Interview with David Alexander, Part 2

As promised, here’s the second half of my interview with David Alexander. Hope you enjoy!


You also worked on the C.A.D.S. series, published by Zebra Books under the name John Sievert, correct? How did you become involved with that series, and which volumes did you write?

I wrote the last few of these. My interest at the time wasn't in writing the series but in finding a new publisher, as I'd moved on from Leisure, and wanted to contract with a house that would give me broader scope for new and advanced projects. C.A.D.S. was, first, last and always, a "foot in the door" job that, as the description implies, would hopefully lead to bigger and better things. Unfortunately I learned before long that I’d blundered. When a writer accepts a project like C.A.D.S. with only vague promises of "being taken along," and similar catchphrases, that writer will more often than not wind up being typecast as something lower than a Johnny pump before the ink has dried on the first advance check.

Curiously, though, I'm frequently asked by readers about whether I'm planning a C.A.D.S. sequel. I seem to have inherited the mantle of C.A.D.S. authorship purely by being the last man standing, as the first two chroniclers of Dean Sturgis and company seem to have vanished without a trace.

C.A.D.S. was, like Phoenix, a post-nuke action series, only the series was created by someone else (authors Ryder Stacy). Did you approach it differently than Phoenix?

As the foregoing should indicate I approached it in a manner that was in many if not most ways diametrically opposite to how I approached Phoenix. Also, in complete candor, I don't consider C.A.D.S. as part of the cannon of my work. It was work for hire, conceived by others. I was just basically mopping up.

There’s a part in Z-Comm #1 where the hero assumes the covername “Coltray,” which happens to be the title of a three-volume series you later published under your own name. What’s the story behind that series?

Coltray was a specialist operative who worked solo but had ties to official law and intelligence agencies. Coltray was in some ways a one-man Z-Comm, although he generally assembled a team before going into action. The reason that the Coltray series had my byline was because I wasn't putting up with any more of the same house-name nonsense of the sort that had already given the world "Kyle May-ning."

I’m also curious about your work with Gold Eagle, for example the Nomad and Slam series. What was it like working with Gold Eagle? You mention on your site that they edited your manuscripts for Nomad (which you offer in the original forms on your site); what all did GE change, and why?

The Nomad ebooks I've made available on my website for free download are based on the original manuscripts of the four-book Nomad Miniseries that I proofread and lightly edited a few years ago. I plan to revise them in the near future to make downloads more compatible with tablet readers and whatever else is currently the latest and greatest. Working with Gold Eagle is the subject of mixed emotions, but there were some positives.

At any rate, the edits referred to seemed to reflect an attempt not only to Bowdlerize anything even remotely suggestive, but also to grind down any and all the edginess of the writing, wherever edginess was to be found. Beyond this there were totally off-the-wall and gratuitous emendations that seemed to have no rhyme or reason for having been made.

I countered each hatchet job on my Nomad manuscripts with faxed lists of stuff I demanded be changed back to the way I'd originally written it. Comparing those lists against the published books, I found that although some of my demands had been met, others had not.

Were there any other series you worked on, under your own name or a pseudonym?

Possibly. Fortunately or otherwise, I seem to have forgotten them like Nixon forgot the Plumbers in the basement.

In your Writing The Action Scene article, you mention performing an overview of the action-series genre before you began writing Phoenix. You further mention, correctly, that none of them were like Phoenix; which series did you read, and were there any you enjoyed? Did you maintain any interest in what was going on in the world of action-series fiction while you were working on Phoenix and your other series titles?

I enjoyed a number of things in the course of planning and writing the Phoenix series, but not all of them were action series. Other sources of inspiration were fiction and nonfiction books of many types, as well as movies. I liked Rolling Thunder, the '70s movie that they're still blogging about in which actor William Devane returns home as a Vietnam vet and discovers, somewhat like Ulysses at the conclusion of the Iliad and Odyssey cycles, that home base ain’t what it used to be, and needs some serious cleaning up.

The great line in that movie is, "You learn to love the rope." You can Google that and it still gets a zillion hits, just like for, "Say hello to my little friend." In many ways I thought of Phoenix as a character who also had to learn to "love the rope" in order to survive in post-nuclear hell.

I also found inspiration in Mad Max, which had some memorable lines among its riffs and hooks, such as, "He goes to water over a dummy," and, “Perhaps it was a result of anxiety,” which I still quote at times.

I know you have moved on from action-series fiction. What projects are you currently working on? How has your experience been in the world of eBooks?

In fiction I'm currently working on several things, including a project I'd put away some time ago and had believed, until I sought to read it again, that it was only a short proposal. It was, in fact, a fair-sized manuscript. I'd always liked its concept and still do. It seemed to cry out to be completed. As to ebooks, I think they’re obviously the future of publishing, but I also think that printed books will continue to play a significant role in it.

Which of your own books are your favorites, and why?

I've favored Machine Breakers. I wrote it as literary fiction that I hoped would also appeal to a more commercially oriented audience. Despite or because of the different approaches to narrative I took, including an invented language and casting aside conventional sentence structure, as well as using some techniques I devised such as one I call "chaosing," (which, as the term implies, is the deliberate introduction of chaos or noise into the prose narrative slipstream), the book has been remarkably accessible to a wide range of readers, despite my belief that it would appeal only to small number of them.

I'll go so far as to say that I've always considered it an alternative Phoenix story insofar as it's set in a dystopian universe, as well as in the immediate aftermath of a series of apocalyptic events, and the characters that strut and fret their hour upon the stage have also been warped and disfigured by war and technological innovation run amok.

