ASTONISHING ADVENTURES PULP MAGAZINE
If there were stands, Astonishing Adventures would have hit them. As it is, it's a .pdf format online magazine and a clear labor of love from editors John Donald Carlucci and Tim Gallagher. It's got just fucktons (metric) of pulp style goodness. A heaping wodge of pulp fiction and interviews with the likes of Wm. Michael Kaluta (he of The Shadow comics) and Joe Lansdale (Bubba Ho-Tep, and big piles of creepy westerns). Also, an adventure from the Decoder Ring Theater folks. There's even an essay on Steve McFuckingQueen.Among the stories within its (completely free) pages is Formula For Fatality featuring The Auslander by some guy called Michael Patrick Sullivan. Maybe it'll be the first in a series. Set during World War II, The Auslander is an amnesiac Nazi trying to track down stateside acts of sabotage and prevent them before his memory fully returns and he perhaps reverts back the dirty Kraut he was before.
I find myself in awesome company, not the least of which being the crafty screenwriter himself, Alex Epstein. I wish the Mad Pulp Bastard could have joined us in this inaugural issue, but he was tied up (maybe literally).
Now, if you'll excuse me, I must pen the next thrilling adventure of The Auslander, in which he stops an evil plot and possibly learns his name.
6 Comments:
I like your pulp. Looks like there are a few weird errors with the formatting, though, when moving it to PDF.
Format errors and, honestly, they have a thing or six to learn about layout. Most aptly represented by placing images directly in the center of one-column text in the Shadow movie article. That just makes it hard to read.
They need to get a proper desktop publishing program and use a two column format. Make it look like a real magazine rather than a compilation of word documents.
Though, what I've read of the other folks work so far has been pretty interesting. A great focus on content, if not form.
If I had the time and energy I'd offer to get more directly involved in the layout...drawing upon my college paper experience...but there's just no way right now.
Haven't read all of them yet, but so far the Auslander is my favourite. Always a sucker for WWII stories. Sort of a Jason Bourne meets the SS(in a good way). Definitely enough mystery there to make me want to find out more.
Is the editor the guy who was writing the blog http://theconstipatedwriter.blogspot.com/ ? I know the editor has another blog now but wondered if it was the same JD. I seem to remember JD was from Philly.
Nice little collection of writers he has amassed.
cheers
Dave.
I wasn't tied up...
I was shackled.
Get. The. Shit. Right.
And oh yeah, I will be back with a mad pulp bastard's vengeance.
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I really dug The Auslander.
Firstly, the 'white-haired-man' moniker branded ‘Aus’ (as I already lovingly refer to him) in my mind right alongside 'the man of bronze'. Well met, because none of the other characters in the mag have done that thus far. (I am skipping around, so perhaps that will change, but we’ll see.)
Also, from the other three stories I've read in the eMag, yours is the only one that seems to be setting up an arc with your pulp hero, giving it a bit more depth and a serial feel. Some of the others didn’t intend to do that, I understand. I just preferred that style to some of the others.
On a nit-picking note, there were a couple of things that took away from the story for me.
Thing 1 - There were two places where the word choice felt a little less pulp than the rest of the yarn.
-Page 168 (toward the bottom of the page) –
"...His jaw hit the ground at exactly the angle one's jaw should never hit the ground."
You're perhaps thinking " What? That sounds super-pulpy, you twit." I’m coming at it from the angle of "'precisely' would fit better than 'exactly.'" I dunno, it just sounds pulpier to me.
-Also Page 171 (top line of the page) –
"One of the unusual items he kept in his possession was a bottle of so-called knockout drops."
For this one, we just need 'knock-out drops' and ditch the 'so-called'. It could be due to a lack of the true etymology of 'so-called', but it almost seemed like you were apologizing for using this nifty little pulp staple. 'So-called' took me right out of the story, whereas 'knock out drops' would have given me the sense that the narrator, and especially The Auslander, was very intimate with the dirty little things.
Thing 2 – I might have to re-read it again, but I wanted The Auslander to get hurt more. A slice in the arm, a bruise on the cheek—something that makes him all the more stoic with his white hair and perfect black trench coat. I kept getting the image of the red blood against his pale white face and hair. Of course he wouldn’t be bothered by the injuries, just shrug them off—but they should still be there.
Overall a solid piece of pulp, with adequate pacing and a very interesting character that can grow as the serials continue.
My only qualms were certainly nit-picks to be sure, and I really like the 'stranger in a strange land' approach-- it definitely lends to more readily available conflict.
I also dig the white-hair physical trait; it set Aus out from the other Pulp and Comers in the mag (from the three stories that I have read). It also builds an ever-present, if subtle sense of mystery, which added to the flavor.
I await issue 2 with anticipation, for certain.
-T
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