The Serial Vigilante Blog

On Tuesday, I read that Edward Woodward had passed away. Woodward was a gifted actor and the various obituaries I've read have mentioned a number of his roles, Breaker Morant, The Wicker Man, C15-The New Professionals, Sherlock Holmes in The Hands of A Murderer, Callan and The Equalizer.


Callan was a grim and gritty spy show, an anti-Bond. Woodward played the lead role of Callan, a government sanctioned hitman who always wants out of the life but is so good at killing that he can never truly leave it behind.
I remember finding my copy of Death and the Bright Water, I was at the Lifeline bookfest with my mate clean, he holds up the book and tells me that Edward Woodward oughta sue for the use of his likeness - I had to tell him that the book was a tie-in for Callan which Woodward had starred.

The role that puts Woodward into the pathenon of Serial Vigilante legends is that of Robert McCall The Equalizer.McCall was a retired spy who advertised in the papers - Got a problem? Odds against you? Call the Equalizer.

Many people noticed that Woodward played both roles, that Callan and McCall were both spies and that the shared Call in the name (CALLan and mcCALL) and many people considered the two to be the same role. (just like John Drake from Danger Man/Secret Agent and Number 6 from The Prisoner)

McCall was helping people to make up for the horrible things he had done during his spy career and trying to connect with his long lost son.

I was saddened to hear of Woodward's passing - I admit that I hoped he might take a role in the rumoured movie adaptation of The Equalizer. I look over my Callan and Equalizer tie-ins and remember a great actor and a great body of work

When I was a young lad, I watched The A-Team, Knight Rider, Airwolf, Steethawk, MacGyver and other Serial Vigilante Shows at that time. Imagine my delight at finding a number of Tie-In Novelisations over the years to these series - most adapted exisiting episodes but a few were original adventures.

One of the first Serial Vigilante series The Persuaders starring Roger Moore and Tony Curtis, a British production that aired from 1971-72 for 24 episodes, the series was novelised under the imaginative titles of The Persuaders Book 1, The Persuaders Book 2, and The Persuaders Book 3. A Tie comic of orginal exploits appeared in TV Action Magazine.

Surprizingly there were very few series published in the United States so whilst Pinnacle published 7 A-Team Novels and 3 Knight Rider novels, the books were reprinted by Target Books in the United Kingdom who then printed further books so there were 10 A-Team books and 5 Knight Rider books.

Target also printed Airwolf, Streethawk and The Equaliser novelisations that were not printed in The States. http://homepage.ntlworld.com/john.seymour1/ukbookguide/index.html has links to a number of series that were novelised back in the day.

Armada Books, another UK publisher, published MacGyver: On Ice, an original MacGyver adventure. Sadly, this never caught on and was Mac's only foray into print.

The Annual is another British source of Tie-in with A-Team, Knight Rider, Airwolf and The Equalizer all appearing in this format mixing comics, short stories and fact based articles (The Airwolf annual compares Airwolf to real world helicopters)

There were also original comic book stories of Knight Rider, Streethawk, The A-Team and Airwolf that appear in Look In Magazine in the UK. The A-Team was the only series to make it in comic book format in The United States with Marvel Comics producing a 3 issue series.

In the 90s none of the TV series such as The Pretender or Vengeance Unlimited made the transition into print. But the movies of that decade made the Tie-in transition. The first Darkman movie had a tie-in novel and comic book adaptation as well as original novel and comic book series. The Tomb Raider game series launched several tie ins - two movies, two comic book series (Tomb Raider, Tomb Raider Journeys), movie novelisations,(as well as a Tech Manual)and a series of original novels.

Now at the end of the noughties, there are several new TV series such as the new Knight Rider, Leverage, Supernatural and Burn Notice. (I'm ignoring Dexter as the TV series is a tie-in to the book series) Supernatural has had two comic book miniseries and three original novels. Burn Notice has also produced two original novels with another on the way.

