Showing posts with label Warlord. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Warlord. Show all posts

Thursday, March 14, 2019

The Warlord #2: The Cutthroat


The Warlord #2: The Cutthroat, by Jason Frost
January, 1984  Zebra Books

I shouldn’t have doubted Raymond Obstfeld. I found the first volume of The Warlord so poor that I put off returning to the series for a good long while. I shouldn’t have waited so long, because from the first page of The Cutthroat I realized that this was the Obstfeld who’d written Invasion U.S.A.. That sounds like an insult but I mean it as a compliment, because I loved that book.

And luckily, The Cutthroat is in much the same style as Invasion U.S.A.; whereas the first volume of The Warlord was, I felt, a ponderous and bloated bore, the second one moves at a fast clip and has the snappy dialog I expect from Obstfeld. This is proven in the first few pages, in which Eric “The Warlord” Ravensmith and his girlfriend, former courtroom artist Tracy, are in a boat above sunken downtown Los Angeles and Tracy randomly starts wondering aloud if Goldie Hawn’s still alive.

It’s a few months after that previous book, and California has descended even further into brutality and despair. Rather than socialism, full-on unbridled capitalism is the order of the day, and in random asides we learn that women have become chattel. Obstfeld takes this concept and runs with it throughout, as well as the idea that people are free to become whoever they want to be in this post-catstrophe California. A former information technology entreprenneur can become a modern Blackbeard, a former nightclub singer can become ruler of Hearst Castle – which itself is transformed into a Mos Eisley sort of trader’s den. So the theme of transformation also extends to the setting, with California getting a new image post-Halo.

And yet despite the wish-fulfilment, Obstfeld is one of those men’s adventure authors who wants to buzzkill the escapism with “realistic” stuff. So we learn soap and razors are at a minimum – not only is everyone nasty and grungy, but women can no longer shave their armpits or legs. Tracy however loves this, and finds it one of the “best things” about living in post-Halo California. (Obstfeld uses this phrase throughout, and it’s catching, the Halo being the psychedelic smog that now hangs over California.) Tracy’s also hacked her hair off so she’ll look more like a boy and not rapist-bait.

Maybe because it’s because I’ve been on a classic rock kick lately, but I wonder if Obstfeld’s opening is an action ‘80s inversion of the CSN/Jefferson Airplane track “Wooden Ships.” ‘Cause both the book and the song open with people on different ships approaching one another in a post-holocaust world: in the song they exchange smiles and food, but in The Cutthroat they shoot arrows and bullets at one another while trading action movie one-liners. Of course, it’s possible I could be reaching, and it’s also possible my reading might’ve been colored by the fact I recently got Volunteers on vinyl, first pressing in mint shape with all the inserts and everything…

Anyway I’m digressing as usual. It’s a masterful opening sequence, and better than the entirety of the previous book. Eric and Tracy are on a canoe heading out onto the sea, tracking Eric’s archenemy Fallon, who as we’ll recall kidnapped Eric’s adopted son with the intent of raising him as his own. Instead they run into a bunch of pirates. The Cutthroat is basically Pirates Of The Caribbean meets post-nuke pulp; it has almost nothing in common with the previous volume, which played it straight for the most part.

And indeed, Obstfeld only makes occasional mentions of the first volume; only rarely are we reminded how much of a prick Eric became in the final quarter. Here he’s more willing to save others, though he’ll occasionally give almost blasé “it’s everyone for himself” comments on the situation. He’s also had a huge personality upgrade, doling out one-liners and sarcastic retorts; another recurring joke is that he’s a walking encyclopedia, and knows the particulars of any subject, no matter how obscure.

Obstfeld has just as much fun with the villains of the piece. Chief among them is Rhino, sort of a ripoff of Two-Face from Batman: one side of his face and body is melted gray flesh from a failed attempt at crossing through the Halo, which turns out to be hazardous to all forms of life. Now he’s reborn as the captain of a pirate ship, his crew dressed like Rocky Horror Picture Show rejects and Rhino intentionally going over the top as a bad guy.

