Jaloon: Assassin's Cape - Sneak Peak

Coming soon, my new novella- consisting of three short stories with the same protagonist, the alien female Jaloon Roe. A technician on the planet Commonwealth, she has to navigate off-world gangsters, alien assassins, and worst of all, her own family.

Below is the concept art from the book and a sample of the book itself.

 

 

Assassins Cape 

The Phentari assassin flexed its four tentacles and yawned, its feeding mandibles quivered back and forth. Planetfall at last. The trip had taken two weeks, from stargate to stargate, until the correct connection was made and he had entered the Andromeda Galaxy via the gate on Commonwealth. Longest trek he ever took. The assassin was feeling cramped. 

The converter mask chafed around the sides of his mouth. Its edges bonded molecularly with the Phentari’s skin, preventing it from being accidentally jarred loose. His race’s natural habitat was a methane rich atmosphere and the device converted the local gases to ones he could breath. First time the alien ever had to wear one and he hated it. 

He surveyed the world around the landing platform. It was cold and stark. What vegetation existed was spindly and weak, barely surviving as it crawled up between cement blocks. Nothing like the lush steamy swamps of equatorial Phena, with blue vines thicker than steel beams, and the waters so vibrant you could stick your face into free running rivers and come up with a fish stuck on each mandible. 

The assassin pulled a black cape closer around his shoulders and rubbed his tentacles rapidly to generate heat. He’d have to make the best of it; endure the discomfort, the weird smells, the odd aliens. For his life began today. Normally on a cape such as his, a dward, there would be red hash marks indicating the number of personal kills. The Phentari had none. This was his first job as a professional assassin\bounty hunter (the terms meant the same thing in the Phentari tongue). He could hardly wait to sew in his first red stripe. 

He pulled up his target’s image on his datapad. Yes indeed, once he killed this Jaloon Roe, Orion female, things would finally start rolling for him.

***

Jaloon stared at the bank balance on her datapad and decided that it would take more than fifty gallons of utoban to wash away her blues. She owed her corporate masters a lot of credits for “inappropriately destroyed equipment” from a past job. Or they claimed she did. Personally, she didn’t feel all that responsible. A lot of people had died on that misadventure and she had lost the bottom half of her left leg, but all they cared about was their stinking tools and gadgets. 

She kicked over the wastepaper basket, then felt guilty about making more work for the cleaners so she replaced the two balled up papers back in the cylinder. Her bargain basement cybernetic leg scraped against the stump. 

Time for another readjustment. 

A chute opened in the wall and a soft bubble, containing twenty solo field goggles, emerged from it. It floated over to her workstation and popped, leaving the gear safely on the bench. 

Until her debt was paid off, this was where she was stuck. Doing the shit work. Cleaning and maintaining every else’s soiled gear. The overlords at Space Systems Development Corporation didn’t want to risk her dying out in the field and leaving a hole in their budget, so they took half her paycheck and benched the Grade C technician for the time being. 

 I could quit. I could sue. 

But they had ten thousand lawyers and she could barely make rent. In a perverse way the situation gave her some job security. As long as she owed them money, they would keep renewing her contract. 

She dove into work, cleaning and maintaining the goggles. The standard field goggles could be switched to low-light vision, IR and UV scans, atmospheric chemical analysis, long range and microscopic viewing. All of this was controlled by voice command. She had to check that each of the linkages still connected to their microprocessor and that information displayed was correct. A long and tedious job which took her the rest of her shift to muddle through. 

“Your numbers are down,” her human supervisor chastised her later on. “You should cleared at least three times as many units.” 

“Sorry about that Gomez,” she said with fake sincerity.

“It’s Mister Gomez,” he said. “I’m marking your dereliction down on your daily report.” 

She didn’t reply, but swear words flew in her mind. The beetle-backed little turd of a man shuffled away. A nasty little shrub of a mustache twitched under his acne scarred nose.

Honorifics such as Mister or Miss didn’t translate well into Galactic Basic, the artificial bureaucratic language of the Alliance, which is what they were speaking. So many different races with a rainbow of languages came through the stargate that Galactic Basic accidentally had become the planet’s official language. Still, this middle manager insisted on having some petty leg up over his subordinates and the regular worker suffered as a result. 

