The Specialist #2: Manhattan Revenge

The Specialist #2: Manhattan Revenge, by John Cutter

April, 1984 Signet Books

Jack Sullivan returns in a second installment nearly as plodding and padded as the first. Once again "John Cutter" (aka John Shirley) proves that he can fill pages with the best of 'em, giving us another novel that could easily be cut down to half the length.

Now in New York City, Sullivan's tracing some leads he picked up in Talent For Revenge. Sullivan's wife was killed years ago, and he's still trying to figure out who was behind it. But his contact Malta has followed him here, and -- after a pointless scene in which he sets Sullivan up against a trio of thugs to "test" him -- Malta offers a new mission.

A gang known as the Meat Hooks is terrorizing the inner city, snatching runaway children and locking them up in some unknown location where the kids are drugged and used to satisfy the twisted needs of deranged perverts. Behind it all is a former Nazi named Van Kleef and his equally-sicko wife. One thing I admire about Shelley's series is how he bridges the gap between '70s and '80s-style men's adventure novels. The plot of Manhattan Revenge is as lurid as any '70s men's adventure novel, but it also features the gung-ho "guns, guns, guns" bravura that was all the rage in the '80s. (Not to mention that Sullivan gets laid -- and often -- which in itself is another '70s throwback in the sexless '80s world of Mack Bolan, Phoenix Force, and etc.)

Unfortunately Shelley doesn't capitalize on the lurid aspect, for once again he delivers a novel in which nothing happens but his hero stalking various low-tier henchmen and staking out various enemy strongholds as he plans his final assault. The twisted den Van Kleef has created is dealt with in a perfunctory manner, and instead we get endless scenes of Sullivan chasing down Meat Hook members and torturing them for info.

Did I say endless? Everything is drawn out here. If Sullivan chases after some punk, we get 5 pages of tiny type describing each alley, corner, and fire escape Sullivan lopes across -- and each scene ends exactly the same, with Sullivan killing the punk in question. Just like Talent For Revenge, we have here another protracted game of cat and mouse; we know from page one that Sullivan will storm Van Kleef's den and kill the man, and that's finally what happens. And just as in the previous installment, the climax goes exactly like you thought it would.

There are a few colorful patches in the otherwise monochromatic color scheme. This time out Sullivan has an accomplice, a private eye Malta's hired. Sullivan's pissed -- he works alone -- but the way these things go, of course, the private eye turns out to be a smokin' hot babe. This not only leads to plentiful sex but also what I want to think is a little genre parody from Shelley. For the lady constantly chastizes Sullivan for his "kill first" attitude, and Sullivan constantly calls her a "Liberal."

But Sullivan here is a bloodthirsty maniac, one who would do Johnny Rock proud. He murders countless Meat Hookers, torturing them with joy. Even when he tries to do good he's a sicko; my favorite scene is where Sullivan attempts to talk a youth out of the gang life, using as a prop a Meat Hooker Sullivan has just killed. Sullivan puts the boy's face up to the open gut wound -- "Looks like he ate a fast-food burger today! Well, just goes to show what that stuff'll do to you!"

Who knows, maybe Shelley intended Manhattan Revenge to be a satire of men's adventure novels. But at 200 pages of tiny-type padding, the joke is lost.

Spider-Man Goes To Psychedelic Hell

From the Spider-Man '67 cartoon DVD...I slept on this boxset a few years back, and my mistake. It's now OOP with steadily-climbing prices on the collector's market. The set contains all three seasons of the lo-fi Spider-Man cartoon which ran from 1967 to 1970.

Cult animator Ralph Bakshi took over the series for its second and third seasons, and imbued the affair with a psychedelic glow. Truly, this is a whacked-out series in Bakshi's hands, as Spidey glides across kaleidoscopic backgrounds and takes on increasingly surreal foes and situations.

Legend has it that this episode, Revolt in the Fifth Dimension, was not shown during the original broadcast of Season 3, due to its insane vibe. No one seems sure if this is true, but it sounds cool nonetheless.

Could you imagine any comics company releasing a cartoon like this in today's tepid world? And it was marketed to kids!