There’s also Angel, an evil Vietnamese babe with boobs that are “large for an Oriental’s, but firm and perfectly round.” Further, “her long dark nipples budded straight out like thorns.” We get to see all this because Angel casually doffs her top upon Eric and Tracy’s capture aboard Rhino’s ship. Angel and Eric have a little history: after a night of sex 14 years ago in ‘Nam, Eric “killed” Angel with a sniper rifle. Orders from Fallon. Angel now proudly displays the puckered bullet wounds between her big ‘ol boobs; she didn’t die because double-crosser Fallon warned her and gave her a bulletproof vest.

How or why exactly Angel got to California before the quakes isn’t much elaborated on, but I love my pulpy and depraved female villains so I won’t complain. I’m just happy she’s here. However Obstfeld doesn’t do much to capitalize on this aspect – Angel’s evil, to be sure, in the Nietzschean sense at least, and was known for eviscerating and mutilating people with a balisong knife back in ‘Nam. But otherwise there’s no exploitation of her sexy evil charms, and she just plumb wants to kill Eric. She also disappears for a large portion of the novel, along with Rhino, which kind of sucks, because they’re set up as such a wacky pair, and Rhino’s motley crew of sadistic rejects is equally fun.

Instead, Eric and Tracy are able to escape when Rhino attacks another ship. Tracy is shot in the hip and, surprisingly for the genre, we learn that she won’t be able to just walk it off. She’ll have a permanent slight limp. So again as you can see, Obstfeld isn’t afraid to let realism get in the way of his escapist fantasy. However Eric and Tracy are promptly captured by another group of pirates, this one led by a muscle-bound black dude who calls himself Blackjack. They turn out to be sort of post-Halo hippies who live in a partially-submerged skyscraper; the top floor turns out to be a greenhouse in which they grow their own vegetables.

Both Blackjack and Rhino are searching for “Alabaster’s map,” and of course neither Eric nor Tracy have any idea what it is. Ultimately we’ll learn that Alabaster was a government employee who knew where all the guns and weapons confiscated from Californians in the first volume are now hidden. Both pirates want these weapons for their own purposes, though Blackjack claims he wants the guns for defense of his skyscraper island fortress. Presumably the “cutthroat” of the title, Blackjack is a memorable character, though not nearly as much as Rhino is. He turns out to have been a pediatrician before the quake, but now he’s the pot-smoking leader of a group of battle-hardened pirates, many of whom worked in Blackjack’s old hospital.

Even though there isn’t much in the way of the action, the novel moves at a snappy clip, making the previous volume seem even more like a sluggish bore. Also it’s worth noting that this volume’s much shorter, which I think works to its advantage. The focus is more on character and plot, as Eric is able to convince Blackjack that his best chance of getting that map is letting Eric get it, as Eric’s already figured out that Angel double-crossed Rhino and knows where the map is. This is how Eric’s able to negotiate his freedom and safe passage out of here with Tracy.

Things pick up in the final quarter, in which the action moves to the transformed Hearst Castle, now run by the above-mentioned nightclub entertainer, BeBop; his goons patrol the grounds in black Hearst Castle T-shirts. It’s an everything-goes sort of place, but BeBop has a strict no-killing policy, as it’s bad for business. Of course, Rhino and Angel are here, so it’s only a matter of time until the fireworks break out. Obstfeld works up the suspense and tension as Eric, Tracy, and Blackjack plot Angel’s abduction. Even here though it’s done more on a low-key vibe, without the big action setpieces you usually get in post-nuke pulp.

The climax is similarly unspectacular, but memorable: Eric versus Rhino in a garbage-filled pool in Hearst Castle. This features the novel’s sole gore, as Eric begins ripping off strips of Rhino’s mutated skin. There’s also mortal combat between Tracy and Angel; like the reporter in Invasion U.S.A., Tracy is a strong female character who doesn’t let cliched “tough girl” posturing get in the way of being a fun and vivacious personality – Hollywood’s screenwriters of today could learn much from Obstfeld in this regard.

