In 2021, we get the seventh volume in Airship 27‘s Mystery Men (& Women) series of New Pulp characters. 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. We get another quartet of stories, including two characters returning from the previous volume.
First up, we get another new setting for stories in a piece from Teel James Glenn. More comicbook superhero-y than pulp, we have a story set in the near future where “exceptionals,” who are former military people that have been given enhancements to be basically superpowered bounty hunters. Here, we meet some going after an arms dealer that gets messy after one is killed, and another goes undercover to take down the bad guy.
We get the third outing for Kira by Curtis Fernland. See Vols. 3 and 6 for her prior appearances. Set between the world wars, the story stars Kiri, a female samurai, who is in pursuit of the villain who killed her father/sensei and clan. But she is working as a companion to the daughter of the head of the Pulitzer newspapers. Here they deal with the growth of the Bund in New York. This is the first time we’ve had a character appear for a third go-around. Will she get here own volume from Airship 27?
Returning from the last volume is Dr. Fixit, by the late Greg Hatcher. Hatcher sadly passed away recently, so I don’t think we’ll see more of this character. Dr. Fixit is a mechanical/electronics genius who works for supervillains to setup their headquarters or super weapons. But here he is hired by a superhero, the Ghostwalker, to build his Ghostmobile. But things don’t quite go as expected for either. It’s an interesting character that we probably won’t see more of.
Finally from father-daughter team of Harding McFadden and Eleanor Hawkins is The Ghoul, who is a vigilante in the style of The Spider, though without an outlandish outfit. He strikes me as more of a possible agent, but one willing to kill. A veteran of WWI, his adventures are set in the in-between years. We meet one of his associates, “Camera Girl” Marion McGivern, and hints of others (two pairs of twins). This time around he goes up against an old foe from WWI, the “Butcher of Berlin,” who has released a deadly disease in a small Pennsylvania town. Can The Ghoul stop him? They are working on a solo Camera Girl story, which would be nice. I would like to see more stories with these two, and would like to see the others hinted at appear, as well.
As always, it’s another great collection. What I like about this series is that in addition to the usual paragraph or two on the author, we also get a page or two by the author giving the background of their work. I would like to see more of several of these. I have no idea when the next volume will be out, but I’ll be there for it.