Do yourself a favor and track down the DVD set. I recently did, and the entire Bakshi run is just as psychedelically insane.

TNT #7: Kingdom Of Death

TNT #7: Kingdom Of Death, by Doug Masters

August, 1986 Charter Books

(French publication, 1978)

Sadly, this was the final volume of the English translation of the marvelous TNT series, but in another odd move by Charter, it was actually volume #2 of the original French publication, where it was titled Le Grand Congelateur (aka The Large Freezer, cover below). But it somehow works, as the first half of Kingdom of Death retains the psychotic drive of the earliest TNT novels.

The opening alone is a throwback to the grim tone of TNT #1, as a team of surgical-garbed terrorists break in on a newly-married couple's honeymoon night, force them to have sex, then take the wife and hang her upside down from meathooks as they drain every drop of her blood. More atrocities follow; duplicate blood-draining killings occur around the world, which of course make the news, but it's only Arnold Benedict and his intelligence chief Corrie Corlington who deduce that all of the victims shared one thing in common: they all had a super rare blood type known as "Bombay Blood."

It turns out that these terrorists -- lead by a mysterious figure known only as "Cancer" -- have killed every known person who posesses this blood type. All save one: the sickly great-grandson of mega-wealthy Aldai Mayflower, an industrialist who has basically run the US from behind the scenes for the past few decades. The boy is hemophilic, among other things, and the slightest cut could kill him; Cancer threatens to destroy all of the remaining vials of Bombay Blood unless Aldai Mayflower pays him an incredible amount. Mayflower, as we know from previous installments, is Arnold Benedict's hero, so Benedict is quick to come to the old man's aid. And Benedict does what he's done in similar circumstances throughout this series: he calls in Tony Nicholas Twin.

Twin however is in the middle of his own investigation -- this is one of the few times in the series in which we see him going about his ostensible "job" as a photo-journalist. Using his connections, Twin has gotten a meeting with a splinter cell of terrorists in French Canada, a distrustful group of murderers who have only met with Twin because he's known as one of the few journalists who won't give away his sources. This leads to one of the funniest moments in the series, as Benedict telephones Twin right in the middle of this high-security meeting; even Twin, lead through the streets of Montreal blindfolded, has no idea where he is, and yet Benedict has found him as simply as that. After an escape with the help of the busty Margo, a gorgeous acquaintance of these terrorists via her imprisoned husband, Twin decides to help Benedict stop Cancer.

Things pick up as Twin is sent to Budapest, where he again meets Margo; she's one of Corrie Corlington's "girls," she informs him, and she's here to assist. Corrie herself is busy putting together a team for a chaotic sidejob Benedict has devised; part of Corrie's team is Valka the Titan, the Russian powerlifter so memorable from previous volumes. (However this leads to a big question about Kingdom of Death, which I will get to below.) In Budapest, Twin discovers that there is one final person who posesses Bombay Blood, the only person Cancer hasn't gotten to; a schoolteacher named Sandra Gyarmati who lives behind the Iron Curtain (remember that?). Twin's mission is simple, then; he must sneak across the border into the USSR, grab the woman, and sneak back across -- and then evade the worldwide network of spys who will be coming after him.

As usual things are a bit more complicated. It turns out that Sandra Gyarmati has just recently died. But her body has been frozen and sent into "The Kingdom of Death," a high-security compound in which the important dead are stored, to be unfrozen and returned to life at some future date, a la Walt Disney. Twin's second female accomplice is Fedora Karon, a doctor in the center which freezes the bodies; after a little sex she "kills" Twin and places him in a coffin which is bound for the Kingdom.

Here the novel becomes like the TNT we know and love. Coming back to himself within the freezing Kingdom, Twin must open the massive doors so a commando squad can enter and steal away Sandra Gyarmati's coffin. But in his daze Twin rips up the wrong controls and the coffins about him begin to defreeze, leading to a crazed moment in which "zombies" stagger to life and come after him. One of the zombies is Stalin himself, who emerges from his VIP section in the Kingdom and staggers toward a panicking Twin. But the commandos enter and blast away, and Twin escapes with Gyarmati's coffin; now he must get it across Hungary and back into the West while evading Communist agents, the CIA, and Cancer's men, who have discovered this ruse.

