Flash Gordon

Flash Gordon, by Arthur Byron Cover
December, 1980  Jove Books

Flash Gordon came out when I was around six, but I didn’t see it until the following year, when it was on HBO. I watched it all the time, loving the visuals and the Darth Vader-esque henchman Klytus; it wasn’t as good as Star Wars, but there was something cool about it. I didn’t understand why all the adults said it was stupid.

About seven years ago the movie came out on Blu Ray and I bought it for the heck of it…it was the first time I’d seen it since 1981, or whenever it was on HBO. The first thing that occurred to me was that it was more Barbarella than Barbarella at times; I’m a huge fan of Barbarella, that mix of kinkiness, psychedelia, and intentional camp, and Flash Gordon is along the exact same lines. The part where Dr. Zarkov’s capsule is sucked into an astral whirlpool could actually be a scene from Barbarella, and I choked on my cheap wine when, late in the film, a bound Prince Barin (aka future 007 Timothy Dalton) delivered the deadpan line, “Tell me more of this Houdini.”

In the meantime I’d grown to love the original ‘30s-‘40s Flash Gordon comic strip by Alex Raymond (not to mention the excellent – and faithful – serial version). Raymond’s Flash Gordon is planetary romance as it should be done: on the level, but as escapist as could be, with clear-cut heroes and villains and a healthy heaping of kinkiness. In fact it’s this dark, perverted side of Flash Gordon, strong in the initial Raymond strips and the ’36 serial – as well as in this 1980 film – that makes me prefer it as an adult to Star Wars (which to tell the truth I can’t stand anymore).

The Acidemic review of the ’36 Flash Gordon serial (link above) inspired me to go back and revisit the ’80 film. I still like it, and I’d still rather watch it than Star Wars. I saw some online reviews that claimed this novelization was even more kinky than the film, giving the story even more of a spicy pulps vibe, with talk of group sex and drugs and various sadomasochistic stuff. So of course, I got the book posthaste. But folks, I hate to report that those reviews are a bit exagerrated, not to mention misleading. In fact, the novelization is more along the lines of a collaboration between say Ron Goulart and Howard Rheingold.

Sadly there was never a novelization of Barbarella, but if there had been, it likely would’ve been a lot like this. Arthur Byron Cover pens his novelization as if it were 1967 instead of 1980; his Flash Gordon has more in common with the psychedelic sixties than the late ‘70s/early ‘80s, filled with full-bore psychedelia and New Agey concepts. Meditation, drugs, trances, astral voyaging into the cosmos, references to Jefferson Airplane, the works. There’s even a leftist spin to the narrative as would be expected by one of those hippie-lit authors of the ‘60s; Flash’s opening section, for example, begins with an arbitrary diatribe against Vietnam, Nixon, etc.

This ‘60s vibe is particularly evident in Flash Gordon himself. In Raymond’s original strip, Flash was an elite human being, a professional athlete who was also part of the upper crust of society. This was slightly retained in the ’36 serial; in the just-as-entertaining 1979 animated feature, he was changed to a government agent. But in the ’80 film, all of that is removed and Flash is just a dumb jock. Not so in Cover’s novelization; Flash is a paragon of leftist virtue-signaling (even Dale Arden thinks of him as “such a liberal”), constantly pondering his own emotions and the emotions of others, even complaining about the “sexist, male-dominated societies” of the day.

In other words, Cover’s Flash Gordon is a total snowflake, folks, and in this day and age would probably have his own daytime talk show. Yet at the same time he’s a powerhouse NFL quarterback, New York Jets, and just won the SuperBowl for them. Cover provides inordinate background for each of the main characters, and we learn that Flash was born in Alabama, raised by his dad when his mom died in childbirth, and lost his southern accent from listening to the sports announcers for football games on the radio all the time. He is fully in tune with the cosmos, though, having attained a sort of “spiritual awareness” that makes him more than human – but less of an emphathetic character than the film version, or even the original Raymond version of the character (who was pretty much a cipher).

These inordinate backgrounds extend to Dale Arden and Dr. Hans Zarkov; the former we learn in some of that “spicy” stuff other reviewers have mentioned became involved, temporarily, with group sex due to an overly-demanding boyfriend. But there’s no detail (indeed, there’s no sex at all in the book), and Dale in fact comes off as pretty unlikable in the novel. Easily triggering the sensitive types of today, the Dale Arden of Raymond’s strip was a classic damsel in distress, always in need of Flash to save her. Cover tries to invest his Dale with more of a “city girl” sort of gumption, but mostly this extends to her whoring past. As it is, Dale is still a damsel in distress, and spends the majority of the tale waiting for Flash (or some other man) to save her.

Whereas the film, in my view, capably mixes the action with the comedy, the novel unfortunately falls flat in the attempt. For Cover has fallen prey to one of the biggest sins, in my book – the characters themselves don’t take anything seriously. Despite that the Earth is about to be destroyed by the machinations of Ming the Merciless, and despite that our heroes are plunged into one desperate situation after the next, they still find the oppurtunity to trade knowing banter, mocking everything. 

This is the sort of stuff the reader endures throughout:

“We’ve all been under a strain,” said Dale. 

“Absolutely,” said Flash. “Unexplained phenomena invariably lend life a surreal texture that makes us all subject to Sartre’s nausea.” 

“I couldn’t have put that better myself,” said Zarkov.

Or like when Dale is certain she’s about to be taken advantage of by whatever aliens they encounter, upon their arrival on Mongo – a certainy, by the way, borne from her knowledge of “spicy pulps:”

“In other words, Dale, [Zarkov is] saying the universe is too sophisticated a place for you to have to worry about being taken against your will,” said Flash. “The chances are your adventures will be much more exotic.” 

“Absolutely,” said Zarkov. “Let’s forget these hoary cliches of spicy pulp fiction and come to grips with the sheer inventiveness of reality, you know, like a genuine Chekhovian character.”

Mind you, this is after the trio have taken a trip through a sort of black hole and crash-landed on an alien planet, where they stand and watch, trading such dialog, as a platoon of alien soldiers march toward them. This sort of thing occurs throughout the novel, and is intended as “knowing” comedy. You can judge for yourself how funny it actually is.

Granted, all this might be in the original Lorenzo Semple, Jr. script, but the filmmakers wisely didn’t translate it to the screen. The movie I think can still be enjoyed as straight but fun adventure as well as a knowing parody – I should know, as I experienced it both ways, the former as a kid and the latter as a (drunk) adult. The novel though fails in the attempt; its mixture of high-brow “literature” and low-brow self-mockery (not to mention annoyingly-frequent pop culture references like Frank Frazetta, the Blue Meanies, Captain America, Fellini, etc – even Erica Jong’s Fear Of Flying) comes off as unwieldy on the page.

And while Flash may be a jock in the film, in the novelization he is as distant to the reader as some Timothy Learyian concept of a psychedelic demigod, so ascended from mundane, worldly concerns that the reader cannot connect with him. I mean every other page we’re reading how Flash “immers[es] his soul into his corporeal self” and the like. Thus the action scenes, what few there are, suffer – and suffer drastically. Zarkov and Dale themselves fail to come much to life; in fact, Zarkov and Flash are so similar in the novel that I had a hard time telling them apart, something you could never say about the original comic strip or the ’36 serial, not to mention the 1980 film itself.

The narrative is basically identical to the film; only in the incidentals does it differ, usually in backgrounds for various characters and, as mentioned, dialog. About the only “new” thing is we learn that Flash saw Dale before he boarded the doomed airplane with her, something one could figure from the film, anyway, given a line of dialog from Flash about seeing her before. But here we learn that Flash has come out to the woods to find “spiritual awareness” after his SuperBowl victory, and Dale, an independent travel agent, has come here to escape that group-sexing boyfriend…though we learn in incidental dialog that in the meantime she’s done a bunch of country boys while staying here. As I say, Dale’s a bit of a whore in the book.

