Get Your Dance On: SHAKIN' ALL OVER by The Guess Who

Toy Soldier Saturday: REL Cowboys

I think this Rel outfit put most of their efforts into making dollhouses and dollhouse furniture and dollhouse people, but they took time out to make some odd-looking cowboys too. These guys were made in both hard (as shown) and soft plastic.

This guy, who belongs on a stage coach or wagon seat, is about halfway between hard and soft, and seems to be made of some sort of resin. I'll introduce you to some odd-looking Rel redskins sometime soon.

Our Toy Soldier archive is HERE. 

Forgotten Books: The Executioner 42 - THE IRANIAN HIT by Stephen Mertz

 

Back in the '70s, The Executioner was one of my favorite series. Don Pendleton's prose was stylish and compelling. The plotting was tight, and the action came fast and furious. Mack Bolan was a new breed of pulp hero, more deadly than The Shadow, The Spider and all of his other predecessors combined. I read the first thirty-eight books (all but one by Pendleton himself) and liked them so much I read them again.

 

But after number 38, the magic died. Pendleton sold the series - including his own name - to a new publisher, and everything changed. Bolan's one-man war against the Mafia was over. He got a new name -John Phoenix- and was sanctioned by the government to fight terrorists and other threats to freedom around the world. I tried a couple of the new ones, but they didn't grab me, and I bid the series a fond farewell.

 

Then last year, after enjoying a few Steve Mertz books, I decided to hunt down his contributions to the series. And damn, I'm glad I did. Steve assisted Don Pendleton on some of the original books, and developed a great feel for the character. The Iranian Hit is the first (of twelve) that he wrote on his own, and it reads like the real thing.

 

This book was published in 1982. Here's yours truly 

hobnobbing with the author himself at the 1982 Bouchercon.

(Photo courtesy of Sir Arthur Conan Scott)

 

From the title, I figured Bolan would be kicking Iranian butt over in Iran. But nope, this one takes place in the suburbs of Washington D.C., and while a lot of the kicked butts belong to Iranians, an equal number are attached to his old playmates in the Mafia. A renegade Iranian general has snubbed his nose at the Ayatollah and set up his own criminal operation in the U.S. Now Khomeini has sent a hit squad after him, and while U.S. officials would like to see the general dead, they can't let the Iranians take him out on our soil. So who they gonna call? Mack Bolan, of course.

 

This one brought back a lot of memories, reminding me why the original series was so great. I'll be digging into the rest of the Mertz entries, which, for the records, are numbers 43, 48, 52, 62, 64, 67, 73, 76, 92, 94 and the unnumbered opus Dirty War.

 

Meanwhile, The Executioner has been rolling right along. It boggles the mind to realize the original series is now up to number 435, and there have been more than 300 additional adventures published as Stony Man, Super-Bolan and plain old Mack Bolan books. Does that make Bolan the busiest fictional character of all time? Is there any other hero who has starred in more than 700 novels? Maybe you can think of one, but I sure can't. And here's an even bigger question: Is there any living human who has read all 700+ books? Yikes!

Pulp Gallery: MYSTERY ADVENTURES (1935-36)

1935 - H.J. Ward

1936 - Norman Saunders

1936 - Norman Saunders

Comic Gallery: The Birth of S.H.I.E.L.D. (Part 5)

1965

Kirby/Steranko cover

First true Steranko cover

Earlier S.H.I.E.L.D. covers HERE.

Overlooked Films: Philip Marlowe in "Blackmailers Don't Shoot"

"Blackmailers Don't Shoot," from the December 1933 issue of Black Mask, was Raymond Chandler's first published story. I re-read it recently and found it shockingly good. Shocking that Chandler was that good on his very first story, and he just kept getting better. The hero is a tough guy named Mallory. He's recently come from Chicago to L.A., and though one of the characters asks if he's a private detective, it's never really stated one way or the other. Because this one is told in third-person, no one ever tried to turn it into a Marlowe story. No one, that is, until HBO adapted it for their TV series back in 1986.

All drawings and paintings from Black Mask Magazine are copyright © 1923 to 1953 by Keith Alan Deutsch as successor-in-interest, and conservator of all copyrights to the original publishers and copyright registrars: Pro-Distributors Publishing Company, Inc, and Popular Publications Inc.  All copyrights © renewed 1951 to 1981.

Cap Gun Monday: Leslie-Henry TEXAS RANGER

This week's less-than-lethal weapon is about 8 1/2 inches long, with a shiny nickel finish, and dates from around 1955. It doesn't say MADE IN U.S.A. anywhere, but you can bet your bippy it was. If James J. Griffin didn't have one of these, he sure as shootin' should have. 

Song Twins: CATCH A WAVE and SIDEWALK SURFIN'