Manga Review: Master Keaton, Volume 1

Manga Review: Master Keaton, Volume 1 art by Naoki Urasawa, story by Hokusei Katsushika & Takashi Nagasaki Taichi Hiraga Keaton is a mild-looking fellow with a bumbling exterior personality.  You’d never guess that he’s a brilliant archaeologist, ex-SAS soldier and freelance insurance investigator.  He often takes leave of his day job as a poorly paid… Continue reading Manga Review: Master Keaton, Volume 1

Book Review: Pearlhanger

Book Review: Pearlhanger by Jonathan Gash Lovejoy is a “divvy” (presumably from “diviner”), a person who can just feel if an antique is genuine by standing near it.  This is a great help in his career as an antiques dealer.  But just because he’s got a gift of his own doesn’t mean he believes in anything… Continue reading Book Review: Pearlhanger

Magazine Review: High Adventure #138 Battle Stories

Magazine Review: High Adventure #138 Battle Stories edited by John P. Gunnison By the mid-1920s, the Great War was far enough in the past for people in America to be nostalgic about it, and the pulp magazines noticed an increase of interest in stories about the war.  So they started putting out magazines dedicated to… Continue reading Magazine Review: High Adventure #138 Battle Stories

Magazine Review: High Adventure #126 Adventure Fiction Spectacular

Magazine Review: High Adventure #126 Adventure Fiction Spectacular This issue of the pulp reprint magazine concentrates on stories of adventure around the world.  Three of the stories are by “Major” George Fielding Eliot, who was born in Brooklyn, raised in Australia, fought at Gallipoli and was a Canadian Mountie before settling down in the U.S.… Continue reading Magazine Review: High Adventure #126 Adventure Fiction Spectacular

Magazine Review: Detective Yarns April 1939

Magazine Review: Detective Yarns April 1939 This is a facsimile reprint by Adventure House of a pulp magazine.  Pulp magazines tended to stick to one genre, so you knew what you were getting from the beginning; in this case action-mystery.  Great literature was rare, but they really got the blood pumping.  And a dozen stories… Continue reading Magazine Review: Detective Yarns April 1939

Book Review: 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories

Book Review: 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories edited by Stefan Dziemianowicz, Robert Weinberg & Martin H. Greenberg This was my Halloween season read this year, an anthology commissioned for the Barnes & Noble stores in 1995.  There are indeed one hundred stories in this hefty tome, averaging about six pages.  They are not all about… Continue reading Book Review: 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories

Comic Book Review: The Shadow Hero

Comic Book Review: The Shadow Hero Story by Gene Luen Yang, Art by Sonny Liew It is the 1930s, and Hank Chu lives in the Chinatown neighborhood of San Incendio.  He wants a simple, quiet life, working with his father in the family grocery store.  Hank’s mother, on the other hand, has bigger plans.  She’s… Continue reading Comic Book Review: The Shadow Hero

Comic Book Review: Top 10: The Forty-Niners

Comic Book Review: Top 10: The Forty-Niners written by Alan Moore, art by Gene Ha In an alternate America with science heroes and other weird or wonderful “characters”, it’s been decided to move everyone who isn’t “normal” to one city, Neopolis.  It’s 1949, and war veterans Jetlad and Sky Witch are reunited on the relocation… Continue reading Comic Book Review: Top 10: The Forty-Niners

TV Review: Michael Shayne

TV Review: Michael Shayne Michael Shayne is a private detective who works out of Miami.  He was created in 1939 by Brett Halliday (pen name of David Dresser) for the novel Dividend On Death.  He went on to star in a long-running book series (the later ones produced under the Halliday house name by other authors),… Continue reading TV Review: Michael Shayne

TV Review: Miami Undercover | Richard Diamond, Private Eye

TV Review: Miami Undercover | Richard Diamond, Private Eye Miami Undercover was a 1961 series shot in Miami Beach, with Lee Bowman as private investigator Jeff Thompson and Rocky Graziano as “Rocky.”  Mr. Thompson was employed by the hotel owners to perform undercover investigations to avoid alarming guests with the presence of an overt hotel… Continue reading TV Review: Miami Undercover | Richard Diamond, Private Eye