The Black Bat's ASPC Streak to Resume!

Airship 27's 55th podcast, released earlier today (on YouTube at least) dropped a little bit of good Black Bat news.

Airship 27 publishes novels and anthologies, but Redbud Studio is comics-focused. they have published, among many other books, four volumes of All-Star Pulp Comics, the first three of which included Black Bat stories.

Unfortunately, the character's streak ended after issue #3 but he appears set to start a new one.

Ron Fortier: John Helmer, The Publisher of Lucky Comics...this is according to Mark Davis...supposedly has a new 8-page Black Bat script that he wants to offer us for this volume.

This is somewhat surprising because Lucky Comics has its own Black Bat book in Black Bat Tales. They have two, in fact, if we consider the modern-day version of the character, The Bat.

Now the stories set in the 1930s (Tales) are written by Lou Mougin so perhaps Mr. Helmer preferred to not interfere with that process and/or to ship his own story out because it didn't quite fit into the plans. Regardless, cooperation between publishers is rarely (never?) a bad thing.

Rob Davis warns that there is no set release date for this book so let's not sit on the Redbud website and refresh our browsers repeatedly, but it's good to hear the Black Bat mentioned on an Airship 27 podcast in any case.

Here's the cover to the book which contained the Black Bat's last appearance. Hey, being that he's been a part of most of these books, maybe he's due for cover treatment?

Other stories will include the Crimson Mask and a Purple Scar / Secret Agent - X team-up. You can listen to the show here but the ASPC portion in particular is at the 15:30 mark or so.

The Black Bat is an Amazing Hero!

We knew this of course, but it turns out that he has been officially given that label by Fresh Monkey Fiction. FMF has included the Black Bat in their third wave of 4.5" plastic action figures.

While the pre-order period will only last another week or so, I shall post the link here anyway. I believe whatever number of figures are left will then move to the general store page at some point.

Anyway, let's have a look...

I know to expect these to be a little plain but I wish they'd have included a belt, holster...hell, footwear, even! It's clear that they based themselves entirely on cover images and no part of the character description within the stories themselves.

On that basis, I understand the lack of gloves, of a full face mask (or "hood") and so on.

The unfortunate thing is that the guns in the image of the action figure are "for display purposes only" and are not included with the package. I also wish that the scarring around the eyes had been added to make the figurine a bit more distinctive (and, frankly, authentic).

Nevertheless, I'm glad that the Black Bat made the line-up. I've known of Fresh Monkey Fiction for some time and even considered suggesting to them that they create a Black Bat action figure at some point but decided against it thinking that the character was not flashy enough for them. They seemed to prefer more colourful types like Silver Streak and the American Crusader. I'm pleased to have been incorrect on all counts.