Traveler #11: The Children’s Crusade

Traveler #11: The Children’s Crusade, by D.B. Drumm

February, 1987  Dell Books

I get the impression that Ed Naha prepped for this volume of Traveler by reading the installments that were written by series co-author John Shirley. Instead of the spoofy banality that was #9: The Stalking Time or the parodic descent into Hell that was #10: Hell On Earth, Naha finally delivers exactly what this series needs: a fast-moving action thriller with a taciturn protagonist who despite his bad-assery always finds himself defending “the little guy.” 

Naha does pick up on elements from the previous volume; as we’ll recall, that one had an opening sequence in which Traveler, now dubbed “Storyteller,” was living on some pueblo where he’d tell stories to a pack of mutant children. Naha drops this in the opening chapter of The Children’s Crusade, with Traveler deciding to head back out onto the road. 

We are told that it’s been a year that Traveler has been living here in the pueblo, so at least this time around I’m not as confused by the dating of the series. Naha frequently states that the bombs dropped “two decades ago,” and there are a lot of references to how Traveler’s battles with roadrats and other post-nuke scumbags was “long ago,” in “the early days” after the war. 

It’s curious that Naha has introduced this “long time ago” scenario to Traveler, and my best guess is that he wanted to distance himself from Shirley’s installments, so he could write a series (and hero) that was slightly different than John Shirley’s version. 

In other words, Shirley’s volumes took place in those “early days,” and by setting them long ago in the past, Naha is free to refer to them, but without the emotional trauma that would be necessary if they were events that had occurred recently. Like in particular Jan, Traveler’s soul mate who went off with Traveler in a Happily Ever After in #6: Border War, before we found out at the start of #7: The Road Ghost that she’d been killed – Traveler thinks of Jan once or twice in The Children’s Crusade, but it’s more in a wistful, “she’s been gone a long time” sort of way. 

That said, Ed Naha brings a lot of “emotional content” (as Bruce Lee would say) to the series; for the first time ever, Traveler thinks of his lost wife and son…like throughout the book. Methinks Naha is setting up the final volume in some fashion, but it is otherwise curious that these two characters, who have never been seen in the series and only sporadically mentioned, are the focus of so many of Traveler’s thoughts this time around, up to and including an emotional dream sequence in which Traveler goes out shopping to buy his four year old son some Legos, only to come home and watch as the child and his mother are blasted away in nuclear hellfire, with Traveler unable to help and forced to watch. 

Also curiously, the “children” of the title are not the mutant kids “Storyteller” would entertain; it’s a new pack of kids, new to the series I mean, and Traveler runs into them in an abandoned shopping mall in California. Naha seems to do a Yojimbo riff here with Traveler the lone wolf heading into a town and helping one side while pretending to help the other; perhaps I make this connection because Naha specifically refers to Lone Wolf and Cub in the narrative, so it would seem he is a bit of a fan of samurai movies. 

Otherwise we are very much in John Shirley territory here, only minus the nuke-spawn mutant monsters Shirley would often bring to his tales. Instead of bogging things down into pseudo-epic or religious satire, Naha keeps things moving with Traveler getting in frequent scrapes while doling out action movie-esque one-liners. Traveler is once again a smart-ass, I mean to say, and he delivers a bunch of memorable lines throughout The Children’s Crusade. And unlike The Stalking Time, the action and storyline itself are never mocked; it’s merely Traveler mocking the people he goes up against. In other words, Ed Naha plays it on the level, just like John Shirley did. 

Traveler comes across a group of teens who are drinking beer and talking about a conspiracy back in their hometown, and Traveler immediately takes a liking to them and helps them hide from the mercenaries who come looking for them. Again Naha clearly has his series set in a different world than the earliest volumes; it is made clear to Traveler again and again that this is a “new America” and “his kind” – ie mercenaries and other men of violence – are no longer welcome or wanted. Naha even gets in a little Right Wing-mocking in an early scene where Traveler makes an impromptu stop at the Grand Canyon to see it for the first time in his life, and a local tells Traveler to get out or he’ll be shot dead: “After all, it’s the American way.” 

The changing of the times is especially pronounced when Traveler arrives in Bay City, on the Pacific; actually it’s more like pre-war times, as the little town is fully functioning and has everything from a police force to an amusement park for the kids. At this point Naha has retconned Traveler into essentially a standard men’s adventure series, without any of the post-nuke trappings of the earlier installments. 

Here the Yojimbo stuff arises, as Traveler discovers that something rotten is going on; the scar-faced but good-hearted mayor of the town is secretly being held prisoner, taken captive by a turncoat police chief (who looks like William Shatner, we’re told, in what appears to be intended as a joke that Naha loses interest in). Traveler poses as a guy just visiting town while helping the group of teens hide – their leader is the mayor’s grandson, and they too are wanted by the merciless cops and mercs who have taken over the town. 

It’s more of a long-simmer setup here as Traveler investigates and gets in occasional scrapes. Naha skirts some boundaries with Traveler finding himself attracted to a girl in the group of teens – she’s apparently only 15 or thereabouts – and developing a rapport with her, before Naha drops this as well. Indeed he even has Traveler briefly reflect on his passing fancy with the girl, at the end of the novel, and wonder what he was thinking! But at any rate this is the rare volume where Traveler does not enjoy any female companionship…which, now that I think of it, seems to be a recurring element of the Naha installments. 

That said, Naha does want to tie back to the earlier volumes, but often in unintentionally goofy ways…like when Traveler calls old buddy Orwell on a payphone, who is now working for the new CIA in Las Vegas(!). This sequence exists only to set up ensuing volumes, as Orwell relates that a civil war is brewing in the new United States, and rumor has it that none other than series villain President Andrew Frayling – presumably killed in earlier Shirley installment  Border War – is plotting to overthrow President Jefferson (himself a character in earlier installments). 

Frayling as we’ll recall is a wildly overdone Reagan caricature, but he was old even in the Shirley installments, which as we’ll further recall were two friggin’ decades ago. Naha has it that Frayling is now nearly a hundred years old and what’s more he’s wheelchair bound and with a fried face, so in other words like the original Enterprise captain on Star Trek. Traveler ultimately discovers that Frayling is behind the plotting in Bay City, which entails Frayling getting hold of a few nukes that have been deposited in the area. 

The gore has also been removed from the series, and the climax is mostly bloodless when compared to Shirley’s books. But Naha does set up the next volume; Frayling and his henchmen escape, headed for China (which it is rumored survived WWIII unscathed), and Traveler heads after him – along with a newly-introduced character named Persky. A female cop on the Bay City force, Persky is invariably described as “feline” or “small,” and otherwise is not exploited in any way whatsoever, but she does have a snappy rapport with Traveler, so one wonders if she will become Traveler’s new flame. 

Two more volumes were to follow, and hopefully they will be more like this one than the others Naha wrote for the series.

Traveler #10: Hell On Earth

Traveler #10: Hell On Earth, by D.B. Drumm

October, 1986  Dell Books

Ed “D.B. Drumm” Naha takes a page from the Doomsday Warrior series with this tenth installment of Traveler, which turns out to be a literal take on the title: In this one, Traveler actually finds hell on Earth, and ventures down into it like some post-nuke Orpheus to rescue his beloved, Jan. While Hell On Earth starts off with some actual “emotional content” (to quote Bruce Lee), it even gradually takes on the same “R-rated Saturday morning cartoon” vibe as Doomsday Warrior. 

This is unfortunate, as I was ready to declare Hell On Earth as one of the greatest volumes of Traveler ever (or any post-nuke pulp in general)…for the first twenty or so pages. But as the narrative went on it became clear that Naha was up to his usual tricks, spoofing his own content with lots of bantering and humorous asides – and really the entire setup is straight out of Ryder Stacy, with the titular hell being modelled after a 1980s shopping mall, complete with an escalator that takes one down the nine levels. I kept expecting Ted “Doomsday Warrior” Rockson and team to show up and lend Traveler a hand. 

Of course we know this would be impossible, given that Doomsday Warrior takes place a century after 1989 – one of the few things consistent about that series was the “hundred years after” setting. But friends there’s still a disconnect between Ed Naha and the guys in the office at Dell Books. Because they’ve yet to get their stories straight on when the hell Traveler takes place. The back cover threw me for a loop with its mention that it’s “nearly thirty years after doomsday,” and as we’ll recall the previous volume had back cover copy stating it was twenty-plus years after. 

And when the novel opens, we meet Traveler with a gray beard, living alone outside a pueblo in “the Southwest” and his traveling days apparently long behind him – the indication is clear that it’s a helluva long time since the previous volume. So I was like wow, this really is 30 years after the nuclear war, and Traveler’s basically retired from the, uh, “Traveler” business…but almost immediately after this evocative setup Naha informs us that Traveler is not old, despite looking old, and is only “in his midforties.” And also guess what…it’s only six months since the previous volume, and only three years since the events of #6: Border War! Also we are told, later in the novel, that without question the nuclear war was “two decades ago,” meaning that the novel takes place in 2009. Not 2019, as implied by the back cover. 

This sort of thing irritates me. 

