Ron Goulart Books in Order

Chameleon Corps agent Ben Jolson can disguise himself as people or objects. When military officers vanish from the Barnum system, he investigates a movement trying to prevent an invasion of Earth, putting his unusual abilities to work.

In a fractured future America, investigator Jim Haley pursues Lady Day, whose organization targets prominent public figures. His search crosses eccentric communities and institutions, exposing the political absurdities of a country divided into competing enclaves.

Interplanetary troubleshooter Raker travels to Esmeralda, expecting a backward world. Instead, he faces sorcerers, assassins, and people capable of spreading plague, turning his assignment into a struggle to survive a planet full of unexpected dangers.

These science fiction stories explore humans' dependence on machines that behave unpredictably. Talking refrigerators, dangerous household appliances, and medical androids turn technological convenience into trouble, combining comic situations with the fear of losing control over everyday life.

Mercenary John Wesley Sand is hired to recover a governor's daughter abducted by mechanical pirates on Esmeralda. With the ransom paid but the captive still missing, he must navigate a planet where crime and strange technologies are commonplace.

Muckrake reporter Jack Summer travels to the backwater planet Murdstone in search of a major story. Accompanied by photographer Palma, he encounters dangerous situations and distractions while trying to uncover what the planet is hiding.

The Republic of Southern California faces guerrillas and inexplicable riots in its wealthy suburbs. Sergeant Hecker investigates the unrest with only the name Gadget Man to guide him, searching for whoever is directing the destruction.

A screenwriter receives a letter apparently written by the daughter who vanished after leaving a suicide note years earlier. When she misses their planned meeting, private investigator John Easy searches California to find out whether she is alive.

Goulart traces the history of pulp magazines, examining their stories, readers, and lurid covers. He challenges their reputation for corrupting young people while exploring the adventure, detective, and other popular genres that filled twentieth-century newsstands.

Muckrake magazine sends reporter Jack Summer to investigate the corrupt government of Noventa. With photographer Palma alongside him, he encounters a zombie factory, a violent attacker, and other hazards that make reporting the story an unpredictable assignment.

When actress Jill Jeffers disappears during the production of a root beer commercial, private investigator John Easy takes the case. Discovering she is a senator's daughter, he follows her trail from Los Angeles into San Francisco.

Invisibility gives secret agent Jack Conger an advantage as he investigates the Sandman, a mysterious figure reviving recently dead influential men. Rival intelligence operatives and international spies complicate his search, including a woman whose attraction creates another distraction.

This companion to the television documentary follows seven months in the lives of the Loud family of Santa Barbara. Goulart turns the filmed material into a written account of their everyday relationships, private conflicts, and changing family life.

Narcotics agent Cleopatra Jones travels to Hong Kong to break an international drug ring. Its leader, the Dragon Princess, combines criminal power with formidable martial arts skills, setting up a confrontation that tests Cleo's training and determination.

Reporter Noah Kraft becomes caught between political extremists, a secretive Mafia, and the Robin Hood Foundation, which reverses its namesake's ideals. In a divided future America, he tries to uncover the mystery surrounding the name Hawkshaw.

When a secret agent disappears on the unstable planet Murdstone, his wife hires the Mirabilis Agency after official help fails. Undercover agent Peter Torres investigates, entering a territory near civil war where allies and enemies behave unpredictably.

Accused of robbery and murder, the Phantom must find the actual criminals while investigating the secret of the Golden Circle. Clearing his name becomes inseparable from confronting a dangerous conspiracy that challenges his reputation and resourcefulness.

A dying man's last words draw the Phantom into an investigation of Hydra, an international criminal network. Men marked with tattooed skulls appear after wars and disasters, leaving him to trace the organization behind the violence.

Diana Palmer becomes caught in the orbit of Chris Danton, a wealthy man with a yacht and private island. The Phantom investigates the source of Danton's fortune and the conspiracy threatening the woman he loves.

