Clint Rockman

[severance]

Just finished the first Clint Rockman (Ken Bulmer) - Black Slaver - with a truly awesome Richard Clifton-Dey cover.

Throughly enjoyed this I have to admit - basically Bulmer has given us a maritime adventure about a Gloucestershire teenager, Richard Luckhurst, running away to Bristol with the intention of joining the first available ship. He intervenes in a fight on the docks between some locals and a huge black, who turns out to be Rafee, a free crew member of the slaver Revenge, captained by the gorgeous redhead Emmalena Canyng. Richard signs on board and its all sun, rum, violence and sex from then on! With those ingredients it would take a lousy writer to mess it up (though judging from WD's analysis a few of them did), and Bulmer was most definitely not lousy. There's enough of the 4 above ingredients to keep most people happy, and he even handles the dubious activity of slaving without being overly sensationalist - no matter how distasteful we find it today, back then it was second nature, and millions of Africans were chained up and transported to the New World solely for profit.
Things get decidedly kinky towards the end with Richard, Rafee, Emmalena and the octaroon slavegirl 'Sable' involved in a love-quadrilateral
Time to find the next one I think!

Just worked my way through Black Queen by Clint 'Ken Bulmer' Rockman - not as enjoyable as Black Slaver, that was more of a coming-of-age sun, sea and sex saga, whereas this one concentrates on the sex aspect rather more.

We open on the Caribbean plantation owned by the particularly loathsome Jamie Moray and his wife Frances, with a brutal whipping scene of one of their female slaves. This slave is Vuva, daughter of the Queen of the Zinka tribe. The Moray's have no compunction against working their largely female (ie. cheaper) slaves until they drop dead, though this doesn't stop either of them using them for their own sexual needs either, or of whipping them to death for little or no reason. When the Spanish invade the island, the slaves are all taken for transportation elsewhere, however when they in turn are attacked by French pirates, the slaves overpower the pirates and become pirates themselves, with the ultimate goal of getting back to Africa.

I get the feeling that Bulmer could have written this kind of stuff in his sleep, but he does feel more comfortable with the endless parades of naked female flesh, and the resultant sex orgies than in Black Slaver. That was more of a maritime adventure that veered into sex and slavery on occasion, whereas this very rarely veers out!! A good, solid read from Bulmer here (to be expected), though it doesn't entice me to delve further into the genre and pick up Avallone's or Moffatt's entries.

[gigasahab]

I'm new to these climes so forgive me if this is common knowledge, but I just recently noticed that "Clint Rockman" is a character in "Journal of a Slaver" by "Tom Goane, edited by Christopher Nolan" (Coronet, 1978). The book just happened to fall open to an appropriate page while I was moving some paperbacks a few weeks ago!

Presumably some sort of nod to the earlier books? I've got "Black Queen", "Black Ivory", "Sable Adventure" and "Sable Mistress" on my Slaver shelves but I have to admit that I've got no intention of reading any of them!

[franklinmarsh]

Yyaaaaaaayyyyy! Welcome Gigsahab! As Sev points out 'Clint Rockman' was Ken Bulmer. 'Christopher Nolan', if I'm right, was none other than Laurence James who not only came up with the name 'Clint Rockman' but peppers his books with in-jokes, characters from other stories, author mates and, well, anything he could get away with.
Aren't the 'Journal Of' series ultra-rare? I've never seen one!

[franklinmarsh]

Have just fought my way through Sable Mistress (08/11/05). Glorious stuff! . If it weren't for the branding,whipping, the inevitable rape(s), and the odd stabbing or shooting this heart warming soap opera wouldn't have been out of place in Woman's Own. A marvellous tale showing that black and white people (although they're different) can live together in peace and harmony. Ken tales a good tale and then has to throw some exploitational sex 'n' violence in every now and again, completely against the run of play. But this makes for big laughs in an appallingly tasteless way. It also seems to build up to a tremendous anticlimax (typical bl**dy NEL!) - what was the next in the series Steve? This kind of leaves us hanging!

[franklinmarsh]

Black Fury - Roger Blake - NEL December 1979

Yippee! Allen does Slavery! The good news? No use of the 'N' word. The bad news? Mr Moffatt's insistence that women enjoy rape. Of course this is fiction, and rather deliriously bad fiction at that, so if dodgy film maker John Waters could describe Herschell Gordon Lewis gore films as 'indefensible - therefore they're classics', if we overlook Jim's appalling lapse in taste, this scummy little potboiler is ..ermm...enjoyable in a so-bad-it's-good kinda way. From the titular overkill to the lurid Tony Masero cover this promises much, and you could say it delivers. Off to Montserrat 'the Emerald Isle' according to the Irish Catholic plantation owners. We're more concerned with Sir David Noble - English Protestant and dastard to boot. He's got a few problems. Sugar is his main crop - but competition from Brazil and Cuba, soil exhaustion and the anti-slavery movement are all thorns in his side. He lives in the obligatory mansion with his crippled second wife and is master of three hundred slaves. His strong-willed daughter by his second wife has been married to a homosexual who wants to escape to England and Negro overseer Joshua has revolutionary plans. This begin boiling nicely when Sir David attempts to ravish Joshua's woman, Hannah. Repulsed by his perverse tastes, she fights him off - only to face a whipping from a 'jumper' or travelling professional punisher. This is the catalyst Joshua needs to rouse the slaves. There then follows rape, decapitation,blood-drinking, male rape (which apparently isn't pleasant) , blood-mixed-with-rum-drinking (wot, no Seagrams?), gunfire and all manner of goin's-on. Moff stays a shade more coherent than say, Dracula And The etc , but is still over the top enough to fill his 125 pages with extraordinary and ludicrous images.