Obstfeld’s writing is great but he undermines himself periodically with strange digressions that are shoehorned into the narrative and come off as incredibly arbitrary. This first occurs early on, with a needlessly-digressive backstory on Rhino, up to and including his first sexual encounter! This sort of thing goes on throughout; characters will flash back on happenings long ago, no matter what dire situation they’re facing – like Eric, in the climactic brawl with Rhino, pondering how people need entertainment no matter how horrible the world is. And did we really need all the arbitrary backstory on the employees who once worked in Blackjack’s skyscraper headquarters? This sort of stuff, now that I think of it, is what ultimately ruined The Warlord #1, but at least it isn’t as prevalent here. 

Even though this volume almost seems like filler in the grand scheme of things – Fallon doesn’t appear and Eric doesn’t get anywhere in his search for his son – it’s still very enjoyable, and makes me look forward to continuing with the series.

Thursday, March 16, 2017

The Warlord #1


The Warlord, by Jason Frost
No month stated, 1983  Zebra Books

First of all, I want to apologize if I’ve been writing a string of negative reviews on here. I hope it should be clear to everyone that I love these series books and would rather read them than anything else. But I’m not going to sugarcoat things when the situation arises – sometimes I’m really let down, and by god, I’m gonna tell you about it when I am. And unfortunately, such is the case with this first volume of The Warlord, which was by the usually-gifted Raymond Obstfeld, writing under the name “Jason Frost,” which he also used to write the incredible Invasion U.S.A. novelization.

I really wanted to like this book. I’d been meaning to read it for a while, having picked up the six volumes of the series over the years. But I was really let down, and in a major way – to the point where I was skimming through stuff, something I never thought I’d say about an Obstfeld novel. As for the series itself, it’s hard to tag Warlord, as it was packaged like other Zebra post-nuke pulps, only the series occurs after a natural disaster rather than a nuclear one. Otherwise the series has all the trappings of post-nuke pulp: a threadbare society dealing with the ravages of a destroyed, dangerous world, one populated by even more dangerous survivors. Given this I’ve decided to label the series as a post-nuke pulp as well, even though technically it’s not. I have my lawyers filing the necessary paperwork.

The novel runs to 398 whopping pages and suffers for it. In defense of Obstfeld, my guess is he was handed this unwieldy word count and struggled to meet it. This means that the reader is barraged with unimportant, trivial information – usually egregious background info about one-off characters – throughout the book. It also means that the overriding drive of the narrative is ultimately lost in the clutter. The book wants to be post-catastrophe action but instead comes off like a bloated bore, one with uninvolving, unlikable characters.

It takes a long time for the catastrophe to occur. Instead we are slowly brought into the world of Eric Ravensmith, former ‘Nam Special Forces badass, now assistant professor of history at a college near Los Angeles. He’s a mountain of muscle with a livid scar that runs along his jaw. Folks, Eric Ravensmith is ‘80s Arnold Schwarzenegger in tweeds, and it’s a laughable image, but an image Obstfeld strives to convey. He’s married to former hippie Annie, a big-bossomed babe with whom Eric has raised two preteen kids, Jennifer and Timmy. Only later do we learn that neither of the kids are Eric’s biological children; in another of those long backstories we read how Eric came across the corpse of Annie’s soldier husband in the war, wrote her a sympathy letter, and then ran into her years later at an anti-war protest, after which they fell in love and got married.

Plaguing Eric’s idyllic life is the recurring nightmare that his old ‘Nam enemy, Colonel Dirk Fallows, will one day come after him. The novel opens with this event occurring, Eric waking up in his bed and realizing an intruder is in his home, sneaking up the stairs to kill Eric and then slaughter the rest of his family. Eric takes the guy out in a tense scene, one which sees almost buddy cop-esque humorous dialog between him and Annie, who takes the attempted murder of herself and her two kids pretty much in stride for a former tree-hugging hippie. And then we get a clue of what we’re in for, as instead of Eric breaking the bastard’s neck…we instead flash forward to two months later, and Eric’s in the midst of a court case against him and Fallows!

