I think I've rambled about liking pulp heroes at some point - growing up digging out every Doc Savage book I could find in the various used-book stores I've come across, spending weekends rewatching the Indiana Jones films (along with THE PHANTOM, THE SHADOW, THE ROCKETEER, etc.), that sort of thing.
Added to that mix of daring heroes of the 1930s and thereabouts is Athena Voltaire. Who is she? From a Westfield Comics interview with writer/artist Steve Bryant:
"Athena Voltaire is a 1930s pilot/adventurer. She’s the daughter of a stage magician, so growing up on tour with her family, and traveling with other magicians, circuses, and air shows helped her to develop her unique skill set. She’s the pilot who everyone calls when they want to get into—and out of—dangerous places."
Those dangerous places are often inhabited by gangsters, zombies, vampires, Nazis, and assorted other monsters. Also the occasional run-in with major historical figures of the times. Fun stuff.
Started as a webcomic (co-written with Paul Daly), Bryant has shepherded Athena from the web to print comics, including a new upcoming series from Action Lab Entertainment, and now to a prose volume also from Action Lab consisting of close to twenty tales of derring-do by a variety of writers, each story illustrated with a piece by Bryant.
I've only just started reading it so I can't get in to which stories I like best. I'll guess that Bryant's own tale will be up there, of course, and I expect good things from Ron Fortier's entry (among other things he's written stories for The Phantom and The Spider for Moonstone Books' recent anthologies of those characters and the Green Hornet revival from NOW comics in the early 90s *and* currently heads up Airship 27 Productions which puts out many cool pulp-inspired projects featuring heroes new and "classic," so yeah, I think he knows his stuff). Other authors in the Chris Murrin edited volume include Elizabeth Amber Love, Tom King, Corinna Bechko & Gabriel Hardman, Genevieve Pearson, Dirk Manning and more.
Currently available from all the major online retailers like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Target, if you've got the slightest interest in the likes of Indiana Jones, Lara 'Tomb Raider' Croft, the Uncharted games series, and naturally the pulps that started it all, I'd definitely reccommend you making the acquaintance of Athena Voltaire.
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