Aggressors - The new hero pulp

Okay you may have noticed in two of my recent posts I reviewed DEATH MERCHANT #24 The Kronos Plot and PENETRATOR #19 Panama Power Play, both of which feature the heroes saving the Panama Canal from a Cuban backed plot and both novels were published in 1977.

What are the odds that Fidel ordered 2 seperate plots on the Panama Canal in the 1970s? Not very likey, so it seems that both The Death Merchant and The Penetrator helped stop this Panama plot but neither was aware that the other was involved.

Consider that the Death Merchant battled Panamanian Communist rebels and never encountered Cuban troops, the Penetrator battled Cuban troops but not Panamanian Communist rebels and in both books it was acknowledged that the rebels were working the Cubans.

I wonder if Richard Camellion and Mark Hardin ever discovered that they both worked on the same case?

Okay in the last post I spoke of the influence of this story on me. In this post I will look at the plot of this novel and if it is possible to reconcile the parody heroes with their inspiration.

Bay City, New Jersey is a dying port town, left behind in the march of progress. Into this town sweeps Rocco Nobile, who procedes to improve Bay City and through some blackmail becomes Mayor, with the intent of centralising all Mafia operations.

Ordinarily, we'd expect that Remo and Chuin would be dispatched to get rid of such a threat, but Smith assigns them to protect Nobile. All is not as it seems and Nobile is working undercover to help bring down the Mafia.

To protect this plan they have to protect Nobile and this brings Remo and Chuin into conflict with The Eraser and the Rubout Squad who have decided to start a war on the Mafia with Mayor Nobile.

The Erasor is Samuel Arlington Gregory, millionaire weapons designer and his team consists of Mark Tolan, The Exterminator, Al Baker, the Baker and Nicholas Lizzard, the Lizard.

The Erasor's war on the mafia foiled by Remo and Chuin but the publicity generated by the Rubout squad's attacks means that the plan to bring down the Mafia using Nobile has to be abandoned.

As far as I can find Samuel Arlington Gregory, The Erasor is a unique creation.

Mark Tolan, The Exterminator is based on Mack Bolan, the Executioner from the series by Don Pendleton. Tolan is a kill crazy psycho who would be happy to kill anything. On the other hand Bolan is not a kill crazy psycho, a surgical scapel to Tolan's hacking machete. In Viet Nam, Mack was known as both the Executioner and Sergeant Mercy, so we see a man who is capable of extreme violence and extreme compassion. The latter quality is totally lacking in Tolan.

So it is impossible to reconcile Tolan with Bolan, but is it possible that Tolan could be one of the many imitators of the Executioner but I haven't found any who are as kill crazy as Tolan. (There was a 1980 movie THE EXTERMINATOR and 1984 sequel, which star Robert Ginty as John Eastland, The Exterminator but the timing suggests that any influence would be the other way around.)

Al Baker, The Baker is based on Bucher, The Butcher from the series by Stuart Jason (house name). Baker is a small time number's runner who had seen "The Godfather" too many times. Bucher is an orphan adopted by a mob boss, starting as a hitman eventually replacing his father before the realisation that what he was doing was wrong hit him and he decided to fight against the mob. Baker refuses to use a gun and is happy to take Gregory's money. Bucher is an expert shot. I could see Al Baker working for Bucher and worshiping his boss, mentally creatng the team of the Butcher and The Baker.

Nicholas Lizzard, The Lizard is based on Richard Camelion, The Death Merchant from the series by Joseph Rosenberger. Lizzard is an alcoholic actor who routinely dresses as a woman, Camellion rarely drinks and his disguises seem to be of older men. Like Baker, Lizzard doesn't activly participate in the fighting.

So as we can see the members of the Rubout Squad serve as broad parodies of other Pinnacle characters.