Gannon #1: Blood For Breakfast (second review)

Gannon #1: Blood For Breakfast, by Dean Ballenger

October, 1973  Manor Books

I’ve been meaning to re-read this first volume of Gannon for many years; my original review of Gannon #1: Blood For Breakfast was one of the first posts on the blog, way back in July of 2010. Sixteen years later, I can only say that Blood For Breakfast, aka Meet Gannon per the cover, no longer seems as outrageous to me. This is yet another testament to how reading men’s adventure novels will eventually rot your brain. 

For one, I don’t think it registered on me last time that hero Mike Gannon, most often referred to as a “tiger,” never even kills anyone in the book…save for one guy at the very end, but given that Gannon and the guy are struggling for possession of a gun, it could be that the other guy shoots himself accidentally. Instead, Gannon “merely” beats and maims his opponents…and here indeed is where the book is still outrageous, if only for the dark humor Dean Ballenger brings to the gore. 

Speaking of Ballenger, an interesting thing about the Gannon books is how little they come across like his previous work. Many years ago I also reviewed a few men’s adventure magazine stories Ballenger published in the 1960s; the narrative style in Blood For Breakfast is not at all like them…it’s more of a perverted, funhouse take on Spillane, or hardboiled pulp in general. 

Perhaps the biggest difference between this reading and my first back in 2010 is that I now see how similar Blood For Breakfast is to the early volumes of The Butcher, particularly those written by James Dockery. My favorite recurring bit in The Butcher is the opening of each volume, in which a memorably-colorful Mafia goon tries to kill Bucher and finds out Bucher is impossible to kill. Well, the entirety of Blood For Breakfast reads almost exactly like one of those sequences. 

There is no question in my mind that Dean Ballenger was inspired by The Butcher. Everything, from the goofy syntax his underworld characters speak in to their bizarre names, like for example “Rhino Rogers,” could come right out of a James Dockery novel. But whereas The Butcher ultimately heads off into a globe-trotting adventure each volume, Gannon is a proud working-class stiff and stays in the gutters of Cleveland. And by the way, this similarity with The Butcher is something James Reasoner noted in his 2008 review of Gannon #1, so he was way ahead of me! 

Another book Blood For Breakfast has much in common with is the superior (and equally rare) Bronson: Blind Rage. That novel too featured a hero pushed to sadistic lengths to avenge a loved one who had been wronged by the rich and powerful. Both Gannon and Bronson find themselves up against wealthy miscreants who literally get away with murder due to their fancy lawyers, and thus the two men must take gory justice into their own hands. 

Manor Books leaned hard into this setup, with future volumes dubbing Mike Gannon a “Robin Hood” who looked out for the poor. Ballenger, who even writes the third-person narrative in the same gutter-view syntax that his underworld figures speak in, takes rich people to the coals often and frequently in Blood For Breakfast, likely envisioning how his blue-collar readers will pump their fists in agreement. In other words the class divide is very much played up, and it’s very black and white: the average stiff must suffer and follow the law, while the rich get away with rape and murder and own the law. 

I still think it’s interesting that we are specifically told that Mike Gannon did not serve in a war, which goes against the grain of the typical men’s adventure protagonist of the era. While Gannon did serve in the military, it was between Korea and Vietnam, though we’re told he “saw some action” in off-the-books operations. His military background isn’t much dwelt on. Rather, Gannon’s current job is: despite only being 31, Gannon has worked his way up to being the chief security officer at a shipyards in Seattle, where he’s really learned to kick some shit; another thing I’d fogotten in the past 16 years since I last read this book is that Gannon’s colleague at the shipyards is the person who gives Gannon his “spiked knucks,” even warning Gannon that the things are so sharp that they can “shear off ears.” Gannon will prove this a few times in the course of the book. 

Gannon was born and raised in Cleveland, which is where the entirety of Blood For Breakfast occurs. Those from the area looking for a topical view of the city in the early ‘70s won’t find much; Gannon #1 takes place in dingy bars (or, in the weird vernacular of the book, “happy stores”), dingy restaurants, and dingy houses, plus a long sequence where Gannon strangely enough finds himself trapped on a boat as it drifts along Lake Erie. 

Ballenger begins with an action scene – Gannon coming back to his motel to find a trio of hoods waiting for him – and then goes back to tell the story. Long story short, Gannon is back in Cleveland due to “poor little raped Sandra,” ie Gannon’s 15 year-old sister, who was raped by a pair of college-age punks named Reese and Hobbs. A few witnesses came across the raped and bleeding girl on the roadside where the punks dropped her after raping her, and thus Reese and Hobbs for sure looked to be serving time in the upcoming trial…but now suddenly the witnesses have changed their stories, and Gannon suspects foul play. 

He leaves Seattle to go back home, and Blood For Breakfast is also unusual for a men’s adventure novel in that Gannon’s father factors into the story, but Bud Gannon doesn’t have much in the way of dialog or narrative space. Mostly he just argues with his son, thinking that Mike is imagining things. Gannon’s mother is also present, but humorously she doesn’t have any dialog. Same goes, surprisingly enough, for Sandra, who says nothing for the majority of the novel, Ballenger treating her like the Maguffin she is, even though she is the one who was raped and beaten by the punks. 

No, the focus is squarely on Gannon, who slips on his spiked knucks and goes around Cleveland beating and maiming the goons hired by Reese’s father, a wealthy bigshot who is running for Governor. Gannon, trying not to skirt the law, refrains from killing anyone, even though he carries a .38 with him. But instead of killing, he beats, and sadistically so; there is a ton of wonderfully dark humor throughout Blood For Breakfast, particularly the snappy rapport between Gannon and the grizzled cop who always comes around to “clean up Gannon’s mess.” 

The violence is raw and brutal, but Ballenger doesn’t dwell on the maimings. The back cover warns off squeamish readers, and Ballenger certainly lives up to expectations: Gannon “wrecks faces” with his spiked brass knuckles, lopping off ears and noses and disfiguring the goons who try to get the better of him. He also has a fondness for “stomping in the pumps,” ie kicking someone in the balls; there is a bizarre vernacular throughout the novel that almost attains the level a grimy American cousin of Anthony Burgess. 

But while the violence is colorfully and gorily described in a handful of sentences, the same cannot be said of the surprisingly-frequent sex scenes; all of them occur off-page, and Ballenger doesn’t even exploit the ample charms of the female characters. Gannon picks up three women in the course of the novel, but in each case we are only told how Gannon feels the morning after, or we get off-hand mentions that the girl “knew how to screw.” 

Gannon also isn’t very bright, but then his is a cunning street wisdom. Two of the girls try to get the better of him; the first selling him out and the second being a “pussy trap” that Gannon quickly falls for. Not to worry, though, as Gannon will eventually get his girl. Humorously, we are frequently told that the third girl, a waitress in a dive, is not pretty, but she’s there for the taking, so Gannon humps her a few times because he doesn’t feel like scoring a new chick! 

There is a surprising amount of padding for a book that runs only 190 big-print pages. There are also a lot of plot errors that are expected of Manor Books. The main one being: Gannon (which is to say Ballenger) focuses solely on bigshot Reese, the father of one of the rapists…but the other rapist, Hobbs, doesn’t even factor into the book, and nor does his father – even though it’s established from the beginning that both families are wealthy and connected. No, Hobbs is completely forgotten…there’s a part toward the very end, where Gannon is getting his final revenge on the elder Reese, and only then does Gannon think of Hobbs, but he basically says to hell with it. One suspects this is Ballenger himself explaining the error to his readers…but then one also wonders why Ballenger had it as two rapists. He could’ve just removed Hobbs entirely and the book wouldn’t have changed. 

