Doomsday Warrior #19: America’s Final Defense

Doomsday Warrior #19: America’s Final Defense, by Ryder Stacy

July, 1991  Zebra Books

Well friends, this is a bittersweet moment – it’s the final volume of Doomsday Warrior! I can’t believe it’s finally come to the end; this series has been part of my life for 14 years, now, and it’s hard to believe I’ve finally read the entire thing. 

Of course, it only took Ryder Syvertsen seven years to write the series, which is half the time it took me to read it, but honesty – as I’ve documented here again and again in the reviews – Syvertsen lost interest in Doomsday Warrior long before it ended. I’m happy to say that he drummed up his enthusiasm for America’s Final Defense; none of the “I’m sick of this” vibe is evident in this last book, and for once Syvertsen doesn’t rip off most recent volumes…instead, he gives a sort of microcosm of the series entire, serving up all the staples of previous installments in this final volume. 

Before writing this review, I went back and read my pedantic, overly-comprehensive reviews of the previous books in the series. And abruptly I remembered why I’d made them so comprehensive in the first place: because I knew the day would come when I got to this last volume of Doomsday Warrior, and I’d no doubt want to refresh my memory on the series before I wrote my review. The prophecy has been fulfilled! 

Seriously though, Ryder Syvertsen clearly intended this to be the finale, as he was gearing up for it in the final pages of the previous volume. Syvertsen has always played fast and loose with the chronology of the series; I see in my reviews that “2089 AD” was frequently mentioned as the date in the earliest books, and then later we were told that “2096 AD” was the date. We’re told in this final volume that the year is now “2099 AD,” and Ted “Doomsday Warrior” Rockson and his comrades often reflect on things that happened “ten years ago.” 

What’s curious is that Syvertsen frequently refers to those earliest books, but jettisons most all references to recent things – for example, in the previous volume we were told that Detroit Green was the official representative to the USSR, and Schertantsky had returned to live in the USSR. Also, Archer had retired to live in the countryside. All of that stuff is never mentioned once in America’s Final Defense; the “series reset” that ran through the series is here, too; when the novel starts, the entire Rock team is operating out of Century City, same as they were way back in the the first volume. No mention is made of Detroit having been a rep, or Archer having been retired. In other words, nothing has changed – even though everything changed in the most recent volumes. 

Well, one thing has stayed the same – Syvertsen, around the ninth volume, decided he was sick of the “USSR invading the USA” storyline of the earliest books and decided to focus on other things. Reading my reviews of the earliest volumes, I was surprised to see how many subplots were dropped as the series progressed, like for example the political stuff between Zhabnov, the depraved ruler of the conquered US, and Killov, the KGB personification of evil. All that stuff was brushed aside, as were the frequent cutovers to Russia where we could read about supreme ruler Vassily and his Ethiopian manservant/best friend. 

Another thing, which I copiously noted in my reviews, was the removal of all the goofy, purple-prosed (but exceedingly explicit) sexual material. The earliest Doomsday Warrior novels were ultra-detailed on both the sex and the violence fronts, but gradually both of these factors withered away…for reasons I’d love to know. I wonder if Syvertsen realized that kids were reading his series and purposely decided to make the books less explicit; or maybe he himself had a kid and didn’t want junior to start reading them and think his dad was a psychotic pervert. Or maybe the sex and violence had been forced on Syvertsen by the publisher and later on they had an editorial change…who knows. 

Whatever the reason, the removal of the dirty stuff is one of the things that remains consistent with this final volume; in other words, Syvertsen did not pay true hommage to his own series in that regard, as he did with practically every other aspect – seriously, America’s Final Defense is essentially every volume of Doomsday Warrior rolled into one, save for the lack of XXX sex, gory violence, and appearances by any Russian villains other than Killov. 

It also features a big return of the psychedelic aspect of the series; indeed, this is the most psychedelic volume since #3: The Last American, which I believe was my favorite volume of the series. As with that early volume, there are parts of America’s Final Defense that are like a blacklight poster in literary form – one can only imagine the incredible illustrations gifted modern-day artist Alexis Ziritt could do with this material. 

Another thing I noticed in my pendantic reviews is my frequent declaration that Doomsday Warrior was essentially an R-rated Saturday morning cartoon. Again, this is entirely true for America’s Final Defense, which brushes reality to the side with the same eagerness that previous volumes did. I mean folks in this one Rockson and team go up to space, again, and end up fighting ancient alien gods that have lurched out of Erich von Daniken, during the course of which Ted Rockson is imbued with ancient wisdom that makes him “a million times smarter than before.” 

As mentioned, Syvertsen only picks up a few things from the finale of the previous book – despite which we learn, fairly late in the game, that all this is occurring one year after the events of American Dream Machine. Otherwise the series reset is in full force, and after an incongruous prologue, in which the setting for the series is established for us – as if we haven’t been reading the previous 18 damn books – we have an action opening in which Rockson and his forces try to finally take out Killov in a running battle.  Another interesting thing is that Syvertsen describes all of the main characters, for the first time in who knows how long; topical details on what Rockson looks like, and etc.  Again, quite strange, given that this is the 19th volume! 

A lot of important series stuff is mentioned in passing – like how America has worked out an agreement with Vassilly in the USSR which sees both countries destroying all of their nuclear warhead stashes(!). In other words, the entire impetus of the series is over and done with, and Syvertsen didn’t even cover any of it in the narrative, which indicates how little invested he was in Doomsday Warrior at this point. Indeed, one gets the impression that he was more into his concurrent series Mystic Rebel (which I collected years ago but held off on reading until I finished this series), what with the focus on New Agey concepts. Oh and speaking of which, there are all these random asides in America’s Last Defense, like how shunning fat in your diet could have health implications, and also a big part of the finale involves Rockson’s understanding that both science and mysticism should be embraced – very, very New Age stuff, and I’m assuming the Mystic Rebel series is rife with that sort of thing. 

Rockson is nearly killed in this opening, and Killov wasn’t there anyway (it was an imposter!), and Rockson is flown back to Century City’s hospital…where Syvertsen introduces an entirely new character to the series, for some reason: Charity Birdell, a “buxom beautiful nurse” in Century City who hero-worships Rockson and sees this as her opportunity to screw him. We get a refreshing return of that ‘60s vibe, gone for so many volumes, when Charity has Rockson smoke a “chi-stick” as part of his healing process. Indeed, Rockson is instructed to take “two tokes twice a day!” 

But brace yourself: the Charity-Rockson conjugation happens off-page, despite Syvertsen dropping kinky details before it occurs, like for example “[Charity] nearly came in her panties” when Rockson smiles at her, and whatnot. (Also we get the goofy tidbit that Charity has tattoos of “all forty-six presidents” on her body, with one of them hidden, and of course Rockson finds it…!) Actually, Syvertsen was doing this in the most recent volumes, too, so it appears that he was fine with writing ribald dialog and such, but when it came to the actual tomfoolery he decided to cut to black…a decided change from the early books, which left nothing unexplored. 

This is especially strange as, again just like in the most recent books, Rockson gets laid a lot in America’s Final Defense. Shortly after being with Charity, Rockson hooks up with his “girlfriend” Rona, the statuesque mutant redhead babe who was the main female character in this series once upon a time, before being shunted off into the narrative woodwork. I think the last volume she actually featured in was #6: American Rebellion, where she was worshiped as a post-nuke Eva Braun, a sequence that is actually mentioned here in America’s Final Defense; again, Syvertsen (and his characters) frequently reminisce about previous volumes, all the sign you could need that the author intended this to be the final story of the saga. 

But ever since then, Rona has been shunted aside, only given a line or two of dialog and having off-page sex with Rockson…and the same is true, here. Rona has more off-page lovin’ with Rockson, then the two are dancing to Judas Priest in her room (we’re told a Judas Priest CD was “recently unearthed” and is now all the rage in Century City), but Dr. Schecter comes along to take Rockson away, and that’s all we see of Rona. 

As for Rockson’s other “girlfriend,” Kim, she doesn’t appear at all in America’s Final Defense. This is especially galling, as my fellow sleazebags will recall the awesome premise upon which previous volume American Dream Machine ended: Kim and Rona had agreed to “settle their petty jealous differences” and, just as the novel friggin’ ended, they went together to Rockson’s room to double-team him(!). Well, fellow sleazebags, this little incident is not mentioned at all in America’s Final Defense, and we are told that Kim is off in some other city, handling business for her father, the newly-elected president of the (Re)United States (and he doesn’t appear in this volume, either). 

I’ve long suspected that Syvertsen had no interest in Kim – perhaps she was a creation of Jan Stacy, Syvertsen’s writing partner on the first four volumes – and her lack of appearance in this book would indicate that. Looking back on my reviews, I see that, even in Kim’s infrequent appearances, she’s barely had any dialog and has not contributed much to the overall storyline. But at least she’s mentioned this time around. 

