This past Sat, the 12th of Sept. saw the premier of the new Fort Collins Comic Con, not to be confused with the FoCo Comics and Gaming Convention. Thus it became the third such convention to take place here in my new home town of Fort Collins, Colorado.

Upon learning of the event months ago, we were approached by the con’s promoters and asked if we’d attend and help them promote the show.  Both we were only too glad to do. Then week’s prior to the show we were informed that we’d be receiving a Legends of Comics award at the show. That came as a surprise and the Air Chief was more than a little nervous about that. Getting awards is always an awkward thing, as in all honesty, we simply don’t feel worthy of such. It is as if someone is going out of their way for thanking you for doing something you love to do. And yet saying no, you don’t want the award is a very rude thing to do.  And so manners, which our loving parents long ago, dictate we bite our tongues and agree to be thus honored.  Above is a photo of the Air Chief accepting this Legends of Comics award from Nathan, the show’s main promoter and organizer. It was still awkward, but the Air Chief was sincere in his thanks to the gathered crowd and especially the folks who put on this fun new show.  The day was a huge success, we met lots of old friends and made lots of new ones.  Here’s hoping this becomes an annual event. Who knows, maybe next year they will let me hand out the award to some other guy.  Now THAT would be fine by me.

As people from the show are still sharing pictures on-line, we thought we’d post this one of the Air Chief on a panel dealing with independent publishing. To my right was Radio Station-Manager-Turned-Comic Writer, Brian Hughes and to my left was an award winning novelist of young-adult books named Todd something, sorry, we really aren’t that good with names.  Anyway, upon seeing the above photo, the Air Chief’s immediate thought was imply, “Oh my God, I look just like my grandfather Fortier.” Amazing, what time does to all of us.

Meanwhile Airship 27 Productions has just launched its newest title – GHOST BOY Vol Two – featuring another quartet of stories starring the comic book hero of the 1960s, Ghost Boy. This volume features stories by J. Walt Layne, Lee Houston Jr., Terry Alexander and Erik Franklin.  The cover, painted by the amazing Zachary Brunner is based on a scene from Franklin’s story and is an homage to that classic Jack Kirby cover to Marvel’s Fantastic Four # 1.  We hope you give this book a look-see.  With fingers crossed, by the time all you Loyal Airmen are reading this Flight Log, it should be up at Amazon as a hard copy and then within a few days as a digital copy for Kindle.  Thanks ever for your continued support.  Up next will be a brand new Sherlock Holmes full length novel.

And that’s all for this week, Loyal Airmen. See you back here next Friday.

Ron – Over & Out!

Greeting Loyal Airmen, and welcome to this week’s Flight Log.  This week we want to tell you about a truly strange experience we encountered earlier in the year which once again proved how often the line between what is real and what is make believe can be blurred.  Especially for a writer.

At the start of this year, the Air Chief was working away at writing the first ever Lady Action prose adventure would ultimately become “The Sands of Forever.” Above is the pencil composition Art Director Rob Davis whipped up for the cover and next to it the finished painting based on that composition by the super talented Ted Hammond. Now some books are easier to write than others. In the end it pretty much depends on one’s inspirations, those elusive muses that at times can bless the scribe with dozens of fantastic ideas while at others leave him or her floundering on the shore like a stranded guppy unable to come up with any kind of direction.

Thus is was for the Air Chief when at the first of the year we began writing this Lady Action book.  In the first few weeks we threw out several false starts and were at the hair-pulling stage. Oh, we knew the general shape we wanted to capture. In our minds this characters was always intended to be a female amalgamation of Indiana Jones and James Bond, half-spy, half-global adventurer. That was the one we needed to establish in a fast paced narrative. And so we kept plowing away at it, page after page doing our best to invent exciting action sequences that would entertain our readers and keep them turning those pages.  After about a month, we manged to make our way into the section where Nicola Sinclair, a.k.a. Lady Action, returns to A.C.T.I.O.N. headquarters for further assignment.  It was in this section that we began seeing just who the head of British ACTION really was…it was Nicola’s own mother, who everyone simply referred to as The Commander.  Okay, so that was a cool idea and the more we envisioned her the more she began to emerge fully developed out of our imagination.  The Commander had early on been one of the top secret agents for the British Government and being drop-gorgeous, her cover was that of a fashion super-model which allowed her to travel the world carrying out her mission’s for Queen and Country.  It was during this career that she ultimately married Lord Sinclair and had Nicola. But she still continued to work until one day an old foe planted a bomb in her sports car in an attempt to kill her. By a miracle, she survived but lost her left leg in the explosion.