What makes it even odder is that there’s a long, but certainly memorable, part in the final third where Gannon hires a pair of thugs to beat and maim the rich lawyers who got the two rapists off in court. (Okay, the last half of that sentence sounded strange.) While it is darkly humorous – and certainly violent, with ears getting ripped off and testicles getting smashed in as the two thugs trade maiming techniques – the scene could have easily been replaced with Gannon getting revenge on Hobbs. As it is, these two thugs have nothing to do with the rest of the book. 

There’s also a puzzling and long part where Gannon gets trapped on a yacht with one of his female conquests, a pair of maimed goons tied up below decks. Neither Gannon nor the girl know how to handle a yacht, so they are trapped on it as it lazily goes down the river. Ballenger does this for the sake of the plot, so Gannon can’t be there when the trial happens and “poor little raped Sandra” is fed to the wolves by witnesses who have been bought out, but still it comes off as a puzzling interlude that makes his hero seem incompetent. 

Otherwise, Blood For Breakfast moves at a rapid clip, and Ballenger doesn’t waste our time with a lot of subplot or subtext. It’s not that kind of book. Mike Gannon is a “Tiger,” a 5 foot 8 scrapper who “look[s] like Burt Reynolds with a little early-day Mickey Rooney mixed in,” who quickly figures out that Reese has bought off witnesses and has hired goons to prevent his son from going to prison. There are a handful of parts where Gannon confronts the elder Reese in his office – indeed, the rapist kid himself barely factors into the novel – which includes more of Ballenger’s dark humor, particularly courtesy “the lesbian” who serves as Reese’s secretary. 

But Gannon’s chief foe in the novel is Rhino Rogers, a hulking stooge who first appears cradling a Thomspon submachine gun, which he accidentally blows away one of his own goons with, thanks to Gannon’s fast moving. Rhino keeps showing up to get the better of Gannon – Ballenger has his hero being caught unawares too many times for my liking – and it is not until the finale that he is permanently dealt with. 

It’s funny when you re-read a novel after a long interim and you see the stuff that stuck with you over the years. For me it was the guy who got blown up under the car in Blood For Breakfast. This is Spider, and his appearance occurs early in the book; Gannon catches him in the act of planting a bomb beneath his rental, and after a long dialog exchange – in which Spider lies that he was simply trying to break into Gannon’s car – Gannon orders Spider at gunpoint to get under there and take the bomb off. The explosion leaves a “gore-trail” of Spider’s brains on the pavement, and also seems to have inspired the uncredited cover art. 

In conclusion, Blood For Breakfast is more “sleazy hardboiled pulp for the ‘70s” than it is men’s adventure; the debt to Mickey Spillane is clear, even if Gannon isn’t a private eye. But with its focus on maiming and mutilation, it is more of a grindhouse take on ‘50s pulp, with an added layer concerning the class divide. As mentioned Manor played up on this, with the next two volumes featuring Gannon avenging more unfortunates against the wealthy…but still not getting his revenge on Hobbs! In fact, Blood For Breakfast ends so haphazardly that I wondered if Manor cut down Ballenger’s manuscript; Gannon goes off to “roll” the ugly waitress once he’s dealt with Reese, and the book hurriedly ends! 

So yes, I certainly enjoyed Gannon #1: Blood For Breakfast on this second reading, with the caveat that it didn’t seem as outlandish to me now that I’ve read a steady diet of ‘70s pulp over the past several years. The biggest takeaway this time – which I didn’t realize the first time I read it – was how similar it was to The Butcher, with the difference being that Gannon doesn’t kill anyone. At least in this one. I can’t recall if he does in the next two volumes, but I will gradually find out, as I will be reading them again next.

Men’s Adventure Quarterly #1

 

Men’s Adventure Quarterly #1, edited by Robert Deis, Bill Cunningham, and Paul Bishop

January, 2021  Subtropic Productions

All fans of men’s adventure magazines owe a debt of gratitude to Bob Deis and Bill Cunningham, who have done what I thought no one else would do: brought men’s adventure magazines back into print for the modern day. Men’s Adventure Quarterly #1 reprints vintage men’s mag stories and art, with a new theme each issue. Under the “Men’s Adventure Library” Bob and Wyatt Doyle have published several books over the past few years, but Men’s Adventure Quarterly is special because it actually comes off like a vintage men’s mag – only a lot slicker and more professionally put together, and without that strange stink that most old men’s mags have! 

For make no mistake, Men’s Adventure Quarterly #1 is a work of art. The presentation is flawless, with eye-popping reproduction of cover art and a layout more in-tune with today’s readers – no dual columns of blurry typescript copy here. Also, Bob and Bill do something that the old men’s magazine editors apparently never thought to do: they group each issue around a theme. So as you can see, this first issue is devoted to Westerns. I should admit right at the start that I am not and have never been an avid fan of Westerns – I think there was a brief tangent as a preteen in the ‘80s that I was into Spaghetti Westerns and mabye read a Longarm or two – but regardless I really enjoyed all the stories here. 

I’ve collected about 50 or so men’s adventure mags over the years, but the majority of them feature Nazi She-Devils (here’s hoping that will be the theme of an upcoming issue!!) or other WWII stories. I’d never read any Western men’s mag stories, nor gone out of my way to collect any of them. What I found interesting is that they turn out to be of a piece with the other men’s mag stories of the era: most all of them open with the incident depicted on the cover or the story frontispiece, then flash back to show how the characters got to this moment, and then quickly wrap up by returning to that opening incident. Honestly I think there was like a DeVry school for men’s mag writers; practically every single story I’ve ever read follows this same template. 

Another nice thing the editors do here is provide an intro for each story, which I much appreciated; I’m going to assume Bob wrote most of them, as they read very much like his posts over at his blog. In each case we get an overview of the author, the artist, and maybe some background context on the story – even photos of the real-life personalities (for the stories that don’t feature completely fictional characters). As I say, the publication is clearly a labor of love. The three editors (Paul Bishop serves as guest editor this issue) did a good job of selecting the tales; there’s a fair bit of variety, and all of them are memorable. They also selected from a wide range of men’s mags, from higher-quality lines like Male and more sweaty ones like Man’s Life. However none of the stories are very long; there are no “true book bonus”-type novellas here along the lines of the type collected in vintage anthologies like Our Secret War Against Red China or Women With Guns. 

The first story is “The Old Shell Game,” by John Concannon, and it’s from the February 1953 issue of Male. The editorial intro says that this one’s unique in that it offers a “female empowerment” storyline, what with it’s buckskin-garbed blonde beauty of a gunslinger. But man, as it turns out, “female empowerment” is offered a resounding slap to the face by story’s end. The story is also unique in that it’s narrated by a guy in his sixties, one who even looks upon the buckskin beauty as a daughter or somesuch; what I mean to say is, the story doesn’t burn with that horny fire typical of men’s mag yarns. 