She punched out via DNA scan and left the sterilized corporate glamour of the SSDC offices for the grimy utilitarian concrete and metal pipe ridden city of Commonwealth.  

Commonwealth. City and planet shared the same name, and technically the entire continent did too. Its purpose was to maintain a trade foothold for the Galactic Alliance by guarding the stargate, allowing travel between the two galaxies, and in doing so the planet had become a trade power in the Alliance. 

Commonwealth was the only city on the planet. There were a plethora of mining camps and agricultural hubs across the continent, but these all connected back to the capital city by shuttle or high-speed tube train.  Religious nuts and idiot neo-communist groups had occasionally landed to set up some doomed utopia on another continent, but those who survived almost never had contact with the outside. Only the city of Commonwealth mattered. 

And what a city it was. Now in its one hundredth year, it had spread out from the initial explorer landing platforms and pylon geothermic taps, which converted the planet’s natural heat into energy to power the stargate, and covered approximately 5,426 square kilometers.  Over all Commonwealth was broken down into 32 municipal boroughs. 

The weather outside mirrored Jaloon’s mood. Greasy rain sprinkled down from gasoline scented clouds. Streets were devoid of almost all decorations. A multi-hue of alien species wandered about, running from dry spot to dry spot. She decided to grab some fast food from the corner Horrokroshcu King before catching the tube back to her corporate apartment tube. 

The herd animal’s meat tasted especially processed today. Even hot, it stuck in her throat. She tossed the rest in a dumpster. Vermin from a dozen planets started a war over her trash. Roars, snarls, and hisses echoed out of the bin. She backed away. 

The ecosystem of the planet was in constant flux. Each new race accidentally brought with it a host little scavengers and parasites. Some flourished, others went extinct. There were a few civil servants whose entire job it was to track the invasion, growth patterns, death rates, and factional wars of one invading animal against another. It was like watching a galactic war in miniature. Whole nations blossomed and sputtered out under the city’s dermis. 

Nothing could be done about the vermin. Inspections, gassings, sterilization programs only went so far. With the amount of trade Commonwealth had running through it, alien species were bound to slip through. You could never be a hundred percent. 

Time to go home. She started a slow walk towards the tube trains, when her datapad lit up. Incoming call. She groaned. It was her sleazy cousin, Jimune. A wanna-be ladies’ man who had spent most of his teen years trying to convince Jaloon to star in an “art film” that he would direct. He had since given up on film stardom, but his current occupation was no less shady. 

“Well there she is,” Jimune Roe said over the datapad. “You’re still looking pretty fit.” 

“What do you want?” she asked. “It’s been a long day, my hands are worn down to the last layer of skin, and I ate a bad sandwich. So get to it.” 

“Jeez, you haven’t changed. Still the icicle up your cunt.” 

“HANGING UP NOW!” 

“No wait. I want to hire you to fix something.” Her finger paused over the disconnect symbol. “I know you need the money.” 

They negotiated a price. Not much, but enough for her to be able to afford a higher caliber of crappy food for a while. It was well worth an hour of her life. 

Directly after she hung up on her cousin, another call came in from her mother. Very odd. Usually by this time her parents were blacked out or too drunk to use any device correctly. She answered. The call beeped, a red dot appeared briefly on her screen, then hung up. Sounded like her mother. Jaloon tossed the call from her mind and went into the tubes. 

 For more readings, try books by Rex Hurst. 

 

 

Pope Alexander IV's Smutty Story [True Tale]

Franciscan monk Salimbene de Adam’s Cronica covered the years 1167–1287 and the people he met in his travels about the courts of Europe. In it he describes everyday life vividly and gives unrivalled detail into internal disputes in the Franciscan order at the time, which include many lusty, prank filled, violent episodes of life in the religious order. Including this hysterical little snippet.

One, Brother Bonaventure asked Pope Alexander IV [the Borgia pope- that was Alexander VI] whether or not it pleased him that the Francian Friar Minors heard confession, and the pope answered, “It pleaseth me very much. And I will give you a horrible example on the subject. There was a certain woman who confessed to the priest of her church. But this priest, wishing to know her carnally, began to solicit her sexually. And so in the very church itself behind the altar near the place where the Lord’s body is kept, he sought to rape her, but the lady said to him, “This is neither the time nor the place for the work of Venus. Let us seek a more convenient time when we can do this thing together.”

