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Hack indulged himself on this book by bringing his well-known hatred of Santa Claus into the narrative. When Saint Nick crash-lands in the park, Ranger Joe takes over for him and finds the job so easy that he is appalled at how overrated a figure Santa is. So when he finishes the task and returns to the park, Joe summons an angry gorilla who owes Joe a favor to tear Santa limb from limb and then feast on his flesh..
It did not become the holiday perennial that publisher John Kane hoped for.
When his cover artist Jonny M.’s brother Joe, the basis for the Junior Ranger books, got struck by a skateboarder and his ability to take part in a hike he wanted to go on was endangered, Joe made such a fuss about it that Hack wrote this book to mock him. When it was published, it turned out that there were countless thousands of outdoorsmen who had endured similar injuries so that rather than becoming a laughingstock, Joe was lauded as a folk hero. Hack, by contrast, was widely mocked for his terrible writing.
When Hack’s cover artist Jonny M.’ brother Joe (upon whom the Ranger Joe character is based) read this novel, he said that “it was the only Junior Ranger book which accurately portrayed the Junior Ranger experience.”
Disappointed with the reception to “Junior Ranger and the Hellish Hyenas of Togario Alpine Crossing,” Hack decided o take another stab at a Junior Ranger book about Bro Joe’s Australia/New Zealand adventure. He refused to learn from his earlier mistake and didn’t do any research about the countries as all, but his core readership loved the man-eating marsupials of the title and his depiction of anal sex by the aborigines (who, according to the book, “all looked exactly like Halle Berry.”)
When Bro Joe took a trip to Austrailia and New Zealand, Hack cranked out a Junior Ranger book about it without bothering to consult with Joe about what the countries were like. The Tolucan Times wrote “the only thing that can be learned about either nation from this book is that its inhabitants really like anal sex.”
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.
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.
Ranger Joe is overwhelmed by savage monkeys who drag him to their cave and violate him repeatedly with anal sex until their demands are met. A typical entry in the Junior Ranger saga.
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.”
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.
