I'm one of the administrators over at Destroyer Club, a site dedicated to the series created by Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir. There have been over 140 books in the series since 1972, many of which have been written by ghost writers. Some background material before my rant.
When I first found the series, it had just gone over to Signet, and Murphy & Sapir were still writing it (for the most part). Then Will Murray took over as the main writer, with an occasional book by Murphy, Sapir, or both. I didn't realize back then about ghost writers. M&S's names were still on the books, and if they were a little different, they were still entertaining and featured the characters I had grown to love.
Signet gave way to Gold Eagle, and a few years later Murray gave way to Jim Mullaney, and still the series went on. But Gold Eagle didn't advertise it very well and didn't seem to care about selling as many of the books as they could. Jim Mullaney was made an offer he needed to refuse during his last contract negotiation, and a new writer took over. Sales plummeted, and as it stands now, Warren Murphy has refused a new contract with Gold Eagle and is shopping for a new publisher for the series. Since then the books have taken a nosedive in quality with the new writer, and GE has never promoted it, it's going to be a bit of a task.
Jim Mullaney, who continues to love the series, has been trying to help get the series back in the public eye a bit. Last week, National Review Online (the web branch of a conservative magazine) published an article by Jim. It posited that one of the reasons for the series' sliding popularity was that the conservative slant that had been in place since Murphy and Sapir's books had been sliding toward the left. He also happened to mention that the ghost writer before him, Will Murray, had also in his opinion not stayed true to the series' conservative roots.
Now, agree or disagree, it did get the series a bit of publicity, much more than it's had since Murphy and Sapir's Destroyers were mentioned in the New York Times Book Review. Sales (on Amazon.com) of the Assassin's Handbook 2, a privately published reader's guide to the thirty years of the series, even went up a little in the days after the article appeared.
However, Will Murray took it rather badly. Which is his right. However, he used this as the occasion to join the Destroyer club and make his first post there -- not to answer fans' eager questions, or give them a chance to say how much they loved his books, but to rant against Jim Mullaney. As one of the administrators, I can't take sides on the forums, but my blog is my own.
What an honor! After over a year of the club's existence, another one of the ghost writers finally shows up and it's to do nothing but spew venom against a fellow writer. Makes me wonder, if he cares so much about the Destroyer, why it took him so long to find us. It was pretty quickly rectified once he'd got a bug up his butt.
Contrast his behavior to that of Warren and Jim's, who have been posting on the Destroyer Club since the beginning. And while both of them have expressed their opinion about Gold Eagle, they haven't attacked the latest ghost writer or dissed other writers of the series. Even with Gold Eagle, they've never named names.
The Destroyer club is supposed to be a site for the fans to talk about Remo and Chiun and Smith and CURE, ask Warren and the ghostwriters questions, and just get together to talk. It is not supposed to be a site for one of the writers to slam another of the writers, no matter how justified he might think he is. The other admins aren't happy about his little temper tantrum either.
It really bothers me how he's gotten people's hopes up. Finally, another of the ghosts is on the forum! Several members responded eagerly to his post. They didn't give him the angry reactions he wanted, but were excited to see him there. The more cautious ones didn't weigh in; they probably read the message and found it disturbing. But I would bet everyone's hoping he'll be dropping in on us regularly now he's found us. I feel that since he's done his spewing and didn't get the indignation and support he craves, he won't be back. Which stinks for the fans. It's sure to occur to them that he could have found this site easily a year ago and didn't bother. And the site is for the fans, not for him to spit venom at Jim or engage in vendettas.
No comments:
Post a Comment