I got the most recent issues of Bronze Knuckles, a New Pulp fanzine. The main emphasis of the fanzine is pulp-hero stories, but other pulp-inspired stories are carried.
Its slogan is “Keep Pulp Alive” and is done through Patreon campaigns. You can purchase the digital editions from their store, but if you want the hard copies, you’ll need to join the Patreon like I did.
Like the rest, each issue is about 40 pages long, about 8- by 10.5-inches in size, and saddle stitched. They use an off-white paper inside that I think was chosen in imitation of the color of pulp paper, which I thought was a nice touch. The covers are in full color, with black-and-white interior artwork. In addition to the stories, we usually get one or two reviews.
Bronze Knuckles #10 (January 2024) gives us six stories, including the concluding story (the eighth) of “Ichabod Crane, Monster Hunter.” We get the first Damion Knight story by Keith Gooderson. This hero is a demon hunter who takes care of these creatures, called “Sinisters,” who come to our world to hunt and kill. But he sometimes runs afoul of the police.
Other stories are a detective story centered around the murder of a hockey player and the secrets tied to it, and a science-fiction work told in a series of police reports.
A bit different are the “quick takes,” where authors are challenged to write a 1,000-word story (or one-page comic) including three or more of a set of nine objects. Three authors take up that challenge.
Bronze Knuckles #11 (May 2024) gives us seven stories. We get another Damion Knight story, and another Adventurers Inc. story by Alexandre LeVasseaur (and are promised a further one). This time Rush Randall and the rest are involved with an expedition to Mt. Everest. Things don’t go quite as expected. I look forward to the next adventure, as it features the return of a major villain.
From Kevin Beckett and Craig Tower is a story set in Las Vegas in the late 1950s. Among other things, it makes use of Donald Keyhoe‘s aviation hero Richard Knight, though not in a good way.
Scott Mollon provides a kind of different murder mystery story set in Miami, where the reader is challenged to try to solve it. Jon Eric Mundy gives us a tale of “Molly O’Day, Super Sleuth,” which takes its inspiration from early comicbook detectives.
As always with such collections, there are stories I like and those I don’t. But there is enough to like that I think it’s worth getting. Certainly, I look forward to new Adventurers Inc. tales and similar works.
In addition to these, they are also doing a “serial pulp” as an additional level to the Patreon. They are putting out a new work by William Messner-Loebs, who may be best known for the comic story Journey: The Adventures of Wolverine MacAlistaire. This is “Mousterian Investigations,” with chapters 1-3 and 4-6 published in small booklets. I am not certain how many chapters are planned.
Again, I encourage folks to check this out, and at least consider obtaining the ebook editions, if not commit to the Patreon itself.
I loved the Adventures Inc. story. Well crafted.