Serial Vigilantes of Paperback Fiction. An Encyclopedia from Able Team to Z-Comm

by Bradley Mengel

  Comic Book Universes

  Just as the influence of pulp heroes such as the Green Hornet, the Shadow and Doc Savage can be seen on the comic book pages with the Crimson Avenger, Batman and Captain America, we see the same influence coming to play with the serial vigilantes on a new generation of comic book heroes such as the Punisher, the Vigilante and the Huntress. Stemming from the 1940s super teams like the Justice Society and the Invaders, both DC and Marvel Comics created interwoven universes where their characters could and often did interact.

  With the introduction of serial vigilante-derived characters in comics, there operated a generation gap between the older characters and these new characters. Perhaps the character that best exemplifies this is the Huntress. In her original incarnation, the Huntress was Helena Wayne, the daughter of Batman and Catwoman, who operated as a female Batman, adopting the role of Gotham's protector after the death of her father. But in 1986, DC had the universe-shattering Crisis on Infinite Earths, which rebooted continuity and erased Helena Wayne and the Huntress. In her place, a new Huntress, Helena Bertinelli, daughter of mob boss Guido Bertinelli, seeking to avenge the death of her family, appeared. In the final story arc of her nineteen-issue series, Days of Rage, she encountered Batman — the pair of them dealing with a gang war from different perspectives. At the end of the story, as Helena is packing up her belongings, implicitly retiring from crime fighting, she ruminates that she expected Batman to accept her as a kindred spirit but he rejects her and her methods. In subsequent stories, Helena has moved to Gotham City and is continuing to try to earn Batman's approval — something he won't give, as he sees her as too violent and unpredictable.

  When Adrian Chase became the Vigilante, his methods for taking out the members of the mob family who killed his family bring him into conflict with the New Teen Titans, who disapprove of his methods. When the Vigilante finally encounters the man responsible for the death of his family, Batman's partner Robin attempts to dissuade the Vigilante from taking the law into his own hands and allowing the justice system to take care of the mobster.

  The Punisher, in many of his early appearances, battles established superheroes like Spider-man, Daredevil and Captain America. In Captain America #241: Fear Grows in Brooklyn, Captain America encounters the Punisher; these two war veterans come into conflict over how to deal with a meeting between two mob bosses. Captain America wishes for the mobsters to be taken into custody but the Punisher uses a bomb to kill these men. Captain America in the end declares that he and the Punisher are similar, both waging a personal war, but next time they meet Captain America will stop the Punisher — this difference in methods will cause them to clash in the future, just as his methods cause the Punisher to clash with the other superheroes he encounters; they view his methods as too violent and extreme. In the Punisher's encounter with Batman, Batman refuses any assistance and tells the Punisher to get out of Gotham.

  Serial vigilante-inspired characters are not team players, and their interactions in a larger superhero universe are often tense, due to their conflicts with other superheroes. The Punisher has never been part of a superhero team, although he was part of the loose alliance called Marvel Knights. When the Punisher found a job too large to handle alone, he gathered other heroes such as Daredevil, Black Widow and Shang Chi, referring to these other heroes as "do-gooders." The so-called do-gooders immediately decide to hunt him down after the threat is over. Similarly the Huntress was invited to join the Justice League so they could keep an eye on her; Maxwell Lord had to use his mind-control powers on her to get her to agree. So we see that serial vigilante-inspired characters do not work well with more conventional superheroes. This is because these superheroes' moral code (largely forced on the publishers by the Comics Code Authority) makes them an extension of the justice system that the serial vigilantes are working outside of.

  Crossovers and References

  Just as the serial vigilantes draw on their pulp roots as seen above, the various series often refer to each other. Direct crossovers where one series character meets and interacts with another series character are fairly uncommon outside of the Executioner and its spinoffs. More commonly, another hero will be mentioned or referenced in the course of an adventure. This often serves as a cross-promotional tool, using the popularity of series such as the Executioner or Knight Rider to build an audience for a newer series.

