Guns of The Black Bat

Not the upcoming comic series from Moonstone. This is a two-story novel by Wayne Skiver.

First things first. I want to throw some flowers Tom Johnson's way. I contacted him in regards to Double Danger Tales recently, specifically about whether the first volume of DDT was still available for purchase. Not only did Mr. Johnson respond quickly, he provided me with a list of Black Bat stories from various authors, published in a number of different books. It's a great resource for this obsessive collector and the gesture was very much appreciated.

This helped me to avoid duplication. Double Danger Tales has two Black Bat stories and two Dr. Satan stories. I'm not terribly interested in the latter two and I can get the Bat stories elsewhere with additional content so...why wouldn't I do that?

One of those other options is Guns Of The Black Bat, available by print-on-demand from lulu.com.

The Dark Detective of the Pulps returns in two exciting new mysteries! 

In "Death Smiles Back" Tony Quinn (AKA The Black Bat) must figure out the connection between two warring crimelords, and a strange string of murders.  Hindering his investigation is a diabolical frame up which paints the Bat as a Cop killer! 

Next up The Dark Detective squares off against the world's weirdest criminal, Doctor Satan in a deadly concert of Bullets and Brimstone.  Can the Bat survive the "Symphony in Shadows"?

As I understand it, Symphony in Shadows was originally a Doctor Satan story which was modified to include The Black Bat as the protagonist instead of the usual character filling that role, Ascott Keane. It'll be interesting to see if the Bat still feels authentic being that he's serving as a replacement.

Death Smiles Back, meanwhile, was one of the stories that I'd intended to get from DDT vol. 1. The other story in that book, Murder Under The Big Top, is included in Pulp Detectives by Altus Press (yep, those guys again...).

Every story in this book is written by Mr. Johnson. A second Black Bat story appears in addition to "Big Top", called Guns of Vengeance. I'm aware (now that Mr, Johnson has made his compilation of Bat stories available to me) of an older story that appeared in the original version of Double Danger Tales called The Black Bat's Vengeance but do not know if there's a connection between the two or if they just happen to have similar titles.

And so I dive into Death Smiles Back tomorrow morning. One thing I already know; the text is very small, yet the top quarter of every page is unused, for some reason. The layout is unusual and if small print is difficult for you to deal with, you may prefer to purchase the digital version and read it on a computer or an electronic device on which you can enlarge the text. Just a small heads up.