Cover throws his full literary powers into the rampant description that takes up much of the narrative, bringing to life Mongo and its colorful inhabitants (the film is a damn riot of color, and looks phenomenal when compared to the washed-out looking movies of today), yet for all that I had a hard time forming mental pictures from his descriptions. He does however make Ming’s wanton daughter Aura come off as suitably sexy – and here in the novel it’s not only implied that Aura and Ming have a sexual relationship (one that begins, usually, with Ming whipping her before leading on to the main event), but also that Aura gets off on sodomy.

Otherwise, the novel doesn’t offer much new – just as I say in the incidentals. Like Flash’s awesome “Flash” shirt was given to him by an anonymous female fan, and he wears it in the hopes that she’ll see him in it. Or that Vader-esque Klytus recently went through some sort of transformation which robbed him of his soul, but gave him all sorts of cybernetic powers. Or that Ming the Merciless has no concept of good or evil but is so in tune with the cosmos that he can bend it to his will when meditating. Oh, and we also learn that Dale’s had her tubes tied – this after Flash delivers to her the line “We’ll tell our kids someday,” a line that made it into the film, but here Dale wonders, “Should I tell him about my operation?”

I don’t know…on the whole I’d have to say Cover’s novelization of Flash Gordon really annoyed me, with its pedantic, sanctimonious, ultra-snowflake of a protagonist, and the New Agey vibe didn’t mesh well with the “knowing” in-jokery. Indeed, much of the dialog falls flat throughout. And given the superheroic nature of the protagonsts, not to mention the sad fact that they themselves don’t take anything seriously, the novel fails to make much of an impression. Unlike the film, which certainly does.

The Revenger #4: The Stiletto Signature

The Revenger #4: The Stiletto Signature, by Jon Messmann
October, 1974  Signet Books

Jon Messmann continues his “Burt Hirschfeld writing The Executioner” schtick with this fourth volume of The Revenger that’s once again heavy on the introspection, usually at the expense of the action. That being said, The Stiletto Signature has more sex than the previous three volumes, with hero Ben Martin scoring with two uber-sexy babes – several times over, in extra-smutty detail, which is how I demand my sleaze.

Surprisingly, given the “sex slavery” plot promised on the back cover, we don’t really get much about it; indeed, the sex slave stuff, which serves to get Ben Martin engaged on this particular hit, is given narrative short-shrift. The villain of the piece, a Sicilian mafioso named Vito Cavallo who has taken over the family of Don Genossanto (killed in the previous volume), runs a business in which Sicilian girls are imported to the US and sold to men who keep them in their homes ostensibly as maids and whatnot, but who really use them for sex. Martin’s distant cousin Rosa has become a victim of Cavallo, having been imported from Sicily for this sexual slavery, and murdered when Ben went around looking for her; Ben, who never even knew Rosa, was requested by her family back in Sicily to find out what happened to their daughter. Little did they know they were writing The Revenger himself.

But in reality the crux of Stiletto Signature is more about Ben plotting against Cavallo and trying to get evidence of the sex slavery business and who is helping the Mafioso run it. Cavallo was brought over by old Don Genossanto a few years ago, and has now used his native savagery to get to the top of the heap. He has brought back many of the savage old Mafia ways, in particular murdering turncoats and special enemies with a stiletto; the use of this particular instrument has become Cavallo’s “signature.”

The series takes a turn expected from so many of these other ‘70s lone wolf vigilante novels; Ben is contacted by a police chief who is not only a secret supporter of Ben’s vigilante work, but who also wants to secretly endorse him. This is Captain Leo Hendricks, who has become a fan of Ben’s over the past few years. When Ben goes to see the corpse of his cousin in the morgue, Hendricks has him hauled in, having suspected that the infamous Revenger might eventually try to become involved in this latest mobland plot.

Hendricks, after getting a grudging Ben to admit he is the Ben Martin who is supposedly dead but who is really the Revenger, tells our hero all about Cavallo’s sex slavery operation. If they can figure out how Cavallo is running it, who his financers are, they can bring him down legally. Ben takes the job and sets his sights on Carter Van Rhyne, a jet-setter type who employed Ben’s murdered cousin as a “housemaid.” Ben goes to Van Rhyne’s mansion, just flat-out asking about his cousin – and then telling a nonplussed Van Rhyne that she’s dead. Ben also trades interested looks with Larel, Van Rhyne’s hot-stuff sister.

Action is minimal, as usual; the Mafia tries to put out a hit on this mysterious guy looking into Van Rhyne’s business – for of course it turns out Van Rhyne is up to his neck in the whole sex-slave operation – and Ben fools them with a handy mannequin he puts in the front seat of his car. He guns them down casually, as usual mostly sticking to a revolver or a rifle for his mob-busting. However this volume puts a bit more focus on Ben’s ‘Nam past, in particular where it comes to his preparations for his various attacks.

Laurel unsurprisingly becomes Ben’s first conquest in the novel; she is gradually drawn to his side, initially disbelieving her brother’s role in any Mafia business, but soon pledging to help Ben stop him. She has a secret apartment in the city, and there the two enjoy the first of what will ultimately be a few explicitly-rendered sex scenes; Messmann actually has ‘em go at it twice, back to back, but bear in mind the sex scenes themselves are written in the “literary” vibe Messmann employs for the series: “[Ben] touches…the calyx of ecstasy” and the like. So while the hardcore screwin’ is fairly graphic throughout, it is couched in that same sort of highfalutin style that Burt Hirschfeld would use in his own novels, to the point that the reader doesn’t know whether he should be getting hot and bothered or reaching for a dictionary.

Eventually the action transitions to Sicily, as Ben heads to Cavallo’s hometown to disrupt his plans there. But even here the sex slave stuff isn’t much explored; throughout we only learn about the financial aspects of it, or how exactly Cavallo is bringing the girls over. Rather it’s all about Ben shaming Cavallo by exploiting the overly-masculine dictates of the old world. Which is to say, Ben screws the virgin Cavallo plans to marry! Pretending to be Cavallo himself, Ben ingratiates himself into the local community, all of whom look up to Cavallo with much fear and respect. Due to various reasons, Cavallo has never actually met the girl he is to marry, nor her parents, so Ben successfully bluffs his way into their presence and makes off with the babe, claiming that he has decided to marry her earlier than expected.

Her name is Norma, and Ben takes her virginity in another explicit sequence, one that, as with the material with Laurel, actually features back-to-back banging. Turns out Norma is “built for sex” despite being a virgin…and when Ben drops the bomb that he isn’t Cavallo, thus “despoiling” the girl forever (we are informed that these old-school Sicilians would rather their daughters die than lose their virginity before marriage), she takes it placidly. Ben for his part feels “stained” for the heartless deed he’s done, but hell, you can’t call yourself “The Revenger” without ruffling a few feathers.

Once Ben has called Cavallo back in New York to blab that he just banged his bride-to-be, Norma drops a bomb of her own: she’s known from the start that Ben was not Cavallo, having managed to find some photos of the man. She went along with Ben because she sensed he would be her savior, taking her from the life she does not want with Cavallo. So Messmann gets his cake and eats it, too – Ben thus is not a liar-rapist, but a hero after all. Anyway, Norma soon takes off to hang out with a girlfriend, and we’re into the homestretch.

The finale sees Ben fighting against time as he tries to make various connecting flights and arrive in the US a few hours before Cavallo’s latest shipment of sex-slaves, which are being transported first by a Sicilian fishing boat, then to a private plane, and finally to a lumber mill truck that waits for them at Kennedy Airport. Carter Van Rhyne is so involved with Cavallo that the distribution center of Van Ryne’s lumber mill is secretly used as a sort of waystation for the imported women, who are then shipped out separately across the US. Ben wants to get there before them, set up an ambush, and end the entire affair that night.

Laurel of course manages to go along with Ben on his assault, which sees him blasting from afar Cavallo and the ten mobsters he’s brought along with him. Here Ben again uses his .38, as well as a Mossburg rifle. It’s not an action-centric finale, playing more on chaos and Laurel’s fear that her brother will be killed. And Ben for his part bizarrely enough tries to take Cavallo alive, wanting to deliver him to Captain Hendricks, who will then go about the process of legally taking down Cavallo’s operation. But seriously, what kind of “Revenger” would Ben be if he didn’t kill his man – first shooting off his kneecaps and then his ear for the desired intel, and then finally blowing him away when Cavallo lurches at him with his stiletto?