Thus ended this vibrant woman’s spy career and she retired to become a full time mother.  It wasn’t until a few years later that representatives of A.C.T.I.O.N. approached her to assumed to leadership spot of their newly opened British HQ. At first she thought them mad. How could a one-legged woman be the commander of a super secret spy organization?  Upon posing this question, she received the one answer she never imagined; A.C.T.I.O.N. scientist had built a super prosthetic leg for her that was capable of incredible strength and dexterity. Once fitted to her, it would work ten times better than her original organic limb.  In the end Nicola’s mother tried on this amazing prosthetic and discovered it was just as great as the scientist had claimed and within days of putting it on, she assumed the leadership of British A.C.T.I.O.N. thus becoming The Commander.

The creation of The Commander was the one element that finally unlocked the puzzle of this project for the Air Chief.  Once we had her fully fleshed-out, the rest of the book began to fly off the pages. It was her creation that help identify Nicola to us and their tempestuous relation over the years in an almost love-hate manner. That the Commander was her mother only added to the tension of Nicola’s role as Lady Action and made the book work beyond our wildest dreams.  So we wrapped it up, got it published and the Air Chief is happy to say it has become one of our best sellers this year.

So you can imagine our utter shock when months after the book had been released, while surfing the internet one evening, we found these amazing pictures of a beautiful super model who had only one leg!!  Dear God in heaven, the Air Chief remembers thinking…”She’s real!  The Commander is real!”  The young lady pictured about above is Viktoria Modesta and she is one of the most sought after super models in the world today.  Unlike our fictional character, Viktoria is a real hero, who, despite a tragic amputation, refused to let go of her dreams and set about turning what looked to be a handicap into a something visually artistic and beautiful, this recreating herself ala a moth into a stunning butterfly.  And honestly, we had no clue this young lady existed when writing our book, thus upon discovering her, we could only shake our heads and smile. Sometimes life and fiction do mirror each other in the most fantastic ways.

Finally, to wrap up this week’s entry, Art Director Rob Davis put together the first draft of the cover to the giant benefit anthology we are doing to assist fellow new pulp creator, Tommy Hancock, so we can get a feel for how it would appear. Note, there are flaws in the image about, some names being broken up, and they will be corrected long before the final copy is set and the book is published.  What truly caught us by surprise was when we added just how many writers we had in this thing, 62, and how many graphic artists, 38.  Yup, if you just did the math in your head….we by nothing but dumb luck have ended up with 100 CREATORS!!!  Pretty darn amazing if you ask the Air Chief.  Now we have to put it all together.  Still looking for a late Oct, early Nov release.  Stay tuned.

Ron – Over & Out!

Greeting Loyal Airmen, it looks like we’re going to kick off the Labor Day weekend with a really special new Airship 27 Productions book release.

JEZEBEL JOHNSTON – Devi’s Handmaid is the first book in a new saga by Nancy Hansen, a dear friend and one of the finest new pulp writers working today. It is a straight out, old fashion pirate adventure about a young girl who disguises herself as a boy to sign aboard a pirate ship. This is one of those book’s the Air Chief simply could not put down once we started reading. Nancy is such an amazing writer and all our Loyal Airmen should grab a copy of this soon to be classic right now. It features a cover by Terry Pavlet and interior illustrations by our own Rob Davis. The book is now available from Amazon in both hard copy and on Kindle.

On the comic front, the Air Chief’s work for Moonstone comics continues at a steady pace.  Recently super artist Michael Stribling turned in this cover for the first issue of GUNS OF THE BLACK BAT. It blew us out of the water when we first saw it. Naturally we’ll keep you posted as to when the first issue is completed and on-sale.

