Altus Press has been hard at work on these oversized collections, and you can get them at www.altuspress.com or via Mike Chomko’s table at the Windy City Pulp and Paper Show in Lombard, IL, on April 12:
Operator 5: The Complete Purple Wars (2 Volume Deluxe Edition)
Operator 5: The Complete Purple Wars (2 Volume Deluxe Edition)by Emile C. Tepperman, illustrated by John Fleming Gould and John Newton Howitt
introduction by Will Murray and an afterword by Tom Johnson
Dustjacketed two-volume hardcover edition.
The “War and Peace of the Pulps” is finally collected in a two-volume deluxe, hardcover edition. Running in the pages of Operator #5 magazine from 1936–38, this 14-part epic chronicled the invasion and conquering of America by a mysterious foe from Europe: The Purple Empire. As Will Murray describes in this edition’s Introduction: “Battles rage from coast to coast. The exploits of Operator 5 shift from espionage and counterespionage to straight military adventure. Through it all, Jimmy Christopher rises to become the de facto leader of the resistance.”
Written by Emile C. Tepperman (author of The Spider and The Masked Marksman) and containing nearly 300 illustrations by John Fleming Gould, this half-million-word saga remains the greatest epic to see print in Golden Age of the pulps and is still considered most risky and ambitious experiment ever undertaken in the single-character magazines.
This two-volume deluxe, hardcover edition includes an all-new Introduction by pulp historian Will Murray, as well as Tom Johnson’s retrospective on the series, The History of the Purple Wars. It also collects the rarely-reprinted Epilogue to the Purple War, “Revolt of the Devil Men.” Also restored are all of author Tepperman’s rarely-reprinted footnotes which graced the original pulp editions of the stories. Never-before collected, this remastered, comprehensive collection of Operator 5: The Complete Purple Wars has been one of the most eagerly-anticipated pulp publications of all time.
788 pages / 8.5″x11″ / $150
Ships and Men: The Complete Epic (Deluxe Edition)
Ships and Men: The Complete Epic (Deluxe Edition)by H. Bedford-Jones
illustrated by Frederic Anderson, George Avison, John Richard Flanagan, Leyland R. Gustavson, Robert L. Lambdin, Arthur Lytell, Alex Raymond, Alfred Simpkin, Yngve E. Soderberg, and Harve Stein
Dustjacketed hardcover edition.
Running for three years in the pages of the prestigious Blue Book Magazine, author H. Bedford-Jones crafted the most ambitious work of his career: a massive, 34-part saga of seafaring adventure, told chronologically throughout the annals of naval warfare, involving a number of significant figures in world history. Never before collected, this 200,000-word epic includes nearly 200 interior illustrations by artists such as Alex Raymond, John Richard Flanagan, and Leyland R. Gustavson.
350 pages / 8.5″x11″ / $85
Black Mask (2019 Yearbook)
Black Mask (2019 Yearbook)by Brian Townsley, Jane Jakeman, Brian Stanley, Hannah Honeybun, Katrina Younes, William Burton McCormick, Frank Megna, Michael Bracken, Jonathan Sheppard, Jim Doherty, Isaac Babel, Boris Dralyuk, D.L. Champion, Dashiell Hammett, Carroll John Daly, Frederick Nebel, T.T. Flynn, and Frederick C. Davis
Black Mask, the greatest American detective magazine of all time, is back with another issue. This time around, it includes nine new stories in the Black Mask vein by Brian Townsley, Jane Jakeman, Brian Stanley, Hannah Honeybun, William Burton McCormick, Frank Megna, Jonathan Sheppard, Michael Bracken, Jim Doherty, as well as a new article on Raymond Chandler’s The Little Sister by Katrina Younes. In addition, Boris Dralyuk has kindly supplied his translation of Isaac Babel’s “Lyubka the Cossack” and arranged for its reprinting here.
And, as with previous issues, Black Mask collects some of the best hard-boiled detective fiction from the Popular Publications vaults, as written by some of the genre’s best: Dashiell Hammett, D.L. Champion, Carroll John Daly, Frederick Nebel, T.T. Flynn, and Frederick C. Davis.