The Writer Will Take Your Questions Now #281 -- Recent New Favorites

Who's your favorite golden age pulp character that you discovered relatively recently? -- Jim Beard

For me, these new "faves" came from accepting gigs to write them for anthologies. I knew nothing of them prior to the research required to begin the writing, but felt instantly drawn to the characters as if they were old friends I'd been writing and reading for years.

For prose, they were Armless O'Neil and a certain beauty I can't discuss at the moment. But I really, really (can I add another really and get away with it?) loved writing and reading Armless O'Neil. He was a character I was immediately hooked on and felt like I "got" right off the bat.

To boil him down to his key character is simply this: Take Humphrey Bogart's Charlie Allnut out of The African Queen and give him a hook for a hand, then saddle him with adventures more typical of Allan Quatermain, then shake and pour, voila!

For comics, it would have to be The Blue Lady (whom I wrote in All Star Pulp Comics #1). She grabbed me the same way Armless did. She's a typical old-school pulp supporting lady rather than a heroine at first, but when she receives a ring that gives her the power to beat back guys to a pulp, she does what any other lady of the era would in a comic book and puts on a mask and costume to fight crime.

Even though she was only in three back-up features in Amazing Man Comics in the early 1940s (October '41 - January '42, to be precise) , I felt she needs and deserves more stories --which is something Jim Ritchey and I are currently working on. We'll keep you posted.