Ultimately I try not to adore any of my efforts either from the past or those on which I'm currently working. I'm too oriented toward scrutinizing them for faults and defects. As Swift observes by way of Gulliver in the land of the Brobdingnagians, even the most seemingly flawless human beings show massive imperfections when an observer the size of a fly crawls across their bodies. That's also something like my point of reference to my own writing, and I think (at least hope) it helps me overcome my limitations and develop beyond them.

Still and all, I have to admit to holding Phoenix in a special place, though I probably couldn't say exactly why this happens to be so.

Interview with David Alexander, Part 1

Anyone who has read my reviews will know that I place the Phoenix series by David Alexander in the highest echelon of action series fiction. As I’ve mentioned before, the Phoenix series is available in one complete eBook edition, and Alexander also has many other books and novels available on Amazon as eBooks.

He also has a website, and a few months ago I wrote to tell him how much I enjoyed his work. After exchanging some emails, I realized Dave would make for excellent interview material, and so was very happy that he agreed to one.

Here’s the first part of the interview; in this one Dave focuses on his start in the writing world and the Phoenix series.


Tell us about yourself – how did you get into writing, and what were you doing before?

As a child I began writing spontaneously. I’m sure it’s a common development; just as children often like to draw, they also like to write. At any rate, when I was seven I was mentioned in a newspaper article for having written some poetic verse. I don't know if it was actually any good, but I can say that unlike others I was never coached or was the product of efforts to mold me into something my elders, instead of I myself, wanted. Just the opposite, in fact. I come from a working class family background where letters weren't and still aren't held in particular esteem.

What was your first published work?

Probably the poem that sparked the newspaper item, and certainly the poetry that followed which found its way into miscellaneous publications before I reached my teens. Truthfully, I had no desire to write prose fiction until later on. Prior to that my only aim was to write poetry. I still compose from time to time, but only when my muse speaks, or when, to paraphrase Sherlock Holmes, "the fit is on me." I haven't felt compelled to compose for some years, but awhile back I did manage to write a considerable number of poems.

How did the Phoenix series come about?

Phoenix originated as a convergence between my early aspirations to write booklength thriller fiction and Leisure Books' interest in expanding into that market. I hadn’t set out to write a series, per se; that’s just what was offered. They'd previously had a success with a series whose title I forget and wanted to increase their presence in the marketplace.

The first Phoenix title sold well enough for the house to sign me for another two or three series installments. In the end I wrote five in all, with a sixth and final installment planned which never materialized.

Was Phoenix planned as an ongoing series, or did you envision it with a definite end in mind?

I certainly envisioned the sixth book as the series conclusion, but I hadn't envisioned a final book when I'd begun writing the series. At that time I hadn't a clear-cut sense of how far I'd be able to grow the concept and characters, as Leisure had originally committed to a single book only. I turned in an outline for the planned sixth but it never materialized. At this stage I may have already been in the process of writing the Z-Comm series.

The Phoenix series is more over-the-top than anything I’ve read. What were some of your thoughts while you worked on each volume – were you just constantly trying to top yourself, to see how far you could go? What scenes/volumes stand out most in your mind?

I approached writing the Phoenix books in a deliberate manner. Principally, I set out to create what might be called a post-nuclear apocalypse noir series, and tried to work out how the elements of noir might function in this context.

To address the second part of your question, I don’t really have permanent favorite parts of anything I’ve written. I might find myself idly reflecting on this scene or that, or this paragraph or that, from time to time, with appreciation or odium, or I might like or dislike some parts as I re-read an earlier effort, but that’s pretty much the extent of it.

What was the relationship like with Leisure Books? Did they play much of a factor in each book, or request any changes? Did you receive any feedback from readers?

As far as my words went, I had text approval, and I tried to insure that it was honored.

As to feedback from readers, there was its share, and I think mainly more positive than negative. One fan offered several hundred dollars for the set of original Phoenix manuscripts. I never sold it, though.

Phoenix #5 ends on a cliffhanger, with Magnus Trench still searching for his family. Why did the series end with this volume? Have you considered wrapping it up with a final installment?

As I've said, I'd done an outline for what would have been a final story in which Trench and his family were (in some way, shape or form) reunited (probably with some wicked twist, such as wife and child having become contams by this point, or Luther Enoch or John Tallon appearing to do a "Luke, I am your father" number on Trench junior, etc.).

But as I may have also mentioned, I've from time to time over the years considered precisely that – ending the series in earnest. The most recent "Phoenix moment" was a few months ago when, on pondering the phenomenon of doomsday bunker building and the warped mentalities of survivalists who actually seem to relish the prospect of apocalyptic catastrophe striking the United States, I jotted down some notes for a story where Trench and a group of good guys pit themselves against the last of post-apocalypse America's bunker cities, and the bad-asses who are dug in there.

One of my biggest personal "Phoenix moments," by the way, took place on September 11th, 2001, when I happened to find myself caught in the vicinity of the World Trade Center when the two planes struck. Throughout the ensuing chaos, I recall saying to myself, "What is this? – ‘Dark Messiah East,’ chapter one?" or "What would Trench do at a time like this?"

I'll add that reflecting on Phoenix number five's (Reap the Whirlwind) subway scenes kept me from attempting to take the trains, which turned out to be a smart move on that dismal day. Should I have had thoughts like these on 911? I don't know. But think them I did.

One thing it does point up is the way a character, or group of characters, once created, can tend to powerfully and lastingly root themselves to an author's consciousness. It's a phenomenon that's been commented on by writers other than myself, too, I believe.

