Aggressors - The new hero pulp

Kim Newman's Anno Dracula series is one of the more interesting alternate history series of recent times. The series started with the novella "Red Reign" in the original edition of The Mammoth Book of Vampires, where he posed the question "What if Dracula had won?" Newman then expanded the idea to novel ANNO DRACULA set in 1888 various Victorian characters become involved in Jack the Ripper murders. THE BLOODY RED BARON is set set in WW1 where an exiled Dracula has declared war on England many pulp characters appear including the Shadow, Monk Mayfair and Captain Midnight all appear. JUDGEMENT OF TEARS (aka DRACULA CHA CHA CHA) has Dracula in Rome in 1959 where secret agent Hamish Bond hunts Dracula.

For a full list of characters and stories I recommend this page

Anyway Kim Newman is back to his trick with this tale of the Anno Dracula Universe. Set in 1978 -79 this story tells the tale of Johnny Pop a vampire who declares that he is a descendant of Dracula and one of the last vampires to be sired by Dracula. Like his ancestor Pop is moving to conquer a new world - in his case America. Pop arrives in New York and starts selling his blood, called Drac it becomes the new Drug sensation.

Eventually, Johnny becomes hunted by a group of fearless vampire hunters including Blade, Shaft, Shaggy and Scooby Doo, Popeye Doyle, Hellboy, Travis Bickle (Taxi Driver), Thana (Ms .45), Paul Kersey (Death Wish film series) and The Punisher.

Now Newman only hints at these characters such as the exterminator with skull on his chest, and the architect on his own crusade to avenge a family bled dead by dhamps.

These characters are in the story for a small time but it was neat that Newman allowed a few Aggressors to team up to battle the heir of Dracula.

Brad

In 1983 Ruby-Spears cashed in on Mr T's popularity and created the MR T animated series. In the series Mr T travels around with a gymnastics team and finds mysteries. In many ways Mr T is similar to BA Baracus, not just in appearance but in personality, both enjoy helping children, both have a fear of flying (although Mr T doesn't need to be knocked out) and both use the same catchphrases.

In this episode Mr T and his Gymnastics team fly to Egypt bringing the team bus along with them (why? I don't know and I don't know why Mr T needs a coach size bus for himself, Miss Brisby and five meddling kids and the Dog Dozer)

Anyway the whole team is in Egypt to meet Kim's penpal. The penpal is the daughter of an archeologist who has given her a ruby necklace - which turns out to be the key to a treasure and naturally bad guys are tring to steal it.

Oh I pity the poor fools who mess with T or the kids. Several of the kids are running around Egypt without telling anyone where they going and one by one the baddies capture them and it's up to Mr T to stop them. I wasn't aware but it appears that Mr T is quite the gymnast able to flip and vault as well as any member of his team (who frequently cartwheel out of danger)

Lest I forget each episode has a moral - This one "tell people where you'll be"

(another one had the moral of Don't Brag - "If you're great people will know it and you won't need to tell them. Just like I don't need to tell you" a live action Mr T informs us.

Think of this as A-Team very lite and it's not a bad show.

Brad

Have you ever aked yourself this question

What Would the Punisher Do? (or The Executioner, or The Destroyer, etc)

Well it appears that Mr T has a brand new show in the US - I PITY THE FOOL where Mr T helps people.

I saw this on the news the other week and the news suggests that Mr T offers people an A Team approach to their problems and really could we ask for more? (well except for Dwight Shultz and Dirk Bendict to show up).

Mr T seems to think that Dr Phil is a fool (whom of course he pities)and that the people that Dr Phil helps are fools too.

Hopefully this show will come to Australian Television so I can watch it.

Over the next few weeks I'll be reviewing a few Mr T related items including Mr T's animated series from the 80's, Mr T's comic from the 90's, as well as several A Team related items. I'll be mixing it in with other reviews such as The Death Merchant's other book, The Death Wish series and a new source of Aggressor Information I've found.

Brad

The first of my October Halloween series of The Aggressors meet the supernatural. In this adventure of the Penetrator Mark Hardin meets Vlad Dosadan Magarac, Count Dracula. Magarac claims to be a descendant of the original Count Dracula, who was cruelly defamed by Bram Stoker. Upset by this, Magarac has decided to use a vibrating weapon to set off earthquakes which activates a volcano chain.*

The Penetrator arrives to stop this madman, who claims to be a true vampire. He discovers that several bodies have turned up around the site of the first tremors totally drained of blood.

As if this isn't bad enough the Mafia has also arrived to stop Magarac who is disrupting their activities and there is an uprising of the local indians. The Penetrator is certainly a busy boy.

After wiping out the mobsters, who decided that killing The Penetrator would be a nice side benefit to their mission. Mark manages to subdue the Indian rebellion by getting them to help him storm Magarac's headquarters.

There is nice touch where a corrupt ATF agent working for Magarac is killed by the attacking forces is surprised that The Penetrator and his allies have automatic weapons because automatic weapons are illegal in that state.

Magarac flees and is followed by the Penetrator and the pair eventually battle using chainsaws in a forest. The image of the Pentrator and the black cloaked vampire dueling with chainsaws lopping tree limbs struck me as a very cool image and would be cool to see on film. This was the one image I had kept from my first reading of this book two years ago.

**Spoiler** to head just highlight the next bit.



Not surprisingly Magarac is killed by impalement on one of the lopped tree branches through the heart.

**End Spoiler**

So it is never clarified if Magarac is a real vampire or just one sick puppy.


A very groovy work.

* This was the same weapon seen in Penetrator #21 The Supergun Mission, now nowhere is this explained in the book. Whilst the footnote can be overused by other writers (Joseph Rosenberger to name one) it can be really handy to direct us to other books like in this case.

Sorry it's been so long between posts. Coming back from San Diego wiped me out and just as I was getting back into that I caught the flu which flared my asthma right up, trust me when you can't breath, blogging takes a pretty low priority but I'm back to normal, well as normal as Aggressor Brad gets.

My plan is to add a new entry at least once a week, but we'll see how that goes.

Coming up - October with Halloween and Friday 13th will see reviews of supernaturally themed Aggressors including Mack Bolan's encounter with Cthulhu, Remo vs the vampires, and other series of interest.

I've been sneaking time to watch the Death Wish series starring Charles Bronson so I might do some Death Wish Reviews starting with Brian Garfield's original novel. I hear Garfield's sequel Death Sentence is currently being filmed.

And I have a suprise or two up my sleve.