Private investigator John Easy searches for Joanna Benning, a model who disappears after consulting a psychiatrist. A matchbook leads him to a swingers' club and a hidden side of her life, raising questions about her treatment and marriage.

Television star Bowser is a talking cyborg dog whose agent, Bert Schenley, struggles to manage him. Their tour through a region torn by guerrilla warfare exposes them to rebels and political dangers that threaten both performer and handler.

Jan Love and her companions explore a mysterious volcano in Bangalla known as the Veiled Lady. Rumors of treasure draw people toward its dangers, and their discoveries create an unusual challenge for the Phantom in the surrounding jungle.

On Jasper, young protesters have been turned into living bombs that explode on contact. Chameleon Corps agent Ben Jolson investigates, but the planet's clashing cultures and another shapeshifter complicate a mission his disguises may not be enough to solve.

Pirates appear aboard a luxury liner, rob its vaults and passengers, and vanish without explanation. The Phantom pursues them, determined to discover how they strike and escape while continuing his family's longstanding campaign against piracy.

As earthquakes disturb Los Angeles, John Easy searches for a missing advertising executive. The man's ransacked apartment and collection of archaeology books offer clues, leading the detective into a case whose dangers extend beneath the city.

Kip Bundy is sent to Malagra to discreetly repair faulty android butlers supplied by his family's company. Posing as a detective, he also takes a missing-person case, making an already chaotic assignment harder to control.

This collection follows shapeshifting spies, including Chameleon Corps agent Ben Jolson, through comic adventures in the Barnum system. Their ability to imitate people and objects helps them investigate strange societies, while other stories explore different kinds of transformation.

Flash Gordon, Dale Arden, and Dr. Zarkov crash on Mongo and become caught in Emperor Ming's oppressive rule. Their struggle against his forces introduces a dangerous alien world where survival requires resistance to the planet's tyrant.

A spaceship is pulled underground by a magnetic field, leaving Flash Gordon facing strange creatures and unexpected allies. Musician Pan plans to dominate a planet with destructive high-frequency sound, and Flash must challenge the weapon behind his ambitions.

Kidnapped and sold on the planet Mesmo, Flash Gordon is forced to perform in a circus of enslaved people. Dale Arden and Dr. Zarkov seek to help him while he struggles against captors who control the planet.

Escaped convicts hide in the Great Swamp and raid the surrounding settlements, using the dangerous terrain to avoid pursuit. The Phantom must confront both the gang and the swamp itself to stop the criminals known as the Swamp Rats.

A future descendant of Ming the Merciless sends assassins into the past to kill Flash Gordon. Flash faces a threat from another era as the attackers attempt to alter history and undo his resistance to Ming's dynasty.

Flash Gordon, Dale Arden, and Dr. Zarkov are abruptly transported to Mongo by a psychic prankster. Queen Azura and Ming's son capture Flash, leaving Dale and Zarkov to seek Prince Barin's help against their enemies.

A secret space probe brings Vampirella from her native planet to Earth, where she must drink blood to survive. Stranded among humans, she faces the conflict between her need to feed and finding a way to adapt.

These satirical science fiction stories imagine a near future shaped by unreliable machines and contemporary absurdities. Goulart uses technological mishaps and human responses to them to explore the uneasy relationship between people and the devices surrounding them.

Vampirella travels from Hollywood to the Caribbean while pursued by the Cult of Chaos and Conrad Van Helsing. With magician Pendragon as an uncertain ally, she must resist her own bloodlust while surviving attacks from her enemies.

Goulart examines the adventure comic strips of the 1930s through their art, background, and creators' recollections. Familiar characters such as Flash Gordon and Dick Tracy appear alongside less remembered strips, showing how newspaper storytelling developed during the decade.

The Opposition Party recruits Thad McIntosh to investigate the secret Hellhound weapon. To penetrate the company developing it, he must impersonate a man who died fifty years earlier, making his disguise central to a dangerous intelligence mission.