That’s it for Rockson’s love life – at least in Century City. As America’s Final Defense continues, he has sex with many other women, from an Amazonian queen (a recurring series staple character) to a French space-babe. This is all standard for the series; I only mention it so as to confirm that there is no resolution whatsoever to the Rockson-Rona-Kim love triangle, which was so important to the storyline many volumes ago. Again, Syvertsen has moved on and lost interest, so reading this 19-volume series in one go would no doubt make for a bumpy ride. 

Not to mention a repetitive one; it’s been clear for a long time that Syvertsen is totally aware that his books all follow a template, and by god he’s sticking to that template, and he does so here again in this final volume. So we have the inciting incident: Schecter informs Rockson that a massive asteroid was just discovered, and it’s headed right for Earth and will destroy Earth in three weeks…headed right into Earth’s orbit due to Earth’s orbit being affected by the nuke blasts a century before. 

There follows that annoying mainstay of Doomsday Warrior: the interminable “democracy in action” bit as the Century City council argues for and against Rockson and team going out to save the day. It’s all just so time-wasting, but Syvertsen goes on and on with it regardless, leading to the inevitable conclusion in which the vote is “No” (due to political infighting reasons), but Rockson goes off anyway. From there to the other staple: surviving the mutated flaura and fauna of this post-nuke world. 

It’s just as juvenile as previous volumes: there’s an unused spaceship not too far from Century City, so Rockson and his usual team plus a few redshirts are to go there, fly it into space, and then blast the asteroid so that its path is changed. So like I’ve said in every previous review, total cartoon type of stuff. And meanwhile Killov, in the Inca ruins where he’s worshipped as a god, comes across ancient documentation of this very asteroid, which once upon a time visited earth and imparted some of its alien knowledge here – there was a high-tech city on the asteroid – and he plans to go into space himself and get this ancient alien technology. All so he can kill Rockson, of course. 

The only loose ends Syvertsen is bothered with tying up concern the Glowers, those superbeings who have infrequently appeared in the series, most notably in the third volume. Rockson eventually learns that the “main” Glower, Turquoise Spectrum, has died, and after a very psychedelic “astral commune” bit, Rockson teams up with a new Glower pal, not to mention an “interdimensional being” named Pruzac Ephedrine, a “full-figured” and beautiful half human/half Glower hybrid. She features in a lot of very out-there, psychedelic stuff in the novel, particularly the finale. 

Rockson and team suffer one setback after another, with Syvertsen clearly just winging it as he goes along – I mean, the old NASA spaceship is surrounded by Amazons, who insist on the Rock team banging five women each in one night, but Rockson himself is chosen by the beautiful, green-haired Queen – cue more off-page sex. (“The green-head was hellfire in bed,” and etc.) But the spaceship is in poor state and can’t fly; no problem, because the Glowers whip up a new spaceship for Rockson, and with it they head into space! 

Syvertsen here really ties back to #14: American Death Orbit, with Rockson again hooking up with the “space Frenchies” he met in that earlier volume. And once again we get a lot of mention of those “space Nazis,” without actually seeing any of them. Rockson here gets laid again, courtesy a French space girl “barely out of her teens;” this is Rockson’s last conjugation in the entire series, and again Syvertsen leaves the sleaze vague: “[they] made passionate, gravity-free love” being the extent of it. 

The asteroid is called Karrak by Schecter, and Rockson lands on it in the finale, propelled by visions he’s been given by Turqoise Spectrum, who appears Obi-Wan Kenobi-style to Rockson when Rockson needs him. But Killov is here, too, leading to a bizarre bit where both Rockson and Killov deal with ancient alien technology, one of them to save Earth, the other to destroy it. In the process Killov transforms himself into a nine foot tall, three-eyed ancient alien warrior called Mu-Temm, and he also has an ancient alien device that allows him to “think away” any weapons that are used against him. 

There follows an endless battle between Rockson and “Mu-Temm” that just goes on and on, like the Rockson-Chrome battle back in volume #9. But Rockson gets the shit beaten out of him by this transformed Killov, to the point that Rockson actually weeps in frustration. It’s all very much in a Biblical motif, with Rockson the slingshot-baring David getting the better of Killov’s Goliath.  But it is clear again that Ryder Syvertsen was a fan of Total Recall; previous volumes indicated that he was inspired by the Schwarzenegger film, but this one really brings it home.  From visions involving a pyramid on an alien planet to even the image of Killov’s eyes bulging from their sockets due to the pressure of space, it is clear that Syvertsen was influenced by that movie. 

Then we get the most psychedelic sequence yet in the series, with Rockson going into an ancient pyramid, again following Glower visions, and being imparted with all that knowledge – his memory now even “going back billions of years.” When he comes out of it, he starts talking in mystical phrases that are so profound that Chen insists on recording them. It’s all kind of cool but just totally unlike what one might have expected this series to conclude on. SPOILER ALERT, but the finale of Doomsday Warrior sees Rockson, recovering from his sudden knowledge and intelligence increase, telling the others to leave the dead Killov on the asteroid (Rockson having strangled Killov to death)…and that’s it. We are not told of the voyage home; the story – and series – ends right there, with Rockson declaring that the asteroid is a dead place for dead things. 

Actually, it sort of ends there. We are treated to an epilogue in which Syvertsen strives for a sort of quasi-metaphysical vibe, but it instead comes off as vacuous. It’s a thousand years in the future and a nameless woman attempts to become one with an apple tree, then there’s some gibberish about “the man from the sea,” and the gist seems to be that the two characters are reborn, immortal enemies. It has nothing to do with anything that came in the series before, but then it’s possible I just missed the profundities Syvertsen was trying to bestow. 

And that, folks, is that – the 19-volume saga of Doomsday Warrior comes to a close. What a weird trip it was, too. To be honest, I’d forgotten most of the earlier volumes, so I’m glad my reviews were so pedantic. I can’t say I’ll ever read these books again, but you never know. In the end, I will think of this series in a positive light; it’s just too goofy – and the earliest volumes so outrageously violent and explicit – that you can’t help but like it. Yet at the same time, Ryder Syvertsen’s disinterest in the series was very pronounced in the later books, and one gets the feeling he should’ve ended it many volumes ago.  But clearly he realized that more effort was needed for this final volume; I particularly appreciated how he gave each member of the Rock Team a moment to shine. 

Next I need to get back to the C.A.D.S. series, another post-nuke pulp Syvertsen was writing at the same time. And also I’ll now get to his Mystic Rebel books, which judging from these final volumes of Doomsday Warrior, with their focus on New Age concepts, was probably more the sort of thing Syvertsen wanted to be writing. So maybe he was a little more invested in that series than he was in Doomsday Warrior.

Doomsday Warrior #18: American Dream Machine

Doomsday Warrior #18: American Dream Machine, by Ryder Stacy

July, 1990  Zebra Books

What can I say about this penultimate volume of Doomsday Warrior? That it’s incredibly stupid? That it’s the worst volume of the series yet? That it’s a sort-of rip off of Total Recall with a little Dune thrown in? That Ryder Syvertsen has clearly stuck a fork in the series and has entirely lost all interest in it? No matter what I say, I won’t be able to properly convey how ultimately terrible American Dream Machine really is. 

Well, one positive thing I can say is that it doesn’t rip off the previous volume, which itself was a ripoff of the volume before that. For this one, Syvertsen goes way back to the tenth volume to rip himself off; for, just as that tenth volume was an “imaginary story” that had no bearing on the overarching storyline, so too is American Dream Machine an “imaginary story” that, for the most part, has nothing whatsoever to do with Doomsday Warrior. This volume also has the first real appearance of Kim Langford in the series since…well, since that imaginary story in #10: American Nightmare, I think, with the additional similarity that the “Kim” who shows up in American Dream Machine is also an imaginary figure, same as she was in that earlier “imaginary story.” 

Turns out I was correct when I guessed that there’d be no pickup from the closing events of the previous volume, which as we’ll recall ended with Rockson and his team still not having reached a neighboring city, where they hoped to gather resources needed to rebuild a ravaged Century City. There was also some stuff about a bunch of new recruits Rockson had to train. Absolutely none of that is even mentioned here. When we meet Rockson, he’s flying a commandeered “Sov” fighter jet, soaring west to meet up with pal Archer, whom Rockson hasn’t seen “in three years.” 

Yes, friends, three years have passed since the previous volume; it’s now “around 2096,” we’re told (Syvertsen has also thrown in the towel on pinning down when exactly the books take place), and boy it turns out a whole bunch of stuff has happened since last time. For one, the US and the USSR has entered a truce, with all occupying Soviet forces having withdrawn from the United States(!), though we’re informed that there are still guerrilla bands of Russian fighters out there who haven’t gotten the message. Chief among them would be Killov, who we are told without question is still alive (though he doesn’t appear this time), and also Zhabnov, onetime ruler of Moscow who hasn’t been seen for several volumes; both men have a mad-on hatred for Rockson and are determined to kill him. 

