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Murania’s First Release of 2017

Yes, it’s been a long time since this blog was updated. But at last we have some exciting news to report. Pulp fiction’s first super-villain is back after nearly 100 years in obscurity—and his criminous exploits are just as thrilling now as they were a century ago!

After a lengthy, unanticipated delay we’re finally releasing the first volume of our Johnston McCulley Collection, which brings back into print several long-forgotten characters whose adventures were chronicled by Zorro’s creator for Detective Story Magazine. McCulley’s most famous hero has long overshadowed the others, but this astoundingly prolific ex-journalist also wrote series with more than 20 recurring protagonists, good guys and bad guys alike, for that legendary Street & Smith pulp.

The first of these debuts in 1915, Detective Story‘s first year. He is named Black Star, after the star of jet emblazoned on the hood he wears to conceal his identity. His minions, also clad in black hoods and robes, use vapor guns to subdue their victims and adversaries. These non-lethal weapons emit a gas that instantly renders unconscious those who breathe it in close quarters. Black Star avoids the use of deadly force and always keeps his word. But that doesn’t make him any less terrifying.

An early 20th-century metropolis trembles in fear at the mention of his name. His meticulously-planned depredations leave victims quaking in their shoes and baffle the police, who seem helpless to stem the rising tide of panic that threatens to engulf the city. Amateur criminologist and millionaire clubman Roger Verbeck, aided by his loyal valet Muggs, sets out to apprehend Black Star and finally does. But the master criminal makes good his escape and, once again in command of his army of robed and hooded henchmen, plots a campaign of revenge that will find the mayor, police commissioner, and prominent citizens under his control and at his mercy—with even the brilliant Roger Verbeck powerless to stop it!