“She said this, however, merely in order to get away from him. Yet anticipating such future pleasure, the priest desisted from his actions and simply talked with her in a friendly fashion. As she was leaving, however, he said to her, ‘Remember our bargain, keep in mind our tryst.’ And she answered, ‘Oh, I will remember well.’

“When she arrived home, however, she made a pie which appeared beautiful on the outside but which was filled with human excrement and sent it to the priest as a gift, along with a vase full of fine white wine. And this was the woman’s only fault, she should have sent her own urine to the priest in the vase, just as she sent her own excrement in the pie.

“When the priest saw this fine pastry, he thought it would make a fine gift for his bishop, and so he sent it to him. Thus when the bishop was dining with his household, he ordered his servant to cut the pie and place it on the table before his guests. When the servant cut the pie in the other room, however, he discovered some excrement and was horrified. Then he set the pie aside to show the bishop later, and to the bishop’s insistence that the pie be brought to the table, he said, ‘You have enough for now. Another time, the Lord willing you have better.’ What more can one say? When the bishop saw such a pie, he was ‘exceedingly angry’ at the priest.

“He had the offender brought before him and said, ‘Tell me, priest, where did you learn to send such fine pies to your bishop? In what way have I offended you? How have I earned such an insult? Why have you sent me a pie filled with human excrement? When the priest heard this, he was stupefied, and he said to the Bishop, ‘Father, truly I did not make the pie myself. Such and such a lady sent it to me, and, thinking that such a fine gift was worthy only of you. I sent it to you in order to honor you, believing the whole time it was a splendid pie.’

“When the bishop heard this, ‘he was satisfied’. But after the priest left, the bishop sent for the lady in order to find out the truth of the matter. And ‘she confessed and did not deny’ that she was the one who made the pie, but that she did it to get back at the priest, who had attempted to seduce her in the church right behind the altar. Then the bishop praised the lady highly for her deed and punished the priest grievously.”

 For more readings, try books by Rex Hurst. 

 

Walt Whiman's Lover Tells How They Met

Walt Whitman, one of the greatest poets of Americana and author of Leaves of Grass, is now openly acknowledged as homosexual, though the man absolutely denied it (understandably so) during his lifetime.

Peter Doyle was conductor on a railroad and met Whitman in Washington, D.C.. While shying away from any specifics, he admits his close relationship to Whitman during an 1895 interview with Whitman’s literary executors, three years after the poet’s death.

“You ask where I first met him? It is a curious story. We felt to each other at one. I was a conductor. The night was very stormy, - he had been over to see Burroughs before he came down to take the car – the storm was awful. Walt had his blanket – it was thrown round his shoulders- he seemed like an old sea-captain. He was the only passenger, it was a lonely night, so I thought I would go in and talk with him. Something in me made me do it and something in me had the same effect on him.

“Anyway I went into the car. We were familiar at once – I put my hand on his knee- we understood. He did not get out at the end of the trip – in fact went all the way back with me. I think the year of this was 1866. From that time on we were the biggest sort of friends. I stayed in Washington until 1872, when I went on the Pennsylvania railroad. Walt was then in the Attorney-General’s office. I wuld frequently go out to the Treasury to see Walt; Hubley Ashton [Assistant Attorney General at the time and one of the founders of the American Bar Association] was commonly there- he would be leaning familiarly on the desk where Walt would be writing. They were fast friends – talked a good deal together.

Peter Doyle & Walt Whitman

 

“Walt rode with me often – often at noon, always at night. He rode round with me on the last trip – sometimes rode for several trips. Everybody knew him. He had a way of taking the measure of the driver’s hands – had calf-skin gloves made for them every winter in Georgetown- these gloves were his personal presents to the men. He saluted the men on the other cars as we passed- threw up his hand. They cried to him,

“’Hullo, Walt!’

“And he would reply, ‘Ah there!’ or something like.

“He was welcome always as flowers in May. Everybody appreciated his attentions, he seemed to appreciate our attentions to him. Teach the boys to read, write, or cypher? I never heard of, or saw that. There must be some mistake. He did not make much of what people call learning. But he gave us papers, books, and other such articles too.