So anyway, the narrator (whose name is Bill, though we don’t learn that until the final few paragraphs) tells us how he was sitting in a saloon one day and this gorgeous blonde gunslinger in buckskin strutted in; she’s referred to throughout as “Buckskin,” and as with Bill it isn’t even until the final paragraphs that we learn her real name. Anyway the intro is memorable; she’s here looking for a certain scumbag, obviously intent to blow him away with her six-gun. But instead she – and the story – gets taken in an entirely different direction as Buckskin is almost suckered in the titular shell game, courtesy a thug named Frenchie. Once all that’s sorted out, narrator Bill implores Buckskin to spend the night in town, where she later informs him she’s searching for the man who killed her husband. Then Bill tells us in a humorously hasty conclusion that he’s able to talk her out of her blood vendetta! 

“Madams Of The Old West” is by Richard Carter and Glen Kittler and from the July 1955 Male. This is one of the stories that’s more nonfiction than fiction; the editors include a very insightful intro with real-world background info as well as photos of some of the madams discussed in the story. And of course they look a whole lot different than the smokin’ hot babes depicted in the story’s illustrations! Here we learn about such infamous Old West brothel owners as Poker Alice and the like, the authors doling out their histories and some of their more notorious affairs. Interesting, but too tame given the subject matter. 

“Trigger-Happy Marshall” is by Dean W. Ballenger and from the November 1956 issue of Stag. A big thanks to the editors for the shoutout they gave my review of Gannon #1! Their discussion of Ballenger was much welcomed, particularly their revelation that he wrote a countless number of men’s mag stories. Years ago I reviewed some of them. In particular I’d love to read the Nazi She-Devil yarn from ’63 that’s briefly excerpted in the intro – again, here’s hoping that will be a forthcoming MAQ theme. The editors state that “Trigger-Happy Marshall” isn’t as extreme as Gannon, but I thought it was a definite indication of the brutal vibe of that later series, given that the titular marshall is a psychopath who enjoys killing. Not to mention the dark humor that runs throughout. 

Sam Krell is that marshall, a short-statured lawman in Colorado who is known for his brutality. We’re told of how he has often killed crooks in cold blood – even gunned down newsmen who published critical stories of him – but the townspeople look away given how he keeps the place safe. But Krell has other goals: when a gang escapes with bank loot, Krell hunts them down, kills their leader…and takes over the gang. Here we’re told of the various sadistic campaigns they unleashed, including even brutal fights against Indians. Krell is a definite bastard; he would hire buddies to join his gang, and as a test of loyalty to be accepted one buddy would have to kill the other. After a few years of success Krell retires to a large cattle ranch, but when it’s destroyed by marauding Indians he returns to the town he started off in…and asks for his job as marshall back! I really enjoyed this one, and it had more action and violence than the typical men’s mag yarn – but not much in the way of sex. Indeed, Krell seems curiously disinterested in women, and his one depicted incident with a hooker is very odd indeed. 

“The Gunman Who Killed The Critics” is by Richard Gehman and from the February 1959 issue of Argosy. This one’s just straight-up reporting and is focused on the TV show Gunsmoke. Which I’ve never watched, thus I must admit I glossed over this story, given my lack of interest in the subject matter. 

“The Cowboy And The Dance Hall Floozy” by Bill Houseman is more along the lines of what I’m interested in; it’s from the April 1959 issue of Untamed. Here we have a strange revenge story: Crazylegs Moosberg, a half-Indian outlaw, is the last survivor of a gang and escapes to a small town in Colorado until the heat wears off. He comes into a saloon, one he finds deserted save for an attractive woman at the card table. She pulls a gun on him, saying she always knew he’d return. Here we have a strange flashback in which Crazylegs abruptly remembers how he got drunk in this very saloon, a year before, and murdered the girl’s husband after a game of cards. Something he’d plumb just forgotten about until this moment! The girl takes her revenge after an overlong but tense game of poker. 

“Say ‘No” To Laurie Lee…And Wish You Were Dead” is by Lou Cameron and from the September 1959 issue of All Man. This was my favorite in the issue; Cameron’s story is like a proto-Spaghetti Western with its tough nature and oddball assortment of characters. It’s also one I wish had been expanded into paperback length. I’d definitely read it! A Texas Ranger named Ben Harvey rides into a ghost town in Utah; he’s been tracking an outlaw, only to find him strung up with several others overtop a dry riverbed. Cameron effectively captures the eerie setting of the hanged corpses, their skin stretched taut by the desert sun. From here the story gets weirder; Harvey encounters an “idiot” girl in a “potato sack” dress that barely hides her shapely figure; she warns him to get out of town. But it’s too late, as Harvey meets the “law” of the town, a crazy old man who has discovered uranium and decided to stay here, the only other occupants being a slim gunfighter named Lee and two disfigured women: one with a hunchback and one with a scarred face. 

The old man, goaded on by Lee, accuses Harvey of stealing a horse and throws him in jail, for a “trial” the following morning. That night in his cell Harvey is visited by a mysterious woman in the darkness who begs, “Want me, cowboy.” After some undescribed all-night shenanigans, the mysterious girl takes off…and later Harvey is visited by another girl looking for love: Zenobia, the “idiot” with the killer bod. (Or as Cameron puts it, “The lovely young creature was obviously a hopeless idiot.”) More off-page fireworks ensue. Harvey manages to get out of the jail before his kangaroo court can commence, and the story climaxes with the memorable image of Harvey squaring off against a female gunfighter – one who is naked save for her pistol holster. Cameron skillfully moves the story along; it only runs a few pages but definitely makes an impression, and I can’t believe I’ve done reviews here for 11 years now and have yet to review a book by Lou Cameron! 

“Terror Of The All Girl Posse” is by Thomas Halloran (possibly a house name, per the intro) and from the January 1960 issue of Man’s Life. I’d seen the cover of this one before, with the cleavage-baring beauties rounding up some guy while another shapely female hangs in the foreground. And as ever the story opens depicting this very scene; a killer named Rivers has been captured by some “lovely executioners,” ie the female posse of the title. They’ve already killed Rivers’s woman, Maria; she’s been strung up, per the artwork, and now it’s Rivers’s turn. And par for the course we flash back to explain how we got to this moment. 

We learn of Sheriff Sally Wilcox, smokin’ hot 23 year-old leader of an all-female posse, how she got the posse together and the various crooks they brought to bear. But when we come back to the opening with Rivers we learn that Sheriff Sally, for all her bravado, isn’t that smart. For Rivers, as his “last request,” asks for a roll in the hay with Sally…and she complies! After the undescribed hay-rollin’, Rivers as expected takes Sally hostage and threatens to kill her, or else. But Sheriff Sally is willing to die for justice, as Rivers will soon learn. A fun story, but definitely could’ve been fleshed out more. But then, Man’s Life stories in general are too quick and underdeveloped. 

“Bloodiest Mass Murderer Of The Old West” is by Grayson Peters and from the October 1962 issue of A-OK For Men; this one returns to the pseudo-nonfictional vibe of “Madams Of The Old West.” This one’s about real-life personality Charles Stanton, who per the editorial intro was a businessman who was plagued with stories of being a sadistic murderer. It sounds like this isn’t known for sure – I’d never heard of the guy before, personally – but the story obviously doesn’t leave it a mystery. It opens with Stanton and gang brutally killing a family, Stanton wiping out the dad and teen sons and then personally seeing to the raping of the preteen girls. We go on to learn of his “gore-spattered career,” from killing prospectors to more raping. This one’s very much in the realm of the sweats, almost coldly documenting the various transgressions with no real verve to the narrative. The finale is memorable enough, with Stanton getting his balls shot off by a Mexican bandit he’s upset! 