  The crossovers and references between the Executioner and its spinoffs are far too many to catalog here, but the key crossovers are Executioner #2: Death Squad where Carl Lyons, Rosario "Pol" Blancares and Herman "Gadgets" Schwarz are all introduced. In Executioner #39: The New War all three are invited to join Mack in his war on terror, thus leading to Able Team #1: Tower of Terror. Mack Bolan also hand-selected the five men of Phoenix Force, meeting all of them in Phoenix Force #1: Argentine Deadline. The Executioner, Able Team and Phoenix Force all fought together for the first time in The Stony Man Doctrine.

  Mack Bolan had met Niles Barrabas in Vietnam and cleared Barrabas' name of charges of massacring innocent civilians in "Incident at Hoi Binh" in Executioner #63: The New War Book. The favor was returned in Soldiers of Barrabas #3: Butchers of Eden when Niles Barrabas recalls another meeting in Vietnam with Mack Bolan, although Barrabas refers to the other hero as John Macklin Bolan.

  The Penetrator is more subtle in its references. In Penetrator #11: Terror in Taos, Mark Hardin is asked to translate a page of a book about a "white guy and a gook running around snuffing people for the government" and "television sets and soap operas," clearly a reference to the Destroyer books. Mark Hardin uses the alias Mack Colan in Penetrator #8: Northwest Contract. In Penetrator # 5: Mardi Gras Massacre, Hardin is nearly captured by a security guard who had been reading Executioner novels.

  Destroyer #8: Summit Chase has Remo asking if anyone has seen Mack Bolan. The Sword of Sinanju from Destroyer #3: Chinese Puzzle was referenced by Lara Croft in Tomb Raider #3: The Man of Bronze. Jake Speed refers to Mack Bolan, the Executioner and Remo Williams, the Destroyer.

  In Track #4: The Hard Way, Dan Track teamed up with Josh Cullhane of The Takers to battle gangsters in Las Vegas. In Track #7: Master of D.E.A.T.H., Track remembers this team up. In Home Team's Undeclared War, one of the team, bounty hunter Max Warrick, has stark white hair and smokes cigars and it's suggested that he must be on the jazz, just like that A-Team character (Hannibal Smith) he looks so much like.

  The Wild Geese by Daniel Carney has been influential enough that Col. Rhodes in Warhawks #1: Strike One is strongly suggested to be Allen Faulkner of the Wild Geese. One of Marc Hazzard's men, Sgt. Major Peel, was also part of the Wild Geese as revealed in Marc Hazzard: Merc #10: Iran Slam and expanded on in Annual #1: A Matter of Lives and Death. A group of mercenaries called the Wild Geese appear in volumes 2, 6 and 7 of the manga Hellsing.

  In the 1980 film The Exterminator, Det. James Dalton, who is hunting the Exterminator, has a slip of the tongue and says, "the Exec... the Exterminator," which suggests that Dalton is aware of the Executioner.

  In C.O.B.R.A. #1: The Heroin Connection, Jon Skul makes reference to Richard Camellion, The Death Merchant. Senator Harriet Clayton appears in Black Ops: American Jihad and in Codename: Extreme Prejudice, tying the two series by William Johnstone together. Implicitly, she is the female president seen in Johnstone's Stark and Invasion USA series. Barry Rivers, The Rig Warrior, adopts the CB handle Dog after reading a book about The Dog Teams when he was a boy. Both Jarrod, the Pretender, and Robert McCall, the Equalizer, are referenced in Star Trek: The Eugenics War: The Rise and Fall of Khan Noonien Singh Volume 1 by Greg Cox.

  In his interview for A Study of Action Adventure Fiction: The Executioner and Mack Bolan, Don Pendleton points out that he created the Mafia slang term "turkey meat" for people who have been tortured by the Mafia. The term is used by Lionel Derrick (Chet Cunningham) in The Penetrator #2: Blood on the Strip and by Chet Cunningham in The Avenger #1.

  In the season two episode of Knig
ht Rider, 'The Mouth of the Snake" (1984), Michael Knight and KITT encounter David Dalton. Dalton then appeared in the television movies Code of Vengeance (1985), Dalton: Code of Vengeance II (1986) and the two-episode series Daltons Code of Vengeance (aka Code of Vengeance) (1986). Knight Rider had several later spinoffs and the television movie Knight Rider 2000 (1991) and television series Team Knight Rider (1997). The 1994 television movie Knight Rider 2010 only used the name and did not have any connections to the original series or other spinoffs. In the Amazing Stories episode "Remote Control Man," which first aired December 8, 1985, a man through his remote control is able to materialize characters from his television; among those he conjures are KITT from Knight Rider and Templeton "Face" Peck from the A-Team.

