Fanzine focus: ‘Pulp Reality’ #2

Stormgate Press has put out their second issue of Pulp Reality for Summer 2021. I was surprised by this as I didn’t expect this second issue so soon, thinking it would come later in the year.

Like the first issue, it’s a large size at 8.5- by 11-inches and is longer than the first issue, clocking it at over 200 page as we go from six stories to 10. In addition to several new stories, we also get the return of some characters from the first issue, which I was expecting. Each story has an artwork piece. We get a mix of pirates, PIs, vigilantes, and more.

First off from Marlin Williams, we get a pirate tale, tied to our cover. A pirate ship goes after a target, though things don’t go as expected.

Editor and publisher Charles F. Millhouse provides the first adventure of NightVision, a New Pulp hero set in the same world as Capt. Steven Hawklin. While this is the first story of NightVision, set in 1935, he has been operating for six years. College professor Simon Rook has a curse. He is shown visions of soon-to-be victims of violent crimes. He has been going out at night to stop the crimes and save the victims. But this time, he deals with a new threat — almost his opposite number. It will be interesting to see where this goes after he finds out who is behind this threat. Might we see him encounter Hawklin or others connected to him?

Brian K. Morris gives us a new Captain Hawklin story that teams him up with Morris’ Dr. Jedediah Sagamore, aka Doc Saga, who is kind of an occult detective, being an over 100-years-old, near-immortal shaman/wizard. I’m not sure where else he has appeared. This story is set during WWI, while Hawklin is just a second lieutenant, and the pair must contend with a German “were-panther.”

Abraham Snow is Bobby Nash‘s action hero, with several novels. In this piece, Snow is working with his grandfather’s security company that is protecting a conference of rich CEOs at a ski resort when a threat is discovered. What is it about, and can he stop it? While I have heard of Snow, this is my first time reading the character, so this may be a good intro for others as well.

B-Man was introduced in the previous issue, and was created by Clyde Hall. The character is set in the 1960s, and finds he can tranform himself into movie-serial characters and uses this to fight crime. In this outing, he helps a widow find research left by her dead husband, but there are more to things than expected. He transforms into a hard-boiled PI and other identities to get to the bottom of things. We may get another story in the next issue.

Amy Hale provides a strange and spooky tale. We get a story that reminds me of 1950s sf movies and some of the bizarre horror paperbacks from the ’70s from Scott Donnelly. In 1945, coastlands are invaded by crabmen. By the 1990s, the world is a different place. A trio of men are fighting back, and hope to put an end to it all. This story will continue in the next issue.

From Ron Fortier, we get a new character in The Wind-Up Kid. When a traveling show arrives in a small western town, one of their shows is The Wind-Up Kid, a robot gunslinger in the Old West, similar to the “Steamman of the Prairies” stories. But when a band of outlaws bother the town, it needs to rely on The Wind-Up Kid to stop them. I wonder if we’ll get more with this character? That may be interesting.

We get a solo tale of Hawklin from Millhouse set in 1920. I’ve covered this in another posting, along with another Hawklin short story.

Another character introduced in the previous issue, Ace Anderson, is an American adventurer with a powerful and unusual submarine, fighting against the Nazis during WWII. We now get the second part of the two-part story by Kellie Austin. A former friend of Ace’s has gone bad, calling herself Dr. Atomika, taking a U.S. submarine with ore from Atlantis. Ace must stop her. Can he? We may get more of this character in the next issue as there is a clear setup for more.

The next issue of Pulp Reality will come out in the fall. So will this be a biannual zine? And will some of these characters return in that one? I’m not sure, but expect so.

The next Hawklin novel, the ninth, is Captain Hawklin and the Invisible Enemy, is promised for July of this year. It’s set in 1931 and deals with the Osiris Project which has been mentioned in several novels.

I look forward to both.