“Saga Of Buckskin Frank Leslie: Slick-Shooting Dude From Tombstone” is by Jack Pearl and from the February 1964 issue of Man’s World. Pearl is another author I’m surprised I’ve yet to get around to reviewing; I actually have the two sleaze paperbacks of his the editors mention in their typically-insightful intro. Frank Leslie is another real-life Old West personality, one who made a name for himself – now forgotten by most – in the infamous town of Tombstone. We have appearances from lots of those personalities, like Wyatt Earp, but for the most part this fast-moving story focuses on Leslie, a guy from the mountains who still wears his buckskin proudly and who quickly makes a name for himself in town. This I believe is the longest story in the collection, and comes off more like a character piece, documenting his time in Tombstone. 

“Shoot-Out At Mad Sadie’s Place” is by Donald Honig and from the June 1967 For Men Only. This one has a great editorial intro: when compiling the stories for the book, the editors discovered that Honig was still alive, and also that he was happy to discuss his men’s mag work. He claims that High Plains Drifter was more than likely inspired by this particular tale. That was in fact one of the few Westerns I watched as a kid in the ‘80s during my brief Westerns interest, so I can see what Honig meant, as both this story and that film concern a gunslinger enterting a town hellbent on revenge. But wasn’t it implied that Eastwood’s character was a ghost? Or am I confusing High Plains Drifter with Pale Rider? 

This is a very entertaining yarn, one that certainly could’ve benefitted from more fleshing out. Indeed, the finale is so rushed as to be humorous. Pod Luken, a gunslinger who often has found himself on the wrong side of the law, has a brother who acts as sheriff in a small town, and the brother’s going to help Pod start a new life on the right side of the law in California. But then Pod gets a letter that his brother is dead – shot down by six gunmen from Texas. Pod heads in to town and scopes the place out; there’s a great part where he decides he doesn’t like anyone in it, given that none of them stood up to help his brother. To prove his point Pod goes around to various places and challenges the owners – ie, “What would you do if I didn’t pay for this beer?” and etc, to which of course the owners reply they’d grab their gun and demand he pay. Yet none of them were willing to do the same to help Pod’s brother. 

Pod sets his sights on the six Texans, taking out one of them in a whorehouse – a great part where Pod gets his own girl, goes upstairs with her, and starts snooping around for the room the Texan is in. But this will be the most elaborately-depicted revenge in the story. For as mentioned it’s way too short for its own good. Evidence of this is the female character, Molly; she’s the one who wrote Pod the letter, and as it turns out she was engaged to Pod’s brother. She’s a pretty young blonde, but the expected fireworks between her and Pod don’t ensue…likely because Honig didn’t have the space. Instead, she shows Pod who the Texans are, and Pod starts thinking over his careful revenge…and then it’s all rushed through as he gets in a running gunfight with them, one that climaxes in the titular bar owned by Mad Sadie. A great, fast-moving story, but one tarnished by an apparent restriction on the word count. 

“The West’s Wildest Hell Raiser” is by Jules Archer and from the January 1957 issue of Stag. The frontispiece for this one is unusual in that it’s a naked dude who is exploited: an otherwise-stunning depiction of the titular hell raiser, riding naked into town. Another novelty is that this incident doesn’t open the story, par for the men’s mag template, but is instead relayed in an off-hand line midway through the yarn. The opening is actually a brutal knife-fight the hell-raiser, Clay Allison, gets in with another guy for the rights to a watering hole in Texas. Clay wins the fight, but is left with a permanent limp. This one’s similar to the Frank Leslie story, documenting the various tussles this hotheaded guy gets into, but I found it pretty tame – even stuff like a blonde and a brunette getting in “a hair-pulling match” over Clay isn’t exploited nearly as much as it should’ve been. 

After this we get some wonderfully-reproduced covers, and I found it interesting that the Western-themed men’s mags usually had men on the cover, whereas of course most men’s mags covers were known for their cleavage-baring women. That said, the editors do include a risque photo shoot in the issue, with an early 1960s lady posing in various states of undress; as I say, they do a wonderful job of recreating an actual vintage men’s mag, only with much higher production values. 

Again, a big thanks to Bob, Bill, and Paul for Men’s Adventure Quarterly #1. I really enjoyed it…and I have a feeling I’m going to enjoy the second issue, which focuses on ‘60s spy stories, even more!

Men's Mag Roundup: Nazi She-Devils

 

The cover sums up this post’s theme – Nazi She-Devils!!  Jackboot Girls was okay for what it was, but as I said in that review, the Nazi She-Devils made a greater impact in men’s adventure magazines. Most “sweat mags” showed Nazis torturing busty women in various contraptions, but occasionally the tables would turn and it would be the women dishing out the punishment. This April 1960 Man’s Life is a perfect example – I’ve wanted to read this story for years, ever since I first saw the cover in Taschen’s Men’s Adventure Magazines (the first edition of the book, which had a “sweats” chapter). Finally I bit the bullet and bought the mag, and luckily I didn’t pay too much for it…unfortunately, this is one of those cases where the actual story does not live up to the cover.

“Trapped in the House of Nazi Dagger Girls” (what a title!! And one I will rip off someday) is another of those “as told to” b.s. first-person narratives; in this case the “teller” is Dean Caswell, and the writer is Robert Moore. The story is unfortunately short, despite being the cover feature – but then, I’ve been spoiled by the “True Booklength” features in the Noah Sarlat-edited men’s magazines, like the ones collected in Women With Guns. The story opens as that cover scene occurs, with a busty and half-nude blonde German woman attempting to kill Caswell with a bayonet – not a “Nazi dagger” like in the cover. And also, the blonde and her fellow women are either nude or dressed in lingerie, not the buttonless, swastika-adorned uniforms of the cover.

These women, you see, are not “Nazi Dagger Girls” at all – they are in fact prostitutes, brought here from Germany to keep a battalion of SS troops happy. (Damn those misleading titles!!) Caswell is part of an Army force moving through France in late June of 1944; they’re pinned down by SS artillery outside of a town. Word comes down that a nearby hotel is filled with women, and Caswell’s sarge wants to go see them. He brings Caswell along as his “good luck charm,” and after some fighting (there’s more gunfire action than Nazi Dagger Girls, unfortunately) they finally get into the hotel, which is filled with women, nude or in lingerie.

Caswell’s sarge goes for one, and another comes out of the shadows for Caswell – and then brandishes a bayonet. Here the story resumes from that opening scene, with the blonde trying to kill Caswell and calling for her fellow whores to help; more of them come rushing out with clubs and knives. Then a total copout ending occurs as a US-ordered air strike knocks Caswell cold, and he wakes up beneath “piles of entangled limbs.” All of the poor Nazi Dagger Girls were killed in the bombing – and plus the sarge is dead, too, his throat slit. The end.

The other stories here also aren’t up to snuff – there’s one about a “Manhunt” that’s a total ripoff of The Most Deadly Game, another first-person narrative about some dude being hunted by a crazed Arabic “great white hunter;” the dude is saved by a harem of women (of course) and escapes to safety. There’s another first-person “as told to” story about another dude almost getting eaten by a crocodile while fishing, but it was lackluster. There were also two Westerns and a feature about how the air defense system sucked, circa 1960, but I skipped them.