The story ends with Ben once again boffing Laurel in literary-smut fashion, with the intimation that Laurel is going to be Ben’s woman…for a time. It would appear that Messmann is giving up on the ongoing storyline of the previous three volumes; as we’ll recall, Ben was also quite serious about his leading lady in the last volume, even debating at book’s end if he was going to return to her. 

Messmann’s writing is good as ever, though – at least, if you’re looking for a little literary-style stuff with your mob-busting action. But at this point, Ben Martin is not much different from Messmann’s other series character of the time, Jefferson Boone; both are presented as more worldly and sophisticated than the average man of action, prone to brooding and introspection, well-versed in history and poetry and what-all. But so far I like this series better.

The Sword Of Rhiannon (aka Sea-Kings Of Mars)

The Sword Of Rhiannon, by Leigh Brackett
No date stated (1963?)
(Original Ace edition, 1953)

First published as a “complete novel” under the title “Sea-Kings of Mars” in the June, 1949 issue of Thrilling Wonder Stories (which can be found at The Internet Archive), this Leigh Brackett planetary romance came out in paperback as The Sword Of Rhiannon in 1953, as the flipside of an Ace Double, the other side of which was Robert E. Howard’s Conan The Conqueror (aka The Hour Of The Dragon). This edition is a standalone paperback reprint. 

Unlike Brackett’s later expansions of “Queen Of The Martian Catacombs” and “Black Amazon Of Mars,” this is a straight-up reprint of the original ’49 pulp version, only with a new title and minus the illustrations (of which there were only a few, anyway, so no big loss). It runs to just a bit over 120 pages in this Ace edition, though with some very small, very dense print. The back cover compares Brackett to Edgar Rice Burroughs, and it isn’t mere hyperbole, as The Sword Of Rhiannon is basically Brackett’s version of Burroughs’s Barsoom novels. (And as for this new title, Brackett stated that Ace made the change, fearing that “Mars” in the title would scare off savvy sci-fi readers who knew there was no life on Mars…)

As for one thing that has been added to this Ace edition – that would be typos. This edition of The Sword Of Rhiannon is littered with typos, more than even the average Leisure Books publication. Indeed, this book has my favorite typo OF ALL TIME. Early in the original Thrilling Wonder Stories edition, there is the line “The women screamed like harpies.” Folks, in this Ace edition, that line appears on page 20, and it’s rendered as: “The women screamed like hairpies.” (Italics mine.) I kid you not! But that’s just the most egregious example. As mentioned, practically every page has a typo of some sort, so the copy editor must’ve really been hitting the sauce that day.

Anyway, this Brackett yarn doesn’t feature her recurring protagonist Eric John Stark; our hero is an archeologist named Matt Carse who is about as cipherlike as you could get. Seriously, we learn hardly a single thing about him, other than that he’s 35, an “Earthman” by birth, and has lived on Mars for 30 years. Apparently he lost his archeologist creds due to some tomb-raiding or somesuch. He’s got blond hair and the rugged good looks expected of a pulp hero; he’s also apparently damn good with a sword, though how he got to be that way is unexplained.

In fact when we meet him Carse is coming out of some tavern on Mars where he presumably took some illegal substances; he’s approached by a native thief, who claims to have found something almost mythical: the Sword of Rhiannon, the “Cursed One” who ran afoul of the old gods of Mars ages upon ages ago. Rhiannon’s tomb has been sought for untold eons, yet this random thief has stumbled upon it, and wants Carse’s help to sell off the priceless artefacts within. As ever Brackett captures a ghostlike, haunted Mars as the two venture to the desolate location of the tomb in the dead of the Martian night.

In the hidden tomb Carse finds a glowing orb of black energy; into this he’s shoved by the turncoat thief, who resents Carse’s unwillingness to give him a fair share of the ensuing profits. This orb turns out to be a sort of captured black hole, and long story short, Carse is shoved across the millennia – and comes out into a Mars of one million years ago. In Brackett’s solar system, Mars has an incalculably ancient history; even the so-called “New” cities, like the New Valkis in which Carse finds himself at story’s beginning (a location featured in “Queen Of The Martian Catacombs” and other Brackett yarns), are thousands upon thousands of years old.

What’s interesting about The Sword Of Rhiannon is that Brackett basically wrote about a different planet; the Mars of a million years ago is vastly different than the one Carse knows. It is an ocean-filled sort of paradise populated by beings that not only don’t exist in Carse’s time, but aren’t even remembered. Whereas New Valkis in Carse’s time was an ancient city on the outskirts of even-more-ancient Old Valkis, all of it surrounded by vast desert, “Valkis” is just Valkis here and there is ocean everywhere.

As in the incredible Stark novella “Enchantress Of Venus,” Brackett gives this ocean some cool, psychedelic touches – it’s phosphorescent, glowing white, and even has healing powers. However it burns upon initial contact. Anyway, Carse is suitably smackjawed by his trip through the ages, initially disbelieving the reality of the situation, but in true pulp fashion Brackett doesn’t belabor this too much. Within a few pages Carse is accepting of his new reality and enduring the rigors of this strange new world.

Luckily as an archeologist he’s fluent in the High Martian which is spoken here, though his accent makes others think he’s a barbarian – Brackett again paying subtle tribute to her writing hero Robert E. Howard. This different Mars has different peoples, ones Carse has never even heard of – “Halflings,” of which there are Swimmers, who are seal-human hybrids, with fine hair on their faces and bodies; the Sky Folk, who are basically like the Hawkmen of Flash Gordon; and finally the Dhuvians, aka the Serpent Men: these are hated and feared by all Martians, and they’re also the reason why Rhiannon is known as “the Cursed One,” as ages ago he taught the evil Serpent Men the science secrets of his people, Rhiannon being one of the Quiru, “hero gods who were human but superhuman.”

Brackett faithfully follows the “planetary romance” guidelines: before you know it, Carse is shackled up, alongside his new sort-of colleague, the portly thief Boghaz, who serves as the book’s comedic relief. And Brackett’s so good, the stuff with Boghaz is funny, and he isn’t the sort of comedic relief you hope gets gutted before story’s end, like for example the loser in Conan The Destroyer. Tall, brawny, blond Carse is accused of being a Khondor spy by the Jikkharans who live in this city which is part of the Sark Empire – the fact that Carse hasn’t heard of any of these places or people doesn’t much help him.

He’s conscripted into slave-duty on a Sark warship, one that’s bound to carry Ywain, daughter of the emperor, to the capital city of Sark. Ywain is one of those “bad Brackett babes” familiar from previous stories – a mega-beauty with raven hair and a malicious spirit; so evil, in fact, that a “black nimbus” seems to surround her. She wears tight black mail, showing off her incredible curves. Carse, spying her from the veritable dungeons of the rowing pit, instantly sees how cruel and vicious she is – but boy, she sure is hot. “It would be good to tame this woman,” he tells himself, a sentiment that would’ve been par for the course in the world of the pulps but which of course would trigger the overly-sensitive types of today.

Carse gets his chance when he causes a mutiny, he and Boghaz taking Ywain captive – this after Carse, as if his mind were temporarily possessed by another, has killed off the cloaked Dhuvian mentor Ywain keeps in a darkened inner room. Brackett amps the hate-lust that brims between Carse and Ywain, with Carse almost killing Ywain as well, but settling with a sock to the face that leaves her with a permanent facial scar – it pleases him that he has left his mark on her. Ywain leaves her own, later; when Carse impulsivey kisses her in “anger,” she bites his inner lip.

Another interesting difference between Brackett’s day and our own is the utter lack of sentimentalism. Onboard the war galley the Sarks keep a few Halflings, among them a pair of Swimmers and also a birdman whose wings have been broken in a typical display of Sark sadism. After the mutiny Carse and his ship of loyal followers are approached by a formation of Sky Folk; as they leave, the one on the ship with the broken wings despondently watches them fly away. As Carse and the others are busy with other stuff, the maimed birdman tosses himself into the ocean, drowning himself. If this tale had been written today, Carse no doubt would dive right in after him, pull him out, and there would follow a bunch of “Your life is worth it! You’re important!” sappiness. Instead, Carse and his fellows basically shrug and deem that the birdman’s suicide was “for the best!” 