While writing Phoenix, I see you also worked on some other series. One of them was Z-Comm, also for Leisure Books, published under the name Kyle Maning. What’s the story behind that one?

I wanted to do a more contemporary action series, which is how Z-Comm got going. The title stood for Z-Command, a unit of last resorts that took on missions too impossible for anybody else, and which of course always brought home the bacon. I was told, though, that I had to provide a house name for the series byline, as for some unfathomable reason I couldn’t still be just plain old me.

Now, if this were today, I'd have taken out a laundry marker and scrawled “David Alexander” on the editor's desk by way of response, but in those days I suppose I was more … temperate. So I gave Leisure the byline "Kyle Manning."

Note that the surname, as might be expected, is spelled with two n's, not one. The reason the series' book covers bear the surname spelled with a single n was revealed to me when -- on one of my visits to the Leisure office, during which I was shown the cover of the first Z-Comm book -- I noticed that one of the n's was missing.

"It should be Manning, with two n's," I’d pointed out to the editor, who apparently had thought I might miss this disparity.

To this he replied, "Oh, we can't afford the AA (which stands for author's addition or author’s alteration, requiring a second run through the printing presses) so from now on your name is May-ning."

Once again, were it today, I would have carved that extra n into the editorial desk, but that was then, not now, and "Maning" it remained.


In the second part of the interview, Dave talks about his contributions to the C.A.D.S. series, his work with Gold Eagle, and his current projects – posting here next week!

Phoenix #5: Whirlwind

Phoenix #5: Whirlwind, by David Alexander
No month stated, 1988 Leisure Books

Here endeth the grisly, gruesome, gore-tatstic Phoenix saga, the OTT chronicle of Magnus "Phoenix" Trench's quest across the nuked US. The previous three novels progressively derailed from the overriding plot as established in the first volume, Dark Messiah -- namely, that Trench was rabid to get from San Francisco to New York City to determine if his wife and son survived the nuclear holocaust -- but happily this final volume gets things back on track.

And just as happily, David Alexander is back to form in this final outing. Whirlwind is nearly as violent and demented as its predecessors; not all the way up there with the first installment and Ground Zero, but close. But on the positive side this volume features more of a focus on the major plot: after being absent for too long, Trench's archnemeses John Tallon and Luther "Dark Messiah" Enoch finally return to the fray.

Whirlwind opens with another of those crazed Alexander action scenes; Trench and his companions from the previous novel, Raven and DeLaCour, arrive in NYC and must brave a guantlet of heavy weaponry and government soldiers to get into the city. Raven and DeLaCour by the way are pale reflections of their previous selves. Raven's ballyhooed psychic skills go unmentioned -- as indeed does her ESP link with Trench, as established in the final pages of Metalstorm -- and there's no indication that she and Trench were once involved. I think she has maybe five lines in this entire novel. DeLaCour isn't much better. The hulking, steel-plated character comes off more like Trench's familiar, there to save the guy and battle alongside him. Hell, even the wolf Blue from the previous novel is gone and doesn't get mentioned.

Trench is caught, and Tallon shows him that his wife and son are held prisoner, hooked to life-support machinery, inside the Statue of Liberty. This scene, so long built up in the series, is glossed over in a paragraph. The intimation is both Trench's wife and son suffer from the Plague that has affected the rest of the country, product of the biochemicals in the Soviet nukes that hit the US; the Plague Trench himself is immune to. But Alexander leaves this vague. Tallon informs Trench that a mutant has been born in NYC that can heal the Plague. Trench must find it and bring it back, and in exchange he and his family can go free.

So like a regular Snake Plissken Trench crosses alone into the no-man's land of Manhattan. Here follows another great setpiece which comes off like a more gory variation on the famous scene from Stephen King's The Stand, where Trench puts on night-vision goggles and ventures through an abandoned subway station. Alexander certainly has a gift for dark humor; after building up Trench's shock that no "Contam" mutants have yet attacked him -- Trench realizing of course that the mutants dwell underground, just like the C.H.U.D.s -- about a million of them come out of nowhwere and attack him.

The action scenes are as expected OTT and like super-violent cartoons. Leather-clad gangs rule Manhattan -- every city Trench has visited has been run by a leather-clad biker gang -- and Alexander really comes to life when Trench blows them away:

The burst caught Badass One high on the chest, stitching a diagonal line of ragged punctures from his left shoulder to lower jawline that changed him from vicious prick to Moby Dick as he spurted a dozen whale spouts of blood.

As death reflexes made the muscles twitch and jerk, the crude dude went into a terminal breakdance that ended when his legs kicked out from under him and he slid down the side of the mountainous pile of wreckage on his face, splattering his pard with intestinal guacamole.

Again Alexander takes a cue from the ancient world: Trench is captured by Abraxas, ruler of NYC and basically a clone of Lord Humongous from The Road Warrior. Abraxas has set up the Clone, a death-trap constructed in "Blastroland" from an old Ferris Wheel and roller coaster. Trench is strapped in and must survive all manner of booby traps, pursuing killers, and guys with flamethrowers. And if he lives, Abraxas will take him to "The Child," ie the mutant with the Plague-stopping powers.

The nihilism of previous volumes is brought to the fore here. As in the past Trench muses to himself about man's inhummanity and etc. But also it's been clear from the get-go that there could be no happy end to the Phoenix saga. How could there be, given the nonstop gore and carnage? But what's most unfortunate is we realize in the last pages that, though this was the last published volume of the series, it sure isn't the end. For nothing is resolved. Trench's wife and son are still the prisoners of Luther Enoch and John Tallon, both of whom escape, once again leaving Trench a lone man consumed with vengeance.

