When I was a wee lad, I received Captain Action for Christmas. He was a well-dressed action figure (or what my Dad called “a doll”). The thing I remember most about Captain Action was that he came with a Batman and a Spider-Man costume. At least that's what Santa brought. In reality, there were a bunch of other superheroes Cap could play dress up with, including The Phantom, The Lone Ranger, Superman, Flash Gordon and The Green Hornet. Captain Action was, to six-year-old me, the man without an identity. That Christmas gift also included Action Boy and the evil, well, Dr. Evil. I felt kind of guilty that Doctor Evil was my favorite of the three. Cap and AB were just so bland. Dr. Evil was cool. And you could see his brain!
There was also a Captain Action comic book published by DC with amazing art by Gil Kane. It lasted only a few issues, and, along with the action figure, soon faded to memory.
Recently, the character was revived in pulp novels by Airship 27. I haven’t read those.
I have read the new spinoff novella LADY ACTION-THE SANDS OF FOREVER by Ron Fortier. And it’s a corker.
Set in the present day, the titular character is an operative of A.C.T.I.O.N., a generic intelligence agency. Fortier does a fine job in laying out the background and setting in few words, leaving plenty of room for the man event: action, without the periods.
Here’s all you need to know: there are bad guys seeking a supernatural power in the desert. Lady Action has to stop them.
The rest is full-tilt shooting, punching, blowing things up and more shooting and punching (and nightmare-inducing giant double-tailed scorpions). LADY ACTION-THE SANDS OF FOREVER reminded me of the best of those beloved 80s men's adventure novels, with a larger-than-life threat, exotic climes, and death-defying heroics. Fortier never lets the story slow down and he does a fine job of added enough local to set the scene in his foreign locales without falling into the common trap of bogging down the story just to show off the research.
The only flaws I found were a few typos. Beyond that, LADY ACTION-THE SANDS OF FOREVER
provides an hour of so of fun-filled escapism.
That’s what pulp is all about.
0 Yorumlar