Blood, Thunder, and a Whole Lotta What the Hell
There’s vintage… and then there’s “a skeleton fondling a crystal ball while a busty blonde looks confused and a villain in the back prepares to shank someone” vintage. Welcome to the chaotic pulp energy of Blood ’N’ Thunder’s 2025 Special Edition, where subtlety gets strangled in the first act.
This cover is a 3-ring circus of clichés, each one shouting over the others for attention:
- The damsel in distress looks more surprised than scared—possibly because she’s half-dressed at a séance table.
- The skeleton isn’t haunting; he’s more like a cut and paste spectral palm reader with boundary issues.
- Meanwhile, the dude in the background is trying to photobomb the scene with a knife and zero context.
And the typeface choices? Bold, brash, and about as subtle as a thunderclap in a library. “Adventure, Mystery, and Melodrama” is right—this cover delivers all three in an unintentional comedy format.
We get it. This is a tribute to early 20th-century pulp. But the only thing getting resurrected here is a debate about when enough tropes is enough. If the cover was aiming for “campy retro charm,” it hit “B-movie fever dream” instead.
Ed Hulse and the BnT Writers Brigade may have the content nailed down, but this cover is one séance short of an art exorcism.