‘Pulp Reality’ #4

Stormgate Press has put out their fourth issue of Pulp Reality, dated Fall 2022, a year after the previous issue. I think their original plans were for this to come out a little sooner, but things happen. We should see the next issue in 2023.

Like the previous issues, it’s a large size at 8.5- by 11-inches and 180 pages, more than last time, though still with eight stories. We also get the return of some characters from the earlier issues, which I was expecting. This time it’s a mix of mercenaries, adventurers, pulp heroes, and more, with a new Captain Hawklin story as well. Each story has an artwork piece.

Editor and publisher Charles Millhouse gives us a weird-western tale, which is cover featured. It has aliens and cowboys and all that. It’s pretty good, though I would have liked a new story with his other characters NightVision (from #2) or Purple Mystique (#3). We did get a nice NightVision pinup in this issue. I think this was done to help promote Stormgate Press’ upcoming Old West collection.

From Bobby Nash is a new Lance Star story. Set shortly after the end of WWII, two of Lance’s Sky Rangers take leave to visit the farm of one of them. But there is trouble at home affecting many of the farms. Once Lance hears of this, he and some of the others arrive to lend a hand.

Millhouse also gives us another Lance Star/Captain Hawklin team up. The last time they teamed up was in #2, but there it was written by Nash. Set in 1939 shortly after his trial that year, Hawklin and friends are pulled into helping an old associate of Hawklin who has gone missing. Most likely he’s been taken by Nazis operating in Brazil. Hawklin asks Lance for help, and the group quickly gets pulled into things that involve a mad scientist that Hawklin had previously dealt with. As the Hawklin timeline moves forward into the 1940s, I am sure he will get more involved with such threats.

Returning from the previous issues are new tales of B-Man and of the Kings of the Crustaceous Period.

We’ve been getting Clyde Hall‘s B-Man since the first issue. Set in 1964, it’s about the owner of a run-down movie house, who he discovers the ability to transform into movie-serial characters and uses it to fight crime. This time B-Man and his associate must contend with a shadowy group who knows about the secret of the movie house and want the power for themselves. Can they succeed in holding them off?

Since #2, we’ve gotten Scott Donnelly‘s Kings series, which has a trio of heroes fighting off an invasion of crab men who have overtaken civilization. With this story, the series takes a strange turn, as our heroes learn the cause of the crab-men invasion. Does this start a new phase in the series?

And in a return from the first issue, is the next part (last part?) of Rick Bradley‘s sf adventure tale of aliens and bionic dinosaurs, where our hero has been kidnapped to a space station orbiting another world. He, with others, escapes being experimented on by escaping to the alien world. But will he ever get home?

Brian K. Morris is back with a stand-alone work with ghosts and seances, con men, and a ghost from the future. Or is this the first of a series?

A different tale from Brian Rodman is our introduction to his “Cosmic Wheel” universe. This one has occult detective The Midnight Mason looking into the rising power of the Nazis in 1930, where he goes up against other occult forces working for them. I’m not sure when or where we’ll see more of this new character and the larger universe of this story.

Like the previous issues, this is another great issue. I do like there is a mix of stand-alone and continuing stories and characters. I mainly got these for the Captain Hawklin stories, but the others are pretty good. I wound up going after the Abraham Snow series, and will probably look into the Lance Star stories as well.

I look forward to the next issue. If you haven’t gotten this series, I recommend you do so. This is one of the better New Pulp fanzines.