This week’s column goes back to the bread and butter of my reading pile: mindless paperbacks that were once commonplace in racks at truck stops. These are books with covers that promise the world, but can they deliver? Let’s find out …

C.A.T. #3: CULT OF THE DAMNED by Spike Andrews — Sometimes, there’s a cover you stare in amazement. This 1983 work is one of those: a guy fighting what looks like giant rats, a girl getting naked, a sniper, trains exploding, and one pissed-off dude. Well, 90 percent of that makes it into the story, which is also the problem: You have three storylines to follow, and they combine at the end in a rather forced manner.

C.A.T. stands for Crisis Aversion Team, considered the lowest of the low on the police force, which makes zero sense since the two cops assigned to it have three major cases to solve: a photographer who dupes models into showing up at a sleazy motel, where they are raped, beaten and killed; a sniper with some extreme religious beliefs, hence the book’s subtitle; and finally, an Arab overlord being hunted by his former countrymen.

Storylines one and three get mashed up together toward the end. Sorry to ruin the surprise. The second is there just to fill up pages. Across all, at no point will the reader care for one character. The cops are one-dimensional types that are common in such adventures: you know, super cops who will jump on top of cars while chasing a suspect, and bedding any pretty lady they might come across.

This book is a mish-mash of ideas. It seems a dartboard was used to set up plot points, all the while, Andrew was counting his words so he could collect a check. On the whole, it took me a total of an hour to read, and was forgotten 30 minutes later. If you can find it on the cheap, sure, try it out. But don’t expect much.

TANK WAR V: FIREFIGHT by Larry Steelbaugh — To quote Johnny Rotten, “Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?” That sums up my opinion to this 1992 book, in which there is so little going on, you feel as if golf were a contact sport.

The cover promises what looks like a tank attacking the Great Wall of China. Well, there are a few tanks in the book, and the enemy is Chinese, but that’s about it. The book first ties up all the loose ends from the previous installment, TANK WAR IV, so you can skip those 11 pages. Then it moves into the tank command team comprised by people with the following names: Titz, Fruits, Ham and Giesla. I’m totally serious.

The tank itself is called No Slack Too. Then add to the fact they get a few new tanks called Terrapins. I know of two Terrapins the team that plays for Maryland and the two that dance in front of a train station on a Grateful Dead album.

I should have bailed when I had the chance — like, at page 12. The bulk of the book has our group of “soldiers” meeting up with a Russian group to take on a Chinese outfit in Mongolia. Add maybe a page of action, and that’s FIREFIGHT, folks.

Look, I was not expecting some detailed battle that would make Rommel wet himself. But just one little, y’know, firefight would have done wonders for my attention. I have no idea how the other entries in this series are, and if my money is at stake, I’ll never know. WAITING FOR GODOT WITH TANKS would have been a better title or, for that matter, a better read.

SWAMP MASTER by Jake Spencer — For a book that had the lamest cover of this week’s three, I thought this 1992 effort was going to be the low point of the column. In actuality, this is the best book of the bunch, to the point I ordered books two and three in the series. But I’m getting way ahead of myself.

This one has it all. Allow me a quick rundown of some of the high points. We are introduced to John Firecloud, who has been trained by ancient shaman in a post-nuked America with an over-the-top general bent on domination. Now he wants to nuke what is now called Free Atlanta, filled with white-trash mutants. The hillbillies from DELIVERANCE come off as Mensa members compared to these creatures. Then there is a Chinese female badass who is teamed up with twins named Marcus One and Marcus Two.

The book follows two plots that never meet. Since this is the first of a series, plenty of groundwork is laid, while one thread follows the crazed general who holds a dinner party with a surprise guest. The other storyline follows Firecloud and his band of merry men as they try to free a scientist from a bizarre circus run by mutants.

There isn’t much more I can discuss without dropping spoilers, especially the shocking ending. Well, it’s a shock if you don’t pay attention to everything that precedes it. In other words, the revelation is so telegraphed that you should kick yourself if you don’t figure it out. Still, I’m super-psyched to read the sequels. I also get the feeling Spencer is probably a pseudonym for a name author slumming for a quick buck. Come on, certainly someone who reads this column must know. —Bruce Grossman

Buy them at Amazon.

Because we are both fortunate and unfortunate enough not to have been born in the previous turn of the century, reprints help fill the void of what we missed (past lives excepted, if you believe in reincarnation). At BOOKGASM, that often means the pulps, and today, the ADVENTURE pulp in particular.

Has any fiction magazine been so simply and appropriately named? You now can given an educated answer, thanks to editor Doug Ellis compiling THE BEST OF ADVENTURE: VOLUME 1, 1910-1912. Through Black Dog Books, he’s rounded up the 24 best stories from its first 26 of 753 issues.

His efforts prove worthy, sure to find favor with many a pulp-hungry enthusiast, whose hands will clutch this paperback much like original readers would with each subsequent issue. Bookended by a pair of poems, the contents boast such classic authors as the refined Damon Runyon, the swashbuckling Rafael Sabatini and horror maven William Hope Hodgson. And not a single entry falls into the realm of “usual suspects” for anthologies.

Highlights for me included the pistol shots, sword duels and romantic gestures of C. Langton Clarke’s “Captain Curlew’s Atonement”; the struggle of a ruined farmer in Nevil G. Henshaw’s “A Pair of Mules”; the Gold Rush-era remembrance of Hapsburg Liebe’s “The Preacher and the Gun-Man,” complete with an abrupt surprise ending (at least for the times); seafarers’ exploration of a mysterious isle populated by “living skeletons,” with help from man’s best friends, in Bertram Atkey’s “The Hate of Ismail Bey”; and a tongue-in-cheek Western — despite robberies and other genre trappings — under the mouthful name of “That Prodigious Postscript: A Tale of the Very Woolly West,” by John Lewis.

Other stories include pirates, gunboats, soldiers, sailors, sheriffs and things cloaked in shadows. Note that these stories may be difficult to comprehend by anyone not used to pulp; words and phrases like “Hurmph!” and “’tis” and even “Talofa!” abound.

It’s a little pricey, but the 352 pages are packed tightly with words in small print (not too small, for most of us). Future volumes will continue chronologically, tackling ADVENTURE’s 17-year run. Provided this stuff is your thing, you won’t be able to wait. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

Do you miss the nautical novels of Patrick O’Brian, adventurous tales of the sea, and doughty warriors involved in daring escapades?

Can you handle a shift in ancestry and time from Englishmen fighting during the Napoleonic Wars to Spaniards wreaking havoc in the 17th century?

If so, then you should be reading Arturo Pérez-Reverte and his series of books featuring Captain Alatriste, the latest of which is PIRATES OF THE LEVANT, translated into English by Margaret Jull Costa and new to paperback.

These picaresque stories are enjoyable of their own accord, but there doesn’t seem to be very much to them outside of one tale of derring-do after another; a boys’ adventure complete with blood, mutilation and a considerable amount of deaths. Alatriste and his ward — 17-year-old Inigo, who tells the story from his point of view — gadabout on ships, stopping enemy vessels, stealing their stuff, and selling off the Moors into slavery. Everyone else is doing the same thing.

It’s all a little flat, even with the exotic Mediterranean place names. Still, there’s a market for these type of tales, and Costa’s translation reads smoothly, so if you love the old days of pulp-style adventuring on the piratical seas, then you may enjoy Pérez-Reverte’s works. —Mark Rose

Buy it at Amazon.

Just because the Cold War has been relegated to a topic of contemporary world history doesn’t mean the super-power nations trust each other. No author understands this better than John le Carré. OUR KIND OF TRAITOR, now out in paperback, returns his focus to the now fragmented but no less threatening clandestine activities of the former Soviet Union.
 
Perry Makepiece, a talented but disillusioned tutor of English literature at Oxford University, travels to the island of Antigua in the Caribbean with his girlfriend, Gail, a successful lawyer, to contemplate his future. At the resort, Perry meets a wealthy Russian businessman who calls himself Dima and challenges him to a game of tennis. Perry wins the match, but Dima is impressed with the Englishman and his beautiful lady, and immediately becomes the couple’s new best friend.

Later, during a visit to Dima’s private mansion on another part of the island, Dima gets Perry alone and, between long swigs of vodka, makes a startling confession: He is one of the world’s most successful money launderers, with operations around the globe. But lately, he’s grown resentful of those in control of his home country. He offers to defect to Great Britain and reveal all his incriminating financial secrets, providing his wife and family are looked after. 
 
Perry creates a lengthy document of Dima’s confession, which he turns over to the British Secret Service upon returning home. Immediately thereafter, he and Gail are subject to several long interrogations by the Special Projects branch of the Service. It is then decided that Perry and Gail will meet up with Dima and his family again in Paris, where Dima is expected to sign over much of his authority and, therefore, make his position — and his life — expendable. That is, unless Perry and Gail can divert Dima and his family safely to England.
 
Le Carré presents the narrative through a series of long flashbacks and scenes in the present. It’s a challenging technique, but one he has used frequently over his lengthy career. Not surprisingly, the entire details and action are presented with amazing clarity and coherence.
 
The same holds true for his characters, all of whom are impressively credible and convincing. Of particular note is Perry, and how the complications and dangers of intelligence work suddenly reinvigorates him, giving his life new meaning and purpose.
 
Then, in the midst of all this, le Carré presents a long section detailing the life and careers of the two British Secret Service agents who interview Perry and Gail, and plan their abduction of Dima. While as comprehensively detailed and revealing as the rest of the novel, it still feels like an unnecessary tangent. But there is good reason why the author takes us there, as becomes apparent when he pulls all the pieces together in the novel’s sad and surprising ending.
 
Le Carré continues to redefine the spy novel while blurring the boundaries between genre fiction and revered literature; and OUR KIND OF TRAITOR is one of his more accessible works. Like most of his bibliography, it resonates long after its conclusion, and manages to entertain while reminding us of the dangerous games played in the name of government and security. —Alan Cranis

Buy it at Amazon.

Just in time for the start of summer arrives editor Otto Penzler’s latest big-as-a-brick anthology, THE BIG BOOK OF ADVENTURE STORIES. If you buy only one piece of fiction for the season, make it this one. It’s full of awesomeness, and at 900 pages, it’s going to take you a lot of laying out by the pool or on the beach.

The press materials peg as “destined to be the greatest collection of adventure stories ever compiled,” and I would not disagree. Penzler has assembled some of the genre’s greatest authors, greatest characters and greatest —yes — adventures for an overview that stands essential, whether you grew up on this stuff or are just getting ready to.

Among the contents, you get a full Tarzan novel from Edgar Rice Burroughs, and nearly 50 other entries, from the expected classics (Richard Connell’s “The Most Dangerous Game”) to left-field surprises (The Spider’s first outing, Grant Stockbridge’s “The Wings of Kali”). Penzler organizes them among themed chapters, such as “Man vs. Nature,” “I Spy,” “Sword & Sorcery,” “Future Shock” and so on, with each containing anywhere between two and seven tales.

Consider the stellar lineup of authors: H.G. Wells, Jack London, Rudyard Kipling, Louis L’Amour, Alistair MacLean, H. Rider Haggard, O. Henry, Fritz Leiber. Not convincing enough? How about Sax Rohmer, Rafael Sabatini, Clark Ashton Smith, Damon Knight, Saki, Carl Stephenson, Edgar Wallace and Cornell Woolrich? Oh, there are many more.

Robert E. Howard is represented by a Conan story, “The Golden Snare,” and Doc Savage daddy Lester Dent by the never-before-published “Hell Cay.” Mexico’s No. 1 swashbuckling superhero appears via Johnston McCulley’s “Zorro Deals with Treason,” and a certain giant ape by way of Philip José Farmer’s oddball, satirical “After King Kong Fell.” And Gabriel Hunt — aka Charles Ardai — is the newest pup of the literary little, with a short story that was tacked on to the tail end of the HUNT THROUGH THE CRADLE OF FEAR pulp paperback from two summers ago.

This delightfully welcome BIG BOOK is put together in the same manner as Penzler’s other recent wrist-strainers, THE BLACK LIZARD BIG BOOK OF PULPS, THE BLACK LIZARD BIG BOOK OF BLACK MASK STORIES and THE VAMPIRE ARCHIVES. Own any of those? Then you know exactly what to expect: a no-brainer of a buy and a volume to treasure for generations. Seriously.

The best anthologist in the biz’s next big project? Oh, just 1,056 pages on ZOMBIES! ZOMBIES! ZOMBIES! You’ll likely nom-nom-nom that as much as you will this. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

A lot of comic books aren’t for kids anymore. With all these massive crossovers and events, a tween or teen can’t get his or her fix. Thankfully, there are books like SIDEKICKS to fill the void. Jack D. Ferraiolo’s prose novel follows the adventures of Scott Hutchinson, aka Bright Boy, a school kid who has hit puberty in a big way: having an unexpected moment captured live on TV while saving a pretty woman. Yup, Bright Boy got a boner.

The book is all about Scott dealing with his other side of life, being a superhero sidekick. It’s obvious on whom Bright Boy and his boss, Phantom Justice, are based. Even people not familiar with comics can figure it out, and the young-adult work delivers with plenty of fun reading. There are some great twists even we old-timers won’t see coming.

Of course, you can’t have superheroes without some supervillains, and that’s where the first major twist of the novel comes in. Not only does Bright Boy have to deal with a pair of them, but discovers one is a girl he goes to school with.

SIDEKICKS is a delight, with Ferraiolo having major fun poking fun at a certain version of the Dark Knight. It’s sort of like Grant Morrison for kids. —Bruce Grossman

Buy it at Amazon.

The world has had enough and finally reaped its revenge. At least that’s the feeling you get when you start BURN DOWN THE SKY from James Jaros. The readers are never told fully what happened to cause this existence people are now living. We are only given small snippets in the chapter headings, but it’s clear that climate change had the final say, and it won.

It’s only later on we are told of a virus that killed billions. In an unnamed year well after those events, we find a small community living in the wastelands, and a team of marauders are headed straight to this encampment with a prisoner: a leader of the community who was out on his own.

The marauders are there to take any supplies they need, but more importantly, any young girls who they will use for trade with a group called the Church of God. From this point on, the novel takes the idea of the post-apocalyptic men’s adventure tale and turns it on its head, with the simple idea that it focuses on female leads — namely, the mother-and-daughter combination bent on bringing back their own.

The story follows the trails of the marauders as they bring their captives to this compound of darkness, while also showing Jessie, the mother, and Bliss, her daughter, as they head into battle, so to speak. It’s an interesting focus on female heroes in what is usually a male-dominated type of fiction.

Jaros really captures the feel for a post-apocalyptic world, and his characters are not two-dimensional stereotypes or caricatures. The final sequences bristle with action, but readers will be glued throughout the entire thing. With some truly stand-out moments, BURN DOWN THE SKY never falters.

Of course, an epilogue could easily lead into a sequel of sorts. Let’s wait and see what happens. —Bruce Grossman

Buy it at Amazon.

Do you miss the nautical novels of Patrick O’Brian, adventurous tales of the sea, and doughty warriors involved in daring escapades?

Can you handle a shift in ancestry and time from Englishmen fighting during the Napoleonic Wars to Spaniards wreaking havoc in the 17th century?

If so, then you should be reading Arturo Pérez-Reverte and his series of books featuring Captain Alatriste, the latest of which is PIRATES OF THE LEVANT, translated into English by Margaret Jull Costa.

These picaresque stories are enjoyable of their own accord, but there doesn’t seem to be very much to them outside of one tale of derring-do after another; a boys’ adventure complete with blood, mutilation and a considerable amount of deaths. Alatriste and his ward — 17-year-old Inigo, who tells the story from his point of view — gadabout on ships, stopping enemy vessels, stealing their stuff, and selling off the Moors into slavery. Everyone else is doing the same thing.

It’s all a little flat, even with the exotic Mediterranean place names. Still, there’s a market for these type of tales, and Costa’s translation reads smoothly, so if you love the old days of pulp-style adventuring on the piratical seas, then you may enjoy Pérez-Reverte’s works. —Mark Rose

Buy it at Amazon.

To coincide with one of the summer’s last big movies, I’m revisiting a few series that have not been covered in a long time, and two of which left serious bad tastes in my mouth. So let’s delve into another column of guns and explosions while we bask in that testosterone fest called EAT PRAY LOVE. (To be honest, there was only one summer movie I went to and that was INCEPTION. My mind is still spinning … wondering how Ellen Page still gets acting jobs.)

DEATH MERCHANT #38: THE BURNING BLUE DEATH by Joseph Rosenberger  — How this series lasted so long is a head-scratcher. I figured it must have improved since the first , but no, this 1980 entry is just as much of a mess as the last one I read. Richard Camellion, aka The Death Merchant, is still as bland, jumping from country to country with his weapons.

For some reason, he teams up with people who can’t see through his lame disguises, as he investigates spontaneous human combustion. (As I learned watching that classic Alex Cox film REPO MAN, sometimes people just explode.) The book has no idea where it’s going, as it’s all over the map. At first, he is looking into what is killing some top scientists, only to switch gears like a trucker on speed. At one point, it focuses on some IRA cell, then the next, a group of Nazis.

Throw in some technobabble about a device right out of STAR TREK, which made me want to give up with only 30 pages to go. “ARGH!” is the best summation I can give it. I know there are supposed to be some truly out-there books in this series about aliens — and if anyone knows which ones, please tell me — and I’d much rather read that than bland Nazis who want to take over the world. You are not missing anything.

THE BUTCHER #34: THE MAN FROM WHITE HAT by Stuart Jason — I recently read a great collection by a man named Ennis Willie, who created a character that left the mob on his own terms. But that did not mean the mob wouldn’t try to rub him out. I bring up that point because at the end of the collection, Willie explains how a publisher asked him to create a men’s adventure series, but he declined. That didn’t stop the company from taking his ideas and sticking a new name on it.

Enter THE BUTCHER series. What makes this 1982 entry — the second-to-last book in the run — is that it takes the Butcher character and inserts him into a new genre. At the start, he’s offered a job by some shadowy government operation named the White Hats, to be sent to some banana republic on a mission of investigation — if some shooting happens, so be it.

The story is quite different than the cover suggests. Yes, there is a presidente figure, but the problem is he’s quite likable, and the Butcher finds no issue with him. The real problem is the presidente’s “lover,” a woman who plays both sides of the fence, but leans closer to the hardcore rainbow brigade. The Butcher is teamed up with a woman who has no clue her compatriot is a cold-blooded killer. She thinks he’s just some lawyer there to get mineral rights.

This is a muddled mess, but that is to be expected from ghostwriter Michael Avallone. The question is, why change the whole of the series with only one book left? Who knows, but this is far better then the earlier entry I covered. My suggestion is go to the real source of this character, not the carbon copy.

THE PENETRATOR #38: HAWAIIAN TRACKDOWN by Lionel Derrick — Closing out this ’80s revival is the return of Mark Hardin aka The Penetrator. As if the cover does not give away the whole plot of this 1980 entry, let me further the discussion. We find our intrepid anti-hero on the tail end of some R and R, and itching for a new case where he can get his hands dirty.

And there is nothing dirtier than a child-porn ring. Hardin tries to infiltrate one, starting off in California, but ending in Hawaii. The subject matter will make a few readers’ skin crawl, but the NINJA MASTER series has a more disturbing take on it.) Once Hardin gets on the trail of the ring, the action moves really fast, leaving some of the skeevier parts off the page. The story also finds Hardin going up against a former enemy Preacher Mann, who seems to be the head man in the porn ring, and isn’t the type to sit idle while a vigilante tears through town.

TRACKDOWN has plenty of action, with the author doing a passable job of throwing a surprise or two at Hardin. But, to be honest, they are about as predictable as a Harlem Globetrotters outcome. Still, the point is to have Hardin just go all bad-ass and beat up the scum. And there is plenty of that to go around. —Bruce Grossman

Buy them at Amazon.

Ben Bova, one of our elder statesmen of science fiction, has spent the better part of his prolific career tracing humanity’s destiny towards other planets and beyond. So THE HITTITE, a historical novel of ancient Greece, might seem strange at first.

But his truly devoted readers know that several titles in his “Orion” series involve a time traveler exploring parts of the unexplained past. This new work leaves out any sci-fi trappings and instead presents the story of the Trojan War from the point of view of an outsider.
 

