{"id":19401,"date":"2025-02-28T10:00:57","date_gmt":"2025-02-28T15:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/?p=19401"},"modified":"2025-02-03T15:13:03","modified_gmt":"2025-02-03T20:13:03","slug":"pulp-comics-black-scorpion-and-modern-pulp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/2025\/02\/28\/pulp-comics-black-scorpion-and-modern-pulp\/","title":{"rendered":"Pulp comics: ‘Black Scorpion’ and ‘Modern Pulp’"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have previously posted on Wordsmith<\/em>, the pulp-inspired comicbook series by Canadian author Dave Darrigo<\/a><\/strong> (1954-2024). But I learned that he has more pulp-inspired works.<\/p>\n

\"Black<\/a>After a too-brief stint with The Green Hornet<\/a><\/strong> at NOW Comics, he later started his own comicbook company, Special Studio, which existed from 1989-91 under Diamond Press in Canada. There, he put out several pulp-inspired comics, most written by him. A total of 14 comics came from the company.<\/p>\n

This time I’ll look at two of those titles: Black Scorpion<\/em> and Modern Pulp<\/em>. Another time I’ll look at some of the others.<\/p>\n

Black Scorpion<\/em> ran three issues and starred the Black Scorpion<\/strong>, who was a pastiche of The Green Hornet, but with a black man (newspaper publisher Ben Wright<\/strong>) as the Black Scorpion with driver\/sidekick The Dart (David Cox)<\/strong>. Each issue had two 16-page stories written by “George Stryker<\/strong>.” While the intros claim that Stryker is a comics fan who wrote several stories, it’s really a pseudonym.<\/p>\n

In case it wasn’t clear, Fran Striker<\/a><\/strong> created and wrote the radio (and sometimes other media) adventures of The Lone Ranger<\/a><\/strong>, The Green Hornet, and Sgt. Preston of the Yukon<\/strong>. “George Stryker” was really Darrigo and Ron Fortier<\/a><\/strong>, who wrote many of The Green Hornet comics at NOW Comics and is a New Pulp<\/a> author, editor, and publisher at Airship 27<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So who are these characters? Ben Wright is the publisher of Pulse<\/em> magazine instead of a newspaper. It’s not clear what kind of magazine it is. David Cox is his driver and comrade-in-arms. His ethnicity is unclear. He is called The Dart because he uses small darts as weapons. The only other recurring character is Africa Thorpe<\/strong>, an investigative reporter for Wright. The Black Scorpion’s car is the Blue Stinger. We get no origin for the Black Scorpion. Like The Green Hornet, he is seen as a criminal.<\/p>\n

As the stories are short, there is not a lot of extra time for anything but the main story. We get a vigilante killing drug dealers; the kidnapping of a pastiche of Nelson Mandela<\/strong>; after the Dart is hurt, the Scorpion has to go after a new female enforcer; a white supremacy gang, the White Lions, beats up Africa Thorpe, and are taken down; the mayor up for re-election is corrupt and is caught by a blackmailer, and the Scorpion is able to get the tape and gets it to Thorpe; and finally there is a serial killer after prostitutes, and Thorpe goes undercover to help stop them.<\/p>\n

\"Modern<\/a>As a bonus I’ll cover another title.\u00a0 Modern Pulp<\/em> was a one-shot comic. It has two stories by Joe Zabel<\/strong> and Gary Dumm<\/strong>, who have contributed to Harvey Pekar<\/strong>‘s American Splendor<\/em>. The two stories are expanded versions that saw print in their mini-comic called January Midnight<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The first story is about an undercover government agent who runs afoul of a madman who likes to see people getting killed and eaten by his tiger. But she turns the tables on him and exposes the corruption at his company. I could see this being a pulp story. Depending on how the writer did it, they could have turned it into a weird-menace<\/a> tale or a spicy<\/a> tale.<\/p>\n

The second is a science-fiction tale set in the future and centers around an art thief with an interesting way of laundering his loot. Again, I could see this as a story in a sf pulp magazine.<\/p>\n

I was saddened to learn that Dave Darrigo passed away in 2024. I had hoped that his Wordsmith<\/em> series could be collected in a better edition. I don’t know if that will ever happen now. Ron Fortier also does comics through Redbud Studios<\/a>. I wonder if there is any chance of them reprinting the Black Scorpion<\/em> or even Wordsmith<\/em>? Or whether we could see more stories with the Black Scorpion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have previously posted on Wordsmith, the pulp-inspired comicbook series by Canadian author Dave Darrigo (1954-2024). But I learned that he has more pulp-inspired works. After a too-brief stint with The Green Hornet at NOW Comics, he later started his own comicbook company, Special Studio, which existed from 1989-91 under Diamond Press in Canada. There, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":19477,"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 Pulp comics: 'Black Scorpion' and 'Modern Pulp.'","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":[18,14],"tags":[84,1470,2145,394,2132,499,252],"hashtags":[],"class_list":["post-19401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-comics","category-review","tag-airship-27","tag-dave-darrigo","tag-fran-striker","tag-ron-fortier","tag-special-studio","tag-the-green-hornet","tag-the-lone-ranger"],"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\/2025\/04\/black-scorpion-1-featured.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3eLo8-52V","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19401","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=19401"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19401\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19483,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19401\/revisions\/19483"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19401"},{"taxonomy":"hashtags","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtags?post=19401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}