At the end of 2019, we got another volume of Tales of the Shadowmen. The Black Coat Press series is now up to 16 volumes, which is pretty incredible.
I don’t think any other New Pulp publisher has done a series for 15 years, or 15 volumes. The closest is Airship 27 in their series of new Sherlock Holmes stories.
This latest volume is subtitled “Voir Dire.” It is often translated as “to speak the truth,” which deals with the effort by which witnesses and experts are subjected to in order to disclose any bias or explain their background in a quest for the truth.
As noted previously, this annual series makes use of Philip José Farmer‘s “Wold Newton” concept, mixing in a variety of literary characters, with a focus on the various pulp and pulpish characters of France and Europe, such as Arsene Lupin, Fantômas, The Nyctalope, Rouletabille, and many others, as well as those from other countries. Several authors will come back with further stories of the same characters, creating loose series within the volumes.
In reading this one, I realized how many of these series we seem to get, as there were four in this one alone. With the old pulp magazines, they used the serials to keep readers coming back, as while one serial ws finishing, others had already started up.
New this volume is an index of authors and another of stories. I assume this will be updated in upcoming volumes. I would like to see one of characters, indicating what story they appeared in.
This time we get:
First off, we have “The Peculiar Cats of the Sea of Dreams,” by Matthew Baugh. Here we have sorceress Madame Palmyre (from the novel Baal also available from Black Coat Press) traveling to H.P. Lovecraft‘s Dreamland with several companions, all searching for their heart’s desire. One is Victoria Custer, from Edgar Rice Burrough‘s Savage Lover.
Nathan Cabaniss gives us a tale with The Domino Lady in New York going up against Fantômas: “Rage of Terror.” She is assisted by NYPD detectives Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones, as well as another pulp character toward the end.
As appropriate, we get another tale dealing with The Black Coats, or more precisely, their leader Colonel Bozzo-Corona in Matthew Dennion‘s “Dwelling in the Dark.” Set in New York in 1990, it has Darkman going after gangsters connected to The Black Coats and meeting the Colonel. He blames the Colonel for his condition. Hopefully people will pick up the various characters who are name-dropped.
With “The Vampire Candidate,” Brian Gallagher‘s series with Captain Vampire has come to a conclusion after seven appearances. With the story now up to 2014, we have our “hero” Boris Liatoukine running for the office of President of Russia! Though he is expected to lose, he get more influence and power behind the scenes. But he still has to deal with the network of people trying to kill him. Now that the series is finished, will Black Coat Press collect it in a single volume?
We also get the latest of another series with “Rouletabille and the House of Despair” from Martin Gately. This one is a direct sequel to the story in the previous volume. Rouletabille teams up with Harry Dickson to deal with some German spies in England in the years before World War I. They had run afoul of them in the last volume, and here go after them. I look forward to more stories in this loose series.
The Domino Lady and Fantômas are back in Joséph Gibson‘s “The Other Vampires of Paris.” However, this is apparently the Fantômas from the 1960s Euro-spy films, not the pulp supervillain of the early 20th century. We also get The Falcon, a literary character used in a series of movies.
Set in Paris in the ’60s, this story has various groups fighting each other in secret, with the heroes getting involved as well.
We get an interesting pirate tale in Travis Hiltz‘s “A Pirate’s Life for Me,” which has Dr. Eric Palmer, a Sherlock Holmes-like character created by Paul Feval, fils (who appeared in Felifax). Palmer is involved in a whodunit with pirates at their every 50-year gathering. Pirates like Captain Nemo, Robur, the Dread Pirate Roberts, and more.
A somewhat different tale is from Jean-Pierre Laigle. “Mobilis in Vacuo” is presented as a section of Jules Verne‘s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea that was cut from the final version. Here Captain Nemo tells of a strange voyage of The Nautilus. Interestingly, it mentions characters from another Verne novel.
A yet another different tale is Jean-Marc Lofficier‘s “The Legacy of Atlantis.” This tale is a prelude, though self-contained, to the “HexagonVerse” series of works coming out. It makes use of Count Saint-Germain, though a version from this universe.
Another series that has been running is from Nigel Malcolm, who has been writing about The Nyctalope in an alternate future Europe that under fascist control. “Useful Idiot” is the next in the series, where The Nyctalope is joined by Sexton Blake (I’d like to know how he’s still alive) in his attempt at taking down the fascists. They also met with the evil version of the Frankenstein monster, Gouroull. Hopefully we’ll get the next installment in the next volume.
We get an interesting little story from Xavier Mauméjean. “The Replacement” has a meeting of a young Bruce Wayne with Doc Savage and The Shadow. Despite some elements I don’t agree with (along others, items with Margo Lane and the Cobalt Club), this is a good story.
And from Christofer Nigro is yet another series, this time using Felifax the tiger-man and his half brother. “Clash of the Jungle Lords” has Felifax meeting Mowgli, which is appropriate as both characters are from India. We should see a further story in this series.
I am always glad to see a new Doc Ardan story, and we get it in John Peel‘s “The Eye of the Hawk.” Here Doc is in the Congo of the early 1930s, where he teams up with Jane Clayton to find several missing scientists, such as Doctor Omega, among others. This story could be a good set-up for a sequel. We are also getting a new-old Doc Ardan later this year.
Frank Schildiner give us another story by Jean-Pierre Séverin, from his “Napolean’s Vampire Hunters” series (a third novel is coming in May) in “Vampire Diplomacy.” This is actually set before those novels, and takes our hero to New Orleans in the early 1800s. There he encounters a pair of well-known vampires who live there.
And for the final story, I am glad we get another with Arsène Lupin. David L. Vineyard‘s “The Stone of Solomon” has Lupin getting involved with various occult detectives, such as John Silence and the Duke de Richleau… in a unique way.
It’s another great volume. Volume 17 has been announced, and will be subtitled “Noblesse Oblige.” As always, I look forward to it.