But man, that opening. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess Naha was inspired by Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, which came out in 1985, ie right around when Naha was likely writing Hell On Earth. As with that film, Traveler when we meet him is alone and bitter and it seems much time has passed. And like Mad Max, Traveler here becomes a protector of children…for those first few pages, at least. Frustratingly, Naha has a perfectly fine setup at the start of the novel, but ditches it for the “hell on Earth” scenario…which is ultimately undone by Naha’s penchant for spoofing and mocking his own material. I mean I get it that he feels this sort of shit is beneath him, but still – couldn’t he have kept it to himself and not let his derision spill into the narrative? 

Traveler when we meet him isn’t even “Traveler” anymore (and, we’ll recall, his real name is Kiel Paxton, anyway): he’s now “The Storyteller,” and he’s living here in a shack or something outside of a pueblo that was untouched by the nukes. Naha pulls a double “background story” thing here: first we’re told that “Storyteller” got his name because each morning he tells stories to the mutant children that live in the pueblo. Then shortly after that we have yet another background story, detailing how Traveler got here in the first place: he came across a caravan of youth while he was headed South, six months ago, and sort of lost his mind after witnessing their grim fate – a grim fate Traveler himself unwittingly sent them off to. 

I was more moved than I thought I’d be by the opening of the book, which features “Storyteller” reading a book of nursery rhymes he has recently discovered in the post-nuke rubble; he can’t even get passed “once upon a time” without being hammered with questions by the mutant children, none of whom can grasp a “once upon a time” in which their weren’t mutant children like themselves. Naha pulls a double “rip the reader’s heart out” bang for his buck with the next chapter, in which he flashes back six months to when Traveler met that caravan of youth on their way out of the South; in this nuke-blasted world, they had “chosen to remain kids” instead of becoming the hard-edged survivors required in this new world, and Traveler mindlessly avoided the opportunity to provide them with some much-needed security. 

So the potential was there…Traveler, blaming himself for the death of one group of kids, now a sort of guardian for another group of kids; all kinds of potential for a redemptive storyline here, with roadrats or other post-nuke brigands descending on the pueblo and Traveler fighting to save the kids. But Naha skips this and instead sends Traveler to hell – literally. The surprise return of Link, Traveler’s companion last seen in Border War, sets the narrative wheel in motion. Traveler has assumed Link dead all these years, but here he is, ravaged and near death (for real this time), with a crazy story about having escaped from hell – where he’s been these past three years, along with Jan. 

As we’ll recall, Jan was the American Indian beauty who featured in the installments written by series co-author John Shirley; she and Traveler went off into a post-nuke Happily Ever After in the denoument of Border War, only for Naha to buzzkill that in the opening of #7: The Road Ghost, where we were bluntly informed that Jan had been killed almost immediately after heading off into that Happily Ever After! Naha has seldom referred to Jan since – naturally, given that Jan wasn’t one of the characters he created – but now we are reminded of how Traveler “loved her once.” So, if she’s still out there, off he’ll go, getting the Meat Wagon geared up and heading out. 

Naha has a knack for mystically-attuned guides for Traveler, and Hell On Earth has not one but two of them. First there’s Willy, who acts as the sort of shaman for Traveler/Storyteller, and in one of those typically-inexplicable events of the series was the one who prevented Traveler from killing himself six months ago: after discovering the grim fate of those kids, Traveler attempted to blow his brains out, only for the gun to be knocked out of his hand just as he pulled the trigger – knocked out of his hand by a friggin’ tomahawk! A tomahawk thrown by a punk-haired mystic by the name of Willy, who appeared just at that moment to tell Traveler it “wasn’t his time” to die…and as if that weren’t mystical enough, this dude even called Traveler by his real name, Kiel Paxton. 

But this will be yet more interesting material Naha will cast aside; Willy is soon gone from the text, having givenTraveler some arrows for his crossbow, the blades of which have been treated with Willy’s magical “herb.” Traveler accidentally knicks himself on one of the blades, immediately seeing LSD-style flashes of color; this will be Ed Naha’s way of having his cake and eating it too, with the overhanging possibility that the rest of the novel could be nothing more than the herb-caused hallucinations of Traveler. However Willy’s gone…to almost immediately be replaced by another “mystic guide” type, this one an older gentleman in a robe who insists he is Saint Michael, ie the actual angel himself. 

As we’ll also recall, Naha has no problems with taking Traveler outside of the already-wide boundaries of its internal post-nuke logic: previous installment The Stalking Time featured an alien, complete with spaceship, assisting Traveler. So the actual Saint Michael of the actual Bible appearing here doesn’t seem to out of place. What I found most interesting was reading this from a post-modern perspective; today belief in religion isn’t nearly as commonplace as it was in 1986 (it’s actually no longer the majority religion in England, with the US surely soon to follow), so I wonder how many modern readers would respond to the Biblical and religious overtones Naha sprinkles through Hell On Earth. 

The problem with this is that these spiritual and mystic guides only serve to lessen Traveler himself. Naha will build up a nice rapport between Saint Michael and Travel, with the “angel” often questioning Traveler’s lack of belief and sort of taunting him that he’s wrong, but at the same time it’s all so frustratingly similar to modern-day drek in which the male protagonist is constantly questioned, criticized, and belittled by a “strong empowered woman” who once upon a time would’ve been nothing more than a damsel in distress. But seriously, I’m not joking – not only does Saint Michael constantly question and criticize Traveler, but he’s always saving him! Indeed, Traveler hardly does anything in Hell On Earth; his bullets will have no affect on the demons and hell-beasts he and Saint Michael go up against. 

Otherwise Saint Michael isn’t that bad of a character; he claims without question he is the angel of myth, and what’s more has two big scars on his back, right where ripped-off wings would’ve gone. But then, he remembers nothing from before the war, so there is the possibility he’s just some guy who had a psychotic break after the collapse of society. Again, Naha wants his cake and to eat it too (and really, who doesn’t??), so throughout the novel he dangles the idea that all this could just be a big trip for Traveler. Regardless, Saint Michael is learned on mythology and the general outline of hell, and for the rest of the narrative will explain this or that to the constantly-befuddled Traveler. 

Again, this is a far cry from the confident and capable ass-kicker of the John Shirley installments. Naha’s Traveler is more prone to self-doubt and, most unforgivably, can’t even save himself, at least this time. Throughout Hell On Earth he totes an HK-91 or Uzi, blasting away, but his bullets don’t do anything, and Saint Michael will show up with a wand or even a bag of holy water to save Traveler’s ass. This is because the stuff Traveler fights this time is straight outta hell, with actual demons and the like walking on the Earth. But even here, Traveler will tell himself they might just be a type of mutant he’s never seen before, or perhaps “hell” was a top-secret genetics research lab before the war, and what’s been unleashed is a man-made hell. 

The caveat here is that these action scenes are more along the lines of a fantasy novel, and nothing like the post-nuke carnage of previous installments. There’s little in the gun-blazing gore one might reasonably expect, with instead Traveler getting his ass handed to him by a pterodactyl-type creature from hell and the like. Even the finale sees Traveler fighting a massive demon. And that’s another thing – Link tells Traveler that “Lucifer” reigns in this hell Link has just escaped, and for no reason Traveler immediately assumes that “Lucifer” is really President Frayling, ie Traveler’s arch-enemy of earlier volumes. The only problem here is that Traveler killed Frayling in Border War…which, again, was written by John Shirley, and for all intents and purposes was a volume that could have easily served as the final isntallment of Traveler. 

But we aren’t even reminded here that Traveler himself killed Frayling (perhaps Naha forgot, given that Shirley is the one who told us of this incident), and as Hell On Earth proceeds he becomes more and more confident that Lucifer is Frayling. Yes, cue more taunting from Saint Michael, who insists that Lucifer is really Lucifer, ie the devil himself, and that is who they will face in the center of hell. But still, it’s just another indication of how lessened Traveler is, given his muleheaded insistence, apropos of nothing whatsoever, that Frayling is the ruler of this hell, which has sprouted like a radioactive mountain out of the desert. 

The Doomsday Warrior parallels are strong as Traveler and Saint Michael take the escalator down into the shopping mall that is hell, with each level themed along the lines of Dante’s Inferno – the film version of which plays on TV screens on one of the first levels. Another level is given over to red light districts and cathouses (the horror!), and another level has victims lined up to be ground into bloody paste. Also I forgot, there’s a lake at the entrance complete with a Charon at the boat, which gave me bad flashbacks to Clash Of The Titans (truly not a movie that has aged well, but damn I loved it as a seven year old – I even had the toys!  And I recall shooting the Charon figure in the face with a BB gun when I was older for some mysterious reason!). 

You can skip this paragraph due to spoilers, but for those who don’t want to bother with reading the novel, Traveler does indeed find Jan, on the sixth level, but this too is a lessened Jan – she is zombielike, and barely has any dialog. Oh and I forgot, along the way Traveler and Saint Michael also pick up some other young woman, this one named Diana, who claims to be escaping from hell – but like everyone else here, she has no memory of how she even got here. Our heroes even meet a former lawyer turned “samurai for hire” named Patrick Goldsteen – “An Anglo samurai?” thinks a shocked Traveler, but this is just even more indication of Naha’s contempt for his own material. It’s all just spoofed throughout. But anyway, we can see where this is going – Jan, Goldsteen, the other “zombies” Traveler meets…hell even Link in the opening…all of them are dead, and this really is hell, folks, and it’s not President Frayling but the devil himself – a twenty-foot demon in a lake of fire – who runs the place. And once again Saint Michael saves the day while Traveler just stands there. 

