Cüneyt Arkın Memorial Tournament

In a shocking move, Ramsay Thorne’s Renegade is disqualified for being a wrong’un.

We’ll see more from Charles Saunders, from the worlds of Imaro and beyond.

Horn comes to a close, in defeat Ben Sloane is unmasked as Stephen R. Cox, and unless his unavailable Mutant Hunter series surfaces, brings him to retirement.

As Falcon limps to a close, Mark Ramsay is unmasked as John Maddox Roberts and claims the European Championship.

Mathew Swain gets his happy ending, but there’s plenty more to read from Mike McQuay, our first Intercontinental Champion.

With no exit strategy in sight, we have many more installments of Vietnam Ground Zero by Eric Helm, our first United States Champion.

And the winner of the Series Showdown finals and our first World Champion, Robert Faulcon with Night Hunter.

And that concludes No Redeeming Value. Keep following for our next event.

NRV: Cüneyt Arkin Memorial Tournament

 

No Redeeming Value - Our Main Event

 

The Series Showdown started way back in February, 2020. Eight tournaments, 64 book series, 112 novels. Alien Nation has already claimed the Television Title belt. Now the top seven book series compete for the four vacant titles - European, Intercontinental, United States, and World championships.

Let's meet our competitors:

Vietnam: Ground Zero by Eric Helm. War is Hell brutality an jungle adventure.

Night Hunter by Robert Faulcon: Like John Constantine in an Evil Dead story scripted by Nigel Kneale.

Renegade by Ramsay Thorne: Mercenary action in Central America against the geopolitical background preceding the digging of the Panama Canal, with butt sex.

Mathew Swain by Mike McQuay: A hardboiled detective in a cyberpunk future, before Blade Runner.

Falcon by Mark Ramsay: Revenge seeking former crusader leads a private army.

Imaro by Charles Saunders: Early Sword and Soul innovator, monsters and magic in a fictional Africa stand in.

Horn by Ben Sloane. The winner of the first Series Showdown tournament. Nihilistic cyberpunk Robocop cash in that shifted into buddy cop territory.

These seven authors will go head to head, and the top four in ranked order will be our inaugural Trash Fiction Champions

No Redeeming Value: Young Guns Championship

 

We'll probably see more of Curran and Beard in the future, but this was really a showdown of two 21st century titans Sodergren and Ferguson. Ferguson brought his A game and is our first Young Guns Champion!

No Redeeming Value: Young Guns Fatal Four Way

Four twentieth century authors, two favorites, two new reads. But only one will survive as our first Young Guns Champion. Let's meet our competitors:

Jim Beard writes new pulp, tie-in fiction, and comic history.  Buy his stuff at Amazon.

Tim Curran is a prolific horror author. Buy his stuff at Amazon or visit him at Corpse King

New pulp phenom Derrick Ferguson was taken from us too soon, but his creation Dillon lives on. Buy his stuff on Amazon.

Accompanied to the ring by the Highland Horror Hound Boris, it's the Scottish Scribe, the Gaelic Goremeister, David Sodergren. Sodergren's work covers the range of horror and exploitation subgenres, from Giallo to Weird Western. Follow him on twitter at @paperbacksnpugs or buy his stuff on Amazon.

NRV Cruiserweight Gauntlet Round 7

While properly unnerving, Deathtracks read like a premise without a story, but more meat on the bone than Shambleau. Dennis Etchison faces the final challenge as the Gauntlet concludes!

NRV: Cruiserweight Gauntlet Round 6

Not a fan of 50s whimsical fantasy or 70s conceptual stuff, it would appear. Henry Slesar and Adrian Cole are both counted out, and two new authors will run The Gauntlet!

NRV: Crusierweight Gauntlet Round 5

I'm beginning to think there was a genre fiction Sahara between the mid 40s and late 60s, and these performances by Bowen and Garrett haven't changed my mind. This match ends with a double knockout, and two new authors face the Gauntlet.

NRV: Cruiserweight Gauntlet Round 4

Sadistic spirits versus a horny devil. Marjorie Bowen manages to outcreep Ed Wood, Jr. and moves on to the next round. Can she survive the next four rounds and claim the championship?

NRV: Cruiserweight Gauntlet Round 3

Robert E. Howard is one of the all time greats when he's not going on pseudoscientific ramblings, talking about history and genealogy drier than the Old Testament, or being a giant racist. We get a little of each with Kings of the Night, and not much else. Ed Wood gives us a sexual confused killer in rubber panties. Wood is nothing if not consistent, and that consistency has let him survive another round.

NRV: Cruiserweight Gauntlet Round Two

The Children of Noah has it's charms, but it doesn't stand up to the transcendent vision of the master of the form. Ed Wood Jr. survives this round - can he survive six more and claim the title?

NRV: Cruiserweight Title Gauntlet Round One

Roald Dahl's drab snobbery versus Robert Bloch's dull snootiness. Dahl barely makes it a couple pages through the Gauntlet before being eliminated, hopefully clearing a path for an author who wasn't a miserable anti-Semite. But it won't be Bloch, who also fails to measure up. We start with a double countout, and two new authors will meet in this game of human chess! Will one of them survive the Gauntlet?

