Showing posts with label Penetrator. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Penetrator. Show all posts

Monday, July 31, 2023

The Penetrator #43: Rampage In Rio


The Penetrator #43: Rampage In Rio, by Lionel Derrick
October, 1981  Pinnacle Books

Clearly my criticisms of recent volumes of The Penetrator have caused a blip in the time-space continnuum and gotten back to series co-author Mark Roberts. For there could be no other reason to explain the sudden uptick in quality here in Rampage In Rio. It hasn’t been since the 20s of the series that we’ve seen such violence and even, believe it or not, a little sex – nothing too risque, but we certainly get some of that goofy Roberts purple prose. 

In fact, Rampage In Rio is almost a prefigure of Roberts’s post-Penetrator series Soldier For Hire. In particular it predicts the bonkers finale of that series, Jakarta Coup, complete with bizarre sex talk (below), a lusty babe who turns out to be a jackbooted villainness, random bouts of liberal bashing, and an action vibe that’s more akin to military fiction than the lone wolf vibe more typical of men’s adventure. The only caveat is, while Rampage In Rio has all those elements, they aren’t nearly as exploited as they would be in Jakarta Coup

Oh and first of all, the cover art for The Penetrator is now credited to Hector Garrido, aka the guy who a decade earlier did the covers for The Baroness. Somehow Garrido has turned Mark “The Penetrator” Hardin into a South American gangster on the cover, complete with a Panama Jack sort of hat. The only problem is, Mark (as Roberts refers to him) actually dyes his hair blond in the novel, even his eyebrows, given that he goes undercover in Brazil as a German expatriate. Otherwise Garrido gets the other details correct: there are headhunters, for example, and also Nazis, though to be sure they aren’t in full WWII uniforms. 

Oh and another note – as we’ll recall, the previous volume concluded with Mark experiencing a terrible personal loss. (Spoiler alert: It was the death of his sometimes-girlfriend Joanna Tabler.) But given that the preceding book was by series co-author Chet Cunningham, this “terrible personal loss” is barely even a factor in Rampage In Rio, only mentioned twice in the narrative, and in passing at that. It’s my assumption that the series editor might have amended this material into Mark Roberts’s manuscript. In particular, there’s a part where Mark is about to get busy, and here we have the first of the two egregious mentions of the preceding book’s climactic loss…after which Mark gets on with getting it on, and no more is mentioned of the loss until toward the very end of the novel. 

In fact when we meet Mark at novel’s beginning, he’s just sort of puttering around in his airplane (naturally, for a Mark Roberts installment) and “looking for a new mission.” He’s not upset about anything or desolate after his loss or whatever; just the Penetrator looking for a new job to, uh, penetrate. Meanwhile we readers have already underwent a somewhat brutal opening sequence in which people – among them children – have been kidnapped by a group of neo-Nazis. One of the captives is 15 year-old Tina Rock, an “incredibly successful country-rock star from Kansas.” Speaking of children, later in Rampage In Rio Roberts goes into what I consider too dark a tone for a men’s adventure novel, with kids getting gunned down and massacred by the Nazis. 

But initially these kids are captured to be held down in the green hell of Brazil for ransom, the neo-Nazis looking for money to further their movement. They have a base in the middle of the Brazilian jungle, all of them expat Germans or Germans who grew up in Brazil (their parents having gone there after the war). Leading them is Herman Braunn, who claims to be the grandson of none other than Hitler himself. He’s more of a loser than the sadist you might expect; Roberts fills the pages with a lot of internal politicking in the neo-Nazi camp, with one faction aligned against Braunn – and besides, these Nazis are a little more “well behaved” than you might expect. In one of those aforementioned “too dark” sequences a fat Nazi molests one of the captured children (off-page, I should note)…and for this affrontery the other Nazis have him whipped as punishment. 

One notable thing here is that Professor Haskins has a more active role than I can recall in any previous volume. Mark frequently heads back to the Stronghold to discuss the situation with the Professor, and also gets info from him on a frequent basis. Professor Haskins this time helps Mark figure out that these kidnappings seem to all be the work of one group, and ultimately they conclude it’s a bunch of Nazi-types operating out of Brazil. Before that though we have a lot more action, as Mark heads to Los Angeles and manages to prevent a few kidnappings while putting the pieces together. Here also we get the first taste of “bleeding-heart liberal” bashing, as after one firefight Mark looms in the distance and listens to a couple cops complain about liberals. As egregious as it can get, but still pretty funny, and an indication of the sort of thing Roberts would do later in Soldier For Hire

But the most notable thing in Rampage In Rio is that Mark Roberts dangles a plot idea I have long wondered about: a potential team-up of the Pinnacle men’s adventure heroes. In the first quarter of the novel Mark, down in Brazil, comes upon a rack of English-language books in a store: 


Unfortunately though, a team-up of The Penetrator and The Death Merchant never happened. In today’s era, with team-up superhero movies and plots that hinge on multiverses with multiple versions of the same character and all that, such a team-up would seem like a natural idea. But for whatever reason it never occurred to the powers at be at Pinnacle. Or maybe it was just a matter of figuring out who would write the books – I mean if The Penetrator and The Death Merchant were together in one book, would Mark Roberts write it? Or would Joseph Rosenberger? This also gets down to a rights issues – Rosenberger owned his character (which is why he was later able to move the series over to Dell), whereas Roberts was a writer for hire. So hell, maybe a team-up did occur to someone at Pinnacle, but the idea was untenable. At any rate it was cool to see Mark even consider the idea here. 

Also Roberts indulges in even more in-jokery with the Six-Gun Samurai mention; that was another series Roberts was writing at the time. I’ve never read this series myself but have been aware of it since I was a kid. I remember my brother picked up a copy of the first volume when it was brand new on the bookstore shelves – he’s 7 years older than me so he would’ve been 14 at the time. Not sure if he ever read it but I do recall flipping through the book myself over the years, but never reading it. Anyway I like this kind of in-jokery Roberts would do in his series books. 

But speaking of how the Death Merchant team-up is dangled but never happens, Roberts also makes unexploited forays into science fiction this time. There’s a part where Mark meets an old Nazi who worked in the camps in human experimentation, and this guy hints that cloning was a real thing that the Nazis figured out. But Roberts doesn’t go more in this sci-fi direction. He also doesn’t, as mentioned, much exploit the sexual material in Rampage In Rio. Per tradition, Mark does manage to pick up a babe while on the job, in this case an expat German blonde named Gretchen who, of course, propositions Mark while he sits alone in a bar. When they hit the inevitable sack, Roberts surprisingly leaves it off page. He has them go at it again shortly after, where Gretchen delivers dialog that’s almost a prefigure of the infamous “toss my cookies” line in Jakarta Coup


Speaking of goofy phrases, if I didn’t know any better I’d suspect Rampage In Rio is where David Alexander took a lot of inspiration for his later Phoenix series – not in the content, but in the alliterative put-downs Roberts uses for his Nazi villains. “The Nazi nerd crumpled like a sack of soft turds,” is probably my favorite of the bunch, but there are a lot more besides: “soiled superman,” or a part where Mark “pulp[s]” a Nazi’s “testicles and depriving the world of a horde of Hitlerian horrors.” However as mentioned this fun gory pulp is unfortunately sullied with un-fun gory pulp…like the parts where a couple innocent kids are gunned down by those “soiled supermen.” Actually Roberts writes so quickly he overlooks his own plot threads; there’s a part late in the book where Mark befriends a young American orphan in the jungle, and Mark is reminded of his own orphan childhood, and there’s almost the dangling potential here that Mark himself might take this kid home and raise him. But the kid soon disappears from the narrative, never mentioned again. 

Another element Roberts doesn’t exploit as much is an appearance of that favorite villainness-type of mine: the Nazi She-Devil. In the final pages a female character is outed as a jackboot-wearing Nazi gal, complete with uniform, but Roberts mostly keeps her off-page after this revelation. Indeed, her comeuppance is unsatisfactorily rendered, with Mark sniping at his foes from a distance. Otherwise the potential of this Nazi She-Devil is not much exploited. I mean, she’s no Helga Haas

Overall though Rampage In Rio is a fine return to form for The Penetrator. For once Mark Hardin actually kills his opponents instead of just knocking them out with Ava the dart gun (which doesn’t appear this time), and Roberts injects some of the goofy fun that has been missing in the past several volumes. Hopefully this will continue for the remainder of the series.

Thursday, February 16, 2023

The Penetrator #42: Inca Gold Hijack

 
The Penetrator #42: Inca Gold Hijack, by Lionel Derrick
June, 1981  Pinnacle Books

Chet Cunningham changes up The Penetrator with a series that might cause repercussions in future volumes, but probably won’t. I mean I’m sure series co-writer Mark Roberts won’t bother playing out on any of the developments. But long story short, Inca Gold Hijack features Mark “The Penetrator” Hardin suffering his greatest loss yet in the series – his greatest loss since his girlfriend’s murder, which happened before the first volume even took place. 

