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.