“In his habits he was very temperate. He did not smoke. People seemed to think it odd that he didn’t, for everyone in Washington smoked. But he seemed to have a positive dislike for tobacco. He was a very moderate drinker. You might have thought something different, to see the ruddiness of his complexion – but his complexion had no whiskey in it. We might take a drink or two together- nothing more.  

 

“It was our practice to go to a hotel on Washington Avenue after I was done with my car. I remember the place well – there on the corner. Like as not I would go to sleep – lay my hands on my head on the table. Walt would stay there, wait, watch, keep me undisturbed – would wake me when the hour of closing came. In his eating he was vigorous, had big appetite, but was simple in his tastes, not caring for any great dishes.

“I never knew a case of Walt’s being bothered up by a woman. In fact, he had nothing special to do with any woman except Mrs. O’Connor and Mrs. Burroughs. His disposition was different. Woman in that sense never came into his head. Walt was too clean, he hated anything which was not clean. No trace of any dissipation in him.

“I ought to know about him those years – we were awfully close together. In the afternoon I would go up to the Treasury building and wait for him to get through if he were busy. Then we’d stroll out together, often without any plan, going wherever we happened to get. This occurred days in and out, months running. Towards women, Walt had a good way – he very easily attracted them. But he did that with men, too. And it was an irresistible attraction. I’ve had many tell me – men and women. He had an easy gentle way – the same for all, no matter who they were or what their sex.”

For more readings, try books by Rex Hurst. 

The Golden Trough

The following excised excerpt is from my upcoming novel Sunday Morning at the Peak of Hell. It has been cut because it doesn't fit the narrative of the story any more, but I still think it has potential as a disconnected piece of flash fiction. Enjoy. 

The Golden Trough is open for business! The already fat customers are packed single file into a maze of cold iron bars with flaking lead based white paint. They are whipped along by a cadre of rail thin menial workers wearing cheap Casper the Friendly Ghost masks. The customers huff through one at a time and are then forced to wait in line again for the cashier. They mutter non sequiturs, while looking at their cell phones, or their shoes, or the ceiling, or their fat beer guts, but never at each other or anyone around them. Direct eye contact is verboten!

The toll for this establishment is $31.41. Exact change is required. Outside the customers must display this amount to the thick suited guards, armed with truncheons and Mace. If the customer is off by one cent, they are given a healthy dose of stick and spray and sent on their way. Once the amount has been verified, the customer must swallow it before being let in. When they reach the register, they are slapped on the back of and forced to regurgitate all of the money onto the counter.

The manager is a hirsute man wearing a stained wife-beater shirt, with five chins and surprisingly spindly arms. Stinking of old oil and spoiled tomatoes, he anoints each person who pays on the forehead with a stamp in blue ink, reading “valued customer.”

The inside is one large gleaming white room, with plain patternless, easily stained, linoleum glued to the floor. On the leeward side, a large aluminum tough, spray painted gold, is sunk into the floor, with “friendly” waiters there to attend to whatever is needed. Each of the “friendly” waiters cheeks have been pierced with twine that is pulled back and tied behind the head, forcing the waiter to smile no matter how obnoxious or stupid the valued customer is.

         Three feet in front the trough are a series of holes exactly 14 inches apart. The valued customer crawls (walking is so exhausting) up and positions their anus exactly behind a hole. Then a “friendly" waiter pulls down the valued customer’s trousers and brown streaked underthings (“Anything to make it easier for the customer”), and pulls up two plastic tubes from the hole. One is inserted into the rectum, while the other is slapped on the penis or into the vaginal shunt.

Thus the valued customer isn’t discomforted by having to handle such unsavory bodily functions, which one would not like to think about at the dinner trough. They must merely pause their gorging for a brief moment, flex what muscles are need to get the ball rolling, and automatic suction machines take over the rest of the process.

To cut costs, The Golden Trough only hires one “friendly” waiter per estimated one hundred and fifty customers. So occasionally, the customers must wait. They shift about, getting annoyed, making little huffing noises, but they dare not raise their voice above the low decibel range, lest they are picked out from the herd by The Scum Who Rule. They could start eating, if they wished or even apply the tubes to themselves, but they don’t. They prefer to wait and delay their pleasure, they're paying someone else to deal with these problems, not to do it themselves.