  Kim Newman's short story, "Andy Warhol's Dracula: Anno Dracula 1978-79," set in an alternate reality where Dracula won, features a group of fearless vampire killers which includes Travis Bickle {Taxi Driver), Thana {Ms. 45), an architect on a crusade to avenge his family (Paul Kersey, Death Wish) and the exterminator with a skull on his chest and a flame thrower in his hands (a dual reference to the Punisher and to the Exterminator who wielded a flame thrower).

  Parodies

  Most of the crossovers and references listed above have treated the "guest" in a serious light. However, the guest stars may be distorted and shown in less favorable light, either as a figure of fun or menace. The Destroyer #38: Bay City Blast sees Remo Williams and Chuin protecting a deep-cover federal agent buried deep in the Mafia. This agent has taken over Bay City, New Jersey to allow the Mob to centralize, thus making it easier for law enforcement to take out a large slice of the Mafia in one raid. Certainly without the complication of the undercover operation, such a setup might well have appeared in an adventure of the Executioner, The Butcher or any of the other mob fighters. So Sapir and Murphy used this opportunity to make fun of three rival series also published by Pinnacle at the time.

  In Bay City Blast, weapon designer Samuel Arlington Gregory adopts the alias of the Eraser and forms his three-man Rubout Squad consisting of:

  • Mack Tolan, the Exterminator: A parody of Mack Bolan, the Executioner, which emphasizes the violent side of the character and ignores the compassionate aspect, "Sergeant Mercy," that Pendleton imbued his character with. Tolan is totally kill-crazy and ready to kill any and everything. The Exterminator is what someone might have expected to read in an Executioner if they were totally unaware of the character.

  • Al Baker, the Baker: A parody version of the Butcher, Al Baker is a former numbers runner, who claimed to be much higher in the mob than he actually was. He sells Gregory information about the workings of the mob, all of which he has made up.

  • Nicolas Lizzard, the Lizard: The Death Merchant, Richard Camellion, gets the parody treatment. Camellion's mastery of disguise is the main element parodied here as the alcoholic Lizzard frequently disguises himself as a woman with his three day growth still intact. Lizzard believes that his disguise is so good that every man he meets has fallen madly in love with him.

  The Destroyer takes most of the novel to catch up with the Rubout Squad, but when he finally confronts them, all four members are very quickly dispatched by Remo and Chuin.

  In Bay City Blast, the parodies are played mainly for laughs, but parodies can also be used to air a grudge with a rival series. Mike Newton revealed in an interview for A Study of Action Adventure Fiction: The Executioner and Mack Bolan that NBC was allowed access to Able Team files for a potential television series in 1982. In 1983, NBC produced The A-Team.

  In 1986, Gold Eagle published Able Team #24: Blood Gambit where Able Team comes into conflict with the Gun Team, an evil parody of the A-Team. The Gun Team is a crack Commando unit court-martialled after developing a taste for flesh, eating those killed in napalm attacks. The Team escapes and develops a Robin Hood image in the press, although they act as a troubleshooting force for Armageddon Arms, a weapons manufacturer. The Gun Team is lead by Col. Carruthers "Cannibal" Jones — the team leader who appears in a bad disguise and is a play on Col. John "Hannibal" Smith. Templeton "Face" Peck is parodied as Francis "Feces" Forthingham, a six-foot-six baby-faced conman. Orville Daemmeus "O.D." Yus is the ebony-skinned stoner pilot. O.D.'s appearance and name suggests a parody of B.A. Barracus, although his skills and British accent suggest a parody of H.M. Murdock. "Slaughter" Smith, the thin, gangly team member with a wild shock of red hair and a vicious temperament, is a similar combination of H.M. Murdock and B.A. Barracus, sharing the latter's dislike of flying. The Gun Team is completed by Doris Drane, a homicidal reporter who is as likely to kill you with a hat pin as write up a story. Doris parodies the roles of Amy Amanda Allen and Tawnia Baker in the A-Team.