When twelve detection satellites vanish, Flash Gordon and Dr. Zarkov investigate. Their ship crashes on a roaming planet inhabited by robots and consumed by war, forcing them to survive rival powers while seeking answers about the disappearances.

After flirting with a scientist's wife, Nat Kobean receives an experimental serum that repeatedly puts him to sleep for fifty years. He must find an antidote during brief waking intervals while the world keeps changing around him.

Reporter Jack Summer visits the planet Peregrine to investigate the king of Laranja East. His assignment entangles him with rival claimants, a highwaywoman, and competing alien groups, making it difficult to distinguish local justice from the surrounding schemes.

Vampirella and Pendragon accept an invitation to perform at Count Mordante's castle. Their host has arranged a different role for Vampirella, however: he intends to make her the bride of Chaos in a sinister command performance.

Vampirella and Pendragon travel to the Caribbean island of Cote Soleil to search for two of his missing relatives. With help from a local investigator, they confront disappearances tied to the dangerous Cult of Chaos.

On the Riviera, Vampirella encounters gamblers whose wagers put their lives at stake. Her attraction to a mysterious man draws her deeper into a deadly game connected to the Cult of Chaos.

Laverne and Shirley travel to Hollywood after Laverne qualifies for a television quiz show. When the producers supply answers and insist she win, her determination to expose the rigged contest puts both friends in danger.

Shirley begins dating a rock star who owns an island with a ruined mansion and rumors of hidden bootlegger gold. When a visit turns dangerous, Laverne and their friends become involved in a rescue.

Temporal detective Sam Brimmer investigates a woman's kidnapping in 1933 Hollywood with an android time machine and his assistant. The search exposes criminals using the past as a refuge and a scheme to supply modern weapons to Nazis.

A man awakens in 2033 after decades in suspended animation, unable to remember his identity. Possessing strange abilities, he journeys through an unfamiliar future while trying to uncover his past and the enemies pursuing him.

The Challengers investigate reports of a monster in a South American lake. Their expedition brings them up against fugitive Nazis whose experiments and political ambitions threaten more than the people living near the creature.

In an automated future America, an inventor called Crackpot creates illegal gadgets that let their users control other machines. A well-meaning spy becomes caught in a mechanical vendetta amid unreliable technology and competing political schemes.

A computer assembles an unlikely team that includes a reporter, a bionic teenager, and a telepathic thug. They face a president intent on prolonged domination and powerful allies willing to eliminate anyone who resists.

Ted Briar suspects that his wife, his household computer, and the world around him conceal troubling secrets. Contact with a wanted fugitive draws him toward resistance against a corrupt president and a clandestine mind-control agency.

A castaway reaches an isolated island where Dr. Moreau conducts experiments that turn animals into humanlike creatures. As he learns about the doctor's methods and the beings who worship him, his apparent refuge becomes increasingly dangerous.

Jake Conger of the Wild Talents Division searches for a time traveler who can lead him to a secret machine. The president has been using it to strand political enemies in the past, putting history itself at risk.

An amnesiac wanderer continues his search for his identity in the world of 2033. His journey through an unfamiliar future becomes entangled with secrets from the past and a mystery that reaches back fifty years.

Jake and Hildy Pace investigate killings of government-employed entertainers that resemble the methods of executed murderers. After a juggler dies in a familiar fashion, the Odd Jobs detectives must explain how dead criminals could be involved.

When a faulty spacecraft threatens a Mars mission, NASA forces three astronauts to stage the flight at a secluded airbase. As the deception endangers their lives, the men flee while a reporter investigates the cover-up.

Rick Jones visits a town where a gamma scientist has vanished and residents wander the woods in a trance. When Rick also disappears, Bruce Banner investigates an alien threat while facing the pursuit of General Ross.

Tad, heir to an interplanetary robot-making business, faces a cyborg uncle who controls his inheritance. Inside a sinister household, he repairs the robot Electro in hopes of finding help against his dangerous relative.

