EDitorial Comments

Now Available: BLOOD ‘N’ THUNDER 2013-2014 SPECIAL EDITION

A triple-sized issue I’m calling the 2013-14 Special Edition is now available. At nearly 300 pages it’s the biggest, thickest fanzine ever produced, loaded with the usual complement of informative articles and entertaining stories reprinted from vintage pulps. As a bonus feature I’ve included an entire book-length novel (85,000 words) by Randall Parrish: The Strange Case of Cavendish, serialized in All-Story Weekly prior to appearing between hard covers in 1918. This is a yarn I originally planned to publish as part of Murania’s Classic Pulp Reprints series, so in this issue BnT readers are getting a $19.95 value along with the usual departments and feature articles.

The Special Edition, which counts as issues 38 through 40 for subscribers, naturally includes all the material previously announced for #38. In addition you’ll find other lengthy articles, such as Richard W. Bann’s 8500-word essay on the making of the 1941 Maltese Falcon. Dick’s previous article on the making of The Thin Man was very well received so I figured it was a good idea to have him weigh in again on a film with a pulp-fiction connection.

Along the same lines is Flickering Shadows of the Thirties, my chronicle of Depression-era films featuring The Shadow: the six 1931-32 featurettes released by Universal and the two 1937-38 feature films released by Grand National. There has been some coverage of a couple of these films in previous issues, but this piece expands on that with new information gleaned from recent research. And lots more illustrations.

Larry Latham, a prolific and prominent contributor to pulp fanzines of the Eighties and Nineties, returns to the field with a comprehensive look at the dime novels and nickel weeklies that metamorphosed into pulp magazines of the Teens and Twenties. To date I haven’t published as many articles as I would have liked on these pulp precursors, but Larry’s thoughtful, well-researched piece makes a good start toward addressing that situation.

There is, of course, much more in this jumbo-sized issue, which will give you plenty of good reading to make up for BnT‘s absence this last nine months or so.