Highlights of Ron Fortier's appearance on the Art's Reviews podcast

This is a rare two-post day on this blog, but I take that as additional proof that 2015 will be the year of the Bat.

Airship 27's Ron Fortier was a guest on Art's Reviews podcast yesterday and talked about the huge amount of projects occupying his time over the next few months. The bulk of the first half of the conversation was about Sherlock Holmes projects (past and future) but at about the 30 minute mark, the attention turns to The Black Bat for a few minutes.

I attempted to capture the information as best as I could, starting with a project that I'm hearing about for the first time. All quotes are by Mr. Fortier (host Art Sippo may as well have not been involved, he contributed very little besides the occasions "wow").

"Last year I wrote a long Black Bat vs. Doctor Satan story which will be appearing in a new Black Bat anthology from Moonstone."

Fantastic! I was getting tired of The Black Bat appearing in one story in anthologies for Domino Lady, The Spider, and so on. About time the tables were turned in that regard. I knew little about Doctor Satan but have done a little research and this could be quite cool. More on him later.

We are also given a bit more information about the team-up with The Purple Scar.

"Basically it's a novelette...It will have ten interior illustrations by none other than Rob Davis."

Onwards from prose books to comic book projects. The image below is several months old, but for those who may not have seen it yet, you could probably guess that it is meant to be the cover to the Black Bat / Domino Lady book. The art is by Mike Dorman.

"I've taken over writing two series for Moonstone. One of them is called 'Black Bat and Domino Lady: Danger Coast to Coast'...

What I've done is, every two issues we tell a complete story. In the first storyline, the Black Bat story is the 'A' story whereas interspersed between it is the 'B' story of Ellen Patrick out in Los Angeles.

When you get to issue #3, it reverses. The A story becomes the Domino Lady story, in between some of those pages you're going to find the continuation of the Black Bat saga but it's the B story now."

"And then as if that wasn't enough to fill my plate, he (Moonstone's Joe Gentile) turns around and had another comic project in the works that for whatever reason, the gentleman who was writing it took a hike...And it was going to be a pulp team book, much like a pulp version of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen but with The Black Bat as the primary, central force collecting these pulp heroes...The series itself is going to be called Guns of The Black Bat".

"Any public domain character that you can possibly imagine is sooner or later going to pop up in this series. In the first two issues we've got...Domino Lady is there, The Phantom Detective, Air Boy, I.V. Frost, Ki-Gor The Jungle Lord, Jim Anthony Super Detective and...I got to throw in my own character Nighthawk (sp?), is going to appear there, in comic book form."

So basically, in terms of Black Bat content, the exact opposite of Mask and Masks 2. Where he appears to be a bit part player in those books, he will be the hub character in Guns.

There was also a brief reference to a third volume of Black Bat Mystery. So all very good news, aside from the fact that we don't have a release date for any of them yet.