After the final scenes of Robert B. Parker’s novel Appaloosa, fans knew the story of Everett Hitch and Virgil Cole couldn’t end there. Especially not with a movie starring Ed Harris and Viggo Mortensen waiting in the wings.Resolution takes up only a short time after the previous novel. Everett Hitch is still riding solo at this point and takes a job at the Blackfoot saloon as a security guy. I enjoy the relationship between Everett and Virgil, because that relationship is the bones of what Parker has stated will be a three-book series. I knew I wouldn’t have to wait long for the action to begin, or for Everett and Virgil to get back together.

Parker delineates his two principle characters very well. Virgil Cole is an unfinished man in a way. He knows what he has been but he doesn’t yet know what he will become. Everett Hitch, on the other hand, has no qualms about addressing what he is. His moral convictions are centered and steady, and he never questions his actions or his motivations for doing them.

The town of Resolution remains somewhat undefined and isn’t seated in the historical Old West. Parker seems content to just lay the town in where he wants to and sketch in the background and surroundings the way he did in Appaloosa. Given the story that he wants to tell is skeletal and action-packed, readers don’t need much of a history or true-to-life geographical setting the way Louis L’Amour and Elmer Kelton do them.

In no time at all, Everett finds himself neck-deep in trouble. As security man for the Blackfoot Saloon, he works for Amos Wolfson. Wolfson is intent on buying up as much of the town and surrounding land as he can, and he’s made enemies of the local ranchers and Eamon O’Malley, Resolution’s other financial baron who is also making moves at a major land grab.

Although Parker concentrates on the relationship between Everett and Virgil, he paints an interesting picture of an Old West town being born. The shifting fortunes of the populace bounce back and forth between Wolfson and O’Malley as each of them squares off to become top dog of Resolution.

Everett quickly ends up becoming recognized as a protector of women, starting with the prostitutes that work the two saloons, and spilling over into the domestic arena. He’s a definite man of action, but also of compassion, and that rankles the ire of Wolfson who doesn’t want the added aggravation. Still, Everett sticks to his guns.

The characters are simple for the most part, but that’s why I enjoy reading these books. Parker portrays Everett and Virgil as the same kind of men I grew up with in the small Oklahoma towns where I lived. I understand the values at once, even though a lot of people might think those men were more complicated. Virgil seems driven to understand more about what he’s doing and why, but Everett just accepts himself without question.

I think the duality between the two men, the places where they fit together so well, and Virgil’s imperfections that keep them apart, paints a pretty accurate picture of the differences between men of the Old West and of the New West.

The story is light and straight-forward. There aren’t any surprises in this one, but I had a good time and read it in a couple sittings. Parker fans will love the book and Western readers will enjoy it if they’ve never read anything by the author before.

I’m looking forward to the movie and to the third book in the trilogy. Seeing how Virgil eventually reconciles himself to his lethal attraction for Allie, the singer that has all the morals of an alley cat, should be interesting.

When I was a child back in the early 1960s, I wanted to grow up to be a hero. I tied a towel around my neck and was sometimes Superman or Batman. I ululated in the back yard like Tarzan and shamed the cats in the neighborhood. I ran as fast as Jonny Quest in my PF Flyers.

But the hero I loved most of all at that time was the Lone Ranger. His adventures came on every afternoon, and I’d get home from school in time to watch him shoot the guns out of the bad men’s hands, give lectures on the evils of, well…evil, and leave that cool silver bullet behind so people could ask, “Who was that masked man?”

The Lone Ranger was the brainchild of George W. Trendle, a radio producer, but he was given life by Fran Striker in radio script and novel form, and brought to iconic life on television by Clayton Moore.

But in the beginning, he was a young Texas Ranger named John Reid who was with his father and brother the day they were gunned down by Butch Cavendish’s men. Reid clawed his way out of the grave, donned his signature mask, and started cleaning up the West.

The last couple of years, Dynamite Entertainment Comics brought the Lone Ranger back to comics, which had to have been one of the coolest and riskiest things ever done. I mean, in an age of FaceBook and MySpace, who’d buy a cowboy hero?

