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!

The Look Of Love

This is a "feel good" story in every way.

If you have an interest in pulp characters, you are likely aware of this massive project. Legends Of New Pulp Fiction came about as a result of several members of the pulp creative community coming together for one of their own.

After finding out that writer (and editor-in-chief at Pro Se Productions, among other pulp-heavy career achievements in his resume) Tommy Hancock was diagnosed with congestive heart failure, an idea to create an anthology book of pulp stories to help raise funds for Mr. Hancock's family caught on immediately. Within two days of the call for submissions being sent out, more than 50 commitments were received.

The book was released earlier this week by Airship 27 with a cover by Douglas Klauba. Click here to be taken to the Amazon.com page from which you can purchase it.

Legends' page count alone is damn near legendary. It weighs in at 776 according to the Amazon listing.

It seemed unlikely that a book that size and with a specifically pulp theme would not include at least a small amount of Black Bat content. I took a moment to review the table of contents and sure enough, our hero does make an appearance in a story called The Look of Love by Greg Hatcher. It is brief, however, only 10 pages including an illustration(s) by Rob Davis.

Mr. Hatcher has experience with the character already. He wrote None So Blind, the story which kicks off the third volume of Black Bat Mystery, also for Airship 27. He has also written stories for anthology books of Domino Lady and The Green Ghost.

Good cause, great collection of talent, huge variety of characters new and old, including The Black Bat. Sounds like a winner all around.

Alternate Cover for Masks 2 #6

I didn't see this cover art when artist Colton Worley posted it on his Twitter account in October and it isn't displayed among the variant covers on dynamite.com, either.

Even though the Black Bat didn't play a huge part in the Masks 2 mini series, I hope this image finds its way into the Masks 2 trade paperback because it's quite striking.

The Black Bat Returns Hardcover...Cover

Just a small update today as Moonstone reveals for a hardcover version of The Black Bat Returns.

THIS IS A PREORDER ITEM ONLY. Book will be available Jan/Feb '16. MOONSTONEBOOKS.com EXCLUSIVE! ... SUPER LIMITED edition! Same contents as the sc, but with a new cover by Mike Fyles and high grade paper stock!

So you can get a fancier version of the book if you're willing to pay a little more (naturally) and wait a little longer (the softcover version is supposed to be in stores on December 23rd).

I'm less sure about wanting to wait any longer, but that cover is certainly making it tempting.

Guns Of The Black Bat About Ready To Fire!

According to writer Ron Fortier, we will soon see one of the several Moonstone Books Black Bat projects become available.

This should be scheduled for an April, release. The series was supposed to feature The Black Bat at the head of a group of other pulp characters, such as Domino Lady and The Phantom Detective. The cover above no longer seems to indicate that so we'll see what the actual solicitation material says.

In the meantime, I wasn't terribly familiar with Silvestre Szilagyi's work so I went on a brief hunt. The pages below provide what appears to be good sample material and if so, it seems Bat fan are in good hands.

I'll post the full solicitation when it comes out.

Edit: Since the Black Bat Facebook page included the solicitation earlier today, I'll just add it to this post:

Dateline 1938. Hitler and the Nazis have begun their plans to conquer the world. In the states, the crimefighter known as the Black Bat encounters German spies exhibiting strange, unworldly powers. Have aliens infiltrated the Third Reich and is the threat to mankind greater than imagined? Hurriedly the Bat assembles a team of specialists to help him confront this unknown foe: Airboy, Domino Lady, Moon Man, Golden Amazon, and more! They will become known as The Guns of the Black Bat. 

***RETAILER INCENTIVE: If you purchase 4 or more copies of Guns of the Black Bat #1, you will receive 1 FREE variant issue!

The book is listed as being 32 pages in length for $3.50

Fighting Aliens With Ravenwood

Shortly after deciding to focus this blog specifically on The Black Bat, I considered starting a Facebook group through which I could "meet" other fans of the character and perhaps more easily find out about past, or upcoming projects.

Of course, I quickly found out about the existing Black Bat Facebook group. I was perfectly happy with having someone do my work for me until it became clear that the group was geared towards the Airship 27 / Moonstone versions. Nothing wrong with that, but not exactly what I was looking for (or more accurately, not a complete version).

So yesterday I started a Twitter account (@BlackBatQuinn) instead. And it took all of one day to pay off.

Aaron Smith was among the first writers that I sought to follow based on his work in the first two volumes of Airship 27's Black Back Mystery. Turns out he was a little more involved with the character than I'd known.

News to me. You wouldn't know it from the front cover...

...But it is clearly indicated on the back cover.

 ...the Stepson of Mystery once again sets out to solve bizarre mysteries the police are helpless to unravel. Follow along as he confronts an amazing killer robot, teams up with the Black Bat to fight an alien horror and investigates ritualistic murders having no rhyme or reason.

And just like that, we have an addition to the reading list.

Thanks for the follow, Mr. Smith, and for the info!

The Black Bat Swoops Into All-Star Pulp Comics #3!

A pleasant surprise turned in the press release announcing All-Star Pulp Comics #3 from Redbud Studio / Airship 27.

Airship 27 Productions in conjunction with Redbud Studios is thrilled to announce the release of ALL STAR PULP COMICS # 3. 

“We’re thrilled to offer up another great collection,” says Airship 27 Managing Editor Ron Fortier, “comic strip adventures of classic pulp heroes. The contents in this third volume is really eclectic representing a wide variety of pulp genres by some of the finest writers and artists in the graphic world.” 

The eight featured stories include : 

“Sinbad and the Isle of Stone”
Scott “Doc” Vaughn   

The Black Bat in “Blind Justice”
Ron Fortier & Eric Johns 

The Purple Scar in “Breaking Point”
Percival Constantine & Carl Yonder  

Lance Star Sky Ranger in “Gods of the Molten Sea”
Bobby Nash & Rock Baker & Jeff Austin  

Mars McCoy Space Ranger in “Crazy Horse”
Mike Baron (with Ron Fortier) & Eric Hurley & Warren Montgomery  

The Crimson Mask in “Killing Rain”
Aaron Smith & David Nehaus  

The Moon Man in “Dance of the Black Flamingo”
Michael Leonard & James Lyle & Greg Keyzer  

The book has a cover by Rob Davis with colors by Warren Montgomery and features the Moon Man battling side-by-side by Lt. Betty 12 from the Mars McCoy Space Ranger pulp series. 

The book is now available from...Amazon.

Several of these stories had been talked about while the book was in production, with no mention of the Black Bat. I'd believed he was not included but there he is, making a clean sweep of a all three ASPC books. Hope it becomes tradition.

CKRTLAB Version Of The Black Bat.

Sadly, this is only artwork. There are no current plans for CKRTLAB Toys (pronounced "secret lab", for those just finding out about the company) to make a Black Bat figurine, they were simply having fun displaying their favourite "golden age guardians" done in their style. I believed it was packaging art, but sadly that's not the case.

Scars around the eyes!

Check out which Golden Age Guardians have made the cut to this point on the CKRTLAB website.

Not typically my sort of thing, but he'd look mighty fine on my stack of Black Bat material.