Pick Up Your Sickle Sword, Follow Me…

I’m the Bronze Age infantry.

Tribal shock troops

Patch on my shoulder…

Free for the Amazon Kindle right now: the new epic fantasy novel Gods & Proxies.

This is not yet another Tolkien wannabe book. And, like other Virtual Pulp titles, it eschews the “strong female character” and all the accompanying feminist tropes which are obligatory across seemingly all entertainment media, ESPECIALLY fantasy novels.

If I were going to try to emulate some famous fantasy author (which I’m not), it would be Robert E. Howard.

What you have here, kind of, is opposing gods fighting a proxy war via Bronze Age nations. One nation is human, and its enemies are mostly Nephilim (giants, or Titans).

For the small price of zero dollars and no cents, you can indulge in high adventure…for the next few days.

Gangster Land – a Review

It would be difficult to count all the movies that have been set during the prohibition era. Yet for some reason, it seems like all of them are set at the end–usually around the Stock Market crash. It’s nice to see one that kicks off in the early days.

The story bears only superficial resemblance to history. But still, it’s nice to see a period piece that depicts the rise of Al Capone and Bugs Moran.

The protagonist (played by some actor who looks familiar) is a straight arrow, but when his father is murdered by a rival gang, he hires on as a trigger man for Capone.

One little tidbit I didn’t expect was a brief monologue from Capone about how John D. Rockafeller was the driving force behind getting the Volstead Act passed. Hadn’t heard that one before.

Aside from what I’ve mentioned, there’s nothing remarkable about this movie. Back in the day, it would have been called a “B picture.

War For the Planet of the Apes – a Review

First of all, the title is a bit deceptive. There is a war brewing between apes and men–like it was in the last movie or two, but this one doesn’t depict a war.

There is a cheesy firefight scene at the end, and an ambush of sorts at the very beginning, and that’s about the extent of the combat. The bulk of the film is a psychological profile of Caesar. Woody Harrelson (doing his best Colonel Kurtz) murder’s his wife and son, so Caesar is tempted to adopt tactics and methods that are just as ee-veel as those used by the bad guys (humans).

In this ongoing reboot of the franchise, the film makers evidently intend to erase generations of history. The apes haven’t even taken over the planet yet, and they’ve already introduced both Cornelius and Nova.

The cinematography was the best aspect of the  film. Otherwise, meh.

“Another Excellent Novel”

There are downsides to having a bestseller. It gives your book more exposure, which is certainly a net gain; but it also draws plenty of wild cards.

As in all businesses, customers are probably about 75% more determined to make their opinions known when they have a complaint than when they find a product satisfactory. In the book biz, you also have some jealous, petty and vindictive authors prowling Amazon to size up the competition who, I guess, assume they can elevate their own work by trying to make other author’s work look bad. And then there’s controversial books like False Flag, which are gonna trigger sheeple and SJWs, even when they are warned up front that a particular book will not be their cup of tea.

Case in point: shortly after the post about Roy Moore went live on this blog, somebody posted the first-ever one-star review for Hell and Gone, admitting within the “review” that they hadn’t read the book. Up until then, my debut novel had never drawn less than four stars from any Amazon reviewer. I smell a motive for this drive-by, but who knows.

So the vigilant haters have managed to drag False Flag‘s cumulative review score down to 4.2 stars, but comments like the following tend to improve morale:

Another excellent novel by Henry Brown

First of all let me state that this is the third novel by Henry Brown I have read featuring “Rocco’s Retreads” a group of different special warfare operators who are mostly retired from different branches of the active duty military.


It’s a direct follow up to Tier Zero– the novel where Native American lawman and ex spec ops warrior Tommy Scarred Wolf and some of his friends and family set out to rescue a group of females from the nearby Rez who had been kidnapped in a foreign country.

This time around, Tommy and some of the Retreads have been targeted by a sleazebag Statist DHS spook and his underhanded operators- including several who are basically Manchurian Candidate Brainwashees.
Tommy is now the Sheriff in the town where the nearby Rez is located and his friends are scattered to the Southwest. Rocco, Leon and Carlos are now operating a shooting range and firearms sales and supply shop; Mac has gotten involved with a sleazy race-card baiter in Federal Law Enforcement and Josh has retired to the life of a modern Mountain Man.


Essentially Josh and some of the others find out that Rocco’s Retreads have been flagged as Domestic Terrorists by the dirtbags from DHS and worse- the same scumbags are planning on a False Flag attack on a peace rally in Amarillo Texas following the senseless beating of an African American motorist.


Talk about being ripped from the headlines.


As the NeoFascists in Federal Government see it, by attacking the rally and pinning the rap on “Right Wing Militia extremists” it will give them the justification among the McSheeple to go after the Internet and gun owners.


Tommy, Josh and the majority of their friends and family decide to try and stop the False Flag attack.
When they call in a phony bomb threat and the “proper authorities” refuse to evacuate the facility…well, it’s time for Tommy’s pals in the Native American Militia to step forward and stop the slaughter of innocent people and try and save the country from the insidious forces within the corridors of power who see Freedom as a threat to their own lustful power grabs.