Not only that, but we’re told that President Langford is now the official, uh, President of the reformed US, but he’s so old and frail he’s in a wheelchair now…and gee, the reader must only assume it’s due to fallout from the brainwashing torture he endured back in #16: American Overthrow, a subplot Syvertsen never did follow up on. Also, we’re told that Kim, Langford’s hotstuff daughter, is in the reformed DC with her dad, where she plans parties and stuff – and Rockson figures he’ll “never see her again.” As for Rockson’s other “true love,” Amazonian redhead Rona, she too is out of the picture, off in some other liberated city. We also get the random note that Detroit, the black member of the Rock Squad, has been assigned by Langford to be the Ambassador to Russia, and given that Premiere Vassily is now so old and incompetent, the USSR is actually being run by his Ethiopian servant, Rahallah (who also doesn’t appear – we’re just told all this stuff). So, Rockson muses as he flies along in his fighter jet, the world is essentially run by two black men: Detroit and Rahallah. 

But man, all this is well established at the point that this story begins…it’s news to us readers, but it’s been Rockson’s world for the past three years. Indeed, things are so slow now that mountain man Archer plain left Century City three years ago, bored with the lack of fighting…and Rockson just heard from him for the first time, having received an urgent fax from Archer that Archer needs help! So there are a lot of problems here already…I mean, Archer has ever and always been an idiot, his bumbling stupidity a constant joke in the series. How the hell did this dude learn how to send a fax? And for that matter, since when did he even know how to write? 

Beyond that, though…I mean Rockson receives this urgent “Help!” message, and just all by himself hops in this “Sov” fighter and heads for Archer’s remote destination. No backup, no “new Rock Team” (we also learn Russian guy Sherasnksy has gone back to Russia…but Chen and McLaughlin are still in Century City, at least), just Rockson going solo for no other reason than plot convenience. And even here we get the series mandatory “man against nature” stuff, with Rockson crash landing in rough terrain and then having to escape a giant mutant spider…just “yawn” type stuff after 18 volumes of it. 

The entire concept of Archer having been gone for three years isn’t much followed up on; Rockson and the big mountain man are soon drinking beer and shooting the shit in the bowling alley Archer now calls home(!). There’s also a new character to the series – the absurdly-named Zydeco Realness, an elfin “Techno-survivor,” ie yet another new mutant race, this one having survived the past century in silos, hence their small nature and weird manner of speaking. Also, Ryder Syvertsen has discovered the word “diss,” which mustv’e come into the parlance around this time (I probably learned the word from the Beastie Boys at the time); Zydeco’s people are obsessed with being “dissed,” and will take affront if they even think they are being dissed. Rockson has never heard the word before, and Syvertsen has it that it’s a word the Tecno-survivors have created themselves. 

The titular “Dream Machine” is a device the Techno-survivors have created for people who are about to die…sort of like that bit in Soylent Green where you could have like a sensory experience on your way through the out door. So off the trio go, riding over 50 miles of rough terrain – but wait, I forgot! Rockson actually gets laid…indeed, quite a bit in this novel. But again demonstrating the marked difference between this and the earliest volumes, all the sex is off-page…well, most of it. The few tidbits we get here and there are so vague as to be laughable when compared to the juicy descriptions found many volumes ago. But Rockson makes his way through a few green-skinned wild women, of the same tribe he last, er, mated with back in…well, I think it was the ones way back in #3: The Last American. 

It's curious that Syvertsen often refers to earlier volumes in American Dream Machine, more so than in any past installment; we are reminded of how long ago certain events were. But then he goes and makes the rest of the novel completely unrelated from the series itself. Anyway, I realized toward the end of the book that Syvertsen was indulging in this reminiscence because he must have known the end was near, as by the end of the book you know we’re headed for a series resolution. However I’m getting ahead of myself. As mentioned instead of any series continuity, we instead get a bonkers plot that rips off Total Recall to a certain extent…which must’ve been quite a trick given that the movie hadn’t come out yet when Syvertsen was writing his manuscript. Or maybe it was the Total Recall novelization, published in hardcover in 1989, that inspired him. Or maybe it was just a coincidence. Or maybe it was just the original Philip K. Dick story. 

So Rockson gets in the Dream Machine, which looks like a big metal coffin, and sure enough as soon as he’s under none other than Zhabnov and his forces storm in – completely coincidentally! – and they take everyone prisoner. And when Zhabnov discovers Rockson in this machine, he has the Techo-survivors turn the dream into a nightmare. For the next hundred-plus pages we’ll be in this nightmare world, which is where the similarity to previous volume American Nightmare comes in…just as with that one, this one too will be a “nightmare” with no bearing on the main plot of the series, with even Rockson himself a completely different character. 

That’s because he’s now “Niles Rockson,” a wealthy playboy living in a penthouse in NYC in the pre-nuke 1980s, enjoying a romantic time with hotstuff blonde “Kimetta.” None other than the dream version of Kim Langford, with the curious tidbit that, despite having been plain ignored for the past several volumes, Kim is now presented as Rock’s soul mate, the love of his life. Well anyway when the nightmare begins…Kim suddenly becomes a mean-looking tough chick (still hot though, we’re informed – with, uh, big boobs despite her small stature!), and the action has been changed to…Venus! 

Suddenly Kimetta is angry at Rockson, meaning the dream has changed but Rockson of course is not aware he’s in a dream; reading the novel is a very frustrating experience. And it gets dumber. Some cops come in and haul Rockson off for the crime of being a “playboy!” He’s put on a “prisoner ship” and sent off into space, headed for the artificial planet Esmerelda, which is a prison colony. Yet, despite this being a nightmare, Rockson – in the narrative concocted by the Techno-survivors at the behest of Zhabnov – still gets laid. A lot. Hookers are sent into his room each night, a different one each night, and every time it’s fade to black. One of the gals happens to be from Esmerelda, the planet they’re headed for, and since Rockson’s so good in bed (we’re informed), she treats him to “the Esmereldan position.” Demonstrating how juvenile the tone of Doomsday Warrior has become, Syvertsen actually describes this screwing-in-a-weird-new-position thusly: “It would be difficult to explain.” And that’s all he writes about it. 

We’re in straight-up sci-fi territory as Rockson is taken to this planet Esmerelda…where he learns he’s going to become a gladiator. And at least sticking true to the series template he’ll need to fight a bloodthirsty monster in the arena. It’s all so dumb…and, well, at least it’s dreamlike, with non-sequitur stuff like Kimetta – who now has become the daughter of the prison warden on Esmerelda! – giving Rockson a talisman that will protect him against this monster. It just goes on and on, having nothing to do with Doomsday Warrior, yet not being strong enough to retain the reader’s interest; Syvertsen’s boredeom with it all is very apparent, and this feeling extends to the reader. 

At the very least I was impressed with how Syvertsen just wings it as he goes along…given that all this is a “dream,” he’s able to change the narrative as he sees fit. But gradually Rockson starts to figure something is amiss with this world, and begins to remember “The Doomsday Warrior.” But again it’s very juvenile, with Rockson suddenly certain that if he escapes Esmerelda, he will awaken into his real reality. The finale of the dream sequence features some unexpected emotional depth, when Rockson realizes that his beloved Kimetta is “just a dream, too.” This leads to a sequence where the series gets back to its New Agey roots; The Glowers, those godlike mutants also last seen in the third volume, show up to save Rockson – who is near death from his experience. This kind of goes on for a bit, with the Glowers and Rockson’s pals using a Medicine Wheel to put Rockson’s soul back together with his body. 

Here's where it becomes clear Ryder Syvertsen has the end of the series in mind. Well, first we get more juvenile stuff where the Glowers bring out a massive ship made of ice and snow and upon it floats Rockson and team back to Century City – where the Glowers have called ahead telepathically. Rockson is given a hero’s welcome, and what’s more Rona and Kim are there waiting for him, and we’re told they’ve “settled their jealous differences” about Rockson, and have decided what to do about him – but will tell him more later. The main Glower announces that Killov is alive, and only Rockson can stop him, thus setting the stage for the next (and final) volume. 

But man…here comes the scene we’ve waited so many volumes for: that night there’s a knock at Rockson’s door, and he opens it to find both Kim and Rona there in negligees, and they laugh and push Rockson back on his bed, and the reader is promised the Doomsday Warrior three-way to end all three-ways. But friggin’ Ryder Syvertsen ends the book right there!! (I’m currently working on my own 200-page fan novelization of this sex scene.) 

As mentioned, the next volume is to be the last…but the series has been over for Syvertsen for a long time, now. That said, I might get to the last one sooner rather than later, for American Dream Machine seems to be leading directly to that next novel – meaning, the next one shouldn’t open three years after this one. 

Doomsday Warrior #17: America’s Sword

Doomsday Warrior #17: America’s Sword, by Ryder Stacy

January, 1990  Zebra Books

Boy, if you thought the previous volume of Doomsday Warrior was lame, just wait till you read this one! I’ve said before that Ryder Syvertsen was clearly phoning it in at this point; one can almost feel him hoping and praying that the series would get canceled so he could stop writing it. I mean all the dude does this time is basically re-write the previous book; America’s Sword is almost a carbon copy of American Overthrow, but again with the caveat that this one’s even worse. 