More people should, because the graphic story rendered by Brent Matthews (a Hollywood scriptwriter) and Sergio Cariello (an award-winning graphic artist) is one of the best stories that came out in novel form this summer. The story is familiar to everyone, but Matthews’s way of telling it in cinematic presentation, and Cariello’s beautiful drawings, give the tale a life that hasn’t been seen before.

There’s enough new twists and turns, between the principal characters as well as the legend itself, that even old-time fans like me will find something to celebrate and enjoy.

I loved the pacing of the book. The story came to life and moved toward an emotional peak that will leave you breathless at the end. I enjoyed the way the friendship that developed between the Lone Ranger and Tonto was the same, yet different, from everything I’d known. That relationship was re-imagined in a way that works perfectly.

Matthews stays off the page as an author. Some comics authors give in to the temptation to clutter the pages up with narrative boxes and dialogue. Matthews is only there when he needs to be. He stays out of the way and lets Cariello work his magic.

The art is astounding. Vivid and raw, I could taste the dust and feel the heat of the day as I zipped through the panels. At first glance, Cariello’s art looks a lot like Joe Kubert’s pencils. Kubert was another favorite of mine for his tenure on Sgt. Rock and The Haunted Tank as well as several other war strips.

The graphic novel has drawn some flak from Lone Ranger purists, but I believe it’s one of the best stories that’s ever been done that brings in all the elements of the character. I loved the story enough that, after finishing it the first time, I opened the cover again and read it once more.

If you like the Lone Ranger, you’ll probably enjoy this book. Unless you’re one of those purists. If you want a good read or a fine example of everything the graphic novel can be, you’ll want this book. So saddle up, pardner, because it’s time to return to those thrilling days of yesteryear.

Pulp magazines – periodicals published on paper so poor that pulp debris in the form of wood chips was actually present on many of the pages – had their heyday in the 1930s and 1940s. During those years, they were the most popular form of portable entertainment available. People lined up every month at the newspaper kiosks to get the new editions of their favorite magazines featuring over-the-top heroes like Doc Savage, the Shadow, the Spider, G-8 And His Battle Aces, and others.

The pulp format ran the gamut of genres. The magazines featured adventure, crime, private eyes, romance, mysteries, fantasy, science fiction, and horror. They even specialized with tales of boxing, aerial combat, and sea stories.

Those old pulp tales saw the rise of several authors that became literary lions: Robert E. Howard’s Conan tales started in them, Dashiell Hammett established private eye characters that would later become Sam Spade and Nick and Nora Charles, Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote about Tarzan and John Carter of Mars, Raymond Chandler cobbled his first Philip Marlowe novel The Big Sleep from stories he’d sold to Black Mask Magazine, Isaac Asimov and Ray Bradbury got their starts in those pages.

There was nothing like the pulps. But after World War II, when guys came back from war after seeing how harsh the world could truly be, they didn’t want heroes that were squeaky clean. They wanted tales about things that showed the darkness they’d discovered. As the paperback originals (like Mickey Spillane’s novels about two-fisted P. I. Mike Hammer) started coming out, the pulps gradually died till only a handful of science fiction magazines were left.

I grew up reading the paperback reprints of Doc Savage and The Shadow. I loved those stories. Short, compact, tightly written, filled with death, disaster, mayhem, and action, they filled my mind with endless adventure. You just can’t find stuff like that any more.

However, a new publishing venture, Astonishing Adventures Magazine is trying to bring those halcyon days back to old fans as well as new aficionados of this brand of fiction. They’ve published their first magazine as a PDF that they’re giving away for free on their website (www.astonishingadventuresmagazine.blog-city.com) and it’s jam-packed with stories that usually aren’t more than 3500 words long.

The issue features an interview with writer Joe R. Lansdale, whose own novella, “Bubba Ho-Tep” inspired a cult classic film of the same name. And that story could have been spun from the same fabric as so many of the stories during the pulp era. Just to prove that the practitioners of this kind of writing is still out there.

Another interview features Michael Wm. Kaluta, the artist who brought The Shadow to life in the DC comics run of the 1970s that comics fans remember so well.

