Fred Van Lente considers using Night Raven?

Okay, this one's a little bit random. I picked this one up in September, from a link on Fred Van Lente's Twitter account. Probably best known for his work with Greg Pak on Incredible Hercules and two volumes of Marvel Zombies, Fred Van Lente is real up and coming writer at Marvel right now. He's also writing Dead Avengers, for Marvel's Chaos War Mini-Event.

Back in September I checked out a link to his Formspring account, which led to the following question:

A bit of a random, out of the blue, question, I'm sure you'll agree. And certainly not one from me - which made it all the more random!

The link is to The Appendix to the Handbook of the Marvel Universe site, and their profile of Night Raven.

http://www.marvunapp.com/Appendix/nhtraven.htm

For the unacquainted Night Raven was an vigilante come detective, created my Steve Parkhouse and David Lloyd. He's not been seen properly in a Marvel book since Fury/Black Widow: Death Duty, in 1995. He was, however, pictured with other Allied Heroes in the first issue of J. Michael Staczynski and Chris Weston's The Twelve, liberating Berlin in WW2. Although in continuity terms that should not have been possible.

Exactly what pulp(-ish) title Van Lente has in mind, we can only speculate. He has previously done X-Men: Noir, for Marvel's series of Noir reinventions of characters, but as to whether there might be more of that on the horizon I cannot say. What I can is that Night Raven certainly would a perfect fit for any story with a Noir or Pulp-ish feel to it.

And that the character certainly seems to be on Van Lente's radar.

You never know...

Where brooding darkness spreads its jealous wings...

Just a quickie blog, today...

A couple of months ago I was doing a few Marvel UK searches online, and came across the work of Jonathan Wyke. He posts over at DeviantART as drdestiny. The image itself really grabbed my attention, and took me back to a much forgotten character I have thus far kind of neglected on this blog.

Night Raven.



I've not posted the image in full.

But You can find it Here.

I think that Jonathan has really captured the essence of the character.

Night Raven was created by Dez Skin, Richard Burton and David Lloyd, and went on to appear in many strips and later prose stories in a the pages of Marvel UK's Hulk Comic, The Daredevils and Savage Sword of Conan. Steve Parkhouse wrote the early stories, with David Lloyd and John Bolton on art. Later prose stories were written by Alan Moore and Jamie Delano.

Night Raven is really the unsung Pulp Hero of Marvel UK. Initially set in the 1930s the character's story went right to the other end of the 20th Century, via a stay in suspended animation. It was a pulp detective story of the very finest kind, and was even revived during the Imprint Years, through a Marvel UK graphic novel "Night Raven: House of Card" by Jamie Delano and David Lloyd.

Sadly we've not truly seen Night Raven in quite some time. He had a supporting role in a mini series in the mid 90s graphic novel Fury/Black Widdow: Death Duty, but since then his only glimpse in continuity has been in a splash page of Allied heroes invading Berlin, in JMS and Chris Weston's (Yet to be concluded) The Twelve (Click to Enlarge)



There on the left. An appearance which actually doesn't fit with continuity. Night Raven was supposed to be frozen in suspended animation that year...

Still, I suppose it's better than being forgotten.

There were two collections of Night Raven stories collected, both now out of print. Although the prose stories were not. I actually asked some of the guys from Panini about Night Raven. They had said they had considered trying to do a collection, but the issue of creator ownership was preventing it from happening at that point. A similar issue exists with The Special Executive's appearances in Doctor Who magazine. Alan Moore kinda owns them. While a fair number of Doctor Who strips have been collected in paperback form their appearances have not been collected in trade for that reason.

Although at least in Night Raven's case it does seem that new material is possible, if somebody wanted to use him. Who knows. Maybe some day.

Great work, Mr Wyke. I love what you've done there, and I'm glad to see that Night Raven has not been forgotten.