Well, end spoilers. Hell On Earth even has a Doomsday Warrior-esque “reset” finale, with Traveler on his way back to the pueblo, wondering if all this has just been a dream courtesy that “herb” Willy spiked his arrows with. Here’s hoping that the next volume will pick up the thread Hell On Earth started off with, instead of detouring into satire and spoofery. 

Oh, and last note on the lameness – Traveler doesn’t even get laid this time. Now if that’s not a shocker I don’t know what is!

Traveler #9: The Stalking Time

Traveler #9: The Stalking Time, by D.B. Drumm

June, 1986  Dell Books

Traveler takes on a new vibe with this ninth volume, which was written by Ed Naha (who will serve as “D.B. Drumm” for the rest of the series). Apparently feeling that the sub-Road Warrior theme of the previous books has worn thin, Naha introduces the concept that the titular Traveler is now basically a “diplomat” who serves the newly-formed U.S. government. This means that Traveler comes off a bit differently than he did in previous volumes, and truth be told his determination to represent the government seems a little forced. 

One thing that’s made clear is that some time has passed in the series. We’re often reminded that the nukes fell “twenty years ago,” whereas previous volumes had it as thirteen or even fifteen years ago. Not only that, but Traveler when we meet him this time is headed up into the mideast, his first time here since before the war, having undertaken a “year-long mission” for newly-elected President Jefferson. When Traveler tangles with a group of roadrats (ie the leather-garbed road scavengers “inspired” by the ones in the Mad Max films), we’re told that they are better-equipped than the ones Traveler fought “a half-dozen years ago” in the western portion of the US. In other words, we’re about five to six years out from the earliest books in the series, and the year – though it’s never outright stated – is now 2009. 

In a way The Stalking Time works as a series reset; in previous volumes Traveler always had someone with him, whether it was one of his old army buddies or Jan, the American Indian babe who was the love of Traveler’s life and whatnot. This time Traveler is truly alone, driving along in the Meat Wagon and listening to John Coltrane tapes, and there’s no mention of those earlier comrades. Other that is than a few sequences where Traveler dreams about them. So in a way Traveler lives up to his mantle this time, traveling the post-nuke roadways alone…save that is for the new motive Naha has given him. 

Traveler as a diplomat is one thing, but what’s worse is that in The Stalking Time he’s often getting saved by someone else. Traveler does not come off nearly as badass as he did in the superior volumes by John Shirley. And also, whereas Shirley’s installments were fast-moving slices of horror-tinged post-nuke pulp, Naha’s are often sluggish. Even though the novel’s the same short length as those earlier books, it feels a lot longer – the same sentiment I had about Naha’s previous installment The Road Ghost. 

I think the reason behind this is that Naha thinks the whole storyline is ridiculous, and one can sense his sneering through the pages. I never got that impression from Shirley’s books; he was clearly having fun with them. Naha on the other hand goes for a pseudo-“spoofy” vibe that’s almost as egregious as in The Destroyer. What I mean to say is, neither the author nor the characters seem to take anything seriously, and Naha is constantly making snarky asides via the narrative or the dialog. Now to be sure it’s not as bad as in The Destroyer, I mean things still matter here and not everything’s a joke, but the vibe is close. Actually if I want to stay within the post-nuke realm, The Last Ranger would be a good comparison, with the same dark humor. Only whereas The Last Ranger has a nihilistic streak, Naha’s Traveler has a satirical streak. 

So throughout Naha constantly undercuts the tension he himself creates in the plot with sarcastic rejoinders or snarky comments ridiculing the situation. It just gives the sense that it’s all a joke, and folks if you know anything about me you know I don’t like shit like this in my men’s adventure. I want it straight no chaser. Naha’s sarcastic fun-poking was fine in his Robocop novelization, as it matched the vibe of the movie itself, but here it gets in the way of the post-apocalyptic fun. At any rate, his books so far have suffered greatly in comparison to John Shirley’s; Shirley too might have thought the series was ridiculous, but the reader never got that impression. 

But seriously, you know you’re in trouble when Naha spends more time on the trashy décor of a hotel Traveler stays in than on the action scenes. This sequence too is evidence of the new starical vibe of the series; at one point Traveler ingratiates himself into the orbit of a post-nuke warlord who calls himself Dragon, and who has taken over a hotel for his headquarters – one that is done up with themes for various rooms, and Traveler gets one with an “Arabian Nights” theme. And rather than a hockeymasked Lord Humongous type, Dragon is a dapper black man who wears “Day-Glo pimp clothing” and patterns himself after a Blaxploitation character. 

However that’s not to say we don’t have any of the customary Traveler horror vibe. There’s a cool part where Traveler almost gets eaten by blind scar-faced ghouls who live underground, only to be saved by a hulking bounty hunter called Angel Eyes. The uncredited artist who did the cover must’ve read the book or gotten some seriously good art direction, as the depiction of Angel Eyes on the cover – iron helmet, flamethrower-esque attachment on his back – is exactly as he’s described in the book. (Though I’m not sure why the artist had to put so much focus on the guy’s ass!) But this is also part of the problem. Angel Eyes saves Traveler, and Traveler is saved a few other times in the book. It just seems at odds with previous installments. That said, Traveler does save Angel Eyes immediately after. 

Traveler also seems at odds with his past self in another way – he makes dumb choices. As part of that belabored “ingratiating into Dragon’s forces” scenario, Traveler finds himself sent off with two other stooges to create a diversion. Traveler ties these guys up and leaves them to an overly-complicated fate, driving off. It’s almost as if Naha is telegraphing what will happen next, and sure enough those two eventually show up to blow Traveler’s cover story. The Traveler of the Shirley installments would’ve seen this eventuality and would’ve just blown their brains out to save himself the trouble. 

One of the highlights of the novel is the town Traveler comes upon. It seems to have come out of a Norman Rockwell painting, mostly because it was designed before the war as a tourist attraction. There’s also an underground vault of goods that the mayor, a hotstuff blonde who was in kindergarten when the nukes fell, is desperate to keep secret. This underground vault is what Dragon wants, and what Traveler must stop him from getting. But it’s almost as if Naha changes his mind about this, as in the climax it’s the town’s kids who turn out to be Dragon’s target – which leads to a nice action hero-worthy bit of Traveler racing to save a schoolbus full of abducted kids. 

The focus on youth is another weird new element to the series. Quite frequently in The Stalking Time we’re reminded that WWIII was 20 years ago, and the young roadrats and such scurrying around were, like Mayor Emma Fowler, just kids when the bombs dropped. Yet they’ve grown up in a world of hate, which is all they know – and thus Traveler sometimes has a hard time shooting these roadrat punks who are trying to kill him. It’s an understandable sentiment on Traveler’s part, yet at the same time it’s nothing that has ever occurred to him in the previous volumes. One really gets the impression here that he’s an old man wandering around a world of angry youth. 

Speaking of which there’s a reveal on Angel Eyes that’s crazy but also sort of telegraphed, and also way out of the realm of previous installments. It does however have an unexpected emotional impact, given the reason behind Angel Eyes’s determination to kill Dragon. The problem though is that Traveler sort of sits on the sidelines in the climax, that is after he’s saved that schoolbus of kids. After this Traveler sits around – or perhaps that should be flies around – as Angel Eyes gets his revenge on Dragon. But it’s just another indication of the sort of weakened state Traveler has in this volume. 

Maybe it’s just something we’ll have to get used to, as Naha wrote the rest of the series. And given that he wrote the first volume, perhaps Naha’s Traveler can be considered the Traveler. Who knows; as usual I’m probably putting too much thought into it. All told, The Stalking Time was an entertaining installment of Traveler, maybe less violent than previous ones – and certainly less sexually-explicit, with Traveler’s one score occuring off-page at the very end of the novel – but entertaining nonetheless. I mean when it comes to post-nuke pulp, I’d certainly rather read this than Roadblaster.

Traveler #8: Terminal Road

Traveler #8: Terminal Road, by D.B. Drumm

February, 1986  Dell Books

I’ve been wondering how John Shirley would handle this eighth volume of Traveler, given that his previous contribution, #6: Border War, was basically a series finale, with Traveler literally sailing off into a Happily Ever After with his lady love Jan. But as we know from the previous volume, which was courtesy Ed Naha, Traveler’s HEA was short-lived: his boat was bombed out of the water, Jan lost, and Traveler returned to the weary, battle-hardened life of a post-nuke road warrior. 

So as it turns out, Shirley basically just ignores that previous book; other than a late, very brief recap of what happened after Border War, Terminal Road just picks up the pace from the earliest installments as if there’d been no change to the status quo. Traveler’s back in his armed and armored van, the “Meat Wagon,” playing tapes as he travels the road, his riding companion old Army pal Hill. Shirley has read Naha’s previous volume, as we do get a bit of detail on that one, and the fallout from it. Like for example that Traveler’s other old Army pal Orwell is still recovering from the wounds he endured, and thus decided to stay in Mexico a bit with new US “President” Jackson. And Shirley also answers one thing – while Naha left Jan’s fate a mystery, Shirley clearly informs us she was killed in that seaborne attack. Bummer! 

