Merry Christmas!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

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The Savage Tales Blog

art by Uchronic Cover Artist

Mike Fyles  

 Uchronic Tales: The Studio Specter is now available!

The Uchronic Press is proud to release Uchronic Tales: The Studio Spectre. This action packed novella by W. Peter Miller (Jungle Tales Vol. One) features cover art by Mike Fyles (Amazing Spider-Man, Iron Man Noir.)

Investigator Clark Tyler is joined by a new hero—The Jade Monk—as they are thrust behind the scenes and into the line of fire in Hollywood's Golden Age.

A spirit is on the loose and terrorizing the cast and crew of The Mayan Mummy and it is up to these unlikely allies to get to the bottom of the secrets behind… The Studio Spectre.

The third exciting pulp adventure featuring Ace Insurance investigator Clark Tyler is now available in ebook form on the following platforms:
Kindle
Nook
Kobo
Smashwords

The iBook and Sony stores should follow soon... 

Now, I'm waiting for the printed proofs to arrive and it they are ok then Amazon will be selling the printed version as well.

Pick the cover contest winners Bixby and Erwin will each be getting one of those proofs.

Here is a look at the front and back of the final cover layout and you will notice that I used both covers for the printed version!

Next up - Uchronic Tales: The Claim - it all comes full circle as I finally release the expanded version of the first thing I wrote that got me into this whole pulp writing thing.

Pulp is back, bigtime!

The genre of Pulp, the fiction with no genre, is making strong inroads in many aspects of pop culture. This is most apparent to the public at large in comics. The number of new and classic pulp characters that are available in new adventures in comics and prose fiction on a monthly basis is staggering. Here is a partial list:

New Characters:

Comics

Hellboy

Lobster Johnson

Rocketeer

Avengers 1959

Atomic Robo

Jim Broadmore's Lord Cockswain

Mystery Men

The Black Beetle

Athena Voltaire

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

Tom Strong
Fatale

Comics Publishers

Sequential Pulp 

Prose Publishers
My Uchronic Tales series

Airship 27

Uchronic Press

Pro Se Press

White Rocket Books

Wild Cat Books
Find Many New Pulp publishers here...

Classic Characters:

Comics

Tarzan

John Carter / Dejah Thoris

Zorro

Conan 

Red Sonja

Green Hornet

Lone Ranger

Masks (team up of Shadow, Green Hornet, Kato, The Spider, Black Bat, Miss Fury, Black Terror, Green Lama)

Sherlock Holmes

Spider

Prose

Doc Savage

Green Hornet

Captain Midnight

Captain Action

Moon Man

Secret Agent X

Lone Ranger

So get out there are read some New Pulp

Presentation Review - The Hobbit Imax HFR 3D

Tonight I screened The Hobbit at the AMC Burbank in Imax HFR 3D. (HFR= High Frame Rate) How was it? The movie is good, but long. With getting there early enough to get a good seat I was sitting there from 6:45 to 10:10. That's 3 hours and 25 minutes. 

Ahhh, you ask (or maybe not), but how was the presentation? Did the image look good? The 3D? Did the scenes look video-ish? The Hobbit was shot at 48 frames per second in 3D with the Red Epic camera and presented in Imax 4K. So how does the image stand up to a big screen, a silver screen at that?

The Imax passive 3D requires polarized glasses, which is not great considering I already wear eyeglasses, however, it is less cumbersome than the shutter glasses that Imax had used in the past.

The 3D is very good throughout, immersive and at times wonderous. However, the texture of the silver screen gives the bright areas a gritty texture (which is true of all polarized 3D). Unfortunately, shutter glass 3D is not succeeding like polarized, so everything is on a silver screen which results in a bright spot ("hot spot") in the center of the screen and that grittyness to the bright scenes.

Addressing the HFR - there is definitely something odd going on with the bright scenes and the 48fps. I don't know if I was convincing myself, or if I was actually seeing it, but in daylight skies and other very bright scenes I felt I could see the edgyness of the pixels - like TV scan lines. The overly bright sequences were mostly in the early parts of the movie, but as soon as we were in darker interiors, the movie looked great.

I have seen 70mm at 60fps and that indeed looks spectacular. The film grain just goes away and you are left with a beautiful image. Here, the 48fps images (provided they were not dominated by bright or white) looked great. The 3D was as good as I have seen it - well done and immersive. This is probably the best I have seen since Avatar, again probably due to the high res 4k image, but certainly the 48fps probably helped there.

My verdict? I think the 4k is reason enough to see the Imax version or the AMC ETX version and I would approve of the 3D as well. I would have to see it again to compare the ETX 3D to the HFR 3D to see if there really is a big difference. But... as I said, the 3D in the 48fps version was excellent.

The movie is good, the cast stellar, but keep in mind that this is part one of three... If you are a fan of BBCs Sherlock, the actors that play Holmes and Watson are both in the film.

Pulp of the Week - Rocketeer: Cargo of Doom

The Rocketeer: Cargo of Doom
Rocketeer created by Dave Stevens
Written by Mark Waid
Art by Chris Samnee
Color by Jordie Bellaire

The miniseries, Rocketeer: Cargo of Doom recently finished its run from IDW Comics and man is this a fun read. This mini-series introduces a new character to the team, Peavy's niece, Sally. She's a spunky teenager with a knack for both flying and mechanics. The story starts when an aircraft inspector is in flight with Sally and he gets a bit fresh and the plane gets in trouble and Cliff has to bail her out.

WARNING - MASSIVE SPOILERS FOLLOW - DO NOT TAKE THE JUMP IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO KNOW - DON'T SAY I DIDN'T WARN YOU!

I enjoyed Cargo of Doom and I am happy the Rocketeer is back! I'll give the graphic novel an 8 out of 10 - very good, but things can get better and I hope they will as IDW continues with new adventures of the Rocketeer!