Khondor turns out to be the country of the Sea Kings, a confederation of city-states opposed to the Sark Empire. But even here Carse can’t catch a break; the viking-like warriors of Khondor also distrust Carse, and put him through various trials. This is mostly due to Emer, the pretty, blonde, Cassandra-like sister of King Rold; Emer, who has spent so much time with the Halflings that she has sort of picked up their ESP via osmosis, instantly detects something unusual about Carse. Not only that he is from “another world,” but that he is possessed – by the Cursed One.

I’ll tell you another reason why Brackett was such a great writer: she understood the all-important pulp dictum that the bad girl is always better than the good girl. Initially I feared that Emer was going to be set up as Carse’s lady…after all, she has all the typical prerequisites, from being good-natured to blonde-haired. But she’s barely in the novel. Instead, Brackett wisely puts the focus on Ywain, with Rold’s gruff advisor even accusing Carse of being in “love” with her, due to how Carse keeps insisting that the people of Khondor not immediately put Ywain to death, like they want to.

We learn in another psychedelic-ish sequence that Carse is indeed possessed by Rhiannon, who subtly invaded Carse’s mind when Carse stepped into that black time-tunnel bubble. It was Rhiannon who guided Carse’s hand when he killed the Serpent Man on Ywain’s ship. Rhiannon, speaking through Carse, insists that he has changed his ways in the eons of his imprisonment, and wants to aid the Sea Kings in their battle against Sark, and also he wants to destroy the Dhuvians. But no one will listen to him, least of all Carse, who wants the undead Rhiannon out of his brain, posthaste. There’s some good stuff here with Emer frightened of the Rhiannon in Carse, but Ywain sort of liking it.

The finale sees the united Sea Kings about to be doomed in a battle against Sark, with Rold and his fellows taken captive. Carse pretends to be Rhiannon in the flesh, Boghaz his frightened accomplice; they steal Ywain as barter material and make off on Carse’s war galley. The men aboard are still his loyal followers, even though Khondor has sentenced him to death. More good stuff with Ywain possibly being hip to the fact that Rhiannon is really Carse – even up to admiting to “Rhiannon” that she might not’ve minded it when Carse kissed her, after all.

However, the brevity necessary of pulp sort of harms The Sword Of Rhiannon in the homestretch; Carse succeeds in getting into the Tomb of Rhiannon, finding all sorts of bizarre weapons which he hopes to use against Sark and the Dhuvians (that is, if he can figure out how to operate them!). But he is captured by the Serpent Men, who of course easily figure out that Carse is just pretending. But then Rhiannon really does assume control of Carse, and Brackett doles out the “climactic action” in like two pages, Rhiannon wiping out everyone, destroying all his weaponry (which appears to harness the powers of the sun), and basically dismantling the Sark Empire. It’s so harried that it lacks much dramatic impact, and of course it’s further harmed by the fact that our hero, Matt Carse, is sort of on mental vacation while it’s happening.

But Brackett never loses sight of the characters – the reader is as thrilled as Carse to detect that Ywain seems to have grown concerned for Carse during all this, particularly when it looked like he was about to be killed by the Dhuvians. Turns out Ywain, while she harbors no regrets for ruling her people with an iron hand, never much liked the Serpent Men, and resented her father, the emperor of Sark, for making her be so damn evil all the time. Once Sark has been defeated and the Dhuvians all killed, it’s time for Carse to go – Rhiannon has promised to show him the way. The reader is not surprised when Ywain announces her wish to go along with Carse, to his own era: the Mars she knew is now dead, and she has no desire to rule a now-powerless Sark.

Off the new couple goes to Carse’s future Mars, the desert world so familiar from Brackett’s other yarns, and in a fitting but quick finale we see that Ywain will have no problems adapting. While this is a perfectly self-contained story, I wouldn’t have minded seeing more stories with these two characters (they could’ve even run into Eric John Stark!). As usual Brackett makes you care about her characters – as mentioned, even minor characters like Boghaz, who would be annoying in most other such tales, shine with their own memorable personalities.

Brackett’s writing is as polished as ever, with that word painting she does so well; the phosphorescent sea of Mars in particular makes an impression. In fact Brackett’s writing is so good, and her world so fully realized, that it wasn’t until after I finished that I realized not much really happens in The Sword Of Rhiannon. I mean sure, the main character is thrust a million years into the past and all…but really, he’s thrown on a war galley, mistreated in various ways, and eventually bluffs his way into freedom – not once but a few times. Action stuff, as would be expected in such a tale, isn’t as constant as you might think…in fact, the cover of this Ace edition is very misleading, and likely was done for something else, as there are no bald, elf-eared characters in the entire book!

Little-known fact: This novel actually provided the inspiration for the Fleetwood Mac song “Rhiannon.” Okay, I made that up.

The ABC Affair (aka The Adjusters #2)

The ABC Affair, by Peter Winston
No month stated, 1967  Award Books

Hawks’s Author’s Pseudonyms credits this second Adjusters volume to Paul Eiden, but I’m pretty sure it’s not actually by him. This doesn’t appear to be the same author who wrote the first volume; whereas that one was clearly by Eiden, The ABC Affair suffers from pedestrian writing, a naïve protagonist who displays none of the alpha male virility of Eiden’s take on the character, and most importantly the author of this book ignores/is unaware of things stated in that previous volume.

Reportedly The Adjusters was the work of three authors: Paul Eiden, Jim Bowser, and Jack Laflin, who published the fifth and final volume of the series under his own name. I’m unfamiliar with Bowser but I’m wondering if, instead of volumes three and four, as Hawk’s has it, he actually wrote volumes two and four, trading off with Paul Eiden. For I’m 99% sure that The ABC Affair is not the work of Eiden – if it is, he must’ve written it damn fast and damn drunk. Most tellingly, that “widely-separated breasts” line Eiden uses in each of his books does not appear in this novel, so what more proof do we need?

So if I’m correct, then The ABC Affair was actually written by Jim Bowser, and if so, I’ve gotta say I’m not impressed with his work. He possesses a clunky style along the lines of Dan Streib, Ralph Hayes, and Paul Hofrichter. He also turns in a pretty tepid story, one that doesn’t take advantage of the series concept and could just be a novelization of some random TV detective show. The Adjusters as we’ll recall is the secret wing of the Edgar White Whittle corporation, referred to annoyingly as “EWW” throughout. The author of this book has a lot more Adjusters than Eiden did; in this book, there appear to be Adjusters all over the globe, their numerical designations all A-something.

Hero Peter Winston is A-2, and this time there isn’t any vagueness about Edgar Whittle’s involvement with the Adjusters wing; he’s the top boss who gives the orders. Winston still mostly reports to Vandervelle, the Dispatcher. Not appearing but mentioned this time is another Adjuster, Tucker Priest, and I’m pretty certain it was “Tinker Priest” last time – perhaps another indication of different authorship. At any rate, while Priest served as a Q-type last time, this time that function is handled by an Adjuster named Joe Sergeant.

The plot is pretty low-key. The titular “ABC” refers to the first names of the leaders of Argentina, Mexico, and Brazil, who will be attending a Western Hemisphere Conference in Chicago. A guy named Christopher Donne, who poses as a messenger of peace but really finances left-leaning revolutions and riots around the world, has abducted these three men to prevent their appearance at the conference, so as to ruin the whole affair, which would suit his plans for sowing leftist chaos in South America.

The novel is written in such a mundane, almost juvenile tone that Donne is constantly referred to as “Christopher” in the narrative. For that matter, the violence is bloodless, and the sex is strictly off-page. But “Christopher” has apparently captured these three South American leaders, and Vandervelle tasks Peter with freeing them – this after our hero has been jumped by several of Donne’s men in the opening pages. Peter uses his karate skills and a sonic noise maker hidden in his wallet to free himself, then successfully bullies the attractive young woman who “rescues” him into some sex.

