El Murciélago Negro

So I want to learn Spanish. My sister married a gentleman from Cuba and while his English is very good, I want to be better able to communicate with members of his family who don't speak English at all.

My first language is actually French. I began to learn the English language around the age of nine and reading comics was a big part of accomplishing that. I plan to apply the same method to Spanish and doing so with...The Black Bat!

The image at right is lifted from the Proyecto Pulp blog. It has a page specific to a fan fiction project called the "Liga De Los Hombres Misteriosos".

Aside from our favourite masked nemesis of crime, the story (apparently entitled "The Enemy Within") also includes The Green Lama, Ki-Gor, Captain Future and Secret Agent X. Covers to subsequent volumes also display The Spider.

If those covers are to be trusted, The Black Bat seems to be active throughout most of the volumes. I was able to locate the first one on Wattpad. It is only 20 pages long but that's quite all right since it will be a slow process to make my way through it. And assuming The Bat continues to have a prominent role throughout the rest of the volumes, I'll take those in as well.

The cover to volume one was drawn by Carlos Rios. The images below are the work of one Jose Bai Xau Li and were also used as covers for La Liga (issues five and seven respectively, I believe). You can view more of his work on his deviantart page.

Hey, Look Who's Back!

For the first time in quite a while, Dynamite Entertainment solicitations actually look like the Dynamite Entertainment that I enjoyed so much a few years ago. No knock on whomever happens to enjoy books about Grumpy Cat and Bob's Burgers but it ain't my deal and it certainly is not what I'd grown to expect from Dynamite.

Today felt more like "old times" though when I stumbled into the following among Dynamite's upcoming books for April:

MISS FURY VOL. 2 #1 (OF 6)
(W) Corinna Bechko (A) Jonathan Lau
(CA) Tula Lotay, Jonathan Lau 

The Golden Age heroine returns! New York during the Second World War is a place of mystery and intrigue, but with all our boys fighting in Europe, who will stand up to the forces of darkness at home? 

Miss Fury is ready to step into the breach, but even she doesn’t understand the shadow she carries within herself. Is it a force of good or of evil? And can she learn to control it in time to stop the deadly attack that threatens to destroy the Big Apple?

I didn't expect to see this blog's former co-star any time soon, unless it was in a team-up book similar to Noir or Masks. It raises hope that Dynamite may, one day, give The Black Bat another try. 

Spring Comes Early Thanks to Altus!

Altus Press continues to impress.

A week ago, they announced that they would speed up their release schedule of Black Bat Omnibus volumes, starting with number 4, "hopefully in the spring". Good news on its own!

Earlier today they announced that volume was now available.

Damn. If only spring could come that fast!

So this book will feature the character's tenth to twelfth published stories that originally appeared in early 1941, being The Black Bat’s Dragon Trail, The Black Bat’s Justice and The Black Bat and the Red Menace.

As was the case for the third volume, the first story was written by someone other than regular writer Norman A. Daniels. This time, Norvell W. Page pitches in. Page is better known for his extensive work on The Spider in the 30s and early 40s.

For that matter, The fifth volume will start the same way. The Black Bat's Summons was also written by Page and it should kick off the next book. I guess we'll see later this year!

Domino Lady's Threesome

While I wait for Moonstone's Return Of The Black Bat to arrive (tomorrow!), I shall shine my small spotlight onto another Moonstone project scheduled to be available in May because the primary character is one that has been teamed with The Black Bat on a number of occasions in recent years, and will be again.

DOMINO LADY THREESOME #1
Story: Nancy Holder, Bobby Nash
Art: Marco Santiago
Cover: Glen Fernandez 

Trouble Times Three! It’s Coast to Coast action, adventure, romance, and intrigue as Pulp’s #1 Adventuress, Domino Lady teams up with the Golden Amazon and The Veil to thwart a killer, stop a nefarious Nazi plot, and uncover mysterious happenings on big Hollywood movie set. When just one hero isn’t enough, Domino Lady and her companions come together to get the job done.

A little guesswork is required here. The name of the series seemed familiar and it should. Moonstone released a title by that very name in 2012. Solicitation below:

A Return of the Originals Event!  

Story: Nancy Holder, Bobby Nash
Art: Marco Santiago
Cover: Glen Fernandez

When young women vanish at a sleazy burlesque club, three beautiful heroines slip undercover and out of their clothes to investigate - and wind up confronting a kidnapper who just might be out of this world. 

Featuring the delicious Domino Lady, the first appearance of the deadly Golden Amazon in 70 years and introducing the voluptuous new pulp crime-fighter, The Veil!