So yes, the series ends on a cliffhanger, with Trench standing in the head of the Statue of Liberty and looking out at the ruins of NYC, knowing that he will pursue Enoch and Tallon to the ends of the earth. I have many questions about this -- either Alexander chose to end the series on a vague note, or Leisure Books just cancelled it due to low sales and Alexander never had a chance to compose a proper finale.

As mentioned in my review of Dark Messiah, Alexander recently e-published all five volumes of the series as a single e-book, Phoenix Rising, but unfortunately he didn't take the opportunity to write a new and closing volume for the series. Who knows, though; maybe if enough fans pester him he just might write one.

Even though this is the end of the Phoenix reviews, I'm not yet done with Alexander -- the guy wrote several other men's adventure series under his own name and psuedonyms, and I will be getting to them soon.

Phoenix #4: Metalstorm

Phoenix #4: Metalstorm, by David Alexander
No month stated, 1988 Leisure Books

I get the feeling that David Alexander was growing weary of his Phoenix saga; this penultimate volume, while occasionally heavy on the gory and spectacular violence we've come to expect from the series, is a hodge-podge of various plots and ideas. Metalstorm constantly changes direction from beginning to end, so the reader has no idea what's in store -- usually a good thing, but here it's more of a sign that the author is trying to keep himself entertained.

And can you blame him? The first volume alone was already the most OTT blast of carnage-fueled post-nuclear action ever published; how in the hell could David Alexander top it? The answer is he couldn't. Once you've written a few volumes which feature Magnus "Phoenix" Trench blasting away punks in violent and novel ways you obviously have to stretch things to keep it all original, or at least somewhat fresh. So what Alexander has done here is basically just toss in several ideas that have stricken his fancy.

For one, Metalstorm opens with a flashback to Nazi friggin' Germany, strange enough given that the series so far has occurred in the post-nuke USA of 1989. It takes a while, but this prologue eventually pans out. From there it's to our hero Trench, who still hasn't made it to NYC to find out if his wife and son survived the nuclear blast. In fact, Trench has had to go far out of his way, down through Louisana and on through Texas, to get to New York -- the new government's military is blocking his path, and they of course want Trench dead or alive. So Trench is now working his way through the mutant-filled swamps of Louisiana. After a near-death experience Trench hooks up with Raven, a dark-haired beauty with psychic powers, and her pet wolf Blue.

The three head on into Houston, where Raven wants to find a guy named DeLaCour; Raven explains that as part of her CIA-funded psychic "remote viewing" activities she's learned that a gold-carrying ship crashed somewhere in the gulf. She wants to scrounge up the gold and make off to a place undamaged by the nukes. Phoenix agrees to help but he and Raven are separated by a freak sandstorm moments after entering Houston. Alone again, Trench decides to find Raven -- why he doesn't just head on for NYC is glossed over; he has of course slept with Raven a few times and wants to save her if possible.

From here the novel becomes more like the series we have enjoyed, with Trench blowing away various punks in gory fashion. Houston is run by the fabulously-named Runamok, a gangbanger who has installed VCR technology into the heads of his underlings; with the press of a button Runamok can make people follow his commands, go crazy, or even kill themselves. DeLaCour is one of these sufferers -- it turns out DeLaCour is a big guy with metal plates sewn into half his chest and half his face -- and for new sport Runamok has Trench and DeLaCour fight in "Metalstorm," Runamok's variation on the gladiatorial combats of Imperial Rome.

The novel changes direction again in an ultraviolent sequence in which Trench and his new comrade first must kill legions of attackers with their bare hands, then employ submachine guns on a second batch who come at them on motorcycles. After setting up Runamok Trench and DeLaCour are able to go free -- Runamok has sold Raven to a Gulf-raiding pirate named Havock. With the wolf Blue in tow, the two men head down to Galveston, where Alexander takes the time to rip-off/pay tribute to the famous scene in The Road Warrior where Mad Max handcuffs a dude to a car that's about to blow and hands him a hacksaw.

Plot #3 features Trench and DeLaCour now posing as new members of Havock's nuclear-sub riding pirate crew. Not once, mind you, has Trench even asked DeLaCour how he knows Raven; Alexander just pushes his pawns along the board and makes them follow his orders without question. At length Trench frees Raven and all three of them, along with the wolf, make their escape.

Now plot #4 comes along: Raven admits she was lying all along. The plane that crashed was actually a Nazi ship (aha! the prolouge!) that was transporting an "Atlantean crystal" of supernatural power. Here the novel takes on the fashionings of a survival tale as, while scuba-diving for the wreckage of the Nazi plane, Trench and Raven are attacked by a giant squid and some sharks. At length they find the crystal, which as Raven explains was created in a time before history, furnished as it is with more power than a nuclear arsenal. We are well beyond the gory post-nuke world of the previous novels by this point.

But the pulp sci-fi continues. Havock gets hold of the crystal and, like some sort of Fu Manchu, harnesses its power and starts firing lightning bolts from his fingers and eyes and whatever. But it's anticlimatic because the battle just sort of fizzles and Trench is caught, taken back onto Havock's sub. Havock decides, apropos of nothing yet revealed in the novel, to nuke a city, any city; he decides upon NYC. Trench then finds himself chained Gravity's Rainbow style to a missile about to be launched. But there's Raven, employing her psychic link with Trench at the last moment...

