We now have the annual issue of Blood ‘n’ Thunder, the Blood ‘n’ Thunder 2025 Special Edition, from Murania Press, but instead of showing up just prior to the Windy City Pulp and Paper Convention, it was at Pulpfest. This is the fifth such annual edition, going back to 2021. I’ve reviewed the prior volumes here.
We get 288 pages, a little longer than last year’s, with 10 articles on pulp, vintage movies, and old-time radio, along with a couple of fiction pieces. We get several top contributors this time, along with some first-timers. Some of these works are reprints, but most people have probably not seen these.
Will Murray kicks things off with two addenda to his work on pulp westerns, Wordslingers. While I have a copy, I haven’t reviewed it. I guess I need to. The first addendum contains several interesting quotes by readers and writers of pulp westerns. The second looks at how the western-pulp authors moved to scripting western TV shows.
Another article by Murray is a further examination of the story behind The Shadow novel, “The Golden Vulture,” that was written by Lester Dent. It would not be published until six years later, after Walter Gibson revised it. While Murray has written articles on this, he has gotten new information.
And finally, he introduces one of the fiction pieces here, an unpublished Lester Dent story, “Boiled Eggs.” This was an air-war story he wrote around 1931 that was not picked up by anyone at the time. Not only are we getting here for the first time, but we get to see it in the form it was submitted.
From editor Ed Hulse is also a trio of pieces. First up, he delves into the difficulties Raymond Chandler had in writing the screenplay for The Blue Dahlia. A film that became a noir classic, and for which he was nominated for an Oscar. Next is a reprint work, a long piece on the history of The Bat. This was a master criminal who appeared in a 1920 play that was then adapted several times to film and TV. And the character is also another source of inspiration for Batman, according to creator Bob Kane. This work first appeared in the fourth Blood ‘n’ Thunder Presents volume, but sales of that volume were poor, so many have probably not read it. His third piece is a review of various pulp and pulp-adjacent works he has read recently.
From Gilbert Colon, we get a variety of reviews of movies and TV shows. While I had heard of these, I hadn’t seen them, so learning more was great.
Old-time-radio researcher Karl Schadow takes a look at a radio show based on the aviation pulp works of George Bruce. I find Bruce interesting as I’m not aware of many pulp authors who got their own pulp magazine named after themselves. And it’s interesting that while radio at times was a competitor to the pulps, sometimes we see that radio made use of the pulp stories as well.
Adam Link was a well-known and popular robot character from a series of sf pulp stories by Eando Binder. The first story was even adapted into an episode of The Outer Limits, and starred Leonard Nimoy. Matthew R. Bradley provides an excellent history of the character and series, along with later comicbook adaptations.
In another reprint, from about 20 years prior, is from the late Brian Taves. First appearing in an early issue of Blood ‘n’ Thunder, it is a look at the early pulp stories of Talbot Mundy. This was written before Taves’ critical biography of Munday that came out in 2005. I have that and need to do a review here. As I have been trying to get into reading Mundy, this work will help.
Finally, we get another reprint, our final piece of fiction. This is the 1929 novella “The Shadow of Wall Street” that appeared in a short-lived Street & Smith pulp magazine Fame & Fortune Magazine. Sf and pulp historian Sam Moskowitz claimed that this was one of the inspirations for The Shadow. Was it? I remember when Sanctum Books reprinted it when they had The Shadow license, but apparently Conde Nast had them stop. But it’s now in the public domain, so it can be reprinted. See if you think it was an inspiration.
This is another good collection and I encourage people to get it. I really enjoyed the articles here. And if you don’t have the prior ones, get those as well.