It was also a big week the Tommy Hancock benefit anthology project we’ve been putting together for over the past month.  At midnight on Monday, the deadline for story submissions ended and we woke up Tuesday to having logged in 62 brand new pulp stories by some of the finest writers in the business today. Thus ended phase one. Now it is on to phase two, getting 62 illustrations, one for each of the stories. To that end we’ve recruited a dozen gifted graphic artists who have begun turning in some amazing pieces. One such came in from our Art Director Rob Davis and it is the illustration for the Air Chief’s newest Brother Bones short that appears in this anthology.  Called “The Hideout,” the story features the three contest winners of the Scaldcrow Games Kickstarter campaign of a few months ago.  All three winners were written into the tale as hitmen trying to rub out the Undead Avenger.  Rob did a fantastic job of capturing their likeness; that’s Mark Kalita about to kick down a door, behind him with long hair is pal Gerald Kuster and then behind him holding a shotgun is Michael Brown. We hope our pulp fans enjoy their cameos. We’ll keep you posted on the book’s continued progress as ever.

So, where did summer go? Here we are entering into the Labor Day weekend and time continues to whip by.  The Air Chief will be the guest at a new one day comic con here in Fort Collins in another week, more about that next week.  Till then, have a great holiday weekend, be careful on the roads if traveling and thanks as ever for dropping by.  See you next Friday.

Ron – Over & Out!

Greeetings Loyal Airmen.  Last week at the end of our Flight Log we announced the partnership between Airship 27 Productions and Radio Archives. Since then all paperwork has been signed and the official press release was sent out across the internet. We are truly excited about this and can’t wait to see which titles from our catalog, Tom Brown and his staff at Radio Archives will choose to bring to the airwaves.  This is going to be so much fun.

Ever since its debut a few months ago, the Air Chief’ pulp book, NIGHTHAWK from Moonstone Books has been selling extremely well.  We’ve sold out at our two last conventions and we are told Diamond has sold at of their stock. So we we’re extremely happy to hear this past week that the book is finally available now at Amazon.  Right now only in hard copy, but we fully expect to see it go up at Kindle soon enough.  For those of you who have already bought a copy and made it so successful, our heartfelt thanks.

We are also extremely happy to announce the third in our best selling Barry Baskerville children’s book adventures.  “Barry Baskerville Traps a Thief,” by Richard Keller with art by Gary Kato is now on sale at Amazon.  This is a perfect series for young children age seven and up. We truly hope you’ll check it out.

Well look at the above.  Within days of our starting this entry, Radio Archives notified us that the first Airship 27 titles they are going to bring to audio books are our two Mars McCoy Space Ranger titles.  Above is how the CD cases will look when produced. Volume one contains stories by Greg Gick, John Bear Ross and Andrew Salmon. Whereas Volume two contains two novellas, one by Van Allen Plexico and the other by James Palmer. We couldn’t be happier. This was a great choice on their part.  RA is known for their amazing sound special effects in their audio books. We can only imagine how these two will sound what with rocket ships blasting away the buzz of super rayguns.  Wahooo.

And finally out last item of the week, the Air Chief has finally joined the masses and gotten a smart-phone. We’ve been really gun-shy about these little hand-held devices for quite a while, but Valerie finally convinced us it was time to take the plunge. Now after having had it for several days and slowly begun to “play” with it, all we can envision is the Golum from Lord of the Rings as we hold it up and say, “My precious.”

Ron – Over & Out!

Greetings Loyal Airmen, the Air Chief and Art Director Rob Davis just came back from this yea’s Pulpfest in Columbus, Ohio, and honestly, we think it was the best Pulpfest ever. The folks who put it on did a stellar job, the crowds were bigger, we saw lots of Loyal Airmen who have become regulars over the years and made tons of new friends. Sales were really great, as pulp fans came and gobbled up so man of our books. It was most rewarding.

Now unlike comic shows, we see very few costumes at pulp conventions, but lo and behold, this charming lady showed up Saturday in her original Flash outfit and we thought it was terrific. Enough so that the Air Chief had to get a pix with her. We do love the Flash.

