Junior Ranger and the Snakes of Tinsel Town

This was the first Junior Ranger book in which Hack try to suck up to one of his celebrity crushes, depicting the legendary Elizabeth Taylor as an actress who Ranger Joe must save from deadly vipers. When Hack approached her at a Hollywood party to discuss a movie adaptation of the book, security took him outside and beat him so badly that he was temporarily paralyzed.

Junior Ranger and the Claws of Death

When Hack’s cover artist Jonny M.’s brother Joe (upon whom the Ranger Joe character is based) read this book in galleys, he was outraged that Joe kills the bear of the title, saying that “wasn’t the Junior Ranger way.” To assuage him, Hack rewrote the book so that Joe only fights off the bear to protect the picnickers and then nurses it back to health. Surprisingly, Bro Joe had no problem with the scenes where the ranger has anal sex with the bear.

Junior Rangers and the Flesh Eaters of Mount Pinos

This Junior Ranger book was initially banned in Arkansas and Kentucky because of a scene where the piranha savagely eat a dark-skinned native’s penis. The censors finally allowed the book to pass when Hack changed the victim to a lighter skinned man, saying “we just don’t think that the kids who read this book are ready for the shocking truth that negroes have genitals and can reproduce.”

Junior Ranger and the Gorillas of Havasu Pie

When Bro Joe told Hack that he had recently explored the Havasupai Indian Reservation in the Grand Canyon National Park, Hack decided that “Havasu Pie” was a dessert item and wrote this book where Ranger Joe has a piece that a local gorilla keeps trying to steal from Ranger Joe’s “pic-a-nic basket.” Marie Callender’s actually added an item of that name to their dessert menu because boys would ask for it and throw a fit when it told that it didn’t actually exist.

Junior Ranger and the Isle of Heads

The unexpected popularity of the first Junior Ranger book prompted Hack to rush out this sequel, which he hastily adapted from a horror novel that he was in the process of writing. Since it was conceived for adult readers, the sequel had far more anal sex than the first book and as a result, quadrupled the sales. The formula for the series was now firmly established.

Junior Ranger and the Yenta Queen

When his publisher John Kane opened a subsidiary of his Palace Productions empire called Boys’ Adventures and dedicated to providing outdoorsy content for boys, Hack was asked to write a series of books for the endeavor. He was at a loss for inspiration because the only time he spent outside was when he left the Shakey’s where he worked as a janitor and crossed its parking lot to get into the van where he lived to pick up writing. But as luck would have it, his cover artist Jonny M.’s brother Joe was an accomplished outdoorsman and a member of the Junior Rangers, an outlet of the National Parks Service created to get children excited about the parks program and nature conservation. So Hack created a character based on Joe and which launched his most popular series of books. And because Hack wrote them, he snuck in countless scenes of graphic anal sex which parents were unaware of but which were the biggest selling point to the boys who read them.

Since Hack’s otherwise ironclad contract had a loophole for the Junior Ranger books, they were they only thing he wrote which he actually made money from. So even though he grew to loathe them and the Ranger Joe character, he returned to the franchise again and again and again. A legend was born.