Blood 'n' Thunder 2021 Annual - Gilbert Colon

After an absence of two years the award-winning journal of vintage adventure, mystery, and melodrama is back with a book-length annual! A blue-ribbon panel of contributors has provided informative, well-researched historical essays covering pulp fiction, early movies, and Old Time Radio thrillers. Written by aficionados for aficionados, Blood 'n' Thunder is now in its 20th year of documenting American popular culture of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, leavening its serious research with a generous quantity of fannish fun.

The 2021 Annual begins with a centennial tribute to the legendary hard-boiled detective pulp Black Mask that includes a history of the magazine. Famous works by H. P. Lovecraft and A. Merritt are analyzed and compared to their film adaptations. The fantasy-adventure novels by Spider chronicler Norvell W. Page are examined. The dazzling career of aviation-story king George Bruce, one of the few pulp writers who became a top-paid Hollywood screenwriter, is extensively documented. The rare, notorious one-shot pulp magazine starring Flash Gordon is dissected mercilessly. Early radio dramas adapted from the horror-fantasy pulps Weird Tales and The Witch's Tales are explored, and there's a richly detailed account of The Lone Ranger's 1933 creation for the same medium. Blood 'n' Thunder editor-publisher Ed Hulse contributes a making-of essay on the 1943 Republic serial Secret Service in Darkest Africa as well as a lengthy career survey of veteran "B"-movie director George Sherman. The Annual's pulp-fiction reprint is "Mountain Man," the 1934 first installment in the hilarious Breckinridge Elkins series written by Conan the Barbarian creator Robert E. Howard. As usual for Blood 'n' Thunder, the essays and articles are profusely illustrated.