Lukka, a Hittite soldier and the novel’s narrator, has been away from his home and family for many months fighting a battle against the Armenian army. When he returns, he finds his home empire ravaged by a bloody civil war. His house has been destroyed, his father murdered, and his wife and sons taken by slave traders. Desperate to find his family, Lukka gathers those soldiers under his command and sets off across Greece toward Troy.

Once there, however, Lukka discovers that the once-great city of Troy is under siege from the Archaians (Greeks). Lukka and his men enlist their services under the Archaian king, Odysseos, and quickly proves himself a worthy warrior. Eventually, Lukka learns about Helen, the stunningly beautiful woman who, it appears, is at the center of the battle for Troy. The war, which has already dragged on for an eternity, seems hopeless, until Lukka devises a plan to secretly enter the Trojan gates by means of siege tower covered by horse hides.
 
That tower and the victory it leads to become the fabled Trojan horse — one of many historical moments Bova presents stripped of its poetic or mythological embellishments.
 
For the most part, THE HITTITE is absorbing and often vigorous reading. But perhaps because of his obligation to include so many events of the period, Bova stays mostly on the outer edges of his characters’ emotions. There are fleeting moments of introspection — especially when Lukka ponders his ambiguous relationship with his wife — but overall, the story lacks the depth Bova usually brings to his characters.

Still, fans of epic fantasy, ancient Greece or historical fiction will find much to enjoy in this retelling of the battles of Achilles, Odysseos, Hector and, of course, the enigmatic Helen (trusting they make their way past the awful jacket design, which looks like outtakes from Disney’s PRINCE OF PERSIA movie). Die-hard science fiction fans will just have to wait for Bova’s next work. —Alan Cranis

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• ABLE ONE by Ben Bova
• THE IMMORTALITY FACTOR by Ben Bova

War is the theme this week, and without even realizing it, all three books take place during World War II. These are three varying looks upon that war, with a take on what Army life was like; some sheer, over-the-top action; and, to kick it off, the perfect example of a must-read.

BAMBOO GUERILLAS by Guy N. Smith — I’ve never laughed harder while reading a book in my life. Wait, it was supposed to be taken seriously? This 1977 novel is actually from the very prolific Smith, whose horror output is one of the huge influences of GARTH MARENGHI’S DARKPLACE, a show which has to be watched by one and all.

Back to the book: It’s a story of a British colonel named Carter in the time of the Japanese takeover of Malaya. Carter leads a force of multinationals to free 20 nurses who have been captured by the sadistic Col. Sika. The unintentional hilarity ensues here, because Sika is cast in the mold of sex-fiend wardens that you come across watching ILSA movies.

He actually has prisoners line up in front of the nurses, with the idea that he is going to force them all to have sex, but Sika is a lot more nuts than that. Once he has all the men reach full erection, he has his guards kill them all with knives. I’m not making this up, and it just gets even more over-the-top from there. Carter leads his men into a trap, where they are captured, so Sika now has new playthings to put through his warped sex games.

This is one giant laugh riot. Once Carter’s men are captured, you will just sit there dumbfounded. I need to stress that in no way am I slamming this book. I actually want more of this type of reading material. Hopefully, my friend will lend me more of Smith’s output, since it’s hard to come by.

THE DEAD COMMANDO by Gordon Landsborough — “Zzzzzz” pretty much sums up my experience reading this 1976 book. It’s a total snooze that promises so much from the outset, with an English squad nicknamed The Glasshouse Gang, which captures an Italian fort in an isolated part of the desert.

You know, maybe after reading BAMBOO GUERILLAS, anything I tackled next would be lukewarm. Oh, wait a minute: No, this one is a snorefest, no matter what you read before it. The characters are so one-note, and being unable to tell some of them apart does not help the cause.

It sounds great: British soldiers have to figure out a way to save themselves from advancing German troops. But the story gets so bogged down in all its “pip pip and cherio” mentality, you’ll be hard-pressed to force your way through it. No wonder this supposed series only has three books, with the first one coming out nine years before this one. There are whole passages that will make most readers put the book down and be done with it.

The whole “capturing the garrison with little to no effort” should have been the warning sign, but I forced myself on, only be treated to a long, drawn-out discussion between the man in charge and his Italian counterpart about how prisoners should be treated. Then, thankfully, the Germans start to make their move. But I was so fed up by that time, I was rooting for the Nazis. I can safely say this will be the last Landsborough book I ever read, and that includes his long list of pseudonyms, too.

THE RAT BASTARDS #11: NIGHTMARE ALLEY by John Mackie — To quote John Lyndon, ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated? I’m not slamming this 1985 book. It’s actually a great read that’s part of a much larger series. Therein lies the problem, but not in the sense that I was lost. Far from it: I pretty much picked it up right away. My problem is that is takes 150 pages of a 200-page book to finally have any action happen. Then, to top it all off, it leads right into the next book, most likely is one giant action piece, since all the setup happens in this one.

Its sort of like an R-rated version of COMBAT!, for lack of a better description. The Rat Bastards are a platoon of men who seem like a variation of the old LOSERS comic book, thrown into areas of the war where coming back might not be an option. The bulk of the book deals with some of them trying to go AWOL, with no success.

Each man fits an archetype. We have a former religious type, a former bank robber, a rich boy and a total schemer. In other words, WWII stereotypes aplenty! Still, you are totally drawn into these characters, even if you are first coming into contact with them. We also follow the platoon’s lieutenant, who makes a statement about a female officer that will bite him back big-time. I won’t ruin the joke for those who might actually have the complete, 16-book run.

Again, it’s not until much later that we finally get into action mode. The battle sequences make SAVING PRIVATE RYAN look like SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE. Bloody bodies are strewn about and grenades destroy anything that moves, and some of the team find samurai swords and use them to great effect.

Be forewarned that once all the action dies down, the book ends, which really just grinds my gears to no end, since I’ve only come across one other entry in the series. Actually, it was the first one, but it was so water-damaged, I didn’t bother picking it up. Mackie captures the whole war aspect perfectly, including the tension the men must have felt waiting for their next orders to ship out. —Bruce Grossman

Buy them at Amazon.

When you write a fictional account of a real event, you better have the facts straight. With SNOWBOUND, Richard S. Wheeler is definitely up for the challenge. The story is based on not only a real person, explorer John Charles Frémont, but one of his darkest episodes in his life.

That episode can only be described as a disaster of epic proportions. For those unfamiliar, Frémont’s fourth expedition dealt with trying to find a railway route on the 38th parallel, but got stuck in the snowy Colorado mountains. It seems Frémont was definitely a man who could not be swayed from what he thought was a brilliant idea, even if it wasn’t.

Wheeler does a fantastic job of turning this true story into a novel, with each chapter being told from the perspective of one of the party. Some were right there with Frémont throughout the excursions, while others relate the tale from the scouting group. The man-vs.nature story takes a serious dark turn later in the story when supplies are running low. Even when Fremont makes it to an area where his party can regroup, he has already lost most of them, yet he still wants to push on.

This is fantastic read, and while history buffs might know the basics of Frémont’s plight already, they’ll love how Wheeler has made it even more accessible in his retelling. This is the type of book history teachers should have their high school students read, since it gives one of the most accurate portrayals of crossing the country at that time. Add to the fact that it’s such a fast read, it won’t disappoint or be bogged down like a bulk of historical fiction.

In other words, this ain’t no WAGON TRAIN. —Bruce Grossman

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• FROM HELL TO MIDNIGHT by Richard S. Wheeler

No, with that title, this column is not turning into some weekly affirmation. I’m talking about that red, sticky stuff that flows within us all: blood. I’ve got three books to cover this week that all have blood in common, and usually, there is a lot spilled. First up is a book where once I found out who the real author was, it really pissed me off, since his writing was central to my youth.

BALZAN OF THE CAT PEOPLE #1: THE BLOOD STONES by Wallace Moore — I grew up reading tons of science fiction — good and bad, did not matter. I found it funny that the bad stuff was always more fun to read. But I’ve never come across one that truly deserves the title of “worst book ever” in any genre. Sure, I’ve covered more than my share of stinkers, but wow, did I really hit bottom with this 1975 one.

To quote the cover, Balzan is “the Tarzan of outer space.” Yeah, let’s just take whole ideas from that Edgar Rice Burroughs classic and change a few things around, like instead of apes, it will be human-like cat aliens. Then set it in space and borrow whole ideas from that other Burroughs series — you know, the one set on Mars.

BLOOD STONES is one giant turd that, as much as you try and polish it, is still a turd. First off, we get no backstory at all. Let me correct myself: You need to read the back of the book for this character’s history, since when we do come to that part in the story, it’s a giant mess of ideas. Oh, and by the way, this is the first book in the series.

Its story is predictable to the point of overuse. Anyone who has read a Tarzan book or any adventure pulp has seen it before. The village is attacked and the prisoners are taken to another land, only to be used in gladiator games. That is the whole story, just with cat people and this human named Balzan. It’s totally glossed over how he came to be with these creatures.

I’d be better off rewatching the PLANET HULK movie, which brings us to who really wrote this pile of poo. If I were to say, “What do these things in common: The Punisher, ‘The Death of Gwen Stacy’ and Balzan of the Cat People,” what would your answer be? Yes, they were all created and written by one Gerry Conway. Yes, that Conway — the comic book writer responsible for one of the landmark SPIDER-MAN stories wrote this pile of swords and sewage.

I know this review is harsh, and I tried really hard to like the book, but it was just one misstep after another. I’ve seen this plot done before and better executed. Avoid this mess and, if Conway comes across this review, please note I still love all your comic work. But wow, did this stink worse then a Porta-Potty after a tailgate at Foxboro Stadium.

FIRST BLOOD by David Morrell — Let’s tackle the elephant in the room: If you’re only familiar with Sylvester Stallone’s movie version of this 1972 novel, you are seriously missing out. There are major differences between them, especially in the endings. Even Morrell, who would go on to write the novelizations for two of the sequels, brings it up right away; it’s more about the two main characters and how they deal with their own war experiences.

First, we have Rambo — no first name is given — who is just trying to get through town. He’s a Green Beret and Medal of Honor recipient who had a major breakdown because of the Vietnam War. Then, there is Sheriff Teasle, a Korean War veteran who is going through his own issues: namely, a divorce and delusions his wife will come back to him.

From the outset, Teasle just pushes and pushes Rambo to the point that the only thing Rambo can do is be defiant. That means going straight back into town after the sheriff drives him to the outskirts. This is how it all turns ugly, and does so very quickly, especially when Teasle makes it his point to somehow control this kid, as he refers to Rambo, all because Rambo won’t bend to the sheriff’s will. It’s even pointed out by one of the sheriff’s compatriots that there is no reason to give Rambo any grief.

The story moves into a massive manhunt when Rambo escapes the police station when he has been pushed far enough, and he has a flashback to his time as a P.O.W. This is a page-turner that begs to be finished before being put down. There is plenty of action and tense set pieces throughout. Morrell knows how to keep a reader engaged, that’s for sure. It’s simply amazing how such things from the book were changed around to make Rambo some sort of underdog onscreen. Here, he’s a truly damaged person just trying to scrape by, not bothering anyone while he lives off the land. From the inner monologues that Morrell provides, we see that Rambo was not one to be cheered. The book blows the movie away by light years.

EDGE #9: BLOODY SUMMER by George G. Gilman — The problem I sometimes have with this column is that there are so many series I own, I can’t spend a lot of time on one for a while. Case in point: EDGE. I would love to just tear through the stack of them I have, but I also know one goes a long way with its mix of blood, bullets and razors on various idiots who dare come between Edge and what ever he is set on doing.

This 1973 entry is no different. Edge is on a mission to hunt down a group of bandits who stole personal belongings of a pompous Army colonel. But along the way, he has to deal with other little flare-ups. First, a brother and sister who have come from the east to get justice for their dead relative who was killed because of the colonel, who forced his troops to drag all of his belongings to Deadwood. Along the way, they were ambushed by the killers that Edge is going to gun down. Then, of course, there are the other various bounty hunters who would rather not see Edge make any progress, including a local sheriff who is more tin horn than tin star.

You do get a lot of action in this short little read. In the 160 pages, you have a Sioux uprising, various gun battles, and then the big finale. This one is not as over-the-top as some of the others; it’s probably the mellowest I’ve read so far As much as you’d like to see Edge kick the ass of certain characters, that does not come to be. I really need to just go on one major EDGE reading fest, but I’ve got tons of other Western books I want to cover. —Bruce Grossman

Buy them at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF GEORGE G. GILMAN:
• ADAM STEELE #1: REBELS AND ASSASSINS DIE HARD by George G. Gilman
• EDGE #2: TEN GRAND by George G. Gilman
• EDGE #4: KILLER’S BREED by George G. Gilman
• EDGE #6: RED RIVER by George G. Gilman
• EDGE #7: CALIFORNIA KILL by George G. Gilman
• EDGE #11: SIOUX UPRISING by George G. Gilman
• EDGE #15: PARADISE LOSES by George G. Gilman
• STEELE #17: SATAN’S DAUGHTERS by George G. Gilman

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF DAVID MORRELL:
• CREEPERS by David Morrell
• SCAVENGER by David Morrell
• THE SHIMMER by David Morrell

This week’s theme is simple: war. Books have covered this topic since the dawn of man, but this being a column covering books that, for the most part, have fallen by the wayside like so many bullet rounds, the three featured are all part of larger series. We’re featuring three types of war: One takes place during World War II, another during World War III, while the third deals with those secret wars that are staples in the men’s adventure genre. No one is going to confuse any of these with THE KILLER ANGELS, that’s for sure.

BOXER UNIT OSS #1: FRENCH ENTRAPMENT by Ned Cort — You know a better way to spend your time than reading this 1981 novel? Watch THE GUNS OF NAVARONE. Hell, who am I kidding? Even FORCE 10 FROM NAVARONE is better than this tired excuse for writing.

Take a multinational group of Army recruits, give them a code name — this one being Boxer Unit — and have them do missions no one else can, like taking out a German radar station. This story is so pedestrian and bland, most readers will have tossed it after the first 20 pages. As a bonus, this is from the publishers of the NINJA MASTER series — for those unfamiliar, think PENTHOUSE FORUM meets karate. Well, BOXER UNIT is pretty much the same, except take away “karate” and insert (heh-heh, I said “insert”) “WWII.”

All the characters are carbon copies of one another, just with different names. I swear I was waiting for all the French characters to sound like a bad Maurice Chevalier caricature. Even when there were moments of action — like this band of merry men parachuting into France — they’re written so lackadaisical, you’re like, “Did they fire guns at all?” Then there is the chance meeting with a French woman who owns a chateau and is a widow. Take a wild guess what happens — and in graphic description, no less. The story jumps around so much, I was like, “Wait, I thought they were looking for a base, not having dinner parties with the Gestapo.”

If you think I’m a might harsh, trust me, I’m being generous, since I truly felt like a chump sticking it out. It’s best left on the bottom shelf of any used bookstore that might have it. ILSA: SHE-WOLF OF THE SS was based on more facts.

THE SURVIVALIST #1: TOTAL WAR by Jerry Ahern — Wow, did this series take some truly bizarre turns later on. But this 1981 effort being the first, what I expected and what I got were two different things. First of all, yes, the book has the prerequisite of gun porn, of which Ahern has made a career. But what I did not expect was a truly gripping build-up to the start of WWIII.

It feels like a low-grade FAIL SAFE, but kept this reader glued, jumping from situation to situation, all building to when the U.S. and Russia go out in a blaze of stupidity. We actually follow multiple groups for the first two-thirds, where Ahern has a pretty brilliantly plotted story, as the President and his advisers come to grips with what is about to happen. Ahern also shows the Soviet side of things.

The war is started when Russia invades Afghanistan and Pakistan, and doesn’t back down. With its secret particle weapon, it plans on ending it all. While this is all going on, our hero of the series, one John Rourke, is just trying to get home in Atlanta to be with his family. Well, his plans get diverted when his plane is rerouted, due to the fact Atlanta has become a smoking crater.

From there, Rourke the survivalist takes on responsibility like no other. He not only lands the plane in the desert, but takes total charge of the situation. At the same time, we see his family has survived, but is attacked by bikers. The final third moves into that area of “you’ve got to be kidding me,” with Rourke coming off like like every action hero rolled into one.

ON THE BEACH, this is not. This final third sets up what is to come in the series, with Rourke heading back east to find his family. But the books truly go into wacky land quickly, with time travel and frozen people and the like. It seems Ahern had a good idea and felt as though he could milk the series for all it was worth.

KILLSQUAD #2: MISSION REVENGE by Frank Garrett — Moronic. Stupid. Inspid. Racist. These are only a few of the platitudes thrown upon this 1986 book, which, for lack of the author’s (real name: Dan Schmidt) imagination, is just a rip-off of a certain film. We’ll just call this group The Dirty Half-Dozen. I mean, were people even trying to come up with fresh ideas? Or did this just pop into Garrett’s mind: “You know what was wrong with that movie? They could have cut down the group to six.”

These armed fighters have one thing in common: They were all death-row inmates, now part of an elite fighting force funded by the CIA. Our tax dollars at work! Now, fear not if you did not read the first book in the series. The reader is caught up in the first proper chapter, where not only was that mission rehashed, but we’re re-introduced to our little group of do-gooders: a former KKK member, a bank- robbing murderer, a drug smuggler, a boxer, a German rapist and the obligatory ice-in-the-veins hitman, all led by a guy called The Hangman, who is one part Lee Marvin and all parts asshole.

This group is sent on missions with the chance they won’t be coming back alive, which is why the CIA is using the cream of death row. The mission this time deals with a whacked-out religious sex cult led by a reverend. There’s also a group of Russian agents or diplomats – Garrett can’t seem to make up his mind which. We follow the the happy-go-lucky sinister six as they attack the rev’s compound, but I could not keep track of anyone, since character development or even distinguishing differences are tossed aside.

It literally took no time to read, and was pretty much forgotten once all said and done. It’s totally un-PC, which makes it all the better, because there would be no way Garrett could get away with certain passages today, such as his references to seeing only very white teeth in the darkness. On top of that, there’s head-shakingly bad dialogue on top of passages of brutal action which would make Michael Bay’s head spin. This is one of those paperbacks which seems like it’s fun, until you’re finished and you ask, “Why did I bother?”

Next time: When Hollywood screws up, we all suffer. —Bruce Grossman

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OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF JERRY AHERN:
• THE SURVIVALIST #12: THE REBELLION by Jerry Ahern
• TRACK #3: THE ARMAGEDDON CONSPIRACY by Jerry Ahern

As I’ve mentioned before, I have long been associated with the world of comic book media tie-in writing, or what the layman calls “novelizations.” I wrote my first one in 1978, at a time when, as reading some of the material today might suggest, I had no business writing a grocery list, much less 50,000 words of story. But that’s neither here nor there, because in the very same series in which my novels appeared, there were nine other titles, some of which were pretty good.

Published between 1978 and 1979 by Pocket Books, these 11 books are known, collectively, as the Marvel Novel Series, beginning with the Spider-Man novel MAYHEM IN MANHATTAN by Marv Wolfman and Len Wein, and ending with my own effort, SPIDER-MAN AND THE HULK: MURDERMOON — an effort to read, that is … and that officially ends the self-deprecating humor.

I did another one in there, too: SPIDER-MAN: CRIME CAMPAIGN, number 8 in the series. Marv also wrote, as a solo effort, THE FANTASTIC FOUR: DOOMSDAY (#5), but it was strictly as a team that he and Len packaged the entire series. These books featured some lovely covers, by the way, many by the talented Bob Larkin (three out of the four featured herein are his, the exception being DOOMSDAY, which is a Pete Ledger painting over a John Buscema illustration.

Marv was one of the new wave of talent that swept into comics in the late 1960s and early 1970s, along with a host of other writers, including Wein, Denny O’Neil, Gerry Conway, Mike Friedrich, Gary Friedrich (no relation) and others. He’s written every major character from Superman to Spider-Man, and has served as editor-in-chief at Marvel Comics and Warren. He created The New Teen Titans, Deathstroke the Terminator, Vigilante, Blade and many other characters, and has also written animation, TV, kids’ books and big-boy books, including novelizations of his classic 1985 comic series CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS (in 2005 and on which, in a case of the shoes being on the other feet, I was editor this time) and the 2006 movie SUPERMAN RETURNS. He currently writes VIGILANTE for DC. You can check out more of Marv’s stuff at marvwolfman.com.

I e-mailed him a while back to ask him to think back to the thrilling days of yesteryear and the Marvel Novel Series, as well as some insight into his current writing. Here’s what he had to say.

