Black Bat Mystery, Audio Version, Coming Soon!

On August 22nd, Airship 27 made the following announcement:

Airship 27 Productions, one of the best known of the New Pulp publishers today, is joining forces with Radio Archives, the leading voice in audiobooks to bring their action/adventure pulp titles to the exciting world of audiobooks.

And today, they posted this on Facebook:

The following Airship 27 titles are now being recorded as audio books by Radio Archives.  

Biker
Black Bat Mystery Volume One
Black Bat Mystery Volume Two
Call of Shadows
Claws of the Golden Dragon
CO Jones - Mobsters & Monsters
Damballa
Ghost Squad - Rise of the Black Legion

Obviously, I'd hoped that The Black Bat would be selected for this treatment but did not really expect it to happen so this is interesting news.

The Black Bat Skedaddles!

From time to time, I get the bug to seek out more information about the German Black Bat stories that were published between 1960 and 1976. My understanding is that they are largely garbage but with titles like "Executed With All The Trimmings" and "Hot Lead Makes Cold Feet", I can't help but be curious.

Invariably, I fail to find anything particularly noteworthy, but on occasion I stumble into another gem. Such was the case yesterday when I came across a website for Skedaddle Press.

That certainly looked like our hero at right, along with a couple of other familiar faces. A solo image further down the page (copied below) provided confirmation.

So what's the deal? I wrote to the address at the bottom of the page and promptly received a detailed response (which was much appreciated).

Skedaddle indeed plans on publishing new Black Bat material in comic form but probably not until next year. It will be a traditional version, faithful to the source material.

At the moment however, they are preparing to publish food magazines and directing their attention towards the karepax project which combines comics with snacks (a marriage made in heaven if I've ever heard one!)

Skedaddle has already prepared a compilation of origin stories of a number of PD characters. The goal is to group those characters together under the name The Security Guild in future releases.

Even a quick glance at Skedaddle's website reveals a clear appreciation for pulp and public domain characters so Quinn and his entourage appear to be in good hands here. We'll track the project's progress and wish the creators all the best with their various plans.

Altus and Moonstone Expand Their Black Bat Content

The cover at left finally finds its way onto the right border of the blog now that Altus Press has made volume three of the Black Bat Omnibus available for order. Give the side image a click to be taken to the altuspress.com page from which you can order it.

I want to reiterate how quick Altus is to get these books out to readers. I ordered mine on a Sunday night and it was in my mailbox on Tuesday. Unbelievable. On that level, Altus never fails to impress.

On a more negative note, the first story in the collection, The Black Bat's Flame Trail, is a little bit annoying. I'd read that this was case in a number of reviews but am now experiencing it first hand. Written by Whitney Ellsworth (rather than Norman A. Daniels), the inconsistencies with prior material are irritating.

Ellsworth seemed to get the back story and style just fine, for the most part, but got Carol and Butch's family names wrong on a number of occasions. I knew that going in, but it happens more often than I thought. I don't understand how one can get so much right yet whiff on those kinds of details.

Also, Butch is totally out of character. An easy example to display this is his tendency to refer to The Black Bat by his last name. In previous stories, he would usually refer to the Black Bat as "boss" or some such, but in this he often addresses him as simply "Quinn". It comes off sounding disrespectful and even, at times, vaguely threatening. I'm glad I have the story from a collector's perspective, but it's doubtful that I'll return to it very often.

Catching up with another publisher, about a month ago we shared the news that Moonstone Books was making magnets which featured the images of some of their more recognizable book covers. They have since expanded that project to include "classic" covers of pulp books such as Jungle Stories, Phanton Detective and, of course, Black Book Detective!

So if you enjoy the covers to the original Black Bat stories, such as the one at right, Moonstone now has a batch of them in their selection. Check those out here.

I may as well take a moment to point out, for those who may have missed it, that many of those Black Book Detective Covers are on display on a page that can be reached by clicking the button under the banner above.

The list is not complete and I take no credit for any of the scans. I have located them from various internet sources. At most, I may have cropped or adjusted the colours somewhat but the original images are in no way mine.