Aggressors - The new hero pulp

Okay, recently I posted a review of three different items and I suggested that there was a connection between these items. They were The 1989 Punisher movie starring Dolph Lundgren.


A What if... story postulating what if The Punisher's family hadn't died in Central Park.



and New Teen Titans Annual 2 introducing the Vigilante.



and a quick look at all of these things we see a number of similarities,

All had there families killed in bomb blasts, all wage a violent war on crime, all were involved in law enforcement.

I briefly discussed the possibility that What if #10 served as an origin for the 1989 movie, but how well does the Vigilante back story fit the movie?

Adrian Chase is a District attorney, "Frank Castle" is a cop. (hmm not going well)

Adrian Chase has blond hair, Dolph Lungren is naturally blond, but died his hair to play "Castle"

Adrain Chase rides a motorcycle as Vigilante, "Frank Castle" rides a motorcycle

Adrian Chase is chased/helped by Captain Hall, an Afro-American police officer, "Frank Castle" is chased/helped by Jake Berkowitz, an Afro-American Police Officer.

Adrian Chase became the Vigilante in 1983, "Frank Castle" became the Punisher in circa 1983.

Adrian Chase wears all black with no logo as Vigilante, "Frank Castle" wears all black with no logo as The Punisher.

Adrian Chase committed suicide in Vigilante #50 in 1988, in 1989 we see "Frank Castle" in action.

It seems to me that "Frank Castle" could well be Adrian Chase having faked his death.

So my reader what do you think?

The second Batman/Punisher crossover is more like it. Gone is Jean-Paul Valley and Bruce Wayne is back in the mantle of the Bat.

Interestingly The Punisher doesn't appear to realise that there is a different man behind the cowl, Frank thinks that perhaps Batman is a headcase who changes personality with his costume.

The Joker is more involved and he is backing Jigsaw to take over the gangs of Gotham and arranges for Jigsaw to undergo plastic surgery (only to have the Punisher ruin his face again).

Robin and Microchip get to have a cybershowdown where Robin emerges victorious.

There is a nice contrast between Batman and Punisher who are very similar, both lost their families to crime and both reacted by becoming vigilantes as highlighted by the Joker mentioning that Jigsaw told him about the Punisher's origin and that the Joker thinks that something similar happened to Batman a long time ago, because "the masquerade, the gadgets, he reacted as a child would."

When The Punisher corners The Joker, he is about to shoot and kill The Joker when Batman intervenes and saves the Joker. The Punisher kills criminal, The Batman scares them. The Joker's response to Castle's methods is disbelief.

This is the book to get to see Batman meet the Punisher.

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.

This is one of the few crossovers between the Executioner and the spinoff series Able Team and Phoenix Force that I will cover in my enteries on crossovers.

The premise of the Executioner series changed from War against the Mafia to War against Terrorists when Gold Eagle took over publisihing the Executioner series from Pinnacle. Gold Eagle then created two spinoff series Able Team (with characters created by Don Pendleton in EXECUTIONER #2 Death Squad) and Phoenix Force (with original characters). The Premise was that Bolan created these 2 teams to help in his war on terror and all three teams (Bolan, Able Team and Phoenix Force) worked out of a base called STONY MAN FARM. Naturally, as everyone was based together they would bump into each other either before or after missions and occasionally during a mission and the support team would appear in all three series. So unless I want to turn this into a Executioner crossover blog, I will be limiting the Executioner spinoff crossovers to only one or two special crossovers.

Then Gold Eagle decided to create another two spinoffs SuperBolan and Stony Man. Both series would be thicker than standard Executioners and the book that started both was Stony Man Doctrine. For the first time Mack Bolan, Able Team and Phoenix Force would all team up for one mission.

The story starts with a terrorist organisation calling itself Hydra (way to be original guys, there have been at least two other groups called Hydra) threatening the United States. Each team individually picks up traces of this organisation in their solo missions until in Chapter 30 they locate Hydra's main base and all the Stony man teams work together to attack the base.

It was cool to see everyone work together against a large scale enemy but ideally this would have been better left as an occasional special event rather than a new large scale threat every couple of months for everyone to fight against as happened in the Stony Man Series.

Okay this is the book where Sapir and Murphy figured out jut how The Destroyer Series was going to work. Chuin comes to the forefront as a equal partner to Remo in this adventure (from a Wold Newton standpoint Chuin probably started feeding Sapir and Murphy information about his adventures).

Chuin explains Sinanju's history to Remo including the Sword of Sinanju, which past masters used to execute prisoners and other undesirables which the Chinese currently hold.

Remo and Chuin are called in to find General Liu, a delegate from the Chinese Government who has gone missing. Chuin is less than impressed with the American Government's overtures of peace to China as one of China's Emperors didn't pay for Sinanju's services way back when and kept the Sword of Sinanju so naturally all Chinese are thieves.

Chuin teases Remo as Remo attempts to figure out what happened to the General, refering to Remo as Charley Chan, Ironside and Perry Mason.

Chuin ferrets out the traitor in the Chinese delegates and uses the Sword of Sinanju to execute the traitor. He then collects that ancient debt but leaves the sword in China.

This is what the Destroyer is about, the legacy of Sinanju, the relationship between Remo and Chuin and some kick ass adventure.