It’s a shame how Doomsday Warrior has experienced such a downward spiral. The first volumes were pretty cool, packed with gory violence and explicit sex. But around the midway point of the series Syvertsen must have lost interest or heart, as he began dialing back on all the craziness. At this point in the series the violence isn’t nearly as gory as before and the sex is all off-page. Even the goofy subplots have been dropped; for a while we had a lot of stuff about Ted “Doomsday Warrior” Rockson caught in a love triangle between Amazonian redhead Rona and lithe blonde Kim. All this is forgotten, with practically all female characters removed from the series – even the mandatory “native babe” Rockson will pick up on his post-nuke travels does not appear here in America’s Sword. 

But speaking of Syvertsen’s lack of interest…turns out I was right in my review for American Overthrow, where I guessed that none of that volume’s concluding incidents would be picked up in the next volume. I was more correct than I could’ve guessed. So as a recap, in the finale of the previous book Rockson had saved feeble old President Langford and his daughter Kim from the clutches of this sadist who was trying to brainwash them. Kim, once declared to be Rockson’s beloved, had disappeared from the series with nary a mention for the past several volumes, so this was the long-awaited reunion of the pair. But rather than build on this, Syvertsen never even gave Rockson and Kim a moment together; she was brain-fogged when Rockson saved her, then out cold later. As I recall, Rockson hoped Kim and her father would come out of it during the long trek back to Century City, and maybe they could talk then. 

But in true “series reset with each volume” fashion, America’s Sword takes place one month later and we don’t get one iota of info on what went down during that trek home…I mean, did President Langford regain his senses, something Rockson was worried about? Did Rockson and Kim rekindle their relationship? Folks, we still don’t know the answer to either of those questions. For indeed, America’s Sword opens with an overlong sequence in which an earthquake rocks Century City, and Rockson, sleeping in bed (alone for once!), is trapped in the rubble that was once his room, staving off rats and waiting to be rescued. 

We learn that a staggering twenty thousand people were killed in the quake and Century City is partially destroyed. But here’s how half-assed Syvertsen has become with his series: he never even tells us if Langford or his daughter Kim survived the quake! I mean of course they do, but still – he has Rockson desperately wondering if the two are among the victims, but Rockson leaves a few hours after the quake and never learns the answer. He doesn’t even ponder their fate during this latest trek outside of Century City. Hell, Syvertsen’s so half-assed that he also has Rockson concerned over Rona’s fate right after the quake …then Syvertsen makes the casual mention that, the night before leaving the city, Rona comes to Rockson’s bed and “they made love.” So, uh, I guess she did survive the quake! I mean, not only does Syvertsen neglect to even build up on any of his suspense, he casually dispenses info with nary a concern for drama – and Rona doesn’t even have any dialog! She’s literally mentioned in passing. 

So none of the questions concerning Langford or Kim from the previous volume are addressed or resolved. Instead, the big deal this time is that Rock and team must make an emergency journey to nearby Free City Pattonville (the setting of the previous volume, by the way) to get needed supplies to rebuild Century City. Even this plot will ultimately be dropped – spoiler alert, but we don’t even get to see Rockson and team getting the supplies, let alone returning home so Rockson can find out who survived the quake. Instead Syvertsen goes on two separate detours which make up the bulk of the novel. And my friends these detours are exact replicas of the incidents in the previous book! 

As we’ll recall American Overthrow featured this random part where Rockson and team came upon this volcano world filled with lava men, and many pages were devoted to the team learning the customs and etc…and then Rockson realized the entire damn thing had been a dream. Okay. In America’s Sword this scenario is repeated, except instead of a volcano world it’s a jungle world, randomly enough in the middle of the post-nuke US terrain, and Rockson and team marvel at the monkeys and other jungle animals here in the humid climate. They also meet up with the natives, though the difference here is that the natives are friendly…and also there’s no female dalliances for Rockson. I mean WTF? Syvertsen has so neutered his series that even the once-madatory “native gal sex” has been removed…Rockson and team merely eat and drink a lot as honored guests. 

But of course things take a more “thrilling” turn and they have to fight a giant rad-monster thing as part of the ceremony which is required to leave the jungle world. At the very least, this sequence doesn’t turn out to be a dream, but otherwise it is such a carbon copy of the lava world scenario in the previous book that I couldn’t believe it. I mean surely Syvertsen could have come up with something better than a lame ripoff of his own lame work? But he’s not done ripping himself off. Again as we’ll recall, American Overthrow proceeded to feature Rockson saving a city from a despot who was using a gas to control the minds of his subjects. 

Well…guess what happens in this one? Rockson comes across yet another city filled with seemingly-happy people, ones who are a little too enamored with politics, but of course it will turn out that they too are under a sort of mind control. And Rockson will have to save them. So yes, this book is a carbon copy of its predecessor. Anyway, the political activists here are “Republams,” and Syvertsen wears his politics on his sleeves in making fun of these latter-day Republicans…ones who worship Nixon and live for bureaucracy. But otherwise Syvertsen fails to exploit his own goofy concept; he doesn’t have the ability to bring it to life, or perhaps I should say the willingness. I mean he’s already written 16 of these goddamn books and he’s tired, folks. 

So we have weird goofy stuff like this radiated Nixon monument thing that glows in neon flashes and seems to have an animated Nixon statue inside it (Syvertsen is particularly dense in his descriptions here), and also Rockson himself is mind-controlled after being subjected to a Republam recruitment video. But it’s all just so goofy…I mean he and his fellows are brainwashed, but all they’re forced to do is file paperwork and type up paperwork. It’s just so ridiculous and G-rated, and Syvertsen’s so bored with it all that he has everyone saved by the deus ex machina appearance of other members of the Rock Squad. 

As mentioned, by the end of America’s Sword we have no resolution…to anything. Rockson and team continue on their trek for Century City supplies. No doubt next volume they’ll be back and the city will be completely rebuilt. Oh and I forgot to mention. In another elaborately built but unexploited subplot, Syvertsen has about thirty recruits being sent off with Rockson, to help with supply delivery…nothing is made of this and the recruits add nothing to the plot. Hell for that matter, Rockson breaks his ankle in the opening Earthquake section…and Syvertsen doesn’t even mention it again in the novel, with Rockson running and fighting and doing everything just as usual. 

Perhaps the only saving grace of America’s Sword is a cool bit early on where Rockson thinks back to his childhood days; we learn he’s from California, though he doesn’t know it by that name in this post-nuke US. If I recall correctly, this is the first we’ve had an actual flashback to Rockson’s youth, and we learn how his father taught him hunting and other skills. We’re also reminded how the Reds massacred his family, setting young Rockson off on the path of revenge. This latter is not developed in actual flashback narrative; we’re just informed that Rockson memorized the faces of the Reds who raped his mother and sisters and killed them and his father, and then hunted them down – this “Rockson’s revenge” scenario has never actually been fully told, so far as I can remember, but the story alone is more interesting than the majority of the actual novels.

Doomsday Warrior #16: American Overthrow

Doomsday Warrior #16: American Overthrow, by Ryder Stacy

August, 1989  Zebra Books

Well folks with this sixteenth volume of Doomsday Warrior author Ryder Syvertsen clearly doesn’t give a shit. I mean I haven’t seen such authorial disinterest since the latter days of The Penetrator. Syvertsen is going through the motions, likely breaking out in a flop sweat as he tries to pad out the pages of this overlong 223-page novel…the sixteenth damn installment of a series he’s been writing since 1984, but for some reason people keep buying it so he has to keep writing it! You can almost feel him longing for the sales to drop so he can just stop already. 

To wit, American Overthrow is by-the-numbers Doomsday Warrior, offering nothing new to the series and drifting along on its own tedium…so lame that there’s even a “Bobby in the shower” dream sequence fakeout that only serves to further pad out the pages. The colorful gore and unbridled sleaze of the earlier volumes is wholly absent; indeed, the dream sequence has what amounts to the only sex scene in the novel, but Syvertsen glosses over any of the explicit detail. The plot is a rehash of previous novels, further evidencing the author’s boredom. Even the promised setup – that this time Ted “Doomsday Warrior” Rockson will go up against fellow Americans – is given short shrift, Syvertsen focused more on trivial details like endless treks through the nuke-ravaged wastes and battles with nuke-creatures. 

Humorously, there’s no pickup from the previous volume, not even a cursory mention of its events nor of how long ago they occurred. As we’ll recall, that one ended with Rockson presumably dead(!) in the climactic battle in Egypt, once again fighting the sadistic Colonel Killov, but American Overthrow opens with Rockson in the woods near Century City in his homebase of Colorado, on a hunting trip with his best bud Detroit. No mention is made of the previous volume’s apocalyptic final battle, how Rockson survived, or even how he and his squad made it back to America. The entire novel simply isn’t mentioned, and American Overthrow is one of the first volumes of Doomsday Warrior in a long time that doesn’t require you to have read the previous installment to know what’s going on. 

