Editing Don Pendleton (section)

===Executioner series (1969–1980)===
{{Main|The Executioner (book series)}}
The best-selling ''Executioner'' series made the men's action-adventure genre popular in the late 1960s and 1970s, and Pendleton was known as "the father of action adventure", a term he coined. Pendleton's novels revolved around Sergeant Mack Bolan's one-man war against the [[American Mafia|Mafia]], beginning with ''War Against the Mafia'' (1969) and ending with ''Satan's Sabbath'' (1980), after which Pendleton licensed the rights to his ''Executioner'' characters to the [[Harlequin Enterprises|Harlequin]] publishing group.<ref name="Markert2016" />

In the [[Pulp magazines|pulp]] tradition, Pendleton's Mack Bolan, a former [[United States Army]] [[Sergeant#United States|sergeant]] and [[Vietnam War]] veteran, was larger than life, responsible for killing hundreds of mobsters over the course of Pendleton's 38 novels. Like many pulp characters, Bolan left a trademark "[[Calling card (crime)|calling card]]" — in his case, a [[Marksmanship Badges (United States)|marksman's medal]].

After 15 Executioner novels, Pendleton became involved in a legal battle with the publisher, [[Kensington Books|Pinnacle Books]], over ownership of the series. Pinnacle had the next entry, ''The Executioner #16: Sicilian Slaughter,'' written by William Crawford under the pseudonym "Jim Peterson".<ref>Kenney, Joe. Glorious Trash. "A Study of Action-Adventure Fiction: The Executioner and Mack Bolan by William H. Young." Nov. 7, 2011</ref> Pendleton ignored "Sicilian Slaughter" and wrote The Executioner #17: ''Jersey Guns,'' as a sequel to #15, ''Panic in Philly,'' under a contract with [[New American Library]]. The contract was ultimately voided by the terms of his settlement with Pinnacle<ref>{{cite news|author=Kraft, David Anthony|author-link=David Anthony Kraft|title=The Executioner Speaks Out! |work=[[Marvel Preview]]|number=2|date= 1975|publisher= [[Marvel Comics]]}}</ref> and he returned to Pinnacle for 21 more novels.<ref name="Mengel2009">{{cite book|last=Mengel|first=Bradley|title=Serial Vigilantes of Paperback Fiction: An Encyclopedia from Able Team to Z-Comm|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xIPw0F6QWlYC&pg=PA66|date=16 September 2009|publisher=McFarland Press|location=Jefferson, NC|isbn=978-0-7864-5475-4|pages=66–67}}</ref>

====Spin-offs (1980–present)====
Since 1980, ''The Executioner, Mack Bolan'' books and spinoffs - [[Able Team]], [[Phoenix Force (novel)|Phoenix Force]], [[Stony Man]], and [[Mack Bolan]] - have been written by [[Harlequin Books|Harlequin]]'s team of writers.  The Harlequin Gold Eagle books moved Bolan into a fight against [[terrorism]], in whose course he was given the cover identity of "Colonel John Macklin Phoenix." Since 1980, Harlequin has produced new novels, and the writer's name is mentioned on the copyright page as a provider of "a contribution" to the work, pushing the number of ''Mack Bolan'' novels into the hundreds; all of them bear the byline, ''Don Pendleton's Mack Bolan.''<ref name="Markert2016">{{cite book|last=Markert|first=John|title=Publishing Romance: The History of an Industry, 1940s to the Present|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yV_TCwAAQBAJ&pg=PT177|date=26 February 2016|publisher=McFarland|isbn=978-1-4766-2124-1|pages=177–178|location=Jefferson, NC}}</ref>