BOOKGASM: How were you and Len chosen to package the Marvel novels, and who picked the lineup of characters?

WOLFMAN: I don’t remember how we were chosen, but Pocket Books asked us to write the first Spider-Man novel in something like 30 days. If I recall, I wrote the first draft and Len the second, which was the only way it was possible to do. After we finished, we were asked if we’d like to write all 12 books. We wanted to, but the money was awful, so we turned it down. They hired another writer to do the second book, but after they got it, they called us and said they’d meet our price if we took it over.

Paul Levitz, who was then an assistant at DC Comics — he’s publisher and president today — played cards with us and, though much younger than us, a better businessman. He said we should package the novels and not necessarily write them if we didn’t want to. Writing them ourselves, the schedule would have been brutal, so we took Paul’s advice, told Pocket we’d package the books instead and they agreed. We had eight days for the next book, so I wrote that while we assigned the rest, all based on what we knew to be Marvel’s top characters at the time.

BOOKGASM: What were your prose credentials prior to these books? Did you have ambitions to write prose, or was this one of those “Why not?” projects that writers fall into every so often that reveal a new skill or comfort level?

WOLFMAN: I had written one novel before, for Byron Preiss (WEIRD HEROES #5: DOC PHOENIX: THE OZ ENCOUNTER, with Ted White, 1977). Len had not written any. I didn’t have a great ambition then to write prose, because I didn’t think I’d be good at it. I was essentially a dialogue writer — comics are mostly dialogue, at least the part the reader is aware of — and was intimidated by prose because I was a reader of Bradbury and others who were so brilliant. But we were young and foolish and agreed to do it so there would be good superhero novels. We hadn’t read any good ones before.

BOOKGASM: Did you have a goal in mind for the series as a whole or, knowing the business as I do, was it just a nonstop treadmill getting these things produced and out the door?

WOLFMAN: Your question answers it. With FANTASTIC FOUR: DOOMSDAY, I had eight days to write it. After that, a book had to be done every 30 days. For beginners like us, it was a treadmill set to warp speed.

BOOKGASM: How did you guys decide which books to write yourselves and how was the workload divvied up on the collaborations?

WOLFMAN: Len wasn’t that interested, if I recall, in writing a book himself. But we sat down and made the decisions together — then, once I was done with FF, we split the editing. We did have to pitch in and write about a third of one of the books because, I think, it hadn’t worked out.

BOOKGASM: How do you approach writing a novel vs. writing a comic book or long story arc?

WOLFMAN: It was interesting. With the FF, the one I did on my own, I started the book with the origin of the FF, wrote about 30 pages, decided their origin made no logical sense and trashed all the pages, then went back and sluffed off their origin in a few lines and spent the time concentrating on Dr. Doom. I realized what worked with pictures didn’t work with prose, and therefore, had to aim the novel toward what I thought could work that way and their origin couldn’t, or at least I didn’t have the skill to pull it off satisfactorily.

I also realized you couldn’t concentrate on action as you did in all Marvel comics of
the time. You had to write the characters. It was a real learning process, even as I was rushing through it, hoping I wasn’t mangling the entire English language as I did it. There was no time for rewrites, and because of the deadline, I made up the entire plot as I was going along, so I wasn’t always sure if it was coherent.

Len was making corrections, but for some reason, they didn’t use them, which might explain why I’ve never read the printed book. Working on a computer like I do today, it would have been much easier and I could have corrected lines as I wrote them, but I didn’t have time to do that while typing as fast as I could. I needed the backup corrections to take what was being vomited out of my typewriter and turn them into real sentences. Alas, that never happened.

But I learned a lot. You really did have to see comics and novels differently, and as I wrote, I think I may have gotten fractionally better at that. But at the end, I swore that I would never write another book unless I had the time and the talent to do it well. I didn’t write another novel for 26 years, because I felt my prose writing would pale in comparison to everything else being published. Every time I thought about it, I backed away in fear, until I was assigned a novel and realized I had to face that fear.

Also, not every comic character should be done in prose. One can do a great Spider-Man novel, for example, but it could almost never be as good as a great Spider-Man comic. Spidey is one of those characters who is so visual in his core concept that prose doesn’t enhance him. The Fantastic Four would be the same. Some comic characters cry out for original prose novels, however. Batman would be great, because you could really write dark noir. A few of the characters I’ve created would also work well in prose, but not all of them. Most of the Teen Titans characters wouldn’t be enhanced in prose, for example. Raven might be the one exception.

BOOKGASM: Ron Goulart used a pen name, Joseph Silva, on CAPTAIN AMERICA: HOLOCAUST FOR HIRE. Any special reason for that?

WOLFMAN: I really don’t remember any of the stories; we were working too fast. I believe several writers used pseudonyms because they had other contracts or that they also had to write so fast, they didn’t want the work held against them. I actually think all the books were fine, and some were really excellent.

BOOKGASM: Eleven is an odd number. Was there supposed to be a 12th?

WOLFMAN: There was one novel more novel, written by the late science-fiction author, cartoonist, photographer, etc. Wiliam Rotsler, that was never published. He wrote a Silver Surfer novel, and it was excellent, but it was decided that nobody but Stan Lee could write the Surfer, and the book never was published. But Bill had done a great job, so it’s a real shame.

BOOKGASM: What comic book prose have you done since? If you could write any novel featuring any comic book character, what and who would it be?

WOLFMAN: I’ve written a few more novels, including the novelization of SUPERMAN RETURNS and a novel based on my series, CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS. It’s not strictly a novelization; it’s 75% an original story. I was absolutely thrilled when SUPERMAN RETURNS won the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers Scribe award for best novelization, because it made me realize that maybe my prose didn’t suck as much as I feared it would.

It’s such a daunting field to work in, because so many of the writers I absolutely admire are brilliant, and I feel that I’m only just beginning. But now, instead of running from writing prose, I’m truly loving doing it and want to do a lot more.

As for what character would I love doing? I’d love to do a original story of Superman. I’d also love to do novels on some of my own characters, like Deathstroke, Vigilante and Blade. I think they would work wonderfully in prose.

Next time: Veee. —Paul Kupperberg

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The gold I’m speaking of is Fawcett Gold Medal books — a line of novels that are highly sought after and well worth reading. They’re a who’s who of crime authors, with the added bonus of always having great covers. So let’s see if this is truly a gold mine or just fool’s gold.

ALWAYS LEAVE ‘EM DYING by Richard S. Prather — Another entry in the long-running series of Shell Scott mysteries is this early 1954 one. Shell is hired to find a girl named Felicity Gifford, who has hooked up with a bizarre cult run by a man named Trammel. Now, for anyone who has read Jonathan Latimer’s SOLOMON’S VINEYARD — aka THE FIFTH GRADE — take a wild guess who else has read it. That’s right: Prather.

I’m not saying this is a direct rip-off, but there are way too many ideas that both share. Prather at least puts enough of his own ideas into this story that it might just be a coincidence. Anyway, Shell starts his investigation where Felicity worked, and the trouble starts. She worked at Greenhaven Hospital — anyone want to guess what kind of hospital it is? Here’s a hint: There are very large men who work there and some patients like to play tennis with invisible balls.

Shell’s downfall is being friendly to a patient to the point that the doctors think he is a new admission, so they drug him and crack his skull. It only gets better for the readers from here, since Shell tries to escape, only to stumble upon a dead body being carried out by the head doctor. But also he witnesses the death of the cult leader in a dramatic fashion, only for this guy to come back to life three days later. Shell has to not only prove he is not crazy, but solve the missing person case, which has a lot to do with this supposed sex cult.

Sorry, folks, but the sex is barely touched upon — another in the long line of Gold Medals promising titillation, but never delivering. But I knew going in this would be tame. This being a Shell Scott story, of course it’s hinted at the end that Shell is about to get it on. I mean, did any of his books not end that way? Prather is a fun read throughout, even when Shell figures it all out, but still leaves the readers guessing, which is sort of frustrating. But I’ll keep going back since it’s like a treat that goes down so well.

SUDDENLY BY SHOTGUN by Norman Daniels — I went into this 1961 novel flying blind, since it was sent to me by one of my fellow contributors. The story opens with a funeral for a young, attractive, famous actress named Roxanne Royal. We follow Jordan Mace, who works in the netherworld of Hollywood.

He’s a troubleshooter and a hired man for Desmond Cabot, whose interests seem to be in the criminal world. It’s never spelled out for the reader, but enough hints are given, especially when Mace is pulled into a police station for getting into a fight, only for all charges to be dropped once Cabot is contacted.

But that is nothing for what lies at the center of this tale: the reveal early on that Roxanne is still alive. It was her stand-in who is dead, thanks to a shotgun blast to her face. But why would Roxanne not make it known she is still alive? That is what drives the story, with Mace falling head over heels for her, and Cabot pulling strings the whole time.

Daniels’ style is just breezy enough for a super-quick read. It’s sort of a proto-Carter Brown, with the idea of these troubleshooters running around Hollywood, fixing all these little incidents. If you can find this book at a cheap price, take a chance on it. It’s not going to be one that will tax your time, and it delivers in spades at the climax.

THE TERRORIZERS by Donald Hamilton — This 1977 book is the last of the taut and tight Matt Helm adventures. We wouldn’t get another Helm adventure until five years later, in a super-sized read. This story is a bit of a departure for a latter-day Helm, since it opens with the reader finding out Helm has amnesia and has no recollection of the past six months. He’s supposedly engaged and living in Seattle, but why is he in Canada and everyone seems to know better?

At the start, Helm acutely finishes his assignment of a killing bush pilot Herbert Walters. The problem is that Helm killed him in mid-flight, causing a plane crash and his new case of amnesia. This information is slowly doled out to the reader. But once Matt gets a phone call from Mac, whom he does not recognize, that is when the major trouble starts. Namely, Helm being shanghaied to another hospital of sorts where the name of the game is torture and information extraction.

Anyone who has read any Helm books before know full well they are messing with the wrong man, which becomes quite apparent once he not only knocks out a guard, but kills him without realizing his own power. There are plenty of twists along the way in this gripping adventure, including Helm dealing with some homegrown terrorists who are bomb-happy. Not even those who never read a Helm novel before will be lost, and new fans will be on the hunt for all the other ones.

Next time: Essential reading. —Bruce Grossman

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OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF DONALD HAMILTON:
• THE AMBUSHERS by Donald Hamilton
• THE BETRAYERS by Donald Hamilton
• THE DEVASTATORS by Donald Hamilton
• THE INTERLOPERS by Donald Hamilton
• THE INTIMIDATORS by Donald Hamilton
• IRON MEN AND SILVER STARS edited by Donald Hamilton
• LINE OF FIRE by Donald Hamilton
• THE MENACERS by Donald Hamilton
• THE MONA INTERCEPT by Donald Hamilton
• MURDERERS’ ROW by Donald Hamilton
• NIGHT WALKER by Donald Hamilton
• ON GUNS AND HUNTING by Donald Hamilton
• THE POISONERS by Donald Hamilton
• THE RAVAGERS by Donald Hamilton
• THE RETALIATORS by Donald Hamilton
• THE REVENGERS by Donald Hamilton
• THE SHADOWERS by Donald Hamilton
• THE TERMINATORS by Donald Hamilton
• TEXAS FEVER by Donald Hamilton
• THE VANISHERS by Donald Hamilton

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF RICHARD S. PRATHER:
• DANCE WITH THE DEAD by Richard S. Prather
• DIG THAT CRAZY GRAVE by Richard S. Prather
• JOKER IN THE DECK by Richard S. Prather
• THE PEDDLER by Richard S. Prather
• THE SHELL SCOTT SAMPLER by Richard S. Prather
• THE SWEET RIDE by Richard S. Prather
• WAY OF A WANTON by Richard S. Prather

Scouring out the weekly singles scene … in comics!

I’m going to assume ULTIMATUM is one of those company-wide “event” storylines that confounds all but the hardcore Marvel reader. ULTIMATUM: FANTASTIC FOUR REQUIEM #1 is a single-shot offshoot of that, and while it’s obviously tied to a slew of previous events (which it recounts in a big block of text on the first page), it does a mostly good job of standing all by its lonesome. Things within the FF are not well, starting with the death of Sue and Johnny Storm’s father. This threw me for a bit, because he looks about as old as they. Sue and Reed Richards aren’t even speaking to one another, and Ben Grimm is thinking of joining S.H.I.E.L.D. The dysfunction is appreciated, so thanks, Joe Pokaski, Robert Atkins and Mark Morales — your story about their loss is our gain.

But ULTIMATUM: X-MEN REQUIEM #1 doesn’t work so well all on its own. Lots of the X-Men are dead — like, lots — and all laid out on a field. Survivors like Kitty Pryde, Rogue and Iceman show up to pay their respects, but they’re interrupted by the villains Sabretooth, Mystique and a hulking mass known as Assemble (he’s new to me). A fight breaks out, naturally. Then the issue is padded with page after page of needless obituaries for fallen X-ers The Beast, Dazzler, Nightcrawler, Professor X, Angel, Cyclops, Wolverine and others. Ben Oliver’s art is just fine, all in a blue hue courtesy of Edgar Delgado. Perhaps Aron E. Coletite’s script makes sense in the grand scheme of things that is ULTIMATUM, but not as a standalone.

J. Michael Straczynski continues updating old Archie Comics heroes for DC with THE RED CIRCLE: INFERNO #1. One thing I liked right off the bat is how The Hangman’s physician alter ego appears at the beginning, thus linking that one-shot to this one. Inferno is a guy who wakes up in the hospital, and finds — when someone tries to kill him with machine guns — he has the power to erupt into a ball of flame, à la The Human Torch, but with the rage of The Hulk. The Hangman then appears in full costume to try to contain him. Greg Scott’s art is appropriately moody, and looks terrific in all the fiery shades of orange. The final page sets the stage for the appearance of …

… THE RED CIRCLE: THE WEB #1. Here, Straczynski introduces us to John Raymond, a wealthy heir to his father’s fortune, despite being somewhat of a screw-up. He tries to make up for that by moonlighting as spidery crimefighter The Web. His outfit is ridiculous-looking, but his modus operandi is rather unique: He takes on injustice only when told to, via victims dropping him a line on www.summontheweb.com. He takes his job a little more seriously when his hippie-ish peacenik brother is kidnapped and held for ransom. The Web makes for a nicely conflicted hero, thus overcoming the unlikability of his true identity. Roger Robinson draws him like a classic superhero.

Guess who’s 600? CAPTAIN AMERICA #600, a giant-size tribute to the star-spangled do-gooder, new and old. Anchoring the anthology issue is an Ed Brubaker-scripted story about what happened “One Year After” Cap was killed during the superhero Civil War. It looks in on a number of people, both friends and foes, to see how his passing has affected them. Roger Stern’s “In Memoriam” does the same thing, albeit with only two pals, but none of the emotional restraint; it’s a bit maudlin. Other, more effective backup stories entail a collector of Cap memorabilia, a Stan Lee tale from 1942 in which Cap and Bucky take on the Red Skull, and an Alex Ross-painted origin retelling. Joe Simon provides a brief essay on the character he co-created, and every CAPTAIN AMERICA cover is reprinted, in eye-straining thumbnails.

You can get even more Captain America in Marvel’s ALL WINNERS COMICS 70TH ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL #1. The period piece by Karl Kesel and Steve Uy focuses on the exploits of Cap, Bucky, The Sub-Mariner, The Human Torch, Toro, Whizzer and Miss America — a post-World War team, even if they aren’t exactly how the press portrays them. In the back half, get some vintage Cap with a 1941 prose short story by Stan Lee and illustrated by Jack Kirby; and a 1944 yarn in which Cap and Bucky take on — yes, again — the Red Skull in another wonderfully dated, action-packed adventure. A couple of old house ads round up the package, including an opportunity to become one of Cap’s Sentinels of Liberty, badge included, for only a dime. (Don’t send it in, dummy.) —Rod Lott

I think someone’s trying to pull a fast one over on me. THE CATERER #3 purports to be a reprint of an ahead-of-its-time comic book from the ’70s, except that it feels too ahead of its time, know what I mean? Jeff Lint is credited as its creator, supposedly a cult sci-fi author, albeit one who doesn’t show up on the excellent Fantastic Fiction database. So I’m officially calling BS on it.

That said, whether it’s the hoax I strongly suspect it to be, it’s still absolutely hilarious — a silly, subversive work and Pop Art parody. It doesn’t make a lick of sense, but nor does it need to, as being one long non-sequitur is all it aims to achieve. Somehow, it surpasses even that.

The title refers to our “hero,” a college student named Jack Marsden, aka The Caterer, even though we never see him catering anything, unless someone ordered a knuckle sandwich. He rants and raves, visits a graveyard, eludes a sheriff, hallucinates about goats, captures some hens, battles a bear, crashes a car, attracts gunfire and becomes — in his mind, at least — the scourge of the vampire classes, all within 26 pages under the story title of “Dial I for Inconvenience.”

Lint — whoever he is — has nothing if not crack comic timing. The sheriff wonders what The Caterer is doing now, and the very next panel is void of words, showing a smilin’ Jack present a coiled snake in the palm of his hand to an attractive young lady.

Jack’s dialogue is so weird, so off that a red flag was immediately raised. On page 1, he’s ordering a coffee pot in the shape of a severed head. Hell, that’s just the first panel. Consider these later lines: “Udders ain’t so bad, professor. You should try ‘em sometime, if your friends will let you. Know the fun. Know the fun. Know the fun,” or “Pete! I’d like you to meet Carol. She’s my hostage for Christmas.”

He’s not the only one who gets off good lines. Quoth blonde babe Kate, “Christ! Sheriff, did you kick me in the face? I feel terrible.” Or said sheriff: “Sit down young lady, and begin your education. We’ll learn about corn fries today.” Even the comic’s narrator, who writes during an intense scene of action in which many bullets are exchanged, “Nothing of interest occurs for the next hour.”

With a pull-out poster, a cover template ripped off from the Marvel era, and (fake) ads touting chintzy toys and T-shirts, THE CATERER certainly did its homework in appearing to be an actual comic from the ’70s. But — y’know — one that actually makes you laugh out loud. I don’t even think HOWARD THE DUCK could do that today. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Floating World Comics.

Although pulp as a format may be long gone, pulp as a genre will never die … at least as long as it continues to be cared for, in good hands like those of Joe R. Lansdale and Keith Lansdale. The father/son team has a strong hold of the editing reins of Subterranean Press’ SON OF RETRO PULP TALES, a sequel to the 2006 original.

‘Tis fitting the elder Lansdale open the collection of 11 stories, covering everything from Westerns and jungle exploits to cold-blooded revengers. His “The Crawling Eye” is the weirdest — and arguably the best — of them all, with a well-armed reverend befriending a presumed half-wit kept caged in the aptly named town of Wood Tick. Involving rancid horsemeat and dimension-hopping monsters, it’s a joy to read, with dialogue as brisk as it is biting.

Christopher Golden goes soft on us — in a good way — with “Quiet Bullets,” a kindhearted ghost story (no, such a thing is not an oxymoron) about a fatherless, poor boy who finds the spirit of a cowboy haunting his home. It’s a sad tribute to how little a kid can feel in such a big, bad world.

David J. Schow’s “A Gunfight” is just that, and a tribute to Donald E. Westlake’s Parker character. It’s a post-robbery exchange of bullets in a cheap hotel, with $119,000 up for grabs. Using only two or three lines of dialogue, it’s all action, all the time, sporting a narrative simplicity that cuts right to the chase: “Some guys had tried to kill Proctor and Proctor had killed some guys.” What more motivation do you require?

From the get-go, William F. Nolan earned my good graces by giving the single mom at the crux of “The Perfect Nanny” a job at the late, great Whitman Comics — purveyor of many a dog-eared Disney comic of my childhood. Then he surpasses it by delivering an electrifying story of old-school possession that recalls the similarly fun Sam Raimi film DRAG ME TO HELL.

What to do with a box you’ve been told can never be opened, lest it have devastating consequences, and you have no idea what’s inside? I don’t know. But you’d certainly be driven mad, as those unfortunate souls in Cherie Priest’s beguiling “The Catastrophe Box” do. To her credit, she eventually shows you its mysterious contents, and the reveal is worth the wait and worry.

Keying off a real-life event in which African-American boxer Joe Louis defeated German boxer Max Schmeling in 1938, Matt Venne imagines what happened after the momentous event, in “The Brown Bomber and the Nazi Werewolves of the S.S.” As the title teases, embarrassed Nazis throw Louis into a castle’s pit, where he’s forced to fight a lycanthrope in a makeshift barbed-wire ring. Yes, it’s just as much fun as it sounds.

Trying to one-up Venne in the crazed-title department is Harlan Ellison, turning in “The Toad Prince or, Sex Queen of the Martian Pleasure-Domes.” As promised, its protagonist is Sarna, a prostitute on Mars, imported from Earth. Just before one of her would-be johns is murdered, he leaves Sarna a talking “alien frog-thing” known as “the Six.” The creature needs to find its five brothers; together, they comprise an all-knowing lifeform of considerable power.

As a sci-fi satire, Ellison’s story isn’t entirely successful, but its ending sure pays off, and it’s firmly entrenched in the ol’ pulp spirit. And in an anthology like this, that’s all that matters. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Subterranean Press or Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF JOE R. LANSDALE:
• BAD CHILI by Joe R. Lansdale
• LEATHER MAIDEN by Joe R. Lansdale
• MUCHO MOJO by Joe R. Lansdale
• RETRO PULP TALES edited by Joe R. Lansdale
• SANCTIFIED AND CHICKEN-FRIED: THE PORTABLE LANSDALE by Joe R. Lansdale
• SAVAGE SEASON by Joe R. Lansdale
• THE TWO-BEAR MAMBO by Joe R. Lansdale
• VANILLA RIDE by Joe R. Lansdale

Scouring out the weekly singles scene … in comics!

In THOR GOD-SIZE SPECIAL #1, a burly gent named Skurge the Executioner is killed in battle. Afterward, everyone — Thor included — has a different memory of him, thanks to the mind-altering doings of a trickster. Thor and his pals aim to restore his true reputation, and doing so requires fighting some giant beasts. Matt Fraction’s story is told in four parts, with each tackled by a different artist. This allows for styles that vary from painted to classic comics, but by far, Mike and Laura Allred’s unmistakable approach is the one that pops with color and life. A 1985 issue of THE MIGHTY THOR featuring Skurge fills the back half of the book, and it’s an epic fantasy as only Walter Simonson could do them.

For a buck, you can get a look of some of IDW’s upcoming slate with IDW COMING ATTRACTIONS #1, fronted by Darwyn Cooke’s acclaimed RICHARD STARK’S PARKER: THE HUNTER. It’s a multipage excerpt, but others get only one or two, or maybe just an ad, including new titles OXIDO, the zombie-centric THE LAST RESORT and WE WILL BURY YOU, the next series of Joe Hill’s LOCKE & KEY, and VITRIOL THE HUNTER, among others. On the flipside, peek into IDW’s reprint books, such as Dave Stevens’ classic ROCKETEER and Michael Kaluta’s STARSTRUCK. Many would argue previews should be free, and if this weren’t printed on super-high-quality pages, I’d agree. But you can part with 100 pennies for this one.

THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #600 isn’t just a celebration of reaching a numerical milestone, but of the entire series’ characters and mythology. It’s a giant issue, and the lead story details Spidey trying to stop Doctor Octopus from destroying New York on the same day that Aunt May is due to marry J. Jonah Jameson’s father. Brace yourself for a surprise ending. There are four backup short stories, most notably a Stan Lee-penned affair in which Spider-Man visits a psychiatrist, allowing Lee to go to town poking fun at 47 years’ worth of stories. Another is Mark Waid’s Uncle Ben tale that might bring tears to your eyes. Scattered throughout are some amusing “Covers You’ll Never See!” This one’s a party, people.

A Western character from Marvel’s yesteryear is revived in KID COLT #1. The titular teenage antihero is Blaine Cole, who was forced to become an outlaw when a corrupt sheriff had his family murdered over their land. The law is looking for Cole because of a farmer he’s supposed to have shot, but he claims his innocence. A bounty hunter tells him finding an eyewitness might help his case, so that’s exactly what he tries to do. Unfortunately, everywhere he goes, people are trying to kill him or capture him. Guns a-blazin’ in this four-chapter tale — originally a webcomic — written by Tom DeFalco and drawn by Rick Burchett. Western comics aren’t exactly a dime a dozen these days, so when they do come out, you should snap them up.

Del Rey Comics’ THE TALISMAN #0 provides a peek into its eagerly awaited title — its first for the label — and one that adapts the Stephen King/Peter Straub bestseller of the ’80s, of course. Doing the duties are Robin Furth with the words, and Tony Shasteen with the pictures. But while the latter’s work comes through loud and clear, the former’s does not. I know that only 17 pages’ worth of story, it’s bound to be a tease, but I couldn’t comprehend just what was going on — and I read the book when it first came out (granted, I’ve slept since then). It involves a boy named Jack, his dad, dimension-hopping, hunting accidents and a goat monster. At least I think. Hopefully, the threads of the fantasy will make much more sense as the series gets underway in November.

Fan-favorite writer J. Michael Straczynski is updating a quartet of superheroes that were once under the Archie Comics family of the 1940s, in a series of one-shots. First up is THE RED CIRCLE: THE HANGMAN #1, and it tells the story of Dr. Dickering, who unwillingly inherits a Civil War-era curse that has him become the titular terror — a masked, immortal man who gets to decide who’s guilty and who’s innocent. If they’re innocent, he fights to protect them. If they’re not … well, that’s obviously the fun part. You can’t go wrong with vigilante justice, and Straczynski gets this reboot off to a rousing start, complemented by Tom Derenick’s pencils and Bill Sienkiewicz’s color. If you’re into THE PUNISHER, odds are you’ll like this. —Rod Lott

This column is all about setting the Wayback Machine to when I was a young teen with a voracious reading appetite, but not for the books that were meant to be read for school. No, I’m talking about the science fiction and fantasy that filled my shelves at home. Two of them are part of series I read the bulk of back in those days, while the third is based on a show I would watch whenever it would make an appearance on a UHF channel.

THIEVES’ WORLD edited by Robert Lynn Asprin — The recent passing of Asprin reminded just how much of his output I read, including most of his MYTH books and a good amount of the PHULE series. Then it clicked in my head that I had a few of the THIEVES’ WORLD titles as a teen, but I can’t remember if I read them straight through or just picked and chose certain stories. So when I came across a whole set for dirt-cheap, I grabbed it.

For those unfamiliar, the series is set in a town called Sanctuary, wherein resides nothing but crooks, con men, slave traders, brothel dwellers and killers. As explained in the prologue, the king decided to stick all of them in one town to keep an eye on them. So, in plain English, these were people not to screw with, unless you wish to have your life ended.

From 1979, the first book in the series is a bit hit-and-miss, as nothing truly stands out as a must-read, while a few stories reminded me of why I don’t read that much fantasy anymore, what with all these confusing ideas of gods and wizards. Each story does a fine job of introducing the main set of characters, explaining why they live in Sanctuary and the crosses they bear.

For instance, in John Brunner’s “Sentences of Death,” we meet Enas Yorl, a magician who lost a duel and now has to live in a castle by himself, since he can’t control the shapeshifting he is now cursed with. “The Face of Chaos” by Lynn Abbey deals with the world of magic, the temples that occupy the town, and how even religious types are none too keen to let anyone else have an upper hand in this world, with a fortune teller being used as a pawn.

In “The Secret of the Blue Star,” Marion Zimmer Bradley explains the secret of Lythande, the wizard with the star on his head. This story is actually the best of the bunch since the reveal is done in a way where you’re like, “Wait, what just happened?” and you’ll even look at these books in a new light. Asprin’s own contribution, “The Price of Doing Business,” tells of Jubal, a businessman who makes his money the old-fashioned way: by selling slaves. It’s a business venture that doesn’t work out for the best for his crew.

That is only a small smattering of the stories, but the closing essay is just terrific. In it, Asprin explains how the series came to be. These were the days before we had cell phones, e-mail and instant messaging, so just imagine trying to get all these authors to work together while a publisher is breathing down your neck. This is just a guilty-pleasure read, plain and simple — fun for people who remember the days of rolling 20-sided die.

THE STAINLESS STEEL RAT WANTS YOU! by Harry Harrison — All the blame should be pointed at 2000 AD. When I think about it, the British strips were my foray into the world of crime fiction, by way of this series. The Stainless Steel Rat books, especially the early ones, are fantastic reads about a galactic con man named James Bolivar diGriz.

See, 2000 AD adapted three of the novels into a comic series which followed the storylines pretty accurately. It was then I discovered they were actual books and devoured a good amount of them. This 1978 one is one of the few that had slipped through the cracks for me, so it was nice to come across this blast from the past in my used-bookstore travels.

It deals with Jim and his wife, Angelina, and their now fully grown sons who seem to take after their parents. Jim is forced into action with the kidnapping of his wife, only to discover that it was all a ruse for him to work again for the special corps. He has an unlikely working alliance with them — I mean, he still is a criminal at heart. The main problem is that a lunar base all of sudden just disappeared, with the last transmission mentioning a giant set of teeth, then nothing. This leads into a plot about a slug-like race bent on conquering all the planets.

The title is totally misleading, since this has nothing to do with some sort of army recruiting. It deals more with Jim and his family helping out the people who were first taken over by these creatures. Harrison’s writing has always been tongue-in-cheek, no matter the series, which is why I kept reading him over and over.

For those people who like to read series in order, there is a bit of a problem, as these books jump back and forth in Jim’s history. My suggestion is to stop after A STAINLESS STEEL RAT IS BORN, if you read them in publication order. You’ll be better off, since the later titles that came out in the ’90s don’t match up with the earlier ones’ style or substance.

THE AVENGERS #1: THE FLOATING GAME by John Garforth — THE AVENGERS is that cult classic that would show up every once in a while on my local TV — not regularly, but one week it would be on, then gone the next. Thanks to the old VHS tapes and now those DVD sets, it’s super-easy to catch. Well, here is a suggestion: Stick with the show.

This 1967 book takes a person the same amount of time as watching a better-plotted affair. It’s not that book doesn’t feel like a Avengers story, but it lost my interest over and over throughout. A mishmash of ideas comprises the plot, which deals with brainwashing, Russian spies, a gambling establishment, Emma Peel dressed like a cowgirl, Steed running for office, and, of course, more then a few attempts on Steed’s life.

All of this takes place in less than 140 pages. It gets a bit jumbled more than a few times, but Garforth tries his hardest to get Steed and Peel right, which is fine. It’s everything else he should have spent more time on. At one point, I literally had no clue who were the good guys and bad guys. What you should do is search out the other AVENGERS book I covered a long time ago. That one really captures the series; this one is not worth the time or money — especially since I saw one copy go online for $74 more than what I paid.

Next time: I bought some brand-new books. —Bruce Grossman

Buy them at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THE AVENGERS:
• THE AVENGERS: TOO MANY TARGETS by John Peel and Dave Rogers

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF HARRY HARRISON:
• MAKE ROOM! MAKE ROOM! by Harry Harrison

Warning: If you have not read Jeff Somers’ two previous books, skip THE ETERNAL PRISON altogether, since the author is not one to rehash the past events for newcomers. And to be honest, it is a bit of a struggle even for those who have read the novels before it, because Somers tries a different tactic in this third installment that will confound even the most ardent reader.

The problem of the previous book — with Avery Cates pretty much sitting on the sidelines — is addressed. He’s on center stage throughout this one, to the point that he’s the subject of two storylines. One deals with Cates being arrested and sent to a no-holds-barred prison, which seems like a tip of the hat to ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK, when the only time guards take action is when someone tries to scale the walls, or, even worse, creates such a disturbance that he is taken to solitary confinement and never comes back.

The other storyline deals with Cates reporting to one of the government higher-ups for a dangerous mission. The novel alternates between these two plots for the first half of the book, in which we witness Cates in his new prison setting, where he is tested by his fellow inmates with typical results. Also, he is met by someone from his past with a plan of escape. He also pulls off a hit where he barely escapes the building blowing up.

From this point, he deals with a cop of sorts who knows Cates’ history, but can’t believe they are working for the same person. At a certain point in ETERNAL PRISON is where my confusion arose. To go into greater detail ruins some very key plot points, but it seems as though Somers read a lot of Philip K. Dick before starting this one. So expect some head-scratching until the end, with the epilogue and appendix clearing up some issues.

To get there is a bit of a rough road, since unlike the previous novels, this one is not as easily digested and seemed like a 12-round fight. Hopefully, the next entry will be a bit more straight forward and won’t leave some wondering, “What just happened?” —Bruce Grossman

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• THE DIGITAL PLAGUE by Jeff Somers
• THE ELECTRIC CHURCH by Jeff Somers

News of all the recent aviation crashes preventing you from jetting off to adventurous, faraway places? FLIGHT: VOLUME SIX will take you there from the comfort of your armchair, and for less money it takes to check a single bag.

It’s almost ridiculous how top-shelf this indie anthology series is. Every year, a new installment is released, and page after page, story after story, I’m simply astounded at its quality. Enjoyment is heightened by the sense that FLIGHT doesn’t realize the level of greatness it reaches, but it shows up pretty much every other graphic novel you’ll read in the immediate weeks before and after.

FLIGHT’s different/better/special is clear from the get-go, with Michel Gagné’s “The Saga of Rex: Soulmates.” How else would you classify 42 pages of two foxes’ wordless adventures, which unfurl and unfold into mind-blowing 2001 starchild territory? And exactly how does one follow that? By doing a ninja comedy, as J.P. Ahonen does with “The Excitingly Mundane Life of Kenneth Shuri,” which amusingly chronicles the daily doings of an unemployed warrior/family man.

Series editor Kazu Kibuishi goes lighthearted as well, with a just-for-fun ghost story in “Daisy Kutter: Phantoms,” featuring a strong female protagonist and spooks aplenty. The world’s worst viking is the subject of “Magnus the Misfit,” Graham Annable’s yellow-tinted tale of an antler-helmeted yellowbelly.

“Dead at Noon” is a nice, dialogue-free piece, in which Rodolphe Guenoden explores the ol’ high-noon showdown cliché of many a Western. Phil Craven’s brief “Epitaph” appears to be your standard, sci-fi apocalypse story until he slowly turns it on its head as the panels click by.

For “Walters,” Cory Godbey illustrates the real-life story of a man who tied a bunch of balloons to a lawn chair for a short soar through the air. With beautiful, fantastic, frightening embellishments, it plays like the dark side of Disney/Pixar’s UP. It’s followed by two more word-free stories: Andrea Offermann’s disturbing bird romance “Mate” and Rad Sechrist’s “Kidnapped,” which appropriates a SAMURAI JACK visual style and a cinematic scope to let its martial arts battle play out.

A couple wages war of a different kind in Bannister and Grimaldi’s “Cooking Duel,” in which partners lovingly race against one another to cook the perfect mushroom quiche. Similar silliness comes in the form of Justin Ridge’s just-as-it-sounds “Dead Bunny,” which for some reason reminded me a bit of one of my favorite books from the fifth grade: the vampire rabbit tale BUNNICULA.

That marks the start — whether by design or accidental — of the most kid-friendly comics in the book, with Richard Pose’s mischievous “The Z’s and the Attack of the Early Bird,” pieces starring series regulars Jellaby and Fish N Chips, by Kean Soo and Steve Hamaker, respectively; and Mike Dutton’s poignant “Long-Winded.” —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS SERIES:
• FLIGHT EXPLORER: VOLUME 1
• FLIGHT: VOLUME ONE
• FLIGHT: VOLUME TWO
• FLIGHT: VOLUME FIVE

The backgrounds of four characters are delved into in G.I. JOE: THE RISE OF COBRA: MOVIE PREQUEL, a trade paperback collection of IDW Publishing’s comic-book one-shots. These aren’t really origin tales, but stories taking place sometime before the events of the film.

First up is Conrad “Duke” Hauser, on a routine mission — if explosion-laden counts as routine — with the Army Rangers in the jungles of Papua. Wallace “Ripcord” Weems is along for the ride, as well. This is followed by a glimpse on the evil side, with corporate slime McCullen flashing back to his youth, learning about his Destro family lineage.

Neither of these stories are all that special, but the back half of the book comes alive, starting with Baroness Anastasia DeCobray, the leggy brunette baddie who here pulls off a heist of sorts in the mansion of an Arab sheik. Finally, the ninja Snake Eyes infiltrates a terrorist takeover of a new Russian dam, and it’s the coolest of the bunch, because … well, he’s a ninja.

All the contents are written by Chuck Dixon, who’s been busy penning other comics with these characters, so he has an obvious familiarity with them. S.L. Gallant handles the art duties, and he’s solid from start to finish, lending the proceedings a grit, rather than the garish gloss that Casey Maloney brings to the official comics adaptation. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF G.I. JOE:
• G.I. JOE: ABOVE & BEYOND by Max Allan Collins
• G.I. JOE: THE RISE OF COBRA by Max Allan Collins

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF CHUCK DIXON:
• DEAN KOONTZ’S FRANKENSTEIN: PRODIGAL SON — VOLUME ONE by Chuck Dixon and Brett Booth
• A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET: BOOK ONE by Chuck Dixon and Kevin West

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF S.L. GALLANT:
• MONSTERS VS. ALIENS: THE OFFICIAL MOVIE ADAPTATION by Andy Lanning, S.L. Gallant and Alex Dalton
• TORCHWOOD: RIFT WAR by Simon Furman, Paul Grist, Ian Edginton, Brian Williamson, D’Israeli and S.L. Gallant

It’s still summer, so let me be your travel agent in the world of reading. As you will see, all these books are in the men’s adventure line, taking place far and wide — be it down south or some tropical paradise — usually with deadly outcomes. So sit back and relax as we travel with the most antisocial set ever.

THE ASSASSIN #2: NEW ORLEANS HOLOCAUST by Peter McCurtin — This 1973 book is nothing more than a direct rip-off of the Mack Bolan archetype. I mean, we have the main character whose family was killed by the mob and swears revenge on the criminal lot, and has never-ending wealth to keep him in deadly toys and travel.

What separates them by a super-thin margin is that main character Robert Briganti is known to be The Assassin, unlike Bolan, who tries to keep his name out of the papers. Briganti’s name is plastered on the front page, and he sends tapes to the FBI explaining whom he killed and where their bodies are. The “plot” is nothing more than a reason to trot out action scenes and show off Briganti as some sort of vigilante. Like there is any other kind in these books.

The story deals with a giant meet-up of Mob bosses from around the country in New Orleans, to not only settle a few flare-ups within the organization, but also to hold a think tank for ways to get rid of Briganti. For anyone who has seen PUNISHER: WAR ZONE, just imagine that, but even more dumbed down — especially that opening, when he lays waste in the mansion. That scene would be the climax of this book, just with grenades instead of guns.

Briganti kills countless Mafia goons. He’s no superhero type; he does get injured and is helped by a girl who knew him when she was younger. Take a wild guess what happens to her. That’s right: She is sold out by one of her neighbors and is killed. From there, the novel literally goes into autopilot. Not only does Briganti hunt down the people who killed her, but kills anyone even remotely involved with the mob.

Throw in some ’70s stereotypes of Italians, crooked cops, voodoo practitioners and homosexuals that would make Paul Lynde look straight, and you have mindless entertainment that will be forgotten faster than read.

TARGET: DOOMSDAY ISLAND by Nick Carter — This 1973 effort has to be one of the funniest Nick Carter adventures ever — not in the sense that the author threw in humor, but more of what Carter pretends to be and what goes on.

The book is very early ’70s, to the point that Nick’s cover is that of a band manager with a groovy mustache. I’m totally serious: We are supposed to believe this badass super-spy is managing some rock act. I get the feeling Nick probably has a few T.Rex records. He is down with the youth culture and able to hang out with the youngsters. I think Chris Rock said it best: You don’t want to be the old guy hanging out at the club. Well, that is exactly what Nick is here, but it just adds to the true cheesiness of this read.

Nick investigates two islands down in the Caribbean, both owned by a multimillionaire who has embraced youth culture, having all these young kids come over to smoke pot and have orgies. But, of course, there is something truly sinister taking place. What did you expect, some labyrinthian mystery? This is Nick Carter, not Len Deighton.

There is plenty of action that takes place throughout. Right from the start, Nick is in Action Man mode. I loved every single sentence of it. Sure, this series is about as taxing as the USA TODAY crossword, but isn’t that the point to reading it? You want cheap thrills, plenty of gunplay and a hero who will come out at the end unscathed.

THE PENETRATOR #23: DIVINE DEATH by Lionel Derrick — This is one of those series I keep meaning to revisit, but never got around to it. Well, that is about to change, because for my money, THE PENETRATOR is one of the better men’s adventure series around.

In this 1977 installment, The Penetrator — aka Mark Hardin — is a man on a mission of being a one-man A-TEAM. He shares a lot of the same characteristics of other people of this genre, namely Mack Bolan. But also throw in a little bit of American Indian blood, a penchant to leave arrowheads, and the help of his former professor, and you have this series in a nutshell.

Even vigilante types like to have a vacation, which is what The Penetrator is on at the start. He is enjoying some downtime in Denver until he reads an article that catches his eye. A cop has been found killed in a fire, but the fire is not what killed him. This cop had infiltrated a new religious outfit called The Church of the Final Coming. Before you can say “front for some nefarious plot,” our hero jumps into action.

He starts by talking to one of the young girls who stands out front, explaining the church, which seems to make money from these ladies by offering their services to passersby. Most of the young people involved are also runaways and are brainwashed in a way. Throw in the typical toughs who take on Hardin, since they think he might be a cop; a reporter who discovers that Hardin is The Penetrator; a couple of girls who joined the church to see what all the fun is about, only to be stuck into a harem lifestyle; and a super-secret plot that’s your typical “take out the world leaders” mumbo-jumbo.

How will one man take all this down while also saving all the innocent? Read the book. It won’t take much of your time, and most likely will make you grab a few others.

Next time: my back pages. —Bruce Grossman

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF NICK CARTER:
• CODE NAME: WEREWOLF by Nick Carter
• DEADLY DOUBLES by Nick Carter
• DEATH MESSAGE: OIL 74-2 by Nick Carter
• DEEP SEA DEATH by Nick Carter
• THE GOLDEN BULL by Nick Carter
• HIDE AND GO DIE by Nick Carter
• ICE TRAP TERROR by Nick Carter
• THE KOREAN KILL by Nick Carter
• MACAO by Nick Carter
• THE OMEGA TERROR by Nick Carter
• REVENGE OF THE GENERALS by Nick Carter
• STRIKE FORCE TERROR by Nick Carter

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF LIONEL DERRICK:
• THE PENETRATOR #6: TOKYO PURPLE by Lionel Derrick
• THE PENETRATOR #9: DODGE CITY BOMBERS by Lionel Derrick
• THE PENETRATOR #31: OKLAHOMA FIREFIGHT by Lionel Derrick

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF PETER MCCURTIN:
• SOLDIER OF FORTUNE: BODY COUNT by Peter McCurtin

In bringing G.I. JOE: THE RISE OF COBRA to the silver screen, writer/director Stephen Sommers spent somewhere around $175 million. In writing the film’s official novelization, Max Allan Collins probably spent mere pennies in electricity for his computer, or, if he uses a typewriter, an estimated three bucks in paper.

Guess which one is more entertaining?

Whereas the movie is dumb fun, Collins’ adaptation is just fun, period, delivering the thrills without making you feel like your brain cells are being popped like so many soap bubbles.

The book actually follows the screenplay very closely, with lines of dialogue lifted verbatim, but Collins expands on those scenes with additional back-and-forth, which helps flesh out the characters’ personalities. After all, when you can’t spend 40 minutes on action scenes, you have to add somewhere else, and the extra padding is in service of the story.

That story introduces Army men Conrad “Duke” Hauser and Wallace “Ripcord” Weems to the ranks of G.I. Joe, a secret military squad of super-soldiers dedicated to quashing threats to the America way. It’s led by the gruff Col. Hawk, who invites them to join following their efforts in escorting a new kind of warhead from seller to buyer. Invented by the Destro dynasty’s MARS Industries, that weapon employs nanomite techology — microscopic bugs that can devour vehicles, people, cities, all in seconds.

Despite the military’s babysitting, the warheads are stolen by the bad guys (and girl) of Cobra Command, and the Joe team aims to get them back before they can be detonated in various international cities, allowing Cobra to rise to the top of world powers.

It’s one thing to see Sienna Miller’s cleavage onscreen, and it’s another thing to read about it. Witness: “The neckline of the body armor exposed the upper part of her swelling bosom, an exposure of flesh that arrogantly dared bullets to try for her, as if she could walk blithely invulnerable across the landscape.” That’s about as sexy as the real thing!

Like Collins’ original prequel, G.I. JOE: ABOVE & BEYOND, this novelization finds him playing fast and loose with a pop concept. No wonder he’s brought so many of Sommers’ popcorn movies to the page. If there’s one tie-in writer who can not only duplicate but surpass the action jolt of the movie itself, it’s he. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• THE BABY BLUE RIP-OFF by Max Allan Collins
• BLACK HATS by Patrick Culhane
• BYLINE: MICKEY SPILLANE edited by Max Allan Collins and Lynn F. Myers Jr.
• DEADLY BELOVED by Max Allan Collins
• DICK TRACY by Max Allan Collins
• DICK TRACY GOES TO WAR by Max Allan Collins
• DICK TRACY: THE SECRET FILES edited by Max Allan Collins and Martin H. Greenberg
• THE FIRST QUARRY by Max Allan Collins
• G.I. JOE: ABOVE & BEYOND by Max Allan Collins
• THE GOLIATH BONE by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins
• A KILLING IN COMICS by Max Allan Collins
• THE LAST QUARRY by Max Allan Collins
• MY LOLITA COMPLEX AND OTHER TALES OF SEX AND VIOLENCE by Max Allan Collins and Matthew V. Clemens
• QUARRY’S LIST by Max Allan Collins
• RED SKY IN MORNING by Patrick Culhane
• ROAD TO PARADISE by Max Allan Collins
• STRIP FOR MURDER by Max Allan Collins
• TOUGH TENDER by Max Allan Collins
• THE WAR OF THE WORLDS MURDER by Max Allan Collins

WOLVERINE MAGAZINE #2 offers another four stories, all but one featuring at least one of the X-Men. I’m assuming that the two-issue WOLVERINE AND THE X-MEN MAGAZINE has been absorbed into this perodical, since the titular, metal-clawed hero is absent for half of its contents.

First up is a WOLVERINE: FIRST CLASS story in which all Logan wants to do is kick back at the X-Mansion and watch the Stanley Cup finals on TV. His night of R&R, however, is upended by Kitty Pryde and two other girls bickering, not to mention activating some robot villains in the Danger Room that get loose.

A continuation of the previous issue’s WEAPON X: FIRST CLASS number is next, with Professor X again helping Wolverine probe his mind to fill in the blanks of his true origin. It’s one of those reality-benders where our hero ends up fighting an earlier version of himself.

From X-MEN/POWER PACK comes a team-up between the pint-sized super-siblings and The Beast, at the Super Bowl of science conventions — one that Mystique has dared crash. Last is the second chapter of Marvel’s adaptation of Alexandre Dumas’ classic novel THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK, which I doubt the magazine’s younger-age target will appreciate, even if I do. —Rod Lott

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS SERIES:
• WOLVERINE AND THE X-MEN MAGAZINE #1
• WOLVERINE AND THE X-MEN MAGAZINE #2
• WOLVERINE MAGAZINE #1

From the fine folks behind Hard Case Crime comes the second Gabriel Hunt pulp adventure in HUNT THROUGH THE CRADLE OF FEAR. Helping Hunt tell his story this time out is Charles Ardai, the man behind both ventures. For some reason, I thought this series took place in the heyday of other pulp heroes on which this series is based, but the story and setting are of the now, referencing things like personal computers and cell phones.

The tale starts out with a nice big action sequence, in which Gabriel saves a woman named Sheeba from a pack of sword-wielding mad men, led by a man named DeGroet. At a crucial point, we learn Gabriel is actually relating his escape to his brother, Michael. Yes, Michael Hunt — come on, guys, was Seymour Butts too pithy?

DeGroet is still on the hunt for Sheeba, which becomes evident when Hunt turns up for an evening with this young lady, only to see her snatched by DeGroet’s goons, leading Hunt into following her kidnappers in a taxi, with guns a-blazing the whole ride. The story moves around from location to location, taking our intrepid hero from Egypt to Greece, then off to a secret city that hid all of Homer’s descendants — the Greek poet, not the yellow one who lives in Springfield.

DeGroet is on a search for some mythical treasure and he needs Sheeba’s help. But this being a postmodern take on the pulps, there is plenty of violence to go around, including your requisite booby traps hiding in the treasure, with DeGroet having no shame in throwing his men into these death puzzles.

The story more comes off like Indiana Jones then Doc Savage, until the final moments, when a bit of ancient mythology comes into play. Ardai packs plenty of action and a nice-sized body count into this story. It seems their hearts are really into coming up with a new pulp hero for adults, even if it misses the mark a few too many times for my taste. Hunt comes off like a superman, always being in the right place at the right time, always with a quick idea of how to escape. Still I’m looking forward to the other books that will be coming out over this year.

HUNT THROUGH THE CRADLE OF FEAR includes a bonus novelette, also by Ardai, that is included after the main adventure. —Bruce Grossman

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS SERIES:
• HUNT AT THE WELL OF ETERNITY by James Reasoner

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• FIFTY-TO-ONE by Charles Ardai
• THE RETURN OF THE BLACK WIDOWERS by Isaac Asimov, edited by Charles Ardai
• SONGS OF INNOCENCE by Richard Aleas

Scouring out the weekly singles scene … in comics!

Dark Horse resurrects one of illustrated horror’s greatest franchises in CREEPY #1, a 48-page collection of mostly all-new tales. Instead of a magazine, this new CREEPY is a comic book, although the stories are still in black-and-white, as well as hosted by Uncle Creepy. The quartet concerns a man who discovers he has the power to make people do what he thinks, a greedy record store owner, a concentration-camp chemical and an extreme fat camp. There’s a two-page feature on celebs reputed to have sold their soul to Satan, and a reprint of an Alex Toth-drawn alien story from the original mag. This relaunch doesn’t quite hit the same thrill buttons (although seeing Angelo Torres contribute sure helps), but it’s got room to grow.

Tying in with the new Nickelodeon cartoon series of the same name is IRON MAN: ARMORED ADVENTURES #1. It’s a one-shot comprised of two tales, both hinging off the concept that Tony Stark is a teenaged superhero. The first has him mourning his late father while simultaneously fighting crime, and it’s kind of a streamlined origin for newbies. The second, longer story is more action-oriented, with Nick Fury dispatching young S.H.I.E.L.D. agents Hawkeye and Black Widow to find out Iron Man’s true identity. Bright and boisterous, this all-ages approach is like a breath of fresh air; one wishes the ADVENTURES wouldn’t end here.

A star-spangled hero known as The Destroyer takes control of USA COMICS 70TH ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL #1, another in Marvel’s continuing birthday one-shots. From John Arcudi and Steve Ellis, the story pits The Destroyer — who’s kinda like The Punisher, but in a far more Carson Kressley-friendly costume — against those pesky Nazis. Penned by Stan Lee, the backup tale from 1942 shows The Destroyer doing the same thing, and while that’s all fine and good, I got more jolts out of the meager, five-page preview of Ed Brubaker’s THE MARVELS PROJECT that’s tucked into the back.

Of all these 70th celebration issues, ALL SELECT COMICS 70TH ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL #1 is my favorite so far. For one thing, Marc Guggenheim and Javier Pulido’s lead story about Blonde Phantom — legal secretary by day, superhero by night — is one of the better murder mysteries I’ve read this year, which is amazing given how few pages on which the noir-ish story plays out. For another, the great Michael Kupperman gives us an absolutely insane adventure of Marvex the Super Robot as he buys socks and battles a villain made entirely of sandwich ingredients. What’s really surprisingly is that Kupperman’s approach isn’t too far removed from the real deal, as the pair of 1940 Marvex reprints in the back proves. —Rod Lott

In what could be subtitled “The Comic Misadventures of Prince Amir,” our imperious but lovable prince from Nathalie Mallet’s THE PRINCES OF THE GOLDEN CAGE returns in THE KING’S DAUGHTERS. Amir is escorting Eva, one of the king of Sorvinka’s titular daughters, back to her home in order to obtain the approval of her father for their marriage. But in the first of a series of missteps, Amir has as his escort soldiers from a neighboring kingdom that is at war with Sorvinka.

The king is most displeased. This displeasure mounts when it turns out that one of Eva’s sisters has been abducted, and a strange beast is roaming the castle, killing innocent men and women. Another of Eva’s sisters goes missing, and Amir decides to investigate.

Mallet is not subtle with her foreshadowing, so you’ll be racing ahead trying to get the author to admit what you already know, but that’s a minor annoyance, given her penchant for storytelling. Most of her main characters are succinctly drawn, with real motivations and realistic behaviors. She has a jeweler’s eye for scene settings and color, and her pacing is just right. She’s not the kind of author who would write a 600-page tedious doorstop of a book; her style is much more suited to the quick series installment in paperback that we all used to love about fantasy fiction back in the ’70s and ’80s, when such a thing was more common.

The good news is that she’s still published by San Francisco’s Night Shade Books, one of the better fantasy publishers out there, and that the series will continue in the upcoming DEATH IN THE TRAVELING CITY. The bad news is that it took too long for the second book to appear after the first. So, more, please, and soon. —Mark Rose

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• THE PRINCES OF THE GOLDEN CAGE by Nathalie Mallet

Admit it: We all secretly root for the bad guys. Just look at the crime genre in books. Donald Westlake alone came up with two great bad guys in Parker and Dortmunder. You actually want these two criminals to pull off their schemes. So I present three novels in which the bad guy takes center stage. People will always be drawn to the criminal element, even if they are loathsome. The bad guys always come off as cool, while the good guys seems like milk and Dudley Do-Right.

THE BOOSTER by Eugene Izzi — The author is best known for the bizarre circumstances surrounding his death. I’ve always been on the lookout for his books to cover. Well, now that I’ve actually read this one from 1989, I’ll probably pass on others. The title refers to Bolo, a retired safecracker who runs a bar. He is contacted by a mob figure who wants him to do one last job: breaking into an apartment in the Sears Tower, by way of the outside.

That sounds like a great plot to hang a book on, but sadly, it takes close to 200 pages until the job is actually done, let alone planned. Izzi takes a long time to set up the story, being more concerned with the television habits of crooks or former Chicago Bears who make a small cameo. Yes, Walter Payton was one of the best players, but you really don’t need to insert him into a bar scene just to say, “Look at me! I love the Bears!” It would be like Stephen King writing about a player for the Boston Red Sox — oh, wait, he did.

The book just reeks of the time it was written, with references to MIAMI VICE and CRIME STORY that are sure to lose anyone under 30. The only things missing would be one of the crooks wearing a Members Only jacket, with a copy of THRILLER on his stereo. Another problem is that some of these folks are just plain unlikable. These are the type of crooks who would turn on each other faster than a speeding bullet, especially once the robbery goes down, which takes all of three paragraphs. It seems that Izzi figured the only way to end the book was make it “every man for himself.”

Maybe his other books are better, but I won’t be rushing into any of them, especially if they are populated with more of the biggest assholes in crime fiction.

THE CONNECTOR by Tony Williamson — This is a bit more like it: pure spies and giant heists. That should be a given, since Williamson got his start writing scripts for THE AVENGERS, THE PERSUADERS and JASON KING. If you’re a fan of any of those old great shows, you know what to expect from this 1976 novel, with the added bonus that there is no TV censor cutting out the fun bits.

Lee Corey is a bad guy … or so we are to believe. At the start of the book, he’s part of a giant diamond heist, in which he proves himself so well that he is about to make contact with a mastermind called The Connector. That is when a simple phone call reveals the truth that Lee is actually an agent working deep undercover to finally get close enough to that mastermind.

See, The Connector — who is also known by his given name, Ryker — is all about the grand plan. He’s the type of criminal who works out every angle to the point of precision, while he sits backs and hires a crew to do his dirty work. Lee can’t believe he has gotten this close, until he finds out one of his first jobs: breaking into a German prison to free a German radical. Lee doesn’t know what to do — he can’t blow the operation or else he will blow his cover — so he tries to tip off his bosses as best as he can, knowing full well he will still have to take part.

But what does The Connector need with a German radical? It becomes apparent once the real plan is explained — a plan so large and dangerous that The Connector himself will be taking part. Throw in your obligatory girl who is involved to help out her family and you have yourself a tight little spy thriller. No one is going to confuse this with the highbrow works of John le Carré … or even the lowbrow efforts of Nick Carter. Still, it has plenty of action with just enough suspense to keep readers glued to the end, which is fine by me, since it was pure escapism with just enough realism to make it believable.

THE DESTROYER #56: ENCOUNTER GROUP by Warren Murphy and Will Murray — As with this 1984 effort, the DESTROYER series has the most colorful collection of bad guys ever. Sure, they are extreme versions of archetypes, but that is why they’re so much fun to read. This time, the book could have been called REMO VS. E.T., with the added bonus of a feminist leader who makes Gloria Steinem look like a participant on GIRLS GONE WILD.

This woman, Amanda Shultz, is so extreme in her beliefs, it’s just hysterical. I won’t go into the details, but the first chapter alone made me do a few spit takes. Amanda gets swept up in the UFO conspiracy world, thanks to her encounter with an alien who calls himself “the world master” and wants her to get her hands on a nuclear warhead for him.

Enter Remo Williams and Chiun to the rescue. As most people know, UFOs don’t exist — sorry to break the news to you tinfoil-hat-wearing folks. The book follows the basic setup of those that have preceded it, with Chiun doing his best to antagonize Remo, this time with a Rubik’s Cube and a belief that the alien has a connection to Sinanju.

There’s also a Russian spy whose love for tacos drives him throughout the story, which has its requisite action, with humor to go along with the gore. Remo only has some minor work to do in this one, since Amanda turns into a trigger-happy harpy by the end. But still, it’s pretty funny to read Chiun deal with a nuclear missile that is launching while he is standing on the warhead itself.

Next time: Freebird! —Bruce Grossman

Buy them at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THE DESTROYER SERIES:
• THE BEST OF THE DESTROYER by Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir
• THE DESTROYER #5: DR. QUAKE by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #6: DEATH THERAPY by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #9: MURDER’S SHIELD by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #10: TERROR SQUAD by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #11: KILL OR CURE by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #13: ACID ROCK by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #14: JUDGMENT DAY by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #15: MURDER WARD by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #17: LAST WAR DANCE by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #18: FUNNY MONEY by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #19: HOLY TERROR by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #22: BRAIN DRAIN by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #23: CHILD’S PLAY by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #24: KING’S CURSE by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #26: IN ENEMY HANDS by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #30: MUGGER BLOOD by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #32: KILLER CHROMOSOMES by Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #38: BAY CITY BLAST by Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #39: MISSING LINK by Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #41: FIRING LINE by Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir
• THE DESTROYER #45: SPOILS OF WAR by Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #46: NEXT OF KIN by Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #48: PROFIT MOTIVE by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #49: SKIN DEEP by Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #52: FOOL’S GOLD by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #55: MASTER’S CHALLENGE by Will Murray
• THE DESTROYER #67: LOOK INTO MY EYES by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #78: BLUE SMOKE AND MIRRORS by Will Murray
• THE DESTROYER #89: DARK HORSE by Will Murray
• THE DESTROYER #104: ANGRY WHITE MAILMEN by Will Murray
• THE DESTROYER #145: DRAGON BONES by Tim Somheil
• THE NEW DESTROYER: CHOKE HOLD by Warren Murphy and James Mullaney
• THE NEW DESTROYER: DEAD RECKONING by Warren Murphy and James Mullaney
• THE NEW DESTROYER: GUARDIAN ANGEL by Warren Murphy and James Mullaney

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF WARREN MURPHY:
• GRANDMASTER by Warren Murphy
• TRACE: GETTING UP WITH FLEAS by Warren Murphy

Like a lot of guys my age, I got turned on to Edgar Rice Burroughs back in the early 1960s when Ace Books began reprinting his titles in paperback. I know it’s getting late in the game, but I still haven’t read all of them, although I have read a representative sampling of all of his classic series: Tarzan, John Carter of Mars, Pellicudar, Venus. Not long ago, I re-read some and was reminded how good he could be when he was firing on all cylinders.

Over the years, my ERB mania has broadened into a love of pulp fiction in general, so I spend way too much time online searching for interesting pulp reprints. This led me to Pulpville Press and one of its imprints, ERBville Press. Pulpistas, you gotta check these guys out. Surprises abound. Like, for instance, Burrough’s BEWARE! THE SCIENTIST’S REVOLT. In decades of reading Burroughs, I had never come across this title, but it is legitimate.

Seems that back in the early 1920s, Burroughs wanted to know what Stephen King wondered about much later: Did his name on the title page alone sell the book, or would one of his yarns sell if it went out to editors under a pseudonym? Between Aug. 9-31, 1922, he wrote the novelette BEWARE! and sent it out into the world as written by “John Tyler McCulloch.” It was a flop.

Eventually, it sold to Ray Palmer at AMAZING STORIES. With Burroughs’ permission — he was a pretty easygoing fellow — this contemporary mystery/spy thriller was rewritten as science fiction, re-titled THE SCIENTIST’S REVOLT, and finally published in the pulp FANTASTIC ADVENTURES in July 1939. The Burroughs original stayed tucked away for another 35 years, not seeing publication until the July 1974, issue of THE BURROUGHS BULLETIN.

BEWARE! begins somewhere in Eastern Europe. The country is called Assuria, but the names of the characters make it feel like Russia. Russia = Assuria — not too much of a stretch. The emperor and his wife, who has just given birth to a prince, are trapped by revolting peasants — is there any other kind? — so they give their baby son to a commoner guard named Semepovski to carry away. The guard’s wife has also just had a baby, so the two children can escape together. It’s all very Dumas.

The royal family is killed by the revolutionaries and — on the ship carrying Semepovski and his wife, son and prince to America — one of the babies dies and is dropped overboard. Decades later, Semepovski is an American cop and his son is working undercover to expose a spy ring from Assuria. Ah, but is he Semepovski’s natural son or is he the prince?

There’s a murder to solve, villains to expose, and a beautiful young woman to rescue. The description is Burroughs, but the story lacks the excitement of his more exotic tales. There is none of that cinematic cross-cutting he used so well — one chapter follows one group of adventurers, and the next chapter cuts to another group, continuing this way until everyone meets up for the finale.

It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that Burroughs knew this was a weak story and that’s why he was willing to use it for this experiment. Or maybe, deep down, he didn’t want a story without his name on it to sell.

Anyway, Burroughs collectors will want to own this volume, containing as it does both versions of the yarn, even if one is weak Burroughs and the other is ersatz Burroughs. Sometimes, watered-down soup is better than no soup at all. —Doug Bentin

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• THE CHESSMEN OF MARS by Edgar Rice Burroughs
• THE GODS OF MARS by Edgar Rice Burroughs
• A PRINCESS OF MARS by Edgar Rice Burroughs
• TARZAN AND THE FORBIDDEN CITY by Edgar Rice Burroughs
• TARZAN AND THE JEWELS OF OPAR by Edgar Rice Burroughs
• TARZAN: THE CLASSICS – TARZAN AND THE GOLDEN LION / TARZAN AND THE ANT MEN by Edgar Rice Burroughs
• THUVIA, MAID OF MARS by Edgar Rice Burroughs
• THE WARLORD OF MARS by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Here’s another column of short story collections, with two of the books being from pretty big names in genre fiction, while the third is based around a long-running comic-strip character with a strong chin and a fetish for yellow.

SKELETON CREW by Stephen King — That one episode of TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE is the cause for me starting to reading some King. The episode was “Word Processor of the Gods,” based upon the story of the same name here, which deals with a machine that our narrator is given, made by his genius nephew. The machine is able to either delete or bring things back into the world, and the narrator figures out a way to make things better for his life before it goes kaput.

“The Man Who Would Not Shake Hands” is a reworking of the King Midas tale, but of course, with that King touch. The collection is not all horror — there is a bit of science fiction with “Beachworld,” which deals with a crashed spaceship and the dune-like planet. Then there is “Jaunt,” which is set in the future and deals with a transporter device that people need to be asleep to use. A father explains the history of the device, with the horror side of King shining through by the end.

There is even a crime tale called “The Wedding Gig,” about a band playing for a mobster’s daughter’s wedding, and then her rise of power. Then there is what has to be the most over-the-top story King has ever written. He actually admits he might have gone a bit too far with “Survivor Type,” about a doctor who ends up marooned on a desert isle. The doctor goes to great lengths to survive — maybe “extreme” is a better description. The whole story is told diary-style and the writing slowly becomes a gibberish mess by the end.

“Cain Rose Up” seems to be a sort of riff on RAGE, one of his Richard Bachman novels, since both leads take out their aggression on their fellow students the only way they know how. This 1986 collection also has one of King’s novellas of note in “The Mist,” which deals with a weird fog that engulfs a small Maine town, leaving people stranded in a local market with weird creatures attacking anyone who dares to leave. It’s pretty hard to read this one today without thinking of the movie version. Also, the ending is vastly different, being not as bleak.

I’m actually a bigger fan of King’s short story work and novellas than some of those daunting bricks he pops out like they were nothing. I read NIGHT SHIFT years ago and should probably look into reading that one again.

THE BEAST THAT SHOUTED LOVE AT THE HEART OF THE WORLD by Harlan Ellison — Forty years ago, this groundbreaking collection came out. Ellison is not only known for his writing, but also his sweet disposition. I was more familiar with the works that were based on his writing than his actual work — namely, that episode of THE OUTER LIMITS and that certain STAR TREK episode which has been discussed ad nauseam even in a pre-Internet day. I’ve always wanted to read the source material for A BOY AND HIS DOG, finally coming across it in a cheap copy of this collection.

“A Boy and His Dog” is the story of a rover named Vic and his telepathic dog, Blood. These two have a strong bond, being together these past three years and relying on each other to survive. Vic stalks a woman, rapes her, defends her against roaming scavengers, and then follows her to the underworld. Once he arrives, it’s obvious it was a trap from the start — they want to use Vic to repopulate this town, since all the men have become sterile. Vic stays down there for a week until he has had enough. He escapes with the girl in tow, only to find Blood on the edge of death, and there is only one thing Vic can do. Sure, the ending is about as chauvinistic as they come, but what do you expect from Ellison? Feminist literature?

The book actually starts out with a total mind-fuck of a read in “The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World.” It’s not a sequential story, but more an experiment, as Ellison calls it. It deals with various little threads that somehow feel like a spider web. I can’t really give a synopsis; you just have to read it for yourself.

“Along the Scenic Route” deals with traffic in the future, where cars are equipped with weapons to not only protect themselves, but also to make sure they can get the jump on others. DEATH RACE is like Hot Wheels compared to this one. But the one story that really made me laugh, although it’s a bit dated, is “Santa Claus vs. S.P.I.D.E.R.” You ever wonder what Santa does during his downtime? Well, this story portrays him as a James Bond-esque spy who faces certain political figures of the time this story was written, all of whom are working for the secret organization of the title.

I’ve only touched upon a few of the stories of this top-notch collection, which is well worth seeking out. I’m hopeful that Ellison does not come across this review, even though it’s positive, because he’d write a 20-page tirade.

DICK TRACY: THE SECRET FILES edited by Max Allan Collins and Martin H Greenberg — This anthology was published in 1990, the same year that Warren Beatty’s vision of DICK TRACY hit theaters. Collins was writing the Dick Tracy strip at the time, so no one better could have been chosen to put this together. Most of the names will be familiar to most readers of this column.

Mike Resnick’s “Origins” tells of a young comic writer named Chet, whose crime strip’s one real fan is his neighbor Nimrod. So when certain crimes read exactly like his previous strips, Chet goes to the police for help, where he meets an officer who will have a huge effect on his future. It’s a fun little story. Most readers will see where it’s going and just revel in the idea that Tracy was based on a real cop.

Rex Miller’s “The Cereal Killer” deals with a series of deaths, for which a young kid figures out a huge clue, only to find that the police themselves reached the same conclusion. “Rockabilly” by F. Paul Wilson is a fun one about the early days of rock ‘n’ roll, with the return of one of Tracy’s deadly but hard-to-understand enemies.

Ed Gorman’s “The Curse” comes off like a shoot-out from the start, only for Tracy to hear the truth from beyond the grave, thanks to a tape recording. Barbara Collins’ “Homefront” deals with Tess Trueheart and the young Tracy while Dad is not around, but showing that the kid is chip off the old block when it comes to standing up for himself. “Living Legend” by Stephen Mertz moves things to a more current time period, as Tracy takes part in a crack raid, only to find out there might be a crooked cop in the midst.

Closing out the collection is Collins’ own “Not a Creature Was Stirring,” which deals with a serial killer who might resemble a certain figure of that season, with Tracy finally getting what he really wanted for Christmas. This book is filled with some other great pieces that stick Dick Tracy into the hard-boiled world of crime. It’s well worth seeking out.

Next time: Marvel Comics said it best. —Bruce Grossman

Buy them at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF MAX ALLAN COLLINS:
• THE BABY BLUE RIP-OFF by Max Allan Collins
• BLACK HATS by Patrick Culhane
• BYLINE: MICKEY SPILLANE edited by Max Allan Collins and Lynn F. Myers Jr.
• DEADLY BELOVED by Max Allan Collins
• DICK TRACY by Max Allan Collins
• DICK TRACY GOES TO WAR by Max Allan Collins
• THE FIRST QUARRY by Max Allan Collins
• G.I. JOE: ABOVE & BEYOND by Max Allan Collins
• THE GOLIATH BONE by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins
• A KILLING IN COMICS by Max Allan Collins
• THE LAST QUARRY by Max Allan Collins
• MY LOLITA COMPLEX AND OTHER TALES OF SEX AND VIOLENCE by Max Allan Collins and Matthew V. Clemens
• QUARRY’S LIST by Max Allan Collins
• RED SKY IN MORNING by Patrick Culhane
• ROAD TO PARADISE by Max Allan Collins
• STRIP FOR MURDER by Max Allan Collins
• TOUGH TENDER by Max Allan Collins
• THE WAR OF THE WORLDS MURDER by Max Allan Collins

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF STEPHEN KING:
• CELL by Stephen King
• THE COLORADO KID by Stephen King
• CREEPSHOWS: THE ILLUSTRATED STEPHEN KING MOVIE GUIDE by Stephen Jones
• CUJO by Stephen King
• DUMA KEY by Stephen King
• HAUNTED HEART: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF STEPHEN KING by Lisa Rogak
• JUST AFTER SUNSET by Stephen King
• THE SECRETARY OF DREAMS: VOLUME ONE by Stephen King
• STEPHEN KING GOES TO THE MOVIES by Stephen King
• STEPHEN KING: THE NON-FICTION by Rocky Wood and Justin Brooks

After debuting in Steve Mannion’s anything-goes series THE BOMB, female superhero FEARLESS DAWN graduates to her own title, from Asylum Press. This premiere issue was long delayed, thanks to distributor troubles, but good things come to those who wait.

No longer the timid teen of her previous adventures, Fearless Dawn is one of those headstrong, ball-kicking heroines, even if her costume looks standard thrift-store. Here, she’s sent to Manitoba — riding atop a plane to get there to retrieve a sample of a “combat drug” that causes its users to hulk out.

She finds what she’s looking for in Helga’s Henious Hothouse of Horrors, but getting out won’t be easy. The Nazi soldiers there have been rendered ‘roid-raged mutants by the drug, and Helga is an ILSA-esque vixen.

By Mannion’s pen, that means outlandish, cartoonish fun is in order, and he has the talent to pull it off without having it feel too silly or slight. As mentioned in our review of THE BOMB, his art is highly influenced by the early days of MAD — when it was a comic book, not a magazine — to the point that even his lettering looks like Harvey Kurtzman.

That’s exactly the right frame of mind to be in to enjoy FEARLESS DAWN #1 to the fullest. It’s a gas, and gets out on a cliffhanger that leaves you wishing the issue were double the size. Of all the indie-comics outfits these days, Asylum Press is one truly worth supporting. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Asylum Press.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• THE BOMB by Steve Mannion

Don’t confuse the Robert B. Parker of Hard Case Crime’s PASSPORT TO PERIL with the Robert B. Parker of the SPENSER novels. (But if you do, who can blame you?) The “original” Parker’s 1951 novel concerns not a single Boston P.I., but one John Stodder and Maria Torres.

He’s a journalist traveling on the Orient Express under the purchased passport of dead man, only he didn’t know the name was legit. She’s the dead man’s secretary, and the corpse in question is Monsieur Blaye, a watch exporter who was headed to Budapest when he was killed. He was seemingly on business, although he failed to fill Maria in on the details and made her vow secrecy as to their destination.

Stodder’s taking the trip because he’s searching for his brother, an Air Corps soldier who’s gone missing, thanks to the action of a guilt-ridden John. That hunt becomes a little secondary once he meets Maria, and it appears that the killers of Blaye are now after her and, by extension, him.

In an international thriller that’s positively Hitchcockian, the refreshingly straightforward and WYSIWYG John and Maria run for their lives, FUGITIVE-style, while trying to figure out why Blaye was killed. The novel moves as fast as its characters, and that’s largely because Parker writes like the consummate newspaperman he was — each chapter opens with a solid lead, and the supporting details fall from there. —Rod Lott

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Just to give you an idea of how screwy Fletcher Hanks’ YOU SHALL DIE BY YOUR OWN EVIL CREATION! is, consider the collection’s first story starring Tabu, Wizard of the Jungle. He’s like Tarzan, only with mystical powers. Anyway, Tabu’s trying his damnedest to rid his land of a group of slave traders. An earthquake didn’t quite cut it, so a sudden gust of wind blows them into a slimy pool, where they’re nearly killed by giant snakes (“Did you notice the size of those constrictors?” “Did I!!”).

Leaping across a gorge — yes, a gorge — Tabu shows up (“There’s the wizard who is causing this agony”). They threaten to kill him, so he immediately “makes a quick motion,” turning himself into a gorilla (“Oh, my soul!!”). That gorilla then becomes a “jungle tree vine,” crushing the men into oblivion. Says Tabu, “It’s the justice of the jungle.”

I mean, holy. Effing. Shit.

Was Hanks insane or otherwise mentally handicapped? Dunno, but as editor Paul Karasik points out in his meaty introduction, this was a man mean enough to kick his 4-year-old son down a flight of stairs. By all accounts, he was less than kind to others, so I have no qualms criticizing his less-than-competent work.

Of course, that’s exactly the point. As with Karasik’s runaway hit I SHALL DESTROY ALL THE CIVILIZED PLANETS!, the late Hanks’ work is being celebrated because of its inherent badness. Characters are out of proportion; stories make no sense. Yet they’re mammothly entertaining, as if Hanks was completely oblivious to his considerable limitations.

Unlike PLANETS, which focused primarily on two characters — superhero Stardust and mysterious jungle woman Fantomah — CREATION opens it up to those and many more, thus completing Fantagraphics’ collection of Hanks’ entire comics output.

Lumberjack Big Red McLane, King of the North Woods, returns with many more adventures, all of which simply involve him punching people. All problems are solved with his fists, and he’s concerned with little more than a flapjack breakfast at the end. Take a drink every time he hits someone, and if you’re in a frat, your chapter will be kicked off campus. Get a load of his mouth, too: “I don’t like the way you do business, and I don’t like your face!! I can’t change your business methods, but — I can change your face!! And how!”

In one of Stardust’s more notable adventures, aliens bore a hole to the center of the Earth, into which a chemical is inserted so that rocks will rain over Chicago. And the point is …?

However, Fantomah — she of the occasional floating, flaming skull — steals the show with what may be the single most unintentionally funny two-panel sequence in comics history. It’s not about what is said, but her keen sense of timing (not to mention that head):

Other featured Hanks characters with unwieldy names: Tiger Hart of Crossbone Castle on the Planet Saturn, Whirlwind Carter of the Interplanetary Secret Service, and “Yank” Wilson Super Spy Q-4. Were these monikers generated with spins of a wheel? With foes that look like the work of Basil Wolverton (were he stripped of talent) and plots that dare not veer from Hanks’ lone story template, these works are already parodies of themselves.

You’ll love how much you hate them; you’ll hate how much you love them. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• I SHALL DESTROY ALL THE CIVILIZED PLANETS! edited by Paul Karasik

The fact that THE GILDED SEAL is about Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa is likely to be greeted by a chorus of groans. That’s understandable. After Dan Brown’s monumental best-selling THE DA VINCI CODE, readers have been subjected to an endless series of fictional knock-offs and non-fiction speculations about the painting and its creator.

But James Twining’s story is more about what the Mona Lisa is (and is not), rather than what it means. And the best way to discover that, we find, is by stealing it. Three seemingly unrelated events — an all-too-common technique in thrillers — open the novel. In Spain, a man is chased and then brutally murdered. In Scotland, former international art thief Tom Kirk, now a highly regarded consultant on art and museum security is summoned to the robbery site of a lesser-known, but nonetheless valuable painting by da Vinci.

Just as troubling as the theft is a grizzly display left at the site of the burglary. Kirk recognizes it as a message from his old nemesis, Milo. And in New York, FBI Agent Jennifer Browne is alerted to a case of possible forgery on the eve of two very expensive art auctions. As she begins her investigation, an attorney affiliated with one of the art holders is found murdered.
 
As events progress, we learn that the above events are, in fact, interrelated. The man murdered in Spain is Rafael, a skilled art forger and friend of Kirk’s. The murdered attorney was involved in the clandestine sale of art forgeries instigated by Milo. And finally, Kirk uncovers Milo’s plan to steal the Mona Lisa from the Louvre in Paris. But then Kirk leans that Milo has kidnapped Eva, his former lover and Rafael’s adapted daughter.
 
So Kirk concludes that the only way to save Eva, and the da Vinci masterpiece, is to steal it himself and offer it as a trade-off to Milo for Eva’s life — or so he would have Milo believe. For as Kirk and the reader discover, there is no honor among thieves. Nor art forgers, nor even museum curators.

The major players here, along with Kirk himself, are mostly from THE DOUBLE EAGLE, Twining’s previous novel. But while that adventure is referred to often, you need not have read it to enjoy THE GILDED SEAL.
 
The author keeps the action shuffling and events moving with his trademark brief chapters. Yet, he distinguishes his novel from other globe-hopping, breakneck thrillers with flashes of character insight and humor. Along the way, we learn the darker side of museum business, the world of art auctions and sales, the evolving skill of art forgeries, and, most importantly, the previous theft of the Mona Lisa in 1911 — the inspiration for the novel’s premise.
 
Ironically, the omnipresence of da Vinci and his smiling lady in fiction these days almost works against Twining’s book. Perhaps that is why the promotional copy on the paperback covers never mentions the Mona Lisa, and why Twining chose a title that is part of the lesser-known history of the painting. 

In the end, however, THE GILDED SEAL scores high on entertainment, action and occasional suspense. And it just might mark the final volume to a shelf full of da Vinci-inspired thrillers. —Alan Cranis

Buy it at Amazon.

Preview it online.

Scouring out the weekly singles scene … in comics!

I’m still astounded at how much coin Michael Bay’s clankety-clank-clank robots sequel is racking up, despite some of the year’s most savage reviews. I’m sure the first issue of IDW’s TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN — OFFICIAL MOVIE ADAPTATION is better: It takes less time to read, it’s quieter, and you can actually distinguish one machine from the next. (On the minus side, you still have Shia LaBeouf’s character saying, “Oh, no. No, no, NO!”) Written by Chris Furman and drawn by Jon Davis-Hunt, the adventure kicks off with the robot war continuing on Earth, destroying the Witwicky home and putting a crimp into Sam’s first week of college. Dueling cars will do that to you every time. The fights are mindless, but at least in this medium, they’re digestible.

COSMIC SIZE FANTASTIC FOUR #1 is an oversized, one-shot special issue with a Cary Bates and Bing Cansino story that picks up with Mr. Fantastic and The Thing fighting Audrey II-esque plants on an alien planet. After they jet back home, sample spores lodged between Thing’s rocky skin grow and cause havoc for the Richards family, driving a wedge between them all and turning them against one another. This being an all-ages tale, leave it to siblings Franklin and Valeria Richards to save their parents (and the proverbial day for all mankind). Good stuff, and smarter than the average kid-driven book. It’s capped with a reprint of FANTASTIC FOUR #237 from 1981, with a female alien fronting a hobo crime ring.

Marvel’s birthday celebration continues with YOUNG ALLIES 70TH ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL #1, and this time, the story is far more sober than the other one-shot originals. Written by Roger Stern and illustrated by Paolo Rivera, it finds Bucky taking Captain America’s place in the present day, and remembering his life back in World War II, fighting the Nazis alongside the so-called Sentinels of Liberty. Now, all but two of them are deceased, and Cap visits the survivors in the nursing home. It’s tough not to get teary at the end. The back half of the book has two Stan Lee-penned prose stories from yesteryear, as well as an adventure of the forgotten “Terry Vance, The School Boy Sleuth.”

Conversely, MARVEL MYSTERY COMICS 70TH ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL #1 is bug-nuts insane. Courtesy of writer Tom DeFalco and artist Chris Burnham, the 1941-set adventure begins with the Sub-Mariner, and then gradually incorporates other characters into the story: Ferret, Mystery Detective; The Human Torch; Toro, the Flaming Kid; The Angel; and Electro, many of whom are introduced with exclamation points, because that’s the kind of tongue-in-cheek work this is. Two 1940 reprints close it out: The Human Torch vs. The Green Flame, and a mystery featuring Ferret, so named because of his animal companion. A flashback ad details ABC’s Saturday-morning lineup of 1983, including PAC-MAN, RUBIK THE AMAZING CUBE and, um, MENUDO. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

I have never read a Sherrilyn Kenyon novel, and they may be great, but the paranormal romance genre holds no appeal to me. Certainly, her stuff has its fans, so when I learned it had been adapted to manga format in THE DARK-HUNTERS: VOLUME 1, I figured it couldn’t hurt to try it out.

It did.

A former Greek god named Kyrian is now a vampire hunter. He meets a girl named Amanda who also hunt vampires, yet she is not an immortal like he is. In fact, she’s an accountant whose whole family casts spells. Neither character is introduced well, nor are their backgrounds fleshed out beyond toe-depth.

Kyrian and Amanda meet cute when they get trapped in a room together by a vampire who vows to kill Kyrian. Escape, fall in love, fighting, etc., all ending in a cliffhanger. Exactly what and how it all happens throughout still baffles me, because the writing is rushed and clumsy. I’m assuming it makes perfect sense to readers of Kenyon’s series, which currently numbers 17. To this newbie, it was a frustrating introduction; I read and re-read several pages to get my bearings and see what I had missed.

Just my time, apparently. That’s through no fault of Claudio Campos, whose art is fine. —Rod Lott

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THE LAST ORACLE, another Sigma Force novel from James Rollins, is now out in mass-market paperback. And like most of its predecessors, it is a slam-bang mixture of factual speculation pushed to dangerous extremes and plenty of action.

Cmdr. Gray Pierce is crossing the National Mall in Washington, D.C. when he’s approached by a homeless man with his hand outstretched. Rather than begging for a handout, the man wants to give Pierce something. Suddenly, the man is killed by a sniper’s bullet as he hands Pierce what looks like a coin. The object is actually an ancient relic traced back to the Greek Oracle of Delphi.

When Pierce takes the dead man and the strange relic to the underground headquarters of Sigma Force — the elite team of ex-Special Forces soldiers retrained in scientific fields — more mysteries are uncovered. The homeless man is actually a renowned neuroscientist who was slowly dying from massive doses of radiation.

Pierce and his fellow Sigma officers trace down the dead scientist’s daughter and learn of the scientist’s esoteric research on intuition and the ability to foresee the future. This, along with a strange object the scientist hid in his laboratory before his murder, launches a trip to India and the whereabouts of the dead scientists’ close friend and research associate.
 
Meantime, a little girl, suffering from some kind of mental dysfunction, is kidnapped from her keepers at the Washington, D.C. zoo and ends up in the hands of Sigma Force. She is somehow tied in with the murder of the scientist and the disappearance of another Sigma officer who went missing while investigating an assignment in the Ukraine.
 
These and various others unrelated fragments — which include gypsies, autistic children and the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl — slowly come together in a clandestine conspiracy of bioengineering experiments that hope to produce the next great world prophet.
 
Plenty of exposition is needed in the course of the unfolding plot, but it keeps getting interrupted by ambushes, sudden bursts of gunfire or a breathless officer commanding everyone to leave the premises immediately. It all gets rather exhausting and confusing after a while. Rollins eventually pulls all the fragments together by the novel’s end.
 
His fans rarely come to his stories for memorable characters, which is fine, because other than their unusual names (Gray, Painter, etc.), most of the characters are indistinguishable or dashed off with only a few physical details.

But, as usual, Rollins delivers the goods with plenty of gunfire, explosions, car chases and nick-of-time escapes. And he takes great pains after the conclusion in his “Author’s Note to Readers” to illustrate how much of his fiction is based upon fact.

THE LAST ORACLE is recommended for an entertaining and occasionally challenging way to pass the time at the beach, in the backyard hammock or lawn chair. —Alan Cranis

Buy it at Amazon.

Preview it online.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL by James Rollins

Scouring out the weekly singles scene … in comics!

Continuing Marvel’s ongoing seven-decade birthday party is CAPTAIN AMERICA COMICS 70TH ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL #1, featuring a wonderful James Robinson/Marcos Martin story that delves into Steve Rogers’ early days of saving the country, but before he was the star-spangled superhero, and still a 98-pound weakling. In defying expectations, it soars with seemingly little effort. The second half is comprised of a Joe Simon/Jack Kirby classic from 1941, in which Cap and sidekick Bucky thwart a serial killer at a major-league baseball game, back when the game equaled patriotism.

And from Captain America, we go to Miss America — not the beauty pageant title — in MISS AMERICA COMICS 70TH ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL #1. If this was a real character from yesteryear, I wasn’t familiar with her before this. In Jen Van Meter and Andy MacDonald’s story, she’s like a cross between Wonder Woman and Rosie the Riveter, undercover on a shipyard during World War II, seeking German spies. She’s also engaged to be married to Whizzer, the star of two backup stories from 1943. His high-winged-head costume is as stupid as his name.

Horror novelist Jonathan Maberry certainly doesn’t flinch when it comes to scripting THE PUNISHER: NAKED KILL #1, a one-shot that more than earns its “EXPLICIT CONTENT” cover tag. When The Punisher discovers there’s a torture-porn snuff-film ring taking place near the top floor of a heavily secured tower, he kills his way through, level by level, having to improvise without his usual armory. Extreme violence and harsh language abound, and just wait until you see what the abused women do for a ladder! Maberry does a great job with Frank Castle, but Laurence Campbell’s art is a little too rough for my tastes — some fleshing out certainly wouldn’t hurt.

Batman goes to Barcelona in, um, BATMAN IN BARCELONA: DRAGON’S KNIGHT #1, written by Mark Waid and illustrated by Diego Olmos. On a tip from The Scarecrow, who’s locked up safely in Arkham Asylum, Batman flies to Spain to catch The Croc, who’s currently on a serial-killer-esque string of menace and murder. Luckily, Bruce Wayne has a secret Batcave in the country (who knew?), complete with costume, computered-out HQ and one muy fresco Batcycle. The story is thin, but the battle between the Caped Crusader and his reptilian enemy is brutal and bloody. —Rod Lott

BBC’s super-fun sci-fi series TORCHWOOD extends its multimedia tentacles further, with the graphic novel TORCHWOOD: RIFT WAR. The 10-chapter tale is culled from the franchise’s monthly magazine, each issue of which includes a comic feature.

The epic story begins with a rift opening in the middle of a department store, unleashing a slew of heavily armed, heavily armored and crimson-maned aliens that look like animals. Naturally, the men and women of Torchwood Institute — England’s one-of-a-kind extraterrestrial investigation agency — swoop in to save the day.

Except that’s easier said than done. Turns out the invasion of the Harrowkind was just to distract Team Torchwood from the aliens’ true goal: stealing Torchwood HQ, leaving a mostly black void in its place, and destroying it so that it can then destroy humanity without interference. The upside is the rift also allows a bald, ponytailed man named Vox through, and he pledges to help Torchwood defeat the aliens.

In each chapter, the rift presents a new challenge for Captain Jack Harkness and his crew, including a giant baby who turns into some sort of Lovecraftian creature, a horde of dinosaurs, and a shapeshifter loose in a shopping mall. The most ingenious part takes place at a Stonehenge-type site, where dual storylines set in 1918 and the present day unfold simultaneously, with characters crisscrossing from one to the other.

Even more so than the spinoff novels, RIFT WAR actually captures the TV series’ spirit, visually depicting its action-packed, tongue-in-cheek blend of fantasy and fun, only minus the horniness. Better yet, each character gets more playtime — even Torchwood’s pet pterodactyl.

With the exception of Brian Williamson’s bonus standalone story, “Jetsam,” which struggles to make sense, the writing by Simon Furman, Paul Grist and Ian Edginton is solid, as is the art by Grist, D’Israeli and SL Gallant. It’s a little weird having different artists alternate among chapters, especially since Gallant’s more realistic style looks nothing like the others’ more cartoony approach. All look great — just don’t expect cohesion (sometimes, Gwen isn’t even drawn with her trademark tooth gap).

Until the series’ abbreviated third season, CHILDREN OF EARTH, hits DVD, RIFT WAR will serve as a perfectly acceptable substitute for the real deal. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS SERIES:
• TORCHWOOD: ANOTHER LIFE by Peter Anghelides
• TORCHWOOD: BORDER PRINCES by Dan Abnett
• TORCHWOOD: THE OFFICIAL MAGAZINE YEARBOOK

Scouring out the weekly singles scene … in comics!

With Marvel Comics celebrating seven decades in business, it’s been putting out a series of one-shots focused on its earlier characters, featuring a brand-new story with yesteryear reprints in the back, all sporting its original Timely Comics shield. One of them is THE HUMAN TORCH COMICS 70TH ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL #1, featuring the original Torch — not Johnny Storm. Scott Snyder and Scott Wegener provide a terrific throwback tale tinged with racial overtones, while the backup story from 1940 has the Torch meeting Toro, the Flaming Torch Kid, at a circus. You can tell the story is old just from its first page, with lines like “The Torch is attracted by the gay colored tents” and “Can’t say — but it’s mighty queer!” And that’s all part of its charm.

Another in the birthday series is SUB-MARINER COMICS 70TH ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL #1. Roy Thomas and Mitch Breitweiser’s anchoring piece featuring Prince Namor is moody and noir-ish, while Mark Schultz and Al Williamson’s “Vergeltungswaffe!” leans more toward the character’s fantasy origins, being set underwater. Closing out the fin-footed fun is Bill Everett’s debut of the Sub-Mariner from 1939′s first issue of MARVEL COMICS. Boy, is it ever primitive, and boy, do I like it. Namor’s never been among my favorite superheroes — partly because I can’t figure out if he’s really that or a supervillain — but this is a nice little trio of tales, each very different.

Like the clown princes of comics, Scott Gray and Roger Langridge tear THE FANTASTIC FOUR‘s villainous dragon character of Fin Fang Foom a new one in the one-shot FIN FANG FOUR RETURN! #1. The pair has turned the creature into comic relief before in MARVEL MONSTERS, but here are a half-dozen more stories, also starring fellow monsters Gorgilla, Googam and Elektro. They get psychoanalyzed by Doc Samson; FFF works as a chef in a Chinese restaurant; Gorgilla gets the CURIOUS GEORGE treatment; Googam gets adopted; Elektro gets arrested; and FFF saves Christmas. Self-deprecating fun all around, and the kind of thing comics companies should do more of.

Given that THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN: THE SHORT HALLOWEEN #1 one-shot is written by none other than SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE players Bill Hader and Seth Meyers, you’d think it’d be funny, but it’s really not. Then again, it doesn’t appear to be designed to be joke-driven. But it’s certainly amusing, based upon its premise, with a drunk Halloween celebrant dressed as Spidey constantly confused for the real deal, and vice versa, on a night when The Furious Five unleashes a not-so-well-planned reign of terror. Sometimes celebrity writers are brought on just for their name value, but Hader and Meyers adequately display genuine love for the material. Kevin Maguire drew the fine art. —Rod Lott

Warren Fahy wears his inspirations for FRAGMENT on his sleeve — or, rather, in his acknowledgments. Among them are Jules Verne, H.G. Wells and Michael Crichton, and there’s a great big helping of each to be found in his debut novel, which mixes sci-fi, horror and adventure into a semi-pleasing package that’ll make a great movie someday. It’s clearly designed with that in mind.

The Trident is a ship carrying 40 people across the globe’s oceans, for a reality show called SEALIFE. A storm has thrown it a little off course, but within range of a distress signal from an uncharted island. The reason is evident once they land: The South Pacific locale is filled with deadly creatures unlike the world has ever seen. Some enchanted evening.

Most notably, there’s a “spiger,” which is a six-legged mix of a spider and a tiger. But let’s not forget the disk-ants — those tiny, circular bugs that go from walking to spinning on their sides; the monsters that look like mutated rats; the mega-mantis; the “shrimpanzees”; the giant wasps that eat honeybees like Skittles.

Don’t get too attached to any of the characters, although it’s obvious from the get-go that this botanist Nell Duckworth is going to stick around. Despite her puking a lot, she makes for a headstrong heroine, smarter than many — oh, hell, all — of her male colleagues, especially when it comes to grace under pressure.

I don’t think 50 pages have even passed when the SEALIFE crew lands on this Henders Island, and the bugaboos begin to prove their higher level on the foodchain. That’s both to the novel’s benefit and its detriment — benefit because the reader doesn’t have to wait for things to get moving; detriment because once it gets moving, it pretty much does so in a circle for the next 300 pages: dire situation > fatal attack > repeat.

Back on land, one Dr. Geoffrey Binswanger lectures — and I do mean lectures — on sexual reproduction of the animal kingdom. He has no connection to the ill-fated Trident crew for quite some time, but you know that won’t last forever, and sure enough, his unorthodox theories make him a natural expert to help examine these freaks of nature and find out just from whence they came.

The answer isn’t as interesting as one would hope; in fact, it’s more than a little silly. I’m not even sure the question required resolution. As a viewer of many AIP films pitting man against monster, “it just is” is perfectly acceptable for this kind of mindless fare — and it is mindless, no matter how many scientific terms Fahy throws into the mix.

No stranger to this genre of popular fiction, I was ready and willing to suspend my disbelief for FRAGMENT’s MOREAU-like monstrosities, but not for the fact that a show like SEALIFE would be the second-highest-rated show on cable TV, so much so that it’s broadcast live. I’m also wondering what parents would dare name their child Ham Pound.

Those criticisms aside, FRAGMENT is a serviceable, if predictable thriller, most effective when the blood is spilled, which is often. I don’t think Fahy is the heir apparent to Crichton’s vacated throne, but I do think his first effort is better than more than half of those who try in the same field.

Let’s face it: Those beasts he’s invented are unsettling. It’s no wonder he’s included illustrations of them throughout the pages, as if he didn’t trust our imagination to quite match what he intended. And he’s right. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

“With a sharp crunch, the attacker sank translucent teeth into Glyn’s ribs and bit off the top of the Englishman’s body at the solar plexus.”

Not only has Max Allan Collins penned the novelization for Stephen Sommers’ summer blockbuster G.I. JOE: THE RISE OF COBRA, but he’s also gotten the chance to play around further with the property, simultaneously delivering an original prequel novel in G.I. JOE: ABOVE & BEYOND.

Consider it an origin story — not of the high-tech, desert-based international organization known as G.I. Joe, which remains a secret to 99 percent of the population — but of two of its core members: Conrad “Duke” Hauser and Wallace “Ripcord” Weems. Good pals, they’re “mere” members of the U.S. military before being drafted by Gen. Hawk to join G.I. Joe’s elite team. Already included among its members are highly trained specialists like the lovely Scarlett, the gung-ho Gung-Ho and the masked, mute ninja known as Snake Eyes.

An immediate threat to the world occurs when an arms dealer approaches the president of San Sebastiao with an opportunity to buy new pulse-weapon technology. He’s either going to sell it to this South American government, or to the drug lords they vow to fight. In so many words, Prez Vicente tells the dealer to go to hell, and not long after, the leader gets a taste of the business end of said pulse weapon. Oops!

Once news of Vicente’s assassination spread, it’s up to G.I. Joe to put a stop to the weaponry being used by the wrong hands, of course, and damned if I didn’t get a slight charge every time Snake Eyes is depicted silently slithering his way into one ambush or another. Because ninjas are cool.

With Collins at the helm of a tie-in, you can expect it to be more than pure product — an honest-to-God story. That’s the case here, delivering several action set pieces as he demonstrates why each and every G.I. Joe member is worthy of the “Real America Hero” tag. His soldiers chew Double Bubble and hum the MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE theme — how much more patriotic can one get?

The one thing that bothered me was the dialogue of Ripcord, an African-American. Most of it is jokey and playa-smooth, in the manner of so many characters onscreen today. I’m going to assume Collins was just sticking to the character as written for the film, but still, it’s an annoyance.

Luckily, there aren’t any others of note. The story moves fast, with economy and ease, and much of it provides the pure-joy jolt of many a men’s adventure series, with hotheads and their hardware, but stripped of the technical terms that would render it gun porn.

Don’t misunderstand: ABOVE & BEYOND isn’t to be held to the same level of the author’s original novels of crime and mystery, but it’s certainly a nice seasonal diversion while you’re awaiting his next one. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• THE BABY BLUE RIP-OFF by Max Allan Collins
• BLACK HATS by Patrick Culhane
• BYLINE: MICKEY SPILLANE edited by Max Allan Collins and Lynn F. Myers Jr.
• DEADLY BELOVED by Max Allan Collins
• DICK TRACY by Max Allan Collins
• DICK TRACY GOES TO WAR by Max Allan Collins
• THE FIRST QUARRY by Max Allan Collins
• THE GOLIATH BONE by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins
• A KILLING IN COMICS by Max Allan Collins
• THE LAST QUARRY by Max Allan Collins
• MY LOLITA COMPLEX AND OTHER TALES OF SEX AND VIOLENCE by Max Allan Collins and Matthew V. Clemens
• QUARRY’S LIST by Max Allan Collins
• RED SKY IN MORNING by Patrick Culhane
• ROAD TO PARADISE by Max Allan Collins
• STRIP FOR MURDER by Max Allan Collins
• TOUGH TENDER by Max Allan Collins
• THE WAR OF THE WORLDS MURDER by Max Allan Collins

People who have read this column for a while will notice something: I rarely cover books that are more than 400 pages. That is done for one simple reason: Those bricks of books better deliver or I’d seriously be pissed off at wasting my time trying to plow through them. It’s not that I don’t like reading really long tomes — hey, I enjoy Charles Dickens — but it’s a daunting task to start one, especially if you have to slog your way through them … which hopefully is not the case with the three I chose. Consider them potential summer reading, since everyone is always looking for a nice, long read to enjoy while on the beach or by the pool.

THE MATARESE CIRCLE by Robert Ludlum — This 1979 novel has been on my radar for a while, thanks to David Cronenberg, who is writing and directing a movie version. Plus, it’s considered one of the best Ludlum books out there. It’s more than 500 pages, but I flew through it in no time. I thought it would go by slow, but no, not at all!

The plot slowly develops and builds to the climax, where there are some true surprises. The story opens with two killings of high-profile government officials in both the U.S. and Russian governments. In the U.S., it’s the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Both killings have trademarks of long-term spies Brandon Scofield and Vasili Taleniekov, but neither one is responsible.

Taleniekov is told by his former boss about a secret society that has been dormant, but when it was originally in power, it was an assassin-for-hire operation. Now, it has an even more sinister purpose. It’s called the Matarese, and it never really went away, laying down a foundation for world domination. To go further with what the Matarese has planned would ruin the whole story, but it’s a biggie.

Most of the first third has Taleniekov trying to persuade Scofield to trust him and that it’s imperative they meet. Scofield is such a hard-bitten spy, he thinks he is being set up. Even when Taleniekov saves Scofield in one of the many action pieces, he is still not sure. They come to trust one another to a point. This book does not all of sudden make them the best of friends, skipping off together; it’s a very strained relationship.

I need to point out most reviews of MATARESE give away the big surprise. That’s something I try not to do, since what would be the point of reading the book then? Telling people that Ludlum is a good writer is about as pointless as bringing sand to the beach; his books have never gone out-of-print and people will even grab “his” new ones, even though he is dead. This really is perfect summer reading, since it slowly grabs the reader, who won’t put it down until it’s all said and done.

My concern is how this will translate into a movie, since there is so much material, and it’s also set in the late ’70s/early ’80s, when Russia was still a major powerhouse, and relationships between them and the U.S. were not as friendly. That is a major point of this story. While reading, it was hard not to think of Denzel Washington, who reportedly will be playing Scofield in the film.

QUEST by Richard Ben Sapir — As one of the co-creators of THE DESTROYER series, Sapir did not write many other books. He passed away in 1987, the same year this rare solo effort was published. Long before Dan Brown gave us THE DA VINCI CODE, Sapir did his own telling of the search for the Holy Grail.

The story deals with a search for a jewel-encrusted salt cellar that happens to be built around the grail itself. No one knows that fact except for its real owner, the Queen of England. But this object was stolen back in the mid-1940s, only to turn up in the hands of a Ohio businessman who is trying to sell it off. His trouble gets him killed, with his daughter Claire getting swindled out of the item by a corrupt art dealer.

Everyone is after this item, mainly for the jewel stones that adorn it — we are talking a goose-egg-sized ruby and six sapphires. Claire is determined to get back what she thinks is hers and hers alone, slowly doing research about this salt cellar. Throw in the help of an NYC detective with an eye for jewelry, and a British agent who knows full well that this cellar is more than just a pure ornament, under direct orders from the crown to retrieve it by hook or by crook. Things go from bad to worse as bodies start turning up dead.

For my tastes, the story goes on way too long for its own good. Sapir could have easily trimmed this one down to a more reasonable length. It’s more than 450 pages, and trust me, by the time you hit 350, you just want it to tie up already. That’s kinda of a shame since Sapir’s DESTROYER writing is so lean and fast. I mean, QUEST itself is a fine read, but it’s just too unwieldy for its own good. But for die-hard DESTROYER fans who want to see Sapir branch out, take a chance.

KILLING FLOOR by Lee Child — It seems that Child is a favorite with some of my fellow reviewers, so I figured it was about time to finally read one of his novels. This 1997 one is actually the first in his Jack Reacher series.

A stranger in town is arrested for a crime he did not commit. This is how Child introduces Reacher to the world — not in those words, mind you, but it’s a cliché that has been done to death. But Reacher takes it in stride, knowing full well he is innocent and has a pretty much airtight alibi.

See, Reacher was on a bus from Florida when the murder happened. But this being a small town in Georgia, you can guess what the local sheriff is like; Boss Hog and Sheriff Roscoe P. Coltrane probably come to mind. Once Reacher is cleared of the murder, thanks to a policewoman, he becomes involved in the investigation, due to the events of his time waiting to be cleared. Then there’s the sudden murder of a husband and wife, and the revelation of who the original dead body was.

Some of Child’s writing comes off a bit “men’s adventure,” mainly in Reacher’s inner monologues when he is about to take action, right before a bit of violence. Still, it’s well-placed and the plot moves along swiftly. One of the problems is that it’s very obvious who one of the big baddies is. Sure, there are some surprises to come, but for me, it was a bit of a strike against it. That’s a minor quibble, since the rest of the book kept me glued, which, for a column like this, is a major victory.

The story is packed with action and has a nice buildup, never lagging at any moment. Just be prepared to suspend disbelief at certain points, those being the action-hero moments you see in movies. I’ll definitely check out other books in the series at some point.

Next time: I hope Criterion will reissue them.—Bruce Grossman

Buy them at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF LEE CHILD:
• BAD LUCK AND TROUBLE by Lee Child
• GONE TOMORROW by Lee Child
• THE HARD WAY by Lee Child
• NOTHING TO LOSE by Lee Child

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF RICHARD SAPIR:
• THE BEST OF THE DESTROYER by Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir
• THE DESTROYER #5: DR. QUAKE by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #6: DEATH THERAPY by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #9: MURDER’S SHIELD by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #10: TERROR SQUAD by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #11: KILL OR CURE by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #13: ACID ROCK by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #14: JUDGMENT DAY by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #15: MURDER WARD by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #17: LAST WAR DANCE by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #18: FUNNY MONEY by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #19: HOLY TERROR by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #22: BRAIN DRAIN by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #23: CHILD’S PLAY by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #24: KING’S CURSE by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #26: IN ENEMY HANDS by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #30: MUGGER BLOOD by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #48: PROFIT MOTIVE by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #52: FOOL’S GOLD by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #67: LOOK INTO MY EYES by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy

All the problems of DC’s 1960s “The War That Time Forgot” series from STAR SPANGLED WAR STORIES — repetition, repetition, repetition — are not present in DC’s current reboot, THE WAR THAT TIME FORGOT: VOLUME ONE.

Whereas the original stories were the same thing over and over again — World War II soldiers fighting dinosaurs — Bruce Jones’ update aims for an action-driven plot steeped in its own teasing mythology, à la TV’s LOST.

As this six-issue collection opens just prior to Japan’s invasion of Pearl Harbor, Lt. Carson of the U.S. Air Force narrowly misses being shot down by a Japanese plane, yet is sideswiped by … a pterodactyl!?! Next thing he knows, he wakes up on an island, with his plane nowhere in sight. Standing before him are a Davy Crockett-esque man who calls himself Tomahawk and a red-haired Indian named Firehair.

Other characters from various periods of time populate the island as well: World War I German fighter pilot Enemy Ace, the Viking Prince, the Golden Gladiator, the G.I. Robot and sleek, sexy woman-from-the-future Akisha. If you recognize some of those names from obscure DC titles of yesteryear, that’s part of what makes WAR so fun, throwing characters who normally don’t belong together into the same sci-fi tale.

Although there are attacks aplenty, the dinosaurs are almost secondary, with the mystery of the inescapable island and its purpose being the real hook. Unlike LOST, answers come pretty quickly, including a huge, game-changing twist I never saw coming. Art by Al Barrionuevo and Jimmy Palmiotti is terrific, recalling more those AIP Edgar Rice Burroughs flicks of the ’70s and less of its source material. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS SERIES:
• SHOWCASE PRESENTS THE WAR THAT TIME FORGOT: VOLUME 1

My guess is that most BOOKGASM readers have heard of The Shadow, the hero pulp crime fighter who is frequently thought of as the first of his kind — you know, rich guy who roots out evil by disguising himself and adopting an odd but catchy nom de vigilante, like … oh, say, Batman, for instance. But before The Shadow’s first magazine adventure in 1931 came Zorro’s first appearance in 1919 and The Scarlet Pimpernel’s print debut in 1905.

Which brings us to another of those pulp masked action heroes: The Spider. He was Richard Wentworth during the day, another of those indolent millionaire playboys who seemed to be two for a nickel during the Depression. His gal pal was Nita Van Sloan and together they busted more insidious crime than J. Edgar Hoover and Clyde Tolson.

Girasol Collectables, a publisher in Canada, has been producing first-rate reproductions of pulp magazines for years, but they recently got into putting out two-fers without the bells and whistles. Their Spider reprints give you two Spider novels for around 15 bucks. The books are the size of a real pulp, but unlike The Shadow and Doc Savage reprints currently on the market from Sanctum Books, contain no historical essays. They don’t even include the names of the authors or cover artists.

The novels were originally published as written by “Grant Stockbridge,” but several pulpsmiths were the real authors. Most of the books were written by Norvell Page, as were the two in this edition: THE CORPSE CARGO AND SLAVES OF THE RING.

If I’ve made The Spider sound like just another version of the same old masked, slouch-hatted, caped, .45-carrying crime buster, allow me to disabuse you of that notion. These stories are different — kinkier and far more violent than those of Wentworth’s more family-friendly rivals. Good and bad guys drop like flies in these yarns.

In 1934′s THE CORPSE CARGO, a band of land pirates led by the sadistic Captain Kidd rob trains by shooting electricity through the cars and killing everyone onboard: “Wentworth got hold of a paper and by the light of a pocket flashlight he read the shrieking black headlines. TRAIN WRECKS KILL 1,000; PENNSY FLIER CRASHES IN TUBE; 2ND SMASH IN GRAND CENTRAL; FIVE MAIL PLANES CRACK UP. ‘And the loot will run into millions,’ he said. ‘Millions—and a thousand witnesses killed. Captain Kidd—does—right—well.’”

What I like best about that paragraph is the lack of pulp-fiction exclamation points, as if The Spider is appalled at the needless slaughter, but not terribly surprised. The surprise comes when he finds out that Captain Kidd is a woman.

In 1942′s SLAVES OF THE RING, a criminal madman known only as The Brain has corrupted absolutely the political ring of a certain state — no name given. The Spider and Nita, who plays a larger than usual role in the story, have to save the lives of a crusading newspaper publisher and his daughter, convince the governor that he’ll be killed by his bosses if he doesn’t reveal their identities first, solve the murder of an honest U.S. Senator, and bust a statewide siege by the police, and all without the aid of the federal government, which is never even mentioned. The “state” is an obvious stand-in for some small European country that has been conquered by a fascist power.

Forgive me, but I enjoy The Spider stories a lot more than I do those about The Shadow. They’re wilder, goofier, more action-filled — hell, just pulpier. Plus, Nita Van Sloan is hotter than Margot Lane. —Doug Bentin

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THE SPIDER:
• THE SPIDER: ROBOT TITANS OF GOTHAM by Norvell Page
• THE SPIDER: THE DEVIL’S PAYMASTER by Grant Stockbridge

In the past, I’ve covered a variety of spy fiction, be it the brainless fun with lots of things that go boom, or the heady, well-plotted type where there action is only a small part of the story. This week, I present three different takes on the matter, including an author who would have turned 100 this month, a return of a personal favorite and a debut novel from a man best-known for a detective series. But it seems he had the spy bug in him first.

JOURNEY INTO FEAR by Eric Ambler — This 1940 book is considered one of Ambler’s best. Some people would give the edge to A COFFIN FOR DIMITRIOS, which shares one of FEAR’s characters. For those unfamiliar with the author’s work, the best way to describe his stories are Hitchcockian, in the sense that Alfred Hitchcock was a fan and used Ambler’s template of a man way out of his element, thrust into the world of espionage and intrigue.

The book takes place right at the start of World War II, which most people think will be a lot like the first one, not realizing the massive scope and true destruction to come. A British engineer named Graham has just concluded talks with the Turkish government to ally itself with Britain. Trouble starts right away for Graham, with attempts made on his person, to the point that he relies on the help of a Turkish colonel.

The colonel promises to help him out, putting him on a ship where he vouches for all the passengers. The problem is that Graham recognizes one of them as one of the people who tried to kill him. The story moves into a cat-and-mouse game, with Graham at center stage. All of the action takes place while at sea, with Graham trying his hardest to convince anyone that he is in dire straits. He has to rely on some of his fellow passengers, who comprise a rogue’s gallery — including pimps, secret agents, a political French couple and a German spy master with his hired goon — with the story building to what for the time would be the big-budget climax.

Ambler’s writing is of its time, but still pretty relevant. His style is slowly paced, but engaging for readers today, which is a pleasure for a novel close to 70 years old. A bit of serendipity is that I also got my hands on the original movie version with Joseph Cotten in the role of Graham, but I understand that I would have been lost if I did not first read the book.

SPY STORY by Len Deighton — This 1974 book is a bit of a conundrum, since some think it’s a continuation of the Nameless Spy/Harry Palmer series. But while reading the book, some details don’t gel with what we have been presented with before. We also have a name for our spy this time out: Pat Armstrong, who is just coming off a six-week trip on a sub doing research on the Soviets in the Arctic Circle.

Once his time is up, Armstrong goes back to his old apartment, only to find that it seems someone else is not only living there, but living his life, with his clothes being slightly altered, as well as family photographs. Armstrong is pretty much out of the spy life, since he now works for the Studies Center, where the main order of business is running military strategy programs on computers — a bit of war-game theory.

The story slowly builds into the crux of the matter: The British are about to receive another Russian defector. Deighton paces the book so well that it’s more of an enigma for Armstrong, as well as the reader, with Armstrong making discoveries of a rogue operation being run to take in this defector. Armstrong is forced into the position of getting back into the spy game.

Things really go into high gear when Armstrong is taken on a trip to the Arctic Circle for the big climax of this operation, where the whole truth is revealed, with our working-class spies still just pawns in a much larger picture. Deighton mapped out a truly fantastic Cold War tale, but it is not for newbies of his writing, though, since some characters from previous books make appearances. No matter what, it’s a fantastic read that starts off slowly, only to deliver the goods at the end.

THE DARK TUNNEL by Ross Macdonald — Originally credited to his real name, Kenneth Millar, this is the 1944 debut novel of Macdonald, who came up with a iconic figure in his Lew Archer books. The story is very much of the time it was written, right in the middle of World War II, with the idea of sleeper spies in the country alive and well.

Robert Branch is a university professor in the Midwest. Early on, he relates a story of his time in Germany before the war broke out and how he fell for a woman with whom he has been trying to keep in touch ever since, only to find out she has been offered a position at the university. But as much as this is good news for Branch, something happens that enters him into the world of espionage: the death of one of his good friends.

The police believe it to be suicide, but Branch is not sure and thinks it has to be enemy agents. Add to this that the woman he has not seen in more than six years turns up with a fiancé in tow, all leading to another death, this time with all the fingers being pointed at Branch.

There is a fantastic chase sequence in the woods, where Branch tries to find a weapon to protect himself, with his purchase being made from a deaf mute. That is just a tad bizarre for bizarre’s sake. As much as Branch pleads his innocence, the cops still arrest him, but Macdonald throws a curve ball or two. That is when the book shows its age, with depictions of certain characters’ proclivities, to put it nicely. I don’t want to ruin that nugget of information, since it’s key to what follows, but just remember this was the 1940s, where terms were thrown around like grass seed.

I’ve got to say this had to be the fastest I’ve ever read one of Macdonald’s books. It literally flies by. But be forewarned: This is not the mature style that he would find later in his career, but he is not aping anyone else’s style — just trying to find his footing in the world of writing. It’s a shame he did not continue in the spy genre. I’ll just have to make do with those Archer books and some of his non-series entries still waiting to be read. If you come across a copy of THE DARK TUNNEL, grab it with out a worry. Even though it was his first attempt, it’s still better than some of the dreck people rave about.

Next time: These authors are not green. —Bruce Grossman

Buy them at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF ERIC AMBLER:
• THE LEVANTER by Eric Ambler

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF LEN DEIGHTON:
• THE BILLION DOLLAR BRAIN by Len Deighton
• AN EXPENSIVE PLACE TO DIE by Len Deighton
• FUNERAL IN BERLIN by Len Deighton
• HORSE UNDER WATER by Len Deighton
• ONLY WHEN I LARF by Len Deighton

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF ROSS MACDONALD:
• THE ARCHER FILES by Ross Macdonald
• BLACK MONEY by Ross Macdonald
• BLUE CITY by Ross Macdonald
• THE BLUE HAMMER by Ross Macdonald
• THE DOOMSTERS by Ross Macdonald
• THE GALTON CASE by Ross Macdonald
• THE INSTANT ENEMY by Ross Macdonald
• THE MOVING TARGET by Ross Macdonald
• THE WAY SOME PEOPLE DIE by Ross Macdonald

We’re taking a trip into the future this week, with two private eyes out of their element, and one kick-ass vehicle that was turned into a really lame movie. I did plan on covering a certifiable classic I finished, but to be honest, not a lot really happens in it. It’s more a mediation of a man coming in contact with a giant alien ship called Rama. It was by an author who got an Oscar nomination for a Stanley Kubrick film that ripped off Elvis’ intro music. Still a fantastic read, but a bit too heady for this column.

THE DOOMSDAY BRUNETTE by John Zakour and Lawrence Ganem — I think I’ve had this 2004 book on my shelf since about 2005. I always kept meaning to read it, but like others, I wanted to read the first book in the series beforehand. Well, guess what? Now this and the first book, THE PLUTONIUM BLONDE, are packaged together and I’m too cheap to waste money on it now, which is kind of funny since our narrator/hero Zachary Nixon Johnson berates the reader for not having read the first one.

Zach is the last private eye in the world, and he gets hired by one of the most famous women of the future: Ona Thompson, one of the famous quad sisters. The others are named Twoa, Threa and Forra, and they all have their own distinct personalities, to say the least. While Twoa thinks of herself as some sort of superhero, Threa acts like a fairy princess/Earth mother.

The reason for their fame is that they are all genetically engineered and look exactly alike with their brunette hair and purplish skin. They are not only the smartest women on the planet, but also indestructible, created by their late father, Dr. Thompson, a genius who also created a doomsday machine, for which the plans had to be destroyed. The good doctor is getting a small lobotomy so he can never repeat that work.

Zach is called upon by Ona for a very special reason: Someone has killed Foura, which is seemingly impossible, especially in a room with her other sisters present and under close watch of cameras. The story is equal parts Ellery Queen and Douglas Adams, with one very blatant joke stolen from MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL. Zach is put through the detective paces in this novel, with him doing his best Queen impression, with the help of a computer sidekick implanted into his head. This is, after all, a science-fiction mystery.

I’ll say one thing about this writing team: It’s not afraid of using certain mystery clichés for their own amusement. It’s a thoroughly enjoyable take on the whole genre, totally tweaked for a reader who needs a break from hard-boiled action. I was truly surprised by the cleverness of the story, never going for the quick out, but building on those notions we have seen before in the genre. Plus, the interaction with these women is comical.

Now I guess I’m going to have to break down and buy that two-in-one collection. Also, in the series’ later books, Zakour is the sole writer, so hopefully the series continues as is and did not make any drastic changes.

DAMNATION ALLEY by Roger Zelazny — Having recently watched the 1977 movie, I figured I should check out the 1969 book, since the studio changed it so much, according to all reports. Instead of listing every change, here is what they actually kept: There is a character named Tanner and he does ride a motorcycle at one point. Plus, the road he must travel is called Damnation Alley. That’s really it.

In the book, Tanner is actually an ex-con who takes the job of crossing the country in a convoy of cars to deliver a serum to Boston. Already, we know there are other people out there. It’s never really explained what happened to the world — only small bits of information is given — but it seems a giant war happened and most scientists were killed by local mobs because of it.

The events here take place many years after the fact. mainly focusing on Tanner’s expedition, with brief glimpses into the plague-ridden city of Boston. Along the way, the convoy loses two of the other cars. Tanner and his co-driver also have to deal with giant bats, giant gila monsters and, of course, bikers who are just pests.

It’s amazing that if the filmmakers stuck to the actual book, they would have had a much more action-packed film. Plus, they would not have wasted all that money on the goofy-looking car. Zelazny was so right taking his name off the film, but his novel is paced really well, with enough breaks to give a readers a respite, even if the Tanner character is nothing groundbreaking — just a rough-and-tumble biker type with a heart of gold. If you’re only familiar with scenes of Paul Winfield getting attacked by hissing cockroaches or Jackie Earle Haley throwing rocks at George Peppard, read the book. The differences are jaw-dropping in scope.

LOOK OUT FOR SPACE by William F. Nolan — Closing out our space-themed column is the second and final book in the Sam Space series. Once I finished the 1985 novel, it was very obvious why it took Nolan such a long time to come up with a sequel — and a very weak one at that — since the whole idea of some hard-boiled P.I. might work for other writers.

Nolan seems to have a germ of an idea, but uses a few too many quick outs and a huge deus ex machina to move the plot along. Case in point: The opening chapter has nothing to do with the rest of the book. Even Nolan states that fact in the first sentence in the second chapter. So already, I knew it was going to be rough going.

The real plot deals with a missing asteroid that belongs to one Brother Thaddius of the Universal Cosmic Church. Why someone would steal an asteroid is anyone’s guess, but it’s explained that selling these things is big on the grey market. Space searches down asteroid sellers, leading him on a chase that involves all sorts of weird creatures, like a cat-like figure hooked on some sort of heroin, and a race of aliens with appendages on their backs, which makes sex with humans not as disgusting for them, since they don’t have to look at them. It’s moments like that that should give a reader of chuckle, but it was more a groan for me.

As the case progresses, Nolan uses that tried-and-true P.I. staple of the client turning up dead in detective’s office, with all the evidence pointed squarely at Space. He has an alibi, of course, but still gets sent to a prison. Once you get to the point of the whole thing, you’re left scratching your head going, “Really?” Stick with Nolan’s other work — namely, his bio on Dashiell Hammett or his true science-fiction masterpiece, LOGAN’S RUN.

Next time: Happy 100th, dead British author! —Bruce Grossman

Buy them at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF WILLIAM F. NOLAN:
• SPACE FOR HIRE by William F. Nolan

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF ROGER ZELAZNY:
• THE DEAD MAN’S BROTHER by Roger Zelazny