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.