Doomsday Warrior #3: The Last American

Doomsday Warrior #3: The Last American, by Ryder Stacy
December, 1984 Zebra Books

I can see how the Doomsday Warrior series could lead readers down the rabbit hole of obsession. Despite the goofy characters, the comic book vibe, the clunky writing, with this volume the series already elevates itself above others of its ilk, with a definite attempt at creating a sort of mythos. Embracing a spirit that is positively Nietzschean, author duo Ryder Stacy put their protagonist Ted Rockson through the paces in The Last American; whatever doesn't kill Rockson literally makes him stronger, and by the end of the novel he is a very different character from the one we first met two volumes ago. In other words, the authors aren't content to stay in the rigid "nothing ever changes" confines of the genre.

But then, the book's still pretty stupid at times. Ryder Syvertsen and Jan Stacy must've really traded off on the writing, because again there's that terrible dichotomy: one half of the book is clunky and addle-headed, with sometimes-lame writing and a hell of a lot of misspellings. The other half is pretty great, though, veering into psychedelic territory in a big way. From what little is known about the authors, they both were college students in the late '60s, so I think it's safe to say they were involved in the psychedelic scene. The first two books in the series got pretty far-out, but The Last American gets way out there, which is a good thing as far as I'm concerned.

We meet back up with Rockson -- aka "The Ultimate American," aka "The Doomsday Warrior," aka "Rock" -- as he's out on a research mission with some scientists. The party is attacked by big mutant spider-type things and Rockson's hurt in the attack. Injected with venom, Rockson's near death and must be carried back to home base of Cenutry City. There he is asked by the doctors to use his own mind to fight the infection. This is just the first of the psychedelic touches in the novel, as we journey into Rockson's own mind as he heals himself. This is also the first touch of the Nietzschean spirit of the tale, as Rockson emerges stronger than before.

Meanwhile, the far-strung rabble of the American collective is planning to meet together for the first time, each city and village sending representatives to vote on a new president and constitution. Rockson of course is elected to represent Century City, and takes with him Chen, the Chinese ninja martial arts master. Also elected to go are an elderly professor and a middle-aged lady who is highly ranked in Century City's civic arena. So again we have another section where Rockson must test himself against the mutated environs of post-nuke 2089 America. The series is very repetitive in a way, with each book sort of following the same template.

And to further the repetition of previous volumes, we still cut back and forth between Colonel Killov, KGB master, plotting against his Soviet fellows, among them Premiere Vassily and President Zhabnov. Killov has become a full-on monster, a sort of post-nuke Howard Hughes; he doesn't bathe, doesn't eat, doesn't do anything but sit around and plot his vengeance as he pops various pills. Last volume Killov attempted to assassinate Vassily; this time Zhabnov sends assassins of his own after Killov. But the man has become death itself, and makes the reader anticipate the day when we finally have a face-to-face confrontation between Killov and Rockson.

Also appearing from the previous volume is Kim, daughter of the man who hopes to become the first elected president of post-nuke America. Kim as you'll recall was the captured beauty who gave her virginity to Rockson while the two were locked up in twin cages. They're in love and Rockson can't wait to see her again. However the only purple-prosed sex scene in The Last American comes from an awesomely unrelated-to-anything development where Rockson, on the trip to the presidential committee meeting, scouts ahead and comes upon a village of Amazon beauties.

The women hate men -- their bible is a pre-war feminist tract titled Man, The Enemy -- but they use them long enough to impregnate each of the women before killing them. Rockson comes upon a pile of (male) skulls and escapes, but not before one of the beauties catches hold of his hybrid animal as it charges away. Rockson fights her off and takes her to a remote spot, where of course they soon get busy. After which Rockson heads back for the rest of his party, the whole Amazon incident just sort of brushed off. Like I say, it had nothing to do with anything, but damn it was fun.

An unusual thing about The Last American is there isn't much action for the duration. Rockson doesn't even fight "the Reds" until toward the very end of the book -- as expected, the presidential committee is attacked by the Russians and a megaton warhead is dropped on the place. Rockson's hit by the blast -- again, it doesn't kill him -- and he awakens in the hut of a towering mountain man who calls himself Mount Ed. Rockson is burning to find out what happened to Kim; eventually he discovers that she and her father, both nearly dead from radiation poisoning due to the blast, were taken away by the mysterious Glowers.

