{"id":9915,"date":"2020-05-27T10:00:17","date_gmt":"2020-05-27T14:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/?p=9915"},"modified":"2025-11-05T14:26:22","modified_gmt":"2025-11-05T19:26:22","slug":"broken-empire-adventure-unlimited-the-silver-age","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/2020\/05\/27\/broken-empire-adventure-unlimited-the-silver-age\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Broken Empire: Adventure Unlimited: The Silver Age’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"'Broken<\/a>Barry Reese<\/strong><\/a> has created several pulp-inspired characters over the years, all set within his own universe, including Sovereign City, and now published by Pro Se Press<\/a>.<\/p>\n

One series has been about Assistance Unlimited, a group of characters under the leadership of Lazarus Gray<\/strong> and set in Sovereign City in the 1930s and ’40s. In many ways, the group is loosely modeled on The Avenger<\/strong>‘s Justice, Inc.<\/strong> Reese has a timeline for his universe that goes into the present day. So an open question is whether this group is still around, perhaps with new members?<\/p>\n

The idea of successive generations hasn’t been used much with pulp heroes (or New Pulp<\/a>). We too often want more stories with our favorite hero, not their kids or successors. No Shadow Jr.<\/strong> or Doc Savage III<\/strong> for most fans. But Reese has already done this by having the second generation of some of his characters step up; and a few other authors have done similiarly.<\/p>\n

With Broken Empire: Adventure Unlimited: The Silver Age<\/em>, we see this with Assistance Unlimited, as Broken Empire<\/em> is set in the 1960s! While Lazarus Gray is still around, as is Samantha Grace<\/strong>, a younger generation takes the lead in the group, along with other characters. We don’t know what happened to Morgan Watts<\/strong> or Eun Jiwon<\/strong>. Yet.<\/p>\n

Now we have Ellen Grace<\/strong>, Sato Shinji<\/strong>, Bart Hall<\/strong>, Charity Grace<\/strong>, and new character Benjamin Falk<\/strong>. We don’t know much about Sato. Bart Hall is the original Daredevil<\/strong> from the comics by Lev Gleason<\/strong> (he wore a half-red\/half-blue outfit and used a boomerang). Bob Benton<\/strong>, the original Black Terror<\/strong>, is also around, but has passed along the mantle of Black Terror to his former sidekick, Tim<\/strong>. Charity is a former Gravedigger<\/strong> (see her trilogy<\/a>), but she doesn’t play a big role here.<\/p>\n

Ellen seems the main star here, and is Samanath’s daughter. She is kind of an Emma Peel<\/strong> type, with a harder edge. Falk is introduced in this volume, a former Secret Service agent who quit after the JFK<\/strong> assassination and is a target of SIGIL, the bad guys who are a merger of the Nazis and the Illuminati. You’ll learn why. He works with Ellen for most of this story. We also meet Ezekial Gray<\/strong>, though he’s not a formal member of AU, and gets involved in the second half.<\/p>\n

Further, the group no longer operates from their old headquarters in Sovereign City. Now they operate from a nuclear aircraft carrier! I wonder how they pulled that off financially.<\/p>\n

This volume has basically two parts. In the first, they deal with a neo-Nazi-type who has created clones of himself. He tries to threaten the world with an ancient solar weapon and create a Fourth Reich, but is betrayed by one of his clones and a mysterious Mr. X<\/strong>. In the second, they deal with the threat of SIGIL, now under control of a would-be sun god! Who has gone mad thanks to a mystical device. Can they take him down before he burns the world?<\/p>\n

Overall this is a great addition to the series. Another novel in the Reese universe is out, The Second Book of Babylon<\/em>, that I hope to get. Reese is working on the eighth Lazarus Gray volume, and his timeline includes the ninth and 10th volumes, as well as a few other future works. Hope we’ll see these soon. And it would be interesting in seeing more of this iteration of AU.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Barry Reese has created several pulp-inspired characters over the years, all set within his own universe, including Sovereign City, and now published by Pro Se Press. One series has been about Assistance Unlimited, a group of characters under the leadership of Lazarus Gray and set in Sovereign City in the 1930s and ’40s. In many […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":10018,"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 'Broken Empire: Adventure Unlimited: The Silver Age.' #newpulp","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":[14],"tags":[241,72,80],"hashtags":[],"class_list":["post-9915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-review","tag-barry-reese","tag-lazarus-gray","tag-pro-se-press"],"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\/06\/broken-empire.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3eLo8-2zV","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9915","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=9915"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9915\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21785,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9915\/revisions\/21785"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9915"},{"taxonomy":"hashtags","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtags?post=9915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}