Greetings Loyal Airmen, and welcome back to our last Flight Log of March. Amazing just how fast time is flying by, isn’t it?  We want to kick off this week’s entry with something truly special.

Last the world of pulp fandom lost one of its most affable and loving souls, writer-editor Robert Weinberg. A few months back, Doug Ellis, a good friend of Bob’s had the idea of putting together a tribute book which would include many of Bob’s past essays on collecting authentic pulp artwork. At the same time Doug invited folks with personal memoirs of Bob to write them up and send them along for inclusion. The Air Chief hasn’t often spoken about exactly how we found ourselves involved with pulps. That story indeed revolves around Bob Weinberg and so we sat down and wrote a small two page report on how it was Bob got us involved with pulp fandom, introduced us to a fantastic new world of literature which in the end resulted in the birth of Airship 27 Productions. We are proud to say that little essay is a part of this new book. And isn’t that cover by Douglas Klauba fantastic. That’s Bob and his wife Phillis in a Weird Tales homage. The book will be on sale at this year’s Windy City Pulp & Paper Convention and you can bet the Air Chief will be the first in line to buy a copy.

Whereas things have been slow the past few weeks on both the pulp and comics front, one thing the Air Chief is truly excited about this start of the new baseball season in just a few more days. And our beloved Red Sox look to be fielding a really talented squad this year, building on their rookie position players and having added a quality pitcher like Chris Sale to an already solid rotation.  So it was kind of fun to see the above photo plastered up on Facebook this week…and we just had to share it with you as how to wear a proper cap has been a pet peeve of ours for a long-long time. And that illustration above nails it perfectly, all bills should be rounded comfortably in this manner…whereas the flat bill looks stupid, as if the wearer has no clue as to what he is doing.  And you’ll note it is very much ONLY young pitchers who go the flat bill route as if it is some kind of rebel statement they are making to the world at large. Sorry youngsters, again, all you are doing is showing a real lack of cool.  Nuff said.

Finally we wanted to leave you with a really awesome drawing of all the classic Universal Monsters done by our good buddy artist Jeff Butler.  Jeff is such an amazing talent and it was the Air Chief’s joy to work with him for several years on Now Comics Green Hornet series.  Jeff now teaches art a college in the midwest and he’s obviously still has creative as ever.

And that’s a wrap for this week, Loyal Airmen.  As always, thanks for stopping by and we’ll see you back here next Friday.

Ron – Over & Out.

Greetings Loyal Airmen, well after weeks of hyping it, we finally have completed the novel adaptation of R.A. Jones’ and Rob Davis’ comicbook series.  Whereas Rob did the interiors, we early on recruited to Canadian artist Ted Hammond to do the finished cover. But for that to happen, we followed an old familiar path.

Initially Rob had done up full body character sketch showing off her costumes and weapons.  Those see at above left.  This is how he dressed her in his interior illustrations. For ideas on the cover he did up a quick pencil sketch showing her naked from the backside and wielding her sharp deadly bow stick. We thought this was a good start but needed some fine tuning.

We looked at old Scimidar comic covers and found one with her uniform badly torn up after a fight and suggested Rob, while keeping the same composition, put her in that ripped up costume and bloody the bow, indicating she had just survived a deadly fight.

Satisfied with that image, Rob then handed it off to Ted. A few days later Ted turned in his own detailed black and white drawing and we knew immediately we had a winner. He then proceeded to color it and turned it in for Rob to aid our logo, the title and author’s name…and voila, another Airship 27 classic pulp cover. The Air Chief tips his cap to both Rob and Ted for delivering a real gem. Meanwhile, as indicated above, the book is now on sale at Amazon in paperback and soon on Kindle. We hope you’ll check it out.

Finally, for all our Captain Action fans out there, the long awaited third volume in the series begun by writer Jim Beard is on its way.  The manuscript, co-authored by popular new pulp writer Barry Reese, arrived at Hangar 27 HQ this afternoon. As the editor, the Air Chief is most anxious to dig into this culminating chapter of the trilogy begun several years ago. Stay tuned for more updates as we move along with this new book.

And that’s a wrap for this week Loyal Airmen, as ever, thanks for stopping by and we’ll see you back here next Friday.

Ron – Over & Out!

