Tales Of The Shadowmen 19 - Demi-Monde

What They Did
In The Shadows

Tales Of The Shadowmen
19 - Demi-Monde
edited by Jean-Marc & Randy Lofficier
Black Coat Press
ISBN: 9781649321770

Just a very quick mini review of what is, alas, the penultimate collection of stories in the much loved Tales Of The Shadowmen series, Volume 19 (of 20), Demi-Monde.

For those unfamiliar with these collections or with any of my previous reviews of those in the series, the two editors Jean-Marc and Randy Lofficier have created, for Black Coat Press, a series of collected stories all of which mix up famous genre characters of pulp literature and film (including lots of French pulp characters, of course, these are French collections translated into English) and written by various writers... some famous and some not.

Now, a quick note about the editors, both of whom, once again, have a written story each in this collection... I’ve known about these two for years since first spying Jean-Marc’s name on the original editions of the two volumes making up The Doctor Who Programme Guide in the early 1980s. I’d always assumed from their names that they were brothers but, it turns out (the clue came, less than subtly, in the Rick Lai introduction to this tome) that they are, in fact, husband and wife. So I assume a very happy and long marriage steeped in creating and organising genre concoctions.

As in pretty much any portmanteau of collected stories, the tales in here are a bit hit and miss (and all very differtent hits and misses to each individual reader, I’m sure) but this one has the usual mix of genre mash-ups and a fair bit of intrigue. The Brasher Bat by Tim Newton Adenrson which opens the volume, for example, tells of what happens when Billy Bunter’s cricket team are taken over by vampires and various future detectives and others, as schoolboys, are there to investigate.

Another very interesting tale by Matthew Dennion, The Worthiness of the Wielder had Dumas’ Milady DeWinter, in her usual nefarious manner, hiring the blade of Robert E. Howard’s Solomon Kane in order to stop D’Artagnan and Constance from finding various accoutrements once belonging to Thor, including his hammer Mjölnir... she's, of course, acting on the orders of Cardinal Richelieu... this was easily one of my favourite tales in the book.

Other genre interpenetrations include a bunch of Spaghetti Western characters, one teamed up with Josephine Balsamo of The Black Coats and another tale of The Phantom Angel teamed up with... Hopkirk (Deceased). Other attractions include a story where Jules Verne pits his wits against Professor Moriarty and a wonderful account where John Buchan’s Richard Hannay is teamed up with Arsene Lupin against the Germans during the First World War, that I found quite entertaining.

My favourite story in the tome was Matthew Baugh’s Hercules and Samson VS The Russian Vampire and the Zombies of Frankenstein... a title which is as partially accurate as the internationally marketed versions of the Mexican Lucahdore movies it’s inspired by and which features such characters as Maciste, Santo, Blue Demon, Mils Mascaras, The Bat Woman and even mention of Satanico Pandemonium... so this one was easily worth the ‘price of admission’ for me.

And that’s me done with, as I said, another short review of a book in this series. Tales Of The Shadowmen 19 - Demi-Monde is another fascinating and diverse read for those who are smitten by the legacy of international pulp fiction and it is with a bitter-sweet feeling that I look forward to the final, double sized tome in this well regarded series (which was, alas, also twice the price but I picked it up pretty quickly because, I fear, these books might now be an endangered species in terms of availability in the not so distant future).