The only installment that is referred to is #3: The Last American, but only vaguely; we learn here that it was “three years ago” that Rockson attended the signging of the Constitution of the Re-United States, and that occurred in the third volume (I think…it’s been over ten years since I read it). I don’t believe this “three years” dating jibes with the other dates Syvertsen has arbitrarily strewn throughout recent volumes, and it’s just more indication that the author isn’t very invested in his saga. The important thing is that American Overthrow sees the return of President Langford’s daughter Kim, that blonde goddess who was once proclaimed to be Rockson’s “true love” before being abruptly removed from the series without any explanation; the last time we saw her was in #9: America’s Zero Hour. Actually the last time we saw her was in #10: American Nightmare, but that one took place in an alternate reality, so it wasn’t the “real” Kim. 

So anyway we have an overlong opening in which Rockson and Detroit are out hunting and get attacked by this mutated lizard creature. After this a messenger from Century City finds them and requests their presence back in CC asap – word has come in that a fellow liberated city, Pattonville, has been overtaken by a military coup. Three hundred miles away, Pattonville is the chosen city of President Langford and Kim, and Rockson feels pangs of fear. We’re informed that Rockson and Kim “had been lovers once,” which is a WTF? moment if ever there was one, as in those earlier novels Syvertsen made it clear that Kim was Rockson’s soulmate. However, any hopes for a quick-moving tale of Rockson gaining revenge are quickly dashed, as Syvertsen proceeds to waste even more time with yet another overlong sequence of Rockson taking on the mutated flora and fauna of this radblasted future. In fact he won’t even get to Pattonville until toward the end of the novel, and his reunion with Kim lasts all but a page. 

But then the women have been gradually removed from the Doomsday Warrior narrative. Rona, Rock’s other true love, the redheaded beauty who was once “one of the boys” and went out on missions with the Rock Team, is now relegated to “woman at home” status, literally only there to have sex with Rockson on the rare occasions he’s in Century City. Off-page sex at that! Whereas earlier volumes went all-out with the crazed purple prose, these days Syvertsen merely writes, “They made love for half an hour,” and that’s literally all we get for the Rockson-Rona festivities. I mean he’s bored as hell, folks. He also seems to want to write something other than post-nuke pulp, as now Dr. Schecter, the resident genius of Century City, has become the Q to Rockson’s James Bond, providing him with a trio of gadgets for the mission (namely, a breathing device that fits in the nostrils, a foldable heat-shield suit, and most Bond-like of all a mini-gun shaped like a medallion). 

His usual team whittled down to just Archer, Detroit, and Chen, Rockson heads back out into the wild for the long trek to Pattonville…cue even more of those series-mandatory “mutated flora, fauna, and weather” sequences, this time with acid rain and other horrors. Syvertsen pads more pages with cutovers to Pattonville, where we are taken into the plight of one-off characters who are either gassed or killed by the new ruler: General Hanover. The villain of the piece, Hanover is a self-styled modern Hitler, even outfitting his men in Nazi-like uniforms. The fact that Rockson for once will be facing off against fellow Americans really troubles our hero’s heart; indeed, Rockson is filled “with a Kierkegaardian brooding” over the entire mission(!). But despite all the setup Syvertsen fumbles the ball, as the Americans Rockson eventually goes up against have been brainwashed into zombies (or “gasheads”) by Hanover’s gases. 

The most egregious part of American Overthrow is a long sequence in which Rockson and team, wearing those heat-shield uniforms, fall into a volcano…and find themselves in the domain of “lava men.” Doomsday Warrior is known for trampling over any sense of realism, but this sequence in particular is goofier than a 1980s Saturday morning cartoon. Led by King Sulphur, this “fucking colony of volcanic beings” puts Rockson and team through various trials and tribulations. Rockson somehow finds the opportunity to conjugate with the beautiful Shi’sa, an “angelic living sculpture” who makes her interest in flesh-man Rockson obvious. This part is super-weird; it’s not explicit, more just surreal, as Rockson marvels over the warmth and underlying softness of this lava woman’s hot bod. 

But get this…after Shi’sa helps them escape, Rockson’s riding on his mutant horse “hybrid” with the rest of the Rock Team, passing by the volcanic fields…and Detroit tells Rockson that he, Rockson, has been asleep all this time! And none of the team “remembers” the events with the lava men. In other words the entire sequence was just a damn dream! And Rockson basically just shrugs it off and gets on with the trek to Pattonville. I mean good grief! Just as ultra-lame as you can get. But then Syvertsen only livens up when he comes up with something that captures his goofy interest…like later in the book when we’re told that President Langford, who has been drugged regularly by General Hanover, looks “as drugged out as John Carradine in Atomic Vampire.” I mean we’re told this in the narrative, not in dialog, but again it’s another instance of obscure 20th century stuff being referred to in a novel that’s supposedly set in a post-nuke 2090s. 

Even General Hanover fails to meet expectations. He’s set up as suitably supervillain, but instead he comes off like a tool; in Kim’s few scenes in the novel, we see she’s kept locked up in a plush room, and Hanover will come in a few times a week to have dinner with her. The bastard!! But really he’s plotting to make Kim marry him, or somesuch…I mean the series is totally G-rated now, you see, so Kim is more bored than anything. In fact she stabs Hanover with a fork and throws food at him and whatnot, so she’s feisty as hell, but ultimately she too is drugged and kept on the periperhy of the narrative. She fights Hanover more than Rockson himself does; when our hero arrives in Pattonville and tries to disguise himself as a zombiefied “gashead,” he’s quickly outed and put through a sort of gladiatorial contest. His last challenge: Death-breath, a monstrous mutant even bigger than Archer. But even all this stuff is pretty bloodless and boring. 

The finale is goofy too, with Syvertsen so bored that he creates a fake Schecter here in Pattonville: Dr. Mason, yet another scientist able to whip up inventions, in this case a gas that counteracts Hanover’s gas. The finale sees zombie Pattonville residents stumbling around with weapons and taking on Hanover’s loyal soldiers. And of course Rockson’s medallion gun comes in at the last moment. At least this time we get a resolution, unlike the previous volume: Rockson when last we see him is about to embark on the 300-mile trip back to Century City with President Langford, Kim (both of them recuperating from the drugging), and Archer. Rockson’s ordered Chen and Detroit to stay in Pattonville to help with rebuilding; given that there are only a few volumes of the series left, I wonder if we will see either of them again. Who am I fooling…next volume they’ll both probably be back in Century City with nary an explanation. 

About the only interest I got out of American Overthrow was Syvertsen’s unwitting prescience. I mean the main plot has to do with an illegal coup that has taken away the rightful power of the American people. “We’re here to carry out the return to law under the US Constitution. There can be no higher goal than that,” Rockson informs his squad in the climax. Rockson, where are you when we need you now? And as if that wasn’t “ripped from today’s headlines” enough for you, check out this paragraph describing old President Langford, at the very end of the novel: 

Man, that last sentence says it all…it sure does, Rockson. It sure does.

Doomsday Warrior #15: American Ultimatum

Doomsday Warrior #15: American Ultimatum, by Ryder Stacy

February, 1989  Zebra Books

I had a tough time drumming up much enthusiasm for this fifteenth installment of Doomsday Warrior. In the past I’ve said that this series was like an R-rated ‘80s cartoon, but at this point it’s lost the R rating, so it comes off just like a cartoon. A lame ‘80s cartoon at that, like Challenge of the Go-Bots or something. While I’ve applauded Ryder Syvertsen’s dismissal of reality in the past, American Ultimatum really takes things to ludicrous levels…which itself would be fine if there were more bite to the tale, as there was in the earliest installments. Now everything’s basically G rated. 

It’s three months after the previous volume and as ever Syvertsen picks right up on things without much setting up the scene for series newcomers. The book opens with a prefigure of the goofy stuff we’re going to be encountering throughout the narrative: Colonel Killov, now a “god” in Egypt (which is populated by Egyptians who harken back to Ancient Egypt), wields a sonic wand (the Qu’ul) which emits an antigravity beam…which he uses to raise the Great Sphinx and then carelessly smash it onto the side of the Great Pyramid. The assembled priests – again, all of ‘em decked out in Ancient Egypt finery – wince a little at the destruction but shrug it off given that Killov is the promised god who would fall to them from the skies, as he did in the memorable climax of the previous volume. 

All this of course harkens back to that “goofy cartoon” vibe I keep mentioning…in fact I think there even was an episode of G.I. Joe where the gods of Ancient Egypt actually appeared. And it is very ludicrous, in a (hopefully) intentional way, as if the few past centuries never happened and the Egyptians at heart are just worshippers of animal-headed gods…not to mention that there’s an entire caste of high priests who are privy to all this secret sci-fi weaponry the Ancient Egyptians possessed. But then Syvertsen’s already in another plane of reality, given his off-hand mention that the Sphinx has a nose. In reality it fell off (or was shot off by Napoleon’s men, per the legend) centuries ago. At this point though the element of outrageousness is just old hat, and there’s no bearing of “reality” at all throughout to ground anything…every reader knows the main characters will survive unscathed, and despite what happens in the climax the next one will open with them all safely back at Century City. 

