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).

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.

Tales Of The Shadowmen 17 - Noblesse Oblige

Cops & Roburs

Tales Of The
Shadowmen 17
Noblesse Oblige
Edited by Jean-Marc Lofficier
& Randy Lofficier
Black Coat Press ISBN: 97816493202478

Okay, it’s that time of the year again when I do a very small shout out of a review to what has now become my third Christmas reading ritual over the years, following the latest Patricia Cornwell and Kathy Reichs novels (okay, don’t panic, I’ve not read the latest Reichs yet for various reasons but that review will hopefully be coming in a couple of months). That ritual is the devouring of the ‘second from latest’ Tales Of The Shadowmen collection from Black Coat Press... never quite up to date for a Christmas present because the latest one is never published until the middle of each December of the year.

So, December 2020’s collection is Volume 17 in the series, subtitled Noblesse Oblige and, like all the others before it, it contains a collection of short stories with the common thread of each writer taking two or more famous literary pulp or comic book characters and having them cross paths in a new tale. Because of the huge amount of different characters, many of them French, I don’t always get all of the references but, as in previous editions, there’s a handy guide to the origins of all the characters, objects and place names in a kind of index at the back for each story, which attributes these various appearances to the original writer who created them.

This volume has the usual interesting kinds of ‘mash ups’ (in the common, current parlance) and so you have characters like Arthur Conan Doyle’s Moriarty or Jules Verne’s Robur The Conqueror (you know, The Master Of The World) cropping up or at least mentioned in more than one of these tales. There are also, again as in previous volumes, the next story in ongoing arcs from various authors, acting as sequel segments to their stories in various editions of the Tales Of The Shadowmen collections. So, for example, The Revolution Begins Tonight by Nigel Malcom, which has people like Sexton Blake, The Nyctalope, Una Persson, Doctor Omega, Zenith and Judex fighting a corrupt government, transplanted into the future world of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, is the fourth and final installment of this story arc.

And, while some of the combinations of characters are not as odd as they’ve sometimes been in the past... there are still some really nice homages to both the literary and certain cinematic variations of characters. For example, there’s a nice short tale called Only One... by Frank Schildiner about Boysie Oakes (aka The Liquidator, Rod Taylor played him in the movie version of the first book) being brought, by Elke Sommers’ character from the Bulldog Drummond movie Deadlier Than The Male, face to face with the Jean Marais 1960s cinematic incarnation of Fantômas. Or another in which ‘that woman’ from Sherlock Holmes, aka Irene Adler, brings about the downfall of the latest scheme by Robur... in a story called Master Of The Six Gun by Nathan Cabannis.

Perhaps my favourite stories this time around were the more involved and longer tales which spent a while building up the characters. For instance, John Peel’s The Child That Time Forgot, where the inhabitants of Verne’s travelling, mechanical island get caught on Skull Island in the late Nineteenth Century and one of those left behind ensures the survival of baby Kong. But I even enjoyed the ones where I really didn’t know the characters so well. Such as Randy Lofficier’s The Phantom Angel And The Dwarves Of Death, which has Sleeping Beauty, who is now living in the modern world with a fairyland community often hidden from human eyes, helping out a lady detective from a French police procedural TV series called Spiral, as they work to uncover the murderer of one of the seven dwarves.

Plus, as per usual, all kinds of appearances by the likes of Dr. Moreau, The Morlocks, The Liliputians, Dr. Fu Manchu, Rip Kirby, Maigret, Arsene Lupin and also, a brilliant little tale called Doctor’s Note by Matthew Dennion, in which Eric (aka The Phantom Of The Opera) seeks to have his deformity cured, seen first through the diary of Dr. Van Helsing and subsequently through the notes of Dr. Jekyll.

So, yeah, it’s all just delightful business as usual and, once again, I can do nothing else but recommend Tales Of The Shadowmen 17 - Noblesse Oblige to any readers who have a penchant for stories where old characters from different kinds of fiction and walks of life encounter each other. As always, these collections can be a bit hit and miss depending on your tastes, due to the wide variety of different writing styles and, I would say start from the first volume because there are often multi-part stories running through the various collections.