For more readings, try books by Rex Hurst. 

How Much to Research? Am I Wasting My Time and Life?

Currently I am finishing up a book, called Sunday Morning at the Peak of Hell, the setting of which is the great beyond, the bad place where the souls of all the people we don’t like go. It’s a modern day odyssey through the afterlife, similar to the one Dante took in the 11^th century, only updated for modern times. So far it’s taken me five years to complete. Not because of the plot, there isn’t much of one, it’s because every time I had a new historical figure, I feel the need to stop all work and research the hell of that sad soul.

Granted a lot of these characters aren’t exactly well known in the public domain: Decius Mus, Upnastium, Alistair Crowley, Anton lay Vey, Tomas de Torquemada, Hetty Green, Ambrose Bierce, Wilhelm Reich, and John Romulus Brinkley. Recognize any of those names and you get a gold star. However, when I added each of these characters, often knowing very little myself about their lives, I felt the need to stop everything, buy every book I could on them (often this didn’t amount to much more than two books, in two of the cases there weren’t any and I was forced to use Wikipedia alone), and absorb the whole of their lives. Which is why the whole of the book has taken five years to complete.

You’re probably going to laugh when I say that all of these months of research often only resulted in a few extra paragraphs (maybe half a page at most) of text. But I was also trying to absorb the flavor of the historical figure’s personality, so that their dialogue in Hell would seem accurate to the two readers who would read my novel and also know who John Romulus Brinkley or Hetty Green were. For some reason, it needed to be feel right to me.

Now later on, as I’m polishing this work up to actually send to publishers, I’m wondering if I just spent too much time, literally years, on making these obscure characters as real as possible. Maybe I’m too much of a perfectionist. Maybe I’ve got OCD. Maybe I’ve been wasting my time and no one will give a damn.

As a final taste test, I gave the latest draft to my wife. She read over the manuscript and shrugged.

“It’s pretty good,” she said.

“What did you think of the depiction of Ambrose Bierce?”

“Oh, is that a real person?”

Ah well….

Hellbeast Description- excerpt from Sunday Morning at the Peak of Hell

The following excised excerpt is from my upcoming novel Sunday Morning at the Peak of Hell. I’ve removed it from the book as it runs too long and doesn’t quite fit into the developing narrative, but it was one of the first snippets I wrote for the novel and I still rather like it. So, on its own merit is the description of a Hellbeast.  

Occasionally even the strongest brute was assaulted by a horde of flying creatures. The most common one had a fish’s head and dangling fangs. The wings were made of long flapping scales. These were somewhat loose and a strong gust of wind could yank them out, sending the beast hurtling in an involuntary kamikaze dive. Two long multi-jointed fingers protruded from the chest, ending in a talon with screw-like ruts running from the tip to the base. These were used to pin down smaller prey or to latch onto larger animals, while their large mouths ripped off chunks of flesh.

Sometimes a larger beast will shake off the creature, leaving the snapped off nails to fester in the wound. These will turn into a toxic jelly in several days time, killing the animal and poisoning the flesh for any other predator that passes along.

When breeding time approaches, the female nails itself to a bleeding tree and shits out a massive clutch of roe onto the ground. A male will then approach and screw itself upside down on the tree and drip semen mucus over the eggs. Those that are lucky enough to be fertilized, grow rapidly, enveloping the other eggs around them

Eventually, two fertilized eggs attempt to absorb the other. The embryos will tear into each other, with flimsy soft talons and half formed teeth, until one is dead. This continues until there is only one egg left, or several eggs too far away for the other ones to absorb. They hatch over the next week, assuming a larger predator doesn’t come by and eat the whole batch.

For more readings, try books by Rex Hurst. 

The Five Worst Code Names for G.I. Joe Characters

Like most boys growing up in the 1980s, I was a huge G.I. Joe fan. It started with the comics- made great by the writer Larry Hama (whom the character of Tunnel Rat was modeled after), then moved on the sillier cartoon – Pyramid of Darkness motherfuckers!- and prompted me- and all other red blooded American boys- to buy the toys.