Here the novel goes full-tilt into the realm of psychedelia. The Glowers are mutants who speak telepathically, meaning that their dialog IS ALL IN CAPS. Their glowing bodies are twisted so that the internal organs are on the outside. Their powers are cosmic, to such an extent that they can change reality and even suck the radiation out of infected humans. They travel about on land ships, the sails apparently driven by cosmic winds. When the Glowers first rescue Kim and her father, there's a frankly awesome scene where the Glowers power their ship on through the night, and their bodies glow against the vibrant hues of the post-nuke starscape; of anything I've ever read, this scene comes the closest to capturing the feel of a blacklight poster in print.

It's while tracking after the Glowers that Rockson has his only fight with the Reds in the novel. Cornered in a desolate patch of land, they're attacked by around 40 Soviet troops in these glider-type contraptions. One thing about the Doomsday Warrior series is it definitely won't appeal to those who like their men's adventure grounded in reality or accurate weapons detail. Ryder Stacy can't even get their own created weaponry correct; early in the book it's drilled into us that the Century City-created "Liberator assault rifles" only fire clips of 15 rounds, but during this scene it's repeatedly stated that Rockson is firing a clip of 50 rounds. Regardless, it's a fun scene, with the patented gore of this series's action scenes -- lots of guts exploding and showering to the ground as the various Reds are blasted apart.

The novel finishes on another psychedelic scene; the Glowers arrive and pick up Rockson and Ed. Due to their omniscience they not only know who Rockson is but also where they could find him. Kim, still in a coma, refuses to heal for some reason, and the Glowers know that Rockson can save her with his love. This entails an elaborate scene where Rockson mentally joins up with the Glowers's collective entity and they all journey into the pits of Kim's soul. We are far beyond the limits of the men's adventure genre here.

After saving Kim -- her soul was imprisoned in a time warp, it turns out -- Rockson comes out of the collective mind entity feeling more powerful, more in tune with the cosmos. The Glowers inform him that he is capable of telepathic powers, and advise him to cultivate his talents. Again, the authors are building toward something, with the series coming off like a post-nuke Dune, Rockson its Maud'dib. Another nice change of pace with this series is its heavy continuity; there are many references to the previous two volumes, which gives it all the feeling of an epic.

Anyway, I really enjoyed The Last American, and I'm happy that as of now I finally have all 19 volumes of the series -- and they weren't easy to find.

Doomsday Warrior #2: Red America

Doomsday Warrior #2: Red America, by Ryder Stacy
August, 1984 Zebra Books

This time out Ted Rockson, the Doomsday Warrior himself, must once again venture into the post-nuke wasteland of America to destroy a Soviet-operated fortress in which Americans are being brainwashed into Red soldiers. Honestly though, the novel, at least the majority of it, is a retread of Doomsday Warrior #1. It follows the same template as that previous volume, with scheming between KGB nutcase Col. Killov and American Premier Vassily for control of all Soviet forces, while Rockson meanwhile tests himself against the mutated flora and fauna of "the world of 2089 A.D." (I lost track of how many times that phrase was repeated in the novel.)

Pavlov City is the name of the place where sturdy American slaves are deprogrammed by the Soviet mind devices, turning them into hardcore warriors for the Red Army (as it's called throughout the book). As soon as Rockson finds this out (somehow, it's never explained), he takes up his "Liberator rifle" and "shotgun pistol," hops on his trusty hybrid animal, and leaves the relative utopia of Century City -- that is, after some purple-prosed sex with his Amazonian galpal Rhona. Here follows a stretch of survivalist fiction which again seems lifted from the previous book.

Rockson sneaks into Pavlov City but of course is promptly captured; while in prison he finds himself in the cell beside a gorgeous 18 year-old American girl named Kim who reveals that the next morning the Reds will take advantage of her before killing her. Given that she is a virgin, and also that fate has placed her in this cell beside "the Ultimate American," she begs Rockson to take her. And not only is she a blonde, she's a gymnast to boot, maneuvering herself around the cage for Rockson's benefit. Rockson falls instantly in love with the girl. Really, who could blame him?

Finally we have a big battle sequence as Rockson, through blind luck more than skill, breaks free and pulls a Die Hard on the Reds in their very fortress. He frees the Americans, arms them, and engages in a battle with the Russians, who nevertheless manage to trap Rockson and his army on the top floors. Just when it looks like the end, deus ex machina intervenes in the worst way, as Rockson's pals show up in a commandeered helicopter, blasting away Reds with their newfangled particle beam weapon (a gift from the mutated Technicians of volume #1).