Tales Of The Shadowmen 16 - Voire Dire

 

 

If I Were A Richleau

Tales Of The Shadowmen
Volume 16 - Voire Dire
Edited by Jean-Marc Lofficier and Randy Lofficier
Black Coat Press ISBN: 978-1612279107

For this very short look at the sixteenth volume in the Tales Of The Shadowmen collections, Voire Dire, I am once again about 16 months late in reviewing it. This is because of the December publication dates which leave me a year behind on these (I like to read them over the Christmas season). And, like all of them, this latest selection of short tales of famous fictional characters teaming up or crossing paths with one another is a bit of a hit and miss affair. For me, this year, it’s rather more of a miss but, well... we all have our favourites.

Of the fourteen stories that make up this year’s anthology, I will single out a few of which I was somewhat entertained by. The Peculiar Cats Of The Sea Of Dreams by Mathew Baugh is something which I would have found dull had it not been for my re-reading of the complete fiction of H. P. Lovecraft last year (reviewed here). I was quite up for it now, though, as a variety of characters are assisted by Randolph Carter in the dream kingdom in which he is known to be found... along with yet another incident with those powerful, battling cats which often come to the aid of their friend.

It’s often the case that I am most entertained by the stories about characters I know nothing of and I don’t know who the main protagonists from at least three sources in Nathan Cabaniss’ story Rage Of Terror are... so perhaps that’s why I enjoyed that one so much. I was, of course, familiar with the main antagonist of that story, as Fantômas makes his first (but by no means his last) appearance in this volume. It was also nice to spot a very young Kojak as a background character rookie cop (given his first lollipop in one of his two throw away appearances here) and also how the tale turned into an alternative origin story for Batman.

There’s a nice Rouletabbille tale by Martin Gately, which serves as a sequel/finale to some others which have appeared sporadically in the Tales Of The Shadowmen series and also a nice futuristic sequel story to one in another volume by Nigel Malcolm where, in a world modelled after Ridley Scott’s movie Blade Runner, The Nyctalope and Sexton Blake hack wall street and offer an exit from under their foes for the Frankenstein monster and its wife, the replicant Rachel from the aforementioned film. There’s even a nice moment in this tale where we find out the sad, future fate of the source of Doc Savage’s gold.

Captain Nemo appears in two tales... one by Travis Hiltz opposite characters such as Captain Haddock (from the TinTin graphic albums) and the Dread Pirate Roberts (from The Princess Bride?) and another, much more interesting one which kind of breaks the rules of appearing in a volume of these specific collections in that it only features one set of characters. I’m guessing that they needed a story to make up the space for this volume because its also a tale which has been published before in a different collection. This one, by Jean-Pierre Laigle purports to be (and of course it’s not) a formerly unpublished chapter from Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea and it involves the good captain telling one of his new guests of the time that the Nautilus was teleported by accident out of the ruins of Atlantis and into deep space... and how the Captain managed to get himself, his crew and his vessel back to the safety of the waters of Earth.

There’s an interesting story by Joseph Gibson where The Falcon from the 1940s, set in the 1960s and fully aware of his ‘fictional’ on screen exploits, teams up with his brother, among others, to take on Fantômas but, I was somewhat confused by the whole affair because, though it was somewhat entertaining, it’s also a fact that The Falcon’s older brother met his death in one of the earliest movies and his brother took over. What the George Sanders version is doing still alive to seek the assistance of the Tom Conway version (who was also Sanders brother in real life) is anybody’s guess.

Two more I’ll mention... both somewhat problematic for different reasons.

One of these is the very short story The Replacement by Xavier Mauméjean. In it, Bruce Wayne goes to a meeting with Doc Savage and The Shadow to seek their blessing at the start of his crime fighting career. On the way out from his meeting in the Empire State Building, he bumps into Britt Reid (The Green Hornet) and Kato, who then go up to the 86th Floor for, presumably, a similar meeting and, I have to say, I really didn’t understand the implications of some of the comments made at this meeting.

The last one I’ll specifically mention is The Stone of Solomon by David L. Vineyard. This is an exciting tale of John Silence teaming up with Dennis Wheatley’s Duc de Richleau character but, alas, the regular introduction to the story tips its hat that the version of Richleau present for the majority of the story is not who he seems. Since the reveal at the end of the short is very protracted and teased out, one wonders why the writer should have bothered when we know which character the story is supposed to be about in the tale and that, since he’s not mentoned once in the narrative until the end of the story, it’s obviously him masquerading as Richleau in this one.