Another highlight of the show every year is our getting to moderate the New Pulp Panel. This year joining me on the platform, from left to right, were writers Frank Schildiner, Rick Lai, Jeff Fournier & Jim Beard. That’s the Air Chief to far left having a blast keeping the discussion moving along. Our theme was The Heirs of Weird Tales, whereas part of the con’s overall theme this year was celebrating perhaps the greatest pulp mag of them all, Weird Tales. And so our new pulp writers discussed how the writers who graced the pages of that classic pulp title were not only some of the best writers in the world, but how they influenced them personally in their own careers. It was a fast, fun-filled hour and it seemed out audience really enjoyed it a great deal.

Finally in regards to the show, the Air Chief needs to give a shout out to ALL our Loyal Airmen, our regular readers who support us so graciously.  During a busy selling period late Sat. afternoon, a gentlemen who had never bought from us before came up to our table and began perusing our titles. He was clearly interested and so the Air Chief began explaining who we were and what we did at Airship 27 Productions. In the middle of our little spiel one of our regular customers came up to the table, realized what we were doing and without any inducement what-so-ever from the Air Chief, turned and told this other fellow that we were the best publisher of new pulp in the hall and that all our titles were of the highest quality and there wasn’t a bad one on the table. Clearly taken with this unsolicited testimony, the newbie looked at him, turned around, scanned our books again and then bought two of them.  WOW!!!  And that Loyal Airmen is why we love you guys and gals so much. We simply could not do any of this without you. Thanks so very, very much!

As you Loyal Airmen know, beside all the writing and editing we do, we also continue to write a very widely read review column called “Pulp Fiction Reviews” where our goal is to bring to you Loyal Airmen a look at some amazing new books coming from small publishers which you would most likely not ever find in an Barnes & Noble store. Such a book was “Weasels Ripped My Flesh,” a collection of great adventure stories taken from the pages of the old Men’s Adventure Mags of the post-World War II era and edited by Bob Deis. It’s a great book and we recommended it highly in one of our recent reviews. Imagine our pleasant surprise when Deis and his co-editors did up the above ad featuring our image and a quote from that review. Here’s hoping this only helps increase their readership. You can find this at Amazon.

And finally we’re going to end this week’s Flight Log with some exciting news. We have just begun talks with the good folks at Radio Archives, an outfit out of California that does audio books in the fashion of old time radio dramatizations. For the past few years Radio Archives has made a name for themselves by adapting classic pulp novels such as Doc Savage, the Spider and many others. These are a hoot to listen to. Recently they’ve hooked up with our friends at Pro Se Production to adapt some of their great new pulp titles and now they are in talks with us to bring some Airship 27 Productions to the air-waves. Again, this is early in talks, but we’re keeping our fingers crossed that we’ll soon be able to report some partnership that will be bring some of our fine titles to audio.  Stay tuned.

And there you have it, Loyal Airmen, as ever thanks for stopping by.

Ron – Over & Out!

Greetings Loyal Airmen, as you read these words, the Air Chief is in Columbus attending this year’s Pulp Fest convention.  We’ll have a full report, and hopefully a few pictures for you when we get back next week. But for now let’s dig into this week’s Flight Log and somethings that we’ve been thinking about lately.

For years British television had the knack of developing limited run TV series and presenting them like visual chapters in a single book. Whereas in America the major networks continued to give us the same week in and week out series that always seem to drag on and on without any major changes. Whenever they took the gamble to try the novel approach, it invariably had to be a huge production affair ala a mini-series along the lines of “Roots,” “The Thorn Birds” or “Lonesome Dove.” And even here, Hollywood just couldn’t get away from wanting to give us sequels of the mini-series. Ergo, the Air Chief, like many of his writing pals always wondered why American television couldn’t just tell one multi-chapter story…and then move on to something else ala an authentic anthology. Then last year, HBO gave us “True Detective,” created by mystery writer Nic Pizzolatto and starring Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harleson, who also served as Executive Producers. It was a gripping tale of child abductions and mutilations occurring in Louisianna being covered by corrupt government official…until two homicide detectives refused to accept the cover and spent years unraveling the mystery and bringing the guilty to justice. It was a brutal, tough, adult drama and we loved it. At the end of the series, the mystery resolved, we had a real sense of it having come to a genuine conclusion. Still we wondered if there would be a follow. Imagine both our surprise and delight when months later we heard HBO had given Pizzolatto the thumbs to do another, but this time with a totally new cast and telling a brand new story that would take place in Los Angeles.