After so many, many lackluster volumes, Cunningham slightly gets back to the lurid vibe of the earliest volumes; this “Mark” (as both authors refer to their hero) is still not the same unhinged lunatic who would torture and kill hapless thugs in the earliest (and best!) volumes of the series, but at least he does blow a few bad guys away this time instead of just knocking them out and handcuffing them. (But then, he does that here, too.) Otherwise Inca Gold Hijack, with its trucking plotline, recalls a previous Cunningham joint, #20: The Radiation Hit (and goofily enough Mark uses this very name, “The Radiation Hit,” when recalling the events). 

The novel opens with what seems to be the promise of earlier, more action-focused installments: Mark is already on the job, hovering in a helicopter near Chicago and waging an assault on some trucking hijackers. Mark kills a few, even blowing one of them up with a grenade; Cunningham notes the “gore” in the cabin, which is probably the most violent instance in this series in I don’t know how long. But after that Inca Gold Hijack settles down into the PG vibe of the past twenty or thirty volumes, with Mark Hardin acting more like a TV protagonist of the day, chasing leads and going out of his way not to kill anyone unless absolutely necessary. 

The nice cover is a bit misleading; while there is an attractive “dusky-skinned” brunette in the novel, she and Mark never actually meet face to face. (Or, uh, face to cheek, as per the cover.) Instead, it is Joanna Tabler, that platinum blonde dish of a Federal agent who has appeared in several previous installments (the majority of them Cunningham’s) who factors into the novel’s steamy situations. And yes, Cunningham does finally sleaze things up just a little; when Mark and Joanna rendevous in Chicago, Joanna being in the city on assignment and calling up Mark’s Stronghold HQ just in case Mark too happens to be in Chicago(!?), things get a bit saucy as Cunningham doles out sleaze unseen since those earliest volumes: “Mark kissed her marvelous mounds,” and the like. Of course, when the actual tomfoolery begins, Cunningham cuts the scene. 

Mark and Joanna have not seen each other in “sixteen months;” this phrase is used so often when Joanna first appears that it gets to be humorous. This would be a reference to the previous Cunningam yarn #34: Death Ray Terror, which is also called by that name by the characters themselves. But whereas the two had a casual affair in those earlier volumes, spending vacation together and whatnot, this time Cunningham lays it on thick. Or, rather, Joanna does; within moments of their first boink Joanna’s getting misty-eyed and talking about her “silly, womanish, 1940s dream” of marrying Mark, living in some cottage somewhere, and raising a bunch of kids. Through the rest of the novel Joanna will stay safely in a hotel room, waiting for Mark to come home that night, so they can hit the sack again and she can start crying with worry over him and dreaming the impossible dream of them being together happily ever after, etc, etc. 

Folks, you don’t need a master’s degree in men’s adventure to guess that something might happen to Joanna Tabler in this installment. 

This “Joanna” subplot turns out to be the most memorable thing about Inca Gold Hijack. The main plot itself is threadbare; some Incan gold, you might guess from the title, has been hijacked…by truckers! So Mark Hardin follows leads and suspects that a trucker by the name of Big Red, who runs his own operation, was probably behind the heist, working with the Mafia. It’s very heavy on the early ‘80s redneck tip with Mark going undercover and getting a job as a trucker in Big Red’s operation and hanging around the pool hall and stuff. Meanwhile Joanna, also undercover, gets a job on the clerical staff. 

Action is sporadic and bloodless. There’s some fun stuff which, again, recalls the unbridled fun of the earliest volumes. Like when Mark gets a lead on someone who was involved with the heist, and it turns out to be a gay guy who was blackmailed into it – thanks to “homosexual intercourse pictures” (as Mark refers to them) which were secretly taken of the guy in action and used as leverage to get him in on the heist. An interesting note here is that Mark shows absolutely no judgment of the guy being gay, which must have seemed been pretty novel in 1981. That said, Mark does push the poor guy’s face into a puddle of his own vomit, but that’s just to put some fear into him so he’ll talk, not because he’s gay or anything. 

Cunningham also ties in to some earlier novels and subplots. A few past capers – ones with Joanna – are mentioned, and also there’s a goofy part where Yolanda, the dusky-skinned babe who is in charge of the Incan gold, requests The Penetrator’s help in the paper, at the behest of reporters. When Mark responds to the note in the newspaper, he has to pass a “screening” test from a long-time “Penetrator fan” who asks Mark all kinds of questions that only the real Penetrator would know. That said, the stuff with Yolanda is really just framework to set the action in motion; I just remembered that she does indeed meet Mark, soon after this, but it’s only to talk – and besides soon leads into an action scene. But after that Yolanda slips out of the narrative. 

There’s also the recurring Cunningham penchant for a torture death-trap; midway through Mark is caught in the bad guys’s headquarters and finds himself in a special room from which there’s no escape, where the place literally turns into an oven. Mark uses C4, handily hidden on his ankle, to bust his way out, rendering himself deaf for twenty-four hours(!?) in the process. This is another recurring Penetrator schtick, with Mark getting badly injured. And guess who nurses him to health (while crying) before heading off to her undercover job at Big Red’s outfit “just one last time?” And who of friggin’ course is captured in the process? 

Cunningham again gets lurid with all this; poor Joanna is raped (off-page) by Big Red and four of his men, and then the real torture begins (off-page as well). But the finale is slow-going and it seems evident Cunningham was spinning his wheels (lame trucker-plot pun alert). First Mark captures Big Red, then the two drive around with Big Red running his mouth, taking Mark to different places where he says he’s stashed Joanna, then finally they get to the real place where Joanna is hidden…and only then does Big Red try to run away so he and Mark can get in an extended chase and fight scene. It’s all muddled and lame, but the impact of what happens to Joanna isn’t lessened – the only thing that does lessen it is the likelihood that it will never be mentioned again, except perhaps in passing. And only in a Chet Cunningham installment. 

The justice dealt to Big Red is also suitable and again a reminder of the hard-hearted Penetrator of the earliest volumes…except that this time he keeps reminding himself to shut out his thoughts while Big Red screams for it all to stop. Last we see Mark Hardin, he’s bereft and just wanting to take a cab ride to nowhere, as “nothing will ever be the same” for him now. But then, in eleven volumes Mark himself will be in for the big finale.

Monday, October 24, 2022

The Penetrator #41: Hell’s Hostages


The Penetrator #41: Hells Hostages, by Lionel Derrick
March, 1981  Pinnacle Books

The only notable thing about this volume of The Penetrator is that it seems to be an installment of an entirely different series. In fact it’s almost as if Mark Roberts has used Hell’s Hostages as a trial run for his later series The Liberty Corps. Like the books in that series, this volume of The Penetrator is more a piece of military fiction, with Mark Hardin acting in the role of a field commander instead of a lone wolf crime-buster. 

There are some other changes to the series. For one, we have a slightly revamped cover design, which would last until the series end a few years later. Cover art is credited to George Wilson. The customary “Prologue” which has appeared in the previous volumes, detailing the origins of Mark “The Penetrator” Hardin, is gone. In fact, there are none of the typical Penetrator trappings this time: no opening in the Stronghold, no appearances of Professor Haskins or David Red Eagle. When we meet Mark he’s already on the field in Persis, an “independent sheikhdom” in the Middle East, commanding an assault squad. 

Roberts does tie back to previous volumes with some of the men in Mark’s outfit being returning characters: there’s Jim Jaffe, a “black mercenary” who appeared in #33: Satellite Slaughter, and also Uchi Takayama, who helped Mark fight Preacher Mann in #38: Hawaiian Trackdown. Curiously, that installment was by Chet Cunningham, meaning that Roberts was at least familiar with the books written by the other “Lionel Derrick.” These guys are all part of a larger force put together by a ‘Nam Special Forces badass named Toro Baldwin; in a flashback we learn that Toro (a nickname he got in the war, naturally) recently called together various men who served under him in ‘Nam to see if they’d be willing to take part in a mercenary operation and free some captured Americans in Persis. 

Very clearly rankled over the contemporary Iranian hostage crisis, Mark Roberts condems US foreign policy in the opening section, as expected raking the “weak-hearted liberals” over the coals. Toro gives evidence of how the only way to deal with hostage-takers, either foreign or domestic, is to go in with guns blazing. This he intends to do for the latest batch of Americans taken on Middle Eastern soil, employees of a corporation Baldwin now handles security for. Mark, we’re informed, was never in Special Forces, but did handle a job or two on the side for Toro in ‘Nam, hence Mark too has been summoned – Toro’s meeting with his potential soldiers rendered in a flashback sequence which occurs after the opening action scene. 