Shirley also answers another question I had – namely, when the series takes place. He makes it clear throughout that the year is 2005; the nuke war occurred “sixteen years ago,” which we’re informed was 1989. So this confirms my theory that the Dell editor who handled the back cover copy was just plain confused…because once again the back cover states that the book takes place “twenty-seven years after doomsday!” This would place the action in 2016, which is incorrect. Otherwise Shirley doesn’t dip into the subplots he introduced in previous books, ie Traveler being a supernaturally-chosen savior of post-nuke society or whatnot; in fact, I get the impression that Terminal Road was quickly churned out so as to fill a contract, or maybe because Naha needed help. 

Chief evidence of this is that Shirley, for the first time in the series, borrows a gimmick from William Gibson; each chapter alternates between two protagonists. It’s been decades since I read Gibson, but I recall this being a schtick of his in every post-Neuromancer novel. So one chapter will focus on Traveler, and the next will focus on a character new to the series, a bounty hunter named Hastur. And as with Gibson these concurring storylines slowly coalasce into one. Shirley’s never done this before; Traveler was always center stage from beginning to end, so this really gives the impression that Shirley had said all he wanted to say in Border War and was just churning this one out in a pinch. 

Which is not to say Terminal Road isn’t good. In fact it was one of my favorites in the series yet. Like all of Shirley’s Travelers, it’s essentially just a fast-moving action story, but what adds to it is the contrasting natures of Traveler and Hastur. While Shirley never outright states it, the implication is that Hastur is everything Traveler could have been: a Special Forces badass who has turned his back on any vestige of goodness and murders with impunity for money, fuel, or supplies. He’s a seven foot giant of black-American Indian heritage and built like a pro football linebacker. He carries a host of weaponry and rides an armored “trike” with a teardrop windshield. He takes glee in killing for profit, and is in every way the antithesis of Traveler, which makes for an entertaining read. 

The only problem is, Hastur seems like a poor man’s substitue for the Black Rider, that jet-black mutant biker villain who appeared in Shirley’s earliest installments. But unfortunately Shirley killed the Black Rider off, thus he had to come up with this new guy…who, despite lots of setup, turns out to be pretty much a dud in the supervillain sweepstakes. I mean when we meet Hastur he’s killing with ease – and we see how evil he is, as he wipes out his target’s entire family – but when he tries to take out Traveler later in the book he just makes one goof after another. Which makes the whole “alternating protagonist” chapter-switches all the more strange: are we supposed to be rooting for Hastur in his chapters? Hoping that he catches Traveler unawares? While it’s a neat narrative trick, it just comes off like it did in Gibson’s novels: an easy way to meet the word count. 

Another curious thing about Terminal Road is that the customary gore of Shirley’s previous books is mostly gone, and the sex almost nonexistent. I mean there’s a part where Traveler, as expected, gets busy with some post-nuke babe he meets along the road, and it fades to black! This from a series that would at least give a paragraph or two of lovably purple prose. Granted, Traveler and the lady’s second “bout” is slightly more, uh, fleshed out, but still it’s nothing compared with what, uh, came before. (My mind’s permanently in the gutter, in case there were any question.) So to recap – our hero is only in half the book, given the alternating chapters, and the sex and violence have been greatly reduced. Regardless, Terminal Road is still heads and tails better than the previous volume, which makes me sad that this was Shirley’s final installment. 

Shirley opens the book with what will be the only big action scene: Traveler and Hill, barreling through West Texas, take out a small army of Roadrats. After this they take on a job from a commune that’s been hit by Bubonic Plague; Traveler and Hill will do a “serum run” to a hospital in Utah in exchange for fuel and supplies. Traveler learns about the job opportunity via his short-wave radio; can’t recall if this aspect was much mentioned in previous novels, but here Shirley has a whole post-nuke radio society, with people on the various bands recreating old radio shows, just jabbering away, or calling out for aid. There’s a great part later on where Hastur gets hold of a shortwave radio and starts fucking with people, like a post-apocalyptic Jerky Boy or something – this could’ve gone on much longer, so far as I was concerned. 

Speaking of Hastur, in his sections we see him also offered a job: to bring Vice President Veronica Barlowe the head of Traveler. Barlowe I don’t believe has been mentioned before, but she is the VP of crazed President Frayling, who we learn is still recuperating from the previous book. In fact, Traveler is wanted dead because he nearly killed Frayling. Shirley excels in unexpected humorous bits; my favorite in this regard is when Hastur, who has never heard of Traveler, reads the dossier Barlowe provides on him – how he’s seen so much action that he’s become a legend – and bluntly declares, “Sounds like a nobody.” 

Hastur actually carries most of the narrative, shuttling around the South and trying to find Traveler. Most of the action takes place in New Mexico, by the way, and Shirley does a great job bringing the setting to life. Meanwhile Traveler just drives along, blissfully unaware he has a bounty on his head. Hill has suddenly developed a personality, so there’s a goodly bit of chatter between the two. Also this time Traveler’s listening to a “Coltrane tape” as the miles roll by, the music blotting out any thoughts. The cover depicts a random encounter with a “war mech;” for the first time Shirley introduces a sort of sci-fi element to the series, with these battle robots having been created shortly before WWIII and used to guard secret military installations. Most of them, we learn, were destroyed with the nukes, but a few survived and have gone solo, attacking people at random. 

The robot is described pretty much as it appears on the cover, and comes after Traveler and Hill while they’re fixing a flat tire. It’s a rolling tank with .90 caliber cannons and .80 caliber machine guns, as well as other stuff. Solar-powered, to boot. Traveler and Hill are only saved by the sudden appearance of two women in “powered gliders;” they swoop over the war mech and start dropping bombs on it. This is Vickie, a pretty blonde, and Dennie, an also-pretty redhead. Soon we learn their story: Mormons who have come from a high-tech sanctuary built beneath Salt Lake City before the war, so that a new generation could survive any nuclear calamity. 

Only the girls reveal that the men never showed up; while the women and kids made it down there before the nukes fell, the men didn’t. In the passing years a community has developed, with two warring factions: the “conservatives” who think religion should dictate all affairs, and the “liberals” who want to follow the Constitution. Vickie and Dennie are part of the latter group, and they’ve come up to the surface world to find a group of escaped conservatives – who have taken off with computer gear and other essentials that are necessary to maintain the underground society. Meanwhile Traveler and Hill have actually met these escaped women, not knowing who they were – early in the book they came across a bunch of smiling and polite blonde women who looked like “women from before the war;” their bus had been damaged and Traveler helped them repair it. 

It’s inevitable something will soon be happening with these couples – I mean Vickie and Dennie are presumably virgins, having grown up in a “matriarchal” society, both of them having been kids when they went to the sanctuary years ago. Shirley doesn’t elaborate much on this, but he does of course have Traveler hook up with Vickie (the hotter of the two, naturally). But as mentioned he doesn’t go into the full-bore sleaze details of past volumes, dammit. Instead Shirley goes another route – that Traveler, “despite himself,” starts to fall for Vickie. Even though he “promised himself he’d never love again,” yada yada yada. I mean you’d think Jan’s fate would give him a prefigure of what could happen, but nope. 

Hastur slowly makes his way to Traveler, using cunning to figure out where he’s headed. But as mentioned he’s a poor villain. He bungles chance after chance to take out his prey. But with this sole villain it’s clear Terminal Road isn’t headed for a big finale. Rather, Shirley goes for something that wouldn’t have been out of place in a Marvin Albert novel, with two men squaring off in the harsh elements. After a few firefights – some of which are rather costly to Traveler’s companions – Hastur holes up in a cliff and Traveler scales it to take him on man to man. The villain’s sendoff is memorable, but the climax seems more in tune with a suspense-thriller than a post-nuke pulp. 

And that’s it for John Shirley’s run on Traveler. We leave our hero as we met him, adrift in the post-apocalypse with the Meat Wagon his sole recurring companion. And also Shirley doesn’t plant any carrots for future volumes, unless Naha intends to do something with the newly-introduced Vice President. Otherwise Terminal Road is another entertaining installment of the series, though honestly the sixth volume came off like a more fitting conclusion. Here’s hoping Naha will take a few cues from Shirley in the following novels and deliver similarly fast-moving yarns.

Traveler #7: The Road Ghost

Traveler #7: The Road Ghost, by D.B. Drumm
September, 1985  Dell Books

With this seventh volume of Traveler, Ed Naha, who previously wrote the first volume (the only installment I don’t have!), returns to the series; John Shirley would only return for one more installment. Naha’s a veteran writer but he’s new to me; in his hands Traveler takes on more of the feel of a post-nuke epic, and while it still has a bit of the dark comedy of the previous volumes, it’s totally lacking the punk rock vibe Shirley gave it. Which is curious, as one thing I know about Naha is that in 1978 he handled a revised edition of Lillian Roxon’s 1969 work Rock Encyclopedia, so you’d figure his book would burn with as much rock and roll power as Shirley’s did.