Endlessly throughout the book Peter wonders what’s going on, what might happen, what did happen, and so on. We get our first taste of this as Peter questions the true motives of this young lady, Dori Ballinger, for pages and pages. She’s been hired by Donne, but might be innocent of any evil intentions. Or might not be. But she’s supposed to keep Peter distracted in bed – and Peter’s determined she’s going to do her job fully, second-thoughts or not. He basically insists she sleep with him, though as mentioned our author keeps it off page.

Another indication that this is a different author than the first one is when Vandervelle gives Peter his assignment, noting that Donne’s hot young wife, Princess Toria, is here in New York. “I’ve never met a real princess,” Peter says – but meanwhile he not only met but had sex with a princess in Assignment To Bahrein. Oh well. Anyway Princess Toria, despite much buildup, is only in a page or two of the book; rather, the author (and Peter) focuses on her assistant, Cheri Collins, whom Peter thinks is the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen (he thinks the same thing of another woman later in the book, by the way).

Cheri is the second somewhat-reluctant woman Peter hassles into sex; she wants to escape Donne, whom she refers to as a monster, and Peter begs her to come to Chicago with him to help root out the sadist. He promises her he won’t touch her, even though they’ll be sharing a motel room bed, etc. It appears this author watched a couple of the Connery James Bond movies and kept the playful sexual hassling of Connery’s 007 but failed to capture the “playful” part. Peter comes off more like a desperate-to-get-laid fifteen year old. But Cheri ends up loving it and stays with Peter for the duration, though the author doesn’t do much with her; in fact, this is the first such book I’ve read in which the female character actually realizes she’s “useless” and begins to sulk! 

Action is sporadic. Peter and Cheri drive to Chicago in Peter’s Ferrari, and they’re chased by a private plane; Peter succeeds in shooting it down but his own car is destroyed. In Chicago, Peter answers a call from the elusive Donne…and accepts his offer to come over to Donne’s hotel. This entire scene is so absurd I couldn’t believe it. Donne and his henchman get the drop on Peter, who bullshits them into letting him play “a form of Russian roulette” for the slim chance of escape. 

Putting one bullet in a .357’s chamber, Peter tells them the idea is he’ll spin the chamber, pull the trigger, and if he makes it five times out of six he can go. Donne is a sadist so he’s into it, but he insists Peter won’t leave here alive, no matter what. And then Peter goes and spins the gun and puts it to his head and pulls the trigger! Five times!! I thought he might’ve had some ulterior motive here, like a gadget hidden in the handle of the gun or somesuch (Peter uses a lot of gadgets in this one, by the way), but nope – his “plan” is exactly as promised. He hopes to literally dodge the bullet!

As mentioned, Peter Winston is pretty naïve this time around. Even Donne refers to him as a “hopeless amateur.” Even though Peter manages to escape and knocks Donne out, he leaves the supervillain alone, so that Donne too makes his own escape. Instead Peter grills a few of Donne’s henchmen, who wait back in his hotel room with a captive Cheri Collins; Peter turns the tables on them and interrogates them with a cigarette pack-sized recorder Joe Sergeant has made for him, splicing the words into a message he uses to fake out yet more of Donne’s men.

The final quarter takes place in DC, where it develops “the ABC men” are being held in a society house. Donne has ingratiated himself with the gullible movers and shakers in the jet-setting society of wealthy peace-proclaimers, chief among them uber-babe Monica Macdougal – yet another woman Peter thinks is “the most beautiful” he’s ever seen. Cheri, still with Peter, can read the signs, and knows that Peter’s moved on, and thus is desperate to prove her worth to him.

Peter scores with his third and final woman; this would be Monica, while the two are hiding in the locked-off second floor of her mother’s house. From here we proceed directly into our “action” finale, in which it develops that the ABC guys, who’ve been off-page the entire book (and stay that way), are really decoys – the real ones are safely with Edgar White Whittle. Peter leads a team of Adjusters in gas masks on an attack on the society house in which the decoys are kept, and then turns the house upside down trying to find a now-captive Cheri, Donne, and Wallach, Donne’s henchman. 

As a final slap to the face, the author doesn’t even deliver the villains their comeuppance, with Peter arresting Donne and Wallach on the final page, leaving their fates to the courts. What the hell?? But as I say Peter Winston seems to be an entirely different dude this time around, as he’s courtesy an entirely different writer...at least that’s what I think. Here’s hoping the next volume is indeed by Paul Eiden, or at least a better writer.  Love the blatant nude ass on the cover, though!

Swordsmistress Of Chaos (Raven #1)

Swordsmistress Of Chaos, by Richard Kirk
February, 1987  Ace Books
(Original UK edition 1978)

First published in the UK in 1978, Raven ultimately ran for five volumes; “Richard Kirk” was in reality two British writers: Robert Holdstock and Angus Wells. In 1987 the series was brought over to these shores, with awesome covers by Royo (and faithful to titular character Raven’s armor, believe it or not!); the original UK covers had been by Chris Achilleos, and I don’t like them as much, though the cover to this first volume clearly inspired British pop singer Kate Bush.

Raven, the heroine of this fantasy saga, is basically Red Sonja without that pesky “no sex” clause. She is in many ways a Hyborian-age Baroness; not only is she as deadly as hell, but she will screw whatever man (or woman!) she wants. And I’m happy to report these British authors aren’t shy about the juicy details – we’re not talking Baroness-level smut, but the sex in Swordsmistress Of Chaos (incidentally, it’s just “Swordmistress” in the novel itself; ie only one “s”) isn’t just fade to black sort of stuff, either. I’m also happy to report these guys consistently use “around” instead of the British-preferred “round” (ie “She wore a belt around her waist,” etc). However, the lazy bastards at Ace didn’t bother to double up the quotation marks, so we get the British-style single quotes, and Ace also didn’t bother to change the British spellings for the American market (ie the letter “u” shows up in words where it shouldn’t – these colors don’t run, baby!).

Speaking of Red Sonja, the Raven books practically take place in Robert E. Howard’s Hyboria. (Technically Red Sonja was a creation of comics writer Roy Thomas, adapting a medieval-era character of REH’s named “Red Sonya,” whose story appears in the Howard collection Lord Of Samarcand, but you get my drift…) The names of the countries are changed, but this is pretty much the same world that the Howard tales occurred in, a sort of quasi-primeval fantasy world with medieval-era armor. There are no dragons (at least not in this one), but there are various monsters and creatures, not to mention dangerous wizards and the like. A prologue and epilogue hint that Raven’s world, same as Hyboria, is a prehistorical version of our world, one that occurred before the Ice Age.

Raven when we meet her is an 18 year-old runaway from “the slavepens” of Lyand, having been abducted into slavery with her mother and father from their home country of Ishkar. Her parents were killed, and Raven was raped by the cruel Karl ir Donwayne, to whom Raven is to be given as a sex slave. Raven – who is not known as such yet – has escaped this existence, and now the slavehounds are chasing her. She’s captured by another guy and put into yet another slave chain – this one too destined for sexual slavery. A message in a dream tells her she is destined for greatness, not to mention freedom, and a raven seems to have become attached to her.

Raven is freed by the appearance of armored men, one of them a slim but muscled guy in all-black armor with a silver helmet. His name is Spellbinder, and it is he who dubs our heroine “Raven,” given the magical raven that has “chosen” her. Raven, Spellbinder says, is to become the harbinger of chaos that will disrupt this world, chaos being part of the natural scheme of things. So this is sort of like a fantasy take on Aleister Crowley's Horus, maybe? Spellbinder, who has put a spell on Raven without her realizing it, leaves her in the care of warlord Argor, who teaches her all the means of fighting and warfare. The spell makes Raven not question this treatment – not to even wonder why she has been receiving such training, nor even wonder why she was so accepting of Spellbinder just up and leaving her – for a full year.

Cover artist Royo clearly read the book, as he faithfully illustrates the armor Raven has been given – the authors describe it exactly as it appears on the cover painting, even down to the “Ishkarian sleeve-shield” on Raven’s left arm and the studded, thigh-high boots. The “slip” she wears beneath the armor is also suitably revealing, again per the cover – and her sword has that giant emerald or whatever it is on the pommel. Raven learns swordfighting, handfighting, the works, even how to use “Xandrone throwing stars,” with which she becomes quite efficient. That’s right, folks, our blonde mega-babe swordmistress also uses throwing stars.