Yeah, this is one slipshod novel. Even the insane gun-porn and inventive gore of the previous installments is mostly absent; it's there to be sure, but toned down. I get the suspicion that Alexander didn't intend this to be an ongoing series. Perhaps Leisure Books talked him into it, who knows. But at any rate the next novel was the last: Metalstorm ends with Trench finally vowing to get to New York City, where he will find his family and square his accounts with Luther Enoch and his sadistic new government. To say I look forward to this finale would be an understatement.

Phoenix #3: Death Quest

Phoenix #3: Death Quest, by David Alexander
No month stated, 1988 Leisure Books

The post-nuke carnage continues in volume #3 of the Phoenix saga, the most action-packed installment yet. Which is really saying something, because they've all been action-packed. And in fact Death Quest, while occasionally as insane, graphic, and lurid as its predecessors, kind of wears thin after a while, being nothing more than one protracted action sequence after another.

When last we saw our hero Magnus "Phoenix" Trench in Ground Zero, he'd been captured by the mercenary forces of "Dark Messiah" Luther Enoch, aka the guy who caused the end of the world. Enoch's head honcho John Tallon trapped our hero, and that novel ended with Trench being escorted away -- Trench is an "Alpha Immune," possibly the only one in existence; he is completely immune to the radiation and biochemical-induced contaminations which plague the rest of mankind. Luther Enoch himself is one step away from becoming a full-on "Contam," kept human only by a biosurvival suit. Enoch wants Trench dead or alive, so he can create vaccines from his immune blood.

But little need to worry about our hero. When we meet Trench in Death Quest he's already got his hands wrapped around the throat of an orderly who is about to cut him up. Killing the man, Trench stumbles about in a "purple haze" of drugs that have been put into his system over the past few weeks of captivity.

Trench then makes his escape from this enemy base: he kills a few merc soldiers, takes the uniform of one of them, sneaks onto a departing cargo plane filled with mercs and weapons, gets discovered halfway through the flight, kills a ton of mercs in a firefight which results in a hole blasted into the plane, jumps out with an M-60, some Uzis, and no parachute, gets in an airborne fight with the one man who escaped the downed plane in a parachute, kills the guy and takes his 'chute, lands in the middle of a pockmarked expanse of Middle America, and is instantly attacked by a group of chopper-riding thugs whom he blasts apart with the M-60. It all goes on for about 40 pages, and it's the best running battle yet in the series, all of it of the caliber one would encounter in a ramped-up '80s action movie. The only problem is, nothing else in Death Quest can match it.

Finding himself in St Louis, Missouri, Trench wastes a few more motorcycle-riding punks before meeting up with an underground group of resistance fighters. Led by Mason Bragdon, a one-time politican whose bid for the presidency was crushed by Luther Enoch years before WWIII, these people are trying to free a technician named Reinhart from a government concentration camp which operates beneath St. Louis's fallen Gateway Arch. Enoch's new government is planning to kill off what remains of the rabble of the American populace, destroying the scum and freaks who live in the "Urban Containment Zones." Bombs, designed by Reinhart, will nuke all of the living organisms from these areas but leave the real estate intact. The operation is codenamed "Cocked Pistol."

Reinhart it develops became sickened with the idea and turned against Enoch. Now he's in this camp, subject to constant torture. The camp honcho is a sadist named Mekkannik, who is identical to Trench's archnemesis John Tallon from the previous two books. (Tallon for whatever reason sits this volume of the series out.) In exchange for his help in freeing Reinhart, Mason Bragdon promises to get Trench to NYC as quickly as possible. Bragdon claims to know underground channels which will make the trip easy for our hero; Trench, remember, is still red-hot to get to NYC to determine if his wife and son are still alive.

What follows is battle scene after battle scene, as Trench leads Bragdon's men on various assaults against Mekkannik and his forces. Death Quest is more of your "typical" post-nuke pulp, with more of a focus on action than the lurid insanity we got in the previous books. To be sure, Trench still kills a ton of people -- in fact he kills more people here than in any of the previous books -- but they're dashed off kills (for Alexander at least), with little of the "he shit his pants and died" schadenfreude of the first two novels.

But then, when Alexander does go to those previous lengths, he does so with relish:

The kill was beautiful in its perfect symmetry. The exploding hollownosed bullets struck in a tight cluster pattern which knocked the SCORF cowboy off his feet with his arms and legs spread and a gaping, bloody hole where his heart, lungs and pancreas used to be.

The corpse landed on the electrified perimeter fence surrounding the Cocked Pistol secure cordon. What had been a vicious killer named Bullock jerked spastically as the high-voltage current cooked the blood in its veins and jolted every muscle into convulsive fibrillations.

The eyes popped out of the sockets, followed by spouts of red vein juice from the flailing, gesticulating thing's ears. The bowels emptied, spurting from the snuffed merc's rectum. Then the body sagged to the ground and lay there smoking.

All of that, three paragraphs worth, for a character we only met one page before. A sick delight of the previous books was the occasional appearance of a Contam, ie mutants very much in the C.H.U.D. mold. Even these things don't appear much in Death Quest, save for one brief but grisly scene where Trench and his team must navigate through an abandoned subway station.

One new thing Alexander adds to the series is a sense of nihilism. Sure, the previous books were nihilistic -- this is a post-nuke pulp, after all -- but here the cynicism and weariness is much more apparent. The entire book is action sequence after action sequence; the only break we get is the occasional bit where Trench will mull over man's inhummanity and sickness. There is an air of futility to the whole novel. However during one of these mulling bits we get a priceless moment where Trench, holding his gun and fantasizing over the vengeance he will get, takes gun-porn to its logical conclusion:

Yes, Phoenix ached to spurt hot, cleansing fire from the muzzle of righteous vengeance held erect and potent at his thigh.

