Following the fifth volume of Airship 27‘s Mystery Men (& Women), we soon got the sixth.
As noted in my previous posts, this series is kind of like DC’s old Showcase title or Street & Smith’s Crime Busters in providing a variety of New Pulp characters. Sadly, we haven’t gotten many who have spawned their own series.
With this one we get four New Pulp stories, and one character returns from an earlier volume.
First up, we get a new character from Teel James Glenn that is part of a new setting from his other pulp universe of characters like Dr. Shadows. This setting is more modern, with several new characters. Hopefully we’ll see more of those.
This story only includes one: The Scythe, an avatar of Shiva. We are given his brief origin, and he is more comicbook-like than pulp hero. He is really anthropology professor Hondo Blackstone who works at Derleth College in Braddock City. After a college student is killed with an old Zulu weapon and two more are missing, The Scythe looks into it. He finds a madman who is able to manipulate time, and plans for something at Halloween that threaten not just the area but maybe the world. Can The Scythe find the two missing boys, and more so, stop this madman? We are told a bit about the others, and they all sound interesting, so hopefully we’ll see more of these in the future.
A returning character from the third volume is Kiri by Curtis Fernlund. Kiri is a female samurai, in pursuit of the villain who killed her father/sensei and clan. In the meantime, she helps deal with other threats; this time a group of Nazis trying to sabotage New York City before the start of WWII. This story includes the use of a new dirigible. Fernlund also gives the literary background on Kiri, so I hope we’ll see further works of this character and a conclusion to the background story.
A different tale, again more set in a world of comicbook superheroes, focuses on Dr. Fixit by Greg Hatcher. It’s different in that Dr. Fixit isn’t a hero, but a henchman to super villains with mechanical skills. Here we learn of the event that ended his career during the final battle between a superhero and a super villain.
Finally, we get Dr. Vilda, a different take on the occult detective, by Dale Cozart. Dr. Vilda is able to bring back the very recent dead, but it only lasts for a short time. These are no mindless zombies. A young lady is killed and brought back. Can she help figure out who killed her, when she has difficulty remembering?
It’s another good collection of stories. I don’t know when we’ll get the next volume. I certainly would like to see more with Teel James Glenn’s new universe.
