Coming this fall from Altus Press: The Black Bat Omnibus Volume 6

Altus continues to keep its promise of a quicker release schedule for the Black Bat Omnibus.

Pulp hero the Black Bat returns! This collection contains the next three adventures of the Black Bat: “The Eyes of the Blind,” “The Blackout Murders,” and “Shadow of evil,” uncut and restored with the original illustrations. It’s the next volume of the complete reprinting of the series.

So the 16th through 18th stories of the series, all written by Norman A. Daniels this time. I'll provide an exact date when one is made available.

Coming Up Next From Lucky Comics...

Lucky Comics took us by surprise last month when they announced their Black Bat Tales series. The first issue, an 8-page comic book, was released a few days later and they then announced plan for the second issue on their blog.

Lucky Comics marches on with their new take on the old Bat! A prose story 2,300 words by legend Lou Mougin.

Who are you calling old? ;-)

Lucky gave us a look at a work-in-progress version of the cover as well, by Eric Douthitt.

Mougin has worked for Marvel (Avengers Spotlight, Inhumans) and Eclipse Comics (Icicle, Sparkplug, Champions) in the past and is currently writing the Flare book for Heroic Publishing.

In prose format, Mougin recently contributed a story called The Big Download for the Legends Of New Pulp Fiction anthology.

Beyond "Faces Of Fear"

I almost gave up. Almost. I normally listen to the Airship 27 podcasts right to the delightful closing tune but when it seemed like there would be no Black Bat discussion during episode 18, I came this close to shutting her down at the 53:48 mark. But they were moving on to fan questions, there were only about six minutes left in the show, so I said "what the hell" and finished the show.

Quite glad I did. At the last minute (very nearly literally), Ron Fortier brought us up to date on Faces Of Fear, the team up book with The Purple Scar to be published by Moonstone.  A choppy partial transcript of Fortier's conversation with Rob Davis follows (Fortier is speaking throughout):

You and I have done a book for Joe (Gentile, Moonstone Books) called Faces Of Fear in which The Black Bat teams up with The Purple Scar. 

Well Joe was so happy with that particular novella, which should be out (in) maybe another month...Well, at Windy City this year, Joe and I got to talking and Joe said "Would you and Rob (Davis) consider doing another one of those?"

And I said "'m pretty sure we can fit it in our schedule later, for the start of next year". So I said "Are we talking novella and, you know, Rob's illustrations, and all that stuff?" and he said "Definitely". 

And he turned around and told me this: "I'd love for it to feature The Black Bat and Domino Lady". And I went "Okay... " and he goes "Remember that character that you like so much on radio, Ron?...Could we incorporate that character in the story as well?".

So it's basically going to be two classic pulp heroes and the premiere of this classic radio character in print, in prose, for the first time ever.

So what do we know about this character? Prior to relating the details of that conversation, Fortier explained that the character was an inspiration to Stan Lee for the creation of a specific Marvel character.  The obvious answer would be The Spider but he doesn't meet the criteria of being a prose first-timer.

So I'm a little stumped, but it makes for a fun mystery. And it's encouraging to know that the flow of Black Bat material is not on the verge of stopping for a while.

Guns Of The Black #2 Bat Preview Art

Courtesy of Ron Fortier. I've been away from the internet for a few days.  The message below is from Mr. Fortier, originally posted on August 4th on his Facebook page  .

I want to personally thank all of you who picked up Moonstone Comics' GUNS OF THE BLACK BAT # 1 yesterday upon its release to comic shops. Writer Erick Esquivel and artist Paul Delacroix were the stars of that issue, I being brought on board at the 11th hour to do a little script doctoring. With issue # 2, my participation grew a bit more with artist Sylvestre Szilagyi joining the team. Here's a peek at page #1 of issue #2 as my way of saying thanks for your wonderful support.

It seems like publishing this book has been quite a battle. If my memory is sound, the first issue was scheduled for April but only finally reached stores this past week. And at the moment, Previews World display a release date of December 28th for issue #2. Yikes.

Looks gorgeous though.