An earthquake in an African city raises suspicions that a missing scientist's sonic invention has become a weapon. Captain America works with Nick Fury and S.H.I.E.L.D. to investigate, with the Red Skull among the possible threats.

Troubleshooter Andy Stoker substitutes an android for an unreliable Western film star, only to discover that the replica shares its model's drinking habits. An insurance investigator's attention makes concealing the replacement still more difficult.

Ghostwriter Jose Silvera wants the money Dr. Scofflaw owes him, but collecting requires an unusual search. The doctor's body parts have been scattered among different locations, forcing Silvera to reassemble his elusive debtor.

Ancient Lemurians emerge as a threat to Earth's survival after their existence is exposed. Jake Conger must locate their headquarters and stop their plans, drawing on his experience with the Wild Talents Division.

Interplan Law Service agents Rex and Chavez, accompanied by the foul-mouthed robot dog Sniffer, are sent to defuse a crisis on Empire 99. The previous agent's grisly fate makes their assignment particularly unpromising.

When comic-strip creator Archie Judd falls ill, a ghost artist takes over Poor Little Pearl to protect its lucrative business. Judd's disappearance and subsequent death turn the concealed substitution into a dangerous mystery.

Jake Pace investigates the murder of a broadcaster who promised to expose international business secrets. With other investigators already dead, Jake and his wife discover connections to a Nazi scientist whose return threatens America.

Screenwriter Peter Tinsley is working on a Martian movie when a prop weapon proves real and he and Tracy Flynn are kidnapped. An apparent actor's alien identity turns their studio troubles into a threat to Earth.

Fleeing police in a poverty-stricken future America, Brinkman enters a forbidden enclave of wealth. There he encounters Beth, a girl he believed dead, and begins investigating a mystery that challenges his understanding of his own life.

Sara Tenbrook rents a time-traveling robot to explore her distinguished ancestry and locate a lost fortune, taking her boyfriend along. Their machine's disguises and enormous ego complicate a journey through increasingly eccentric branches of her family.

The cyborg Jigsaw gains control of Braintrust, the galaxy's most powerful computer, and plans to use it to rule. Interplan agents Rex and Chavez and their robot dog Sniffer receive the hazardous assignment of stopping him.

Investigating the Big Bang murders, Jake Pace loses a day's memories and is arrested beside an informant's body with a pistol in hand. He must escape his robot-guarded prison and uncover the truth while the killings continue.

This anthology gathers British detective stories featuring sleuths including Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, Lord Peter Wimsey, Loveday Brooke, and Dr. Fell. Their cases combine criminal puzzles with settings ranging from country houses to London's streets.

Zack Tourney discovers that he and several powerful figures have been infected with a delayed-action lethal virus. He races to identify those responsible, locate an antidote, and find his missing girlfriend before the infection kills him.

Resurrected after their execution, a couple seek their missing daughter and the fortune she took with her. John Wesley Sand accepts the search, venturing into the Hellquad sector, where four dangerous planets harbor criminals and unstable machines.

Detective Harry Challenge visits a Balkan princess and narrowly survives an automaton's attack. Hired to investigate an uncle's confinement in a forest sanitarium, he encounters supernatural dangers with help from a magician and a reporter.

Electronics heiress Sylvie Kirkyard preserves her memories in a chip that is implanted into an android after her death. The resulting mechanical client hires Jake Pace to investigate her murder, exposing him to danger as well.

Bert Kurrie discovers his former colleague Beau Jassminsky's body while out jogging. Although the police consider the death accidental, Bert doubts their explanation and becomes drawn into the mystery surrounding what happened to Beau.

An ex-criminal named Smith works alongside androids and humanoids for the Interplanetary Investigation Agency, nicknamed Suicide, Inc. Their assignments arrive through floating terminals from Whistler, a mysterious mastermind whose identity and even nature remain unknown.

Reporter Jack Summer investigates suspected Zombium smuggling aboard a movie studio starship filming Galaxy Jane's life. Working with his boss's daughter and a robot photographer, he pursues a story whose dangers extend beyond the cameras.