He's talking about his MINIMI M249, of course! It's things like this that place Phoenix above and beyond others of its ilk, the obvious fact that Alexander is having just as much fun writing it as we are having reading it. And again this time out we're of course still treated to tons of gun fetishizing, goofy puns, and rock references -- beyond the "purple haze" bit there's also a Grace Jones-type Amazon who fights Trench to the death while she sings ? and the Mysterians's "96 Tears."

So even though Death Quest lacks a certain something that its predecessors had, it still opens with one hell of a protracted action sequence, and it still has that same gleeful sadism about it, just to a lesser extent.

Phoenix #2: Ground Zero

Phoenix #2: Ground Zero, by David Alexander
No month stated, 1987 Leisure Books

I'm all about delayed gratification, but when it came to the second volume of David Alexander's post-nuke Phoenix saga, I couldn't wait. Dark Messiah, the first installment of this five-volume series, was the most OTT thing I've yet read, so it makes sense that the only thing that could top it would be this second installment. Yes, Ground Zero goes to the same insane lengths as its predecessor, sometimes even further.

The first thing we notice is this second volume is longer than the first. Alexander accordingly gives it a broader story; Dark Messiah, great as it was, went down with the mentality of a violent cartoon in many respects, with a simple storyline of action and vengeance. With Ground Zero the series takes on the nature of a picaresque; you'd figure protagonist Magnus "Phoenix" Trench would be heading straight from San Francisco to NYC to find his wife and son -- to ensure they survived the thermonuclear exchange which ravaged the US in Dark Messiah -- but here we pick up with him a few months after that previous volume, and he's only made his way into Nevada.

Trench might be in a hurry to find his loved ones, but Alexander isn't -- he wants to take his hero on a protracted journey across the blasted, sadistic, post-nuke USA. We learned last time out that the Russians dosed their nukes with biochemicals, which resulted in instant mutants nicknamed "Contams;" even those survivors who haven't contracted the full-blown Contam virus are still affected in some ways, usually with minor scarring or whatever. Only a handful of people are "Immunes," ie people completely unaffected by the biochemicals or the radiation. You guessed it: Trench is an Immune, and as such he's a wanted man.

The battered US government, now under the control of Luther Enoch, the "dark messiah" psychopath who orchestrated the war, has offered bounty on any and all Immunes. The idea is to cut them up and see what it is that makes them Immune, so an antidote can be created. Enoch himself has been infected by the virus; only a robotic suit keeps him from becoming a full-blown Contam, and he now commands his forces from his underground survival bunker (which we're now told is in Virginia; the previous novel implied that it was the more-unexpected West Virginia...but I guess this is incidental in the post-nuke US). Long story short, roving bands of bounty hunters scour the country, seeking out Immunes. Dead or alive.

Having dropped off the 15 year-old prostitute September Song in California, Trench now travels alone, armed as always with a variety of submachine guns and his trusty MINIMI M249. He stops in Trinity, Nevada, for provisions, fuel, and ammo; despite only being six months out from the nuclear war, the city has already become a Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome sort of wasteland, a shantytown of mohawked punks and armored car-riding warriors. Bounty hunters detect Trench's immune status via handy but hidden scanners, and soon enough the whole town's after him, leading to an endless and gory chase sequence.

After killing pretty much everyone, Trench himself nearly becomes a meal for a pack of Contams. He's saved by the appearance of a flamethrower-wielding midget named Big Wally; Trench laughs at the spectacle, much to the midget's chagrin. But then, a self-mocking vibe runs throughout Ground Zero. For here is a novel that isn't afraid to poke fun at itself, or even its protagonist:

"You know where I can score some weapons and ammo?" Phoenix asked Big Wally.

The midget said he did. "But you want a beer first, right? Then you want to get fucked, I bet. Well, pardnuh, I know this woman, she's got such a fine --"

"Wrong," Trench said cutting Big Wally off. "Iron first, beer later, pussy last."

"Can I quote you on that, big guy?" Big Wally asked, shaking his head. "I mean, no shit, people must tell you all the time you're a regular fount of wisdom, right?"

Big Wally takes Trench into Vegas, which operates much the same, even in the post-apocalypse: people come to the neon-lit streets to wager bets and make "n-bucks," however now they bet on various life-or-death contests. The city is controlled feudal-style by "The Sheik of Las Vegas," a former con who now rules the roost from his penthouse suite in the battered Caesar's Palace. The biggest event the Sheik runs is the Murder Marathon, patterned after the chariot races of Imperial Rome, only with armed and armored muscle cars replacing the chariots. This race goes on between Vegas and the outlying cities, a veritable joust that determines which city reigns supreme. Losing his best racer in a barfight, the Sheik catches wind that the already-legendary Phoenix is in town, and determines to draft him as his new racer in the Murder Marathon.

Meanwhile, John Tallon, the sadist in command of Luther Enoch's mercenary army, has assembled a special team of mercs to hunt down Trench. The best of the best, these men have been put through instense trials over the past months, to ensure their ferocity; Tallon was bested by Trench in the closing pages of the previous novel, and is now fanatical to get revenge. Soon enough he gets wind that Trench is in Vegas, and has been there for a while -- having set the man up, the Sheik of Vegas has succeeded in making Trench his new Murder Marathon racer. Tallon works with the Sheik to get Trench once the race has been run.

