A couple of new things from Chuck (Gotham X) Miller

[Chuck Miller]

I've got a couple of new stories up on the BCP blog-- featuring the secret origin of the Black Centipede and a new Vionna Valis mystery! http://theblackcentipede.blogspot.com/2010/10/vionna-and-vampires-chapters-1-3_10.html http://theblackcentipede.blogspot.com/2010/09/forty-whacks-secret-origin-of-black_27.html From the SECRET FILES of the Black Centipede As told to Chuck Miller Copyright 2010 by Chuck Miller/Black Centipede Press THE PUBLIC STORY: When William Lee Williams was but 10 years old, the scientific research vessel on which he was traveling with his parents was set upon by pirates off the coast of Madagascar. William's parents, a wealthy scientist and his physician wife, were murdered before his very eyes by the brigands, who then set the boy adrift in a lifeboat. Young William drifted for days, contracting a strange tropical disease that was known to have a 100 percent mortality rate. In this condition, young William, dying and delirious, washed ashore on a mysterious, uncharted island known as Sullaballu. The boy was pulled from the boat by several members of a tribe of highly intelligent lemurs, who took him inland to the fabulous city of Gorrindaka, home to an ancient race of men and woman rumored to be the descendants of superhuman demigods from beyond the farthest star. The boy spent ten years in this fantastic, incredibly advanced society, where he was initiated by the Elders of Gorrindaka into the Brotherhood of the Hundred Legs. William learned the ancient sorcery, science, mysticism and alchemy of these ancient geniuses, as well as honing his physical body to perfection and becoming master of every known martial art. When he came of age, William returned to the so-called civilized world from which he had come, taking with him all that he had learned, and his pick of the scientific wonders of Gorrindaka. Swearing to use his hard-won gifts to rid the world of crime and evil, William Lee Williams became that scourge of evil and crime, the man whose name strikes fear into the heart of the evil criminal underworld-- the world-renowned, peerless avatar of Swift Justice... THE BLACK CENTIPEDE! (From “The Black Centipede: Who He Was, Who He Is Now, and Why That Is,” by Bull ‘Duke’ Testosterson, Tales of the Black Centipede Magazine Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1931, Lane and Lane Publishing, Zenith USA) THE TRUTH: I hereby affirm that the following is a true and accurate account of events. -- the Black Centipede When I was very young, my family moved to the town of Fall River, Massachusetts. My father wanted to distance himself and his brood from Zenith and the unsavory activities of my grandfather, a notorious robber baron, ward heeler, political machine engineer and thug. Needless to say, my parents were not wealthy scientists and neither of them was ever within a thousand miles of Madagascar. The colorful story dreamed up by "Bull" Testosterson (real name Percival Doiley) was just that-- a colorful story designed to make me marketable. It worked. I was wildly popular in the 1930s and 40s, and the public believed in the Black Centipede as imagined by Percy and roughly a score of other writers who ghosted on the Black Centipede magazine during its heyday. The real story would have been unpublishable back then. It was too fantastic and unsavory even for the sort of publications that catered to fans of H.P. Lovecraft. But the early 21st century is a more cynical, sensation-hungry time. My only fear now, as I set down the true story for the first time, is that it might be too tame... http://theblackcentipede.blogspot.com/2010/09/forty-whacks-secret-origin-of-black_27.html