2011 is turning out to be the year of the Superhero revival. In January of this year we had the Green Hornet starring Seth Rogan. In May, Thor starring Chris Hemsworth thundered on to the screen. The X-Men returned to save us all in June and the Green Lantern lit the way for Captain America's come back in July. Before you pay your $15 bucks to see the new Captain America movie, sit back and watch the original 1944 serial starring Dick Purcell as Los Angeles District Attorney Grant Gardner who changes into the rock-'em-sock-'em Captain America when fighting crime.

In 1995 the now-defunct Wild Card Press of San Francisco published Retrospective Online contributor Will (later known as “The Thrill”) Viharo’s detective novel, Love Stories Are Too Violent For Me. A couple of years later the publishers opened the popular Parkway Theater in Oakland, and asked Will to host a weekly cult movie night, which eventually became renowned as “Thrillville.” But Will’s true dream was to be a novelist. In 2001, Christian Slater magically came upon a copy of Love Stories and has optioned it for a film annually since then. After the Parkway and its sister theater the Cerrito Speakeasy folded in 2009, Will took Thrillville on the road, but tired of it, and returned to his first love, publishing much of his vast backlog of books (including his very first, Chumpy Walnut, excerpted on our site here). Now, 16 years after the first novel in the Vic Valentine series debuted, Will has finally published two of the long-awaited sequels, Fate Is My Pimp and Romance Takes A Rain Check, as a “double feature,” with yet another “double feature,” I Lost My Heart In Hollywood and Diary Of A Dick, waiting in the wings.

An icon of indie cinema (as well as a personal friend) made the ultimate transition to Cult Movie Heaven this past Friday, February 4, 2011: Tura Satana, immortalized as Varla, the voluptuous, ferocious, bone-crunching, cleavage-conscious femme fatale of Russ Meyer’s fast 'n' furious fist-fest Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill! (1965), passed away in her adopted hometown of Reno, Nevada...

Retrospective Magazine contributor Will “the Thrill” Viharo’s very first novel was called Chumpy Walnut, the story of a guy only a foot tall—lost, alone and looking for love and friendship in a wacky, wondrous world of hobos, gangsters, gamblers, gun molls, showgirls, and other colorful characters. It is a story anyone who has ever felt “small” can relate to. Recently, Will self-published this novel, along with several others, including his original Thurber-esque illustrations for the book. Featured here is an exclusive excerpt concerning the two hoboes, Goosey Maloy and Jinx Hoolihan, who discover Chumpy wandering alone in the woods and bring him to the city of Excelsior, “the Big Banana,” to be exploited on the nightclub circuit. First, though, they plan to “auction him off” to the highest bidder, with the help of Booker McBribe, a suspicious agent with his own agenda…