I got the latest volume in The Red Menace series by James Mullaney from Bold Venture Press: The Sky Is Red.
Mullaney is probably best known as a ghost-writer for The Destroyer #111-131, along with the later “new Destroyer” novels. I had gotten into The Destroyer in the late ’80s, reading many of the earlier ones and the then-current ones by Will Murray, before losing interest, though I did get the later new Destroyer series and enjoyed them.
I have posted on the first seven all with nice covers by Mark Maddox, and have been looking forward to #8, with another cover by Maddox.
So for those who missed my earlier postings, who is The Red Menace? Well, he is Patrick “Podge” Becket, a computer tycoon and security expert. We are told his company, Becket International, is IBM’s main rival in the computer industry.
Back in the 1950s, he decided to fight back against communism and its agents, creating the costumed persona of The Red Menace. His outfit of cape, hooded mask (described as like an executioner’s hood), and gauntlets are made from a special dye that looks red close up, but black (and blurry) further away. He also has a special gun and other devices.
However, in 1960, he stopped. Most likely he realized as he was getting older, he wouldn’t be able to continue and live.
Now in the 1970s, he reluctantly comes back into action. He is aided by Dr. Thaddeus Wainwright, doctor and inventive genius, who you will soon realize has a mysterious background. He gives Becket a serum that helps him physically but doesn’t make him superhuman. His special devices come from Wainwright. We get some of this backstory throughout the series.
The Red Menace works with (Patrick emphasizes this) an agency known as MIC (Manpower and Intelligence Command), headed by Simon Kirk, the son of the man who headed it in the ’50s. These three are the only consistent characters in the series. MIC was formed in the ’50s as an inter-agency group but has since fallen out of favor and power.
With these three you have a very similar dynamic to what is seen in The Destroyer series, though one thing I miss is the recurring villains that that series had. Maybe that will happen.
In The Red Menace #8: The Sky Is Red, we get a different villain from all the communist foes from the prior books. Things start off when rockets are launched from a little-known nation, Manu, in South America. Who is behind it? Not the U.S. Not Russia. Not China. But if not them, then who? While this is going on, Podge and Wainwright are trying to tie up loose ends from the previous novel. They are trying to track down The Candy Man, the source of the dangerous drug Splat. But The Candy Man seems to be tying up loose ends as well. This collides when Podge raids one of their drug-manufacturing dens while one of The Candy Man’s men are doing the same. And he unleashes The Candy Man’s ultimate clean-up: a strange purple substance that dissolves almost everything.
But that will be a mystery for a future novel I expect. Instead, our two heroes are flying off to South America to look into things. And maybe they get a clue when the Manuan president’s aide is a young German born in Manu. Instead of more Reds, do we instead have a group of Nazis trying to bring back the Third Reich? Or is it the Fourth? Are they the ones behind the rockets, and what is their ultimate goal? But they didn’t account for The Red Menace and his associates going after them.
But after Podge and Wainwright arrived in Manu, briefly speaking to the wife of the dictator, who is German, it appears all the Germans have left, taking with them all their loot and destroying the rocket installation. Where they went is a mystery.
Then several places in the U.S. and Russia are hit by an electro-magnetic pulse. Clearly, the rockets were not ICBMs, but launched some kind of satellite platform under Nazi control. So the mission is to track them down and put an end to the threat. We also have a couple of German scientists who escaped the fall of Nazi Germany. And there is a lot more to the president’s aide than was thought. Who is he really?
When it’s all said and done, it looks like Podge and Dr. Wainwright have a new associate, a former Israeli agent. I wonder how this will affect the dynamics in future works. There was a period in The Destroyer series where there was a female associate who mainly helped out with CURE, though I don’t see this one just hanging out at the office.
As this went live, the ninth Red Menace novel, Red Meat, came out, with the promise of #10, Terminal Red. There are a few story threads that haven’t been resolved yet, and hints at past events that would be interesting to learn about. I haven’t gotten it yet, but hope to soon.
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