Greeting Loyal Airmen, it has been a while since we brought you any new updates on our third issue of Front Range Tales. As you’ll recall, this is the comic series completely written by our writing students at the Front Range Community College. Last winter we wrapped up our third ten-week class and each of our seven student turned in their six-page scripts. The Air Chief then sent them off to seven professional artist to illustrate. To date five have been completed and we are awaiting the last two strips to put the comic together.

Above is a page from Terry Crowley’s sci-fi story as illustrated by fellow student, and amazing artist, Zane DeGaine. When the Air Chief reported to the class that finding seven pro artist to do these strips  (for free) would be difficult, Zane told me after class that he would gladly volunteer to draw one of those stories.  Meaning, not only would he write a script himself, he would also draw one written by one of his classmates. And that’s who Zane DeGaine is, a truly wonderful, kind and super talented fellow. His work for Terry’s story is nothing short of stunning and we should be see it completed by the end of the week. In the meanwhile, we need to bug artist Sivlestre Szilagyi to finish his tale…the one that Zane wrote.  We’ll keep you posted.

One of the things the Air Chief has always loved about the classic pulps were the truly fantastic villains put forth in those yellowed pages. Perhaps none so representative of the “dastardly bad-guy” as Paul Ernst’s creation, Doctor Satan. Ernst invented Satan as an assignment from the editor of Weird Tales who thought having an on-going series of such a character would help sales. And so along comes the red-clad, horned helmet wearing menace who uses both science and dark magic to threaten society.  Of course Ernst also gave us the dashing occult Detective Ascott Keane to combat the red-scourge. In the end, fans, use to the diversity of stories in each of the popular magazine, cried long and loud in their displeasure and after only a few tales, Doctor Satan was no more. No more, that is until the advent of New Pulp.

Having discovered Doctor Satan via a small reprint booklet published by the late author and pulp historian, Robert Weinberg, we convinced New York fantasy & horror writer Gordon Linzner to join us in writing a brand new Doctor Satan wherein he battles the Moon Man; another classic character for the pulps only this one a hero. The end result, first pen almost fifteen years ago, was the novella THE HOUNDS OF HELL. When Rob Davis and the Air Chief kicked off Airship 27 Productions, it became one of our very first titles. One of the first fans of that effort was our colleague writer Barry Reese. Barry also took a shine to Doctor Satan and soon added him to his own pulp series featuring the Peregrine.  He would do so several times and each new story a gem. Of course we were not unaware of these stories and often thought about some day writing the character again. That opportunity finally arrived last year when we were putting together the latest collection of Brother Bones stories. A germ of an idea surfaced wherein Dr. Bugosi, the mad scientist of Cape Noire, wanted to build/clone a superman who would be able to defeat the undead avenger. To do so he needed not only scientific know-how, but a little arcane magic as well. Thus he recruits none other than the mysterious Doctor Satan. Writing the story that became “The Synthetic Man” was a hoot from start to finish as it was pretty much like old-home-week for the Air Chief. And reuniting with this legendary villain a “hellish” delight.  Both “The Hounds of Hell” and “Brother Bones – City of Lost Soul” are available at Amazon. If you’ve never read either, maybe now is the time to do so.

File this under seeing double. Jamie Bonjour (on right above) recently returned home after doing missionary work in South America. While there she met a gentlemen who reminded her totally of the Air Chief.  Hmm, maybe our stunt double, you think? They say all of us have a look-alike in this world. Obviously this fine fellow is one of mine.

Finally, we’re going to end this week with a western illustration by artist Jeff Sherwood.  Jeff heard we at Airship 27 Productions are always on the hunt for new illustrators and approached the Air Chief a little while ago saying he’d be interested in working for us. As we are looking to get another volume of “Masked Rider – Tales of the Wild West” into production, we asked Jeff to do us a cowboy sketch and here it is. Needless to say, that piece won us over and Jeff is now working the actual illustrations for that book.

And there you have it for this week, Loyal Airmen.  As ever, thanks so much for stopping by.

Ron – Over & Out!