Greeting Loyal Airmen, we’ve got some really fun stuff to bring you this week, especially in regards to production of the Brother Bones movie.

As one would expect, one of the most crucial elements in bringing the Undead Avenger to the the silver screen will be dressing him properly and no item of his outfit is more crucial than his skull mask. Believe us, we’ve seen it done in so many different ways and lots of them way off the mark. Above is Bones’ artist Rob Davis’ interpretation and one of the best. In fact Rob did up the model sheets for the movie’s pre-production and now producers Erik Franklin and Daniel Husser have hired a sculpture to make that eerie skull mask.

Josh Tavena of Beardless Props, the hired sculpture began by doing up three sketches of the mask in various ways for all of us to look at.  After some deliberation, the Air Chief, Rob and all involved went with version B as it most resembles that seen in Rob’s illustrations.

Next came the practical concept of how the mask, when completed, would stay firmly on the actor’s face. In the end it was decided a leather strap would be fashioned to do that job. Note, in the stories, Bones’ mask remains in place magically with any such attachments, ergo, the strap itself will be hidden with various movie tricks so that it is never visible in any given shot.

Having chosen which model we wanted, and how to make it work, step two moves into final stage of defining the features, ala the long forehead which needs to be fitted perfectly over the actor’s face as to allow Brother Bones’ slouch hat to fit over it snugly and comfortably.  Believe me Loyal Airmen, seeing all this come to fruition has the Air Chief really excited these days.  We’ll share further updates as they become available.

On other fronts, one of Airship 27 Productions continuing best selling series is our SHERLOCK HOLMES – Consulting Detective and the Air Chief is happy to announce Vol. 9 of that series is now in full production. It will contain stories by Erik Franklin, Fred Adams Jr, I.A. Watson and Aaron Smith. Above is one of Rob Davis’ eleven interior illustrations that will grace this volume. It will also feature a truly gorgeous cover by Adam Shaw. Stay tuned for more as the book nears publication.

Finally, while back one of the Air Chief’s friends, artist Marco Santiago offered to do a pin-up of Sister Blood, the sexy vampire from our Brother Bones stories. We love Marco’s work and told him we’d love to see what he could do with her. Well, he wrapped up his pencils and then his friend, Roberto Ferreira inked it all above into the piece you see above. We absolutely love it. Thanks Marco & Roberto, great job.

And that’s it for this week, Loyal Airmen, as ever thanks so much for stopping by.

Ron – Over & Out!

Greeting Loyal Airmen, this week we’re kicking of things with sharing the amazing photo above. Shortly after moving here to Fort Collins, the Air Chief met fellow writers Mike Baron and Todd Jones. Through them and the local comic shop, we discovered there were quite a few comic creators living in this wonderful town as the weeks went by, we slowly got to meet quite a few. Enough so that one day, the Air Chief had the idea of inviting seven of them to have breakfast together at a local restaurant on the first Sat of the month. We tagged the group The Fort Collins Comics Coffee Clutch Crew and we’ve been meeting at a local deli now for almost seven years…and as you can see by the photo above, our ranks have swelled. Present in this photo are 22 of us….and there were at least four members not in attendance this month.  Yup, that’s one happy bunch of comic creators.  If you look at the photo closely, at center front, is a Shaundra Shultz, and children’s book painter, she has blond hair…over her left shoulder, in an Army green long sleeve tee-shirt is the Air Chief. Honestly, these get togethers are so much for all of us.

Meanwhile artist Kevin Johnson, our partner on the BLACK LION comics series is studying animation and has begun work on a digital 3-D model of our hero. We think he is doing a truly amazing job with this.

In a follow up to our lead topic concerning the huge gathering last weekend of the Fort Collins Comics Coffee Clutch Crew, we began re-evaluating the situation. If you look at that top picture carefully, you’ll note that our members pretty much take up almost half the floor space of that deli, what with pushing all those small tables and chairs together to accommodate us all properly. Well, as it turns out, that pix now shows our last official meeting at this venue. A few days ago the Air Chief spoke with the owners of Gryphons Games & Comics here in Fort Collins. It is the city’s premier comic shot and a big store with multiple private rooms where gaming tournaments are held plus their giant comic retail area and…they even have a cafe that serves drinks and sandwiches. We connected with the owners, had a very pleasant conversation and when it was over they had invited us to hold our monthly breakfast meetings at their story.  Yup, so a group of comic creators will now be getting together once a month at a real comic shop. Seems about time this came to pass.