No Redeeming Value: Cruiserweight Championship Gauntlet

Can one author defeat all challengers, survive eight rounds, and become Trash Fiction Championships first Cruiserweight Champion? Will Roald Dahl survive...The Gauntlet!?

Brought to you by comic writer Kek-W, author for 2000 AD among others.

Follow him on twitter @19f3_records

Buy his stuff at Amazon

NRV: Television Championship

 

Our inaugural champion makes their first defense against tie-in powerhouse Marvel. Alien Nation faces Captain America for the Television Championship.

Brought to you by artist Łukasz Kowalczuk. Buy his stuff and hire him to do the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, cowards! 

Website

Twitter

Tag Team Elimination Tournament Final Round

Startling Detective Adventures (December 1937, v19n113)

Double Death: Trapping New Jersey's Elusive Cop Killer by Tom Bailey

Cops are shot while serving a warrant on an eccentric bail bondman.

Teen-Age Gangsters (1957)

Sex and Liquor

Stories of "non-virgin clubs", with games like seven minutes in heaven, pretty much the stuff of 80s teen comedies. Tame for this title.

Battered and bloodied, these two true crime titles barely stumbled through the last round, but Startling Detective Adventures makes the pin, and is your new Tag Team Champion!

NRV: Tag Team Elimination Tournament Round Six

Startling Detective Adventures (December 1937, v19n113)

Murder in the Model's Boudoir by Lawrence Flick Jr.

A good time girl with a black book filled with influential names is murdered. 

Savage Realms Monthly Volume 2 (February 2021)

Titan's Thirst by Alexander S. Karcher

Quick, poetic piece about a primitive man hunting a man-eating lion.

Teen-Age Gangsters (1957)

Teen-Agers in Jail

Teen-Age Gangsters crawls deeper in the gutter with sexual sadism in girls' juvenile detention.

Savage Realms succumbs to the shadows.

NRV: Tag Team Elimination Tournament Round Five

Street & Smith's Mystery Magazine (May 1940, v06n01)

No Profit in Murder by Alan Hathway

The Keyhole is a mysterious columnist crime solver. This case involves a slain mail carrier, an Inca curse, and a murdered inventor. The premise is still being set up as the Keyhole smashes and shoots his way out of it.

Savage Realms Monthly Volume 2 (February 2021)

In the Cove of the Apostate by B. Harlan Crawford

Barbarian nomad Seanai takes refuge in a cursed temple of a city that was driven into the sea for worshipping dark gods. The spirits of the apostates animate statues held together with possessed sea-life.

Teen-Age Gangsters (1957)

Gang Wars

Yikes! Strong stuff here from Teen-Age Gangsters. After the introduction of an ex-gang member being beaten and outraged, more general information about New York's juvenile gangs and the lax criminal justice system that doesn't strip search teenage girls enough. Surprisingly, neither parents nor comic books were blamed.

Startling Detective Adventures (December 1937, v19n113)

The Man Who Turned Monster by Dean S Jennings

The story of Roy Righthouse, obsessed killer and necrophile who strangled a nurse before turning himself in. One of these true crime stories which took some narrative liberties, complete with internal monologues of the characters. More florid than most, Jennings tries to go full Dostoyevsky.

Mystery Magazine had that sub-genre of mystery that introduced bizarre elements in the beginning, hoping to explain everything in the resolution. It almost never works, and you're better off depending on action than the whodunit. A whole magazine of this format is a bit much. Street & Smith Mystery Magazine is eliminated!

NRV: Tag Team Elimination Tournament Round Two

Soldier of Fortune (March 1985, v10n03)

From Wailing Wall to Hallowed Ground by Jim Graves

Learned a lot about the Vietnam Veterans Memorial - I didn't realize there were objections at the time to the bleakness of the Memorial Wall, as well as to the architect Maya Yin Ling for being born in Ohio. I tease, it was from racism, with Ross Perot calling her an "egg roll". They added a statute and a flagpole as part of a compromise, and it's questionable how much of the controversy was from veterans as a whole as opposed to some financial backers. This article is about the inauguration of the Three Soldiers statue.

Complete Man (February, 1967, v7n01)

Vietnam's Life-or-Death Rescue Daredevils by Emile C. Schurmacher

Quick handful of pages on helicopter rescues, evacuating wounded from fire zones.

Teen-Age Gangsters (1957)

Thrill Pills

Straight talk about goofballs. As silly as the parodies are, 1950s drug warnings are way sillier. Teens using barbiturates constantly get laid which somehow leads to car theft.

Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine (March 1983, v28n03)

Professor Kreller's Secret by Ingram Meyer

A romance author hires a pair of private detectives, one a grandma, to investigate her professor neighbor, who has guest visit but never leave. The professor drops dead on campus, they find newspaper clippings that the visitors are criminals who escaped justice, and they think the professor turned them into cats. This is introduced as a second act red herring, but the story just kinda ends with a "maybe he did turn them into cats...somehow". Feels like it was written for children.

Street & Smith's Mystery Magazine (May 1940,v06n01)

Too Many Ghosts by Maxwell Grant

Norgil the Magician investigates a murder in a haunted theater. Usual convoluted Scooby-Doo stuff.

