine’s Invitation” is another of his tales, this time short, of Lady Blakeney (the Scarlet Pimpernel‘s wife) and her dealing with The Black Coats (the early French criminal network).
• Emmanuel Gorlier: “Fiat Lux!” doesn’t deal with the Nyctalope (an early French proto-superhero), but with his ancestors and shows that the power of the Nyctalope is something that has been passed along in his family for thousands of years, to emerge when needed.
• Micah Harris: “Slouching Towards Camulodunum” is a two-part story (continued in volume eight) in his series staring Becky Sharp (from “Vanity Fair,” the novel not the magazine). This time she meets Sâr Dubnotal and must deal with Richard Upton Pickman (from H.P. Lovecraft)
• Travis Hiltz: “The Robots of Metropolis” which has Doctor Omega visit Metropolis, and content with Rotwang and his robots. (This sets up Rotwang as a possible foe for the doctor.)
• Paul Hugli: “Death to the Heretic!” the Nyctalope is in Egypt in 1929, and has an adventure with a young Indiana Jones and a young Bruce Wayne.
• Rick Lai: “Will There Be Sunlight?” is about the The Black Coats, showing the group in the 1930s still lead by Colonel Bozzo-Corona, and with a group of villains such as Zemba (from The Shadow Magazine), John Sunlight (from Doc Savage Magazine), and several others. As always, when you get a group of characters like this together, you know they won’t play nicely.
• Jean-Marc Lofficier: “The Sincerest Form of Flattery” is an interesting little story of Fantômas, the French super-crook, meeting with Diabolik, the Italian super-crook.
• David McDonnell: “Big Little Man” has Dr. Miguelito Loveless (from “Wild, Wild West”) elderly and confined to a hospital. He has a new foe to vanquish, Nurse Ratched from “Once Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”
• Brad Mengel: “The Apprentice” is a short-short story of The Saint passing on the torch to Prince Malko Linge (aka Son Altesse Sérénissime), the hero of a long-running series of French espionage novels.
• Sharan Newman: “The Beast Without” has the author’s 12th century heroine, Catherine Levendeur, meeting one of the first literary werewolves, Bisclavret (created by a 12th century poet Marie de France).
• Neil Penswick: “Legacy of Evil” reveals the connection between T.E. Lawrence and Fu Manchu. Also appearing is Sir Dennis Nayland Smith, and a French secret agent known as the Chinese Fish.
• Pete Rawlik: “The Masquerade in Exile” is set in WWI, and shows two of Lovecraft characters crossing paths: Herbert West and Erich Zann, along with some other literary characters.
• Frank Schildiner: “The Tiny Destroyer” is another story featuring Jean Kariven, the French archaeologist who is aware of the battle between two alien races on Earth, the Polarians and the Denebains. He starred in a series of novels. This time he meets up with Kato, who assists him.
• Stuart Shiffman: “Grim Days” is a humorous story set on the Orient Express with Lord Peter Wimsey and Colonel Haki.
• Bradley H. Sinor: “The Screeching of Two Ravens” is a swashbucking tale that brings together Captain Blood and Alexandre Dumas‘ Milady, Baroness de Winter.
• Michel Stéphan: “The Three Lives of Maddalena” is a homage to the old Universal Studios monster movies. It stars Victor Frankenstein and Carmilla Karnstein, and reveals more about the origins of “the Bride.”
• David L. Vineyard: “The Mysterious Island of Dr. Antekirtt” is an interesting story based on a Jules Verne book I had never heard of. Verne’s “Mathias Sandorf” stars Dr. Antekirtt, a mix of the Count of Monte Cristo and Captain Nemo, who has a super-science island fortress. Now, a group of heroes in the 1950s, including Bob Morane (a French adventurer who has many science fictional stories that I wish we could read) and the Nyctalope are working to prevent it from falling into the hands of the Yellow Shadow (a Fu Manchu-like villain who Bob Morane fights), and Dr. No (from the James Bond novel).
• Brian Stableford: “The Necromancers of London” is the sixth and final part of this serialized story staring characters from Paul Fevel‘s John Devil, the Frankenstein Monster, and others.
At the end of the volume is information on the characters used and who created them, though this may not help point you to where they are from. (Wikipedia is most useful here, along with Black Coat Press’s French Wold Newton site and Cool French Comics site). The “Starring” lists the characters who appear in the story, “Co-starring” lists characters mentioned in the story, and “Also Starring” lists places and things that appear or are mentioned in the story.
I have all the past volumes, and look forward to the next in this annual series.
