The Bat and The Scar

It looks increasingly like Spider fans' loss are The Black Bat's fans' gain.

Moonstone Books gave The Spider a lot of attention over the past few years but now that they no longer have publishing rights to the character, they appear to be directing their energy towards Black Bat projects.

The Black Bat Facebook page recently made reference to a team-up book between our man and a character named The Purple Scar to be published by Moonstone.  I admit to not being particularly familiar with The Purple Scar so a little research was required.

There were only four stories published during the pulp era featuring this character. Altus Press has reprinted them in one volume.

The Purple Scar is a famous plastic surgeon, Miles Murdock. Dr. Murdoch's brother, a police officer, is murdered and during the attack, acid is poured onto is face causing tremendous damage to his features. His outrage at the brutality of the attack inspires Miles Murdock to create a mask based on his late brother's disfigurement and to fight crime.

Evidently, the fine folks at Airship 27 found The Purple Scar interesting enough to shine the spotlight on him.  They released a four-story anthology (176 pages in total) based on the character this past October and as you can see from the cover below, they made the scar mask far more graphic than that of the original.

How cool is that?  Click here to order the book from Amazon.

The frequency with which The Black Bat is cast into team-ups with characters such as Zorro (in Masks), Domino Lady, Captain Action, etc. is an unexpected treat.  I didn't anticipate that when I became heavily interested in the character. In this case, there appear to be quite a few similarities between Scar and The Black Bat so I'll be curious to see how the creative team (Ron Fortier and Rob Davis) gives each his own voice, so to speak.

Pulpsploitation cover

Super Powered Fiction's Nicholas Ahlhelm recently sent out an update on his Pulpsploitation project, an anthology book which includes a Black Bat story.  The book's cover layouts were revealed in the update, but artist Nik Poliwko displayed an inked version yesterday on his Facebook page.

We don't see much of The Black Bat, but what we do see appears to be a relatively traditional type.  I'll admit that the 80's aspect, and the "sploitation" portion of the book's title, made me wonder if this book might take a bit of a silly tone, but the cover is encouraging.

And in case anyone at SPF happens to read this...I am not particularly interested in the other characters in the anthology, so I only signed up for the Black Bat pdf.  I do prefer a print version of stories, however, so if you continue to publish these pulp anthologies, and you continue to include The Black Bat (or Miss Fury, for that matter) and you choose to release a compilation of the Bat stories in print format, I shall purchase it even if I already have all of the stories digitally.  Just sayin'. ;-)

Miss Fury by "Slangmead" on deviantart

The Black Bat has received most of the attention on this page in recent weeks for the simple reason that there is more activity based around him of late, but I'm still hopeful that we'll get good Miss Fury news soon.  In the meantime, let's enjoy the art work below from Stephen Langmead.

Float on over to his page to check out more of his work. The guy is ridiculously talented.

Day of The Destroyers: Jimmie Flint, Agent X-11, must save America

Moonstone continues to give The Black Bat the attention that Dynamite fails to provide (wish they'd do the same for Miss Fury) although I admit I'm unsure as to whether I'll get this book.  It seems as though The Black Bat's contribution may be relatively small.  Still, it might make for a good introduction to some other characters from the era.

Authors: Ron Fortier, Adam Lance Garcia, Gary Phillips, Paul Bishop, Eric Fein, Tommy Hancock, Aaron Shaps, & Joe Gentile 

Cover: Fernando Ferreiro 

6” x 9”, Softcover, 276pgs, $13.95
6” x 9”, Hardcover, 276pgs, $23.95

Based on a real historical event during the Roosevelt administration! 

Guest starring pulp heroes The Green Lama, The Phantom Detective, and The Black Bat! 

Day of the Destroyers is an all-original linked prose anthology – each story is part of a larger arc wherein Jimmie Flint, Secret Agent X-11 of the Intelligence Service Command, battles to prevent the seditionist Medusa Council from engineering a bloody coup overthrowing our democracy. 

Agent X-11 fights across the country preventing an aerial assault on Chicago’s rail lines, destroying a secret factory of gas meant to enthrall millions in New Mexico, racing to stop a machine of fantastic destruction in Manhattan, and so much more! 

Written by pulp fictioneers: Ron Fortier, Adam Lance Garcia, Gary Phillips, Paul Bishop, Eric Fein, Tommy Hancock, Aaron Shaps, & Joe Gentile. 

Introduction by pulp historian and award-winning author Robert Weinberg! 

The book is scheduled for release in March of 2015 so I have some time to think about it but I gather that pathetic hoarder that I am, I'll likely end up getting it as long as the Black Bat that appears is a more traditional one.  I didn't care for the version that Moonstone introduced a few years ago, but they seem to be drifting away from that one.