I forgot to mention! Roberts dedicates Hell’s Hostages to none other than Joseph Rosenberger


So in addition to William Crawford, that’s another Pinnacle writer we now know Mark Roberts was friends with. And also I love that “patriot” description of Rosenberger (“extremist” in modern parlance, btw), because from the get-go I realized that not only was Hell’s Hostages dedicated to Rosenberger, but it was also written like Rosenberger. In short, this could just as easily be an installment of Death Merchant, with Camellion on foreign soil and in charge of the latest group of redshirts. There’s even a “pig farmer” presence (though Roberts doesn’t use that phrase), with the Soviets funding the Islamic radicals who have taken the Americans hostage. The only difference is that Mark bangs the Soviet babe in charge. Otherwise even the action scenes are the same, with Mark even busting out martial arts moves while blasting away with a machine gun in total Richard Camellion fashion: 


The only problem is, it’s not The Penetrator, and it’s even more indication of how bored Roberts was with the series at this point. Nothing that gave this series its quirks is present in Hell’s Hostages. Mark’s entire point for being here is also brushed over….Toro Baldwin intimates that he suspects Mark might be the Penetrator, and also that Mark being on his force was a suggestion made by none other than Dan Griggs (ie the Fed that’s supposed to be tracking down the Penetrator but instead secretly assists him). But as we all know, the Penetrator generally operates in the US, yet here he is in the Middle East commanding various fire teams in attacks on enemy compounds. And the helluva it is, it’s boring – there’s none of the immediacy of typical men’s adventure action, going for that same pseudo-“military fiction” vibe of The Liberty Corps

Things are only salvaged by the presence of two women: Rosalyn Kramer, a “blonde, sloe-eyed beauty” who acts as Mark’s CIA contact in Persis, and Major Katrina Something-Or-Other (I was too lazy to write down her long Russian name), a hotstuff but “masculine” KGB babe in charge of the Persis guerrillas. Roberts gets kinda creepy-crawly pervy for the latter, serving up an arbitrary and explicit flashback detailing Katrina’s rape…at age 11. But on the more fun side of sleaze, Mark and Rosalyn get it on posthaste, in the first explicit sex scene in a Penetrator novel in forever: 


Like The Liberty Corps, a lot of the narrative is comprised of padding. Mark gets his own personal team together, part of the larger group Toro Baldwin runs, and trains them. There are periodic action scenes but for the most part Hell’s Hostages is a slow churn. Even more like that later series, there are even periodic cutovers to the various characters under Mark’s command, like this is suddenly a “team” series and not the lone wolf setup we’ve become accustomed to over the past 40 volumes. As I say, it’s as if we’re reading another series entirely. Things only pick up, again, when the female characters are concerned, as Mark is blindsided by a goofy reveal and soon finds himself a captive. This serves up a fun part where Major Katrina shows off Mark and the other captives for the world media – the US reporters of course left-wingers who clearly seem to be on Katrina’s side! 

But the finale just continues with that war fiction angle, with Mark and soldiers freeing the hostages at novel’s end – I mean literally, the entire 180 pages is just buildup to this one event. The only promising thing is that Major Katrina survives the tale and vows revenge on Mark. With only several volumes left in the series, we’ll see if she gets her chance. But anyway, Hell’s Hostages wasn’t very good, and one of my least favorite installments yet.

Monday, December 13, 2021

The Penetrator #40: Assassination Factor


The Penetrator #40: Assassination Factor, by Lionel Derrick
January, 1981  Pinnacle Books

Well folks this volume of The Penetrator is something else entirely…this is, I’m fairly sure, the only volume of the series yet in which hero Mark “The Penetrator” Hardin doesn’t get in a single fight. And he doesn’t even get laid! Poor Chet Cunningham must’ve been supremely weary of writing the series at this point; I mean, even his previous half-assed contributions, like #30: Computer Kill or #36: Deadly Silence, actually featured a little action, not to mention the death of the main villains…even if the villains did Mark the favor of killing themselves. Not so here; for once again Assassination Factor comes off like the novelization of a bland TV movie. 

In fact, Cunningham is so bored that he spends most of the novel writing about other characters. As far as I’m concerned, with these series novels the series protagonist should always be the primary character. But Cunningham here spends much more time with one-off characters, in particular a professional assassin named Butler (not to be confused with the other Butler) who is killing off famous people who use their platform to speak ill of the United States. (Boy would this guy have his work cut out for him today!) We see him in action at novel’s start, taking out by methodical (not to mention pages-consuming) means a variety of targets. He’s pretty diverse in that he hits anyone who bad-mouths the US, whether they be Liberal, Conservative, or even Independent, as demonstrated in his first kill, which really threw me for a loop. Check this out and see if a certain phrase jumps out at you:


“Make America Great Again” was a slogan originally used by Reagan in his 1980 campaign for president; Trump bought the rights to it in 2016 and obviously branded it more than Reagan ever did. But at the time Assassination Factor was published, this phrase would’ve resonated as Reagan’s, and initially I thought Cunningham was “taking the piss” (as the British say) out of series co-writer Mark Roberts, who as we all know was a pretty conservative guy. But as it turns out, Butler kills liberals as well as conservatives; as the novel progresses we see him take out a civil rights activist (where Cunningham doles out the dreaded n-word), a wealthy Iranian, and finally a Jane Fonda analogue, who presumably is the busty babe on George Bush’s cover…and yes, the “No nukes” stuff works into the plot. Anyone who denounces America on a public stage becomes Butler’s target. 

But as mentioned Cunningham is bored with it all. For example, Mark Hardin is fishing when we meet him, and then he hears about this assassination early in the book. He heads back to the Stronghold and, playing a hunch, starts making a list of all the recent deaths of notables, and gradually comes to the conclusion that it’s the work of a hitman who is making the kills seem like freak accidents or whatever. And folks, Mark spends the first 76 pages investigating at the Stronghold! Literally sitting at a desk and looking at computer printouts and making lists! It all gave me bad flashbacks to when the similarly-“badass” hero spent nearly the entire novel pecking away at a computer keyboard in Stand Your Ground

On the plus side, this is by far the most the Stronghold has ever featured in a Penetrator novel. While it isn’t much brought to life, it was interesting to see Mark Hardin there so long, as generally we get but a page or two at his “home base” before he heads off on his latest mission. Curiously though the Stronghold is explained to us again, how it’s built on an old Borax mine and how the Professor built it and all this other setup stuff that you think wouldn’t be necessary in the 40th volume of the series. But again, poor Chet Cunningham is bored with The Penetrator and he’s doing his damndest to fill up the pages and meet his word count. He’s even got Mark calling up various contacts – including even Dan Griggs, the Justice Dept dude who is supposed to be finding and arresting the Penetrator – to ask if they have any info on these mysterious murders. 

Cunningham only proceeds to pile lameness on top of lameness. Intermittently in Assassination Factor we will encounter one Marshall Songer, a guy in his early 20s in Los Angeles who likes to go around…pretending to be the Penetrator. He’s got plastic blue arrowheads, a .45 he managed to acquire, and he blusters his way into shopping areas and whatnot to give people lessons on the danger of crime and etc. The cops nearly bust him at times and Marshall always gets away – there’s also a weird gimmick that he does magic tricks on the side – and Mark eventually finds out about it. We already know there are “Penetrator fan clubs” out there, and while Mark is okay with those, he’s concerned this imposter Penetrator, whoever he is, will get killed by the real Penetrator’s many enemies. 

Of course as it plays out, Mark eventually heads to LA, finally leaving the Stronghold (on page 76!) to scope out an Iranian whom he thinks will be the assassin’s next target. Mark will be proven correct, though he’s unable to catch or prevent the killer. Instead, more focus is placed on Mark coming across Marshall Songer during one of his “Penetrator” routines, and then tracking him back to his home and doing like a “scared straight” sort of thing, where he convinces the punk that he is in over his head. This sequence ends with Songer pretty certain that his mysterious visitor, who claims to be a reporter, is likely the real Penetrator. But luckily that’s all there is to this particular time-waster of a subplot. 

But man, that’s what The Penetrator has been reduced to by this 40th volume of the series: a guy who sits around and “investigates,” occasionally giving pep talks to wayward youth. And believe it or not, after meeting Songer he goes back to the Stronghold to investigate some more! Finally he figures that famous movie star-slash political activist Jane Marvel will likely be the assassin’s next target. Clearly a spoof of Jane Fonda, Marvel is a hotstuff brunette with “full breasts” (“thirty-nine inches,” we are specifically informed) who, when not making films, is known to get involved in the latest activist stuff. Currently she’s been denouncing various nuclear plants and silos, and folks you better believe that Cunningham wastes pages and pages on Jane protesting at not one but two events, her activist husband Larry Tollison (ie Tom Hayden) in tow. Her third husband, we’re informed, Cunningham slyly setting it up so we won’t be too shocked when Jane makes her inevitable pass at Mark. 

