For 2023, we come to the end of an era. After 20 volumes, Tales of the Shadowmen from Black Coat Press now ends.
This volume, a milestone in itself, will be the final one as well: Vol. 20. We get a larger than normal volume for this blowout issue, 668 pages rather than around 300 pages. In addition to the stories, we get various essays and reminiscences.
This last volume is subtitled Fin de Siècle, which means “end of the century,” appropriate for the last volume. The phase typically encompasses both the meaning of the similar term “turn of the century,” as well as referring to the closing of one era and the onset of another. The “spirit” of the term often refers to the cultural hallmarks that were recognized as prominent in the 1880s and 1890s, including ennui, cynicism, pessimism, and “a widespread belief that civilization leads to decadence.”
As noted previously, this series makes use of Philip José Farmer‘s “Wold Newton” concept, mixing in a variety of literary characters, with a focus on the various pulp and pulpish characters of France and Europe, such as Arsène Lupin, Fantômas, The Nyctalope, and Rouletabille, as well as those from other countries. Several authors will come back with further stories of the same characters, creating a loose series within the volumes. I was surprised by how much the works of Jules Verne were used in these stories.
In talking about the stories that appear within the Tales of the Shadowmen volumes, we have the continuation (or conclusion) of several series. With the old pulp magazines, they used serials to keep readers coming back, as while one serial was finishing, another was already running. While some of these may get collected in their own volumes (a few have been), there is no guarantee.
For essays and reminiscences we get pieces by Stephen R. Bissette, Neil Gaiman, Stuart Gelzer, Robin Hobb, Stephen Jones, K.A. Laity, Randy Lofficier, Tim Lucas, Frank J. Morlock, Kim Newman, Sharan Newman, Henry Lion Oldie, David J. Schow, Michael Shreve, John Skipp, Brian Stableford, Antifas de Torquemada, Rob Walton, Lance Weiler, Douglas E. Winter, and Thomas Yeates.
As to the stories, we get the following.
Our first story makes use of Mateo Falcone from the story by Prosper Mérimée in Jason Scott Aiken‘s “The Hunter and the Grubber.” Here he adds some interesting elements to the character as he hunts down a killer from Corsica, while also linking him to a later literary hunter.
Tim Newton Anderson works in the Surrealists in his “The Exquisite Corpse,” which has an encounter between Belphegor and The Nyctalope.
We get a future sf story in Jean-Michel Archaimbault‘s “When Worlds Collide” that includes the characters from E.E. “Doc” Smith‘s Skylark series and the French sf hero Chevalier Bruno Coqdor by Maurice Limat. Sadly, Black Coat Press has not reprinted this series.
Set during WWI, we have a Lovecraftian tale in Matthew Baugh‘s “The Staffel From Yuggoth” with several characters including The Nyctalope, Philip Strange, Biggles, and others dealing with the Mi-Gou who are working with the Germans.
A bizarre little tale of a group of admirers of The Phantom of the Opera, “The Society of the Phantom” by Atom Mudman Bezecny, has them somehow reaching the spirit of Erik. They then set out to haunt opera houses of their own, though maybe not as successfully.
Judex with the assistance of others, including a certain Jesuit priest, go up against a possible vampire invasion of France in Thom Brannan‘s “Holy Water.”
Set in the 1970s, Nathan Cabaniss‘s “Get Fantômas” has a group of characters from British and American movies and books, such as Nick Carter, Cleopatra Jones, and others working together to prevent a possible World War III caused by Fantômas.
We get a group of monsters, including the Wolfman, Irma Vep of Les Vampires, Dr. Frankenstein, and others either working with or working to stop the Nazis in occupied Paris in “The Midnight Train to Paris” by Bill Cunningham.
From Matthew Dennion, we get “A Greener Future,” a sequel to Maurice Renard‘s Doctor Lerne (available from Black Coat Press) that involves muck monsters like The Heap, as well as Sâr Dubnotal.
We get another sequel, this time based on Jules Verne’s The Steam House: “The Steam House in Innsmouth” by Paul Di Filippo. The Steam House is a vehicle built to look like an elephant that pulled two large structures around India. A new one is built in America in a Lovecraftian world. Here it’s built to look like a bison pulling two large teepees, and their mission is to capture some Deep Ones from Innsmouth so P.T. Barnum can exhibit them. Will they succeed?