 

This January 1963 True Men Stories is more like it. Another incredible cover, and another mention of “Dagger Girls” as a feature story. Once again though, they aren’t referred to as such in the actual text (indeed, they’re referred to as “Nazi butcher-bitches!”). The captions for the story’s illustration refer to them that way, stating that the “Dagger Girls” were an “elite corps” of Nazi warrior-women created by Ilse Koche. However, absolutely none of this is mentioned in the story itself! Anyway, “Last Days of Hitler’s Depraved Dagger Girls” is by Joseph Andrews and concerns the plight of Sergeant Matt Pool, captured three days after D-Day and put in a German prison compound (aka a stalag). Eventually, due to his frequent attempts at breaking out, he is sent to the infamous Kitzingen stalag.

This prison is overseen by vicious Commandant Gruber and his beautiful blonde wife, Erna. The story opens with a nude Erna offering herself to Pool, who spurns her. Why? We learn in backstory that Pool has been told that Erna likes to tempt the Allied POWs with her body, and then just as they’re about to do the deed a bunch of Nazi goons rush in and beat the poor POW up. Anyway due to his effrontery Pool succeeds in having himself made Erna’s personal slave, and we quickly learn that as the weeks and months go by she is the one who begins to “quiver” at the sight of him. After purposely letting his hand slip while bathing her, Pool succeeds in knocking down Mrs. Gruber’s defenses, and the two go at it (only implied, no dirty stuff).

Things get dumb as Pool holds Erna’s indiscretions over her head; if she treats him and his fellow POWs badly, he’ll run to Commandant Gruber and blab that Erna screwed him. Life in the stalag becomes pleasant for a while, but as the war goes on and Germany loses, more men are needed at the front. Hence, the stalag has a shortage of guards. A new batch finally arrives…and Commandant Gruber is stunned to find that they are all women! These are the “Dagger Girls” of the title, though again none of them are described that way; we’re just informed that some of them are former inmates or various rabble-rousers, but they’re all devoted Nazis and hate the Allies.

The story now veers into sweat-mag territory as the women run roughshod over the male prisoners. Erna becomes their leader and ousts her husband, after which she runs the stalag – and takes sweet revenge on Pool, whipping him nearly to death. After his recovery Pool sees the hell the stalag has become; on his first day out of solitary he’s called forth and Erna hops on his back, lashing at him, riding his shoulders like a horse as she mock-jousts with another of the women, who also rides a POW’s shoulders. Things get nice and lurid with lots of lashings and beatings…though at least Erna’s sure to take Pool back to her room after this, to clean him up and “take him.” (Though this is what hurts Pool the most – that the women are taking the men, when it should be the other way around!)

When Pool’s best bud gets his head blown off point-blank by Erna, our hero has finally had enough; he attacks Erna and a fight ensues, remarkably just like that depicted on the cover painting. The other women start fighting the POWs, and at that moment the Army arrives, having battled their way this far into Germany. Pool manages to use Erna’s own blade on her, slicing her jaw open, and we flashforward to after the war, where we learn that two years later Erna Gruber was sentenced to death as a war criminal. The end. Not bad, nice and lurid though without too much bite – though again it was a bit of a miss for me, as I would’ve preferred to read the “elite corps of Dagger Girls” story the captions referred to.

Other stories in the issue: “Dealey’s Way” by Gene Channing, about a devil-may-care commander’s struggle to rescue a downed pilot; “Epidemic” by Martin Baine, a sensationalistic take on the legend of Typhoid Mary; “Taboo Vengeance” by Ray Thorne “as told to” Paul Olsen, a super-goofy account of some river-explorer who runs afoul of jealous husbands in Pakistan in a village where everything is on stilts; and finally “Our Army’s Terrifying Electronic Horror Weapon” by Robert Laguardia, a story Joseph Rosenberger would’ve really gotten into – a pseudo-factual article about a button-sized device that can be sewn into a person’s head (complete with gory b&w photos of actual people with their heads being cut open and sewed up), turning them into veritable Manchurian Candidates.

 

Another great cover, another great title – “The Hell-Plot of the Nazi Nymphos!” (These men’s mag editors and authors really had a gift for titles, didn’t they?) This April 1966 issue of All Man though is unfortunately another where the story doesn’t live up to the title. Also I have to mention that the cover doesn’t illustrate anything that happens in the stories inside…in fact, “Hell-Plot,” by Vernon Gibney, is yet another tale about prostitutes. The story is woefully short and occurs in May of 1945, three days after the war has ended in Europe. This one’s a first-person account, as our narrator has been sent to Turin, Italy to discover what happened to the 150 various OSS and MI6 agents that were airdropped into Turin during the war, all of whom disappeared.

The story opens very lurid with the narrator watching as pretty women are hauled into the town square and gutted while a crowd watches and cheers. The narrator’s guide is the partisan leader, who tells him how these women, whores all, were actually employees of the SS. The entire story is basically background info as told to our narrator, which robs it of its pulp nature – there aren’t even any scenes where we see the hookers at work. Apparently though their modus operandi was to lure the parachuted-in agents to their whorehouse, telling them they were actually members of the underground resistance. Instead though they’d hand the agents over to the SS, who would torture them to death. Now they are getting their just deserts, gutted and murdered in the town square why the locals cheer. A strange, short, and nasty tale, this one kind of sucked.

“The Savage Warriors Who Like to Hear Men Scream” is by none other than Dean Ballenger, and guess what, it’s just a longer version of his tale “Strange Platoon,” which appeared in the January 1961 Action For Men. Same characters, same story – Sgt Hugh Therein is in Papua, where he is ordered to request the native Kulukuk warriors help fight the “Japs.” The story is the same as that earlier printing, only longer, with more dialog and the characters and plot better fleshed out. This leads me to believe that this version isn’t a rewrite; Noah Sarlat probably just edited Ballenger’s manuscript for publication in Action For Men, and after a little title-changing Ballenger later sold the original, unedited manuscript to All Man. Those crafty pulp writers always know how to make a buck.

The other stories are middling – “A Good Pirate Dies Rich” by Sam Fegler is straight-up adventure fiction, the narrative of a Korean vet who now runs a successful smuggling operation in Southeast Asia; “The Girls Yelled Rape!” by Al Popein, another first-person account, this one done in 1950s “juvenile” tones about a hoodlum and his gang who go on a panty raid in a girl’s dorm, where they get lucky (only implied), after which one of the girls for reasons unspecified screams “rape!” and the dorm guard comes in with revolver blasting. There’s also a cheesecake spread of some rather unattractive women and some other articles and stories that I skipped over. All told this magazine didn’t live up to its cover or feature-story title by a long shot.

 

Now that is a cover! And it’s safe to say if the Nazis really did have women who looked like that, they probably could’ve taken over the world without having to resort to murder or warfare. Anyway once again though the story inside this February 1972 issue of Man’s True Danger doesn’t quite live up to expectations: titled “The Nazi She-Devil Who Killed For Kicks!,” it’s by Jack Hunter, and it’s another of those first-person narratives that tries to pass itself off as the recollections of a real person.

