Balladeer’s Blog resumes its look at the neglected Pulp Hero G-8. This is a story-by- story look at the adventures of this World War One American fighter pilot who – along with his two wingmen the Battle Aces – took on various super- natural and super- scientific menaces thrown at the Allied Powers by the Central Powers of Germany, Austria- Hungary and the Ottoman Muslim Turks.
G-8 was created by Robert J Hogan in 1933 when World War One was still being called simply the World War or the Great War. Over the next eleven years Hogan wrote 110 stories featuring the adventures of G-8, the street-smart pug Nippy Weston and the brawny giant Bull Martin. The regular cast was rounded out by our hero’s archenemy Doktor Krueger, by Battle, G-8’s British manservant and by our hero’s girlfriend R-1: an American spy/ nurse whose real name, like G-8’s was never revealed.
73. THE BLACK BUZZARD FLIES TO HELL (October 1939) – Introducing a new member of G-8’s Rogue’s Gallery of foes – Nordlich the Inventor! Herr Nordlich has put his genius to work and has come up with stealth planes coated in a special coal-black paint and capable of carrying over twice the bomb payload of other planes. In addition he’s invented special helmets that permit the planes’ pilots to see each other AND see in the dark of night.
The stealth planes’ debut mission finds them audaciously bombing the HQ of G-8 and his Battle Aces at Le Bourget Field! The emboldened Central Powers are exploiting this technological edge to the fullest so it’s up to G-8, Bull, Nippy and R-1 to root out the secrets of Nordlich’s deadly Black Buzzard planes and to find a weakness that can be used to bring them down. Continue reading
Balladeer's Blog 