POP-A-LOOZA! Flight Of The Copperhead

Each week, the pop culture website Pop-A-Looza shares some posts from my vast 'n' captivating Boppin' (Like The Hip Folks Do) archives. The latest shared post is publicity on behalf of my new short story, "Flight Of The Copperhead."

Details are in the post, but we'll note here that "Flight Of The Copperhead" will be published as a prose piece in the back pages of the AHOY Comics title G.I.L.T. # 4, which hits comic book stores on Wednesday, July 20th. Not all shops carry AHOY's fine products, so parties interested in snagging my story should use Comic Shop Locater to find their nearest funnybook vendor. You can then contact the store to ask the fine folks there to order a copy for you. I say you'll be glad you did! 

(I, at least, will be glad you did.)

Illustration by Ed Catto

Meanwhile, here are the tentative opening paragraphs from another forthcoming chapter in my ongoing Copperhead series. This one reaches back earlier in the saga's timeline to present the story of "The Copperhead Kid's New York Adventure:"

Illustration by Ed Catto, from the first Copperhead Kid story

"He wasn't really used to big cities. But being in a teeming metropolis didn't bother him. The twenty years he'd spent on the run from the law taught him to adapt, to find his place in whatever place he found himself. Places were temporary. As a fugitive, he usually wouldn't stick around long enough to care all that much about where he was.

"He'd settled down since then. Decades ago, he'd been a young gunslinger called the Copperhead Kid. He wasn't young anymore, and he wasn't a gunslinger anymore. He'd faked his death, put down his guns, and left the West behind. Go East, old man. Thirty-five years later, twenty years into this new 20th century, the former Copperhead Kid had a new life with a new name, a wife, a family. His younger sister's cheap tin brooch was the only thing he'd held onto from his past, and he kept that out of sight. There was no need for anyone to remember the Copperhead Kid.

"But someone did remember. That's why the Kid was in New York: to put a stop to that. Permanently.

"The Kid was pushing 70 by now. Old enough to have one foot--hell, both feet--in the grave, but that had been true of the Kid for many years. Old enough to be a grandfather, but he'd started normal life late in life. He had a son, Hart, aged 22, who now lived in Harlem, and a 13-year-old daughter, Hedda, who lived with the Kid and his wife upstate. 

"How do I know all of this? I'm Hedda. I was there, for the Copperhead Kid's New York adventure. Daddy just didn't know that I was there. Not yet.

"I trailed Daddy to an office building in Manhattan. From my hidden vantage point, I saw him stop at a newsstand; he appeared to be angry about something at the newsstand. As he disappeared into the building, I ran up and could immediately understand what had drawn his ire: a row of 10-cent story magazines--I guess they were called "pulps"--with a garish logo proclaiming The Copperhead Kid. We'd seen similar Copperhead Kid magazines--pulps--at a five-and-dime back home. 

Daddy was not pleased. That's why he came to New York."

Shane White's depiction of a grown-up Hedda in 1939, as seen in "The Copperhead Strikes!"

More to come! For now, we turn our attention to the Copperhead Kid's great-great granddaughter's exploits in the present day. A few words on behalf of "Flight Of The Copperhead" serve as the latest Boppin' Pop-A-Looza.

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This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl airs Sunday nights from 9 to Midnight Eastern, on the air in Syracuse at SPARK! WSPJ 103.3 and 93.7 FM, and on the web at http://sparksyracuse.org/ You can read about our history here.

I'm on Twitter @CafarelliCarl