Our first series ending in this volume is Brian Gallagher‘s “The Secret Archive of Vienna,” which closes out, with the ending of World War I, the adventures of Dr. Cornelius Kramm (from Gustave Le Rouge‘s series available from Black Coat Press) against Countess Irina Petrovska (from movie Horror Express). Here Dr. Cornelius is working for U.S. military intelligence to grab the secret archives of extraterrestrial info before other nations get it as the Austro-Hungary Empire collapses at the end of the war. Does he succeed?
We get the final part of Robur‘s origin series from Martin Gately, “Young Robur and The Masada Pattern,” which has him return to the haven he grew up in for a final confrontation. Hopefully the whole series will be collected in a future collection.
And surprisingly, in “Masters of the World” by Lex Gil, we get both Robur and Captain Nemo. Set after the events of 20,000 Leagues, Professor Arronax gets contacted by two U.S. Secret Service agents: West and Gordon. They need help in resolving the matter of strange flags appearing on various landmarks. And need his help in dealing with Captain Nemo. Robur is behind things but has only The Terror. Also tied in are other items from Verne’s works, like The Great Eastern and Propeller Island.
French pulp sf detective Teddy Verano is the star of Micah S. Harris‘s “The Secret Alchemy of Very Bad Balloons,” which has Teddy on a search in the post-war period looking for a mysterious woman that has him intersecting with various characters and elements from spy/espionage works, as well as TV series like Twin Peaks and The Prisoner.
We get a strange team-up of Orlando, Solomon Kane, and Porthos (of the Three Musketeers) in Travis Hiltz‘s “The Ghosts of Gascony.” Here they look into the matter of ghosts appearing that could lead to a war between France and Spain. Can they get to the bottom of things before it gets out of control?
We get a team-up of Harry Dickson and Dr. Jules de Grandin in Riley Hogan‘s “The Epicurean Slaughters.” Here they look into a series of bizarre murders of some British noblemen. There is some connection between them, but what is it and why did this lead to their gruesome deaths? Can they solve the mystery before any others are killed?
In Matthew Ilseman‘s “The Nyctalope at the Earth’s Core,” we get a combination of Edgar Rice Burroughs‘ Pellucidar and Verne’s “hollow earth” when The Nyctalope is asked early on in his career to look into a group coming back from Pellucidar who have gone missing. Not only does he solve the problem, but come across a potential threat.
We get another wild story pulling in a lot of characters from various “spaghetti westerns” in Rick Lai‘s “Executioners Also Die.” I do hope we get more stories from his other series.
We get another look into The Nyctalope’s long life in Roman Leary‘s “The Legacy of a Man” which finds him in Thailand in the early 21st century. There he runs into the vampire Carmilla and winds up saving her and a young girl.
We again get Irma Vep, the French cat burglar who leads Les Vampires, this time going up against female Italian air pirate Filibus, from the silent Italian movie of the same name, in Sean Lee Levin‘s “The Vampire and the Air Pirate.” Filibus is a movie that only recently came to light, but I think too much is made of the cross-dressing lesbian air pirate being some kind of ground-breaking “gender fluid” character.
We get a dinner gathering of early French heroes collected by Arsène Lupin in “A Scepter in a Child’s Hand” by Jean-Marc Lofficier. Francis Ardan, Rouletabille, The Phantom Angel, Hareton Ironcastle, The Nyctalope, Judex, and Sâr Dubnotal. Afterwards, they tell of their past adventures, but for us, Lupin tells of his first adventure.
Set during the French Revolution, David McDonald‘s “Scarlet Petals, Crimson Flames” has the Scarlet Pimpernel meeting the main character from Dumas‘ the Chevalier de Maison-Rouge to rescue someone.
French adventure hero Bob Morane is the star of Rod McFadyen‘s “Shadows of the Past.” He is asked to look into a matter that involves a Bond villain. It’s not as fantastical as the other Morane stories. I really wish we’d get an English translation of his stories.