Well anyway, once again I was pulled out of the fictive dream in the early pages with my pendantic quest to understand when the hell this series takes place. At this point I can only conclude that whoever at Dell Books wrote the back cover copy either goofed, or misread the text of the actual books, or possibly just didn’t give a shit. Because the back cover states that it’s 2016, and in the book we’re told at least a few times that WWIII was “seventeen years ago.” Which would indicate it happened in 1999. We’re also confused in the beginning because when we meet Traveler, he’s wandering alone in the desert, befuddled, and it’s like he’s returning to the world after a long absence. Initially I thought it really was 2016, and thus ten years after the previous volume, which ended with Traveler and his girlfriend Jan heading off into a happily ever after on a yacht; the impression we get from this opening is that Traveler’s been gone a long time.

But no – shortly afterward Traveler thinks to himself that the boat, ie the boat with Jan and his buddy Link and Link’s girlfriend, blew up, just “two weeks after setting out.” So poor Traveler didn’t get very far! And he’s lost Jan and the others in the melee and doesn’t even know if they’re alive; all he knows is a shadow passed over the boat as it toiled along the Pacific, and then Traveler was thrown into the ocean and the boat had blown up. But still, Traveler’s checking out how things have changed in the post-nuke world “since he’d been gone,” with the new President getting an interstate highway together in the U.S. and all that…and the reader’s like, “only two weeks have passed?” Gradually we learn that Traveler’s been gone for a year, not two weeks…apparently he was knocked for such a loop by the exploding boat that he’s lost track of how long he wandered. Which is all well and good, if a little clumsily delivered, but there’s still the question of the date, as the text specifically references December 20th, 1989 as when the nukes went down. This means that “seventeen years later” is actually 2006, not 2016. So again, someone at Dell just goofed…and seems to have goofed on the back cover of just about every volume.

Another big difference between this and Shirley’s previous books is that The Road Ghost is a much slower read, and is one of the more deceptively slim paperbacks I’ve ever encountered. It sure looks short, at only 172 pages, but boy does it have some super-small and super-dense print. This is not helped by the crush of sometimes-monotonous sequences and often-sluggish pace. Indeed, this sluggish pace, coupled with the “epic” vibe and the sudden focus on military hardware and strategy, really reminded me of another post-nuke series: The Guardians (a series I still haven’t been able to bring myself back to, even though it’s been like six years since I read a volume). Perhaps not-so-coincidentally, Naha also wrote The Marauders, a sort of a sister series of The Guardians.

“The Road Ghost” by the way turns out to be a nickname “the locals” use to reference Traveler himself, the locals being Mexicans, Traveler’s legend so pervasive that they even know of him down here. The opening makes us suspect we’re in for a taut, Shirley-esque adventure; Traveler comes across a severely rad-burned survivor named Rat Du Bois, who speaks in ryhming slang and has a face so badly burned that he looks like a human fish. He rides a buffalo and wields a spear, and sort of acts as this volume’s stand-in for Nicholas Shumi. After Rat takes his leave, Traveler heads into the nearest small town and holes up in an abandoned restaurant, fashioning weapons from household items. As mentioned there’s more of a focus on weapon-making and survival tactics in this one; Traveler even works on a junked VW Bug for a week, gearing it up to cross over the border into the US and find out what’s going on.

The craziest thing is…we never even see Traveler drive the Bug. Instead, the Meat Wagon – ie his usual armored van, which he gave to old Army buddies Hill and Orwell last time – rolls up, his two buddies behind the wheel. There’s vague mention of the neurotoxin in their systems allowing them to track down Traveler. They catch our hero up on the progress of the rebuilt USA and also inform him what likely happened to his boat: the Glory Boys, ie the personal guard of former President Frayling, the crazed Reagan spoof who was blown away previous volume, have taken up camp down here in South America. And also they’ve put together a fleet of WWII fighters and other stuff, and they’ve been bombing boats all over the Pacific. No doubt one of them got Traveler. Curiously there’s no burning yearning for Traveler to go hunt down Jan or the others; he basically just figures they’re yet more loved ones who have died.

In fact there’s no female conquest for Traveler this time, possibly the hugest difference from Shirley’s volumes. The cover shows a hot blonde toting a machine gun, and one sort of shows up…piloting a WWII B-17 Bomber, too, just like the cover. Her name’s Veronica, and like Rat Du Bois she’s another interesting character who plumb disappears from the narrative. After getting in a couple firefights with the Glory Boys and a group of hooded monks who are led by Pope Gordon, Traveler and buds find themselves escorting a “very pregnant” young Mexican gal named Maria. Per some bonkers prophecy, her child will depose Gordon, and she’s been ordered dead. Traveler decides to take her in the Meat Wagon to safety in America, leading to some nice tension with the bumpy desert roads and the constant barrage of gunfire. But due to all the chaos Maria doesn’t make it very far, and our three heroes are carrying around a newborn baby; Veronica lands her B-17 long enough to tell Traveler, apropos of nothing, about her pilot father, Alexander, and provide some info about the surrounding area. After she leaves, Traveler gives the baby the same name.

So now Traveler, Hill, and Orwell are carrying this newborn, who doesn’t act like any baby they’ve ever seen with his mystical eyes and serene expressions, and hordes of Glory Boys and armed monks are after them. It’s basically a long chase scene, same as the Shirley books were, with occasional detours into horror fiction. But again, without the splatterpunk bite of similar scenes in Shirley’s books. Veronica also tells them about “The Chemical Mountains,” an area toward the border where all the secret US germ warfare labs blew up due to the nukes, and now the place is poisoned; the trio ride through, suffering realistic flashbacks to horrible events in their lives. There’s also a part where a bunch of mutant animals attack them, including a monstrous creature that’s half-human, half-bison or something; this part has a definite Shirley vibe, as a weary Traveler gets out of the Meat Wagon, sizes up the towering creature, and shoots its balls off with his HK91.

Traveler himself is soon in a bad way. During that fog of delusion in the Chemical Mountains, Hill flashes back to when some locals tried to lynch him as a kid in the south. He runs, shooting at the lynchers, and happens to hit Traveler in the hip. The bullet passes through but the wound gets infected; and conveniently enough baby Alexander has some mysterious infection at this point, too. Per Traveler’s orders, the kid gets all the antibiotics left in the Meat Wagon fridge, and Traveler just suffers through. This leads to him being captured, and finding out that the mysterious Scar, new ruler of the Glory Boys…happens to be, spoiler alert, none other than former President Andrew Frayling. Now he’s like a post-nuke Two-Face, with one side of his face and body scorched by high rad burns. He’s still nuts, though, and plots to take back over the US with his growing armada of WWII planes, bombers, and helicopters.

But truth be told, The Road Ghost gets to be a little wearying after a while. It’s a constant sequence of one step forward, two steps back. Traveler and pals will forever be getting a leg up on their pursuers, then hit some snag and be surrounded by them, or captured, or separated, and throughout you have this increasingly-unusual baby sitting serenely in the Meat Wagon and eventually using his mind to control mutant dogs. But there’s just too much repetition, too many parts that could be whittled down, and the constant striving for the vibe of an “epic” gets to be wearying as well. Again, parts of the book caused me to experience bad flashbacks of my own – to The Guardians.

What makes it worse is that Traveler basically just sits out the finale; through various contrivances he’s managed to escape Frayling’s men (only to be captured again, par for the repetitive course of the book), then Hill and Orwell show up with their mutant dogs, which do most of the fighting for them. Our heroes sit around while the bad guys blow up and stuff. Then we even have a repeat of the Chemical Mountain stuff we already read about before, with our heroes getting blasted apart by enemy gunfire in a situation that seems increasingly like one they faced in El Higuara, the fictional South American country in which they all gained their neurotoxin abilities, right before WWIII. Indeed, all three of them actually die…only to wake up in a field hospital, to wonder if it had all just been a dream. And meanwhile Rat Du Bois shows up again, to take baby Alexander off with him, and it seems as clear as you can get that the two will be returning.

As for Veronica, who knows. Personally I thought it was a big miss that we have this big aerial battle in the finale – Frayling’s Chinooks gunning for Traveler and his buddies – and Veronica didn’t make a Han Solo-esque return in her B-17. Perhaps she too will return in some future volume. I do know that, save for the next one, Naha took the reigns for the remainder of the series, which apparently gets into even more of a metaphysical direction; if I’m reading the back cover of the last volume correctly, Traveler even goes back in time in that one. But we’ve got a ways to go until we get there, and honestly I’m looking forward to Shirley’s return with the next installment. Especially given that the previous volume was basically his conclusion to the series. 

Traveler #6: Border War

Traveler #6: Border War, by D.B. Drumm
June, 1985  Dell Books

It’s a veritable Old Home Week in this installment of Traveler, which sees John Shirley writing what comes off like a series finale. This leaves me with many questions, as Shirley did pretty much the same thing in The Specialist #3; he caps off the entire series with a satisfying conclusion. One wonders what led him to this, as there were seven more volumes of Traveler to go.

I wonder if Shirley just figured this was it for him on the series, but as it turned out he wrote one more volume: the eighth installment, with series co-writer Ed Naha writing the others. Maybe it looked like Traveler was about to be cancelled and Shirley wanted to give the readers a proper finale. Who knows. Whatever the story behind its creation, Border War is a blast, my favorite volume yet in the series. It features everything you could want in post-nuke pulp, save for the inexplicable lack of Shirley’s patented hardcore sex scenes. Bummer!