After all of this, Red America gets pretty good. Once again it seems obvious that the two authors who comprised "Ryder Stacy" shared the writing duties. One of them focused on the battle sequences and the stuff with Killov, all of which comes off like a more violent version of the '80s Rambo cartoon (remember that??). These sequences suffer from piss-poor writing, with horrendous dialog and unforgiveable POV-jumping (the worst case being one paragraph that starts from Rockson's point of view but ends in Killov's!).

However the other author is very good, and excels in the more far-out stuff. In the previous novel, this author delivered the Technicians material, which was above and beyond the rest of the book. Here he improves on even that, with a crazed sequence involving a group of "Indians" who drive around the desert on choppers, speak in Beatnik slang, and worship a guru called The Ginsberg. All of this is well outside of the men's adventure norm, and all the better for it.

In this section we have meditation trips, more sex between Rockson and Kim (which veers stright out into astral-tinged purple prose), a ribald party in which the beer is spiked with psychedelic mushrooms, and a climax which is lifted from Beowulf (at least that's my take, as it starts with Rockson at the beer-hall, then has him fighting against a powerful creature and its dragon-like familiar). It is by far the best part of the novel, and makes one look forward to continue with the series, just to see how much more out-there this version of "Ryder Stacy" can get.

And again, the series spoofs the genre, with Rockson the "Ultimate American" no more than a monstrous freak who spouts patriotic, anti-Communist invective that Ronald Reagan would've been proud of. But the irony is that Rockson and his pals live in a utopia that is 100% communist, where all the people must serve the cause, sharing allotted duties, living together in complete communion. None of this is stated outright, of course, which only adds to the impression that it's all a subtle in-joke from the authors.

In a way this series kept alive the feel of the men's adventure novels of the '70s, with a self-mocking tone, twisted plots, and a lurid vibe -- there are at least three sex scenes in Red America, and they're all pretty hilarious. I just wonder if our authors can keep it up (so to speak) for another 17 volumes.

Doomsday Warrior #1

Doomsday Warrior #1, by Ryder Stacy
May, 1984  Zebra Books

Back in the mid-'80s the men's adventure genre got a new kick with the emergence of what I call "Post-Nuke Pulps," aka action series which were set in the nuclear aftermath of WWIII. Jerry Ahern's Survivalist started the trend, but I could never get into that series. I was familiar with the long-running Doomsday Warrior series -- the painted covers, each with a fist holding a different weapon, really stood out on the bookshelves -- but I was never able to track down volume 1. It was only a few decades later, after reading Justin Marriott's fab overview of the series in Paperback Fanatic #16, that I finally decided to find a copy.

The series takes place a hundred years after the damn Commies have blasted the US with several nukes. The country is now mostly a wasteland, some spots ruined for eternity, others becoming much different from what they once were. Several cities were untouched, pointedly avoided by the Russians, so that the invading forces would have nice places to live. Yes, the Russians have even taken over the country, ruling the populace with an iron fist. The Communist empire is ruled by Premiere Vassily in Moscow; his nephew controls the US from the White House. The true power however is the KGB, here reformatted into basically the Waffen SS: a bunch of sadists in black leather uniforms emblazoned with death's heads, their commander a sociopath named Killov.

I should mention that in an eerie coincidence we are informed that the Russians launched their attack on the US on September 11th. (September 11th, 1989, but still, that's a bit creepy in its own prescient little way, isn't it?)

Americans have become slaves of the empire, churning out threadbare product which is shipped back to Moscow, suffering hardscrabble lives in slums. But from various remote areas of the conquered US an army of "Freefighters" wage a guerrilla war against the Russians. These are free Americans who have evolved in the radiated stretches of the country; in true Marvel Comics fashion, the decades of radioactivity have effected superhuman change into the people who live in these places. The end result is that the best fighters all have the builds of professional wrestlers, beyond which they can run faster, jump higher, and survive more damage than the average human being.

These Freefighters live in a nigh-idyllic world of underground cities in which each person works dutifully for the future freedom of the American people, making their own food and medicine and weaponry. There are several of these conclaves, but the top one is Century City, located in the Rockies. This is a vast, high-tech community burrowed into the mountains in which the free Americans live a sort of "communist" life of their own, really -- more importance is placed on the city rather than the individual, and each citizen works at various chores for the good of the community. At any rate it's all very comic-booky, as we learn that Century City started a hundred years ago, when a bunch of traffic-jammed Americans got trapped underground following the nuclear blasts; here they formed a society, over the decades creating this virtual paradise inside the mountains, complete with indoor waterfalls and meditation rooms and etc.