Raven is consumed with vengeance, wanting to kill her rapist, Karl ir Donwayne, whom she learns has become a sort of general for the country of Lyand. When Spellbinder returns, finding Raven an accomplished warrior (we are informed she has fought and killed in the frequent outlaw activities of Argor’s band of fighters), the reader expects that these two will be heading out to handle the sating of said vengeance. Instead, Swordsmistress Of Chaos becomes more of a quest, taking an unexpected (and narrative-consuming) detour before finally getting back to the revenge angle…in the final pages.

But before even the questing, Raven and Spellbinder take care of another little matter – namely, the looks of burnin’ yearnin’ they’ve been throwing each other. The authors don’t get too explicit in the sex scene, along the lines of stuff like, “[Raven] cried out as he entered her,” but at least it’s there. But Spellbinder makes it clear: Raven is not “his” woman; she is free to choose (and take) any man (or woman!) she pleases. Next Raven gets to prove herself in another manner: a trial by fire. Argor and his men raid an Ishkarian merchant ship, and here we see Raven in action, hacking and slashing with her sword, dagger, and throwing stars, even using the bladed edge of her sleeve-shield. The violence isn’t too gory, but it is fairly bloody – again, these two particular British pulp authors aren’t as shy about the juicy details as some others I’ve read.

One thing these authors have in common with their pulp British kin is a tendency to word paint, sometimes to excessive lengths; the novel is rife with locales and settings which the author strive to bring to life, over the course of dense descriptive paragraphs. This unfortunately serves to work as a headwind against the initial rush of the narrative. Raven’s trained and ready for warfare within a few chapters and we’re ready for some awesome fantasy stuff, but instead we hopscotch around this fantasy world with Spellbinder. First up is a trip to a cryptic temple in which a sort of meteor is worshipped; here another disembodied voice tells Raven she has been chosen for greatness. Also here we see flashforwards of what her world will someday become, with more intimations that this is in fact our world, eons ago.

The “Stone” tells Raven that if she is to get vengeance on Karl ir Donwayne, she will first need to make an impression on the Altan of Lyand, as Karl is favored by the Altan and won’t be an easy target. To gain the Altan’s favor, the Stone recommends Raven deliver the mytic Skull of Quez, which turns out to be a magical artefact: the skull of an ages-ago Lyand ruler who ventured to the mysterious Ghostly Isles of Kharwhan (from whence Spellbinder might hail, though he isn’t telling) and died, his skull saved, imbued with magical powers. Its current whereabouts are unknown. Spellbinder grabs a boat and off the two head for Kharwhan, only for the sea to wage “war” upon them as they reach the Ghostly Isles; they are shipwrecked, and are saved by Viking-like raiders who were drawn by the raven that follows Spellbinder and our heroine.

Led by the awesomely-named Gondar Lifebane, these Vikings hail from Kragg. Gondar is a big blond bastard, and Raven thinks he’s one of the best-looking dudes she’s ever met. He wants some hot sex with her asap, claiming her as his “battle right,” having found her – he and his men were waging war on Kharwhan, only to be assailed by that sea-storm, of which Raven and Spellbinder were unwitting casualties. Raven doesn’t give it up so easily, and tells Gondar he’ll have to fight her for the honor…which basically is Red Sonja’s schtick, but so what. Gondar likes her moxie.

The narrative detours from the revenge angle. Instead we head to Kragg, stronghold of Gondar and his vikings, where Spellbinder runs afoul of Gondar’s wizard, Belthis, and where Raven fends off (sort of) Gondar’s demands for sex. They swordfight over it, and though it comes to a draw, Raven decides to do Gondar anyway – more pretty-explicit stuff here, ie “[Gondar’s] manhood filled her, near choking her” as Raven shows off her oral skills for the big lug. Gondar knows that the Skull of Quez is in the jungles of Ishkar, and he and a shipfull of men take Raven and Spellbinder there, having pledged themselves to the quest. This sequence has a Tolkein flavor as the group is attacked by Beastmen, Orc-like creatures descended from various animals. There’s also more gore here in the frequent battles, and it’s all nicely done.

The authors pull some unusual narrative stuff…like when Spellbinder engages the Beastman ruler in magical combat for possession of the Skull, and they render the entire friggin’ sequence off-page. But he gets it, and after bidding goodbye to Gondar and his men our heroes finally go to Lyand, where we get back on-track with the revenge angle that started the book. Spellbinder is imprisoned due to magic courtesy Belthis, the ousted wizard from Kragg; Belthis puts a spell on the Altan (a foppish sort) and the Altana (the Altan’s co-ruling sister, a mega-babe sort) to make them think Spellbinder is evil.

For whatever reason, Belthis leaves Raven alone…and meanwhile Raven can’t help but notice the hot looks the Altan’s sister is throwing her. Her name is Kyra, and she makes her interests known – and Raven decides to take advantage of said interests so as to free Spellbinder, what the hell. The ensuing sex scene is the most explicit of all: “[Raven] lapped with a hunger she had not known she owned at the sweet, thrusting core of Kyra’s being.” The Swordsmistress of Chaos, baby! The two dine at the Y all night long, and into the morning as well, and the fact that Raven’s entire reason for engaging in this sapphic tryst is brushed under the narrative carpet is something we’ll just overlook; for as it is, the Altana doesn’t even do much to help Raven.

Rapist Karl ir Donwayne is finally given his comeuppance, and it’s pretty anticlimactic; Donwayne barely even appears in the novel. Raven guts him and literally emasculates him with her fancy swordfighting and star-throwing skills. The end is pretty damn rushed, in fact; like how we’re informed in passing that Raven screws the guy who guards the gates to the city, so he’ll watch over her horses and armor. Even more oddly, we’re informed that Raven, our heroine, threatens the lives of this guy’s wife and kids if he blabs on her! But this isn’t even the messiest part; when Raven and Spellbinder make their escape, using the powers of the Quez Skull for distraction, the authors already have them in their armor – even though, just a page or so earlier, we’ve been expressly informed that Raven is not wearing armor. So clearly the book suffered from this dual-author writing, as it would appear these guys didn’t check each other’s work.

I wonder if the authors envisaged this as the start of a series; the novel ends with Belthis still at large and the Quez Skull destroyed. Raven’s vengeance has been sated, which leaves the future an open book for her. She and Spellbinder ponder what to do next. Meanwhile, the epilogue takes us back to that post-Ice Age opening, in which the “old cripple,” who appears to be none other than Spellbinder, bemoans again the nightmare which has become of the world, and how the heroes of the past, like Raven, are long gone. Particularly interesting are his comments about the “last armageddic battle,” which he doesn’t believe Raven survived, though he mentions that Gondar did.

Anyway, Swordsmistress Of Chaos detours from where it initially seems to be headed, but like the old saying goes, the journey is more fun than the destination, so I can’t complain. I got the entire series (in the Ace edition) for a pittance and look forward to continuing it.

Death Merchant: An Insider's View

A big thanks to Allan Wood of the World of Joseph Rosenberger blog for transcribing this and emailing it to me, for publication here – this is the Death Merchant writeup by Joseph Rosenberger that ran in the back of some Pinnacle books in the early ‘80s. It was originally written for a free flyer Pinnacle gave out in bookstores in the late ‘70s (hence the “1978” reference toward the end of the piece).

 Anyway, please enjoy this “insider’s view” into the Death Merchant, courtesy the fevered imagination of its (possibly insane) creator!

An insider's view of the Death Merchant— A master of disguise, deception, and destruction . . . and his job is death. 

