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.