Curiously, Jane Fonda herself was mentioned in a previous Cunningham volume: #28: The Skyhigh Betrayers. This means that there is both a real Jane Fonda and a fake Jane Fonda in the world of The Penetrator. Jane Marvel, we’re informed, even watches movies on “the China Syndrome,” an unsubtle reference from Cunningham to Fonda’s real-life film of the same name. Furthering the similarities, Jane Marvel even went to ‘Nam during the war to protest, which ran her afoul of the servicemen there; later in the book, when Mark and Jane meet, the actress asks Mark why he’s trying to help her, given that he served in ‘Nam and thus should hate her guts as a traitor. Mark’s response is that, while he doesn’t agree with most of what Jane preaches, for this one instance they are aligned. Plus he’s a big fan of her movies! Even if she’s “an all-around extremist,” so far as Mark is concerned.

Mark gets into her confidence via goofy means. He scopes out Jane’s mansion, up in the richer area of Beverly Hills, and slips past her elaborate security system. There he rings the house phone and speaks to Jane on it, informing her that he’s waiting for her in the den! Mark manages to convince Jane and her husband that he’s certain an assassin is coming for her, and that he’s here to help. Soon enough he’s shadowing Jane on the studio lot, and prevents her “accidentally” being crushed by a sandbag that falls from the rafters or somesuch. But it’s clear at this point that there will be no action finale for Assassination Factor. Instead, the only time Mark fires his gun in the entire novel is while guarding Jane’s home that night, shooting at Butler’s shadow out in the woods. We get a retread of the very same thing the following night, but this time Mark manages to lure Butler into a trap and knocks him out, ties him up…and then tells Jane to call the cops! 

I mean he doesn’t kill the bastard or anything! Nor do we have a big confrontation between Mark and Butler…for that matter, Butler himself at this point is lost in the narrative, just a mysterious figure Mark’s trying to stop. You might imagine him as this buzzcutted humorless super-patriot, but Cunningham does absolutely nothing to bring him to life, nor to let us know what makes him tick. No, Mark just knocks him out, ties him up, and takes off – another assingment complete. And as mentioned he doesn’t even have the expected sleazy shenanigans with busty Jane Marvel; she plants a big kiss on him twice in the book, and at one point bluntly propositions him, but Mark Hardin can’t be bothered with such things. I mean, the lady’s married! The Penetrator has morals, folks! 

It’s all just so lame and stupid…you almost wonder if you’re reading a TJ Hooker novelization. Actually that’s an insult to TJ Hooker, plus I don’t think the show was even on the air yet. But you get my drift. Overall this one was very lame, as bad as Cunningham’s previous “worst installment ever,” #22: High Disaster.

Thursday, September 9, 2021

The Penetrator #39: Cruise Into Chaos


The Penetrator #39: Cruise Into Chaos, by Lionel Derrick
November, 1980  Pinnacle Books

The back cover of this 39th installment of The Penetrator promises a tale in which Mark “The Penetrator” Hardin takes on a Mafia scheme involving a WWII U-Boat that preys on cruise lines and other ships, so it only makes sense that the story itself is more concerned with Mark first posing as a mobster, then getting in an extended survival sequence in the desert. The actual “U-Boat preying on cruise lines” material doesn’t even occur until the final chapters of the book. 

So then it’s more indication that Mark Roberts was bored with the series, but then he’s also clearly lost the bloodlust that drove his earliest installments. Once again “The Penetrator” comes off more like a TV detective or cop than he does the brutal revenger of early in the series. I mean, the bit with Mark impersonating a mobster. Mark corners the guy in Portland early in the book…and merely knocks him out, then gives him a drug dosage that will keep him under for several days. I mean what the hell happened to the Penetrator who would’ve blown the guy’s brains out with nary a concern? This puzzling change to the series – which is also reflected in the volumes written by Chet Cunningham – is to me the most interesting aspect of these later Penetrator novels. Were both authors just drawn to a kinder and gentler protagonist, or was someone at Pinnacle involved in the change? Or it could be the opposite – maybe the early, brutal Penetrator was a Pinnacle mandate, and the requirement waned as the series went on. 

Who knows or cares, as this point it’s very clear that The Penetrator was just a way for Roberts to indulge in his latest interests and get a steady paycheck for it. So this time he must’ve read something about U-Boats, and maybe planned to take a cruise, so decided to integrate both elements into the story. Oh, and maybe he’d also read about desert survival so thought he’d include that, too. But what I mean to say is, his heart doesn’t seem to be in it, but given that he’d written so many volumes at this point you can’t blame the guy. It’s just that these latter volumes make for poor entertainment when compared to the wild volumes of the earlier years. 

Anyway per usual we have the opening of Mark in the Stronghold, going about his usual daily activities and deciding he’ll look into this recent rash of piracy off the coast of Baja California. We’ve already seen the U-Boat in action in the opening, complete with a boarding party of pirates. They are a pretty vicious lot, wiping out some of their prey. Roberts delivers an effective opening in which he takes us into the perspectives of the various victims, among them a young woman taking her first cruise. Back to Mark in the Stronghold, who figures the Mafia is behind the action. An interesting element here is that Professor Haskins, formerly the guy who came up with missions for Mark, has almost been reduced to butler status, like the Penetrator’s version of Alfred. All he does is make drinks for Mark and act as a sounding board. 

Our hero heads off to Portland, where as mentioned he assumes the identity of a Mafia bigwig, one named Boots. Once again Roberts refers to previous volumes; one of the Portland thugs immediately pegs “Boots’ as the Penetrator, given that he stood face-to-face in front of him “a couple years ago” in Nebraska. This would be a reference to the Roberts-penned installment #17: Demented Empire. Mark bluffs his way out of it, but this sets off what will consume the first half of Cruise Into Chaos: Mark Hardin posing as a mobster and his cover constantly in danger of being blown. Speaking of being blown, Mark also spends the majority of the novel turning down a young woman’s pleas for sex: this would be young Massalina, daughter of the Portland don, with her “small, high-poised breasts.” Despite her seductive nature, not to mention her claims of sexual activity since she was 10 years old, Massalina is only 17, and Mark spends the entire novel kicking her out of his bed. 

So anyway “Boots” is like a U-Boat specialist or somesuch, and thus had been called in to Portland to help the Don figure out how to operate this U-Boat piracy thing better, so Mark does some manual-cramming to be able to bluff his way through training other mobsters. Roberts shoehorns in a lot of stuff he’s gleaned about captaining submarines and whatnot, just like he shoehorned in all the similar techincal stuff in #33: Satellite Slaughter. There’s only a bit of action here and there, usually due to various mobsters trying to prove “Boots” is really the Penetrator. For once Mark actually kills a couple people before the last few pages, as has been the common trend of the past several volumes. But despite which his identity is uncovered, leading to a thrilling bit where Mark’s able to escape the mob’s holding pen in Mexico and make his mistake. 

This seemingly-endless sequence is straight out of Gannons Vendetta, with Mark making his way across the unforgiving desert while trying to elude his pursuers. In fact, if I’m not mistaken a similar sequence occurred in a previous Penetrator novel. But it goes on and on, with Mark setting up traps for rabbits, finding some water, trying to turn the tables on his pursuers. At one point he gets hold of their helicopter and makes his escape, able to get back to the Stronghold to plan again. There then follows a random bit where Mark gets hold of a B-25 bomber and makes a bombing run over the mob’s Baja California base, blasting them to pieces but still unable to get the U-Boat itself. The most humorous part here is that Roberts has his hero flying a WWII bomber and blowing away the bad guys, but rushes right on to the next part as if not comprehending how big of a deal this is. Or more likely he just hurries through so more thoughtful readers won’t ask any questions. 

This finally leads to what the back cover promised; Mark becomes a passenger on a cruise through this passage of the sea, hoping it will be attacked by the U-Boat. And in these more lenient days he’s managed to bring along his entire arsenal in a carry-on crate: machine guns, pistols, even an M-79 grenade launcher. His brilliant way to bypass discovery is to tell the porter he’ll carry the crate himself! So Mark just lounges around and takes advantage of the various dinners as he waits for the U-Boat to hit. He figures he’s on the right ship when none other than Massalina shows up, propositioning him once again, even if he’s the Penetrator. And once again Mark turns her down. Why Massalina would be on a cruise ship about to be hit by her dad’s thugs is a question Roberts doesn’t ask, nor answer. But after this latest refusal Massalina tries to take out Mark herself, “accidentally” shooting at him with a shotgun for clay pigeon practice, then later tossing a fire extinguisher at him. 