Hunter is in a stalag on the France/Germany border, where he was sent after being captured after D-Day. The place is run by female commandant Elsa Brughoffer, who is described pretty much exactly like that cover painting, only she’s a more-expected blonde rather than a brunette. She wields a cat’o’nine tails which she uses to whip the hell out of everyone for her twisted pleasure. The stalag is made up of male and female Allied prisoners, and while performing his cleaning duties (Elsa is a stickler for cleanliness) Hunter meets a pretty female prisoner who tells him the women are tunneling their way out.

The Nazi She-Devil plays second fiddle as the narrative instead focuses on the escape. Also, the tale is quite short; we open en media res as expected with Elsa whipping Hunter’s female prisoner pal nearly to death, while the rest of the prisoners are secretly escaping. After filling us in on the backstory Hunter goes back to that opening scene and has Hunter rush out in a mad dash, snatch the whip from Elsa, and whip her half to death with it, leaving her a bloody mess as he and the girl escape with the others. Of course Hunter informs us that he eventually managed to score with the girl.

“Vile Shame of Jail-Bait Call Girls” by the awesomely-named Blake Bronston is another fake first-person “true account,” this time by a cop who infiltrated a club of execs and the wealthy who would meet once a month to bid on teenaged whores. This one’s mostly made up of long scenes of the guys sitting around and watching some teenaged girl strip down for their amusement, Bronston lovingly describing each detail while at the same time chastizing the men for their warped minds. Of course it all ends with the guys arrested and the girls sent to a reform school.

“Nude On Horseback” by Don Averone is another first-person WWII tale, about an agent sent into a town in France to rescue the beautiful Suzette, who we are told served as a mistress to “all of the high-ranking German officials in France,” but in reality was a secret agent. Now that the Nazis are defeated the townspeople are out for the blood of any who helped them, so of course Suzette is tops on the list, given that she was a “Nazi whore,” the people obviously not knowing her secret identity.

Averone comes in just as the nude girl is trussed up on a horse; what the townspeople plan to do to her is vague, but our hero rescues her and together they race off on her horse – Don only discovering later, and to his surprise, that he’s been hanging on to Suzette’s breasts the whole way. Hiding in an abandoned farm the two get cuddly but Suzette has grown leery and hateful of men; Don then forces himself on her! The story becomes like this twisted date rape fantasy…one with a happy ending, though, because after a full night of being screwed Suzette learns the valuable lesson that some men are good-hearted, after all.

“Passion Ship of Desire-Haunted Women” is by Neil Larsen, “as told to” James D’Indy; this one’s the “true account” of a guy who was on a small cruise ship that sank in 1958, and was stuck for five weeks at sea on a lifeboat with 14 women. Each night the women would take turns with him, and the goofy, wish-fulfillment tale is all about the rivalries that would ensue as the women would fight over who’d get to screw Larsen next.

I’ve wanted to read these particular magazines for a while, especially the issue of Man’s Life, but one thing I’ve learned is that in future I’ll stick with the “diamond” line of men’s mags, ie those edited by Noah Sarlat, as the stories in them are just better. All of the tales within these mags were just half-baked and underdeveloped. Great covers and titles, though!

Men's Mag Roundup: Dean Ballenger

Several years before he unleashed the lurid masterwork that was Gannon, Dean Ballenger like many other pulp writers wrote for men’s adventure magazines. A while back I picked up a few of them, just to see if Ballenger’s work in them was similar to the unhinged brutality of the Gannon trilogy. It turns out they weren’t – but then, not much could be – but they were still pretty fun. On a WWII kick again thanks to Len Levinson's The Goering Treasure, I decided to give the mags another re-read…as well as some of the other men’s mags I’ve picked up, which I’ll also be eventually reviewing.

This January 1961 Action For Men is the earliest of the three I have that contain a Ballenger story. Titled “Strange Platoon: Five GIs and the Amazon Women of Papua,” the story takes place in the Pacific Theater of the war, as do the other two Ballenger stories reviewed below. And unfortunately this one’s not as good as the two reviewed below. It’s also the shortest. Ballenger writes this one in psuedo-factual style, as if he’s writing about a true WWII incident and not a straight up piece of fiction.

As for the story, a platoon heads into Papa New Guinea and asks a tribe of headhunters to fight the invading Japanese (referred to of course as “Japs” throughout!). The Americans are just advisors and the natives pull off Viet Cong-style guerrilla tactics on the Japanese, killing them unseen from the bushes, poisoning their water, etc. Ballenger relates a few scenes from the Japanese perspective, with a bit of comedy that they are so incompetent they can’t fight back and have no idea how they are being killed.

A war of attrition develops with the Japanese terrified, being picked off at night. The Americans are relegated to the sidelines, even having to ask the headhunter leader for permission to help out in the final attack! These men’s mag stories were always sure to include sex, at least to an extent, but there isn’t much here, other than the mentioning that the headhunters will rush off into the bushes with their women before going into battle, so as to propagate their seed in case they die in the fight. It’s a short story, mostly forgettable, and completely lacks the crazed style of Gannon.

This January 1964 Action For Men is more like it. Ballenger’s “Nude Harem of the US Navy’s Fleet-Wrecking Island Commandos” is a fun piece of WWII pulp. This one is written more like a short story, even though it still tries to pass itself off as a “true story” per men’s mag tradition. In this one a team of Navy frogmen head into Japanese-invaded Sulu Island and hook up with some Suluese women as part of their cover as native fishermen. The Japanese armada is stationed around this island and the mission is to destroy it or at least do some major damage.

The frogmen spend a few weeks sunning to get their skin dark, as well as loving the women, who are appropriately horny. (As soon as she meets the hero, Halpin, the Suluese girl Satabi asks “Where do we make love?”) Of course nothing is described, just a lead up and then fade to black. Posing as fish sellers, Halpin and team are allowed to pilot their little boat through the Japanese armada to sell their catch to the captains.

The entire story itself is a buildup with zero action; after gaining the trust of the Japanese after several weeks of selling fish, the frogmen stay in the armada one night, plant bombs, and escape. The armada explodes but they don’t know it, staying with the Suluese gals and believing they failed, only for a submarine to show up and the pilot to tell them the island has been cleared for weeks. No guts or gore, but the tone you expect of Ballenger is there, particularly Halpin’s lament at the end that he’d stopped sleeping with Satabi – we learn that the frogman commander was so upset over “failing” his mission that Satabi got sick of his grumbling and refused to have sex with him anymore.

There’s also a WWII story by Anson Hunter with the unwieldy title “House of Italian Call-Girls: Salerno Invasion Outpost;” it’s about an American spy who stays in an Italian brothel where he gets intel. This one is mostly told in report-style backstory, and the brothel setting is not played up. We learn that some of the whores hate the Nazis who have billeted in the village around the brothel, but there’s no sex and indeed the hero is friends with the eldery madam who runs the place, with many scenes given over to the two of them in conversation. There’s just one action scene, where a whore hits a Nazi in the back of the head with a revolver and then beats him to death with it. But it all builds up to the intelligence hero radioing in a bombing on the village, with the madam and the hookers escaping in time.