Startling Detective Adventures (December 1937, v19n113)

Milwaukee's Passion Slayers and the Missing Schoolgirl

Two drifters rape and kill a teenage girl. Interesting to see some basic profiling, which was probably as effective as it is now. After conviction, the judge gives a speech about sterilization, which I'm sure has nothing to do with the culprits being Eastern European.

Savage Realms Monthly Volume 1 (January 2021)

The Festival of the Bull by Steve Dilks

Bohun, a warrior from an Africa stand-in, escapes a slave ship and lands in a Greco-Roman stand in, where he his captured, forced to fight a jaguar, and escapes. Solid enough, but after reading 70s historical fiction the recent stuff feels a bit PG-13 to me.

A couple of snoozers in this round, but Professor Kreller's Secret is giving me second thoughts about the entire shelf of AHMMs I've collected. Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine is eliminated.

NRV: Tag Team Elimination Tournament Round One

No Redeeming Value

Tag Team Elimination Tournament

Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine (March 1983, v28n03)

The Beckoning Eye by Ron Butler

An American businessman on vacation in Japan with a local police inspector evade an assassination attempt by the Yakuza. Mild thriller, no suspense, and no twist.

Teen-Age Gangsters (1957)

What Makes a Teenage Gangster   

Not exactly a research article, but quotes some psychologists. Talks about outdated theories of juvenile crime, like comic books and lack of corporal punishment, and gets closer to modern thinking with lack of group acceptance and household trauma, but then slips back into girls getting hooked at marijuana parties. Manages to slip in some references to infanticide and explicit child torture, in case you were worried this wasn't exploitation.

Soldier of Fortune (March 1985, v10n03)

I Was There: Silhouette Shoot by Uzal W. Ent

One page quickie about calling in a mortar strike during the Korean War.

Grimdark Magazine Issue 3 (March 2015) - Available from Amazon

A Recipe for Corpse Oil by Siobhan Gallagher

A pickpocket is recruited by a potion seller to steal chins to make corpse oil. A light comedy, the grimmest and darkest of fantasies.

Street & Smith's Mystery Magazine (May 1940,v06n01)

The Crack of Doom by Norman A. Daniels

A cop responding to a suicide call finds a series of bodies, heads twisted around following an unholy screeching. Daniels is a master mechanic of action scenes so we get great fist fights, shootouts, and fiery escapes, but the reveal was a letdown.

Complete Man (February, 1967, v7n01)

Come-Across Swinger by Karl Kramer

Sleaze short in the paperback original tradition, in the sub-genre of Private Airport Noir, the only other example of which I can think of is Coleman Francis' Skydivers, though it looks like Kramer had at least a couple novels in the genre. A dirtbag airport owner cheats on his wife, rapes a widow, screws over his partner, beats up an employee, and lives happily ever after.

Savage Realms Monthly Volume 1 (January 2021) - Available from Amazon

God of the Mountain by Willard Black

Redgar the barbarian is hired to rescue a woman from a savage tribe under the shadow of an active volcano. There's a sweet spot for Sword and Sorcery, and this one falls on the short side - the descriptions and actions could use more detail. S&S, like Westerns, tend towards generic templates, and this felt more generic than most - if this is a series character, maybe future installments have more variety.

Startling Detective Adventures (December 1937, v19n113)

Fatal Masquerade of the Midget Gunman by John Shirley (presumable a different John Shirley)

The story goes for the "midget" angle even though the gunman was a full five feet tall. The local press focused on the blackface, calling him the "Mammy Bandit". Pretty standard robbery gang true crime stuff.

A Recipe for Corpse Oil may not have been representative of grimdark, but you can't expect fairness and justice to prevail in this dark and cynical world. Grimdark Magazine is eliminated.

NRV: Tag Team Title Elimination Tournament

Announcing an eight title elimination tournament. A story or feature from each title will compete, with the lowest reviewed title will be eliminated until we crown our first Tag Team Champions.

Brought to you by John Bender's Chainsaw.

"In Chainsaw, Bender delivers a rollercoaster ride of redneck humor and blood-soaked visuals that dives deep into backwoods hilarity while going full-tilt duh in all the right spots. More fun than pass the cousin at a hillbilly reunion, Bender pulls out all the stops and pushes the envelope on toilet jokes, dirt road mentalities, and gory splashes of ineptitude."

Available from Amazon

Four titles were chosen by the commissioner and another four were picked randomly from the Trash Menace collection. In publication order:

Representing True Crime, Startling Detective Adventures

The pulps continue with Street & Smith Mystery Magazine

True Crime goes juvi with Teen-Age Gangsters

Complete Man gets things sweaty

Long time veteran Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine fights for it's spot. Still in print and available from Amazon.

Soldier of Fortune takes the occasional break from firearm accessory ads for features

And representing Fantasy we have a couple of Young Guns, Grimdark Magazine, available from Amazon.

And Savage Realms, also at Amazon

Six decades, eight titles, 35 stories, but only one magazine will bring home the belt as our inaugural Tag Team Champion.