Which is what’s happened this time, of course. We meet Ted “Rock” Rockson, aka the Doomsday Warrior himself, as he’s back in Century City, with no pickup from the previous book…the same sort of series reset that occurs at the opening of every volume. The year is still 2096, and we’re told Rock first arrived at Century City “as a teen” 25 years ago. Periodically Syvertsen will drop references to previous books, telling us how long ago they were – like that Rock flew a MIG “about two years before” (an incident that happened in #9: America's Zero Hour) – but I get the impression he’s just making it up as he goes. I mean it was 2096 in the last volume, and maybe the volume before that, but then maybe 2096 just happens to be an endless year, sort of like 2020 was (and 2021’s shaping up to be). I mean, I’m still trying to cope with how Rock’s still riding the same faithful ‘brid, Snorter, which he’s been riding since the start of the series…despite the fact that he’s lost the damn thing multiple times, with no explanation how he ever gets it back. 

It's almost kind of impressive how Syvertsen sticks to his series template no matter what, sort of like how James Dockery stubbornly did the same thing on The Butcher. Each volume opens with a brief bit of Rock in Century City, then putting his team together (pretty much always the same guys), then leaving Century City to endure some rigorous post-nuke flora, fauna, or weather, and then finally arriving at their destination where Rock will get lucky with a local gal before killing a few Reds. But man this is the fifteenth volume, and we’ve already seen all this happen, uh…let me get my calculator…fifteen times already. At this point it seems pretty evident Syvertsen is just going through the motions. There are none of the fun topical touches even in the Century City sections, other than a previously-unmentioned “Sky Lounge” built high atop the city, a restaurant which affords diners a view of the surrounding mountains. 

This is where Rock takes girlfriend Rona for dinner; it’s her birthday, and once again Rona will be cast aside in the narrative – after that other series template, a roll in the hay with Rock. Which happens off-page, comrades, another indication of the increasing blandness of the series. Gone are the over the top, purple-prosed boinks of the past. As I say, we’re in lame cartoon territory here. And also Rona continues to be minimized; she was once a main character in the series, but now she’s essentially “the girlfriend,” never allowed to go on any of the missions and always stuck back at Century City. This time her going on the mission isn’t even brought up, and last we see of her she’s “bawling” when Rock leaves her bed next morning. And once again Kim, Rock’s other girlfriend, isn’t even mentioned, so I’m sticking with my assumption that we’ll never hear about her again. 

The mission at hand is Rock has received a coded radio broadcast from Rahallah, the African servant of Premiere Vassily in Moscow, ie the ruler of the world. Rock and Rahallah met back in #4: Bloody America, when Rock and team made their way to Russia, and apparently he and Rahallah came up with an agreement that if they ever needed to talk to one another, they would broadcast a code that could be deciphered via a copy of War And Peace. So Rath, the security honcho at Century City, picks up the broadcast, and then there’s the belated realization that there are multiple copies of the book in existence. Thus Rahallah’s code – which is based on certain letters on certain pages – might not be decipherable. However the problem is quickly overcome with “the computer,” and the deciphered code humorously runs two pages…again, there isn’t even the barest attempt at any realism, and the juvenile tone of Syvertsen’s prose doesn’t help add any. 

Rahallah has learned that Killov is alive and well in Egypt, and has come upon some weapons of mass destruction; Rahallah learned this in a mystical way, having seen in a dream his cousin’s African tribe being wiped out by a falling mountain or something. Basically Killov has ancient Egyptian technology which allows him to levitate anything, and he’s throwing mountains and whatnot on various tribes that don’t pledge fealty to him. Rahallah himself will be going to Egypt to put together an army to stop Killov – there’s vague mention that Vassily is too busy with internal riots to send any Russian troops – and he begs Rock to come help him. 

For once Rock doesn’t take the full team; he whittles it down to Chen, Archer, and Sheransky, the latter due to his being Russian and all and thus able to help them steal a MIG and fly it to Egypt. Otherwise Sheransky kind of comes off like a bumbling fool, the red shirt who would typically be killed in an earlier installment. We get the usual “journey through hostile terrain” setup, and Rock and team’s theft of the MIG from a Red airbase is ridiculously easy. Even more ridiculous is that Rock has to quickly read the flight manual to remind himself how to fly the plane! And not only is he able to complete a quick takeoff, but he also manages to pick up Chen and Archer and take out a few fighter jets that are scrambled after them! The plane eventually runs out of gas, conveniently right over Egypt, leading to Rock and pals parachuting into the Nile and fighting a couple sea monsters. 

Eventually they come upon the “Neo-Egyptian Army,” which is decked out in ancient Egyptian finery and the warriors of which ride elephants with lasers on their trunks. (Cue Dr. Evil.) Their leader is even named Tutenkamen. Rahallah, who is among them, explains that it’s a crazy story, “as so many are in our post-nuke world,” which led to the Egyptians of a hundred years before becoming the ancient Egyptian flashbacks of 2096. Whatever; Rock is soon making eyes at lovely “coca-skinned” Neferte, who makes a priority of tending to him. Their inevitable shenanigans occur off-page, it pains me to inform you. More focus is placed on Rock and team learning how to ride those elephants. Then the village is destroyed in a sneak attack of “falling mountains,” courtesy Killov’s Qu’ul; the only thing that can stop Killov’s weaponry is even more advanced ancient Egyptian tech: the “Ra sticks,” which we’re informed are two “levels” beneath “the Cheops pyramids.” Indeed, they are in “the level beneath” the level in which the Qu’ul was discovered! 

But honestly, just try to go along for the intentionally goofy ride, ‘cause later on Rock muses to himself that “just before the Nuke War” a McDonald’s was opened inside Grant’s Tomb, where customers could purchase “The McGrant.” Killov manages to capture Rock, the first the two have been face-to-face in I don’t know how many volumes, but not much is made of it. Instead Killov takes Rock back to his headquarters, aka the Great Pyramid, and puts him on a “sacrificial altar,” threatening to crush him with a six-hundred ton slab of rock, guiding it with the Qu’ul. It gets real goofy here when a “mysterious figure” in a black cloak comes out of the shadows and puts a knife to Killov’s throat, ordering him to move the slab away from Rock. Killov does so, manages to escape…and the “mysterious figure” turns out to be none other than Chen, anticlimactically enough. 

It all leads to a massive battle between Tutenkamen’s men and the “Amun Army,” ie Killov’s Northern Egypt warriors. This takes place along the Aswan Valley, and Syvertsen tries to go for a Biblical finale, with a flood taking everyone out, hero and villain alike. Even Rockson’s fate is left in question. (As if!) We do however, unsurprisingly at that, learn that Killov survives…now with a burning desire to get revenge on Rockson and kill him. This is kind of goofy too, as what else has been fueling Killov all these volumes? Pretty lame. But then “pretty lame” aptly sums up American Ultimatum, surely my least favorite volume yet in the series.

Doomsday Warrior #14: American Death Orbit

Doomsday Warrior #14: American Death Orbit, by Ryder Stacy
September, 1988  Zebra Books

Okay so at this point in the Doomsday Warrior saga Ryder Syvertsen is straight-up writing juvenile fiction, like Tom Swift for the post-nuke subgenre. The juvenile tone has been there from the beginning, but at least the earliest volumes spiced things up with gory violence and hardcore sex. But with American Death Orbit Syvertsen greatly reduces the former and barely caters to the latter – redhead beauty Rona returns to the series, the first we’ve seen her since the twelfth volume, but she only appears long enough for some off-page shenanigans with Ted “Doomsday Warrior” Rockson in the beginning.

That’s another thing: early volumes couldn’t figure out if Rockson’s nickname was “Doomsday Warrior” or “The Ultimate American.” In fact it was the latter that was most often used, but I guess at this point Syvertsen realized he should follow, you know, the title of the series, so it’s “Doomsday Warrior” throughout, with Ultimate American not used even once. These things only matter if you’ve read the previous 13 volumes and are taking notes, though. Last volume I wondered if Syvertsen was giving us arbitrary dates for these adventures, and this volume seems to indicate that he indeed is: we’re informed that American Death Orbit occurs in 2096, which means that the previous volume did not take place three years after volume twelve.

But then, it’s hard to tell how long ago American Paradise was. Rockson’s again in Century City when we meet him, of course, with no indication of how long ago the adventure in Hawaii was. I figured it must’ve been a month, maybe a few weeks. But as we’ll recall, the previous volume climaxed with evil Colonel Killov abducted by a spaceship. We gradually learn that this happened two days ago, meaning this volume occurs immediately after the previous. Yet in the Rockson sequences, it’s as if a long time has passed…but it’s especially moronic because the established template of the series has it that Rockson and team endure a hellish long journey to get wherever they’re going when they leave Century City. So are we to undrestand that the journey back is a breeze? 