The Mask...Close enough!

I don't want this blog to become a parrot to the Black Bat Facebook page (since I have nothing to do with that page, no less, and don't want to copycat) however of late their postings have been too important for any fan of the character to avoid.

Here's the latest:

Although issue # 1 has yet to be released, production on BLACK BAT - DOMINO LADY: Danger Coast to Coast continues at Moonstone Comics. As we've reported here previously, Ron Fortier is writing this 30s setting pulp series and Michael Dorman is the artist (on) the first two issues. Starting with issue # 3, Carlos Cableiro will be taking over the art chores. Here's a sample of his work.

I love that image, especially of Quinn.

I'm going to use the opportunity to segue into a comic book appearance of the past, sort of.  It's something I had dismissed when I first read about it but am now realizing that I should not have.  Let's let Wikipedia explain it first:

Due to the issues with Batman, Nedor Comics, the comic publishing arm of Thrilling Publications, did not do a Black Bat comic series; however it did do a series with a character called "Mask", based on the Black Bat. The Mask appears in the first twenty issues of Exciting Comics.

What I did not know or anticipate is how faithful to the original Black Bat material these "Mask" stories are (aside from changing the names of the various characters), at least the first one.  I assumed that the character was similar, since many pulp heroes were anyway, but the Mask story is near identical to Brand of The Black Bat.  For an example, here's the first page from issue #1, first published in April of 1940:

And here's Tony "Colby" meeting Carol "Smith".

Granted, the Mask looks rather ridiculous, but it's still cool to see The Black Bat's original story done in comic book form at the time.  I'm certain most fans of the character must be aware of it, but in case it's been overlooked by others for the same reason I did, I thought I'd draw some attention to it.

If you want to have a look at the stories in full, you can do so through the Digital Comic Museum though at some point I'll probably copy and clean up the pages and post them here.

Die Schwarze Fledermaus

While I'm waiting for official news to come from Moonstone Books about their upcoming Black Bat projects  (apparently a solo book, as well as the team up with Domino Lady) and from Dynamite as to whether he and/or Miss Fury will appear in the second volume of Masks to any significant degree, I'm attempting to educate myself somewhat on The Black Bat's publishing history in Germany.

From what I can gather, reprints of stories from Black Book Detective began to appear in Pabel Kriminal Roman starting with issue #100 in 1961.  Rather than print them chronologically though, there seemed to be a rather random order as to how they were made available to the German public.  Issue 100 included the story "The League of Faceless Men" from 1951, among the last Bat stories published.  His next PKR appearance, in issue 103, featured "The Murder Makers", originally published in the United States in 1948.

Evidently, it took little time for his popularity to dictate that he should become the book's main attraction.  The Black Bat's stories appeared periodically for a spell but starting with issue 119, the title "Fledermaus" (German for bat, obviously) began to take prominence on the cover and by issue #135, he became the focus of the series altogether.  It looks as though that held true until about issue 667 or so inclusively, with new material being written for the character once stories to reprint ran out.

A significant portion of the information I've been able to find was lifted from the Schwarze Fledermaus website.  See the "galerie" page for cover scans of every issue for more Bat goodness.

The Black Bat in Pulpsploitation: Hard Edged Heroes for the 1980's

Bah.  I found out about this Kickstarter campaign a couple of days ago, but was too slow in posting about it and now the Black Bat Facebook page has a mention of it so it looks like I'm lifting it from them... ;-)

In the 1930s, pulp fiction introduced dozens of amazing heroes to the world. Dozens of hero pulps of various success filled the racks alongside numerous other titles. Those characters formed a lasting impression on society and are still remembered fondly to this day. 

In the 1970s and 1980s, men’s adventure fiction introduced dozens of new characters and properties that captured the minds of readers young and old. Sex and violence became the new norm. They influenced heavily the decades of fiction since, even as the “exploitation” films of the same era helped to shape cinema.

Among the four stories...

Frank Byrns introduces the legacy of The Black Bat, as a new hero takes up the mantle of one of the earliest masked vigilantes.

All this information is front and center on the campaign page.  However writer Frank Byrns provides details as to what he has planned in an interview posted under the "updates" tab.

So what would that mean for a Tony Quinn in his seventies? What would he be up to? If I left him in New York, I could work in another of my passions: the look and feel and vibe of 1970s crime films. 

The French Connection, Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, sure. But also things like Rolling Thunder, The Killer Elite, Charley Varrick, The Yakuza. Friends of Eddie Coyle. 