Century City's military commander is Ted Rockson, aka "Rock," the toughest Freefighter of them all. A towering, muscle-bound presence with differently-colored eyes ("one violet, one aquamarine") -- not to mention a skunklike streak of white through his heavy metal-long black hair -- Rockson grew up on the wastelands before finding Century City. In fact he trekked across the radioactive wastes on his own, after seeing his family killed by a KGB deathsquad. Hence Rockson has become affected by more radioactivity than most, which of course means he is even more powerful than the rest. Rockson is the protagonist of the series and is your basic idealized action series leading man: charismatic, deadly to his enemies, beloved by the ladies. Known as "The Ultimate American," Rockson is a folkloric hero in this post-apocalyptic world.

This first installment mostly lays the groundwork for the series. In fact it starts off with what I'm certain is the outline "Ryder Stacy" used to sell the series. We learn how this post-nuke world came to be and meet all of our characters (and there are many of them), both the Americans and the Commies. During lots of bickering between Killov and General Zhabnov (aka the ruler of America), Rockson and his Freefighters launch several raids on Russian outposts. The Commies devise a mind-controlling device which allows them to locate the hidden American bases, and later on Rockson discovers new, devastating weaponry that has been created by mutated Americans far out in the wastelands, and he and a few handpicked men venture out to get hold of it.

The problem is, Doomsday Warrior #1 is too damn long. At nearly 400 pages of incredibly tiny print, it's so padded as to be monotonous. There are many repetitive sequences and incidental bits that should've been gutted. For example, there is an endless scene where a returning party of Freefighters describe to Rockson the ruined land they just trekked across, pages and pages of dialog...and then, mere pages later, Rockson and his crew trek over the very same terrain, with the same description employed in the narrative!

But even worse is the writing. Simply put, the writing here is often atrocious. I'm always nagging about POV-hopping -- where the narrative jumps between character perspectives with no warning -- and "Ryder Stacy" takes it to new depths here. The most jarring instance I can think of is when we're in the POV of Rockson as he and his Freefighters hide in a valley, preparing to launch a sneak attack on a group of Commie helicopters -- and then, in the very next paragraph, we're suddenly in the POV of one of the crewmembers on a Russian 'copter. I just cannot understand how a writer can POV-hop and not realize what he is doing. It completely takes the reader out of the fictive dreamworld and disrupts the reading experience. I mean, at the very least, drop a damn line or two, give us a little space between POVs so we can understand that you're changing perspectives...I mean, anything.

Where was I? Oh, right, the terrible writing. The dialog too is goofy and hamfisted, but this actually lends the book more of a comic book charm, at least most of the time. (It's hard to be critical with a book that contains lines like: "Look -- it's the Ultimate American!") Cliches however run rampant throughout. Characters who "run like bats out of hell;" tension "so thick you could cut it with a knife." Even secure doors which when unlocked "open as easy as pie." And yet -- this goofy writing actually goes hand-in-hand with the goofy concept of the series itself, so somehow it all works.

What's odd is that there are long stretches of very good writing in Doomsday Warrior #1, in particular the sequences focusing on The Technicians, that aforementioned mutated batch of Americans who have created a host of particle-beam weaponry. The descendants of nuclear silo technicians, these people think only in mathematical terms, which allows Stacy to go into some outer limits of thinking and dialog. It's my understanding that future volumes go into even further reaches, but like any first installment of a series this one plays it a little safe -- any pulp writer knows that you lure readers in with a more traditional first volume before getting whacky in future volumes.

"Ryder Stacy" was the psuedonym of two authors: Jan Stacy and Ryder Syvertsen. Both wrote men's adventure series under their own names, and I'm uncertain if they collaborated fully on each volume of Doomsday Warrior or traded off. I would imagine the former, as some parts of Doomsday Warrior #1 seem to be written by different authors; for example, the writer who penned the Technicians scenes doesn't POV-hop.

At any rate, this first installment was successful enough to launch an incredible 19 volumes. And despite my dithering it is good in spots -- these authors don't shirk on the ultraviolence, with each battle scene featuring lovingly-detailed gore and destruction, lending it a definite tongue-in-cheek vibe. There's also some purple-prosed sex. Justin's Paperback Fanatic article really sold me on this series and I gather from it that it just gets better from here -- and I'm hoping it does, because in my usual OCD nature I've gotten hold of most of the volumes.