There are additional features involving a discussion of Christopher Golden and Mike Mignola’s new book, Baltimore and Alec Baldwin’s portrayal of The Shadow in the movie.

And then there are the stories. Some of them are good, and some of them are thin and violent and off-beat. But that was how it was in the pulps. The buyer picked up a magazine and turned the pages to see what the writers delivered.

And did I mention that this one is FREE!?

The editors, John Donald Carlucci and Timothy D. Gallagher, even roll out submissions guidelines for any would-be pulp writers lurking out there. Entertainment and the possibility of having a pulp story you’ve written accepted? Be still my beating heart. They also offer the caveat that they’re partial to stories featuring monkeys.

Hmmm…

This is the kind of thing I’ve been waiting my whole life to write. So I’m going to send them a story or two at some point. In the meantime, when was the last time someone gave you something for free?

Go to the website and get your free copy. Dig in to see what treasures of story or art that you find. And be sure to spread the news to anybody you think might like this kind of material. There’s just not enough of it left in the world.

At Amazon

Robert B. Parker’s second Western novel, Appaloosa is being made into a movie starring Ed Harris and Viggo Mortensen. I’d previously passed Parker’s novel by, though I love his writing, because he’s Bostonian to the bone and I figured if I wanted to read Westerns (which I grew up on), I’d go back and pick up Louis L’Amour, Elmer Kelton, or the occasional Max Brand.

I read all of Parker’s Spenser novels, and every book in his Jesse Stone and Sunny Randall series, and even the recent YA novel he’s done, Edenville Owls. All of those are set in Boston or Massachusetts, which is Parker’s stomping grounds. I just didn’t want my favorite “Easterner” writer mixing it up with Westerns.

But with the movie coming out, I got curious. The book had been released in paperback, so I picked up that edition and tucked in. Before I knew it, like with every other Parker book I’ve ever read, the pages started flying by and I was having a great time.

The plot essentially boils down to the town tamer plot line. A ruthless rancher, Bragg, and his boys are shooting up the town of Appaloosa whenever they get the urge. In fact, when three of the hired hands kill a man and rape his wife, the local marshal goes out to Bragg’s ranch and gets gunned down in cold blood.

Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch have been taming towns for a long time. The city aldermen hire them to bring Bragg to heel. Cole agrees to the job, if they’ll allow him to write out the laws they need to pass, and the war begins.

Parker writes some of the best dialogue out there. It’s short, punchy, and says a lot in a few words. In a short time, Cole and Hitch put Bragg and his boys on notice and they discover really quick that the two new marshals don’t have any hesitation about killing anyone who goes up against them.

The action sequences at this point are great. The scenery and the sets are barely described, but I’ve seen so many Westerns that as soon as the bar’s batwing doors were mentioned, I had the rest of the saloon in mind. So it wouldn’t have mattered how much Parker tried to build the Western world he was writing in, I already had my view of it. He’s a skillful enough writer that I think he was banking on that and didn’t want to get in the way of his readers who love Westerns.

The plot takes a turn, for the worse in my opinion, with the introduction of Allie French. She says she’s married but that her husband ran off. Arriving in Appaloosa (though what she was planning on doing because she only had a dollar to her name) is anybody’s guess. Cole is smitten with her and sets her up playing piano at the hotel. Every long-time reader of Parker’s work feels the familiar groove drop into place. It’s not quite a death knell on the novel, but it sure took some of the wind out of the sails for me.

One of Parker’s most used (debatably over-used) themes is that of a good man loving a bad/weak woman. While juggling that theme with the war against Bragg, something does get lost. A little disinterest kicks in, as well as wariness.

However, readers not overly familiar with Parker’s work, may see this them as something new. Especially Western readers. And I’m pretty certain the movie crowd won’t have seen something this blatant.

But, since no one can move a story along the way Parker can, I kept my horse turned in the same direction as our heroes and galloped through to the end. I enjoyed the book a lot. Loved the dialogue and sarcasm. And I was glad I spent my free time with it.

I can’t wait for the movie to come out.