  

This September 1965 Action For Men is the gem of the bunch. The Ballenger story here is almost a prototype for Gannon, with a plucky hero and his “gut-busting TNT kickers!” Titled “Sgt. Mike Heiser’s Weird Exploding Jap Raiders,” this one’s longer than the other two and is a great and fun short story, one that gives a good indication what it might’ve been like if Ballenger had published a WWII novel at the time. It’s packed with more action and gory violence than the previous two stories combined, and some Gannon-isms even show up, courtesy protagonist Mike Heiser’s dialog.

Heiser is a member of the fictional Unconventional Warfare Specialists Corps, and his mission is to destroy the Japanese fuel base on New Georgia island. Bombers are unable to locate it, so a commando force needs to go in and do the dirty work. Since it’s a silent mission, Heiser and squad go in armed with bows and arrows only, fighting “Indian style.” They have explosive tipped arrow heads to destroy the fuel. Ballenger works up the tension with the team working through the dense foliage and wondering how the hell they’ll get out alive after blowing away the fuel.

After destroying the fuel they escape but the Japanese close in; Heiser realizes they can use the exploding arrows on the Japanese soldiers, something that’s never occurred to anyone! He gives the order and pretty soon explosive-tipped arrows are flying all over the place – lots of exploding guts and faces here. They grab up some dropped Japanese Nambu machine guns and take out more soldiers, escaping to safety, and we learn in a postcript that their heroic attack caused the eventual defeat of the Japanese armada here.  A few years ago I found an online scan of the splashpage; here it is:

 
There’s another WWII story, “The Ambush that Rescued the US 5th Army” by Leon Lazarus, one that is very similar to the “Salerno” story in the issue above…but really I can’t remember a damn thing about it, other than it is relayed as a psuedo factual article.

Ballenger by the way did publish a WWII novel, at least eventually – 1980’s The Sea Guerrillas. I tried reading it a few years ago but just couldn’t get into it. It lacked all the spark of Gannon and even of these old men’s mag yarns. One of these days though I’ll try to give it another try.

Gannon #3: Blood Beast

Gannon #3: Blood Beast, by Dean Ballenger
No month stated, 1974  Manor Books

For Karen Bonner it was a terrifying night. Her first night in jail. But the worst part were the two dykes who tried to lesbian her.

Yes, friends, we are back in the crazed world of the Gannon series by Dean Ballenger, a man whose narrative style and syntax are so outrageous that he can even use nouns as verbs. Sadly this was the last of the series (so technically it could be considered a trilogy, I guess), but it’s a hell of a way to go – despite the fact that Blood Beast comes off like a clone of its two predecessors, it’s just as wild, violent, and mean. (The title, by the way, comes from Gannon, who refers to himself as a “blood beast.”)

Once again Gannon serves as a “Robin Hood,” taking on the rich fat-cats who exploit the working class. And once again, Gannon is almost a co-star in his own series; he isn’t called onto the scene until events are well underway, and there are many scenes where he just disappears. But again as in the previous two books, it’s not like Ballenger spins his wheels when Gannon isn’t around. As ever, Ballenger populates his tale with a cast of upper-class and lower-class oddballs who talk in a bizarre patois, like ‘30s gangsters mixed with truckdrivers.

The above-referenced Karen Bonner is the mark this time, set up to take a fall by her super-rich boss, Peter Hibbs. Reason being, Hibbs’s playboy son Brian is “vigorished” by Juice Ollman, a hood who extorts the kid for seventy-five thousand. Hibbs Jr goes to his dad, who sets up Karen Bonner, a gorgeous blonde who works in accounting who wouldn’t let Hibbs sleep with her. Hibbs has the books done up so it looks like Karen embezzled, and after a joke of a trial she’s sent to jail, where the aforementioned “lesbianing” takes place.

Karen’s dad, a working joe who can barely afford his mortgage, hears about Gannon and gives him a call. As in the past, when Gannon shows up his potential client feels underwhelmed; Ballenger reminds us that Gannon’s just a “little tiger” and doesn’t look anywhere as tough as he actually is. But one look in Gannon’s eyes and Karen’s dad knows he has found his man. Gannon as is his custom doesn’t want any money from Karen’s father; he’ll get his payment from the fat-cats and hoodlums he busts up.

Even though this novel takes place about two weeks after #2: Blood Fix, Gannon has apparently become a kung-fu master. This is mostly so Ballenger can throw in the occasional “donkey fist” or other martial arts term in the brawl scenes, but also so he can write things like “the kung-fu’d dude” in regards to the people Gannon beats up. Also worth noting is that for once Gannon doesn’t employ the spiked brass knuckles which he used so memorably in the previous books.

Gannon pays Karen’s bail and insists she live with him as Hibbs or the crooks will surely send some hoods after her; Karen could easily blow Hibbs’s entire story. It’s funny because, while Gannon feels sorrow for the shafting Karen was given, and her living with him is necessary to keep her alive, Gannon doesn’t let that sway him from planning to give the gorgeous lady a “shafting” of his own. There are many humorous scenes where Gannon, while reflecting on the current case, will segue into the “good thoughts” of how he will soon go back to his hotel to screw Karen…only thing is, Karen is probably the weakest female character yet in the series; she only has a few lines of dialog, and most of the time she’s either crying or freaking out over the corpses Gannon has just created.

And to be sure, Gannon once again creates a ton of corpses. I think Blood Beast has more action scenes than the previous books; there are many scenes of Gannon blowing away hoods with his Sten gun. There’s even a goofy scene where Gannon goes to Hibbs’s corporate office and threatens the guy; Hibbs calls in his security guards, one of whom is a psychopath, and a firefight ensues, complete with Hibbs himself leaning out of his own office window and blasting away at Gannon down in the parking lot!

Hibbs Jr and Sr are mostly forgettable, but Juice Ollman is another of those Ballenger-patented creeps who jumps off the page. He spends the entire novel trying to off Hibbs and Gannon, always failing. He does succeed with offing Hibbs Jr, though, and this is another of those unsettling but played for laugh scenes that Ballenger excels in, where Juice calls in his two best guys, a pair of sadists who hoist Brian Hibbs up on the rafters of an abandoned loft and take bets on how long he will live after they set him on fire – putting the flame to his exposed genitals, of course. (In fact, poor Peter Hibbs suffers the most in this tale; after getting screwed over by Juice he then gets his ears cut off, and later on gets his thumbs cut off!)

But the usual darkly comic sadism is in full effect, for one last ride…people get blown apart by Thompson subguns, shot in the face, set on fire, beaten to death. The action stuff is great, but had me wondering. The igenuity and determination people show after Gannon arrives on the scene makes their earlier reluctance questionable. What I mean is, Peter Hibbs spends the narrative trying to get Gannon killed, when meanwhile all he had to do was show this same determination at the beginning of the tale, and have Juice Ollman killed after he tried to extort Hibbs’s son. But I guess that’s missing the point.

It’s hard to relay the dark humor Ballenger so effectively doles out, in both the narrative and the dialog. And Once again his hero is an unflappable, hardcore bastard, not even fazed when a pair of would-be muggers get the jump on him – and, mind you, Gannon doesn’t have a weapon on him:

Gannon looked at Costigan. He had a Webley in his hand. With a silencer. Concealed by his attache case from anyone who might come into the lot.

“It’s not a healthy thing,” Gannon said, “laying a gun on people. It’s liable to get you dead.”

“Listen, wise ass, just drop that wallet!” Costigan said.

“You’re making the kinds of sounds,” Gannon said, saying it low but very hard, “that people make who are tired of this world. So rip off, stupids, while you still can!”