As time went on and the franchise expanded in all directions, more and more Joes needed to be added onto the roster. And towards the tenth and eleventh iteration of new characters they began to strain at the seams for new names and new ideas. As such, some bad decisions were made in the creation of new characters. So I give you the five worst codenames for G.I. Joe characters.

These are not popular characters. They were released as toys, never supported in other media, then fell into the ashbin of history. Some of these are so obscure that even a hardcore Joe fan as myself had never heard of them before.

Colonel Courage

Filecard Information:

File Name: Mewett, Cliff V.

Grade: O-6

Birthplace: Boston, Massachusetts

Primary Specialty: Administrative Strategist

Secondary Specialty: Patriot Driver

 

File Comments: Proper dress and discipline have always been the backbone of the Colonel’s leadership. He works hard to impress these qualities upon his subordinates and insists that anyone who follows his lead will quickly transform themselves into a lean, mean, efficient fighting machine! Because of his efficient work ethic and organizational skills, he is usually assigned to intelligence tasks behind the lines, and behind a desk. So whenever he has a chance for combat duty, he eagerly jumps at the opportunity with an armor piercing weapon in one hand and machinegun blasting in the other.

Military buffs pointed out that the regular G. I. Joe team really lacked a command structure. They had General Hawk and the first sergeant Duke with no one in-between. So they introduced Lt. Falcon, Colonel Courage, and Captain Grid-Iron (see below). Apart from Lt. Falcon (who in the animated G.I. Joe movie was subordinate to Duke for some reason), none of the others ever caught on. Originally part of the twelfth series, it was discontinued in 1994.

And I can’t blame anyone for that. From a toy aspect, the figure doesn’t give you much. There are more weapons included with it than most action figures- seven in total, but they were recycled from other figures and issued in neon green, which is not the coolest color for your war toys.

The appearance of the toy is terrible as well. Even as kid, I would’ve noticed that he seems entirely assembled from different parts of previous characters painted different colors- and none of the interesting ones. In our old battlefields he would’ve just been cannon fodder, someone to be blown up by a firecracker, before the cooler characters came in.

Also the name, although I appreciate the alliteration, is terrible. Sounds like it should be part of a terrible Burger King Kids Club cartoon meant to “inspire children” but just ended up boring them to tears.



Captain Grid-Iron 

File Name: Lydon, Terrence
SN: 903-5221-YY07
Grade: O-3
Birthplace: Evergreen Park, Illinois
Primary Specialty: Hand-To-Hand Combat Specialist
Secondary Specialty: Infantry

File Comments: CAPT. GRID-IRON was quarterback of the West Point football team and graduated in the top ten of his class. It can be said in his favor that he passed up an appointment to the U.S. Army War College for a conventional infantry at the company level. It was this determination to be "where the action is" that brought him to the attention of the G.I. Joe organization. 



  What was the pitch for this? "Everyone loves G.I. Joe and everyone loves football, so let's combine the two." Hence Captain Grid-Iron. He came complete with football shaped grenades, kneepads, and a football style helmet, an oversized rocket launcher, and was completely ridiculous.

He only appeared in one panel of the comic series, but was a regular in the DiC G.I. Joe cartoon series (this was the one who took up the series when Sunbow lost the license after completing the animated G.I. Joe Movie), and all of his dialogue was peppered with football references, which became irritating after the third one.

According to the hierarchy he was in charge of the G.I. Joe team, after the Colonel above and General hawk, but who the hell could take this guy seriously? Sergeant Slaughter should’ve put him in an itty-bitty-ditty bag.

 

 

Starduster

File Name: Skylar, Edward J.
Grade: E-5
Birthplace: Burlingame, California
Primary Specialty: Infantry Transportable Air Recon
Secondary Specialty: Helicopter Assault

File Comments:  Starduster was a circus trapeze artist when he enlisted in the Airborne Rangers. He quickly found that his acrobatic skills and boundless energy would come in handy when swinging from a 150-foot rope. But now he did his famous routines suspended from a Huey Assault Copter- with the audience throwing more than just popcorn and peanuts. It was Duke, however, who recognized how well Starduster's death-defying act would work with the JUMP Jetpack. The combination has been a crowd pleaser ever since. 