This past Sunday night that second series starring Colin Farrell, Rachel McAdams, Taylor Kitsch and Vince Vaughn wrapped up in a very gritty, powerful film noir style. Honestly, we enjoyed just as much as the first season’s story. Everyone in the cast was superb but the major pleasure was seeing Vince Vaughn play the sophisticated gangster who had foolishly thought he could leave his street-ways behind until circumstance forced him to have to become a thug once again. Since its finale, we’ve been seeing a few Facebook posts with folks grumbling this season was as good as the first etc. etc. Which is fine as all of us who love good crime and mystery novels all have our favorites and often attempt to quantify them…but keep in mind that is all subjective to your own personal taste. Again, what all of us should be applauding here is HBO willing to do a real anthology series and Pizzolatto giving us two totally different crime stories, each as far apart in style and atmosphere as the Earth is from Jupiter. Now that’s TV worth following. But upon consideration of some of these Facebook comments, the Air Chief would personally want to challenge HBO and Mr. Pizzolatto by suggesting the following…if you are going to do a third season, as we certainly hope that does happen, then we think it would be great if he would actually recruit ANOTHER MYSTERY WRITER to do the third season, but stay on as the producer. After all, it is an anthology series.

Now all of you Loyal Airmen know that in the past few weeks the Air Chief has been working what is going to most likely be the biggest single anthology book Airship 27 Productions will ever put out – LEGENDS OF NEW PULP FICTION. This is the benefit book for our pal, Tommy Hancock. As of this writing, 40 of the 57 promised short stories have been turned in…and they are great. But keep in mind, each story will also feature an illustration and we thought you’d get a kick out of seeing two of them now in progress. Both pieces above are actually incomplete and only in their pencils stages. The one on the left is by Shannon Hall and the one on the right by Silvestre Szilagyi. We love them both. This is the caliber of art that will be featured throughout this amazing book. Stay tuned.

And that’s it for this week, Loyal Airmen. Thanks ever for stopping by.

Ron – Over & Out!

Greetings Loyal Airmen, well with Pulp Fest only two weeks away, the Air Chief and Chief Engineer Rob Davis are extremely busy getting last minute jobs wrapped up so that we are ready to travel to Columbus, OH and join many of you Loyal Airmen and our other pulp colleagues for this annual, super fun convention.

At the same time we are re-stocking our Airship 27 pulp inventory to take along, Rob spent part of the past weekend working on the newest issue (# 5) of Redbud Studio’s RON FORTIER’S TALES OF THE MACABRE. We’ve four new stories in this latest issue and Rob whipped up this wonderful drawing for our cover. And once again, there’s Ye Old Air Chief resplendent in his fancy duds and top hat, stuck away in his secret laboratory reading the latest Mad Scientist Times.  We truly loved this piece and it is currently being colored by Casey Beamis who worked on our I.V. Frost comic from Redbud.  Stay tuned.  With any luck this title will soon be available.

We are currently putting together Nancy Hansen’s amazing pirate novel – JEZEBEL JOHNSTON – Devil’s Handmaid, which we hope to have out upon our return to Hangar 27 after the Pulp Fest show. Art Director Rob Davis has been whipping up the interior illustrations and above is his latest which is a truly imaginative use of an old sailing map of the southern Florida coast beneath the silhouette of a pirate ship. Just another example at why Rob is a master of illustrating.

Okay, now it’s time for one of the Air Chief’s rare rants. In the past few months the following has happened to us twice. We received the following letters in the mail, yeah, the postal snail-mail, each began like so, “Dear Mr. Fortier, I’ve been having a hard time finding you on-line. Whereas writer John Doe (not real name here) told me about your publishing house, as he is one of your regular contributors, and I would like to send you my story idea for such-and-such….etc.etc.  Now, let’s stop and think this through. Is the Air Chief really that hard to find on-line? We ask you to Google our name and see what pops up. The last time we did try this, at least twenty different links to one or more of our various websites popped, all of which, had either of these gentlemen visited, would have provided them with our valid e-mail.  No, we are most certainly not hard to find. Of course then comes the piece of in-your-face logic that had us smacking our heads. If writer Joe Doe told you about us, then why didn’t either of you ask HIM for our contact information? Frustration is a mild description of our reaction to reading both these letters. Again, they were from two different writers sent almost a month apart. We really worry about this new crop of writers. Obviously logic and reason are not their strong points.  Sigh.