Finally Brother Bones movie producers have done another video update you can find on You Tube at this link.  In which they talk about where they are at in production.      (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3iGaZiwI-Q)  All of which is really exciting.

And that, dear Loyal Airmen is a wrap for this week.  As ever thanks for stopping by and we’ll hook up again right here next Friday.

Ron – Over & Out!

Greetings Loyal Airmen, last Sunday members of Pulp Factory Awards committee released the list of this year’s nominees on the official ballot.  We were pleased that so many Airship 27 creators and titles were listed among the five categories.

As for the Air Chief, beside being nominated for Best Anthology editing, our own “Captain Hazzard – Custer’s Ghost” was nominated for Best Pulp Novel. To say we aren’t excited would be a joke. Of course we’re terribly excited and humbled that so many of our colleagues at the Pulp Factory thought enough of the book to give it their vote. Note voting on the final ballot is open to all the public, so if you’d care to check it out and give us your support, simply log on to the link below.

(https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSehHfX7HXALCIa0Pnr1udzftHXJLBBUocBweHsxRMcpOn8kcQ/alreadyresponded?c=0&w=1)

As ever, we thank you for your support. Winners, as ever, will be announced at this year’s Windy City Pulp & Paper Con in Chicago.

Now for something truly cool. One of the fun things about Wonder Woman when she first appeared in comics was her invisible plane that she flew around in. Well some parents out there, obviously were extremely creative in building such a plane for their daughter’s role as the female superhero.  This photog appeared on FB last week and the poster suggested this little girl should win some kind of prize. We couldn’t agree more and wanted to share it with all of you.

Speaking of cool things, as many of you Loyal Airmen will recall, last November the Air Chief turned 70 and was given a surprise birthday party at the Rocky Mountain Con. One of the things presented to us was this amazing character collage done by so many of my artists pals here in Colorado which featured many of the characters we’ve written in our career.  Well, recently Valerie went and had it framed and mounted on my office wall.  Our desk is to the left of this photo and we so love coming into the office every day and seeing it there. We are truly blessed with so many wonderful and talented friends.

And now for a little sneak peek.  We are currently putting the finishing touches on our latest Airship 27 Productions pulp title, SCIMIDAR.  This one is based on the comic series that was published by Eternity comics back in the late 8Os as written by R.A. Jones and drawn by very own Art Director Rob Davis. And now SCIMIDAR is a full length pulp novel. Above is the finished back cover. Canadian Ted Hammon will be doing the front cover and with fingers crossed we should have it out in another weeks.  Until then, Rob put the back cover together and we love it.  With fingers crossed the book should be out by this time next week.

And that’s a wrap for our first March Flight Log, Loyal Airmen, as ever, thanks for stopping by.

Ron – Over & Out!

Greetings Loyal Airmen, we got some fairly exciting news for all of you this week. As many of you already know, over a year ago the good people at Scaldcrow Games came to us with the offer to do a RPG (role playing game) module based on our Brother Bones the Undead Avenger stories. We happily agreed to joined up in this partnership. T Glenn Bane, the owner of Scaldcrow Games, then launched a Kickstarter campaign for RON FORTIER’S CAPE NOIRE, the title of the book module to solicit funds to produce the game.  Happily that campaign was very successful and they ended up collecting several hundred dollars above their target goal, funds that then went into bonus features. Thus for the past year and several months, Bane and his creative team, have been compiling all the date inherent in the Brother Bones books and comics and to produce the most definitive tome on the world of Cape Noire. Last week, Bane announced on Facebook that the final proofing had been completed and he and his co-editors were about to start laying out the actual book itself. Meaning, once assembled, they would soon start mailing out the finished volume to all our loyal fans who contributed to making this program such a huge success.  Note, aside from those ordered copies, as soon as the game is available for general sale, we’ll naturally let all you Loyal Airmen know where to you can go to pick up a copy.  As we said above, exciting times indeed.

Yesterday saw the release of Airship 27 Productions’ newest title, THE HYDE SEED by Michael Housel. This is only the second novella we’ve ever published. It’s a gripping story about an ex-boxer and his struggles with his inner demons. The stark cover above is by Ash Arceneaux with interiors by Pedro Cruz. Now available in paperback at Amazon and soon on Kindle. As ever, thanks for your support.

