Fanzine focus: ‘Pulp Reality’ #3

Before the end of 2021, Stormgate Press has put out their third issue of Pulp Reality, dated Fall 2021. I was surprised by this as I didn’t expect this third issue so soon, thinking it would come in 2022. They suceeded in getting out two issues in 2021, after the first one came out in late 2020.

Like the prior issues, it’s a large size at 8.5- by 11-inches and 150 pages this time with eight stories and a comic strip. We also get the return of some characters from the last issues, which I was expecting. Each story has an artwork piece. This time it’s a mix of mercenaries, adventurers, pulp heroes, and more, but no Captain Hawklin this time.

First off, from publisher Charles F. Millhouse and creator of Captain Hawklin, is a new New Pulp hero, the Purple Mystique. She is similar to the Green Hornet, wearing an outfit in purple and using a unique gas gun, with only the assistance of her driver, Danny Brocko. She has been going after minor thugs, now she is going after a mobster, Bobby Two-Tone, who has kidnapped a young girl. We don’t yet know her background or origin, or who she is. Hopefully, this will come out in future stories.

We get another story of B-Man, a hero who is able to take on the identities of various characters from “B movies” to fight crime. This is the latest piece by Clyde Hall, who has appeared in every issue. I expect we’ll see him again in the next issue.

From John C. Bruening, we get Kordon, a hero of a future dystopian world. Kordan is inspired by Jack Kirby‘s Kamandi, but I see some of Magnus, Robot Fighter as well. This looks to be the first of a series of stories.

Author Mark Allen Vann (and publisher at Xepico Press) gives us a future war tale of soldiers fighting a losing battle with alien octopodal creatures. But a veteran soldier, more machine than man, steps in. Can he prevail?

A short tale by Ted Davies gives us a man who sees murders in his dreams, which he uses as a private investigator to solve those murders. Except no one is there to solve that last one.

Another returning series is Scott Donnelly‘s “Kings of the Crustacean Period,” which has a trio of heroes fighting off an invasion of crab men who have overtaken civilization. This appears to be a continuing series.

In Paul Barile, we have a young jazz musician who is in Chicago and gets in trouble with the wrong folks. Thankfully there are those who will help out. Why and how Barile got in this situation won’t be clear till the end.

Another science-fiction tale set in the future is Carl Dietrich‘s “The Sphinxes of Xanadar,” which has a space trader kidnapped by a hidden race on Mars and forced to fight for his life in a series of games.

The comic strip is an adventure with The Freelance, a female mercenary, by Bobby Nash with artwork by Clayton Murwin and Jeff Austin. Here The Freelance is working to stop the hijacking of a shipment in a private jet. I’m not sure if this is her first appearance, but I hope we see more.

It’s another great issue. The next one should be out in spring 2022.