Black Samurai #1

Black Samurai  (Black Samurai #1
Marc Olden
1974

I've always been familiar with the Jim Kelly film, Black Samurai, so I was pleasantly surprised to find out it was a book series by the revered Marc Olden, which at this point I still hadn't read anything of. Maybe not a good deal to most for ratty paperbacks, and since these are now available on Amazon in digital editions, but earlier this year I scored all of these in a lot off the 'bay. Price came out to about the price of the digital editions, but I felt it was worth it for my obsessive tangible desires. And the covers are absolutely glorious.

I've just read the first book so far. Didn't blow me away, but it's a solid setup for things to come. Our introduction to the Black Samurai is in Vietnam, where GI Robert Sand sees a group of white GIs bullying a frail Asian man. He intervenes and is shot in the process, seeing the elderly man clean up the scum with inhuman moves. Sand awakens in a different place, his wounds dressed. His savior is naturally a Samurai master, so no surprises what happens from this point on.

The story kicks into gear when a nasty group of terrorists with some world-cleansing ideals raid the dojo, machine-gunning, grenading, and attack-dogging all those inside. Sand and his fellow samurai manage to take a few terrorists with them, but they're ultimately all wiped out, with Sand the only survivor.

The revenge onward is decent, but only a few notable scenes. A lot of sleuthing about and finding the bad dudes, but one particular scene where he invades an outpost at night is pretty good, going as far as decapitating a lookout guy then throwing the head in, convincing the remaining guys inside to just straight up leave in fear!

It's been a couple months since I read this earlier this year, and already my memory of it has sorta diminished, hence the ass review. It was enjoyable and moved fast, but nothing that memorable--sans that glorious decapitation! With the intro exposition out of the way I'm definitely looking forward to the next volume that'll hopefully have a bit more to remember it by, especially the sixth volume with its delightful, cultish cover with whip-wielding midgets.