The Twilight Patrol #1: Drones of the Ravaging Wind

by Stuart Hopen, Stuart Hopen (Illustrator)

Overview

The strangest adventurers of all time have banded together to fight the dreaded Mysteriarchs of the Abyss -- an ancient and vilified order of wizards, or demigods, or fallen angels. With their insatiable appetite for destruction, the Mysteriarchs would sow the seeds of nothingness and reap a harvest of eternal horror -- transforming the War to End All Wars into the War to End All But War!
WHAT IS THE TWILIGHT PATROL? To the world at large, The Twilight Patrol is a high-flying band of scrappy patriots, ever alert for trouble and always willing to lend a hand. To the sinister foes lurking behind the Axis horizon, they are a force to be reckoned with in the onslaught against freedom. To their fans, The Twilight Patrol is the bravest assortment of adventurers ever brought together to confront the dark forces threatening our mortal realm.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781542675857
Publisher:	CreateSpace Publishing
Publication date:	01/24/2017
Series:	Twilight Patrol , #1
Pages:	132
Product dimensions:	8.50(w) x 11.00(h) x 0.28(d)

About the Author

Stuart Hopen is a graduate of Princeton University, where he studied creative writing and studio art. He has written comic books published by D.C. Comics, Marvel, Fantagraphics, Eclipse, and Amazing Comics. His critical writing has been published by Rain Taxi Review of Books and the Comics Journal. His other novels include Warp Angel, originally published by Tor Books and reissued by the Misenchanted Press. More of his writing and art can be found at his website, stuarthopen.com.

Editorial Reviews

03/20/2017
Presented as “the rarest and most obscure of the Depression era pulps,” this spry pastiche of the hero pulp magazines that dominated newsstands in the first half of the 20th century calls to mind an era when genres were malleable and writers readily manipulated their tropes to craft entertaining popular fiction hybrids. Its series character, Hollister Congrieve, is a Spad-flying Air Force captain cut from the same cloth as pulp aviation aces G-8 and Dusty Ayres and dyed in the heroic hues that colored the exploits of Doc Savage, Secret Service Operator 5, and their ilk. While serving the Allied forces in Europe, Congrieve runs afoul of the titular weird menace, a massive cloud of ravenous vermin that strips flesh from bone and turns biplanes into tattered wrecks. His attempts to stop this formidable weapon lead him to Cassiopeia, “a country in the Carpathians,” where he combats agents of an ancient occult order known variously as the Archons of Qliphoth and the Mysteriarchs of the Abyss, who are in cahoots with the German-led Central Powers. Hopen sets his tale in an alternate 1917 in which the deaths of President Woodrow Wilson and his successor, William Jennings Bryan, were followed by the invasion of the American mainland by the German navy, adding an intriguing level of complications to the chaos unfolding in Congrieve’s European adventures. He also casts it with the usual suspects one expects in pulp fiction—femmes fatales, double-crossing double agents, amiable sidekicks for the hero—and lards it with colorfully descriptive passages (“casings on the belted bullets passed in a blur of coppery incandescence”). The package is rounded out with poems by Orville Wootin (an aviator spy whose metaphysical maunderings are now de rigueur from the mouths of mystics in contemporary superhero comics), a short story, illustrations, and reproductions of the cheesy ads that cluttered the back pages of the original pulp magazines. Readers nostalgic for the flash and dazzle of pulp derring-do will find this adventure tale a fitting homage. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly