Trash Rant: Z Comm #2- Killpoint

Situation: Hopeless. Solution: Z Comm!
Radical terrorists were plotting the ultimate coup. Their target: the mass annihilation of free world leaders at a summit conference in Venice. Their goal: the establishment of a global dictatorship conceived in blood and dedicated to the enslavement of mankind. Their first mistake: thinking the Z-Command would not interfere. Their last mistake: their first. 

With that rather oddly-written description, we're off to delve into one of the most demented books I've ever read. Killpoint, the second novel in the four-novel Z Comm series, is credited to Kyle Maning, a pseudonym for David Alexander. (I see that I have a book from the Alexander-penned Phoenix series on my trashy adventure novel shelf, so it'll be interesting to see if it measures up to the blood-splattered insanity of Killpoint.)  Z-Comm is a kind of grindhouse GI Joe, featuring characters from various branches of the military sporting often-goofy names tackling various terrorist threats, but with a tone that is decidedly geared toward exploitation. In other words, this book is crammed full of batshit insanity. After I read a passage in which a trio of terrorists shot a hooker to death while fisting her, I had to put the book down for a little while and wonder exactly what the hell I'd gotten myself into. If you like your crazy-ass novels lurid as hell, you need look no further than the Z Comm series!

The Z Comm members are team leader Logan Cage, martial artist Sam Proffitt, professional big mean bastard "Bear" MacBeth, expert thief Harry Zabriske, and obligatory tough, uber-sexy female Domino Black. It bears mention that MacBeth is frequently described as bald throughout the novel, yet none of the team members are bald on the cover art; likewise, Domino is wearing an eye patch on the cover, yet there is no mention of this anywhere in the novel. The team is up against the middle-eastern terrorist group of the man known as the Vulture, whose goal is to blow up Venice during a peace meeting attended by the President of the US and the Soviet Premier. But basically, the entire book consists of scene after scene of terrorists massacring large crowds of people in various horrible ways, followed up by Z Comm killing lots of the terrorists in turn.

The Vulture is one nasty bastard. He and his henchmen, who are frequently referred to as "camel humpers," "scum sheiks," and "terror guys," rain violent, bloody death on large groups of people again and again throughout the novel. Seriously, people die by the goddamn hundreds in this book. So many people die that it barely matters that the Z Comm team technically accomplishes their mission, as there must have been all of 30 people left alive in Italy by that time.

A few choice scenes involve Italian mafioso Ugliano. The Z Comm teams busts in on him while he is busy getting it on with a transsexual, and proceeds to interrogate him. When he returns to his house with intent to evict the Vulture from the premises, Vulchy turns the tables; while his men restrain Ugliano, Vulture slits a lamb's throat, and the blood washes over Ugliano. Alexander is sure to inform us that the blood somehow fills Ugliano's asshole. I don't know how the hell that works, and I'm sure I don't wanna find out.

The writing is no better than you'd expect, but it does keep the novel moving at a good clip, even through all the page-filling passages describing the countryside and the weapons the characters use. Alexander's terrorists are complete caricatures, but he does capture the mindset of absolute fanaticism quite well.

A few choice quotes:

 "May you swim for eternity in flaming lakes of diarrhea!" - a random "terror guy"
 

Bear knew he stuck out in the Plaza of the Crazies like a hard-on in a room full of nuns. 
 

"Shake your shit and get on the tit!" -Cage, for no discernible reason

As a bonus, here is the full cover art, revealed in all its glory when you open the front cover flap.

HOLYSHITJESUSFUCK What the hell is wrong with that guy?!?!!?

Just look at him!!!!

I can't possibly follow that up. Can the next book possibly match the fever dream that is Killpoint? Find out next time!

Trash Rant: Rig Warrior

I'll tell ya what, I was sold on this one the moment I saw the cover.

"Barry straightened and looked around him. No witnesses. Good. The dimly lit parking area was void of human life. Not counting the shitheads on the asphalt. And Barry didn't count them as human." Meet our protagonist, Barry Rivers, a.k.a. Dog. No, really! His CB handle is Dog. Rig Warrior is the work of prolific author William W. Johnstone, no stranger to action novels. Barry Rivers-- a Vietnam vet, as required by the law of men's adventure novels-- is a weapons salesman with a thriving business who enjoys kicking the shit out of random street punks whenever the opportunity arises. Barry gets wind of the trouble his father, Big Joe, is having down in New Orleans with the Mafia trying to take over his trucking business. Barry heads down to deal with the situation, and it quickly becomes clear that the whole mess is far bigger and nastier than anyone imagined.

The story eventually encompasses a shady government program that is performing horrific experiments on Vietnam veterans who suffer from PTSD, along with illegal Mexican immigrants of all ages, homeless people, and pets for good measure. This book really wants us to hate scientists, as the horror of these experiments is repeatedly hammered into the reader, and we're reminded that it's all for the benefit of science. Apparently all scientists are evil sadists who enjoy performing horrible acts on people and animals. Who knew? On top of that, the dead bodies are used to smuggle cocaine once the eeeeeevil scientists are done with them. Even further on top of that, Dog and his loyal truckers are being set up to take the fall! And even higher up, on the tippy top of that, the man behind it all is one of the people Dog trusts most!

This novel functions largely as an origin story, setting up a series centering on Dog and his dog, Dog. That's right, vigilante trucker Dog has a dog named Dog. You can't make this stuff up! (Well, uh, I guess you can, but it's pretty damn goofy.) The main plot is abruptly abandoned near the novel's end, and the new status quo is established. The pair of Dogs drive off into the sunset, armed to the teeth, looking for punks and thugs to snuff out.

Barry/Dog is a typical adventure novel protagonist; he's tough, seems to secrete a musk that causes all women in his immediate vicinity to shuck their undergarments, and as mentioned, he's a Vietnam vet. We're reminded often of his "Cajun temper," and he despises all lawyers, even though his most trusted friend is-- any guesses?-- his lawyer. Naturally, he despises the criminal justice system, and we are reminded every couple of pages that the laws exist to protect the criminals, not the innocent. Here's a nice quote to that effect, when we discover that the truckers will carry their illegally owned firearms no matter what: "As should be the case for any taxpaying, normally law-abiding citizen who knows the law is slanted toward the criminal and against them." We're frequently reminded that it's all the fault of all the liberal bureaucrats in the government, those criminal-loving, pencil-pushing dickheads!

Barry is no slouch with the ladies either, of course. We're told that he has several regular lady friends in his city of residence, including Linda, who works for the Treasury. When Barry hosts her for dinner, it doesn't take long for her to succumb to Dog's irresistible charms: "The dinner had been very good, and dessert was even better; took two to consummate it." Whew, anyone else all hot and bothered after reading such masterful innuendo? Then there is Kate, who is described as "an angel with a garbage can for a mouth." Kate drives for Big Joe's trucking company, and don'tcha know that all the other truckers-- with handles such as Beer Butt and Panty Snatcher-- are always trying to get into her pants to no avail, but she just can't resist instantly falling for Dog! The two of them actually get married, however, which is definitely a bit surprising in a novel of this genre.

Rig Warrior isn't particularly well-written. Sentence fragments are often presented as if they are full sentences, sometimes even as an entire paragraph all on their own. There are also several instances where Johnstone just flat-out used the wrong damn word; my favorite is "Something he merely suspicioned?" There are the expected typos, as well. These are things any halfway decent editor should have caught. For all of that, Johnstone keeps the narrative moving at a rapid pace, so the reader never really has a chance to get too hung up on the book's flaws. The Rig Warrior series apparently only ran for two more installments, and I'll try to get my hands on them to see if they surpass this introductory novel, which manages to entertain despite all its shortcomings.

Trash Rant: The Penetrator #28- The Skyhigh Betrayers

This volume of the Penetrator series is written by Chet Cunningham, who handled the even-numbered volumes in the series. Dr. Brunt Maxwell is some type of scientist working on atomic shielding or something-- look, it doesn't matter, okay? Point is, this dude is missing, and everyone wants to find him, including Mark Hardin, the Penetrator. Most of the book consists of Mark bumbling around, asking everyone in sight if they've seen the guy, and constantly getting into fights. He blows up a carload of thugs with a frag grenade, breaks into a Hispanic woman's house after she's tried to kill him, just taunts her and then inexplicably leaves her alone so she can try to kill him a few more times, burns a guy's house down with a white phosphorous grenade, goes hang-gliding, goes through three or four cars... that still doesn't cover everything. This is certainly a busy book, as Mark never seems to sit still for more than a few seconds; it's ADD writing at its best. If you find yourself bored with whatever penetrating Mark is up to, just turn the page, and he's bound to be waist-deep in something else.

The attempts at reaching the page count are more obvious than in Mardi Gras Massacre; for instance, Mark visits two porno theaters/brothels, and has basically the exact same conversation in both places. Oddly, one of them masquerades as a model-photographing place, where you rent a camera and photograph the model/stripper for money, which serves as a cover for whatever else you negotiate with the ladies to pay for. Did any strip joint/brothel actually use this gimmick? I've never heard of it before, and the absurdity of it had me laughing my ass off.

In one of the brothels, Mark encounters the "manager," who happens to be a homosexual man. Most of the guys who wrote novels in this genre were basically Archie Bunker with a typewriter, so of course the only homosexual men in these novels are of the ridiculously flamboyant variety. This guy immediately comes on to Mark, then calls him a bitch when he is rebuffed. I was sincerely surprised that he didn't try to scratch his eyes out. Mark leaves the porno district soon afterward, surprisingly without any actual penetrating done.

The main villain, who is so inconsequential that I've already forgotten his name, kidnaps Dr. whatsit's wife, and then hilariously announces over the damn radio that she will be gang-raped by five men like clockwork every six hours until the doc turns over his plans for the macguffin. This leads to a genuinely interesting finale in an abandoned funhouse where Mark penetrates the fuck out of a bunch of guys with his bullets. He gets shot in the leg, but it's cool, because he uses some ultra-convenient Indian mental discipline to isolate the pain until he can deal with it at a more convenient time.

I didn't enjoy The Skyhigh Betrayers as much as Mardi Gras Massacre, largely because of the problems with obvious padding mentioned above. Another reason may be the misleading cover art, as we never get to see Mark penetrate the ocean and fight a killer whale, or have an axe fight with an Asian dude, or watch a black guy kick back and smoke a pipe. George Wilson's cover art is honestly cooler than the actual book, unfortunately. Pornstache represent!

Trash Rant: The Penetrator #5- Mardi Gras Massacre

Despite my partaking of trashy men's adventure novels here and there from my pre-teen years to the present day, I had never heard of the Penetrator series. This grievous oversight was rectified when I came across a few of the novels in a thrift store a little over a week ago, scoring them for one thin dime each! Once I saw them, there was no way I was leaving without them, and now my interest in the genre has been reawakened. A few minutes of research revealed that the Penetrator series was written by two authors, both of whom used the "Lionel Derrick" pseudonym: Mark K. Roberts, who penned the odd-numbered volumes, and Chet Cunningham, who wrote the even-numbered volumes. It seems that the series was quite popular, running for 53 volumes, and selling millions of copies. It's always interesting to me how something so popular can be so utterly forgotten just a couple of decades later. Thankfully, the series' large print run and its lack of popularity mean that I shouldn't have too much trouble getting my hands on the rest of the series.

As an odd-numbered installment, Mardi Gras Massacre is the work of Mark K. Roberts. Mark Hardin (no, I did not type an "i" instead of an "o" by mistake, that's really his name) is the Penetrator, a Vietnam veteran (virtually a requirement for protagonists in the men's adventure genre) who resolved to wage war on the criminal element after his fiancee was killed. For new readers, the basic concept and the Penetrator's previous adventures are helpfully summarized at the beginning of the book.

This volume sees Mark travel to New Orleans after a fisherman sends him a letter asserting that he is being paid with counterfeit bills. The money's phony nature  is virtually impossible to detect, and the culprits are distributing it in cahoots with Cuba to destroy the US economy. The man is dead when Mark arrives, but he meets his daughter, a lovely young lady who has an uncanny resemblance to Mark's dead fiancee. She leads him to a family who is sympathetic to their plight, leading to many, many action scenes and whole hell of a lot of murder and mayhem. As with most novels in this genre, the plot is entirely incidental, and exists only to provide plenty of opportunity for bloodshed.

There are some great moments in this book, from a kid who imitates Grady from "Sanford and Son," which is made even funnier since the combat-obsessed Penetrator has NO IDEA what the kid is referring to, to some truly great (bad) dialogue that flows steadily from the first few pages to the end. My favorite, delivered by a thug who follows Mark into a dark alley: "Darker'n the inside of a turd in here." You won't find lines like that in a Jane Austen book! There's also a scene in which Mark, delirious from a penicillin overdose, has sex with his new female pal, convinced that she is his dead fiancee. Happily, the woman doesn't mind, so thrilled is she to be with Mark! I can only conclude from this that Roberts never spoke to a woman his entire life, since I cannot conceive of any circumstances in which a woman would behave that way!

I must mention the great cover art; the artist is uncredited, but it may be the work of George Wilson, a prolific illustrator who seems to have handled at least the bulk of the covers in this series. Dig the pornstache.

This book was a lot of fun, and you can count on seeing more of this series featured here.