Written by contributor James Aquilone
Ron Fortier has been publishing comics and novels since the early 1980s, including the best-selling Green Hornet series and Terminator Burning Earth with legendary artist Alex Ross. And now, 40 years later, Ron’s career is stronger than ever.
A few years back, Fortier, along with artist Rob Davis, started Airship 27 Productions and Redbud Studio, where they publish many New Pulp novels and comic books – including Fortier’s New Pulp character Brother Bones: The Undead Avenger, which is being turned into a webseries. I recently got to talk with Ron and chat about Brother Bones, New Pulp and a few other things.
What can we expect from the Brother Bones webseries?
The Brother Bones webseries will be a live-action series that will adapt the seven stories from the first Brother Bones book, The Undead Avenger. Each episode will be 15 minutes long. Whereas the first story, the origin, is longer than the others, it will be adapted in two parts. Thus when completed, the series will have 8 episodes. Talk is pre-production will run to the end of the year with principle shooting happening early in 2021. All fingers crossed.
Who is Brother Bones?
Brother Bones was a onetime mob killer in the Northwest metropolis of Cape Noire. After he was killed, by his own twin brother, his soul became frozen in a limbo state between heaven and hell. There, he was informed, by a Spirit Guide, that he was being sent back to the land of the living to atone for all his sins. Thus upon his ghost returning to this reality, it takes over his brother’s body…and becomes an animated corpse, i.e. the Undead Avenger. It then sets out in each story to avenge the innocent and punish evildoers.
How did you come up with idea for Brother Bones?
I wanted to create a character in the style of the classic pulp avengers, à la the Shadow and the Spider, but with a horror spin. Thus the idea of the avenger being a zombie was a perfect fit and Brother Bones was born. Horror remains an important element of the series. As to date he’s confronted werewolves, vampires and even Cape Noire’s own version of the Frankenstein monster.
You recently published Who’s Who in New Pulp, a directory of writers, artists, editors, and publishers in the genre. Why did you feel the need to make the book? Will there be new editions?
New Pulp is very much the continuation of pulp literature. In its current state of evolution, it has been extremely active for the past 15 to 20 years. The label New Pulp was slapped on it by a bunch of new writers and publishers back at a small writers’ convention in Arkansas 15 years ago. Since then it has continued to grow, attracting both new writers and new readers. Enough so that I saw the need to create a directory of those amazing people who are carrying on the tradition of pulp fiction. Hopefully it will not only promote New Pulp and its people, but someday act as a legitimate resource book when writing the history of the movement.
Over your long writing career, you’ve written for many characters, such as The Green Hornet, Rambo and The Terminator. Who was your favorite character to write for?
As much as I enjoyed working on the series you mentioned here, none gave more fun and satisfaction than my own comedy super-hero, Mr. Jigsaw – Man of a Thousand Parts, which I created over 30 years ago with artist Gary Kato. We still continue to produce his adventures via Rob Davis’ independent comic outfit Redbud Studio. Over the years, it slowly dawned on me that Charlie Grant, aka Mr. Jigsaw, is very much Ron Fortier, only without the bad parts. By that I mean, Jiggy, as I write him, is a selfless, loving soul who only ever wants to do good. Many is the time I’ve wished I was a whole lot more like him.
What makes a work New Pulp?
It requires two elements. Like the classic pulps of the ’30s and ’40s, it has to have larger-than-life heroes and super dastardly villains. The stories should take place in exotic locales, whether the real jungles of the Congo or the concrete variety in a metropolitan city. And the action has to be super fast paced. Not a dissertation on motivation or character development. Action wall to wall. And the second element is obvious. It has to be a new work written by someone today. That’s why it’s not called Old Pulp.
Did pulp ever really go away?
Great question. Lots of people think it did and they are wrong. Pulps merely continued but in new formats. After World War II, the standard pulp monthlies morphed into the Men’s Adventure Magazines (MAMS), sticking to the formula of giving return veterans stories of wild, way out there action. As time went from the ’50s to the ’60s and ’70s, these too slowly disappeared only to be replaced solidly by the paperbacks from such writers as Mickey Spillane, Clive Cussler, Alastair McLean, David Morrell, Stephen King and tons of other great action, horror and mystery authors all catering to popular entertainment. Which is just a classy name for pulps. All of them the torchbearers of that grand old tradition…until you come to the birth of New Pulp as it is today.
Who are your favorite pulp heroes and writers?
Sticking with the modern pulps of today, my favorite heroes are Dirk Pitt as written by the late Clive Cussler. He’s pretty much our version of Doc Savage. Then we have Special FBI Agent Pendergast, created and written by Preston & Child. Pendergast is our Shadow today. Not to be left out, we also had Mack Bolan the Executioner by the late Don Pendelton and Remo Williams the Destroyer by the late Richard Sapir & Warren Murphy. Much like the classic pulps, their adventures still continue to this day by an army of ghost pulp writers.
As for other pulp writers I enjoy tremendously, the late Ed McBain, who’s 87th Precinct novels were among some of the finest mysteries I’ve ever read. We also have Raymond Besson, Max Allan Collins, Dean R. Koontz, Kevin Anderson, George Mann and the list goes on and on and on.
What other projects do you have coming up?
The new Brother Bones book, Tales of Cape Noire, just came out. I have several new pulp stories coming from various publishers. Artist Cesar Felicano and I are now developing an action thriller graphic novel to be called Jin & Tonic, about modern assassins, and Silverline Comics has just agreed to publish another comic creation, Satin’s Ways, about a Chinese female cat-burglar. Moonstone Comics will be releasing my pulp graphic novel Danger Coast to Coast, which teams the Black Bat and Domino Lady and a half dozen other old-time pulp characters. That will be out in November. As you can see, there’s no rest for the wicked.