And lastly, for this final Flight Log before we head out to Pulp Fest, we are delighted to announce the release of our newest Airship 27 Productions pulp novel, CLAWS OF THE GOLDEN DRAGON by Barbara Doran. A great Asian themed fantasy adventure our readers are going to love. Interiors are by Gary Kato and the cover is by Shane Evans. Available now in hard copy from Amazon and soon for Kindle.

There you have Loyal Airmen. The Airship 27 is almost all packed and fueled up.  Look out Columbus and Pulp Fest….here we come!

Ron – Over and Out!

Greetings Loyal Airmen and welcome to another Flight Log.  The summer season is usually looked upon by the movie going public as the traditional time for blockbuster films.  You know, action driven over-the-top adventures and thus far this season we’ve been given several such from AVENGERS – AGE OF ULTRON,  JURASSIC PARK – LOST WORLD, TERMINATOR – GENESIS and most recently, the totally fun ANT-MAN.  And trust me there are lots more on their was like the latest Tom Cruise MISSION IMPOSSIBLE – ROGUE NATION to the big film version of MAN FROM UNCLE.  And believe me, the Air Chief is excited to see them as well.

Still, amidst all these battles and explosions and dinosaurs eating stupid tourists, it is fun to sit back and enjoy a smaller-scaled, more thoughtful movie.  Earlier we had that in the creepy little sci-fi cautionary tale, X-MACHINA.  A truly brilliant film.  And now comes MR. HOLMES, a warm-hearted tale of the Great Detective dealing with a failing memory in his attempting to solve the mystery of his very last case and why it emotionally devastated him.  Ian McKellen is nothing short of fantastic of the aged Holmes and he has terrific from his supporting players.  Valerie and the Air Chief were both mesmerized by this beautifully told story, both in narrative and visuals. It is without a doubt the real treasure of this movie-going and if we haven’t seen it yet, we urge you to do so.  You won’t be disappointed.

The other day, while a crew was doing some landscaping work to our back yard, an underground cable was accidentally broken that provides our internet, television and phone signals.  We called the provider and just a little while ago the tech arrived and repaired the broken section in a matter of minutes.  Thing is we were disconnected for about 18 hours.  Meaning no TV, regular land-line or internet access.  The first two were an annoyances at best as we do have cell phones and last evening, rather than watch our normal TV fare, we simple threw a few Blu-ray movies in the DVD machine.  No, what was the most frustrating to the Air Chief was not being able to get on-line. Considering some of the big projects we are now involved here at Airship 27, this inability to communicate had it lasted any length of time could have been a major set-up to our day to day goals.  Once again highlighted, whether we like it or not, we are a society very much dependent on these machines. And at times it is pretty scary just how much so.

For those of you interested in what the Air Chief has been writing lately, well we finally decided to write a story for our SINBAD – The New Voyages series. To date we’ve published three anthologies and one novel which features a black Sinbad and his international to crew feature a Viking, archer from Gaul and female samurai. We had created all these characters several years ago as a bible for our series and many of our talented Airship 27 Productions have put them through their paces.  Now as our turn. The story is called, “The Desert Contest,” and will appear in volume five.  We’ll keep you posted.  It was much fun to finally get our creative hands on these characters.  Up next is a new Brother Brother short of the Tommy Hancock benefit anthology, “Legends of New Pulp Fiction.”

Again, thanks for stopping by and we’ll see you here next week.

Ron – Over & Out!

Greetings Loyal Airmen, last week we mentioned being anxious to see the new ANT-MAN film from Marvel Studios.  Well, Val and the Air Chief saw it today and both of us give it major thumbs up.  As ever, Marvel has given us a story that combines drama, action and humor in equal measure…totally giving their audience a very entertaining experience. The cast is great, the cameos brilliant and that little girl playing Scott Lang’s daughter is such a cutie, she’ll melt your heart.  Again, another winner for Marvel Studios.  The irony is the Air Chief wishes their current comics were as good.  Sigh.