And that’s about it for Tales Of The Shadowmen 16 - Voire Dire. More characters abound and cross paths... some of whom I know very little such as Darkman and Gordon Gekko (I’ve not seen their respective movies) and others I am more familiar with such as Arsene Lupin or Anne Rice’s vampire character Lestat. There’s also a very entertaining and thorough version of Edgar Rice Burrough’s Jane Greystoke (formerly Jane Porter before she married Tarzan) and even a couple of relatives of famous characters, such as the sons of Professor Challenger and Robur The Conquerer.

Actually, I guess I was about 50/50 with this volume which, I guess is not a bad batting average considering the number of writers and the considerable number of character appearances and references which are scattered among the tales. Once again, I’ll look forward to receiving what would have been the December 2020 edition this coming Christmas release and hopefully, fingers crossed, get around to sharing my thoughts with you on that one in about a year from now.

Tales Of The Shadowmen 15 - Trompe l'Oeil

League Of Mental Men

Tales Of The Shadowmen 15
Trompe l'Oeil
Edited by Jean-Marc Lofficier and Randy Lofficier
Black Coat Press ISBN: 978-1612278131

I previously reviewed the first 14 collections in the Tales Of The Shadowmen series here and explained about my annual ritual of receiving the next volume in the series either at Christmas or for my birthday a couple of weeks later. And, as I said before, since these things aren’t published until December each year I’m usually one year behind when I get to finally read these things. It’s a cycle I keep meaning to break (if I ever get time around all the other things I’ve got to read) but for now I will quickly... very quickly in this case... cover the December 2019 release which I read a little while ago, Tales Of The Shadowmen 15 - Trompe l'Oeil.

As usual, the gallery of stories by different authors on offer, all utilising two or more heroes, villains or supporting characters from known literary (and other) works and then mixing them together in the same stories, is a bit of a hit and miss affair. As is sometimes the case, actually knowing the characters that are being continually referenced in these stories is part of the fun. This is not to deny that, when a really good writer gives these tales a go, even if you are not acquainted with the character of choice, they will be gripping reads. Usually these books are, once you get the first few volumes out of the way, more hit than miss but occasionally you get a volume where it’s maybe not quite as engaging as previous volumes and, I think that’s definitely the case here.

The book starts off fairly strongly following a short, dimension hopping tale called The Vertigo by Daniel Alhadeff. Like many of the characters in this particular volume, I hadn’t heard of the central protagonist and the brief intro to this tale gave him the hint of an atmosphere which didn’t seem to tally up with what I was actually reading. Frankly, the style it had been written in reminded me of an entirely different flavour, that of the Jerry Cornelius books by Michael Moorcock (I reviewed the movie version of one of them, The Final Programme, right here). So I was pleasantly surprised when a character from that series, Miss Brunner, turned up as one of the main characters a little later on... now it made sense as to why the writer was delving into this style.

Another stand out would be when the human-sized spider detective character, Spiridon, goes on a mission where the villain turns out to be another in a long line of Dr. Moreaus, who is also in this tale, responsible for the creation of the giant ants seen in the film THEM!

In other stories you will find the usual mash up of characters and ideas and, if you want to see what happens when Professor Challenger invents time travel, or when a very young Alfred Hitchcock gets involved in a plot involving Rouletabille and Harry Dickson, then this is a tome for you.

I particularly liked a tale by Travis Hiltz set around a time traveller marooned in Medieval France being assisted by the Wandering Jew to help rid the locals of Rotwang, from Metropolis, who was controlling not just Maria but the Volkites from the old Republic serial Undersea Kingdom. Another story has the Nyctalope and others trying to round up Edgar Allan Poe from 1940s America after he has been displaced by 'The Philadelphia Experiment'... a story in which a certain Ian Fleming spots James Bond’s name on a copy of the Field Guide To Birds Of The West Indies and notes how bland a sounding moniker it is (which parallels the real life creation of his famous character of course). They also refer to Edith Keeler in this story and how two other time travellers (which would be Kirk and Spock) allow her to die at her alloted time. You may remember this character played by Joan Collins in the Star Trek episode City On The Edge Of Forever, of course.

