Except for a couple of stories I sold to Warren’s fabled Eerie magazine in the very early ‘70s (just before Uncle Sam came along to whisk me away from my writing pursuits and drop me onto a helicopter carrier ferrying Marines to Viet Nam), The Twilight Avenger was the first comic book I ever scripted. Originally floated out on the crest of the black-and-white independent comics wave of the 1980s, the character was created by artist Terry Tidwell and me for an initial four-issue run.
The strange and sad reason only two of the projected four comic books appeared — although a later version ran for eight issues from a different publisher — is explored in an essay of mine that accompanies the entire original adventure in the brand new graphic novel, The Twilight Avenger Vol. 1, expertly and lovingly produced by Bill Cunningham, aka the Mad Pulp Bastard, for his Southern California-based Pulp 2.0 Press.
The Twilight Avenger Vol. 1 offers, for the first time, our entire pulp-and serial-flavored, 1930s-set story, featuring an Old School masked avenger and a costumed villain, along with plenty of what used to be called female interest. The approach we took is nicely summed up on the cover of the book, shown here. It’s one of several new pieces of art that Terry, and others, created for the book. (And while I might be telling tales out of school, it’s also one that caused him a bit of embarrassment after he’d finished it. He thought, on the whole, he might’ve gotten a little too carried away with the young lady’s deshabille. But he and Bill let it ride, and Terry seems okay with it now.)
Other bonus features include a series of lobby cards for the (unfortunately pretend) Twilight Avenger serial, a Twilight Avenger prose story written in the style of the weird-menace pulps, and a casting call, in which I had a little too much fun selecting the real-life ‘30s B-picture actors I’d like to have seen in the TA serial.
We think it’s a nice package for pulp, serial, and costumed-hero comics fans, and we like the price Bill put on it. The Twilight Avenger No. 1 is on sale for under ten bucks from our eStore address: https://www.createspace.com/5281297
It’s also available at amazon.com, where it’s been racking up some pretty good numbers. You can check it out at either place, and we’d sure appreciate it if you did.