 

 

          This character first appeared in 1987, when G.I. Joe was still pretty popular in comics and cartoons, but I’m sure plenty of people don’t recall it. That’s because he was only first available as a mail-in exclusive from G.I. Joe Action Stars Cereal. Afterwards, the figure was available as a mail-in offer from Hasbro Direct. The character was never released in stores and was discontinued in 1990.

The only media he appeared in was three mini-comics that was available in G.I. Joe Action Stars Cereal. Ironically the Jump jetpack he was debuting got more usage than the character, as it appeared very often in the Sunbow cartoon series.

Let’s face it, the name Starduster lacks punch. It sounds like it should belong to a magical pony on Rainbow Bright, or Strawberry Shortcake, or some other godawful feel good, lets-teach-a-lesson, piece of crap cartoon. The character itself looks cool, granted most of the toy was recycled from the Recondo, Flint, and Roadblock characters, to a young me the helmet, jetpack, and grenade launcher looks pretty awesome put together- I think my friends and I would’ve renamed him.

 

 

Windmill 

File Name: Roth, Edward J.
Grade: O-3
Birthplace: Allentown, PA
Primary Specialty: Stopped-Rotor Aircraft Operator

 

File Comments: Windmill was a flight instructor at the Army Flight Warrant Officers School in Fort Rucker and later flew experimental helicopter prototypes at the same facility for the Army Aviation Department Test Activity. You might think that test piloting is easier, or even safer than, testing jet fighters. Consider this- helicopters don't have ejection seats. If you make a mistake, you ride down with it! 



Windmill was the pilot character packaged exclusively with the Skystorm X-Wing Chopper toy. It was released in 1988, rereleased the following year, then shit-canned because no one wanted the stupid looking thing with its ugly pilot. This character and his aircraft didn’t appear in any other media until one of the mid-2000s G.I. Joe vs Transformers: Black Horizon comics where he was quickly killed.

Goddamn this is a stupid looking character. The colors are a fucking eyesore. Safety orange, puke green, blood red- was the person who designed this color blind? The head piece makes no sense and looks like a reject from a Buck Rodgers line of toys. Plus, the oversized revolver (while mercifully black in color) just looks stupid. Like the head, it seems as if it came from another line of toys altogether.

Had I been gifted this character, I would’ve disassembled it and used it as spare parts in a miniature landmine scene. That would be cool.

 



The Ice Cream Solider





File Name: Ragan, Tom-Henry
Grade: E-5
Birthplace: Providence, R.I.
Primary Specialty: Fire Operations Expert
Secondary Specialty: Barbecue Chef

File Comments: The last thing you would expect from G.I. Joe's fiercest flamethrower commando is for him to be called the Ice Cream Solider. However, it's a perfect cover for him because when Cobra hears the Joes are sending a guy into battle with a code name like that, they don't expect much more than a sweet toothed kid with chocolate ice cream stains splattered on his fatigues. Cobra's perceptions of him change fast when they see the Ice Cream Solider fire up his super-charged flamethrower and blast 75 foot streams of flaming gasoline into their foxholes and munitions dumps... talk about a firefight! The Ice Cream Soldier is a one man inferno who scorches those slimy snakes until they melt like hot fudge on a summer sidewalk. 

 

         If there was ever an indication that G.I. Joe had well and truly jumped the shark, it was the creation of this character. Not the actual figure which looks pretty cool (despite the bright orange and yellow accents). The mold would eventually be used to create the Cobra Shock Viper character and, once repainted, shows that the design of it was decent, it was the name that cast the character in infamy.  
        It was released in 1994 as part of the deperate “battle corps” line. These had oversized spring loaded weapons, and many accessories with each character. It was an unsuccessful attempt to add life to the G.I. Joe line.
         I can’t tell if someone let their four year old design a character or if they had become so complacent that they figured the fans would lap up whatever shit they troweled out. However, by 1994 the franchise was in its death knell- No more cartoons. The comic series had been canceled. Ideas must’ve been low. Why not the Ice Cream Solider? Kids like ice cream. It’s a fact. So kids would like a toy named after their favorite dessert. Not so much. As far as G. I. Joe figures go, it is one of the cheapest to pick up on eBay.  
 For more readings, try books by Rex Hurst.