The finale is cool if not suitably exploited for all its worth, a sort of proto-Die Hard at sea, with a heavily-armed Mark getting the better of the boarding gangsters. But even here the spectacular gore is toned down, and once again it’s a “kinder, gentler” Mark Hardin, who at times merely knocks out his opponents instead of blasting them to gory bits. However it does get fairly bloody when one of the gangsters, escaping on the U-Boat, is blown in half by Mark’s M-79, and his corpse prevents the hull from fully closing, thus making for a fatal dive for those aboard. Given that he’s already had his hero fly a WWII bomber earlier on, Roberts again says to hell with reality and has Mark merely toss his weapons overboard and talk his way out of custody – though he does let the cops know who he is before escaping. 

Another interesting thing about these later installments is the battle between Roberts and Cunningham over who Mark Hardin’s “real love” is. For Cunningham, it’s a character he created: Joanna Tabler, hotstuff Federal agent. For Roberts, it’s a character he created: Angie Dillon, widowed mother of twins. Both women are aware Mark Hardin is the Penetrator, and both are in love with him. Cruise Into Chaos closes with Mark making the random decision to head on over to Utah for some hot lovin’ with Angie. Given that Roberts penned the final volume of the series, I’m going to assume Angie is the woman he ended up with – and unfortunately for our hero, it was a permanent end.

Thursday, December 17, 2020

The Penetrator #38: Hawaiian Trackdown


The Penetrator #38: Hawaiian Trackdown, by Lionel Derrick
October, 1980  Pinnacle Books

I love the cover of this installment of The Penetrator – take that, “Adult Books!” And humorously enough there is a sequence where Mark “Penetrator” Hardin assaults a series of adult bookstores; he doesn’t do it with a shotgun, but instead goes into them and rips up all the pedo magazines. For that’s what Mark is up against this time: I was hoping for a sleazy installment of the series, with Mark wading into the murky waters of porn flicks and whatnot, but instead the focus is on child exploitation. Fortunately Chet Cunningham isn’t nearly as exploitative of this topic as the somewhat-similar Ninja Master #7 is. 

We meet Mark as he’s pacing around the Stronghold, wondering what to do next. He gets wind of some recent pedo-ring busts in California, violent ones in which people involved with it have been murdered or found dead. In fact we see a few one-off charcters meet their grisly ends on account of their involvement with it, in particular one young guy who fell into it thanks to a honey trap who took him to an orgy which “introduced” a few kids into the mix, with the guy – drunk and high – being photographed as he was encouraged to engage with the kids! For this he’s being blackmailed, but at any rate his head is blown off like a few pages after he’s introduced, so really it’s just Cunningham filling pages instead of introducing a character that will have ramifications on the plot. 

Mark has to look up “pedophilia” in the dictionary – a sad reminder of when stuff like this wasn’t common knowledge. He is sickened by the very thought and decides to bust some heads. He flies to Sacramento – luckily there’s no “amateur aviation” stuff as there would be in a Mark Roberts installment – and hooks up with old pal Captain Kelly Patterson, last seen in #26: Mexican Brown, but I believe first introduced in #2: Blood On The Strip (which happened to be Cunningham’s first novel in the series). Here Mark muses that he first met Kelly “more years ago” than he’d like to think of, yet Mark is still presented as being the same age he was back in the first volume! Otherwise there’s no big character development here, and Patterson could’ve been any other one-off character; he has no reall scenes with Mark other than to trade a little info and to then show up and arrest the people Mark has tracked down – Patterson being one of the few people who know that Mark Hardin is the Penetrator. (This list seems to be growing!) 

Mark won’t be in California long; he first visits a few adult bookstores, where he’s sickened by a kiddie-focused magazine titled Life Child. He tries to find where it’s published, but there’s no info. Eventually he meets up with a producer in Hollywood, Mark posing as a “member of the league” who is into pedo stuff. The guy, who is involved with pedo movies and magazines, throws a party, where Mark runs into hotstuff babe Drisana, aka Drisa, who comes on strong to him. She turns out to have “acted” in some adult films on the side, though she claims to have nothing to do with the pedo stuff. Mark ends up torching the studio and tying up the producer – not to beat a dead horse, but let’s recall that Mark Hardin is curiously wimpy these days, the series having more of the vibe of Magnum P.I. than the ultra-violent early installments. In fact Mark doesn’t kill anyone until page 161 – which makes it all the more grating how he’s constantly threatening people throughout. There’s even a part where he tells some guy, “I should cut off your balls and laugh while you bleed to death,” and of course it’s just bluster…but in reality you could see the Mark Hardin of an earlier Cunningham novel, say #12: Bloody Boston, actually doing such a thing. 

Drisa will turn out to be the main female character of the novel, and she’s a typical Cunningham creation: hot-to-trot but with the emotional content of a child. She’s the closest we get to what I wanted this novel to be – a hotstuff pornstar who becomes Mark’s willing accomplice. But Cunningham is just as determined to neuter the sex as he is the violence – the expected boink occurs off-page, Mark scoring with Drisa in the back of the Brown Beast (that sounds wrong on so many levels, so I should clarify that “The Brown Beast” is Mark’s nickname for his truck and trailer combo). As if to jab the knife in further, Cunningham has Drisa merely talking about the sordid activities, next day, which is how we even learn anything happened between them. As Mark Twain once said, “Don’t just tell me the hero banged a pornstar, show me!” 

But as mentioned Drisa is woefully unexploited; Mark learns from her that all the “pedo stuff” comes from Hawaii, so off he goes to track down the source of Life Child. Drisa manages to tag along because she claims to have overheard the name of the guy behind the magazine and other pedo ventures; she just can’t remember the name, and swears to Mark she’ll be able to if she can come along with him and stay in the hotel, etc. Cunningham must’ve recently visited Hawaii, as we get a lot of topical detail when the two arrive at the airport, Drisa going on in total childlike detail about every thing they see as they drive to the hotel. Mark for his part is humorously blasé, as he’s “visited Hawaii several times.” I imagine this must’ve been back in his ‘Nam days, as I don’t recall him visiting Hawaii at any point during the series. Also the fiftieth state is here transformed into a murky den of iniquity, in which pedo rings secretly operate out of every other business and all one has to do is bypass “the usual tourist spots” to find hardcore smut, particularly of a child-exploitative bent. 

The Magnum P.I. vibe is very apparent, what with the Hawaii setting (not to mention Mark’s moustache on the cover)…and the fact that all Mark does is drive around and question people. At this point he’s essentially a private eye himself. For the most part a large portion of the novel is Mark looking around for wherever the pedo magazines are published from. Along the way he spots a trio of young black men, and wonders if they’re members of a rock band(!?), given that he believes black people aren’t commonly seen in Hawaii. This turns out to be the clunky introduction of the main villain of the novel, “the amazingly evil black man” Mark tangled with back in #24: Cryogenic Nightmare: Preacher Mann. For this is the name Drisa finally remembers…folks, her part in the book is literally reduced to sitting around in the hotel room and scribbling names in a notebook until she remembers the name of the mystery figure behind the pedo ring. 

But at least Cunningham makes it interesting: After Mark realizes Preacher Mann is indeed the same guy he fought before, Drisa whips out a gun and says “they” told her it could only be the Penetrator if he knew the name Preacher Mann. So she’s been a plant all along, which of course calls into question the part where she stood by as Mark torched an entire warehouse of porn flicks and magazines. Anyway she shoots at Mark and takes off, and this is the last we’ll see of her until the very end. Mark picks up another helper, though: Uchi Takayama, a buddy of his from ‘Nam who lives in Hawaii and has fallen on hard times. Uchi becomes yet another person who learns that Mark is really the Penetrator, and helps him out as Mark continues his seemingly-endless search for where Life Child is published out of. Along the way they get in a few fights and shootouts, but still Mark doesn’t kill anyone. He threatens people a whole bunch, though, and even throws in some unexpected racial slurs when he gets hold of that black trio he spotted earlier in the book. They of course turn out to be thugs employed by Preacher Mann. 

And just as with Kelly Patterson, there’s no reason why this particular character has been brought back; Cunningham does nothing to bring him to life and it could’ve just been any other random villain for the Penetrator. Preacher Mann only appears a handful of times, where we learn he now has a burnin’ yearnin’ to wipe out the Penetrator, given that he destroyed his whole “let’s freeze hookers and send them to clients” plot. It’s assumed he now heads up this “International League” of pedophiles, blackmailing people and whatnot, but ultimately we’ll learn – via lazy exposition – that Preacher Mann isn’t even the leader of the group. All of which to say Cunningham does little to exploit the fact that this is one of the few (if only) times we’ve had a recurring villain. 

