Black Chariots

The Avenger #30

by Kenneth Robeson, Ron Goulart (AKA)

The Avenger and his band of associates comprised Justice, Inc. Armed with keen gadgets, clear genius, stout hearts, good humor, and the force of right set forth from their Bleek Street headquarters to thwart evil.

Strange Disc-like objects have been sighted hovering above the desert. The toll of plane crashes has been mounting. Are saboteurs at work - or are visitors from another planet invading the earth? Can even the Avenger combat this unidentified menace in the skies?

Genres: Pulp, Pulp Adventure, Fiction

142 pages, Paperback

Published November 1, 1974

About the author

Kenneth Robeson was the house name used by Street and Smith Publications as the author of their popular character Doc Savage and later The Avenger. Though most Doc Savage stories were written by the author Lester Dent, there were many others who contributed to the series, including:

William G. Bogart
Evelyn Coulson
Harold A. Davis
Lawrence Donovan
Alan Hathway
W. Ryerson Johnson

Lester Dent is usually considered to be the creator of Doc Savage. In the 1990s Philip José Farmer wrote a new Doc Savage adventure, but it was published under his own name and not by Robeson. Will Murray has since taken up the pseudonym and continued writing Doc Savage books as Robeson.

All 24 of the original stories featuring The Avenger were written by Paul Ernst, using the Robeson house name. In order to encourage sales Kenneth Robeson was credited on the cover of The Avenger magazine as "the creator of Doc Savage" even though Lester Dent had nothing to do with The Avenger series. In the 1970s, when the series was extended with 12 additional novels, Ron Goulart was hired to become Robeson.

Reviews

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Other than the cover, painted by an artist who apparently wasn't told that the story was taking place during World War II, this was a better than average book in the modern adventures of The Avenger and his crew. The engines of the odd craft, clearly a jet engine of some kind, were described in a way that would have worked in 1943, which seems to be about when this story took place. Oddly, the main science fictional element was the construction of these disc-like flying machines, which is never quite explained, but in a pulp adventure, that's okay.
I'm still puzzled as to why these stories took place only a few days apart, from internal evidence, since that is what kept Josh and his wife on the sidelines in the Avenger stories written in the early 1970s. At this late date it may be impossible to learn the story behind that.
In any case, this is a very quick read, and there didn't seem to be any gigantic plot holes. Granted, it's an amazing coincidence that whenever any of The Avenger's crew go on vacation, weird stuff happens that also involves a particular FBI agent...yet another story that I hope got wrapped up in a later volume, but you never know.

[Mark Phillips · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the fourth of Ron Goulart's pastiches with the pattern of having one of Dick Benson's team going off on a lone vacation, only to stumble into a mystery. This time Smitty is in the Southwest desert interfering with enemy spies and flying saucers. Better than average Goulart pastiche with some nice humor.

[Craig · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Avenger, Richard Benson, was one of the greatest pulp crime-fighters. He and his band of associates comprised Justice, Inc., and, armed with keen gadgets, clear genius, stout hearts, good humor, and the force of right set forth from their Bleek Street headquarters to thwart evil, defend goodness, and protect American society. The adventures were published as "by Kenneth Robeson, the creator of Doc Savage," (which may have led to the perception that The Avenger was something of a second-rate Doc), though the originals were actually written by Paul Ernst and then continued by Ron Goulart many years later. Armed with Mike & Ike, a very special knife and gun, Benson was teamed with Mac and Smitty (analogous to Monk and Ham from the Doc Savage series) from the beginning, and then joined by blonde and diminutive Nellie Grey (who could definitely have held her own with Pat Savage or Nita van Slaon) in the second book, Josh and Rosabel Newton, perhaps the best-depicted African-American couple from the era in The Sky Walker, and light-hearted Cole Wilson in the thirteenth adventure. The stories were well-paced and exciting and very well-written for the context of the era. Benson's origin, as recounted in Justice, Inc., the first story, was similar to Bruce Wayne's in that the loss of his family spurred his decision to fight crime; his wealth and physical prowess allowed him to do so. The loss of his wife and daughter resulted in a weird facial
deformity that made his skin lose its pigmentation and left it malleable like wax so that he could reform it and made him "the man of a thousand faces"; the loss of this ability in the thirteenth novel was a downturn in the series. The series continued for a second dozen adventures in the 1940's, and then revived for a third dozen in the 1970's when Warner Books had Goulart continue the series for another dozen volumes after they put out the first two dozen in paperback. It was a fun and thrill-packed intelligent series, more down-to-Earth than the Doc Savage books and much less crazy than The Spider series.

[Michaelangelo Barasorda]

Was this book one of the original series from the forties or was it one of the books ghost written by Ron Goulart in the seventies?

[Little Timmy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Much like Doc Savage the Avenger fights crime with the help of his aids. While the stories aren't as exciting and world ranging as Doc he is still a great pulp character and read. Very recommended

[Randy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ron Goulart