Ultimately it doesn’t matter. I mean Rockson lost his ‘brid (aka the mutant “hybrid” horses of this post-nuke future) many volumes ago, yet the thing showed up again with zero explanation. And it appears again this time: “Snorter-the-fourth,” we’re told its name is, leading one to presume it is a descendant of the original Snorter, but Rockson thinks to himself how he has relied on the beast “for several years.” So I guess it’s the same Snorter. Anyway in this one too Snorter will be left in the wild, but we at least get the semblance of some setup explanation when Rockson points it and the other ‘brids “toward Century City” (hundreds of miles away, btw) and tells them to take off. They have mutant talent for direction, we’re told, so no one will be surprised when Snorter miraculously returns in some future volume.

Speaking of returns, as mentioned Rona finally shows up again. We don’t get to see her much, though, and she’s reintroduced to the series with little fanfare; Rockson mutters over the tough judo workout Rona gave him earlier that day, then goes back to his quarters to find her waiting in his bed for him. And you know it occurs to me just now that Rockson’s other true love, Kim, hasn’t been seen since the ninth volume (though we did see an alternate reality version of her in the tenth volume). My assumption at this point is that she’s not coming back, and presumably Syvertsen got bored with her. Rona’s the much more interesting character, at any rate: a redheaded beauty with the same “mutant star pattern” as Rockson. Believe it or not, folks, but the sex scene is off-page…Rockson and Rona exchange some foreplay dialog and it fades to black. And after that Rona begs to come along on this latest mission – as she has in the past – but Rockson refuses, saying it’s too dangerous.

And indeed, Rockson takes off the very next morning: the latest threat has it that some Century City astronomers – just introduced this very volume – have spotted something strange up in space with their telescope, which was installed five years ago (but never mentioned before, of course). Wouldn’t you know it, but there’s a giant space station lurking up there, a wheel design a la 2001 A Space Odyssey, and it’s about five miles large. And there are space ships and what not flying all around it! Yes, all this is introduced via bald exposition; fourteen volumes in and we suddenly learn there’s a teeming population in outer space – and guess what, Schecter, the head Century City scientist, predicts that they only have about a week until the space station is activated.

Schecter also informs Rockson that a few years back they came across a cache of NASA documentation which revealed that this space station was developed “late in the twentieth century” as part of the Star Wars Missile Defense System. And if this thing is fully activated it will have laser cannons and whatnot that can rain hell on the Earth below. But there’s still hope: also according to those NASA discs, shortly before the nuclear war there was designed – and built – a massive starfighter, dubbed the “The Dynosoar Satellite Killer,” which could take out a space station if necessary. And meanwhile we readers know – from the brief opening part with Killov – that the space station is occupied by “Space Neo-Nazis,” descendants of a former Nazi who worked for NASA and started his own project “on the side,” sending out teams of Nazis into space before the war. And now the descendants of these Nazis live in the space station and have just decided to complete it and destroy the Earth. I mean my friends, there was more “realism” in the average episode of G.I. Joe.

So Rockson, who like everyone else on the planet has never even been to space, puts together a team that will head to Wyoming, where the Dynosoar was stored by NASA, get it operative, head into space, and destroy the space station before the space Nazis can fully activate it. But of course, several scientists have “already studied” the full plans of the space station and the Dynosoar, and what’s more have even built flight simulators for it. So Rockson will have to bring these scientists along so they can actually fly the plane. Of course they’re all redshirts, Syvertsen not even bothering to give most of them names, save for the two that rise to the top: Rajat, a brilliant twenty year-old Indian kid, and Connors, a sixteen year-old kid who looks up to Rockson as a hero.

Now Syvertsen has developed this plot, and despite the juvenile nature there’s heaps of opportunity: I mean a space station filled with Neo-Nazis, and Rockson about to board a starfighter and head out there to face them. The reader, especially one who is a veteran of pulp paperbacks, expects a juicy tale of Rockson encountering a bevy of, say, uber-horny outer space Nazi She-Devils. Or even some depraved galactic Hitler or somesuch. But my friends, my friends…Syvertsen says “screw all that” and instead page-fills with abandon, spending the majority of the tale in arbitrary bullshit: an avalanche, a bunch of vampire women who run a diner, and finally – and most annoyingly – a bunch of crap about “space Frenchies” (aka “space bums”), themselves descendants of astronauts, who eke out their existence above the Earth and eat metal. As impossible as it is to believe, Syvertsen spends just a handful of pages in the neo-Nazi space station – Killov himself only appears once or twice in the narrative itself – and does absolutely zero to exploit his own outrageous plot.

The usual template is catered to: Rockson and team (composed of all the usual save for Scheransky, who is “working on a secret project with Schecter” that’s never revealed) encounter all the usual dangers on the journey, both flora and fauna. Syvertsen then reveals that he’s not even paying attention to his own series, or at least hoping no one else is: the Rock Team comes across an actual diner, the U-EAT-HERE, with flashing neon sign and hot waitresses and everything, and Rockson can’t believe such a thing exists. And yet, Rockson already encountered a similar diner back in the fifth volume. Not that he remembers this. Instead he and his team are thunderstruck that a diner exists, and saunter inside and gape at all the food and the scantily-clad waitresses, and Rockson suppresses the constant “danger signs” that flash in his mind.

Syvertsen will spend way too much of the narrative here. Of course the women turn out to be evil and the diner’s a trap; within seconds of eating their food Rockson and team pass out, the food drugged. They wake up in tough spider webs and Rockson realizes that the waitresses are actually vampires – mutant vampires at that. Only Chen’s ninja skills allow them to gradually get free of the bonds, but not before a few of Rock’s team have been killed and, most disgustingly of all, some slug sort of things have been implanted in McGlaughlin’s big gut. Rockson rallies his troops and they finally massacre the vampire women, but McGlaughlin’s in a coma (the slug-things extracted by a medic – and yes Rockson’s finally learned to bring along a medic on these missions) and way too many pages have been wasted on this bullshit.

Even more unbelievably, he squanders more potential: we’re told early on that the Dynosoar is in Wyoming, in an area of land controlled by a barbarian ruler named Garr. Well Syvertsen brushes through this as well; given that he wasted so much time with the vampire women, he has Rockson and team show up in Wyoming, scout out the area – and within a few pages Rockson’s made his way to the massive starfighter, which is stored underground, and gotten the rest of the team on it! I mean there’s no confrontation with Garr, nothing. That being said, we do get one of the most random Beatles references ever: Rockson sees some dude shitting in the street and thinks to himself, “Why don’t we do it in the road?” Rajat and Connors take over and push a few buttons and the ship rolls along the underground passageway – apparently no issue due to the thing having sat there for over a century – and within a page or two they’re blasting off into outer space!

Now all this would be fine if it led directly to the Nazi space station and those cosmic Nazi She-Devils. But unfortunately they’ll just have to exist in our imagination, because instead Rockson starts target-shooting with the laser beam, and almost blasts apart a strange-looking ball of junk…only to realize there’s a person in a spacesuit hovering beside it! The guy waves for entry into the Dynosoar, and he turns out to be the descendant of French astronauts – his ancestors were stuck on a space station when the nuclear war happened – and now he and his people make their living up here, scavenging space refuse. Absolutely no attempt is made at explaining any of this. We’re told there were “hundreds of oxygen tanks” left behind up here, apparently a century’s worth – but there are tons of these people, living in total outer space squalor, even getting their food from space junk by melting metal into a “paste” which they use to make food. And they’re super-advanced, too, even able to heal McGlaughlin and bring him out of his coma.

At this point the reader has to make a choice: chalk the whole thing off as the dumbest shit ever and chuck the book, or just keep reading. But you can’t do the former, because honestly the entire series is goofy, so at this point, fourteen volumes in, what’s the point? It’s just that this particular volume takes it so far into the realm of the ridiculous that there’s almost no coming back. And as mentioned the worst part is that Syvertsen can’t even reap his own material: we don’t see a single space Nazi, and the too-few parts with Killov have him bickering with a scientist type and the Fuhrer, who is old and moronic and just sits there. Killov as expected takes control, fueled as ever by drugs. 

Rockson and team unite with the space bums and launch an attack on the space station, with lasers blasting and men in astronaut suits flying around with guns blazing. Rajat and Connors do all the heavy lifting; of course they are wizards with the Dynosoar, despite only having studied the thing on ancient floppy discs. Oh and I forgot to mention, there’s a friggin “Space Eiffel Tower” up here, which is what the ancestors of the Space Frenchies were up here for a hundred years ago: to build a replica of the Eiffel Tower in space. In one of the novel’s few memorable moments, this thing is used to pierce the heart of the Nazi space station. As ever Rock’s team suffers a few losses, but none of the regulars of course – though one of the new characters buys it. This is rendered humorous though because, SPOILER WARNING, it turns out to be Rajat who dies – floating off into space in a seeming tribute to the finale of Dark Star, and a crying Rockson says to himself, “Thank you, Rajiv.” Italics mine, because racist Rockson couldn’t even get the poor kid’s name right!!

The finale is also memorable, but sadly predicts that the series will get even more juvenile: Killov again manages to evade death, using a pair of “atmospheric chutes” to glide all the way down to Earth, able to even get through the stratosphere without burning to a crisp. And, Syvertsen at this point figuring “who cares,” Killov lands on the Great Pyramid of Cheops – just as a high priest is worshiping Amun Ra. And sure enough the dumb priest thinks this skeletal figure that just dropped from the sky is the god himself, and is prepared to worship him. And to bring him lots of drugs, which is what Killov immediately begins to scream for.