The Murder Marathon sequence goes down like an '80s take on the climactic scene from Ben-Hur, with cheering crowds and competitors dying in spectacles of gore. Trench of course emerges victorious, only to discover that Tallon's forces are coming for him; after a chase through the desert, Trench crashes and blacks out, figuring this is the end. What follows is a bizarre sequence which has nothing to do with the rest of the novel: Trench awakens in an underground "paradise" of New Age-spouting hippies, living in an abandoned nuclear silo beneath the Nevada desert. And to add to the cliche; Trench finds himself suffering from amnesia.

The whole sequence comes off like the opening half of Logan's Run meets Beneath the Planet of the Apes. The hippies are led by a gorgeous lady named Elektra-Yang who of course instantly makes Trench her own; lots of sex scenes ensue. Meanwhile we discover that Contams lurk in the hidden bowls of the silo...there is lots of talk about "Blast-Off and Re-Entry," in which pregnant hippies will return to the surface world to preach their lesson of peace to the nuked masses. It all culminates in one of the most tasteless, sick sequences I've ever read, made all the more sick in that it's so incidental to the novel itself. It's as if Alexander was just trying to out-gross himself, and he succeeded; this is some gut-churning stuff for sure.

With the deus ex machina reappearance of Big Wally, Trench -- who has now regained his memory -- is able to escape back up to the surface world. Only to find himself waltzing right into the hornet's nest, as Tallon and his men have lain here in wait, realizing the only place Trench could've escaped to was that nuclear silo. Ground Zero ends with another of those huge action sequences, with Trench and Big Wally taking on Tallon's elite mercenary squad in the abandoned streets of a nearby ghost town (this series is all about cliche piled atop cliche, but somehow it works!).

Everything I loved in Dark Messiah is here: the gun-porn, the ultra-gore, the purple-prosed sex, the dark comedy. The action is spectacular and violent, even though it's really all simple: some guy usually just shoots at Trench, who "somersaults" out of the way and then fires back. But in Alexander's hands it becomes a sort of hyperkinetic poetry:

Crimson spouted from the shattered base of the skull as a longburst of 185-grain HV steel-jacketed wadcutters screaming from a Steyr MPi69 SMG outfitted with a SIONICS silencer struck the target's skull, buzzsawing it into a thousand jagged fragments.

The headless corpse pitched crazily forward. Its weapon, an UZI .45 ACP Micro, clattered from lifeless fingers. Brain-matter cocktail slopped from the open chalice of the skull, spattering the dirty boots. The corpse lurched onto its knees, then keeled over on its side. Firing nerve ends jerked the legs and arms of the torso, giving it the appearance of some gigantic earthworm as it crawled forward leaving a trail of bloody slime.

I mean, the whole thing reads like it comes from the pen of a sex and violence-obsessed teenager with no conscience. Take for example this bit from a later scene, where Trench sits in a stadium full of people in Vegas and watches two women, Mad Maxine and Piltdown Annie, fight one another to the death:

Maxine's urogenital system geysered from the spectacular exit wound in her upper back as the three-round burst of .45 ACP slugs ripped from the muzzle of the steel phallus jutting obscenely from Piltdown's belt.

I should mention that all of this occurs after Piltdown has strapped on said .45-firing "phallus" and first inserted it into various of Maxine's orifices before finally jamming it into her "rectum," awaiting the audience's decision on whether she should fire or not. As stated, she does. But what makes this entire pages-long sequence so funny -- and serves as more proof as to the self-mocking vibe of the series -- is that it ends with this deadpan punchline:

Magnus Trench was sickened.

Yes, it's only after we have read endlessly graphic material, about urogenital systems geysering from spectacular exit wounds and heads shattering like cantaloupes as they blow into a thousand fragments, that we are informed our hero is "sickened" by the events.

David Alexander plays this game throughout Ground Zero and it's a joy to behold. For a long time I've searched for a men's adventure series that could equal the over-the-top vibe of TNT -- and let me tell you, Phoenix doesn't just equal it, it surpasses it. And we're only two volumes in!

Phoenix #1: Dark Messiah

Phoenix #1: Dark Messiah, by David Alexander
No month stated, 1987 Leisure Books

Here's another of those action novels I bought as a kid but never read. Actually, I did try to read it, but as I recall I found it boring at the time, and only made it through the first few chapters. That I found this book "boring" now makes me laugh, as Dark Messiah is the most ultra-violent, graphic, lurid, nutzoid novel I've ever read. Yes, it's even more extreme than any of the previous novels I've reviewed on this blog. I loved it and place it in the highest echelon of men's adventure trash. It goes over the top in many and spectacular ways, over and over again.

This was the start of a five-volume series, and it's funny that the cover presents the book as just another action novel, when in reality this is the kind of book your parents would ban you from reading if they knew what lurked inside. You name it, it happens in Dark Messiah. It's like David Alexander made a checklist of what was hot in the current action-novel marketplace, and ensured to include all of it in his novel. Gun-porn? Graphic violence? Purple-prose sex? Horrific acts of mutant rape and defilement? It's all here, and it's all taken to the 10th degree. (And speaking of that cover, don't you love how the artist so blatantly based the character on Bruce Willis -- only with blond hair?)

Picking up in 1989, a fated year if there ever was one in the world of Post-Nuke Pulps, Dark Messiah introduces our protagonist, the impressively-named Magnus Trench (!), a former 'Nam special forces type who now lives a plushy corporate-executive life. Back in the 'Nam Trench was nicknamed Phung Hoang by a native, who remarked over Trench's similarity to that mythical resurrecting bird. Camping in Golden Gate national park, Trench survives the thermonuclear blast which levels nearby San Francisco. He emerges from the destruction as the veritable "Phoenix" he was once nicknamed.