I love these books, they’re just a blast to read and Ballenger’s style is so unusual that, as I’ve said before, you don’t even mind how he tramples over ordinary grammatical and writing rules. But I wonder how much longer this series could’ve lasted. Ballenger makes no intimation that this is the last volume; like its predecessor, Blood Beast ends with Gannon planning to leave town posthaste, given that once again a lady (Karen herself) wants to become “Mrs. Gannon.”

I think it would’ve been tough for Ballenger to keep this up for more volumes. The story setup is too limited; how many times can you read about Gannon getting hired to clear the name of some poor sap who was screwed over by the rich? All of which is to say that I think it’s a good thing the Gannon series only ran for three volumes, giving us an undilluted blast of nutzoid violence that never grew stale.

Gannon #2: Blood Fix

Gannon #2: Blood Fix, by Dean Ballenger
January, 1974 Manor Books

It took me nearly a year to recuperate from the sadistic, brutal, and incredible first volume of the Gannon trilogy. Actually I've been meaning to read this second volume for quite a while, but I kept putting it off for other books. But this may have been for the best, as Ballenger's distinctive syntax and diction is probably best enjoyed infrequently -- reading these novels back-to-back would no doubt dillute their impact.

Hero Mike Gannon has now become a "Robin Hood" for the working-class stiff; this is exactly how Manor refers to him, which is funny because it's hard to imagine Robin Hood lopping off ears with spiked knuckles. But due to his ransacking of the corrupt upper-class in the first volume, Gannon is now seen as the go-to guy for blue-collar types who get screwed by the man. Such is the case with a guy in Kansas City who is set up by a millionaire named Thorpe; Thorpe wants to own the man's property so he can make a few more million off of its sale. Hence Thorpe sets the guy up on a phony rape charge, and further hires a stooge to kill the girl so it will appear that the man is both murderer and rapist. But Gannon arrives to save the day, and "the little tiger" wages war against Thorpe and his gang of thugs.

Gannon doesn't even appear on the scene until about 40 pages in -- but trust me, those initial 40 pages are as graphic and insane as anything in the first volume. In my review of Gannon #1 I mentioned the "Chandler goonspeak" every character employed; the same holds true here, with even the narration written the same way. If anything Ballenger has perfected the form with this second volume. It's odd in a way, as Ballenger commits every writing sin: he POV-hops with abandon, every character speaks exactly the same, and he even repeats many of the same phrases throughout. But hell, when the writing is this unusual, you don't really care. And it's addictive, too; pretty soon I found myself wanting to talk like these hoodlums: "Listen up, shit-shooter. Stop fritzing around and rip off, before you get scragged."

If Blood Fix was published today (that is, if it could find a publisher), it would either be heralded as the work of a genius or derided as the rantings of a sociopath. It is in every way as twisted as its predecessor. "Only" a few people die here, as compared to the mass deaths one may encounter in the average men's adventure novel, but each murder packs a wallop, again complete with mutilations via spiked knuckles or eviscerations/decapitations via Thompson submachine guns.

And once more Ballenger doesn't shirk on violence against women -- there are many uncomfortable scenes in which female characters are "stomped" by thugs, complete with graphic detail on the damage they incur before their horrifying deaths. What's worse is that these women -- blue-collar working girls the lot of them -- always scream stuff like "Don't kill me! Fuck me instead!" before getting killed. It's all like the literary equivalent of those ultra-creepy cover photos on the "men's detective" magazines of the '70s, which always showed a gorgeous woman in the process of being murdered. (Not only were those magazines very successful -- and plentiful -- but not-so-surprisingly they were found to be favored reading material of many serial killers, Ted Bundy among them.)

But here's the weird thing: Blood Fix is funny. I mean, really funny. Despite what I wrote in the paragraph above -- content that would turn off the average reader -- there is a definite tongue-in-cheek vibe here, one that isn't in the least subtle. This goes beyond the over-the-top nature of the book and its characters, but also includes recurring jokes and situations. For one, there's easy stuff like a running gag where hoods keep taking handfuls of expensive cigars from the humidor on Thorpe's desk, but there's also more elaborate stuff like when a pair of thugs, while laying in ambush, argue over if they can steal Gannon's wallet after killing him.

So I think it's safe to say that this is another of those instances of a writer just going as far out as he can in order to amuse both himself and his readers. And he succeeds on pretty much every level: the lurid stuff will offend the easily-offended and the outrageous stuff will tickle the most jaded of hearts. None of it is to be taken seriously. More evidence? One of the main villains, after being mauled and mutilated by Gannon, wants to die, and so goes for a gun. Gannon shoots him. "Goodbye, cocksuckers," the man says, and then dies.

I mean, I have no idea how Ballenger did it. As I say, he breaks pretty much every writing rule, but still comes out on top. Just like his "hero" Gannon does -- once again he "rolls" a few gorgeous gals who just throw themselves at him; in another funny bit Gannon realizes that one of them wants to become "Mrs. Gannon," and so clears town asap.

Anyway, Blood Fix is a blast from the first page to the last -- and that's the ding-dong truth!

Gannon #1: Blood For Breakfast

Gannon #1: Blood For Breakfast, by Dean Ballenger

Manor Books, 1973

If you're not squeamish you won't want to miss this one!

Where to start?? Blood For Breakfast is one of the grimmest, bleakest, goriest, vilest, and misogynist books I've ever read. It's great!

The start of a three-volume series, this details a few weeks in the gutter-view life of Mike Gannon, a 31 year-old shitkicker who served in the military (missing both Korea and Vietnam though), saw some action around the world, and now works as a security officer. Gannon's sister is raped by two rich kids whose fathers now protect them from justice, so Gannon returns to the city to kick some shit. Mobsters, goons, college punks, gun molls, and other assorted pieces of riff-raff fall beneath his spiked brass knuckles or his savage karate chops.

Sure, the plot's standard, but the way Ballenger writes it... There's no way to truly replicate the dimestore Chandler goonspeak he's created here. Everyone talks the same way -- this super tough-guy chatter filled with brutal imagery that would stun a hardboiled private eye. (Choice line, from Gannon to a secratary -- one whom we're told, again and again, is a lesbian: "Get him on the phone or I'll kick your kotex up between your ears!") The gangsters, the gun molls who associate with them, the hard-living waitresses Gannon picks up (and "rolls"), even Gannon himself -- all of them talk in a fashion that reminds me of nothing so much as Fat Tony and his mobster goons on The Simpsons.

The problem with this novel, for me at least, is Gannon himself. No one but him is right, he barrels through his opponents without breaking a sweat, and even when he is captured he manages to turn the tables with ease. He has a violent streak which dwarfs even that of the so-called bad guys. He also has no problem with smacking women or chopping them in the throat.

Gannon straps on his spiked knuckles and delivers beatings which leave his victims mutilated for life -- and the narrative doesn't shy from the gore. In fact, this is one of the goriest books you'll come across, with mobsters blown up in car explosions, people shot in the face and hands, and ears chopped off as trophies. It's all as lurid as the '70s could get; even the sex scenes are grotesque, with Gannon the ladies man picking up women left and right, taking them back for a quick fuck, and then taking off.

This is a quick-moving piece of hardboiled crime fiction which will certainly leave an impression on you -- whether revulsion or slack-jawed disbelief (or both).