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

SIZE=3]Oh my Goodness! This was hilarious! Being Aggressor Brad, I knew who The Punisher was but I didn't know much about Painkiller Jane. This comic didn't enlighten me much but it did make me really want to know more.

Painkiller Jane sees the Punisher taking out some mobsters and instantly falls in love and follows him home. We see Jane break into Frank Castle's latest hideout put on his shirt and indulge in her fantasy. The Punisher and Painkiller Jane on a date, shooting talkers in the movie, Frank and Jane getting married shooting the priest, the couple happily married with kids (The idea of two kiddie Punishers and mini Painkiller Jane shooting up the house, still brings a grin to my face).

The fantasy is interupted by Frank's return. Jane tells Castle she loves him, Frank responds by telling her that she needs psychiatric help. You know that you have mental issue when The Punisher tells you to seek mental help!

Jane stalks Frank during his hunting down the Veronica Mob Family, thinking that he is playing hard to get. The Punisher sends her to Alaska to get her out of his hair but she returns just in time to save The Punisher from a trap set by the Veronicas (not the Aussie singing duo but the mobsters).

It was a lot of fun to see The Punisher through Jane's warped view, well worth getting.

In the mid 90s DC and Marvel came out with DC vs Marvel and the concept of Amalagms. An Amalagm character has qualities from a DC Character and a Marvel character to create a new character, such as Super Soldier which combines Superman and Captain America.

In BULLETS AND BRACELETS, they combine elements of The Punisher mythos with the Wonder Woman mythos. The Punisher is Trevor Castle, combining Frank Castle with Steve Trevor (from Wonder Woman). Trevor's back story is the same as Frank's. Diana Prince is not Wonder Woman but rather a renegade Amazon - Diana Prince, Freelance (which could be a tip of the hat to Mike Grell's Jon Sable Freelance).

Diana and Trevor had met and married and had a son Ryan Castaglione. The couple had differences and seperated. Then some enemy kidnapped their son and The Punisher and Diana Prince team up again against the Hand Ninja who stole their son.

Which is where we come into the story ... we could have a gritty crime drama where the former couple let loose on the ninja cult that took their son.

Instead, Castle and Diana are transported to the planet Apokolips where they discover that Thonoseid (Thanos and Darkseid) has taken their son. After some battling with Thanoseid's henchpeople, we discover the plot to have Castle kill his own son because Thanoseid sent Ryan into the past and raised him as Kantos, who Castle is about to kill when Diana realises the truth.

This is where I have a bit of rant - characters like The Punisher, Batman, Green Arrow, The Vigilante in my opinion shouldn't be involved in cosmic goings on, the crime they fight should be more down to earth - suiting their down to earth powers. Foes like Jigsaw and The Joker who are similar in power levels are fine but once we see them take on more cosmic and powerful foes we're getting away from the characters roots. The new Punisher comic from Marvel sees Frank Castle take on the regular Marvel Universe, running concurrently with his Max series, personally I can't see Castle tackle Galactus or Thanos or Magneto as a foe, perhaps the series will be cool but the mix doesn't feel right. Again all my personal opinion.

SOmething a little different here's a short story I wrote. I wanted to explore the notion of the vigilante both the Aggressors and the pulp heroes before them.


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RETIREMENT DAY

The party had been a surprise and Ben Hearne mentally berated himself as he packed his files into storage boxes. He should have seen the clues and figured that his co workers would do something like that, after all he’d been an FBI agent for over thirty years now. He never even gave the sight of his first supervisor, Val Kildare, in the office a second thought. Perhaps the grief of the loss of his wife had affected him far more than he realised.

Ben had joined the FBI in 1971, fresh out of college, where his psychology degree had kept him out of the Vietnam war. His father was disappointed when hadn’t gone into practice, Ben knew his father had been hoping that he would join him in practice and eventually take over, but Ben had found criminal psychology much more interesting and the FBI offered the best opportunity to study the criminal psyche.

He started in the fledgling profiling section under the legendary Val Kildare. Kildare had taken Ben under his wing and had been recommended him to the Vigilante task force after three years.