The book is sobering at times and downright funny at others. The descriptions of some of the peripheral characters (looters and so forth) reminded me of some of the more razor-sharp satirical Destroyer Novels written by the late great Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy as both rednecks and looters get scalded by Brown’s pen.


I would love to see these books made into movies someday. However they are so politically incorrect that its’ mostly a pipe dream at this point.
If you enjoyed the Destroyer novels or the old Phoenix Force and Able Team books the Retreads series is right up your alley.

If you’re willing to take just a few minutes to make a small-but-significant impact in the culture war, and you’ve read one or more of my books, why not drop a couple lines into a review and counter some of this sabotage? Amazon isn’t yet as bad as Twitter, Facebook, or Wikipedia, but they’ve proven to me they are sympathetic to these SJW trolls. They took down a review I posted (it’s long-winded; sorry) even though it was obvious I read the book, and I hadn’t violated any of their published guidelines; but they won’t take leftist hit pieces down, even when it’s obvious the troll hasn’t read the book. There’s not much I can do about that. By posting an honest review, however, you could dilute this well-poisoning.

Justice League – A Review

Last year I reviewed Batman Vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice and opined on the possibility that the next DC team-up blockbuster might be a formulaic clone of the other superhero movies (of which, the Marvel flicks have rather defined the cookie-cutter).

Well, it happened. Some god-like supervillain wants to control/destroy Earth (domination and destruction are interchangeable in these movies), but first he needs to collect some ancient mystical object with cosmic power…blah blah blah. (In this case it’s three boxes–one guarded by the Amazons, one by the Atlantians, and one by the humans.)

This age-old baddie (“Steppenwolf”) captures two of the boxes, bringing Aquaman and Wonder Woman onto the Batman’s bandwagon to form a super-team and stop him from obtaining the third, or Steppenwolf will achieve total…villainhood…or something.

I rather like Steppenwolf. I also like Jimi Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane and the Lovin’ Spoonful. Wonder if one of them will be the next all-powerful supervillain. But I digress.

JusticeLeagueClassicLeadership

So, Superman is still dead from the last blockbuster, which is one reason why the Batman thinks this team is necessary. If you don’t know much about the source material (comic books), then you probably aren’t aware of the characters and team dynamics that get trashed in all the virtue-signaling revamps by screen-adapting creative teams. Batman and Superman were “honorary members” of the Justice League. Obviously Batman had no super powers, but he was the superior tactician of the bunch and therefore the de facto leader of the team when he was there. But now it’s the current year (you mysogonistic bigots!) and Wonder Woman has to be the leader…because vagina. That’s one of the sub-plots of the film–Batman trying to push her into her rightful supreme role.

wonder-woman-batman

Since the main plot is nothing new, I guess I’ll just give you the down-low on the characters, as they are in this depiction.

SUPERMAN: (spoiler alert!…not) He comes back. And he’s got possibly one of the best lines in the movie. At first, after his ressurection, he’s a vengeful anti-hero willing to kill his allies…until Lois Lane gives him a hug. Then he is restored to his Boy Scout super-Samaritan god-dom as fast as you can say “applause-inducing plot device.” Because vagina.

BATMAN: He’s the old, over-the-hill version from Dark Knight Returns in this movie. Some good lines. Same pros and cons from the last movie. At least the writer/director is consistent in this case.

WONDER WOMAN: She’s not just attractive, she’s likeable. Unlike women in real life who think they ARE her.

CYBORG: I don’t remember much about him in the comics–he seemed little more than a token minority character. Here they’ve done a fairly good job fleshing him out and giving him some useful abilities that help the team. Not a marquis character yet, but OK.

flashcyborg

AQUAMAN: He’s basically Wolverine in a different costume, but more effeminate. Oh yeah–he doesn’t have to swim; he sort of flies underwater.

THE FLASH: The character in the TV show is whiny, but bearable. This Flash is the worst incarnation of him I’ve ever seen. Kind of like what the film makers did to Spiderman in Homecoming, only much worse. He’s pathetic. By the time his character arc brings him some backbone, I’m too irritated by the goofy appearance of his costume to pay full attention. They should have just borrowed the one from the Netflix series. This costume looks like something that would be worn to a Gay Pride Bicycle Race.

Nice visuals, of course. Some good dialog. The Batmobile was badass for about 30 seconds, before it (like every other cool multi-million dollar asset in these movies) met its obligatory destruction.

Not a must-see in the theaters. Wait ’till you can stream it at home.

Astounding Frontiers

The folks at Superversive have been putting together an electronic sci-fi periodical that has loads of potential.

I read some Amazon reviews and was surprised (yet again) at how different mainstream tastes are from mine: A few different people mentioned their dislike of serial adventures; while I find it pretty cool. At least some of the fiction in Astounding Frontiers is serialized.

  • Did you know that Tarzan and Conan movies were inspired by their prose adventures?
  • Did you know the full-length novels written about those characters were compiled from their pulp stories?
  • Did you know that those pulp stories were originally written as serials?

There were a lot more than just the barbarian and the ape-man, too. Characters like John Carter of Mars, The Shadow, Buck Rogers and more.

Anyway, I applaud Superversive for putting this series out. I hope to read and post some reviews right here in the future.