Tales Of The Shadowmen 18 - Eminences Grises

The Shadows Strike

Tales Of The Shadowmen 18
Eminences Grises
edited by Jean Marc & Randy Lofficier
Black Coat Press
ISBN 9781649321039

After an unplanned absence on my part of a few years, I once again resume my reading of the Lofficiers’ Tales Of The Shadowmen series for their Black Coat Press imprint... only to find that the final, extra thick volume published last Christmas (which I’ll catch up to soon enough, that one is volume 20) is the final one in what has been a hit and miss but always fun series of collections.

A very short review by me of Tales Of The Shadowmen 18 - Eminences Grises because, it has to be said that this volume, for me, was definitely more miss than hit. If you are unfamiliar with these collections, they are basically short stories by a series of writers of all nationalities using various pop culture characters, many from the pulp literature of 19th and 20th century France but many from other countries and other eras too... mixing the heroes and villains (as they often are) together and bringing them new adventures. So, for example, an early volume brought a short description of what happened when Barbarella kidnapped Captain Kirk.

There are certain characters who tend to come up more than once a volume too.. such a Countess Caligriosto, Josephine Balsamo, Rouletabille, Arsène Lupin and Fantômas and this one is no exception. For example, the first story in this collection, Tim Newton Anderson’s Thirty Pieces Of Gold, sees the inclusion of Rouletabille, Inspector Juve, Fantômas and Arsène Lupin, all trying to put one over on each other. Fascinax also appears in more than one story, the first where he is employed as a supernatural agent to foil the plans of the famous filmic character Dr. Phibes (as played by Vincent Price in the two movies) and then, in a second one where the ghost of Ebenezer Scrooge is trying to get help because he has accidentally created a child serial killer who strikes at Christmas every year due to his younger self wishing this as a child, when in possession of The Monkey’s Paw.

Perhaps my favourite story is one in which several Jules Verne characters intersect, namely Martin Gately’s Young Robur Over Africa, which shows the younger version of Verne’s Robur The Conqueror (another character played by Vincent Price on film in an adaptation of the second Robur novel, Master Of The World) accidentally travelling to a future where he is intent on stopping a world war. Another one, The Power of Countess Cagliostro by Rick Lai deals with a trio of female agents coming to blows with the Shaw Brothers’ running villain Pai Mei (who some only know from Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill Volume Two) by way of The Man with a Harmonica, Charles Bronson’s character in Sergio Leone’s masterpiece movie Once Upon A Time In The West.

Other delights show SPECTRE and their leader Blofeld being outwitted by the 1960s Jean Marais movie incarnation of Fantômas, another where the likes of Fu Manchu and various other Sax Rohmer characters are outsmarted by both Madam Atomos and Sumuru (yet another Rohmer creation)... and another featuring the version of Erik, The Phantom Of The Opera, from Kim Newman’s Angels Of Music stories (which I reviewed here and which, of course, is a mash up of the opera ghost with Charlie’s Angels, itself being an expansion of some stories involving those characters from stories in this very publication’s earlier volumes). And, of course, a title such as Angel and Hopkirk (Deceased) by Randy Lofficier speaks for itself.

And yes I had a good enough time with Tales Of The Shadowmen 18 - Eminences Grises and am looking forward to the next two volumes, even though this one seemed a little duller than many others. I shall certainly miss the very large hole left in modern literature by the ending of the series but Black Coat Press are always worth checking out because they do a great service in reprinting and reinventing just these kinds of characters for modern, French and English speaking audiences. So yeah, I’ll report back when I read the next one.