In 2011 Tommy Hancock‘s Pro Se Press started their most interesting effort to bring back a feature of the original, classic pulps: of being published monthly. This they did in with a monthly digest series, “Pro Se Presents.”
In a prior posting, I looked at Volume 1 of that series. Now I move on to Volume 2.
August 2012 has three stories. We first off have an adventure with Doctor Unknown, Junior. This character is created by Chuck Miller, and is part of the world of the Black Centipede, who I have posted on prior. Then we have a detective story that deals with monsters, and another adventure with Joshua Reynold‘s occult detective Charles St. Cyprian.
October 2012 has another trio of stories. We first get a preview of a novel from Mechanoid Press, “Slow Djinn.” This is a work of occult investigation. Next is story of fear. And finally a fantasy story.
November 2012 has five stories! First off, is a new pulp avenger, Doc Panic. A new pair of vigilantes team up, maybe for the first of many. A police detective is on the case looking for a lost treasure. Next up is a strange little murder mystery. A finally, a detective goes after a jewel thief.
December 2012 has two stories by Nancy A. Hansen. First off is another with her female detective, Kate Keener. Next is a story of vampires and vampire slayers in the second of her “Song of Heroes” stories.
February 2013 has three stories. First off, Ron Fortier presents a New Pulp heroine, Kate Fury. Chuck Miller has another Black Centipede story. And Teel James Glenn has new pulp adventurer Sovereign Wolf.
March 2013 also has five stories. We first get a trio of Westerns. Then a more modern tale with strange characters. Finally, a story of Stone Kolde, the cover feature, which introduces two new characters.
Summer 2013 marks a new direction with the series. Now to be a larger quarterly, this volume is twice as big with nine stories. We first have a cover story with Ron Fortier’s New Pulp hero Brother Bones. We get a story of a man who made a deal with the Devil for youth. An unusual pulp tale. A Sherlock Holmes tale, along with horror, SF, fantasy, mystery and others.
Sadly, the next issue would be the last.
Winter/Spring 2014 this time has six stories. Melissa Robinson has a story of New Orleans and Voodoo; Kat Beeton and Patti Boeckman gives us a pair of strange little tales; and Ethan Nahte gives us a paranormal Western. Ken Janssens has another story with his female sleuth Aloha McCoy. And the cover story is a Robin Hood novella by author I.A. Watson, who has done several Robin Hood stories for Airship 27. This novella takes up about half the volume.
It’s sad to see this experiment in New Pulp end, but all the volumes are still available. Check them out. Pro Se Press has since replaced this with their new “Single Shots” series, which are short stories released as ebooks. I’m not big on ebooks, so I hope that some of these will be collected in print at some point.