While on the subject of movies, back in 1981 Universal thought to bring back an American icon and one of our personal favorite heroes, the Lone Ranger.  So they cast a young Klinton Spillbury to play John Reid/the Lone Ranger and Michael Ironside to play his faithful Indian companion, Tonto.  The Air Chief dragged his sons Scott and Kevin to see it and realized for the first time what cultural gap had come to exist in our country.  My boys were bored silly, primarily because it was a western and not another big splashy Star Wars epic or some such.  We doubt they ever forgave us for taking them to see this.  Another sad note, the theater was nearly empty on a Saturday afternoon.  And despite all this, the Air Chief liked the movie a great deal, perhaps it did harken back to my own childhood when we’d watch the great Clayton Moore and Jay Silverheels on our little black and white TV set.  You never really give up your heroes.  Anyways, later the film was released on cassette and eventually DVDs …but always in the chopped up pan and scan version which cuts off much of the images in each scene.  Well, finally, after that stupid Jonny Depp abomination of a year ago, someone finally got the rights to re-do a widescreen Blu-Ray edition of the 81 movie and we immediately picked it up at Amazon.  Haven’t watched it yet, but am anxious to do so.

On the comic front we were extremely excited this past week to finally see some of the new artwork by Mark Grammel come in.  Mark is the artist on our on-going series for Moonstone Comics – BLACK BAT – DOMINO LADY : Danger Coast to Coast.  The page about shows Prof. I.V. Frost and his assistance Jean Moray meeting Elle Patrick, the Domino Lady in her civilian guise.  All part of an adventure called “Beauty & the Bees.”  We couldn’t be any happier with Mark’s work on our story, he’s captured it perfectly with his wonderful artwork.

Finally, we know how much you Loyal Airmen like sneak peeks at what we are working on here at the old Hangar 27.  Well here’s a pencil composition by artist Zachary Brunner that will eventually become the painted cover to GHOST BOY # 2 now in production.  Looks cool, doesn’t it.

And that’s our Flight Log for this week, Loyal Airmen, as ever, thanks for stopping by.

Ron – Over & Out!

Don’t look now, Loyal Airmen, but as we write this Flight Log, we are exactly one month away from this year’s PulpFest in Columbus, Ohio.  Airship 27 Productions has been a part of this wonderful gathering since its inception and we always look forward to meeting old and new Airmen there.  As ever, the Air Chief will be moderating the New Pulp Fiction panel and this year’s theme will be “The Heirs of Weird Tales,” whereas we’ll be talking with five of the best and brightest new pulp writers working today on how the old classic pulp mag, Weird Tales influenced their lives and careers.  Should be a great discussion and we hope many of you attending the con will join us.  It takes place Saturday afternoon.

We recently released our second volume of Fred Adams’ SIX-GUN TERRORS. Thing is, while deciding what the cover should be, the Air Chief kept looking at artist Zachary Brunner’s cover for volume one which features a demon gunslinger standing in the middle of a western town.  So what if we were to extend that street outward and from it form the cover monster cover for volume two.  A quick conference with Art Director Rob Davis and Zachary and voila…look at the background in both covers and you’ll see how they really are both part of the same western main street.  This is some of the fun we have in producing our books for you Loyal Airmen.

The Air Chief was all of 13 years old in 1960 when Marvel Comics came on the scene.  Imagine all those great titles, Fantastic Four, Spiderman, the Hulk, Thor, Iron-Man etc.  It seemed every month a new, fantastic hero was coming our way.  Amongst them Kirby & Lee whipped arguably the smallest hero of them all, the Ant Man.  And we loved him.  We can’t say exactly why, but maybe it’s part of our American sensibilities that we always root for the “underdog,”  the “little guy.”  And there was no on littler than Henry Pym, the Ant Man.  And it was always a blast seeing him shrink down to ant size so that his familiar world became an alien setting for giants.  Now Marvel Studios is unleashing a big summer blockbuster featuring the diminutive hero and you can bet your Merry Marvel Marching Society Membership Card, Val and the Air Chief will be going to the local cinema sometime next week (after all the opening weekend furor has abated slightly) to watch THE ANT MAN. It looks like another Marvel winner to us.

And that’s this week’s Flight Log, Loyal Airmen, as ever, thanks for stopping by.

Ron – Over & Out!