Finally, after almost a week of Spring time temperatures, breaking records in the high 70s etc. winter finally returned to Fort Collins today, spitting sleet and rain and dropping back down into the 40s.  Above is a shot of Old Town in with icy roads and snow covered trees. That’s winter in the Rockies, Loyal Airmen, unpredictable from day to day.  Thanks ever for stopping by.

Ron – Over & Out!

Greeting Loyal Airmen, this past week the Air Chief was once again  guest at the Rocky Mountain High School here in Fort Collins, for their Career Day. This is a special day put aside for juniors in which dozens (and I do mean dozens) of local professional people from all walks of life, are invited to come and talk to these bright young people about their own careers and perhaps along the way inspire some of them with thought of following those particular fields of endeavor. This was the Air Chief’s fourth year of talking to this kids about our career as a freelance writer in the comics, pulps and sci-fi.  And as ever we had such a fantastic time. Sharing what you love with others who might want to become creators is so satisfying. The Air Chief still holds out hope that one day we can find a teaching gig here at some small local community college.  We’ve put out a few inquiries but as yet now bites.

On the pulp front, Airship 27 Productions just released our fourth title of 2017. SHADOW LEGION – Nightmare City by Thomas Deja is the second in his series about a group of superheroes operating in Nocturne, Florida. This one has all four members of the team in individual stories. Interior illustrations are by Vincent Marchesno and the cover (above) is by Zach Brunner. If you like pulp superheroes, we hope you’ll check it out at Amazon. Available now in paperback and soon on Kindle.

The above pin-up of Mr. Jigsaw, Man of a Thousand Parts, was done by our good friend, artist Darren Goodhart, a while back and used in the back of one of our issues. Darren later volunteered to do a cover for us. And so, at present we have issue # 15 in production and it will feature two new Jiggy Stories.  Darren will be drawing the cover for it and another friend, Mort Todd of the Charlton Arrow, has agreed to color it. This should be a great cover when completed. Stay tuned.

And that’s it for this week Loyal Airmen. As ever thanks for stopping by.

Ron – Over & Out!

Greeting Loyal Airmen, and welcome to this week’s Flight Log.  We would guess many of you  are football fans and if so you witness perhaps the greatest second half comeback victory in last Sunday’s Super Bowl contest between the Atlanta Falcons and the New England Patriots.

At the end, the Patriots had come overcome a 25 point deficit to tie the contest and force an overtime, a first for the super bowl.  And the Patriots came out on top, winning it all much to delirium of Patriots fans around the country. Tom Brady is easily the greatest quaterback to ever play the game, and the Air Chief will argue that fact with any naysayers.  The numbers don’t lie. Anyway, as you’d imagine the internet was abuzz the day after and among all the cool things we saw posted was the above wonderful image of Captain America wearing Tom’s number twelve. It’s by artist Craig Shepard, who just wrapped up his pencils on the Captain Hazzard graphic novel. We love it and of course had to share it with all of you. Brady now becomes the only quaterback to have won 5 super bowls. Oh, yeah. It was a good day to be a New Englander.

The the pulp side of things, last week saw Airship 27 Productions release its third title of the year, JEZEBEL JOHNSTON – Queen of Anarchy by writer Nancy Hansen. This is the second in Nancy’s pirate queen saga and believe us, a great swashbuckling actioner. Art Director Rob Davis did double duty on this one. He provided the interior illustrations (as he did on the first book in the series) and then that gorgeous cover you above.  Book is now available at Amazon in paperback and on Kindle. As ever, thanks for your continued support. If you like pirate adventures, this one is for you.