As if to further distance ourselves from early volumes, in which Mark Hardin would go around with enough weapons to take on a small army, we have a protracted sequence here where he tries to buy some guns. This takes us to the climax, such as it is, where he and Uchi assault Preacher Mann’s hidden headquarters. Cunningham has a fondness for pulp-style death traps Mark gets caught in, and he delivers two of them here in the final pages. The second one is the most tedious, with Mark trapped in a bathhouse while little darts are fired at him. When Preacher Man arrogantly comes in to look at Mark’s corpse, he finds that the Penetrator was able to protect himself with nothing more than a few bath towels(!!). This leads to a big reveal where Mark learns who the real villain was – culminating in one of the few instances in which our hero blows away a female character. Actually now that I think of it, that is something we haven’t seen since the earliest volumes, though here it’s made very clear that Mark only pulls the trigger after he’s been fired at. 

Overall Hawaiian Trackdown is an altogether stilted, slow-going affair, with little in the way of the sadistic action of earlier installments. Probably the highlight is Mark’s rampage through several adult bookstores in Hawaii, where he grabs up every issue of Life Child and tears them up, telling the owners if they don’t like it they can call the cops! Otherwise it’s more of the same…just a slow-going and generic entry in what was once a very entertaining (and brutal!) series.

Monday, October 5, 2020

The Penetrator #37: Candidate’s Blood


The Penetrator #37: Candidates Blood, by Lionel Derrick
September, 1980  Pinnacle Books

This timely installment of The Penetrator features an election-focused plot, only it’s a Congressional race in Alabama. Initially I was under the impression that Mark Roberts had taken a look at recent volumes and found them lacking, and decided to bring back some of the fire and brimstome of the earliest installments. But as the narrative progressed Candidate’s Blood turned out to be just as bland as everything else Roberts and series co-writer Chet Cunningham have churned out over the past few years, with a suddenly-emasculated titular character now acting more like a law-abiding cop than the revenge-minded sadist of the earliest books.

But man, the beginning’s great, and has the makings of a trash classic. First of all we meet “Dandy Andy” Wells, a Democrat who is running for the seat in Alabama. A black former civil rights activist, Wells is a “walking stereotype” per his own followers and talks in an affected “black southerner” drawl, even gnawing on spare ribs while he gives his speech! (Which has to do with “normalization” of trade with China, “making friends” with other countries around the world, and of course banning guns.) Meanwhile an assassin named Art Belman watches him from afar…and we’ve already gotten a glimpse of how twisted this dude is, as he actually has to jerk off because he’s so excited that he gets to kill again. (Definite shades of Justin Perry here!) Once that’s taken care of, Belman blows Wells’s head off with a rifle, escaping in the ruckus – and meanwhile Mark Hardin just happens to be watching the live broadcast of all this back at the Stronghold. Which I believe is in California…yet they’re showing live broadcasts of a political rally in Alabama. But whatever.

Given that there’s nothing else on the “trouble board,” Mark decides to fly on over to Alabama and sort this shit out. Mercifully there’s none of the “flying fiction” Roberts indulges in so often, though he does craftily work at least something in later when Mark happens to flip through an aviation magazine. The Penetrator takes a host of weaponry with him, which again had me expecting the action onslaught of the earliest volumes, but inexplicably he doesn’t use much of it. Once again he’s acting more in a detective capacity, hoping to root out the assassin, find out what conspiracy caused the murder of Wells – whose politics, we’re informed, Hardin doesn’t agree with – and bring the perpetrators to justice. Not kill them. Only late in the novel does Mark finally decide that the main villain needs to die.

We readers already know from the get-go who was behind Wells’s assassination: Johnny Herter, a successful and famous businessman who leads a populist movement called…the American People’s Party. Now before you jump to conclusions on who this might sound like in modern-day politics, remember this is Mark Roberts writing the book. Herter’s the villain of the piece, so of course he’s a “radical leftist,” and the APP is a far-left party. (Hard to imagine such a party having “America” in its name these days, though…but then this book was written in earlier, simpler times, before the nation was irrenconcilably divided.) Herter lives in a big plantation house in Alabama where he throws wild bashes with his clingers on: “creeps…drug-pushing hippie musicians…bomb-throwing radicals,” and “slippery fixit-type fund raisers.” Roberts really tries to pile on the sleaze here:


But man, this will turn out to be it. This is the one and only part of the book that goes to this lurid extreme. Worse yet is around here I also thought we were going to get a bit of a rock novel subplot, Roberts doing his own take of The Destroyer #13, maybe, with Mark Hardin venturing into the crazy world of rock. For it develops that Johnny Herter finances a rock group named God’s Blood, which is known for depraved spectacles on the concert stage. But all we ultimately learn is that the lead singer is named Duce[sp] Wilde and we get a sampling of God’s Blood lyrics: “Let’s get down together, baby, fuck fuck fuck!” And this too will be it! It’s like Roberts teases us in this opening bit…racial stereotypes making speeches with ribs on podiums, masturbating assassins, wild parties with naked chicks diving in the swimming pool, and even “acid rock” (in 1980!!) for the soundtrack. And then he just drops all of it and turns out your basic generic Penetrator yarn that we’ve sadly become familiar with by now.

Once again Mark’s the only person who even bothers to investigate; obviously Wells’s murder has caused a national stir, but Mark waltzes around posing as a federal agent and doesn’t even run into any real ones. He does run into an old acquaintance, though: Samantha “Sam” Chase, redheaded NASA security agent introduced back in #33: Satellite Slaughter. She’s no longer with NASA, she says, operating as a freelance detective. There’s barely any history with her so far as the narrative goes; I mean she and Mark had a fling in that earlier volume and even ended the novel on vacation together, but you’d never know that here. In fact, they don’t even “get friendly” throughout the entire novel, unless it happens so far off-page that Roberts doesn’t even mention it. Instead it’s about Sam insisting she’s a “modern woman” who can handle all the gunfighting and whatnot that’s part of Mark’s life, and also she’s figured out he’s the Penetrator. But by novel’s end Mark tells her so long forever because he can’t have someone else he cares about getting wasted.

Mark and Sam reunite during an early action scene; Herter retains a team of security goons and Mark runs into them while investigating. One of them almost gets the drop on him before Sam takes him out with her pistol. But other than a brief explanation that after meeting Mark the whole NASA thing seemed “boring,” there’s really nothing that ties back to the previous volume, and Sam could’ve just have easily been a totally different character. She just happens to be in Alabama as well, hoping to make her career as a P.I. by finding out who killed Wells. Crazily enough, she’ll be the only other character Mark meets who is even investigating this case! Also here we get yet another reference to real-life private eye J.J. Armes, with Sam mentioning she wants to be as nationally famous as “that [private eye] in El Paso.” Roberts also referred to Armes – who sported metal hands – in #27: The Animal Game.

Action is infrequent, which is frustrating given all the heavy equipment Mark brings along. He does most of the early fighting with dart gun Ava, once again going out of his way not to kill unless absolutely necessary. In other words, Mark’s attackers have to try to kill him first before he returns the favor. Otherwise he knocks them out or doses them with a tranq dart. Roberts continues with his penchant for ending chapters on lame cliffhangers, thus Mark is often finding himself in dangerous situations…ones that just as often have anticlimactic resolves at the start of the next chapter. Like when he’s taken in by some local cops who happen to be on Herter’s payroll and deposited in a makeshift prison on Herter’s land. Mark escapes rather easily and makes his escape, ultimately running into a local American Indian who himself is an enemy of Herter. But Roberts drops this subplot, only to clumsily bring it back later, where Mark makes a speech to the assembled tribe, imploring them for their help and ultimately causing them to go into a war dance sort of ritual. 

There’s also weird out of nowhere stuff…like in one action scene, Sam gets shot in the shoulder and she and Mark escape from Herter’s goons…then the next chapter they’re suddenly half-dead from dehydration and starvation and out in the savage elements, having hid without food or shelter for several hours. This part seems to exist just so Roberts could insert some survivalist fiction material. And also Sam’s shoulder seems to heal up without much fuss, but it does factor into Mark’s eventual declaration that Sam must never see him again. His shock that she’s figured out he’s the Penetrator is pretty humorous, though. Roberts seems at pains to introduce a “modern woman” to the series, with Sam constantly going off on how she knows how to handle herself in a fight, and just as often arguing with Mark to let her go along with him. That being said, there really isn’t much else interesting about the character.