The war this time out was actually started by Luther Enoch, the "Dark Messiah" of the title: a world-famous Christian preacher who believes mankind is soiled and must be destroyed so that it can start over. Enoch as you can see is incredibly twisted, and indeed it is only his people who must take over this newborn world. Somehow he's managed to employ a vast army of mercenaries, all of them outfitted in survival gear and living in underground facilities to survive the blast.

Enoch's even managed to ensnare the acting President -- the novel opens with the actual President getting killed by Muslim fanatics, in another of Enoch's ploys -- and thus launches nuclear war on the USSR. The Russians retaliate, detroying vast stretches of the US, but the reality of it is, the Commies for once aren't the villains of this particular Post-Nuke Pulp. True, they launched the thermonuclear attack, but they did so only after they themselves were attacked by the US -- and again, all of it was the maneuverings of Luther Enoch.

But all this is just the framework for Alexander to enthrall us with countless over-the-top action scenes. SanFran is now a Road Warrior-esque ruin, with leather-clad gangs holding sway over the battered populace. I should mention that Dark Messiah runs at a breathless pace; within a few pages of the initial nuclear blasts we already have roving gangs, pitched urban warfare, and even "Contams," ie mutated creatures who were once human but now only live to rape and kill (or vice versa). The Russians you see also launched biochemical warfare with their nukes, thus explaining the instant mutants.

This accelerated pace is a bit funny at times; Trench has a wife and a prepubescent son back in New York City, and after the nuke blast is rabid to somehow cross the country and find out if they're still alive. But then the next page he's hunkering down with an ATF agent he just met and re-learning how to use various firearms! If anything is missing from Dark Messiah, it would be characterization, but then, how much characterization was in the average '80s action movie? Alexander's priority here is to thrill, and boy does he succeed.

After several pitched battles, Trench eventually learns the score: Luther Enoch and his army of mercenaries have caused this vast destruction. Trench declares himself the Phoenix reborn and vows to destroy them. After saving a pretty blue-eyed Asian girl named September Song -- a 15-year-old prostitue, no less -- from the clutches of a gang of street punks named the Pagans, Trench meets up with the Genesis conclave in SanFran. This is a batch of still-human survivors who are working to preserve the memories of the human race and are retrofitting various trucks and cars into a rolling armada, so they can escape to a patch of the US they've heard was unaffacted by the nuclear blasts. Again, all of this is happening like two weeks out from the nuclear war.

There follows many protracted scenes of gun battles, kung-fu fights, scenes of Trench and September Song getting friendly in graphic depiction, Luther Enoch acting crazy from his below-ground fortress (in West Virginia!), and various twisted bits including PCP-riddled Contams who only want to rape and kill.

What's funny is that every few pages Trench will sermonize to himself over the barbarity of mankind, how this nuclear war was a long time coming, given man's inhummanity to man, and etc. He even finds time to blame heavy metal as more evidence of mankind's self-destructive impulses. And then, just a handful of pages after each of these mini-sermons, we'll be treated to incredibly detailed and graphic depictions of Trench blasting off the faces of various gang members or mercenaries.

It goes without saying then that it's all very tongue-in-cheek. You can tell Alexander is having a blast as he writes this -- let alone the never-ending batch of military acronyms and fetishistic gun detail, but also the various puns and nicknames he devises for the antagonists and the firearms. He even manages to sneak in a Beatles reference during another ultragore sequence ("yellow matter custard").

I could ramble on as usual, but this is clearly an instance where providing examples will do a much better job.

Gun-porn (masked as dialog, no less):

Rawlings took the MINIMI from Phoenix. "This baby's another story entirely. It's capable of firing seventy rounds a second, takes SS 109 caliber 5.56mm FN ammo. That's NATO standard-issue, state-of-the-art, high tech and full auto. In short, the best."

Graphic violence, as Phoenix blasts apart one of the Pagan streetgang:

The large intestine spilled from the jagged hole in the Pagan's side like a coil of pink sausages in a sauce of blood garnished with skeletal fragments. The heart fell out of the ripped open chest cavity, pumping furiously as it hung from the blood-spurting coronary artery. The gun arm was blown completely off, as arterial tubes dangled from the ragged shoulder stump squirting death seltzer.

And the ultra-violence isn't limited to gunplay; witness the devestation Phoenix renders to another of the unfortunate Pagans, with a single kick:

Phoenix sidestepped the swing as its momentum jerked the Pagan around, and roundhouse kicked into the lower back area on the follow through, shattering the punk's spinal cord and shooting fragments of lumbar vertebrae through his kidneys like small bore bullets. His bladder exploded, spraying his lungs with hot urine. The Pagan vomited up chunks of his stomach and flopped over backward, kicking his legs in the air as he shit his pants and died.

Mutant madness:

The Contam who was on top of her scrambled to his feet and rushed across the narrow pit. He towered over the tiny woman, and with one pawlike hand slammed her against the wall, splitting open her head. Brains and cerebrospinal fluid spurted from the jagged wound.

Tallon excitedly watched as the Contam, his huge erection glistening red with blood, leaped on the woman, entered her, and pounded violently.

Yes, this is certainly brain-rotting stuff. It's trash of the most glorious kind, and I can't wait to continue on with the series. Expect to see more of David Alexander's work reviewed here, including the various action novels he wrote under psuedonyms. For here is a guy who knew how to deliver the lurid goods, and in spades.

Bonus note: All five volumes of the Phoenix series have been released as single e-book, titled Phoenix Rising, for those of you who are into that sort of thing.