Other appearances of note might be the son of Bernard Quatermass, Indiana Jones, Doctor Omega, Liz Shaw, The Master and an interesting Carnacki tale where the Bachus is responsible, in a roundabout way, for the Whitechapel murders believed to have been committed by Jack The Ripper. Not to mention more than a few appearances in various stories for Les Vampires’ number one figurehead, Irma Vep. Another interesting story by Nigel Malcolm called Enemies Of The People is set in Paris in a future that is obviously an homage to the world created by Ridley Scott in Blade Runner. In this, after a near fateful encounter with the being that may or may not be the original Fantomas, Judex joins forces with Michael Moorcock’s character Una Persson and the Nyctalope to try and survive the corrupt government that wants the ‘terrorist’ Judex dead.

Out of many of the Shadowmen collections, I wouldn’t say this particular one is a good jumping on point. Asides from taking on some tales originally written for an unpublished volume collecting stories about characters from the Hexagon Comics range (an imprint I’m not familiar with myself), there are also a lot of tales which are follow ups from various yarns told in other volumes... such as Brian Gallagher’s latest chapter in the ongoing history of Captain Vampire or the latest yarn in the continuing exploits of Felifax.

All in all, it’s not the best in the series but, honestly, some of these collections are so entertaining that they can afford to have a few misses every now and again. I’m not a hundred percent sure I was fully on board with the Madam Atomos, tale where it turns out she was responsible for the death of John Lennon... I dunno, it just felt a little in bad taste to me but that’s no excuse not to let any writer or artist do what they want so, yeah, no real complaints from me there.

Tales Of The Shadowmen 15 - Trompe l'Oeil is not one of the best entries in the series but regular readers should get something out of this, I think... especially if they are enjoying the specific tales which, in some ways, could be seen as multi-parters. As I said, though, I wouldn’t jump into this one if you’re new to the series. Best to start off with one of the earlier collections if this is the case. Check out the full range of these and many other interesting curios at https://www.blackcoatpress.com if you want to peruse a publisher who has some very interesting volumes on the market.

Tales Of The Shadowmen

The Shadows Know...

Tales Of The Shadowmen
Edited by Jean-Marc and Randy Lofficier

Okay, so it’s time I try to finally make right something which has been on my mind since not too long after I started this blog review site. Long term, regular readers will probably know of my two Christmas book rituals, which have been celebrated in reviews on this blog every year apart from the last two, when the two authors concerned didn’t write any new books in their respective series. I’m talking about my annual Christmas week tradition of reading first, the newest release from Patricia Cornwell of her latest Scarpetta story, followed by the latest Temperance Brennan mystery, as written by Kathy Reichs. However, there’s actually a third Christmas book reading ritual I have every year and, each year I put off reviewing it because I’m always exactly one book behind in the order of the releases and I always figure I’ll start off with an overview review of the current volumes to date. The reason being that the newest volume in this specific series, which is an annual short story collection called Tales Of The Shadowmen plus whatever the latest volume’s subtitle is, are released in December each year. Shipping being what it is, I always ask for the previous year’s volume the following Christmas. This is still the case and I need to break that cycle soon, I guess.

And this is my way of doing it... by getting the overview out of the way so I can start reviewing the individual volumes as I receive them each year without having to reintroduce the concept of this series in such a detailed way each time.

So, yeah, here we go.

 I discovered these books around about 11 or 12 years ago, I think it was. I’d heard the names of Jean-Marc Lofficier and his wife Randy before because they used to be associated with some Doctor Who guides I used to read back in the 1980s. I think they have handled a lot of different franchised and individual science-fiction and fantasy projects over the years and Black Coat Press, a French imprint with an English translated equivalent, is one of those projects.

So what, or who, are The Shadowmen... well the term originally derives as a collective name for various French characters from past literature who are revived by a number of various writers for these collections... except it’s more than that. So initially, we’re talking about famous characters, some of whom are more familiar to French readers than British ones I suspect... and we’re talking about The Black Coats, Fantomas, Judex, Arsene Lupin, Irma Vep, Josephine Balsamo, The Musketeers, various Jules Verne characters, The Nyctalope, Rouletabille and so on and so forth. However, these characters are, in the parlance of the youngsters of today, mashed up by the various contributing writers of these collections... not just with each other but with many other fictional characters from around the world. So you will have two or more characters from various completely different literature sources, often a lot of heroes or villains and their supporting characters, mixed together in brand new stories.