Roberts drops the ball on another female character. In the early wild party scene, a naked chick dives in the pool for the viewing pleasure of all the coked-up men, and we’re informed this is Herter’s girlfriend. But strangely enough this is all we see of her – and, as mentioned, all we see of one of these crazy parties. Or “Caligula Revisted,” as Roberts titles the chapter. But honestly it’s like some milk-sop editor at Pinnacle saw the early manuscript and frantically got on the phone to implore Roberts to dial it back, because abruptly Candidate’s Blood shifts tone, leaving us with yet another sluggish and meek installment of The Penetrator. Most damning is that nothing at all is done to exploit the entire God’s Blood subplot; there’s even a concert at one point, but Roberts doesn’t bother to bring it to life. How I wanted to see the Pentrator take on Duce Wilde, but sadly it never happened.

There are a lot of subplots that go nowhere, like a DC-based reporter for a “right-wing rag” who wants to get the scoop on Herter – not just his plots to murder rival politicians, but also his illegal mining schemes. This reporter ultimately meets his fate at the hands of Art Belman. Then there’s more go-nowhere stuff when Sam goes undercover with the APP, getting hit on by Herter – but she takes off before anything happens and the entire angle is dropped. Stuff like this is just frustrating because it’s clear Roberts decided to focus on less-important stuff than what the opening promised. The finale seems to imply we’re headed back in the depraved direction of the opening, as Mark decides to wipe out Herter while one of the megalomaniac’s wild parties is in full swing, but it’s really just another generic late-era Penetrator action sequence, with none of the underlings or killers or whatot meeting any brutal or memorable ends…save for Herter himself, that is. But his death, at the hands of a mining auger, comes off more as contrived than anything else.

Roberts’s patented writing style is in full effect throughout, with his usual oddball choice of words – never before have I encountered the word “crackled” as a dialog modifier (ie, “the boy crackled”). There are also occasional lines that must have been intentionally goofy, like: “The Penetrator left Guthrie’s office with his hunch node humming away like a vibrator.” But stuff like this isn’t enough to salvage what initially promised to be a lurid return to the Penetrator of yore. At any rate, by novel’s end Mark hands all the mining and assassination evidence over to Sam, so she can use her straight-world contacts to break the case and become a famous P.I., but as mentioned Mark tells her it’s over forever between them…not that anything really got started between them this time. Roberts is so busy spinning his wheels that the last pages are given over to Mark eating dinner with Professor Haskins and David Red Eagle back at the Stronghold.

I am curious what happened behind the scenes of this series – it’s very strange that both Roberts and Cunningham made their once-brutal character so bland and upright. Well, there are still more volumes to go, so maybe things will eventually improve.

Monday, January 6, 2020

The Penetrator #36: Deadly Silence


The Penetrator #36: Deadly Silence, by Lionel Derrick
June, 1980  Pinnacle Books

At this point my reviews of The Penetrator could basically be on autopilot: the rot has set in, each volume is a bland repeat of the one that came before, and the brutal vibe of the earliest volumes has been replaced by a generic tone more akin to a TV show of the day. Mark “The Penetrator” Hardin is a pale reflection of what he was, and goes out of his way not to kill anyone.

And once again the villain sucks; Chet Cunningham in particular has been delivering loser antagonists for his past several installments, like the sad sack computer programmer in #30: Computer Kill. In Deadly Silence he gives us two loser villains: one a guy who runs a “communications union” monopoly and another an old general who is being forced into retirement. The folks at Pinnacle only got the memo on the first villain because he’s the only one mentioned on the back cover. Indeed it seems Cunningham himself decided to change course midway through and to present a bigger villian for Mark to face, but sadly the communications union guy is the more memorable of the two, despite being fat and having long blond hair – hardly the villain one expects from this genre.

Cunningham takes his time getting into this one; we open with a sequence of various people in the communications industry running afoul of a shady operation calling itself the National Communications Council of America. One guy blows up some phone lines in New York at NCC’s behest, then another is killed by goons in California for refusing to comply with an FCC request. Gradually we learn that the NCC is run by Victor Jerele, the aforementioned loser villain, who runs the outfit from a palatial estate, his usually-nude mistress Mello Tone by his side. Humorously, Mello completely disappears from the text – as I say, Cunningham seemed to write this one in a hurry, changing his mind wily-nilly as he pounded out his first (and final) draft – despite initially being presented as a main character, Mello is anticlimactically dropped from the text. 

Meanwhile Mark himself is just sort of lazing around the Stronghold…we meet him as he’s going on his daily jog and checking out the “Situation Board” to see what trouble spots have arisen around the country. Humorously, one of the situations Mark has been monitoring is the seeming monopoly of the communications unions…I mean you can see already the series is in trouble at this point. Surely there’s a terrorist to kill somewhere? Instead Mark poses as a cop on the handy police teletype he has in the Stronghold, querying on the FCC – he’s noted this name in two of the stories concerning suspicions communications-world deaths in the US. One of the responses Mark receives is from Goodman, the FBI agent who has been hunting the Penetrator “for over five years” and who has no idea of course he has just sent information to the very man he is hunting. Also I think Cunningham’s math is a bit off here as the series has been running for seven years now, not five.

Mark’s biggest lead comes from a cop in Phoenix, Arizona, pertaining to how one Victor Jerele of FCC briefly ran afoul of the authorities at one point. Posing as a reporter for the National Enquirer(!), Mark snoops around the FCC HQ, even gaining a brief phone interview with Jerele. The first whiff of action finally arrives in a brief “soft probe” Mark carries out on the HQ, using some of the knock-out darts in his Ava pistol to take down a pair of guards, one of them being a dog. But while leaving the site Mark picks up a tail, one of Jerele’s goons on a motorcylce. Here again we get a reminder that this is not the same Mark Hardin of the earliest installments – and surely not the brutal sadist who starred in Cunningham’s early installments. For Mark merely doses the guy with sodium pentathol, grills him for info, and then makes sure he’s nice and comfy until the effects of the drug wear off, after which the guy’s free to go!

The novel’s highlight occurs when Mark infiltrates Jerele’s estate, this time posing as a mad scientist…a ruse that Cunningham could’ve better exploited. Instead Mark whips out his .45 and gets in a shootout with Jerele’s thugs, but it all turns out to be a setup as Jerele knew Mark would show up eventually. Mark falls for it, returning gunfire and running for a door that suddenly opens in front of him. It turns out to be a cell of sorts, straight out of an old pulp; Mark is trapped and assailed by blinding lights and loud noise, and the walls are slowly closing in. Mark here comes off like a proto-MacGuyver, using various tools hidden in his belt and pockets to free himself, most notably a small strip of C-4 which he uses to blow off the door of the cell.

This leads to another memorable bit, where Mark is temporarily deafened. A recurring series schtick is that Mark gets hurt on the job, and Cunningham does a good job of capturing Mark’s plight as he escapes Jerele’s estate, unable to hear a thing but convincing himself it’s only temporary. Of course he’s ultimately proven correct, Mark’s hearing slowly coming back as he sits in his rental car, but still I wouldn’t advise setting off any C-4 charges just a few inches away from yourself. Mark’s hurt again at novel’s end, knocked unconscious and given a “minor concussion,” so Cunningham really delivers on the “Mark get hurts” template this time, though this latter part seems to exist mostly so Mark can hook up with a hot nurse at the conclusion of the novel.

Jerele seems to be the novel’s main villain, but Cunningham proves otherwise halfway through the novel. Mark’s learned that Jerele plans something big on this coming Sunday, and gradually determines that Jerele is going to black out the entire country’s communications network – but he’s being paid to do this. Mark learns the final details during a desert meeting with Jerele and a few thugs, a meeting that of course turns into a firefight. This section comes off like survivalist fiction, as all the cars are destroyed and Mark and Jerele, the only two survivors, are trapped in the desert. Again Mark Hardin shows himself to be a different guy from the early volumes; he gets the info from Jerele, tells him he’ll never survive in the desert, and hands him a .45 to take care of himself…which Jerele promptly does as Mark walks away.

Once again Mark is near death, stumbling through the desert. Cunningham page-fills – uh, I mean character-builds – with a random flashback to Mark’s ‘Nam days, one of the few times we’ve gotten to read about Mark’s time in the war. This is all due to a hallucination Mark endures due to heat stroke and thirst. He makes it through the desert but collapses, only to be saved by a truck driver – opportunity for Cunningham to dole out some CB and ham radio stuff he didn’t get to use back in #20: The Radiation Hit. After this Mark flies to California and drives to nearby Air Force base Edwards, having learned that a General Hemphill is the guy who paid off Jerele to black out the country on this coming Sunday.

But man it blows. Mark poses as a Justice Department officer and snoops around the base; we meet General Hemphill, that depraved bastard, while he’s playing bingo. While he’s playing bingo!! I mean good grief folks, it’s like when they’d make R-rated movies into TV shows back in the ‘70s and ‘80s, replacing all the “adult” stuff with middle-of-the-road banality. Anyway Hemphill is over the hill and being forced into retirement, so his foolproof plan is to cause a blackout and then, thanks to a lackey aboard Air Force One, redirect the President’s plane so that it has to land at Edwards. This accomplished, the President is directed to a “special area” the base has for VIPs…an area which is in fact built over an old prison. Thus the President has become Hemphill’s unwitting prisoner. And per the cover art by George Bush (not Dubya!!??) we can go ahead and assume the President is Johnny Carson.