Several older franchises got a new life through the tie-in. Darkman met the Army of Darkness in miniseries by Dynamite. Moonstone comics brought out a number of miniseries and one shots for Buckaroo Banzai. The Roger Corman TV series Black Scorpion is due to have a comic book from Blue Water comics and Boondock Saints is to be made into a comic from Innovation/12 Guage comics.

In 1997, Win Eckert started The Wold Newton Universe Crossover Chronology, a website expanding on Philip Jose Farmer’s pseudo-biographies Tarzan Alive and Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life. Over the years, Eckert kept expanding the concept and in 2005 edited Myths for the Modern Age, a collection of several of Farmer’s unpublished Wold Newton Articles and new articles by various Wold Newton Scholars (including me). That same year, Win was able to meet Phil and during a search through Phil’s archive uncovered an unfinished manuscript and complete outline for The Evil in Pemberley House. Win sought permission from the Farmers and completed the manuscript. Sadly, Philip Jose Farmer passed away before the book was published.

The book tells the story of Patricia Wildman, the daughter of Doc Wildman, who after the death of her parents and husband discovered that she was to inherit an estate in England decides to travel there to start a new life away from all the tragedy. Instead of the happily ever after that she was hoping for Patricia discovers that she has stumbled into a supernatural mystery with the discovery of a family curse. Of course, being Farmer and Eckert the book is littered with Wold Newton references

My best comparison for this book is the first Austin Powers movie – not that Evil in Pemberley House is a funny book. The first Austin Powers movie worked as a comedy even if you weren’t aware of the various 60s spy references dropped (James Bond, the Avengers, Derek Flint, etc) but an awareness of those sources enriches your viewing of the movie. Similarly, The Evil in Pemberley House also works as a Gothic novel even if the reader has no awareness of the rest of the Wold Newton Cycle.

Many gothics take the Scooby Doo route and show the man in the mask muttering “I’d have gotten away with it if it wasn’t for that meddling heiress/governess” but Farmer and Eckert wisely leave the question open, the ghost that visits Patricia may be a relative in disguise hoping to scare off the heiress or might be the real ghost.

Patricia is a great character in her own right, as I said before she is the daughter of Doc Wildman (obviously Doc Savage) and as such is no shrieking, fainting damsel in distress. The novel was conceived and set in the 1970s and whilst Patricia might not get as much sex as her contemporaries The Baroness, The Sexecutioner and The Lady from LUST, Patricia is no prude. The sex in the novel is important to the plot.

The novel finishes in such a way that Patricia has the scope for a series of her own adventures and I sincerely hope that Eckert continues the adventures of Patricia.

Win once told me that Farmer’s manuscript stopped in mid-sentence, well I looked carefully but I can’t find the sentence where Win took over. In fact, there is nowhere in the novel that jars and tips the reader off that there are two hands at work here.

The Evil in Pemberley House was published by Subterranean Press and I would be remiss to fail to mention the cover art by Glen Orbik. Orbik’s work on the Gabriel Hunt series and several of the Hard Case Crime books (my favourite is Money Shot) brought him to my attention and he is a perfect choice for the cover art which evokes the gothic novel covers and still brings Patricia to life as a strong capable sexy heroine.


Subterranean brought Evil in Pemberley House in a standard and limited edition format. The standard is just the novel and the limited edition is a numbered and signed copy of the novel and a limited chapbook. The chapbook might be best thought of as like the second disk of special features in a special edition DVD. The cover of the novel is the Wildman Coat of Arms drawn by Keith Howell based on the notes of Philip Jose Farmer. The first article in the chapbook is a description of the coat of arms with reproduction of four pages of handwritten notes and sketches by Farmer.

Next the chapbook reprints Farmer’s outline, which was especially interesting to me as I am learning to outline myself. I would advise that the reader read the novel first so as to not spoil the story.

Next is a chronology of events described in the novel. The final special feature is “Excessively Diverted or Coming to Pemberley House” when Farmer started this novel there was no Wold Newton speculation and it was easy for him to make Patricia the sole heir. Since that time, there have been numerous speculations and original stories that have added other potential heirs to Pemberley House, Eckert examines each of these potential claimants shows how and why they were out of contention.

