“YesterYear” is the first novel published by Pro Se Press, and was written by Tommy Hancock, the publisher. Up until it came out, Pro Se had been putting out “monthly” magazines, a total of three different titles. But after that point, it went in the direction of novels.
This was supposedly the first in a series of works set in this universe, but nothing further has come from it.
The storyline is set in a world were super heroes and villains exist. While this work is supposed to be a New Pulp work, my feelings are that most of the characters shown are more comic-book-like than pulp-like.
The “MacGuffin” of the story is a mysterious book that reveals the “truth” about the heroes and villains. Written by a newspaper reporter who was himself also a pulp hero, it contains his newspaper column and other additions. It has disappeared, until mysteriously being left in the hands of the protagonist, JC Smithenson.
The book flips back and forth between the main storyline, set in the present, and exerpts from the book, which many times gives origins and stories of some of the heroes (though not all appear in the main storyline).
To make these changes clear, different typefaces are used to indicate newspaper columns, written notes, and the main storyline. Some of the other reviews complained about this. Personally, I didn’t have an issue with it. Overall, I found it to be a very enjoyable read and wanted more.
Now, I did have some issues of my own. Some of the material included in this book (some of the origins and side stories) saw print in Pro Se’s previous magazines. That’s fine. But I would have liked to have seen this information given somewhere in the book (say in the indicia area).
There are a few confusing parts in the book. One of the side stories is the original of The Night, a sort of Batman/Spirit-like character. Later on The Night is one of the main heroes of the present day, who reveals his identity to some of the other characters. But he is shown to be a different individual from the origin story. Considering when the origin was set, the implication is that this is a new individual who took over the identity from the original, but this is not stated in the book. Another confusing point is when some of the early stories tell of a sort of cartoonish character who later appears as a cold-blooded assassin. How this character gets from one extreme to the other is not explained.
And finally, we never learn what the critical secret of the book is that caused it to disappear for so long. Is this something that will be revealed in future works? That, too, is unclear. So what might have been a satisfying work is left a little frustrating.
I do hope we return to this world get the full reveal.