First though a bit of pedantic housekeeping: the back cover states that the novel takes place in 2015, which is odd given that previous volumes were set in 2004. In the text itself, Shirley writes that WWIII happened in 1995, “seventeen years before.” This would place the action in 2012. First I thought Traveler took one hell of a detour in his drive to Arizona, which he began in the climax of  the previous volume, but later we’re told that the third volume was just a year ago. So what I assume has happened is that Shirley intended to write that the nukes came down in 1985, not ’95, or maybe a copy editor just goofed. But even that doesn’t work out, as seventeen years after 1985 would be 2002, not 2004. Ultimately I just said to hell with it and enjoyed the book.

So Traveler is headed for Arizona in the Meat Wagon, his buddies Link (a muscle-bound black dude first introduced in the third volume) and Hill (an old Special Forces pal who debuted last volume) riding along, as well as the seldom-speaking Rosalita, the sexy Hispanic babe Link has hooked up with. Traveler himself wants to hook up: with Jan Knife Wind, the Indian babe who was established as his soul mate back in the third volume, but whom Traveler unceremoniously dropped at the end of that volume so he could get back to travelin’. Traveler is so intent upon reuniting with Jan that one wonders why he didn’t just stay with her in the first place. Again, it seems clear to me that Shirley assumed this would be the last volume of the series, or at least his last volume, and wanted to give Traveler a proper sendoff.

But nothing’s ever easy in the post-nuke US, and when Traveler and crew arrive in Pyramid Lake, Arizona, they find the place overrun by Hispanic-looking soldiers in black uniforms. Jan’s tribe has been imprisoned, and these soldiers, as Traveler learns after a soft but violent probe of the area, are from El Hiagura. The same Central American country Traveler was stuck in doing CIA stuff when WWIII happened. I’m not sure if this has been stated before, but here it’s relayed that El Hiagura is actually Guatemala, the new name coined by commie dictator Diaz, aka “the Colonel Qadafi of South America.”

In a unique spin on things, Shirley has it that the United States has become the stomping grounds for “military advisors” from other countries; in other words, the US has become the new Vietnam. And those former third world hellholes are veritable industrialized empires in comparison to the nuked US. What really makes Traveler seethe is his realization – perhaps grasped a bit too quickly – that senile President Frayling, commanding his lunatic “army” the Glory Boys from a bunker in Las Vegas, is clearly working with Diaz, despite Frayling’s hatred of commies. It’s again made clear that Frayling “started World War III,” something the entire surviving populace of the US is apparently aware of, and this is just yet more of his nefariousness.

Each volume of Traveler has been heavy on the action, with many of the books really just extended chase scenes; Shirley continues the trend but varies things up a bit. For one, people finally seem aware that bullets and ammo would be scarce 17 years after nukes destroyed the country, so Traveler, in an attempt to save his ammo, often resorts to using a crossbow. There are still many scenes of gun-blazing gore on full auto; even the mounted machine guns on the Meat Wagon see some use, and Traveler at one point takes out a Russian helicopter with an M-79 grenade launcher, just like Rambo was doing in movie theaters at the time. The El Hiagurans tote new submachine guns Traveler’s never seen before, things that look like Uzis, but surprisingly there’s never a part where Traveler gets his hands on one of them.

Each volume of the series has also had a bit of a metaphysical slant, and Border War really goes all-out with it. In many ways this volume comes off as almost New Agey as the average volume of Doomsday Warrior. Traveler is briefly captured by the El Hiagurans and finds Jan’s tribe in the camp stockade; Jan herself unsurprisingly has been taken away, to serve as Diaz’s personal concubine. Meeting with the chief of the tribe, our hero learns he is the clichéd “Chosen One” of prophecy who will lead “the red man” against “the white man.” Through the novel Traveler will experience the occasional astral voyage, meeting a spiritual Indian and reconnecting with mysterious holy man Nicholas Shumi, returning from previous volumes.

One of these astral voyages features a surprise appearance by a previously-vanquished foe: the super-cool Black Rider, Traveler’s mutant archenemy who was killed off in the fourth volume. As part of a test to prove he is indeed the chosen one, Traveler is baited by the Black Rider, who claims that while his body is gone, his spirit is strong as ever. But Traveler is powered by his love for Jan, whereas the Black Rider is just fighting out of hate: “Traveler kicked his ass but good.” All of this seems to me another indication that Shirley intended this to be the series finale.

We also see a return from Orwell, another of Traveler’s old Special Forces guys, last seen in the third volume. Now he’s a prisoner at a Glory Boys base, but manages to break free and assemble the surviving soldiers into another of the rag-tag armies Traveler will use to beat the El Hiagurans. Orwell is also our guide through the horror element Shirley delivers each volume; there’s an arbitrary but fun bit where he takes a tour of all the gruesome mutants Frayling’s men have created out of unwilling test subjects. I believe Shirley has a bit of in-jokery here, as we’re told that Orwell’s second-in-command is a guy named Bolan who looks around sixty and claims to have fought in Vietnam. More in-jokery comes courtesy Traveler, who early in the book poses as “Robert B. Parker” to avoid the Glory Boys who are looking for him.

Shirley introduces a new character, one I assume will become important in later volumes: The Grizzly, a burly, red-bearded roadrat leader who was a friggin’ professor of Medieval Literature and Mythology pre-war. Now he’s like a figure from Beowulf, commanding his loyal army of bloodthirsty roadrats. Shirley clearly has fun writing this character and I appreciated how he wasn’t just another of Traveler’s many one-off enemies; Traveler and comrades free Grizzly and his crew from the El Hiagurans, after which Traveler appeals to the man’s patriotic instincts – America is being overrun by a militant horde, and it’s time to band together and kick those South American asses back where they came from. To its credit, though, at least this particular horde is honest about the fact that it’s an invading army.

Another new character is one of those one-off enemies: the Gila Lord, another roadrat leader, but this one a super-massive monster with lizard eyes. Word has it he’s not human, and I kept picturing the Mutant Leader from Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns. In an arbitrary but very entertaining sequence, Traveler must fight the Gila Lord in a match to the death in order to win the support of his roadrats. Shirley again shows his mastery of the minor details: the Gila Lord comes onto the stage amid much fanfare, biting off the fingers of one of his attendants to feed to his pet gila. After all this, Shirley just has Traveler “stroll” onto the stage, which I thought was very funny. But then as ever there is a subtle comedic element that runs through Traveler.

Traveler becomes a post-nuke Patton, putting together a makeshift army of Indians, roadrats, and “real” soldiers who have become sick of the ruling Glory Boys. Speaking of which we have an almost anticlimactic sendoff for President Frayling; the Reagan analogue hasn’t even appeared yet in the series, I think, but here Traveler and his army finally decide to make short but final work of him. Frayling’s exit would of course be another indication of the quick wrap-up Shirley appears to be giving the series, but it leads to fun potential developments for future volumes, in particular a character at the end of the book who reveals his surprising intent to become the next president. 

Action is frequent and as usual well-handled. Shirley as ever delivers appropriate gore, as well as a cruel streak in Traveler – his torture of a captured El Hiaguran soldier shows a new side, though in his defense the soldier beat Traveler around during Traveler’s brief imprisonment with the El Hiagurans. Toward the end of the book Traveler becomes more of a field commander, so that the climactic battles for the most part feature Traveler watching from afar while others do the fighting. Indeed, Shirley attempts to shoehorn too many big battles into the text, and given that the book’s so short this means that many of them are basically dealt with in summary. We do get more detail in the bigger battles, like the fight to free Kansas City – which sees yet another return of previous characters, like Baron Moorcock (yet another in-joke), last seen in the second volume.

But as mentioned Shirley doesn’t treat us to one of his purple-prose XXX scenes. Jan stays off-page for the duration, and in fact I think she has like one or two lines of dialog. Shirley is more intent on giving Traveler a Happily Ever After; he is as expected reunited with Jan (like a page or two before the end of the book!), and further decides that he’s going to go off with her on Diaz’s captured yacht. Further, Traveler gives the Meat Wagon to Hill and Orwell, who are going to stay behind and help rebuild the United States – Traveler just wants the tape deck and the tapes! Meanwhile Link and his girlfriend Rosalita will come along with Traveler and Jan on the yacht, hoping to find some paradise in this post-nuke world.

 And that’s it for Border War, and seemingly for Traveler. Curious then that there were more volumes to go. A peek at the back cover copy of the next volume would indicate that Traveler is not headed for a Happily Ever After, which reminds me how I felt when I saw Alien 3, the opening of which completely ruined the dramatic finale of Aliens. I’d love to know the story behind Border War; did Shirley intend it as his swan song? If so, was it because he wanted to leave or because it looked like Traveler was going to get cancelled? Or did he just want to wrap up all the plot elements he’d created in the previous volumes so that Naha could work off a clean slate upon his assumption of the writing duties?

Regardless, I loved this one, and it encapsulates everything that’s great about post-nuke pulp.

