“Tales of the Shadowmen: Gentlemen of the Night” (2006) is the second volume of an eclectic anthology series from Black Coat Press.
It makes use of a concept of Philip Jose Farmer that has various fictional characters set in the same “universe,” thus they are able to met and interact. Don’t make the assumption that all the stories are linked. They often are not. Most are standalone, usually can be read in any order.
What can be daunting is that this series uses characters of popular literary culture (mainly written, but sometimes film and TV), and not “high brow” characters. And the characters are taken from American, British, French, and other countries’ culture, so often if you’re not familiar with those characters, it can be confusing. Or, it could lead you to start reading the original stories of these characters, which Black Coat Press does (such as Fantomas, Nyctalope, the Black Coats, Belphegor, Judex, and many more).
The stories in this collection are:
• Matthew Baugh‘s “Ex Calce Liberatus,” told through a series of letter, includes French “gentleman-thief” Arsene Lupin and Japanese detective Kogoro Akechi.
• Bill Cunningham‘s “Trauma” is a short tale that has a young Britt Reid (The Green Hornet) witnessing a crime committed by Fantômas. Inspector Maigret makes a brief appearance.
• Win Eckert‘s “The Eye of Oran” introduces Adelaide Lupin (created by Eckert), daughter of Arsene Lupin, and Violet Holmes (created by Baugh and Eckert), daughter of Mycroft Holmes, both of whom will play a part in future stories by Eckert. Here they deal with Dr. Natas (a certain oriental villain), and also meet Doc Ardan, the pseudonym of Doc Savage in another story set in post-WWII Algeria.
• G.L. Gick‘s “The Werewolf of Rutherford Grange” is the second part of the story starring “The American Sherlock Holmes” Harry Dickson, who appears along with occult detective Sar Dubnotal. It has since been reprinted in a book from Black Coat Press with additional works.
• Rick Lai‘s “Dr. Cerral’s Patient” is another unusual story, this time mixing in a Spanish horror movie with French detective Victor Chupin. Rick will be using this background in future stories in this series.
Next, we have a series of short vignettes with artwork by Fernando Calvi.
• Serge Lehman and Calvi’s “The Mystery of the Yellow Renault” has Rouletabille, the French reporter and detective, and “The Melons of Trafalmadore” with Doctor Omega (the early French SF character that seems to be the first Doctor) meeting beings from a story by Kurt Vonnegut.
• Jean-Marc Lofficier and Calvi’s “Arsène Lupin’s Christmas” with Lupin; “Figaro’s Children” with The Phantom of the Opera; “The Tarot of Fantômas” with Fantômas; “The Star Prince” with Doc Ardan and The Little Prince; “Marguerite” with The Nyctalope; “Lost and Found” with Judex.
• Xavier Mauméjean‘s “Be Seeing You!” finds Sherlock Holmes confined to The Village (from the classic tv series by Patrick McGoohan). Will he escape?
• Sylvie Miller and Philippe Ward‘s “The Vanishing Diamonds” is an interesting story involving the Three Musketeers, but also the Time Traveler (from H.G. Wells) as well as others (Allan Quatermain, Hareton Ironcastle, Joseph Jorkins, and even the Invisible Man).
• Jess Nevins‘ “A Jest, To Pass The Time” has a cadre of thieves and villains (including Arsène Lupin, Belphégor, Fantômas, and Zenith the Albino among others) all vying for the Moonstone.
• Kim Newman‘s “Angels of Music” is an interesting story that has The Phantom of the Opera assembling a team of women (including Irene Adler, Christine Daae, and Trilby) similar to “Charlie’s Angels,” who assist him in stopping threats to France, this time against Josephine Balsamo (the foe of Arsene Lupin who is known as Countess Cagliostro).
• John Peel‘s “The Incomplete Assassin” has Michel Strogoff (from Jules Verne) and Rouletabille stopping an assassin.
• Chris Roberson‘s “Annus Mirabilis” has Doctor Omega meeting Albert Einstein, and in the process stop a possible invasion of Earth.
• Jean-Louis Trudel‘s “Legacies” is another new Arsène Lupin tale, which also has Rouletabille.
• Brian Stableford‘s “The Grey Men” is the first part of a serialized novel called “The Empire Of The Necromancers” that runs through several volumes of this series, and has been collected as three separate volumes. This story stars Paul Fevel‘s John Devil, who is a proto-supervillain who predates Fantomas, and involves the Frankenstein Monster.
At the end of the volume is information on the characters and who created them, though this may not help point you to where they are from. (Wikipedia is most useful here, along with Black Coat Press’s French Wold Newton site and Cool French Comics site). The “Starring” lists the characters who appear in the story, “Co-starring” lists characters mentioned in the story, “Also Starring” lists places and things that appear or are mentioned in the story.
I have all the volumes in this series, and look forward to the next one.
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