The Destroyer

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The Destroyer is an American paperback series with the hero " Remo Williams ". The series was created by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy . The first edition appeared in 1971 and 141 stories have been published so far.

Together with the series "The Executioner" by Don Pendleton , "The Destroyer" is one of the longest running adventure series, although, unlike "The Executioner", it also contains elements from fantasy , science fiction , espionage and in various stories Contains mystery. Almost every story also contains satirical allusions to political and social circumstances and she made fun of almost every subject, even herself.

background

In the Vietnam War, Remo Williams made a name for himself as a man who is not to be trifled with and who can coldly and mercilessly send an opponent to the afterlife without the support of others. After serving in the military, Remo becomes an honorable cop and kills, apparently, a drug dealer. The trial against him is strangely quick and unobjective and just as strangely quick he is being executed on the electric chair.

But after his execution, Williams wakes up and finds himself a recruit in the service of an ominous US government agency called "CURE". The authority fights against criminal elements “with influence”, money and power, the types against which a normal authority cannot do anything because of the “relationships” between people. CURE needed an “enforcer” and because of his “merits” in Vietnam, Remo Williams was selected and, as a “man without a past”, is supposed to enforce the “Eleventh Commandment”: “ You shouldn't get away with it! “Williams has no choice but to cooperate.

Remo Williams received training from the Korean master assassin Chiun in the old fighting technique "Sinanju", from which all other martial arts techniques are said to be derived and which is far more deadly than any other. After a while, a kind of friendship develops between the two of them and Remo sometimes calls Chiun “little father” (Koreans are said to have not grown particularly tall). Chiun, on the other hand, believes that Remo is the fulfillment of an old prophecy and a reincarnation of the destroyer god Shiva , otherwise he would not have trained him at all.

filming

In 1985, director Guy Hamilton filmed the genesis of Remo Williams with Fred Ward in the lead role under the title Remo - Unarmed and Dangerous ( Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins ) . The white actor Joel Gray (known from the musical film Cabaret ) was chosen as the Korean "Chiun" . In his mask he portrayed a Korean so deceptively real that he was not even nominated for an Oscar because those who voted in the "Actor" category thought he was actually Korean. The participants in the “Makeup” category knew better and nominated make-up artist Carl Fullerton for an Oscar in the “ Best Makeup ” category .

Series title until October 2005

In addition to the below issues, a series leaders appeared in 1983 with the title "The Assassin's Handbook" ( Handbook an assassin ) with another new story "The Day Remo Died". The book was reissued under the title "Inside Sinanju" in 1985 and also contained material from the film adaptation. The film story also appeared as a novel, written by the series creators, Sapir and Murphy.

"The Destroyer" in comics

In the 1990s, Marvel Comics also released nine albums of color Destroyer stories based on Remo Williams adventures.

There are also various Destroyer comics with other heroes. In 1940 there were adventures in the "Mystic Comics" about the mutant "Kevin Marlow", in the 1970s there were British comics with "Brian Falsworth", also a mutant, and from 1977 a further mutant in Marvel comics became the baddies of the world released, "Roger Aubrey". Also in the Spider-Man comics from 1997 onwards, the spider was assisted several times by a destroyer, which was called "Keen Marlow" in civilian terms.

literature

  • Warren Murphy, Richard Sapir, Christopher Wood: REMO. Unarmed and Dangerous , Heyne, ISBN 3453023676 (film novel )

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