Traveler #5: Road War

Traveler #5: Road War, by D.B. Drumm
February, 1985  Dell Books

Probably the best way I could describe this fifth volume of Traveler, which is once again courtesy John Shirley, would be “a post-nuke Cannonball Run.” Seriously, Road War is all about a diverse group of cutthroats who engage in a race to discover a perhaps-mythical cache of gold. And, as with Shirley’s past Traveler output, it’s basically an extended action scene, one that doesn’t let up from first page to last.

It’s still 15 years after 1989, when WWIII went down, so time hasn’t really moved on much in the past few volumes, even though we learn the third volume was “months before.” It must be some short time after the previous volume, as Traveler is still hanging out with Link, the muscle-bound black guy he met in the climax of that installment, a former Green Beret so big that an M-16 looks like a “toy” in his hands. To tell the truth I kept confusing Link with Orwell, Traveler’s black buddy back in the third volume – not to sound racist or anything. The characters are just very familiar, and are basically just ciphers for Traveler to talk to, so it isn’t just him driving around alone in his “Meat Wagon” armored van. And another character in the book also confuses Link and Orwell, so there.

But anyway Traveler and Link are hanging out in a bar in the Drift, in the desert ruins of Nevada; a radiation-poisoned prospector known as the Old Man in the Hole gets in front of everyone, throws out some platters of beaten gold with maps scrawled on them, and claims he found a huge stash of gold out in them thar hills. The old man is a notorious bastard, prone to lying and deceit. He claims he’s telling everyone this because he himself will have no use for the gold, as he’s dying of stomach cancer – and also because he hopes everyone kills each other while hunting for it. For gold can still buy a passage to peace here in the post-apocalypse; supposedly there are areas relatively unscathed by radiation, but it costs a pretty penny to get there.

Then the Old Man starts off a gunfight which results in him getting killed – the tumor blown out of his stomach via shotgun and splattering on the wall. As ever Shirley provides his tale with customary ultra-gore, which is how I demand it. But be warned, friends, Road War is the first Shirley offering yet that does not offer any of his weird creature feature radiation-spawn mutants or any of his just-as-outrageous sex scenes! I mean for once poor old Traveler doesn’t even get laid, folks. As for the monsters, perhaps Shirley felt he’d gone overboard with them in the previous volume, which was stuffed to the mutated gills with various disgusting monsters. This time the only monsters are the human survivors of WWIII.

Chief among them is The Spike, leader of a gang of roadrats called The Wasps. The roadrats have appeared throughout the series, and are basically the mohawked, heavy metal-wearing barbarians of Road Warrior. The Spike is suitably horrific, with teeth filed to fangs and the usual screwed-up punk aesthetic; she even claims she wants to cut her “tits” off and cauterize the wound, because they just get in the way. Traveler runs into The Spike and her obedient roadrats in the bar, sparking a rivalry that will last throughout the novel. For of course, she is one of the people who sets off on the gold-hunt, as do Traveler and Link.

Traveler for his part could care little about the gold, but Link’s all fired up about it, so what the hell? “Let’s go get killed,” Traveler says; our hero is in an especially cynical mood this time around, but that only serves to make the usually-dark humor of the series all the more humorous. But man he’s like a post-nuke Philip Magellan in this one; there’s a total Marksman moment where Traveler ties a bunch of freshly-killed corpses to the back of the Meat Wagon and barrels past the Wasps, cutting the cord so that the corpses sprawl in the van’s wake as a warning.

The book really is just an extended chase scene, but it’s delivered incredibly well. Traveler and Link get in one battle after another; even “quiet” interludes, like when they pull off for a rest or to save apparently-stranded motorists, turn into full-bore action scenes. So really it has much in common with the action movies of the day; Shirley even provides a sort of soundtrack, with Traveler at one point hauling out a boom box to blare out the window as a distraction, blasting “Raw Power” by Iggy & the Stooges: “Early punk-metal rock. The raw stuff.” Link even gets in on it in a later, entertaining part where he gets behind the wheel of the Meat Wagon and comes to Traveler’s rescue, the Stooges scaring the shit out of the latest enemy they’ve encountered.

There’s even a bit of action-comedy banter between Traveler and Link, usually delivered while the bullets are flying, like when Link blows away a dude who tries to crawl into the Meat Wagon and his blood and brains splash inside – “Don’t mess up my car, bro,” complains Traveler. A bit more comedy comes via Jamaica Jack, a Drift resident captured by the Wasps and freed by Traveler and Link, at the latter’s request – Traveler as ever doesn’t go out of his way to help people, trusting no one. But Jamaica Jack doesn’t make as much impact in the narrative as I thought he might. Nor does Rosalita, a sexy Hispanic gal used as a sex-slave by The Spike(!); she rides along in the Meat Wagon with Traveler and Link, but does not engage in what I figured would be the obligatory sex scene with Traveler. Instead, she becomes Link’s woman, mostly because he’s the only one who can speak to her in Spanish.

Action is constant and energetically-delivered throughout; you never get the sense that Shirley’s just going through the motions like you would in the work of a lesser writer – like say Joseph Rosenberger. He writes every action scene as if it’s his first, with copious gore and gunplay and deadpan dialog. Some highlights would be an encounter with the Glory Boys – aka what remains of the US Army – in a ghost town, as well as a pitched battle with the “digmen” who live beneath the earth and try to catch Traveler and Link with their sticky, gladiator-style nets. And of course there are countless fights with the Wasps, The Spike increasingly desperate to kill Traveler, and vice versa.

Throughout the race our heroes keep encountering a dragster, which sometimes shoots at them as it flies by. At length – and the book occurs over two or three days – we discover that the dragster is occupied by Hill and Margolin, the two remaining members of Traveler’s old CIA Special Forces squad (Orwell, from the third volume, being the third). This is the first Traveler’s seen them since 1989, and they are ruined versions of their former selves, their minds warped by the neurotoxins Traveler himself was dosed with, back in ’89. But unlike Traveler, they were never cured of the effects, to the point that Margolin in particular has become like a machine gun-carrying Cassandra, prone to visions, just one step away from full-blown insanity.

The four manage to locate the hidden gold, which is buried in a ravine surrounded by a colony of hostile digmen. But The Spike and her sole remaining follower get the jump on our heroes, with the Spike using Traveler as a decoy for any traps the Old Man might’ve left behind (of which there are a few). The gold does indeed exist, but Traveler’s heightened senses detect something unusual about it. Not that it matters, as The Spike gets locked inside the vault due to one of those traps – and suffers one grisly fate, as we learn the Old Man really was a bastard, as the gold is radioactive and whoever finds it will die from it, just as the Old Man himself did. Plus he’s even left some food behind for whoever gets locked in the vault so they’ll live longer – to suffer longer!

There are so many pitched battles throughout Road War that the last one with the digmen doesn’t make much of an impression, but Margolin does suffer in the skirmish, offing himself via heroic sacrifice. As if proving how pointless everything is in this hellish post-nuke USA, Traveler, after going through hell to find it, basically shrugs off the lost cache of gold, and he and Hill give Link their gold maps so Link and Rosalita can go find happiness. Meanwhile Traveler’s decided to head on south to hook up with Indian galpal Jan again, last seen in the third volume. Hill says he’ll go along, which means Traveler will have a new co-riding buddy next time around.

I’ve enjoyed every volume yet of Shirley’s Traveler. He doesn’t waste the reader’s time with padding or digressive nonsense, and instead delivers a thrill-a-minute action story with plenty of gore. Not to mention a heaping helping of dark comedy. You can tell he was having fun as he wrote it, and that fun carries over to the reader.

Traveler #4: To Kill A Shadow

Traveler #4: To Kill A Shadow, by D.B. Drumm
November, 1984  Dell Books

John Shirley delivers another fast-moving Traveler installment that reads more like splatterpunk horror fiction than the typical post-nuke pulp; of all the authors I’ve read in this subgenre, Shirley is the best at conveying the horrors of a post-nuke world. But by “horrors” I don’t mean starvation and disease and widespread suffering; rather, I mean gut-churning monstronsities that have been spawned by the radioactive fallout. While Shirley’s preceding two volumes have had horror elements, To Kill A Shadow goes full-bore, with our hero confronting one nuke-created monster after another.

But whereas such monster moments would be played more as a goofy creature feature in say Doomsday Warrior, Shirley’s monster moments are a helluva lot more creepy and scary – not to mention gut-churning. He’s got some sick stuff this time out, displayed immediately, as Traveler, now up in Northern California to look into some “strange US military business going on up this way,” runs into a pack of cen-cars, ie half-men, half-cars. Sounds super-stupid, but these are such disgusting creations – they haul around translucent packs, in which you can see the digesting remains of the humans they’ve eaten, for example – that it isn’t played for laughs at all.

It’s now 2005, we’re informed, whereas the previous volume was in 2004; not sure how much many months have passed, but Traveler has been thinking about heading back down to Arizona to hook up again with Jan, the sexy Indian babe he fell in love with last time. But first he’s up here in California to find archenemies Vallone and the Black Rider, to finally settle the score he has with both of them. This is how he runs into the cen-cars, which we’re informed are pre-nuke military experiments that have run amok in the post-nuke world.

