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A New Review of The Peregrine Volume 2

Amazon user ChickJ is back and he’s given the second Peregrine Omnibus a 5-star review. Here’s what he had to say:

And I thought I loved the first book the best. Silly me. This book is much better. I was wondering about the Black Mass and The Four Peregrines answered it. Satan’s Trial and The Diabolical Mr. Dee are just pure wonderful pulp. A Plague of Wicked Men was great, but my favorite was The Devil’s Spear. The only thing about the book was The Scorched God. It was very enjoyable but it should have been put much earlier in the book. It had a few so-called surprises which were already explained in previous tales. Still this book, along with Peregrine One, is a must read for lovers of pulp. The future of pulp has arrived.

Glad you enjoyed the book! It’s funny that you cite The Devil’s Spear as your favorite – as a writer, I felt like that one got away from a bit and I’ve never thought of it as one of my best. You never know how readers will respond to something!

As for The Scorched God, you’re right that chronologically it occurs before some of the other stories in this Volume. It was decided to run it in order of publication but we honestly could have gone either way with it. I really enjoyed writing The Furies and Sun Koh.

Thanks again!

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The Diabolical Dr. York!

yorkMost of the villains in my pulp adventure universe are of the done-in-one variety: they pop up, bedevil our hero and then get killed. The Warlike Manchu, Doctor Satan and Princess Femi are probably the biggest exceptions to that rule.

But what about the deadly Doctor York? Why doesn’t this bad guy get the credit he deserves as one of the big bads of my universe?

Who’s that, you say? You’ve read almost all of my books and aren’t familiar with Doctor York?

That’s because he’s faced The Peregrine multiple times but never done so in prose (at least, not yet!).

York first appeared in All-Star Pulp Comics (2011) # 1, in a story written by me and drawn by by Craig Wilson. Set during The Peregrine’s days in Boston (1933), this tale introduces us to our would-be master villain. York is a former scientist that is now in service to the Elder Gods. His body is the receptacle for dark energies that have had the unfortunate side-effect of altering his appearance. His brain now floats in a clear glass dome above his torso… York has plans to sacrifice the daughter of one of The Peregrine’s friends but our hero manages to foil the scheme and York is dragged off to the nether-realms by his angry masters.

Case closed, right?

Not quite!

Illustration 4York returned in The Peregrine Animated Script that was recently reprinted in The Peregrine Omnibus Volume Three. In this story (set somewhere in the 1936-1937 period), York has managed to acquire the body of Princess Femi, the immortal enemy of Lazarus Gray. York revives her in hopes that she’ll aid him in destroying The Peregrine but once again he is dispatched back to Hell. How did he survive his prior defeat? We’re told that York was persuasive enough to convince the Elder Gods that he deserved a second chance. I imagine they weren’t so forgiving after yet another defeat.

In The Second Book of Babylon, we get to see York make his debut in prose form — he clashed with the Cosmic Spirit of Retribution. Those events are set in 2011 and while we won’t be told right away what York’s been up to between 1937 and 2011, I’m sure we’ll get more details as time passes.

I originally created York because in both the comic book and proposed animated adventure I wanted someone with a really strong visual. He turned out to be quite fun and I have a feeling that he’ll continue to bedevil our heroes in years to come.

Image # 1 is by Craig Wilson and appeared in All-Star Pulp Comics # 1. Image # 2 is by Steven Wilcox and appeared in The Second Book of Babylon.