PHOENIX FORCE

Phoenix Force is a small team working as part of the Stony Man Group.

The purpose for this sub-agency of Stony Man was tackle situations around the world and that mandate was fulfilled through having adventures in all regions of the globe from the frozen north and south to the jungles and deserts of the center. Whereas its sister group, Able Team, was made up of people with whom Mack Bolan, one of the two founders of Stony Man, had fought side-by-side, these people were from various nations and backgrounds and were chosen largely by the other SMG founder, Hal Brognola.

The original members were Yakov "Katz" Katzenelenbogen, a French-Israeli who was the first leader of the group, Gary Manning, a Canadian, David McCarter, a Brit, Keio Ohara, Japanese, and Rafael Encizo, a Cuban. As time went along, Katz retired and was replaced as the leader. Ohara was killed in action and his place taken by Calvin James, an African-American veteran of Vietnam. To replace the promoted McCarter, T. J. Hawkins, an American.

Both Katz and McCarter were long-time veterans of battle with Katz having served in more than one Arab-Israeli war and McCarter being a decorated member of the elite British SAS. Manning was the team's demolition expert as well as being an expert sniper. Ohara was a martial arts expert in addition to being quite good with electronics. Encizo had helped Castro take power but turned against him when Castro went communist. James knows chemistry and understands urban fighting better than most.

When the new publishing imprint of Gold Eagle acquired the rights to the Executioner line, they and creator Don Pendleton decided to expand the franchise. In addition to the ongoing Executioner series, there would be two additional series published for a while on alternating months. Able Team and Phoenix Force were the two names given these teams.

The Phoenix Force books were listed as being by Gar Wilson though that was just a house name for 8 different authors who penned the adventures. One author, William Fieldhouse, accounted for 32 of the books and two of the novellas. The book series ran for 51 regular stories and four "super" books which were considerably longer. After the series came to an end, three novellas were published in a trilogy of books called "Heroes".

Once the series reached its end, the two teams were molded into the replacement series called Stony Man.

Note: There are several sites on the web devoted to the Executioner and its spinoffs so a good search should bring them up. The best, IMHO, is www.mackbolan.com.

As I wrote for the sister series, Able Team, any series written by a large number of different authors, working off of a blueprint for who each team member is and what they can do, has a hard time winning me over. Able Team did because they were characters I knew before but most of the people who made up Phoenix Force were relatively new and that was a problem. Except for canned histories, there was little background on any of them and virtually no growth. At least there was one retirement and one unfortunate death to bring on new characters but just as the original series, the Executioner was going through a very rough patch of cookie-cutter adventures, so did this series.

On the plus side, though, the two leaders that Phoenix Force had, first Katz and then McCarter, were very interesting characters who could have had his own series and done quite well under one author. This is especially true with McCarter who remains one of the main characters in the follow-on Stony Man series.