Sadly, the rest of the novel fizzles, becoming an overdone Eurospy comedy of confused agents and elaborate ruses. There are some colorful moments -- Twin escapes under the guise of a travelling European circus, complete with Valka as an elephant-riding "bearded lady" -- but after the creepy "Kingdom of Death" section and the truly grisly opening pages it all comes off as rather flat (the super-detailed lesbian scene between Margo and Fedora notwithstanding). In fact, this is my least favorite of the TNT series, which is all the more of a shame since it was the final volume.

But this leads me to the "problem" I mentioned earlier. This installment was published second in the original French series, and Valka is a main character here, familiar with Twin and already working for Benedict. However, Valka didn't meet Twin or Benedict until The Beast, which was published third in the original French series. So I can only assume that in the French version of the series, TNT #3 actually took place after TNT #2. Either that or for the English publication Charter Books and translator Victoria Reitter changed things around between the two novels.

At any rate, here is the cover for the original French publication, Le Grand Congelateur:

Ultraviolet: 69 Blacklight Posters from the Aquarian Age and Beyond

Ultraviolet: 69 Blacklight Posters from the Aquarian Age and Beyond, by Dan Donahue
October, 2009 Abrams Image Publishing

As I've mentioned before, I'm fascinated with blacklight posters. They hold a special appeal for me, so this book was right up my alley. In fact I liked it so much I picked up two copies, one for safekeeping, one for those whiskey-prone nights when I feel like turning on the blacklight and gawking at the eye-popping colors.

And the colors truly do pop; Ultraviolet is printed in UV-responsive ink, which means that the posters featured within glow beneath a blacklight, just like their original incarnations. (I've placed photos below of how a few of these posters look when under a blacklight.) Ultraviolet a hell of a way to save cash: a few years ago I was stung by the blacklight bug and thought about picking up some vintage posters. But vulture eBay sellers price them into the stratosphere; don't even get me started on the elusive Marvel Third Eye blacklight posters from 1971, which one dumb-ass eBay seller currently has listed for a whopping $899 each! (I luckily own two of them -- I plan to feature them here one of these days -- and I can vouch for their impact beneath a blacklight. But still...eight hundred and ninety-nine fucking dollars???)

Perhaps what's most surprising is it's taken so long for a book on blacklight poster art to be published. I can't believe no publisher has yet considered that the kids who had blacklight posters in the '60s and '70s (and beyond) are now adults who might enjoy looking back at this forgotten form of art.

I got my first blacklight when I was 3 or 4, back in the late '70s. It was a panther and it had glowing green eyes. Then in college I got a supercool one titled "Spectrum" at a Spencer's store. The poster was very psychedelic, with a black skull surrounded by layers and layers of tiny people and things. You could stare at it for dopefueled hours and keep seeing something new. (Unfortunately it's not one of the posters featured in Ultraviolet.) It's funny: "Spectrum" was copyrighted 1974, so given that I bought my copy in 1994 it must've been a pretty popular print. But those days of yore...lounging in my dorm room with my girlfriend, the lights off, the blacklight on, music blasting on the stereo...hell, what with the controlled substances and the premarital sex it was more like 1974 than 1994.

Then a few years ago I rediscovered blacklight posters, and I have to say these things are addictive. In a way you're getting two pieces of art for the price of one; I love how the colors and shades change when placed under a blacklight. I bought a few of them with the express intent of framing them up in my study room when we moved into our new house. We move in and guess what my wife declares -- they'd look too tacky. Drum roll, please.

Which brings me back to my opening comment -- Ultraviolet is a perfect way to recapture your blacklit youth while saving both time and money! Dan Donahue and Abrams Image are to be thanked profusely for bringing this book to print. 69 posters are featured, spanning from the '60s to the late '70s, with artist and publication info for each (where available). Even the Third Eye company is featured; their "Zephyr" (the third poster down in my photos below), an original print released the same year as their Marvel series, is my favorite poster here.

To put it simply, I own at least a thousand books. This one is my favorite.