Eric is building a case that the assailant was under the employ of Fallows, a Shakespeare-quoting sadist from Eric’s Nam days. Back then Eric was in a top-secret unit called The Night Shift (Stephen King references run throughout the novel, by the way), which was basically an assassination and massacre detachment of the Special Forces. Fallows was the commander, and with his sadism, glee for killing, and prematurely white hair, he brings to mind the main villain in Avatar (I couldn’t believe that was the same actor from Crime Story, one of the best TV shows in history!!). Fallows took Eric under his wing, grooming him as his second in command, but one day Fallows went too far, and massacred an entire village, babies and all, crucifying the lot.

Turning in his commander, Eric succeeded in having Fallows put away for twenty years – but he’s just been released, eight years early. And Eric is certain Fallows is coming for him. Annie is aware of all this but is a bit too pragmatic about it…if I told my wife some dude who crucified an entire village was after me, she’d probably be out the door before I could finish my sentence. More Fallows-hired thugs come after Eric, including one unintentionally-humorous bit where one attacks him with nunchucks in a courthouse, having to resort to the wooden weapons to get around the courthouse metal detector. Speaking of Arnold, we get a prefigure of the famous line from Commando, two years later, when Eric bluntly states “I lied” to a man he’d promised not to kill.

The series occurs in a California rocked by massive earthquakes, and the first doesn’t happen until around 60 pages in. But Obstfeld hopscotches through a long patch of time in the opening half, with the action resuming two weeks after this big quake. There’s been mass death and destruction, and now the government’s going around to take guns from people, to stave off the violence or something. Eric gives up his pistol, but meanwhile he’s recently bought a Barnett Commando crossbow, which we’re informed has a pump action like a shotgun. Fallows is still out there, and Eric is certain his old enemy will be coming for him, quake-destruction or not.

Another massive quake hits; in this one Eric’s mom is killed (she’s a fellow teach at his university, and Obstfeld devotes more page-padding about her and her boyfriend). From this we jump to three months later, and we learn that Los Angeles has practically been destroyed, most of the coast is underwater, and California has broken away from the continent. (Sounds like a win-win for everyone!) A “dome of chemical gases,” nicknamed “The Halo,” surrounds the new island, courtesy various chemical weapons plants that were destroyed in the quake, resulting in “a super acid fog” that keeps the Californians in and keeps everyone else out. Yep, folks, all just like in King’s Under The Dome, only this was published decades before.

The Halo has basically psychedelicized California (well, only more so, I guess), with “gray-pink night and yellow-orange day” casting everything in odd new lights. Meanwhile Eric and family have barrickaded themselves on Eric’s college campus, along with other survivors; the outside world is referred to as “the Dead Zone” in another (this one credited) Stephen King reference. The place is run by the Council, comprised of a group of elected officials, and humorously enough it’s completely socialist in its makeup (well, this is California…), much like the post-apocalypse society in Doomsday Warrior. Eric is the Security Chief; he constantly butts heads with the dumbass Council, which refuses to grasp the dangers of this new California, at one point informing them, “You are a war council and I am your warlord.”

But they don’t listen, bullying him into taking a group with him out into the Dead Zone to trade with another community of survivors. Eric is against it but goes anyway. He takes along a small team of former students, each of whom is given inordinate backstory and too much dialog. None of them are likable. The trade turns out to be a ruse and, after a minor action sequence in which we see Eric’s crossbow in use against would-be brigands, the team returns to campus only to find destruction and death. The Council lied to Eric, sending him off on a wild goose chase so they could do the deal he warned them against; unsurprisingly, it turned out to be a plot courtesy Dirk Fallows.