Indeed, all the monsters Traveler encounters this time are the creation of genetic experimentation courtesy the post-WWIII American army; as in previous books, there’s a rabid anti-right sentiment throughout. Shirley was no doubt the only leftist punk rock writer in the entire men’s adventure/post-nuke pulp genre, and that’s once again quite apparent; his books have an edgy energy uncommon for the genre. As we’ll recall, Vallone is the bastard who caused Traveler’s nervous system to be damaged by a neurotoxin chemical before the war, and now he’s become the head of the “Glory Boys,” ie the leather-clad soldiers of the new United States.

Traveler wants to kill the bastard once and for all, plus he also wants to take out the Black Rider, the all-black mutant biker who first appeared in the second volume. Traveler figures the two might be involved with whatever “military business” is going on here in California. During his gory battle with the cen-cars Traveler comes across human captives who are bound and hanging, waiting to be feasted on by the creatures. He frees them and escapes to their commune, which is run by Brother John, aka “Christ.” The people here, each of them named “Brother” or “Sister,” are part of a religion that sees John as Christ reborn, his “Holy Book” providing them all the guidance they need.

Sure enough, the Holy Book has prophecized a “Holy Warrior,” and Brother John – an amiable sort whom Traveler thinks looks more like a young rock star than a religious leader – is certain that Traveler is he. Traveler as expected smirks at all this, and besides he’s more interested in Sister Ilana, aka “The Doubter,” a tall, sexy member of the commune who keeps throwing our hero the eye. Turns out she’s had her own vision about him – he’s the man she’ll fall in love with, but whose presence will lead to her death. This doesn’t stop them from engaging in one of Shirley’s patented hardcore sex scenes, which unfortunately is the only such scene in the book.

Traveler’s shenanigans with Ilana serve to piss off chunky, unattractive Sister Jane, who gets revenge by setting Traveler up; the only person on the commune who has seen any of the Glory Boys, Ilana guides Traveler over rough country for a few days, leading him to where she claims to have seen the soldiers – and right into a Glory Boy ambush. (For her troubles she’s sent to the experimentation pens by Vallone.) In a brief firefight Traveler’s head is hit and he’s blinded. He manages to escape, running blind through the woods, and Shirley doles out more of his creepy-crawlies: Trompers, these bizarre creatures that are like hunchbacked legs that the Glory Boys ride on, and Snakeheads, half-men, half-snakes.

Brother John’s people save Traveler, thus putting them in danger of reprisals. Meanwhile a recuperating Traveler spends more quality time with Ilana and also befriends Robbie, a twelve-year-old boy who has grown up in the commune and is subtly presented as the son Traveler was supposed to have – the son who was incenerated in the nuclear war, several years ago. Shirley doesn’t make this budding relationship cloying or maudlin, and spends occasional sections of the narrative in Robbie’s perspective, so we readers see that he’s a strong character in his own right, and a survivor just like Traveler.

Shirley this time also brings back the metapyhiscal aspect of the series, courtesy Nicholas Shumi, the wizened Buddhist monk who rides around on his elephant-sized mutatn cat, Ronin. Shumi and Ronin appear sporadically, with Shumi again telling a cynical Traveler that Traveler is an important person in post-nuke America. He also intimates that he has “plans” for young Robbie. Shirley opens up the novel a bit further with Quinlow and Buford, bumbling dudes who work for the military as Snakehead handlers but who harbor a lot of resentment for Vallone and the Black Rider; clearly meant to remind the reader of Laurel and Hardy, these two eventually become Traveler’s comrades. 

Luckily the blindness stuff doesn’t stick around long – it too being foretold by Ilana in her vision, by the way – and it turns out a bullet lodged in his skull has impaired Traveler’s sight. After surgery, he gets his sight back in another tense action scene, in which Ilana has been captured by Vallone and the Snakeheads and held for ransom. In the fight, Traveler not only regains his vision but is also unable to save Ilana, who is killed by one of the Snakeheads, thus fulfilling her own vision-prophecy. Wisely, Shirley doesn’t waste much print on her after this; Traveler buries her, thinks grim thoughts, and gets on with the business of revenge.

First though he has to prepare Brother John’s commune for the attack that is to come. Over the next week Traveler trains these people how to fight and how to defend themselves; from Quinlow and Buford they have learned that Vallone will be unleashing his latest biological horror upon the commune: the Gutters, which are like biped rhinos. They have horned heads which are designed to gut their prey, hence their name.

The ensuing battle is chaotic and bloody, Shirley mostly relaying it through Robbie, who proves himself to be a hero. Traveler meanwhile has gone off to gather up his “secret weapon,” which cleverly turns out to be those cen-cars. When Traveler defeated their leader, early in the book, the surviving cen-cars honked their horns at him as a sign of their fealty(!). Now Traveler drafts them in the bloody battle against the Gutters.

The final quarter of To Kill A Shadow gets back to the vengeance plotline. Traveler and a few commune members, including Quinlow and Buford, head off in Traveler’s Meat Wagon van. More bizarre post-nuke stuff ensues, like a memorable visit to “The Hungry Land,” a section of earth created by the Black Rider which feeds on anyone that comes across it, literally; Shirley describes the place as having a pulsing purple glow, very reminiscent of a blacklight poster. Have I mentioned that, in Traveler’s world, the phrase “Satan’s Burned Earth” has replaced the old “God’s Green Earth?” Yet more indication of the black humor which Shirley has invested this series.

Perhaps the grossest monster in the book is a 14-foot long maggot that guards the tunnel that leads into Vallone’s underground military complex; the monster-maggot too was biogenetically created from a man. The battle with it is creepy and gory, leading to some inventive usage of TNT. In fact Shirley spends so much time on monster-bashing that the fights with the Glory Boys almost come off as forgettable; after fighting so many disgusting creatures, some thug in a leather uniform just seems mundane. However, Shirley does at least give memorable sendoffs for Vallone and the Black Rider. 

Interestingly, To Kill A Shadow sees Shirley hastily wrapping up a plot he’s been building over the past two books. This is the same thing he did in the concurrent Specialist series, which featured a hasty wrapup of the overriding vengeance theme in the third volume. To Kill A Shadow was the fourth volume of Traveler, but it was the third one Shirley wrote, so I find it interesting that here he follows the same three-volume vengeance arc. In fact it makes me wonder if in both cases he hedged his bets and wrapped up the plots in case either series didn’t do well and folded early.

While it’s nice to see Traveler get his vengeance, it does come off as a bit unsatisfying, particularly because Shirley spends so much of To Kill A Shadow with the Brother John commune and Traveler’s blindness and young Robbie and etc. Vallone and the Black Rider appear in just a handful of pages each. Given that it turns out this is the last we’ll ever see of them, it would’ve been more satisfying if they’d been a little more visible throughout the novel.

But Shirley, as mentioned, at least gives them memorable sendoffs. Vallone’s is the most outrageous: Traveler, having broken into the military complex, finds a nude Vallone in bed with his latest woman, who has tied Vallone to the bed; Vallone likes to get whipped, you see. Traveler, still holding a stick of dynamite, lubes up the end of the shaft, lights it, and sticks it up Vallone’s ass! He even laughs crazily as he runs out of the room before it explodes, looking back inside at the carnage and destruction.

The Black Rider’s fate is a bit more standard: the mutant escapes the base in a helicopter, and Traveler commandeers another, holding the pilot at gunpoint and ordering him to chase after it. After knocking the Black Rider’s helicopter out of the sky—right over the Hungry Land, conveniently enough – Traveler chases after him, shoots him in the chest twice, and watches happily as the ground opens up and eats its own creator. Which should pretty much be all she wrote for the Black Rider; too bad, as he was the most memorable villain in the series, but as mentioned sadly underused here, only garnering a few lines of dialog.

Along the way Traveler picks up a new comrade in arms: John Link, a muscle-bound black prisoner in Vallone’s complex who served as a Green Beret in ‘Nam. Given that he decides to head to Arizona with Traveler in the finale, I expect we’ll see him in the next volume. However we won’t be seeing Robbie – Traveler, when he returns to the commune, is upset to find that Robbie is gone. Turns out Shumi returned and took the boy with him, stating his plans to train the boy as his apprentice. Here we learn that Traveler had intended to take the boy himself, to be the father figure he needed – quite a bit of character development for a guy who has spent the past two volumes trying to run from responsibility.

Shirley again displays his dark, cynical roots with the revelation here that Brother John is dead, killed by a Snakehead while defending Robbie in yet another attack on the commune. Turns out that John’s “Holy Book” was nothing more than a science fiction paperback from 1986 titled The Holy Warrior, all about a hero who came to save a religious commune in a post-nuke hellscape! It’s this sort of genre-mockery that Shirley pulls off throughout the series, and it’s a lot of fun, mostly because he always plays it so straight; as opposed to The Destroyer, despite the near-parody levels of the series, it’s all quite serious to the characters themselves, thus Traveler can be enjoyed both as an over-the-top exercise in gory horror and as a genuine men’s adventure tale.

Anyway, I’m really enjoying this series; as I’ve mentioned before the post-nuke setting gives Shirley free reign to indulge in his horror and sci-fi roots, so you can tell he too was enjoying it. I’d place Traveler alongside Doomsday Warrior and the almighty Phoenix as the best in post-nuke pulps.