Here are a few of the posters featured in Ultraviolet as they appear beneath a blacklight, taken with my patented crappy digital camera. Note of course that these photos do little justice to the pop these pages have in person. But at least they give you an idea of the colorful impact:

Sabat #1: The Graveyard Vultures

Sabat #1: The Graveyard Vultures, by Guy N. Smith

May, 1982 New English Library

Here begin the adventures of Dr. Strange -- er, Mark Sabat, that is -- an astral-voyaging magician/former SAS ass-kicker who now works as a professional exorcist, fighting the legions of hell wherever he may. Oh, and he's possessed by the demonic soul of his brother Quentin!

Sabat even looks like Dr. Strange on the cover, but otherwise he bears no (prosecutionary) resemblance to the Marvel character. For one, he's a hell of a lot meaner -- Sabat comes close to being the most unheroic "hero" I've yet encountered in a men's adventure novel.

The "possessed by his evil brother" is one thing, but beyond that Sabat has his own issues: he was kicked out of the SAS for engaging in s&m sex with a superior officer's wife; due to speeding he runs over and kills an innocent pedestrian and brushes it off as "fate;" he suffers from such an overactive libido that he walks around with an erection after merely meeting a woman (and indeed he "pleasures himself" a handful of times during the course of the novel. Handful -- aren't I clever?).

The "Graveyard Vultures" in question are a coven of English-countryside devil worshippers who are digging up corpses for their black magic rites. In the process they've exhumed the corpse of a recently-dead girl, the bones of a century-dead black magician, and in general have sown much satanic mayhem, offering sacrifices of virgins and prostitutes. Sabat's called in by the Church to get to the bottom of it...and he'll take the job for the money, thank you very much.

But I'm jumping ahead; the novel itself opens with Sabat engaging in final battle with his corrupt brother Quentin, a black magician so consumed by evil that his body has gone skeletal. Quentin raises some corpses and Sabat fights them, but his lack of faith undermines him and Quentin basically wins; Sabat is only able to despatch him with his trusty service revolver, a leftover from his SAS days. But as a result Quentin is not vanquished and is able to reincarnate himself -- this time within the mind of Sabat.

The novel itself picks up an interminable length after that opening act of fratricide. Sabat, suffering from Quentin's countless taunts in his brain, arrives in the English countryside and researches the activities of these left hand-pathers. He avoids the cops, who themselves are investigating the exhumations and murders, and instead speaks with the local parishoner, an old man given to sucking noisly on his pipe. Actually, there's a whole lot of sucking going on in The Graveyard Vultures -- but not the trashy kind. No, I'm talking straight-up pipestem-sucking, which Guy N. Smith mentions in great detail several times, going on about the "gooey sucking" and other disgusting details, all of which caused my "Freudian Sense" to tingle into overdrive.

After checking out the local riffraff, nearly dying in a hotel fire caused by the coven, and masturbating a few times (umm...yeah), Sabat performs an exorcism on the chapel's graveyard. A psychic battle follows in which he defends himself against the coven's zombie demons, "raping" the woman in charge of them -- who it appears is a zombie herself in the psychic realm, meaning that our boy Sabat can chalk "necrophilia" off of his to-do list. But it's all an illusion, and Sabat comes to weathered but victorious. And now he knows for sure that said woman is involved with the coven: Miranda, a redheaded prostitute whom Sabat has seen about the village.

So what does Sabat do? Why, he pays her a housecall! But Miranda is happy to see him, and indeed comes on to Sabat with such vigor that soon enough he's stripped down, and, per her request, masturbating for her viewing pleasure. Sabat just can't get enough of himself, it appears. But it turns out Miranda's played him; she tries to kill Sabat with a knife. He stops her the only way he knows how -- impaling her with his own special little knife, which I guess is standard SAS training. After a good bit of lovin' Miranda is deprogrammed and reveals to Sabat that she's been forced into the coven; she'll be happy to help him defeat the bastards.

What follows is more sacrifice, demonic summonings, walk-ons from various voodoo gods, and our hero suffering from innumerable hard-ons (in between running over pedestrians, that is). And all the while his brother Quentin is there in his mind, taunting and berating him, which sort of reminded me of that old Steve Martin/Lily Tomlin movie All Of Me.