These special features added an extra layer of enjoyment to my reading of this novel.

On Saturday, I had the opportunity to see Jeff Lindsay author of the Dexter series. Lindsay was a speaker at the Brisbane Writer's Festival.

The talk I saw was Dexter: The Ethical Killer. The Hostess asked Jeff several questions, about his background and how Dexter came to be created and so on. Jeff Lindsay is a very funny man who has been a stand up comic, an actor, a playwrite.

The original title for Darkly Dreaming Dexter was The Left Hand of God but marketing decided that the name had to be changed. The suggestion was Darkly Dreaming Dexter as there is a lot of similar aliteration throughout the book and it was in the book. After a few days, Lindsay agreed then his published found a perfect spot on page 273 to put "darkly dreaming Dexter" in the book.

Then there was a short reading from Dexter By Design and the floor was thrown open to questions. There were several questions comparing and contrasting the books to the TV series. It was pointed out that Layla from season 2 and Dexter's behaviour with her seemed out of character for Dexter to which Lindsay pointed out that she looked really good naked.

I scored the second last question and asked about how Dexter ties into the vigilante tradition, his name Dexter follows a similar pattern to The Executioner and the Punisher. The response was that Jeff doesn't see Dexter as a vigilante but as a serial killer, without the Code of Harry, Dexter would be just as happy killing anyone, whereas the vigilantes I mentioned have to kill bad men who have escaped the law.

it got me thinking did I finger the wrong person as the vigilante, was Harry the true vigilante killing vicariously through his foster son?


I then got my copy of Dexter by Design signed.

Back in the 1970's Marvel Comic founder, Martin Goodman, sold Marvel and part of the deal was that his son Chip was to have keep his job, so the story goes. Shortly after the sale, Chip lost his job. So Martin being a good rich dad set up a new comic company for his some to work at. Taking it's name from an earlier incarnation of Marvel, Atlas comics was born through Seaboard publications.

Atlas "the new house of ideas" launched over 20 titles in nearly as many genres. Sadly, none of the title lasted over 4 issues. Atlas' entry in the Serial Vigilante field was Targitt.



John Targitt was an FBI agent who sent his family on holidays and saw the plane explode killing his family. Targitt's FBI supervisor quickly arrived on the scene and informed Targitt that a mob boss was on the plane and that was why it was bombed.

As John was due to take holidays in a few days (to join his family), he decides to take leave immediately. Targitt hunts down the people responsible and kills them. In his investigation, Targitt discovers that the reason the mob boss was killed was to take control of a major drug shipment. Naturally, Targitt stops the drug shipment destroys all the drugs and the money.



In issue 2, Targitt returns to New York and fights off several hitmen as he gets off the train. Upset that the FBI doesn't seem to care if he lives or dies, Targitt storms into his boss' office ready to resign, only to be fired and stripped of his guns.

On the street, without a weapon Targitt figures that he is sitting duck and heads to his old partner's business to get a weapon. There he discovers that his firing was all a ruse so he could be hired as an FBI covert agent. To tackle crimes with methods that normally wouldn't be allowed. Given the costume seen on the cover, Targitt heads to Alaska to investigate sabotage of the Alaskan pipeline with his trusty .45s. Targitt uncovers an Arab plot to destroy the pipeline a drive up the price of fuel which he ends with extreme prejudice.



In the third and final issue, Targitt's suit is upgraded. The suit is now bullet proof and has servo motors to boost his strength and Targitt is no longer wearing his guns.

Professor Death, a hideously scarred and insane weapons designer is planning to release his nerve gas Death-13 wiping out 60% of the world's population so that he could rule over the survivors. Targitt destroys his base and dedicates himself to the being the Man-Stalker.

All issues were written by Ric Meyer and issue 3 was co-written with Gerry Conway, creator of The Punisher.

The series starts as a gritty crime story and slowly slides into super hero antics. I'd be interested to see where the series would have went had it continued. The covert FBI agent scenario had potential to take the series in different directions.