And with that American Death Orbit mercifully comes to a close; at nearly 250 pages of super-big print it does manage to move at a fast clip, but it’s so sophomoric that the reader has a helluva time even enjoying it. I mean Syvertsen’s gone way out before, but this time he goes way, way out, and I can’t say it’s for the best. There are only a few volumes left, so here’s hoping the series gets back to the vibe of the earliest volumes.

C.A.D.S. #4: Tech Strike Force

C.A.D.S. #4: Tech Strike Force, by John Sievert
February, 1987  Zebra Books

I’m really taking my time with the C.A.D.S. series, about one volume every two-plus years. I had to re-read my reviews of the first three volumes to remind myself of the characters and what’s going on. This was a smart move, as with the others Tech Strike Force opens en media res, with our armor-clad heroes emerging from the depths of the lake they escaped in at the climax of #3: Tech Commando, with only vague explanation of what came before.

Ryder Syvertsen (aka “John Sievert”) as ever whittles down his large group of C.A.D.S. so that we only focus on a few of them. That being said, a few “regulars” are killed off this time, but I still had no idea who they were or what they’d done in previous volumes. C.A.D.S. honcho Dean Sturgis is still the star of the show, the Ted Rockson of the C.A.D.S. world, if only less heroic or memorable. He still pines for his wife Robin, but won’t get much done in the way of his searching for her this time around; in fact, Robin doesn’t even appear this volume, which is a series first. Instead Syvertsen sticks with Sturgis throughout, and the dude manages to do pretty well for himself in the female companionship area, bedding three babes in this post-apocalyptic hellhole of America, circa late June of 1998.

Sturgis and Billy Dixon, aka the redneck C.A.D.S. soldier, separate from the rest of the squad as it makes its way back to the C.A.D.S. HQ deep in the swamps of the Bayou. This opening quarter of the novel basically just continues on from the denoument of the previous volume, with the two getting in various skirmishes with pursuing Reds and ultimately getting in a firefight with them in Colonial Williamsburg, which we’re informed has been kept undamaged due to the love the Soviet Premiere has for it. Syvertsen as ever doesn’t strive for realism, despite all the “tech speak” in the dialog; for example, we’re told that the C.A.D.S. suits weigh four hundred pounds, yet when Sturgis’s is so damaged that he can’t use it anymore, we’re informed that he gets out of it and pulls it up into the belfry of the house he’s hiding in.

Unexpectedly we get into some dark stuff, which goes against the grain of Syvertsen’s typical Saturday Morning Cartoon-esque vibe. Sturgis and Billy are taken aboard a sub, where they are interrogated by America-hating Veloshnikov and KGB torture artist Revin. The Reds immediately deduce that Sturgis won’t break, thus set their sadistic sights on Billy, judging that Sturgis will break so as to keep his young charge from harm. But Sturgis won’t break, refusing to give info even as Billy is beaten, his fingers broken, and then is friggin’ sodomized off-page by Revin. Meanwhile Sturgis has himself gotten some intel, shown a map of post-nuke US by Veloshnikov. Here Sturgis learns that the vast majority of the country has been destroyed by radiation, thus the “America” he and his C.A.D.S. are fighting to protect doesn’t much exist anymore.

The two are saved by the remaining C.A.D.S. soldiers, Sturgis’s buddy Tranh having taken command of the squad. Syvertsen keeps referring back to the first volume, thus the escaping C.A.D.S. happen to run into a group of mountainfolk who are fighting some Reds. They turn out to be none other than the McCoys our heroes met back in that first volume, and now these people have set up their own sort of backwoods utopia, complete with food, weaponry, and even New Age crystal healing. This is all like something out of Syvertsen’s Doomsday Warrior in tone and vibe; one thing that’s different, though, is that when Sturgis has sex with Cat, the hotstuff McCoy babe whose virginity he took back in that first volume, it happens off-page. The same can be said of Sturgis’s two other conquests in the book; Syvertsen, whether intentionally or not, seems at pains to whittle down on the crazy purple prose of his typical work.

Dr. Sheila de Camp, the Smurfette of the C.A.D.S., doesn’t much like these New Age crystals, and in fact barges in on Sturgis and Cat mid-boff to complain about them. This just turns out to be another instance of Sheila’s resentment for the women who bed Sturgis, with whom she’s gradually fallen in love. Meanwhile back at C.A.D.S. HQ our heroes learn that “mutated swamp fever” has returned in their absence and wiped out many of the “swamp women” who have taken up residence here, including Dieter, the tall babe Sturgis had some off-page lovin’ with last time. Not to be concerned, though, as soon enough he’s banging another leggy swamp babe, Gloria – but again off-page. 

Syvertsen delivers some unexpected character development with Billy Dixon going nuts due to his rape back on the Russian sub; he pretends as if nothing happened, claims he remembers nothing of his captivity and torture, but he’s a kettle quickly approaching boil. He snaps one day and attempts to perpetrate his own rape, on one of the swamp women. While the other C.A.D.S. are ready to wipe him out, Sturgis instead is able to confront Billy in a fistfight, knocking his ass out but keeping him alive. Despite his misgivings Sturgis has to bring Billy along on their latest mission, despite his insanity; he’s running out of soldiers. However not much else is made of this by novel’s end, with the vibe that Billy’s quest for vengeance allows him to get past his mental troubles.

Speaking of callbacks to the first volume; if you recall, the C.A.D.S. ran across obese billionaire industrialist Pinky Ellis in that first one, the Jeffrey Epstein-type who went around in an armored limo and kept a bunch of sex slaves at his disposal. Well, the sex slave who made eyes at Sturgis in the first novel, Morgana, managed to escape Pinky, get to the President, and inform him that Pinky plans to give the Reds an experimental tank Pinky’s company was developing before the war. I figured this plot thread from volume 1 would be dropped, but Syvertsen clearly planned to get back to it, given the narrative spotlight he gave Morgana in the first volume. She and the President talk to Sturgis over the radio, Morgana finding the opportunity to tell Sturgis she hopes to meet him in the flesh someday – perhaps another dangling subplot to be played out in a future volume.

Now the C.A.D.S. must head to New Orleans, prevent the handover of the tank, and kill Pinky. So it’s back across the blasted United States for our heroes, who have had to repurpose their armored suits as the government is all out of E-Balls, and now they have to make due with regular missiles and whatnot. Syvertsen appears to be minimizing the godlike attributes of the C.A.D.S. armor, or at least not presenting them as so invincible as before. I assume this is an attempt at conveying some tension to the series, but regardless it’s hard to buy that these high-tech, computer-operated suits can even still work in this post-nuke hellzone.

Syvertsen still doles out unexpected and welcomed goofiness, like when the C.A.D.S. on their way to New Orleans run into a crotchety old Western author who lives alone in his decimated town, cranking out “the greatest Western in history.” Dying of radiation and determined to finish his book, the dude begs for more narrative time but isn’t given nearly enough. Instead we get the tiresome return of Carl the King, the Manson-esque serial killer who also last appeared in the first volume. He’s now declared himself King of Biloxi (wearing a paper Burger King crown as evidence of his royalty), leading the same group of escaped mental patients as last time. The C.A.D.S. make quick and somewhat gory work of them, but inexplicably Sturgis allows Carl and his inner circle to escape, presumably to return and annoy us again in some future volume.

Sturgis scores for the third time in the book with none other than Sheila de Camp, Syvertsen paying off the long-simmer hate-lust relationship he’s been developing between them since the first volume. This one’s done for more of a comical effect given that the two are instantly spatting post-boink, as Sheila wants to get her hooks in Sturgis and keep him for herself. Meanwhile Sturgis tells her this is just a casual thing and he can’t get too involved with one of his subordinates. It seems clear that this will play out in ensuing volumes.

Pinky Ellis is a more interesting villain, weasely and obsese and commanding his private army from the safety of his armored limo. His secret weapon turns out to be a flying tank that shoots lasers, and given that it’s up against a squad of guys in armored suits, maybe you’ll get what I mean when I’m always comparing C.A.D.S. to a cartoon. One of the C.A.D.S. soldiers stands out here: Joe Fireheels, nicknamed “The Survivor,” who refuses to go into combat in the powered armor, pleading with Sturgis to allow him to follow his instincts. Also one of the “main” C.A.D.S. soldiers is killed in the firefight, one we’re informed has been Sturgis’s close friend for years, but again I didn’t much remember him.

As ever Tech Strike Force ends as soon as this latest battle is over, Sturgis and soldiers destroying the laser tank and delivering Pinky a memorable sendoff – one that involves fire ants! – but Syvertsen leaves many plot threads dangling. I’ll try to get to the next volume a little more quickly, but overall this series still comes off like a pale imitation of Doomsday Warrior.

Oh and due to the holiday only one post next week – it will be up on Wednesday.