Ron Goulart traces comic books from their nineteenth-century beginnings through the 1980s. Illustrations and historical commentary explore influential creators, changing genres, publishers, and the business that carried the medium from its earliest forms into a mass market.

Sixty alphabetically arranged profiles examine the lives, careers, and drawing styles of comic book artists. Each essay faces a full-page illustration, bringing together figures such as C. C. Beck, Frank Miller, Bernard Krigstein, and Wallace Wood.

Former Chameleon Corps operative Ben Jolson can imitate any alien, a useful talent in his new work as a private investigator. When a fellow detective is murdered, he puts his shapeshifting abilities to work on the case.

A stolen microchip contains a dying starpirate's secrets, including buried treasure locations and political blackmail. Ben Jolson is hired to recover it, but his client's murder draws him into a contest among others determined to obtain the chip.

Detective Harry Challenge follows a mysterious ancient curse across Europe. Pursued by occult kidnappers, assassins, and sorcerers, he must survive their attacks while investigating a riddle whose origins reach back five thousand years.

Ben Jolson is hired by corporation owner Janella Quintillion to find her long-lost sister, an heiress to billions. His search leads to Cosmo's, an orbiting casino and nightclub where competing interests are willing to kill.

Ron Goulart surveys the rise and decline of detective pulp magazines, from their early beginnings to the paperback and television era. The history follows publications such as Black Mask and writers including Hammett, Chandler, and Erle Stanley Gardner.

Cartoonist Jack Deacon finds a colleague shot dead in his yard and a woman hiding nearby with a comic book. Its coded map points toward valuable Golden Age comics, pulling Jack and his unexpected companion into a dangerous treasure hunt.

Investigator Rudy Navarro recruits art director Jack Briggs to trace missing drawings by Heinrich Wisemann, an artist who died at Dachau. When some of the works surface in Orlando, competing collectors turn the search into a murder investigation.

Commercial artist H. J. Mavity's boyfriend is murdered, drawing her ex-husband, voice impersonator Ben Spanner, into the investigation. A cryptic clue and a ventriloquist's dummy complicate a case involving blackmail and their already tangled personal lives.

This illustrated survey follows American comic books from the 1930s onward, exploring their creators, characters, and changing genres. Reproduced covers, interior pages, and enlarged panels show how the medium developed across more than five decades.

More than a thousand entries survey American comic strips and comic books from 1897 onward. Character histories and cartoonist biographies provide a reference to the people, publications, and fictional figures that shaped the medium.

A suspicious hit-and-run death draws artist H. J. Mavity and her ex-husband Ben Spanner into another investigation. A photograph and a distinctive birthmark suggest a connection to a long-missing heiress and a possible blackmail scheme.

This alphabetical guide explores American comic books from the 1930s onward. Entries cover superheroes, humor features, and notable series alongside the publishers, writers, artists, and editors responsible for the medium's development.

Ron Goulart surveys a century of American newspaper comic strips, from early funny pages to adventure and detective features. The history follows cartoonists and characters including George Herriman, Li'l Abner, Dick Tracy, Tarzan, and the Katzenjammer Kids.

Groucho Marx doubts that starlet Peg McMorrow took her own life and recruits radio writer Frank Denby to investigate. Their search through Hollywood brings them up against blackmail, studio interests, and troubling connections within the police.

A film director is found dead on the Sherlock Holmes set at Mammoth Studios. Groucho Marx and writer Frank Denby investigate, following clues through late-1930s Hollywood as another murder and pro-Nazi activity complicate their case.

A young singer on Groucho Marx's show asks him to help her mother, who has been charged with murdering a plastic surgeon and drug dealer. Groucho and Frank Denby take up the case in Hollywood.

This illustrated history examines comic books' Golden Age, from the 1930s through the late 1940s. Cover art accompanies an account of early publications, the rise of superheroes, wartime patriotic characters, and the industry's other popular genres.