  In 1996, in Destroyer #102: Unite and Conquer, Remo and Chuin encounter Blaise Fury, the Extinguisher. The Extinguisher was a Green Beret in Vietnam who discovered that his family of firefighters was killed by Mafia arsonists and had a series of novels published about him. Remo revealed that he had read the early Extinguisher novels during his tours of Vietnam. Eventually, it is revealed that the man is not really the Extinguisher but rather Remo's son, Winston Smith, posing as the Extinguisher. Winston had also been reading Extinguisher novels including #221: Hell on Wheels and #214: Deadly Death. At one point, the young Winston Smith is questioned about how the Extinguisher can still be so young and have served in Vietnam. Winston's answer is that the Extinguisher is eternal and will be alive as long as there is injustice. The Extinguisher and the Executioner are similar: Both have achieved similar numbers of volumes in a similar period and both have been questioned about the age of the hero given his history in the Vietnam War.

  As a popular culture phenomenon, the serial vigilante has been the subject of a more general parody. Mad Magazine ran parodies of movies and television series: Billy Jack, Death Wish, Death Wish 2, Knight Rider, The A-Team, Hardcastle and McCormick, and the Equalizer. The satirical online paper The Onion ran an article in 2004 describing how the A-Team was finally pardoned. The article parodied a number of conventions of the series, such as where the team was frequently imprisoned with items that allowed them to escape. The article can be found at http://www.theonion.com/content/node/30660. In comic books, the Punisher has frequently been parodied in such publications as 1992's The Pummler from Parody Press and the Pulveriser in Marvel's What the.?..!, or the more pornographic Punish-her Score Journal and the Paddler. Punisher parodies also appear in Monster in My Pocket #2 as the Exterminator, and Boris the Bear appeared as the Punishbear in issues 13 and 21 of his own title.

  2. Precursors to the Serial Vigilante

  It has been pointed out that popular fiction has had a long tradition of avengers, men and women who cake the law into their own hands, seeking to avenge the wrongs done to them or bringing law to a lawless land. Both Turner (1977) and Kittredge and Krauser (1978) express the view that the serial vigilante forms part of this cycle of justice figures. It is possible to examine the earlier incarnations of the justice figure and look at how these genres and the characters they spawned have led to the development of the serial vigilante. The justice figure can be traced through the pulp hero, the British outlaw, the dime novel, the penny dreadful, and back into the realms of folklore, myths and legend.

  Perhaps the earliest known example of the justice figure is Robin Hood. The earliest versions of the legend of Robin Hood had Robin and his men as simple thieves, but as the story grew, elements were added such as Maid Marian, Friar Tuck and the fight against corrupt and unjust governments of the Sheriff of Nottingham and Prince John. More modern retellings added that Robin had been in the Crusades with King Richard. Robin's fight against injustice and tyranny became the model for the justice figure.

  The English penny dreadfuls and their American counterparts, the dime novels, took historical and contemporary outlaws such as Dick Turpin, Jesse James and Billy the Kid and gave them much more noble characters and showed them entering a life of crime in response to the unjust treatmen
t handed them by corrupt authorities. Many of the dime novels were written after the American Civil War and the outlaws returned from the war only to be unfairly treated by the carpetbaggers forcing them into a life of crime. These outlaws robbed the rich and corrupt carpetbaggers and gave the money to the small farmers and ranchers in danger of losing their properties.

  The pulp heroes of America and the characters seen in Thriller and competitors in England showed the next evolution of the justice figure with men returning from World War I and fighting against crime. These criminals ranged from the mundane gangsters inspired by Al Capone through to villains wreaking havoc and destruction with superscientific weaponry.

  We see the modern revamps of pulp heroes such as The Saint television series (196269). The Shadow was revived for a series of nine novels starting with The Return of the Shadow in 1963, then the 1964 revamp of dime and pulp novel hero Nick Carter as Nick Carter, Killmaster. Also in 1964, Bantam Books began reprinting the Doc Savage series. In 1966, there was the revamp of the Green Hornet in the television series starring Van Williams and Bruce Lee and the revamp of Bulldog Drummond in Deadlier Than the Male, which was followed by 1969's Some Girls Do. The popularity of these revamps and reprints paved the way for the serial vigilante.