The General is pulling a fast one on his base, thus there are no major fireworks of Mark taking on a battalion of rogue soldiers or somesuch. Instead, it all plays out on the maddening tepid vibe the series has now appropriated…Hemphill assumes that Mark is the rep sent from Washington, and proudly shows off his captured President. Mark uses the “wind walker” technique to slip past security and talk to the Prez, explaining the situation, which leads to a Mission: Impossible scenario in which the President poses as a patient on a gurney and duped base paramedics escort him and Mark off the base. After this Mark goes back to the base to boast to Hemphill that he’s freed the President! And here we have another villain doing Mark the favor of offing himself, Hemphill blowing himself up with his own explosions. Lame, folks. Lame!!

As mentioned Mark ends the novel recuperating in the hospital, where he manages to pick up a hot blonde nurse. He also speaks to the President over the phone, however an editing snafu prevents us from knowing what Mark says in response the President’s offer to increase Mark’s Justice Dept pay – the President being under the impression that Mark’s a Justice contractor. No matter. Deadly Silence is just another middling effort in the Penetrator, a sad reminder of how something once so unpredictable and fun has become so tepid and bland.

Thursday, October 3, 2019

The Penetrator #35: Black Massacre


The Penetrator #35: Black Massacre, by Lionel Derrick
March, 1980  Pinnacle Books

After a glance at the back cover of this installment of The Penetrator I expected something wildly un-PC, given that the villain of the piece is attempting to wipe out the black population with an accelerated version of sickle cell anemia. But in fact Mark Roberts, serving again as “Lionel Derrick,” doesn’t go as uncomfortably over the top as you might expect – save that is for the beginning, which sees the villain of the piece, a biochemist named Raymod Barr(!), being mugged by a trio of black youths.

Before that though we get some of Roberts’s patented in-jokery. He seems at pains this time around to remind us of previous volumes. First there’s a Denver-based reporter named Terry Lucas who helped Mark “Penetrator” Hardin back in the 23rd volume, now looking into his latest story – a nationwide fan club of Penetrator followers who are compared to “Trekees” and refer to their movement as “Penetratoring.” Then we cut to Mark himself, on vacation in Gulfport, Mississippi with more returning characters: Angie Dillon and her two twins, who are celebrating their 11th birthday. Angie first appeared in #29: Aryan Onslaught, had a connection with Mark, and we learn Mark has seen her a few times since.

I almost get the suspicion that Roberts was bickering with series co-writer Chet Cunningham, who long ago introduced a recurring female character intended to be Mark’s main squeeze: Joanna Tabler. Roberts rarely mentioned Joanna in his volumes, and as stated he introduced Angie Dillon, presenting her as “the” woman for Mark Hardin.  Cunningham seemed to respond to this by introducing another “Angie” to the fold: Angie Perez, who was also presented as Mark’s star-crossed soul-mate in #32: Showbiz Wipeout. So now we have three separate women, two of them named “Angie,” who each tempt Mark to give up the Penetrator game and live a normal life. Angie Dillon even reveals that she and her kids have joined a Penetratoring club in their home town, as they’ve figured out who Mark really is. What’s more, Angie asks Mark if they can just live with him wherever his secret headquarters is!

Not to provide spoilers but the other year I peeked through the final volume of the series, #53: City Of The Dead, and I seem to recall Mark was indeed with a woman and some kids in that one. I think it’s commonly known what happens to Mark Hardin in the final volume of The Penetrator, and I’m assuming he does end up with Angie Dillon, after all – perhaps most likely because Mark Roberts wrote the final volume! But I have a couple years to go before I finish the series and find out for sure. At any rate this plot just dangles after the opening section – Mark debating with himself whether he wants Angie and her kids to come live in the Stronghold with him – before it is unceremoniously dropped.

At this point Roberts introduces Dr. Raymond Barr, and our author follows the same template he has for the past several volumes: Mark Hardin disappears for long stretches of narrative and the villains take center stage. There’s a lot of dialog, a lot of page-filling. Barr and his wife are mugged and Barr’s beaten, wakes to find his wife is missing, and later learns she’s been raped and killed. While the black cop working the case finds the scumballs, the liberal courts quickly get them all off with no punishment, and Barr is left with seething but impotent anger. Then he’s summoned by millionaire industrialist Joseph Armbrewster, who reveals his own sad story – his daughter was killed by black hoodlums years before, and he’s been biding his time on gaining vengeance.

Arbrewster’s goal is to eradicate the black criminals who are protected by the liberal courts; he suspects that Barr, with his biochemistry knowledge and his own grudge against blacks, will be able to help. As it turns out, Barr will prove even more bloodthirsty than Armbrewster, looking to eradicate the black population entirely. But he agrees and is whisked off to Puerto Rico, where he’s to whip up a new variation of sickle cell anemia in one of Armbrewster’s high-tech facilities. Here Barr meets up with a local hippie group, led by a freak “with Charles Manson eyes” named Brad Lessor. Dubbed “the Scum of the Earth,” these hippies have been here for years and, conveniently enough, are waiting for the “inevitable race war” which the blacks will win – thanks to help from the US government – after which Brad Lessor will return to America as the white messiah who will rule the victorious-but-incompetent blacks.

There’s grim stuff here but Roberts keeps it off page. Barr first tests his biowarfare on a trio of black Puerto Ricans, and we learn the youngest of them is 13. But they’re dope dealers so it’s okay. Later he starts spraying the poison on business conferences and in other parts of the US, and we learn that adults, children, and even babies are dying. It’s all almost as outrageous as an installment of The Spider, with the caveat that Roberts doesn’t dwell on the mass deaths, as Norvell Page would have. The most we learn of it is that Mark Hardin has read something in the paper, or he mentions the “recent black deaths” in conversation.

As for the Penetrator, he’s busy researching nefarious business in…the shrimping industry! That’s right, folks! This whole element was so goofy and underexplained that I had a hard time understanding why Roberts didn’t just bring Mark into the fold after Barr’s sickle cell started killing people. But, coincidence be damned, it turns out that Joseph Armbrewster is also behind the shrimiping industry shenanigans, so while Mark is investigating the one case he stumbles onto the other. And he really is investigating; at this point “The Penetrator” is more of a private eye, with hardly any of the savagery and sadism of the earliest volumes.

To wit, he hardly kills anyone this time out. He beats up a couple thugs halfway through the book and tranqs one with dart gun Ava. He also carries an “Autoburgler” 12-gauge pistol, which curiously doesn’t appear in the Penetrator Combat Catalog (which makes a return appearance this volume). His first kill in the book is crushing some dude into a “pink smear” with a crane. Action picks up when Mark ventures to Puerto Rico. There’s some goofy humor here as the hippie thugs try to kill the Penetrator, not realizing how outclassed they are, springing lame ambushes on him that Mark easily evades. One of the hippie thugs once worked for Preacher Mann, from #24: Cryogenic Nightmare, but nothing much is made of this, other than being a reference to a previous installment – though interestingly one written by Cunningham.

There seems to be a heavy focus on car chases this time around; I believe Mark gets in three of them in the course of Black Massacre, two of them happening nearly back to back. The action highlight is when Mark and a new comrade stage an assault on Brad Lessor’s commune. Here Mark again uses WP rounds that burn into the flesh of his opponents; there’s a grim bit where one of the hippies screams as the WP burns through his lungs, and Mark blows him away after getting the desired intel. But another reminder of our changed protagonist – Mark tells himself it was the humane thing to do, putting the man out of his misery. 

Either Roberts got lazy or was going for in-jokery because Mark crushes yet another dude in the finale – and the aftermath of this crushing is referred to as a “red smear,” I guess to go along with the pink one from before. Unfortunately though there’s no comeuppance for Dr. Barr, even though I felt he was more of a villain than Armbrewster; Barr wants to kill all blacks while Armbrewster “just” wants to kill off those he deems criminals. But Barr snaps and is put in an asylum, and thus Armbrewster and Lessor must share the brunt of the Penetrator’s wrath. The only problem is neither villain is very interesting; Brad Lessor as a late ‘70s Charles Manson has potential, but Roberts doesn’t exploit the character enough.

At novel’s end Mark goes back to the stronghold and ritually purges himself of the latest ordeal via a steambath or something. After which he’s already thinking about his next assignment, as it appears Professor Haskins has something big coming up. Overall Black Massacre wasn’t bad, not up to the earliest volumes but not as boring as some of the later ones.