So give Quinn a pro bono legal aid clinic in a rundown Brooklyn neighborhood. Make Butch O'Leary's daughter a crackerjack young lawyer working for Uncle Tony. Have Silk Kirby's kid work as a plainclothes narcotics detective. Add in a former Vietnam tunnel rat, who's used to fighting in the dark where he can't see. The NYC heroin trade. The Mafia. Street gangs. Son of Sam. Reggie, Sparky, and Billy. The blackout.

Byrns has some history with the character already.  He wrote The Ty Cobb File story for Airship 27's second volume of Black Bat Mystery.  As an aside, the Facebook page I referred to earlier also mentioned earlier today that a third volume is underway, though no details are provided as of yet.

There's still about a week to get involved in the fundraising campaign, and to trigger some stretch goals, so if you're a fan of The Black Bat, or pulp era stories in general, you may want to get in on this. Hell, you can get the Black Bat story alone for only $1.00 in digital format. Tough to beat that.

To find out more about publisher Super Powered Fiction, head on over to their website.

Black Bat Design Sketch by Alex Ross

Dynamite's Masks mini-series came out around the time that I was transitioning from printed comics to the digital format due to an inability to get to the local comic store as regularly as I used to.  For that reason, I have ended up with the first few issues of Masks in "floppy" format and the rest on my Comixology.

Wanting to have the entire story fully collected, I ordered the trade paperback from Amazon a couple of weeks ago and received it today.  I was looking forward to seeing the bonus content and was not disappointed.

First and foremost, I was hoping for a cover gallery.  Not only was one included, but there was a collection of hand-drawn Jae Lee and Alex Ross (hand-painted, in his case) cover reproductions as well. The book also includes a script for the first issue with Alex Ross sketches and a few pages of character designs. The Black Bat is the first design displayed.  Here it is below.

Pretty cool to see.

The next volume of Masks, written by Cullen Bunn, was first said to have a "late 2014" release date, but that doesn't seem to be the case after all since it is nowhere to be found in the December solicitations. Bunn has stated that he intends to have an "ambitious" cast for his mini series.  That would seem to suggest Black Bat and Miss Fury will be included, but it also raises a concern that they may get lost among a huge collection of characters.  I hope the January solicitations provide us with a promotional image or two to give us a hint of things to come.

More Black Bat Custom Action Figures

Check out this rather awesome custom action figure of the Dynamite Entertainment version of The Black Bat.  Clicking on the image will take you to the Figure Realm website where several more pictures are available.

"he's made from a legends punisher, xf wolverine head, obsidian cape, 2 pistol casts (casting cave), sculpted mask details, sleeves cape top and logo, then total repaint"

Here's another, also posted on Figure Realm and linked through the picture.  Little information as to how he was built is provided, aside from stating that the base figurine is a Marvel Universe Captain America.

This post from early last year features an action figure based on the classic version of The Bat, in case you missed it at the time.  Fun stuff.

Finally, the ASPC Black Bat has arrived!

Late last week, I received the two volumes of the Airship 27 / Redbud Studio All-Star Pulp Comics I'd ordered some time back and read through them this past Saturday.  As expected, the Black Bat content was small, but entertaining nonetheless.

The story in volume one is written by C. William Russette and drawn by Wayne Beeman. The Black Bat's detective skills are on display here as Russette uses the bulk of the few pages he has to show us how the character approaches a mystery.

It's difficult to elaborate without giving anything away.  The book was released in 2011 but who knows how many people may just now be buying it (hell, *I* just did!).  I'll only say that I thought it was well done on that level and leave it at that.

The second's volume takes a broader look at the pulp era.  Many pulp-inspired stories take place in an urban setting but volume two, for the most part, utilizes a number of different locations and eras.  We get jungle tales, air aces, a little Robin Hood...But the big city backdrop returns for "Shootout at the Dry Martini", a Black Bat story by Todd Jones and artist Lee Oaks.

As the title might give away, there is a fair amount of action in these eight pages.  And I find the art completely, appropriately beautiful.  Here are a couple of (non-consecutive and non-lettered) pages.

Scarring around the eyes.  I'm a sucker for the eye scarring.

I believe work is underway for a third volume of All-Star Pulp Comics, though whether The Black Bat will be included is unknown to me.  The only other character to appear in both books (15 stories in total) is Domino Lady so there seems to be some attempt at variety, including some pulp-inspired original creations.  However a page of art by Redbud Studio's Rob Davis recently posted on the Black Bat Facebook group is certain cause for optimism.

Maybe The Black Bat even gets his own book from Redbud?  Let's see what happens.