Greeting Loyal Airmen, we trust all of you are well and doing good things in the world.  What with Aug. whipping by, it will soon be Sept. and schools, from kindergarden to college opening their doors again. We truly wish all you wonderful students out there a great learning year ahead.  And as the theme of this particular Flight Log is, never give up, never say die, we hope you'll persevere to the end.

Over the years the Air Chief has written lots and lots and ..LOTS of stories, both prose and comics.  Many, happily, were lucky enough to finally get printed.  Still others, for various reasons never saw the light of day and have remained hidden away in my digital files.  When Rob Davis and the Air Chief launched the black and white comics anthology series, “Ron Fortier's Tales of the Macabre,” one of our goals was to dig out those old comics and finally get them in print for all you Loyal Airmen to enjoy.

Such is the case with LA FEMME LIBERTE, a 16 pg action adventure comic strip the Air Chief wrote a long time ago.  It told the story of a lovely, mysterious French resistance fighter and her people fighting the Nazis in Paris during the occupation in World War II.  It was dynamically illustrated by John Polacek who had earlier done a one shot Brother Bones comic with the Air Chief.  I loved the finished strip but ala, forces conspired against us and the project it was intended for collapsed and it was never printed.  Then a few short weeks ago, while rummaging through old digital files, we happily came across those sixteen pages and instantly realized it was time to get them out!

So we sat down and looked at the strips we had assembled for the next few issues of “Tales of the Macabre” and lo and behold it fit smoothly into issue #5 of that series.  (Note, issue # 4 is now being assembled.)   At the same time, we met a truly wonderful artist on-line named Dana Black who's style  impressed us greatly.  We contacted Dana and explained the anthology series and asked if he would be at all interested in drawing the cover for issue # 5 that will spotlight our lovely freedom fighter.  Dana is now doing up preliminary roughs and was kind enough to send one along (see above).  Stay tuned Loyal Airmen, this is going to be a truly fun comic.

Now on the pulp side of this topic, similar bumps and pot holes do materialize every now and then that interrupt the production of a particular title.  When we began Airship 27 Productions, we had started a series of new Green Lama stories going from an anthology to a full blown novel.  Then circumstances beyond our control intervened to stop production of the series, which was a real shame as he is one of the finest classic pulp characters of them all.  A few months passed and then the Air Chief received a call from a good friend who was personally involved with the character's legal status.  After an amiable chat, we were told that Airship 27 Productions would be allowed to continue our series of Green Lama anthologies.  At which point, Rob and the Air Chief opted to revamp our title and volume number of – THE GREEN LAMA – Mystic Warrior is now in production.  It will reprint two of the stories from the original first anthology and two brand new stories will round out the package.  All the art will be brand new including twelve superb black and white interior illustrations by Neil Foster (see above).  Fingers crossed, GREEN LAMA – Mystic Warrior will be out before year's end.  Wahooo.

And finally, we just wanted to share with you our love for the movie JACK REACHER based on the best selling new pulp books by Lee Child.  And yes, we just called the Reacher novels pulp.  Note, we haven't read any of them, but are still aware, thanks to colleagues who are big fans, (they call themselves Reachers' Creatures) we've learned enough about this hero to realize he is a classic “Lone Ranger” figure who moves across the land helping people in trouble.  Well, one of his many adventures, LONE SHOT, was finally brought to the big screen earlier in the year by actor Tom Cruise and his production company and they delivered one of the best, well paced, well directed and yes, well cast thrillers the Air Chief has seen in a long, long time.  Last week we finally picked up the Blu-ray disc and viewing it a second time, we were just as entertained as when we'd first watched it in the movie house.  Kudos to Cruise and writer/director Ralph McQuarrie for giving us a thinking man's thriller.  Watching the extra documentaries on the film's production, we were truly impressed with the company's respect for writer Lee Child and how they sincerely did their best to bring the heart and soul of his character to the big screen.  Both the Air Chief and Valerie give JACK REACHER major thumbs up.  We truly hope they do another one soon.

And that, Loyal Airmen, is our Flight Log for this week.  As ever, thanks for stopping by and stay well, we will endeavor to be back here next Friday. Till then, take care,
Ron – Over & Out!