DEATH MERCHANT 

by Joseph Rosenberger 

One of Pinnacle's best-selling action series is the Death Merchant, which tells the story of an unusual man who is a master of disguise and an expert in exotic and unusual firearms: Richard Camellion. Dedicated to eliminating injustice from the world, whether on a personal, national, or international level, possessed of a coldly logical mind, totally fearless, he has become over the years an unofficial, unrecognized, but absolutely essential arm of the CIA. He takes on the dirty jobs, the impossible missions, the operations that cannot be handled by the legal or extralegal forces of this or other sympathetic countries. He is a man without a face, without a single identifying characteristic. He is known as the master of the three Ds—Death, Destruction, and Disguise. He is, in fact and in theory, the Death Merchant. 

The conception of the "Death Merchant" did not involve any instant parthenogenesis, but a parentage whose partnership is more ancient than recorded history. The father of Richard Camellion was Logic. The mother, Realism. 

Logic involved the realization that people who read fiction want to be entertained and that real-life truth is often stranger and more fantastic than the most imaginative kind of fiction. Realism embraced the truth that any human being, having both emotional and physical weaknesses, is prone to mistakes and can accomplish only so much in any given situation. 

We are born into a world in which we find ourselves surrounded by physical objects. There seems to be still another—a subjective—world within us, capable of receiving and retaining impressions from the outside world. Each one is a world of its own, with a relation to space different from that of the other. Collectively, these impressions and how they are perceived on the individual level make each human being a distinct person, an entity with his own views and opinions, his own likes and dislikes, his own personal strengths and weaknesses.

As applied to the real world, this means that the average human is actually a complex personality, a bundle of traits that very often are in conflict with each other, traits that are both good and bad. In fiction this means that the writer must show his chief character to be "human," i.e., to give the hero a multiplicity of traits, some good, some bad.

At the same time, Logic demands that in action-adventure the hero cannot be a literal superman and achieve the impossible. Our hero cannot jump into a crowd of fifty villains and flatten them with his bare hands—even if he is the best karate expert in the world! Sheer weight of numbers would bring him to his knees.

Accordingly, the marriage between Logic and Realism had to be, out of necessity, a practical union, one that would have to live in two worlds: the world of actuality and the world of fiction. This partnership would have to take the best from these two worlds to conceive a lead character who, while incredible in his deeds, could have a counterpart in the very real world of the living.

Conception was achieved. The Death Merchant was born in February of 1971, in the first book of the series, Death Merchant.

This genesis was not without the elements that would shape the future accomplishments of Richard J. Camellion. Just as a real human being is the product of his gene-ancestry and, to a certain extent, of his environment during his formative years, so the fictional Richard Camellion also has a history, although one will have to read the entire series to glean his background and training.

There are other continuities and constants within the general structure of the series. For example, it might seem that the Death Merchant tackles the absurd and the inconceivable. He doesn't. He succeeds in his missions because of his training and experience, with emphasis on the former—training in the arts and sciences, particularly in the various disciplines that deal not only with the physical violence and self-defense, but with the various tricks of how to stay alive—self-preservation!

There are many other cornerstones that form the foundation of the general story line:

 Richard Camellion abhors boredom, loves danger and adventure, and feels that he may as well derive a good income from these qualities. The fact that he often has to take a human life does not make him brutal and cruel.

 Richard Camellion works for money; he's a modern mercenary. Nevertheless, he is a man with moral convictions and deeply rooted loyalties. He will not take on any job if its success might harm the United States.

 The Death Merchant usually works for the CIA or some other U.S. government agency. The reason is very simple. Richard Camellion handles only the most dangerous projects and/or the biggest threats. In today's world the biggest battles involve the silent but very real war being waged between the various intelligence communities of the world. This war is basically between freedom and tyranny, between Democracy and Communism. 

(The Death Merchant has worked for non-government agencies, but he has seldom worked for individuals because few can pay his opening fee: $100,000. Usually, those individuals who could and would pay his fee, such as members of organized crime, couldn't buy his special talents for ten times that, cash in advance.)

 The Death Merchant is a pragmatic realist. He is not a hypocrite and readily admits that he works mainly for money. In his words, "While money doesn't bring happiness, if you have a lot of the green stuff you can be unhappy in maximum comfort." Yet he has been known to give his entire fee—one hundred grand—to charity!

 Richard Camellion did not originate the title "Death Merchant." He hates the title, considering it both silly and incongruous. But he can't deny it. He does deal in death. The nickname came about because of his deadly proficiency with firearms and other devices of the quick-kill. (All men die, and Camellion knows that it is only a question of when. He has never feared death, "Which is maybe one reason why I have lived as long as I have.")

 The weapons and equipment used in the series do exist. (Not only does the author strive for realism and authenticity, but technical advice is constantly being furnished by Lee E. Jurras, the noted ballistician and author.)

Another support of the general plot is that Camellion is a master of disguise and makeup, and a superb actor as well. 

It can be said that Richard Camellion, the Death Merchant, is the heart of the series; but action—fast-paced, violent, often bloody—is the life's blood that keeps the heart pumping. This is not merely a conceptual device of the author; it is based on realistic considerations. The real world is violent. Evil does exist. The world of adventure and of espionage is especially violent. 

The Death Merchant of 1971 is not necessarily the same Death Merchant of 1978. In organizing the series, we did use various concepts in constructing the background and the character of Richard Camellion. 

Have any of these concepts changed? 

The only way to answer the question is to say that while these concepts are still there and have not changed as such, many of them have not matured and are still in the limbo of "adolescence." For example: 

We have not elaborated on several phases of his early background, or given any reasons why Camellion decided to follow a life of danger. He loves danger? An oversimplification. Who first called him the Death Merchant? What kind of training did he have? At times he will murmur, "Dominus Lucis vobiscum." What do the words "The Lord of Life be with you" mean to Camellion? 

All the answers, and more, will be found in future books in the series. 

Camellion's role is obvious. He's the "good guy" fighting on the side of justice. He's a man of action who is very sure of himself in anything he undertakes; a ruthless, cold-blooded cynic who doesn't care if he lives or dies; an expert killing machine whose mind runs in only one groove: getting the job done. One thing is certain: he is not a Knight on a White Horse! He has all the flaws and faults that any human being can have. 

Camellion is a firm believer in law, order, and justice, but he doesn't think twice about bending any law and, if necessary, breaking it. He's an individualist, honest in his beliefs, a nonconformist. 

He also seems to be a health nut. He doesn't smoke, indulges very lightly in alcohol, is forever munching on "natural" snacks (raisins, nuts, etc.), and uses Yoga methods of breathing and exercise. 

Richard Camellion is not the average champion/hero. He never makes a move unless the odds are on his side. He may seem reckless, but he isn't. 

Richard Camellion wouldn't turn down a relationship with a woman, but he doesn't go out of his way to find one. The great love of his life is weapons, particularly his precious Auto Mags. 

As a whole, readers' reactions are very favorable to the series. It is they who keep Richard Camellion alive and healthy. 

The real father and mother of Richard Camellion is Joseph Rosenberger. A professional writer since the age of 21, when he sold an article, he worked at various jobs before turning to fulltime writing in 1961. Rosenberger is the author of almost 2,000 published short stories and articles and 150 books, both fiction and nonfiction, writing in his own name and several pseudonyms. He originated the first kung fu fiction books, under the name of "Lee Chang." Among other things, he has been a circus pitchman, an instructor in "Korean karate," a private detective, and a free-lance journalist. 

Unlike the Death Merchant, the author is not interested in firearms, and does not like to travel. He is the father of a 23-year-old daughter, lives and writes in Buffalo Grove, Illinois, and is currently hard at work on the latest adventure of Richard Camellion, the Death Merchant.

Balzan Of The Cat People #2: The Caves Of Madness

Balzan Of The Cat People #2: The Caves Of Madness, by Wallace Moore
July, 1975  Pyramid Books

The “Tarzan of outer space” returns in the second volume of Balzan, with comics scribe Gerry Conway again serving as “Wallace Moore.” One suspects though that series producer Lyle Kenyon Engel must’ve figured he hired the wrong author for this particular series, as it soon becomes clear that Conway isn’t really into it – and certainly doesn’t like his protagonist. Reading The Caves Of Madness also makes it clear why there was only one more volume in the series.