The taskforce had been established in the 1930’s to track the illegal activities on American soil of unique individuals who took the law into their own hands. During the 1950’s the group had virtually been disbanded but a new wave of vigilantes had swept across America in the late sixties and revitalised the force to its former glory.

When Ben joined he had been given the task of profiling many of these new vigilantes, he threw himself into the study of the first wave of these vigilantes. He’d read reports from assistant commissioners of police, Scotland Yard, state troopers and other Law enforcement agencies, and the colourful exploits of men labelled The Shadow, The Spider, Doc Savage, The Avenger, The Saint, The Toff, The Falcon, The Just Men, and many others had consumed his life for three months.

He’d examined the speculations contained the reports on true identities of some of these vigilantes. And began his profile based on these hints, he’d starting by profiling Richard Wentworth as reports on The Spider, The Shadow and The Whisperer had all suggested that he was the man behind the masks, in fact Commissioner James “Wildcat” Gordon had been most insistent on this point. He’d then looked at other individuals named in the files such as Lamont Cranston, Kent Allard, Jethro Dumont, Richard Curtis van Loan and found that in many cases the suspects were wealthy men who had served in World War I and returned to civilian life unable to settle down and possibly feeling guilt over how their families had gained their wealth sought to use their skills learnt in WWI to redeem themselves. Many of these men appeared to have adopted or at least studied Eastern religions again suggestive of this desire for redemption perhaps to control the darkness in their souls that the war had unleashed.

His superiors had been pleased with his evaluation and he had loaned to various subcommittees of the taskforce to study the new vigilantes that seemed to be appearing daily. Hal Brognola had been impressed with his analysis of Mack Bolan but sadly his recommendation that Bolan be offered an amnesty and his skills be turned to counter terrorism had never been actioned with Bolan refusing to surrender and dying in a blaze of glory. He’d then worked briefly for the Penetrator taskforce with Dan Griggs from the Department of Justice. But mostly he worked with the taskforce in Washington. No arrests were ever made on the men and women had his profiles had suggested and Ben occasionally thought that his colleagues were secretly helping these vigilantes.

Occasionally, the Vigilante taskforces investigations into actions against the Mob and other criminals had uncovered illegal operations run by the CIA and other agencies using mercenary forces. He’d prepared profiles of groups known as Z-Commando, Hard Corps, CURE and Deadly Force Inc. but pressure from the higher ups had stalled those investigations. It was an office joke that they’d dealt with more letters than the postal service.

Oddly, it was these frustrations that helped him to understand why these vigilantes had started their war on crime. But in his heart, Ben knew that he never really understood these men and their quest. He had interviewed Frank Castle, The Punisher during his short confinement but Castle’s insistence on name rank and serial number answers to all his questions had given him little to work with.

Over the nineties, the number of vigilante incidents had dwindled and the taskforce was scaled back. After a warning from NSA agent Remo Murphy-Sapir to back off his investigation, Hearne had been transferred to counter terrorism in 2000.

Now in 2004 he was retiring. One of his investigations had gotten too close to a domestic terror cell and they had planted a car bomb. It had missed its target and killed his wife as she borrowed his car to quickly run to the market for some bread. In his grief Hearne had gone crazy and upset several assistant and deputy directors with his allegations of a conspiracy within the FBI.

Thanks to a former partner, Hearne had received counselling and decided to jump before he was pushed out of the FBI. By retiring first, he was able to keep his pension and benefits and he had decided that in his retirement, he would write a book on the vigilante phenomenon.

Hearne finished packing his files and began to clear the items from his desk, carefully packing his mug, lamp, gun and photos into another box. A few of Hearne’s co-workers offered to help him carry the boxes to the car, which he readily accepted.

He discussed his retirement plans as with them as they walked to his car. All agreed that the book was a great idea and that he should start right away. Patting his desk box Hearne laughed and told them that he had some research to do before he could start.

Once the car was loaded, Hearne drove off to prepare for his empirical research.