I recently obtained Pulp Adventures #42 from Bold Venture Press, dated Winter-Spring 2023. I guess this indicates they are going twice a year.
As always, we get a selection of new and classic pulp stories, along with a couple of non-fiction works. We are back to about 140 pages. We get heroes, villains, science-fiction, westerns, detective, humor, ghost, and supernatural stories.
I had hoped they can get back to being quarterly but looks like we’ll get only two issues this year. This is the ninth year of publication for the new version of Pulp Adventures.
The cover for #42 is an original, tied to the feature story, “Fantômas: The Thousand Legs of Chaos” by Frank Schildiner. Starring the French supervillain/terrorist Fantômas, he is setting various South American insects on people just to cause chaos. But is there more to it when an English Lord is found? Juve and Fandor work to thwart his latest plans. Schildiner has a new Fantômas novel coming from Black Coat Press, using the version from the 1960s SpyFi era.
For classic pulp fiction, we get the following:
Now, the American Crusader is not a pulp character, but a comicbook character from the Golden Age published by Nedor, Thrilling‘s comicbook line. He is a scientist given superpower via atomic radiation who fought in WWII. Being in the public domain, several have brought him back. Here we have a new story of him set after WWII by Don Everett Smith Jr. and Michael Grassia.
From science-fiction author E.C. Tubb is “The Beatific Smile” about a pair of men stuck in a space lifeboat after their spaceship is damaged, as they wait long weeks to be rescued. One is in hibernation. What happens to the other? This one appeared in 1958.
“Saddle Bum” by William R. Cox is a tale from Speed Western in 1945. “Big Gringo” is a troublemaker who was devastating the ranches, until another cowboy comes along and sets things right for his own reasons.
“Valhalla in the Hills” by Emmet F. Harte is one of his Honk and Horace humorous stories from Railroad Man’s Magazine in 1910. I don’t know how many are in this series, certainly around 70. Honk and Horace are a pair of characters who work for a railroad. They had been doing work doing landscaping around their depots when they get a task to rebuild a ghost town into a modern mecca so the railroad can sell off the land to settlers. And things go a little wonky. If you enjoy this pair, they have reprinted more in some of their collections from Railroad Man’s Magazine.
From John Russell Fearn, creator of the Golden Amazon, is “The Chewing Gum Murder,” a detective story in 1952. A fiend is trying to swindle a woman out of her fortune, but she gets the better of him. There is also a small sidebar on Fearn.
“Noah” is a science-fiction tale from Charles Boeckman Jr. The title is prophetic. In the future, thanks to aliens, a pair is chosen to populate a new human race. They picked the best, right?
For New Pulp fiction, we get the following:
Another western, this time a modern noir detective story by Jack Halliday: “Black Sunrise.” So, no, the butler didn’t do it.
In “The Grannywoman of Devil’s Backbone” by Teel James Glenn you learn why you don’t cross old backwoods women in the Ozarks…
Another supernatural tale, “Jonelle Pentecost” by E. Doyle-Gillespie, is next. Our title character is looking for the Three-Legged Donkey Woman to get back someone. Will she succeed?
For non-fiction pieces, there is an excerpt from Michael E. Uslan‘s memoir, The Boy Who Loved Batman. This one is on an episode from his childhood. Another is a review of a new movie, Marlowe (2023), which stars Liam Neesom.