Another story with Harry Dickson is “Sow the Wind” by Nigel Malcolm. Set shortly after the end of World War II in Europe, we find Dickson with Professor Quatermass with a group of Russian soldiers checking out a secret Nazi base. Things go wrong when they discover not just wrecked flying saucers but triffids. Hopefully, they got them all.
We get a strange tale in Xavier Mauméjean‘s “The Recerebration Machine” that has the mad scientists from Radio-Terror (available from Black Coat Press) helping a French publisher deal with a strange malady that may be caused by dictator Adenoid Hynkel.
In William Patrick Maynard and Anna Victoria Maynard tale “Malice and Snares,” we have a return of a villainous character in modern times.
Jess Nevins‘ “The Fall of Scientific City” makes use of the city created by mad scientist Miraculas (from the work of the same name by Gabriel Bernard, which is not available from Black Coat Press or anyone else) in the mountain in Niger that is overthrown in the 1920s by several characters including Edisonade Jack Wright and Phil Strange.
Another series of stories is wrapped up in Christofer Nigro‘s “Full Circle” which gives us the final confrontation between Gouroull, the evil monster of Frankenstein, against Erik, the Phantom of the Opera, that also includes the new Unholy Three and two other monsters of Frankenstein. This one also ties into past works about Gouroull by other authors. I do wish we’d get the original Gouroull stories translated into English.
We get a story about Carnacki that involved a character from the final work by Jules Verne in “A Singular Haunting” by John Peel.
Another Verne character, Phileas Fogg, is featured in Neil Penswick‘s “115,200 Seconds,” though he only appears in flashbacks. This one presents a different take on the character.
Judex appears in New York to rescue a young girl in the days before WWII in Anthony Perconti‘s “Judgment Knight.”
This time we get another Verne character, Passpartout before he met Fogg in Dennis Power‘s “The School of Hard Blows.” Here he is teaching at a school, but runs afoul of others there, including Monsieur Ming (from Bob Morane), which also gives him a possible link to some other characters.
A Lovecraftian tale has Randolph Carter with an associate looking into the caverns of an ancient cult in the Pyrannes in Pete Rawlik and Sal Ciano‘s “The Deposition of Randolph Carter.”
We get another sequel to Jean Rey‘s story “M” in Josh Reynolds‘ “House of Malice,” this time working in Sâr Dubnotal who wishes to put an end to it all.
We get a sequel to the French sf novel Someone Is Stealing Children in Paris (published by Black Coat Press) in “The Same Peculiar Tint” by Chris Roberson. Here we learn the later fate of the rescued children.
Judex is the star of “The Hollywood Affair” by Robert L. Robinson Jr., which takes our hero to, well, Hollywood. There, with the help of Charlie Chaplin, Philip Marlowe, and Sam Spade, he looks for his missing brother. Who is being held by a certain sinister Asian doctor?
Frank Schildiner has been writing a novel using Fantômas, and so has another story with him in “No Child of Mine” where he deals with a group who are enamored of the Prince of Evil.
In Artikel Unbekannt‘s “The Dark Demon” we get the Italian comicbook character Diabolik in a story tied to his movie.
Differently, Nathalie Vidalinc‘s “The Noose of the Phansigars” is the second of a trilogy. So who knows where we’ll get the third? Continuing the adventures of Felifix the Tigerman’s adventures, this time in India, he gets the aid of Mowgli and finally finds the big bad behind several matters.
Finally, in David L. Vineyard‘s “The Thief of Light and Shadows,” we get another Arsène Lupin story that ties in some detectives like Sexton Blake and the filmmaker of the Fantômas and Les Vampire films.
I will miss this series. But this will live on in other volumes. I already see on their 2024 schedule several additional volumes. We are getting a new volume of classic Nyctalope stories in The Nyctalope vs. The Antichrist, and classic Doc Ardan stories in The Hurricane Master. Brian Gallagher’s new Dr. Cornelius series, which concluded in this volume, was collected in Dr. Cornelius vs. Countess Petrovski which has an additional story.
Doctor Omega gets a new volume later that year. And we should hopefully have a new Fantômas story from Frank Schildiner, this one based on the Eurospy movie version.
I do want to see more stories with many of these characters, and hope that we will.
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