So yeah, add in to the mix characters like Batman, Sherlock Holmes, Madame Atomos, Harry Dickson, Sâr Dubnotal, Sexton Blake, Bulldog Drummond, Fu Manchu, The Green Hornet, The Shadow (an inspiration for young Bruce Wayne in one tale), Hercule Poirot, King Kong, Solomon Kane, John Carter, the Frankenstein Monster, Nosferatu, various Bond villains, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Babar the Elephant... the list goes on and on. They’re up to volume 15 now already (I just finished reading volume 14) and  there are many different heroes crossing over with each other. Heck, there's even a very short story where Barbarella abducts Captain Kirk in order to have sex with him, if memory serves.

And there’s quite a few writers involved in these... sometimes very famous ones such as Michael Moorcock or Kim Newman. Heck, Kim Newman’s Angels Of Music, which are a kind of 19th Century group of female characters operating as the ‘Charlies Angels’ of their time and run by Eric, The Phantom of The Opera as their Charlie figure, was originally instigated in the pages of a couple of stories from these collections (I believe Mr. Newman’s novel from a year or so ago, detailing their adventures, is an expansion and continuation of these original tales).

Now the possible disappointing thing about these, if you’re new to them, is that these characters don’t all link up in a single continuity like Philip Jose Farmer’s Wold-Newton family tree. So story consequences in one won’t often, unless it’s a continuation of a previous story, spill over into other stories involving some of the same characters. For the most part these are stand alone stories with the odd serialised story (some book length serials are published in sections in consecutive volumes) and mostly should be enjoyed for the flights of fancy they are. Many times a family tree connection is established by a writer but it won’t always hold true for another story. So, for instance, in volume 14 there is a Honey West adventure where she takes on the main arch nemesis from The Wild, Wild West. This makes sense within that tale (where she also meets Gene Roddenberry and Julius Schwartz) because in that particular continuity the writer establishes that both James West from The Wild, Wild West and, also, Herbert West (Lovecraft’s re-animator!) are descendants of hers. That lineage probably won’t be present in any future Honey West tales in the series however, unless it’s one written by the same writer. So, if you can forget the possibility of a bigger, over reaching continuity within the collections, you can get a lot of enjoyment out of them.

Of course, by their very nature, depending on whether the reader finds each writer’s style entertaining or not, all the volumes are a bit hit and miss in their overall make up but, for me at least, they have become more hit than miss as the series of volumes has grown over time.

Actually, a big part of the enjoyment of these things is that the various references and character identities are not always given away up front, from either the writers themselves or from the Lofficier’s, who usually write a brief intro to each story. So it does also become a game of reference spotting a lot of the time and sometimes the amount of references can be quite dense... I remember a story from one of the early volumes mixing up various Spaghetti Western characters with Shaw Brother’s style kung fu action references and it’s sometimes a bit difficult to spot all the different props and people in these tales. Luckily for anybody reading along and playing that kind of game with the text, there is usually a ‘cast list’ for each story given at the end of the book, listing the main characters, supporting characters and references plus the original creator they are credited too. Very useful if you miss out on any. So, for example, I may have realised that the Roger Delgado incarnation of The Master from Doctor Who was taking on Professor Quatermass in one story but, there was probably a lot more going on than at first met the eye and the post story ‘dramatis personae’ can sometimes help clear up the odd references that litter these tales.

So there you have it, you’ve probably got more of a flavour of this ongoing series of books now and, frankly, if you are a fan of period set fantasy, science fiction, horror or crime fiction (or preferably all of those genres) then you’ll probably find at least a few tales in each volume that you’ll have a good time with. I’ve never seen these books sold in even specialist shops like, for instance, Forbidden Planet but you can usually get them from places like Amazon and, of course, the Black Coat Press themselves at http://www.blackcoatpress.com, which is a website which really is worth checking out. If you click on their catalogue link you’ll find a list of intriguing titles (not just Tales Of The Shadow men) where you can get English translations of hitherto rare or out of print science fiction, horror, crime and fantasy which you just can’t get form anywhere else, plus a load of new stuff too. Their new releases are always a bit of an eye opener (and often of stuff I’ve never heard of) so just reading about their release schedule and existing back catalogue can be an education in itself, sometimes.

So there you have it... Tales Of The Shadowmen and Black Coat Press... something you may want to get into if interpenetrating, famous and not so famous characters are your thing. Definitely worth a recommendation and definitely worth a look. And now this ghost of a review is finally committed to reality (at least in the digital realm), I can maybe review Volume 15 with a clear conscience when I get around to reading it. Maybe even before Christmas this time.