{"id":10109,"date":"2020-08-19T10:00:30","date_gmt":"2020-08-19T14:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/?p=10109"},"modified":"2025-10-10T14:40:59","modified_gmt":"2025-10-10T18:40:59","slug":"ravenwood-stepson-of-mystery-vol-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/2020\/08\/19\/ravenwood-stepson-of-mystery-vol-4\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Ravenwood: Stepson of Mystery’ Vol. 4"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"'Ravenwood:<\/a>After too long, we get more new stories about Ravenwood, Stepson of Mystery<\/strong>. He was an occult detective who had a short-lived series that ran in the back of Secret Agent X<\/strong> for five issues in 1936.<\/p>\n

Airship 27<\/a> has given us two collections of new Ravenwood stories, a novel, and now another collection. If you want to read the originals, Altus Press\/Steeger Books<\/a> has a collection, now with a nice new cover that ties in with collections of other series by Frederick C. Davis<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Ravenwood was orphaned in Tibet when his rich, missionary doctor parents were killed. Rescued by the Nameless One<\/strong>, a Tibetan mystic, he was instructed in the ways of the occult. Returning to New York as a rich playboy (shades of several comic-book and pulp heroes), he works as an occult detective. Ravenwood’s edge is his occult powers, which is to basically being able to see information that is hidden or knowing that something will happen before it does.<\/p>\n

Recurring characters were few in the the original stories. There his valet Sterling<\/strong> (no first name), the Nameless One<\/strong> who lives with Ravenwood in his apartment and (usually) never leaves, and Stagg<\/strong>, a police inspector who usually thinks Ravenwood is involved in the case due to his advanced knowledge. All appear here.<\/p>\n

Ravenwood: Stepson of Mystery<\/em>, Vol. 4, gives us four new stories by several authors, along with several nice pieces of interior artwork.<\/p>\n

First off, we get Lance Stahlberg<\/strong> with a tale with demonic possession, a thief who has made a deal with the devil, and a Ravenwood who has real occult powers. Overall, I thought the story was pretty good, making really good use of Ravenwood and his cast of characters. But I was bothered by the heavy use of occult powers, both by Ravenwood as well as others, as this hasn’t been the norm in the original stories.<\/p>\n

Dewayne Dowers<\/strong> gives us another story heavy with occult powers. This time we have a golem, under control of a rabbi with occult powers, who is attacking various criminal gangs. And unfortunately also attacking innocent people. This brings in Ravenwood to try to put a stop to them both. Will he succeed before more die? As with the prior story, I was bothered by the heavy use of spells and powers by Ravenwood.<\/p>\n

In another story, Michael Black<\/strong> has Ravenwood step in to help a young woman and her fiance from being attacked by criminals. This leads to him being invited to her family estate. This is a story that is more like the original tales, as it is about an attempt to defraud the young lady from her inheritance.<\/p>\n

Finally, Michael Housel<\/strong> gives us a weird tale that takes Ravenwood to Louisiana. He’s looking for missing interns working for a doctor. The doctor is doing some strange research with cats, first big cats, now house cats, that mixes science and magic. No magic spells, and the Nameless One plays a much smaller part, but I felt this was closer to the originals. I kept thinking this could be a 1930s black-and-white horror film.<\/p>\n

While this is another great collection of stories from Airship 27, I was bothered by the heavy level of occult powers in some stories. Ravenwood is more of a character with psychic powers that gives him insights rather than occult powers to cast spells and the like. While I like tales that make better use of pulp characters than the original authors did, I prefer the characters stay true to what they are. I will always look forward to the next Ravenwood collection, though.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After too long, we get more new stories about Ravenwood, Stepson of Mystery. He was an occult detective who had a short-lived series that ran in the back of Secret Agent X for five issues in 1936. Airship 27 has given us two collections of new Ravenwood stories, a novel, and now another collection. If […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":10489,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_has_post_settings":[],"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"The Pulp Super-Fan looks at 'Ravenwood: Stepson of Mystery' Vol. 4. #newpulp #pulpmags","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_wp_rev_ctl_limit":""},"categories":[7,1,14],"tags":[84,3,19],"hashtags":[],"class_list":["post-10109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-new-pulp","category-pulps","category-review","tag-airship-27","tag-hero-pulps","tag-occult-detectives"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/files\/2020\/07\/ravenwood-vol-4.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3eLo8-2D3","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10109"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10109\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10524,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10109\/revisions\/10524"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10109"},{"taxonomy":"hashtags","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtags?post=10109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}