Picking up some short but unspecified time after the first volume, this installment takes place entirely in the titular caves, with Balzan desperately trying to find a family with either of the two winged races that live here beneath the ground. For here is the big, big problem with Balzan: rather than the Tarzan/Conan-esque badass we might want, a rebel loner blitzing his way through an alien landscape, our hero is more of a needy type, lonely and feeling like an outcast, given that he’s the only human on this planet. Poor Balzan just wants to be loved, folks. While it’s all endearing and precious and etc, it sure as hell isn’t what I want when the cover shows a wildman sporting a knife, with the proclamation “the Tarzan of outer space” emblazoned above him.

So I’m betting Engel wanted one thing and Conway delivered another. He tries to have his cake and eat it, too, for despite being a maudlin, melancholy sad sack, Balzan is also a primo asskicker, so good at fighting and killing that he fears he enjoys it too much. (Despite which the dude is knocked out four times within the first 77 pages.) Indeed, practically the entirety of The Caves Of Madness is given over to various characters shaming Balzan for his brashness, for how prone he is to make violence his first and only recourse. It gets to be tedious after a while, particularly when the novel is much too long…only 150-some pages, but some of the smallest, densest copy you’ll ever see in an old paperback…almost as tiny and dense as the print in that Bantam edition of Gravity’s Rainbow.

Displaying his brashness posthaste, Balzan’s out wandering along the beach one day when he sees a pair of winged humanoid creatures fighting a tentacled blob that’s surfaced. He rushes to the fray, his dagger and therb (ie poisoned whip) at the ready. For his heroism he’s knocked cold, and awakens in the caverns of these distrustful “wingmen” (as Conway constantly refers to them). They have wings, ruddy skin, and hooves, yet otherwise look human enough, I guess. They call themselves the Aeri, and keep Balzan a sort of guest-prisoner, in an alcove high above the rocky ground.

His meals are brought to him by a lovely gal – other than the wings, hooves, and demonic look, that is – named Ryla. Balzan is basically an anthropologist this time around. He – and unfortunately we – learns all about Aeri culture and customs; page-filling at its worst. It’s also goofy as hell. For, just after being with the Aeri for a month, Balzan is able to say things like “protective stasis cube” and the like in their language. This is of course while he’s expositing on his back story, which we already read in the previous book.

Things like this would be easier to digest in the Marvel comics work Conway’s more known for…I could see it all illustrated in Curtis Magazines black and white by John Buscema and Alfredo Alcala (my favorite pairing – though Rudy Nebres was always my favorite artist of all those black & white Marvel mags). But in novel form it comes off as silly and unbelievable. There are even goofy blunders Conway misses; early on, Balzan learns that the term “month” cannot be translated into the Aeri language, as they have no concept of it, given the two moons of the planet or somesuch. Yet several pages later, during a tribal meeting in which the ancient Aeri leader takes questions from his people, one of the women states that she has not yet waited “the thirteen months of mourning” after the death of a loved one. So do the Aeri know what a month is or not?

But the novel really is Balzan the Anthropologist; the dude is just way too interested in the people he meets, so that the violent revenge angle of the previous book is lost. I mean, I liked the first book way better than this one, and the first one was kind of a chore to get through at times. And things that should be exploited are left to the reader’s imagination – like the little tidbit of Balzan finally getting laid. As we’ll recall, he was prudish and standoffish to “hmmmm” levels in the the previous book; this time he can’t get lucky quick enough with Ryla (she of the red skin, wings, and friggin hooves, let’s recall). So is this Balzan’s first time or what? Conway doesn’t say. He also doesn’t get more descriptive than, “This time, when they kissed, they didn’t break apart.” Hot stuff!

There’s a bit of action to liven up the anthropological tedium. Another group of winged peoples attacks the Aeri, and Balzan leaps into the fray with therb and dagger, killing with glee. The Aeri are almost massacred, including women and children, and Balzan fights hard, which makes the following scene so WTF? Balzan mopes and sulks and tells a consoling Ryla to beat it. Why? Because Balzan worries that he “enjoys killing too much.” Uh, didn’t you just kill off a bunch of murderers, Balzan? It’s not like you were out thrill-killing in the caves of madness.

Anyway, these other winged people are the Mandagarr, ancient enemies of the Aeri. Conway isn’t much for description, which is humorous given how overwritten the book is, but apparently they look just like the Aeri, only with grayish skin. Balzan is eventually kidnapped by these freaks, and as if in defiance of all reader expectations, Conway writes practically the exact same stuff again – Balzan’s kept a sort of prisoner-guest and taught all about the customs of these winged people, including their language, living among them for a few months.

As if displaying the paucity of imagination rampant throughout the book, not only is Balzan again hooked up with a lovely lady (other that is than the wings, gray skin, and friggin hooves), but this lady, Cho, has a brother who distrusts Balzan – exactly the same setup as in the Aeri section of the novel. The brothers are even named similarly: Hiro and Kimo! This part too drags on, with Balzan first scoring (again nondescriptively) with Cho, who is like the town whore for the month. In what would easily trigger the sensitive types of today, we are informed that every woman in the Mandagarr community serves as a communal whore for a month or so, loving all men equally, so that there are no feelings of possession or love or what have you…and when she gets pregnant, the man responsible (if they know who it be) only helps to take care of the child, he does not act as her husband.

It’s just kinda…stupid. By this time in the previous book, Balzan would’ve fought in a few gladiatorial matches and killed some monsters. Seriously, folks, this time he sits around in these goddamn caves with their glowing fungi and listens to lots of exposition about various customs and beliefs, and then later is chastized by these same freaks for his brashness. The Aeri and Mandagarr sequences are so similar that I was kind of impressed with Conway for ripping himself off in the same book. Anyway, Balzan falls in love with Cho for some reason, and the only thing to differentiate her from Ryla is that she’s more caring or somesuch.

Balzan’s also an idiot. He can’t make up his mind if he wants to stay with the Mandagarr, if he trusts them or not, and occasionally makes breakout attempts, killing guards – something for which he’s never punished, mysteriously enough. He also has periodic run-ins with the ancient man who sits in passages beneath the living area, guarding a massive metal door – behind this is the Sl’yth, an almost mythical monster of unimaginable horror. As if again displaying that paucity of imagination, when Conway gets around to describing the creature, all he tells us is it’s a “slime-encrusted demon.” Again, you can clearly see how this guy made his living writing comics, where the visual stuff was filled in by artists. 

Balzan sulks again when he learns the Mandagarr have been hoping he’d impregnate Cho, as it develops their race is dying – as are the Aeri – and it was hoped Balzan’s seed would start new life. Uh, you all are different species, but what the hell. Cho does get pregnant…and Balzan stays with the Mandagarr…then three months later Cho loses the child. The Tarzan of Outer Space!! Seriously, what the hell kind of book was Conway writing?? But Balzan sulks some more and, after killing Hiro (not to be confused with Kimo) in a long-delayed grudge match, he makes his escape.

We’re in the homestretch now. Balzan returns to the Aeri, where Ryla first welcomes him, then gets pissed when she figures Balzan fell in love with some Mandagarr girl. Balzan sulks some more, and uses this to feed his desire for revenge. He leads a war party on the Mandagarr, unleashing the Sl’yth, which practically destroys everyone. Our hero, who massacres entire peoples. Too late he decides to stop the “slime-encrusted demon,” which, you know, he just released. Somehow along the way he finds time to kill Kimo (not to be confused with Hiro) in a long-delayed grudge match. Then Cho reveals herself to be Balzan’s true love, sacrificing herself in what Conway hopes will be an emotional moment but isn’t, because you could give two shits about any of these lifeless characters. 

The book ends with Balzan finally getting out of those damned caves and back to the surface world of whatever the hell planet he’s on. The entire novel was like a waystation between wherever Balzan was headed after the previous book, which as mentioned was vastly superior, despite also being kind of terrible. One can only hope that the next volume, ie the last one, does something to salvage this series. But boy, you sure can see why Balzan Of The Cat People only lasted three volume while Engel’s similar Richard Blade lasted for 30+ (or a couple hundred more, if you count the French editions). 

Here’s a fun review of The Caves Of Madness at Schlock Value, from whence I lifted the cover scan above.