Now young Timmy and Annie are gone, abducted (and we were treated to another Eric-Annie XXX boff which practically announced something bad was about to happen to the poor gal – complete even with some “I might die some day” dialog from her!), and worse yet little Jennifer’s throat has been slit. Eric is only briefly numb with shock. He gets nude and goes through a ritual he learned in his youth among the Hopi Indians (I forgot to mention he was sort of raised by them), emerging from the cathartic ceremony as “the Warlord,” the old Eric Ravensmith dead and gone, the new one “more Dirk Fallows than Dirk Fallows” (?).

I was hoping that this ritual would turn Eric Ravensmith into a sort of post-holocaust Rambo, but instead it just turns him into a jerk. Losing even the bare modicum of likable qualities he possessed before, Eric is more of a grump than anything. He takes off – that same group of kids in tow, all of whom volunteer for the mission – tracking down Fallows. Another campus resident, the lovely Tracy, follows behind. Tracy is another character given inordinate word count in the early half, a freelance newspaper artist who took a shine to Eric during the Fallows trial, threw herself at him right before the earthquakes hit, and now is best buds with Annie…and indeed is the babe Annie has suggested Eric hook up with “if anything ever happens to me,” in some of the most telegraphed foreshadowing I have ever encountered.

There follows a moment one doesn’t often encounter in the world of men’s adventure; while navigating through the post-quake wasteland, Eric and followers come across a mutilated young girl, clearly being used as a sex slave or something. Her “owners” soon arrive, biker-type scum who taunt Eric and team. Eric merely hands over the young girl, and continues on his way – no attempts at saving her and taking out the scum. Eric cares solely for his own interests at this point. This causes much frustration in the group, most of whom say they’re done with Eric at this point; even Tracy claims that, the way Eric is now acting, Annie wouldn’t even want him anymore.

Meanwhile, poor Annie is being held captive by Fallows, who tortures her and the reader with “I’m evil” dialog that goes on much too long. He keeps telling her all the bad stuff he’s gonna do to her. And meanwhile he’s going to brainwash young Timmy into loving him and thinking of Fallows as his father and making him hate Eric – Fallows assures Annie that this will be simple for him, as he’s been successfully brainwashing soldiers since ‘Nam. He’s got such hatred for Eric that one can’t help but see a jilted lover sort of angle at play, whether it was Obstfeld’s intention or not, sort of like the chainmail-vested Freddie Mercury-looking dude and his hatred-love for Arnold in Commando

Those biker scum came from a place now named Savytown, and Eric learns that Fallows has been through here. He tries to barter for information, only for it to be yet another Fallows trap. The long-delayed climax has Eric and Fallows having a brief face-to-face – one in which Cruz, Fallow’s herculean stooge, breaks Annie’s friggin’ neck. Our hero gets his ass knocked out, only to wake up in this goofy contraption that has him and Cruz hanging across from each other, dangling above flames…some sort of double-dish punishment deal courtesy Fallows, who is pissed at Cruz for disobedience or something. We get pages and pages of Eric and Cruz fighting to the death. Fallows doesn’t even stick around to watch, having left with new “son” Timmy.

The finale ignores all the Fallows stuff – Eric basically shrugs and figures Fallows has gotten too much of a lead on him(!) – and instead has Eric and crew going back to liberate Savytown after all. Indeed it must be such a simple chore that Obsfted flash-forwards through it, giving us a summary of the action. One thing we can be happy about – Eric leaves those annoying former students in Savytown, taking off on his own to continue the hunt for Fallows, and meanwhile Tracy follows him. Obstfeld ends the novel on the awkward note of Eric realizing there’s “something about” Tracy after all…whereas meanwhile Eric just saw his beloved wife’s neck snapped a few pages ago.

As mentioned The Warlord ran for five more volumes, and it looks like the rest of the books are shorter, which as far as I’m concerned, so far as this genre goes, is a good thing. I’m not giving up on the series yet and have faith in Raymond Obsfted, who is usually a very gifted, entertaining author – I still think there were some editorial/imprint constraints which prevented this first volume from being all it could be. But as usual, these are just my thoughts, and doubtless others out there will think this book is just fine. I just wish some of the fat had been cut from it.