Return Of The Originals was an ambitious project through which Moonstone had planned several ongoing and limited series featuring pulp characters. Most of the material was never released and/or projects were aborted. The Black Bat himself is a good example; his "ongoing" series consisted of a graphic novel shared with a character named Death Angel.

I suspect that the upcoming Threesome is a rework of sorts of the one published in 2012. The latter was probably intended to run longer than the single issue which was released.

It feels as though Moonstone has a quiet relaunch and reorganization of its comics line going on.  We know Guns of The Black Bat is on the way in April (though the second issue is not solicited in May) and that it will also include, at least short term, Domino Lady and The Golden Amazon among others. The Black Bat featured in that book seems to be far more faithful to the original than Moonstone's first attempt.

I'm curious to know whether this will be a "structured universe" where events in one book are recognized in another.  I doubt it, but we'll need to wait until the spring to find out.

Volume Two of Sanctum's Black Bat reprints on the way!

Sanctum Books has been in the reprint game for a while but only began including The Black Bat among their publishing schedule last summer. The original intent was to have a quarterly Black Bat release and with today's announcement of the second volume being available soon, they are close to meeting that goal. Solicitation below.

At the printer and shipping soon - THE BLACK BAT Volume 2: "The Black Bat Strikes Again" & "The Black Bat's Challenge"  

Mass murders set the Nemesis of Crime in pursuit of a ring of satanic killers as "The Black Bat Strikes Again."  

Then, "The Black Bat's Challenge" is to unmask the hidden leader of a vicious gang of beggars! 

GOLDEN AGE OF COMICS BONUS: "The Mask Returns!" in a rare 1940 Golden Age classic from Nedor's EXCITING COMICS #2, and an article on pulp cover illustrator turned comic book artist Raymond Thayer.  

This instant collector's item features both classic color pulp covers and the original interior illustrations by Harry Parkhurst, with historical commentary by Will Murray and Anthony Tollin.  7x10, 128 pages, B&W, $14.95

And here's a look at the back cover.

Those extras make the whole thing kind of tempting. Credit to Sanctum for finding a way to separate themselves from what Altus is offering.

I guess the race is on! Altus has reprinted the first nine stories and plan to pick up the pace in terms of release dates. Sanctum will have reprinted four when this book is available. Let's see if they manage to catch up.

Happy New Year from Altus Press!

A month ago today, I wrote a brief blog post about how starting a Twitter account connected to this blog paid off within 24 hours.

On its "monthiversary", it pays off again. Altus shared the following earlier today.

About the only "complaint" I ever had with Altus' Black Bat Omnibus volumes was their release rate. Even if Altus doesn't quite meet their self-imposed standard stated above, it will still be a huge a improvement.

Altus relaunched its own Twitter account with the new year so if you're also on Twitter and want to keep up with their releases, follow them at @altuspress.

Hot Money For Canada

A few minutes ago, I treated myself to a neat little collectible.

I spent a good part of the afternoon yesterday tracking down covers to the German Black Bat novels that came out in the 60's and 70's.

Schwarze Fledermaus is the undeniable authority on the subject. Unfortunately it appears to be the only resource to speak of. My concern is that if the website is done away with, for whatever reason, all that information will be lost. That includes hundreds of cover scans that are otherwise quite hard to come by.

Now I don't want to copy the data displayed on SF. I want to complement and, frankly, better it where I can.

Perhaps I was just luckier than during past attempts, but I was able to score a number of these covers from ebay.de. And in doing so, I decided to pick up one of the books for my little collection.

"Hot Money For Canada" caught my eye because I'm, well, Canadian.  Mind you, I doubt that Canada figures prominently in the story as such. It's probably more about a scheme to transport items across the border illegally or something.

That's not particularly important, to tell the truth. The book was inexpensive (about $10 American, shipping included) and just happened to have a theme that interested me.

Is this a good time to mention that I don't speak or read German? This is going to be the slowest read for me in some time. Still, I want to be able to comment on these books with some first-hand knowledge so this will make for a good introduction.

As for the couple of dozen cover images I managed to locate to this point, I've begun building a page from which to display them. It is, of course, included under the banner up top. I've added translations of cover text where I've been able to make (relative) sense of it.

Since they were lifted from ebay listings, I take no credit for the original scan. However, all images have been resized, cropped, straightened, sharpened and/or submitted to colour adjustments. That's not in an effort to take credit, it is simply to make the graphic more appealing.

You may have noticed a new page for Moonstone Books covers as well. That's also in the building stages now that Moonstone has several Black Bat irons in the fire.

Good way to start the new year!