On the “finally” good news front, some things the Air Chief penned almost three years ago are finally going to see print. I.V. Frost was a scientific detective created for the pulps by the late Donal Wandrai. We were asked to write both new prose stories and comic strip adventures of Frost by our good pal, Joe Gentile, at Moonstone books and we complied. We penned three comic strips and short story. Then, as often happens in the world of publishing, things went awry and those plans were shelves. Eventually the Air Chief Recruited artist Gary Kato and we actually put out a full color comic book featuring two of those three comic strips via Redbud Studio. Now, having regrouped, Moonstone is putting out a full anthology collection of I.V. Frost stories featuring that solo short story we did plus others by such New Pulp stars as Barry Reese, Frank Schildiner, Gene Moyers and many others. Now if you’ve paid attention reading this, you see that this still leaves one comic strip unaccounted for.  Well, as they always do after releasing a paperback edition, Moonstone later does a special, pricier hard cover addition and in this case, the I.V. Frost hardcover edition’s “bonus” feature will be that final comic strip, as written by the Air Chief and drawn by Jake Minor.  Note, the anthology is scheduled for a June release and you can pre-order it from you local comic shop.

And that’s it for this week, Loyal Airmen.  Later today Episode # 24 of the Airship 27 Podcast will go up on You Tube. We hope you’ll check it out. Till next week…

Ron Over & Out!

Greeting Loyal Airmen, the Air Chief is really wound up to get to this week’s Flight Log agenda.  You see, we finally got in Chad Hardin’s amazing cover for the pulp novel “Holmes & Houdini” by I.A. Watson last week and finally have it up at Amazon.

So you can see why we are excited. Chad Hardin turned in a magnificent cover to what is a great adventure. We hope you’ll check it out, available as ever at Amazon in both paperback and on Kindle.

As many of your Loyal Airmen know, one of the characters that we created a few years ago for comics was space-smuggler Captain Jain Marlee. To date she has appeared in two short strips by various others. Now a third Captain Marlee is in production called “Ghost World.” The penciler on the project is one Shane Aden and the inker is an old dear friend of the Air Chief, Ariel Aguire. Above is a sneak peak the strip in progress with the pencils on the left and full inks on the right. We think Shane and Ariel make a really great art team.

Last year the good folks at Charlton Arrow released their 5th issue which featured the first half of a Mr.Jigsaw story in full color. We just learned last night that issue # 6 with the second of that tale is soon to be released. See cover above. We’re told it’s 56 pgs thick. Now that’s a lot of great comic fun. Soon as we have a link where copies can be purchased, we’ll post it right here, Loyal Airmen.

Recently pulp writer/actor, Roman Leary (who penned the Brother Bones novel, “Six Days of the Dragon”) wrote, produced and directed a short 16 min, movie called The Devil Drives. Featuring a cast of three and a budget of only $30, he has whipped up a really wonderful little cinematic treat. You can watch if for free here – (https://vimeo.com/201828354)  The Air Chief thinks its awesome and urges you to check it out. Again, their only reward is your viewership.

And finally, we finally put up the Kindle Edition to our play, that we released on Amazon a few weeks ago. Below is the link to that Kindle Edition. (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01N4UPLEJ/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1486067471&sr=8-7&keywords=Where++Love+Takes+You)

And that wraps up this week’s agenda, Loyal Airmen.  As ever thanks for stopping by, take care …and do good to others. In the end the rewards come back to you ten fold.

Ron – Over & Out!

Greetings Loyal Airmen, as you can see by the photo above, the Air Chief is a happy soul this week as we finally received copies of our play book which we recently had published.  It is a three act romantic comedy that we wrote about our parents love story. It is now officially available at Amazon.com so all you actors, directors and other theater types, do check it out.  And thanks ever.

A few days after writing the above, a writer friend, Michael Housel, sent us a review of the play, which caught the Air Chief totally by surprise. Thanks so much Michael for these kind words. (http://bizarrechats.blogspot.com/2017/01/ron-fortiers-where-love-takes-you-play.html)

A fan on-line recent did an interview with the Air Chief. If you’re interested, you can cut and paste this link below to your search browser.  (http://oldfadedtrails.blogspot.com/2017/01/an-interview-with-ron-fortier.html) And the image above was done of us by pal Gary Kato.

Finally a while back we reported that we would soon be producing a pulp novel based on the old Eternity/Malibu comic series SCIMIDAR by writer R.A. Jones and our own Art Director, Rob Davis. Well, the novel is finished and Rob is now working on the interior illustrations.  Above is his first concept sketch. Been a while but it’s clear his fondness for the character hasn’t lessened one degree. Look for this one by the middle of Feb, all fingers crossed.

And that Loyal Airmen, is it for this week.  As ever thanks for stopping by,

Ron – Over & Out!