80 Years Overdue

In a couple of months Altus Press will release the 200th Doc Savage novel, The Sinister Shadow by Will Murray, featuring the first ever prose team-up of the two greatest pulp heroes of all time, Doc Savage and the Shadow (they have crossed over a few times in the comics). The above cover is by the phenomenal Joe DeVito. I’ll admit that this one has my fanboy parts tingling.

My Favorite Comics

 

In 1973, DC Comics secured the comic book rights to The Shadow, the pulp magazine and radio star of the 1930s and 1940s. Around the same time as his series debuted, DC had The Shadow meet up with Batman. In the story, we learned that The Shadow had been an early inspiration to Bats. They teamed up once more before DC gave up their Shadow license, thus preventing the stories from being reprinted. But for those of us lucky enough to hold on to the originals, we can still thrill to the vigilante who was even scarier (and nuttier) than Batman.

 

Sucktacular Sunday Sports

The NFL season begun in its usual tradition: The Bengals lost.

Thankfully, though, they only suck on offense, defense and special teams.

Jeez.

Fortunately, my wonderful wife didn’t want me to watch the game alone (my brother was working), so she invited some friends over and made her world-famous tacos and Better Than Sex Cake.

Believe me, tacos, beer and cake make everything better.

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Let’s talk reading’ and writin’.

I’m in full pulp mode. I read a Doc Savage this weekend (The Thousand-Headed Man). It’s been over 35 years since I read it and it was, in essence, a new novel. It’s one of the best of the Docs, with all the ingredients: a far-flung locale, a weird mystery and much fighting.

Now I’m reading one of the new Shadow reprints. When I was a kid, I found the Shadow novels too slow, especially compared to the Doc Savages, but I’ve been enjoying a lot of the new reprints.

Anyway, this is all to pump me up for the long pulp story I’m writing for Ron Fortier. I’ve owed it too him for a while, so I’ve put the novel aside for a few days to work on this pulptacular yarn.

I also received another invitation to an anthology. I’ve got a pretty good idea for this one, so I’m going to go for it as soon as the pulp thing is done.

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Callie update:

We adopted a new cat a week or so ago. We already have two cats. Here’s how it’s going:

Hiiiiiiiiiiiissssssss!

Welcome to the new soundtrack of my life.