Trivia / The Executioner

• Follow the Leader: Don Pendleton is credited with launching (or at least modernizing) the Action-Adventure genre with this series, which led to the inevitable flood of One-Man Army Vigilante Man fighting The Mafia clones — The Penetrator, The Specialist, The Marksman, The Terminator (no, not that one), even the soft porn The Sexecutioner (involving a female operative working for N.Y.M.P.H.O., the New York Mafia Prosecution and Harassment Organization). With the exception of the comic series The Punisher, few achieved popular success.
• Recycled Script: At the start of Executioner #49: Doomsday Disciples, Mack Bolan infiltrates the wooded estate of a Big Fancy House where he encounters a struggling Damsel in Distress being pulled from a car. He rescues her using the car for a getaway, shoots the gate guard with his Hand Cannon without stopping the vehicle, then ambushes and destroys his pursuers on the highway outside. The same scenario with minor variations is used in at least half a dozen following novels.