I've been familiar with his work for years but this is the first actual novel I've read of prolific UK pulpster Guy N. Smith. His writing is good, if a bit too pristine at times. I get a feeling of detachment from the narrative -- but then, this is something I've often noticed in UK trash fiction. This sort of spatial dissonance, as if the author wants to get down in the trash while at the same time ensuring he doesn't get dirty. I mean, for all of its many problems, you can't say that lurid trash like The Sharpshooter is afraid to go all the way into sordidness.

Sabat returned for three more adventures, plus two short stories, all of which were compiled in the 1996 omnibus Dead Meat.

Narc #1

Narc #1, by Robert Hawkes

1973, Lancer Books

This is the start of a great series. John Bolt is a narcotics agent for the fictional D-3 agency, aka the Department of Dangerous Drugs. A 31 year-old with a running scar along his forehead and a lifetime of experience cracking hoods and international drug cartels, Bolt is the top agent at D-3, going after the toughest assignments. The latest case is a massive shipment of heroin coming into NYC; Bolt must figure out who is behind it, how they are working, and also determine which of his fellow narcs is a turncoat.

The book opens with a gory battle as Bolt and his fellow D-3 agents attempt to arrest high-profile French heroin kingpin Antoine Peray. But even imprisoned in an American hospital (recuperating from the bullet in the thigh Bolt gave him) Peray is still dangerous: he has placed a bounty on Bolt's head, and there are many willing to collect it. Not only that, but a black American heroin dealer named St. James Livingston has been working on a huge shipment with Peray, brining in a thousand kilos of heroin, the largest shipment in history.

Livingston has his own troubles: he's created a draught of heroin in NYC, hoping to make a huge score when he imports the massive shipment of heroin. But Peray's imprisonment hamstrings him. In an attempt to make Peray stay true to his deal, Livingston kidnaps Peray's daughter. Bolt is caught in the middle of all this, going up against two kingpins who both want him dead. Along the way he meets the daughter of a man he killed in self-defense years before, defends himself with nothing but a pot of hot coffee against shotgun-wielding street thugs, and engages in several battles of will against his D-3 boss.

Robert Hawkes was a psuedonym for Marc Olden, who these days is remembered mostly for his Black Samurai series. But if this first volume is any indication, Narc is actually the better series. It has all the Olden staples: sinewy prose, vivid action sequences, dollops of gore, colorful language, and good characterization. It also has more of a nihilistic feel than Black Samurai; Bolt is a die-hard cynic, he believes the world is rotten and is steadily going to hell. The nihilism goes into overdrive in a wonderful sequence in which Bolt flashes back to his training in "The Game," so called by the Japanese karate master who taught Bolt how to detect and deflect danger at every waking moment. (This martial arts bit also harkens back to Black Samurai, but the karate here is only marginal; Bolt mainly kills his opponents with a pistol or a custom-made shotgun.)

The series jumped over to Signet after this initial volume, with better cover art -- in fact, the Signet cover art came from the same artist who did the Black Samurai covers.

Dave Hunter & Ron Donovan's Black Dynamite Poster

As I've mentioned in a previous post, Black Dynamite is one of my all-time favorite films. So I was happy to discover this poster, created by California-based artists Dave Hunter and Ron Donovan for the Red Vic Movie House in San Francisco. This was a limited run of 100 prints; I've read that "Black Dynamite" himself Michael Jai White and director Scott Sanders were given their own copies when they appeared at the Red Vic's special showing of the film.

Anyway, this is now one of the coolest things I own. I'm a big fan of blacklight posters (part of me is still a kid living in the 1970s), and this print is "blacklight tested and approved." In fact I broke out my own light and snapped a photo on my crappy digital camera of how this baby looks under a blacklight:

It goes without saying that the poster looks better in person. The colors are dynamic and really pop. Under the blacklight they swirl even more, and Black Dynamite's eyes become inky pools of fury. Dave Hunter still has a few copies left at his website, where he also has some photos of the print's creation process.

Fight Smack In The Orphanage!