It is hard to find a Joseph Gobel Nazel Jr. novel today.
Although he wrote of a high-flying Bond-like pimp called Iceman, novelised films like the 1975 blaxploitation oddity The Black Gestapo, wrote and edited for every major black publication you can think of, put out over 40 novels, and did so much more…
He is barely remembered.
Finding his books will take you a journey through the dusty aisles of secondhand bookshops, rather than the polished efficiency of Amazon’s curated lists.
And yet, finding Joe Nazel is worth it, because as with so many writers of his time, he fought hard for every word, while championing young black talent for all he was worth.
The Disillusioned Vietnam Vet
Like many a pulp hero, Joe Nazel served in the Vietnam war.
Before joining the Air Force in 1964, he studied to be a priest. Unfortunately for Joe, and probably much to the chagrin of his teachers, he had the mind of an artist. This meant that he questioned everything, asking question after question about God, man, and meaning…
He did it so much that the faculty had to ask him to leave. Politely, of course.
Which led him to the Air Force and a four year stint in Vietnam, where he got a bullet through his throat for his troubles. The scar would stay with him throughout his life.
When he was back stateside, he did what most young artists still do. He bummed around, going from job to job, attending college, and searching for meaning on the mean streets of the Hood.
He’d become a lecturer at the University of Southern California when Holloway House was looking to put “the black experience” onto cheap pulp fiction paperbacks.
It would get Joe Nazel into a turbulent and terrible relationship that would plague him for the rest of his life as a pulp fiction author.
The Mistreated Editor, Undervalued Pulp Author, and Overworked Everyman
Holloway House was only too eager to snatch up Joe Nazel’s Iceman pulp fiction series – books about a black pimp that also worked as a secret agent and was wealthier than any real pimp on the street.
They were also keen to hire him as the editor of Players magazine, the first ever nudie mag with black models between its pages.
Unfortunately for Joe, a man who routinely championed young black writers and wanted to write of the black experience, this would lead to a tumultuous relationship with a company that would routinely mistreat him for their own ends.
While working as editor, Joe Nazel was routinely chewed out by the white owner of the magazine, an old man who thought that he knew what black audiences wanted better than anyone who was actually black.
He was yelled at. Paid less than a pittance. Treated like his impressive talents with both the written and spoken word were nothing. And he was constantly told to remove the think pieces, articles, and short stories that were considered “too arty” for Players and its audience.
This was especially wounding for Nazel, who had a fire in his belly.
His heroes were Ralph Ellison, Langston Hughes, and Chester Himes, to name but a few. His politics were inspired by Martin Luther King Jr. and his ideals of social justice.
He fought for change. He fought for art. He wanted to describe the real life of African Americans on the streets that he so often walked, taking photographs and notes in equal measure.
But the owner of Players wanted tits. He wanted what he considered “the ideal of black beauty”. Joe Nazel’s ideas didn’t count.
This writer can only speculate on how awful and damaging Joe’s time at Players was to his very soul. And he would constantly be fired and rehired by the owner, the only man willing to keep coming back, no matter how hard it was to do so.
All while writing his impressive array of pulp fiction books…
Pimps, Mobsters, and High-Octane Dune Buggy Chases
Although Joe Nazel wrote some 49 pulp fiction books, quite a few under various pseudonyms, he is most well-known for his Iceman series.
In them, Henry Highland West, Iceman, a pimp that’s rich and as well-respected as he is feared, fights injustice from the beaches to the streets.
Accompanied by “two beautiful and deadly women Solema and Kim”, sidekicks who could kick butt while wearing very little, Iceman takes on everyone from the Mob to white slavers, usually while cruising around in a sick helicopter or metallic blue Rolls-Royce.
More James Bond than any of Iceberg Slim’s pimps, Iceman goes on globetrotting adventures while being as cool as his name suggests he is, as this passage from Spinning Target (1983) says:
“Ice made few public appearances. There’s no need to. He was not out to build a fan club. He was not trying to become the most popular man in the world. That wasn’t his schtick. His thing was living. Living like no man, Black or White, had ever lived.”
And boy howdy, does he live.
He takes out the mob and white South African slavers in-between chilling at his opulent pads, like his house in Malibu, and romancing the cavalcade of gorgeous women he has working for him.
And while a lot of it is wonderfully goofy and over-the-top, if you can read past that, you can see glimpses of the author and his constant fight for revolution coming through the pages.
In fact, if you can look past the sometimes dodgy prose and spelling (it was said Nazel could churn out a whole manuscript in only six weeks), there is genius underneath.
An Unloved and Underpaid Writer and Fighter
That genius is most evident in Joe Nazel’s bravest work Delta Crossing (1984).
In it, Nazel’s nameless protagonist, a college professor looking to research blues music in Mississippi, finds himself hunted through the swamps in a terrifying ordeal that has him pushed to the brink of madness.
The protagonist’s search for black history mirrors Joe’s own, and it is clear that there are elements of the pulp fiction author himself in the hero.
As the back of the book puts it,
“He went South looking for his people’s past… Slowly he realised he was finding a frightening future!”
Delta Crossing’s overarching themes and deeper subject matter bely the derision that I see often directed at Joe Nazel’s other pulp fiction work. His Iceman series regularly gets bashed by modern reviewers – even those who love pulp fiction.
And while he did put out some bad pulp, there is no denying that Joe was always trying to do something with his writing.
Joe’s friend and protege, the writer Emory Holmes II, would say in Sticking it to the Man that he was powered by the rebellions and black artistic movement of the time. That Joe used it as fuel to power his activism and his art.
But he would never get recognised for it.
Joseph Gobel Nazel Jr. died in 2006 of brain cancer. Thanks to Holloway House, he was never paid his fair share for the 49 books he put out.
But pulp fiction author Nazel does have another legacy. One that is arguably more important than his books…
A Man Who Championed The Up-and-Coming
Joe Nazel didn’t only write pulp fiction. And he didn’t only work for Players.
He did so much more in his third-five year career.
He was an editor and reporter for every major black newspaper and magazine you can name, including the LA Watts Times, Black Radio Exclusive, and Turning Point magazine.
He wrote scripts for The Urban Network and produced a chat show for KACE.
Nazel fought every step of the way, championing black stories and culture everywhere he could.
Not only that, but he also was instrumental in the careers of so many great black artists.
In Emory Holmes II’s fantastic tribute to Joe Nazel, he says:
“…he was instrumental in the careers of scores of African American artists–folks he discovered, mentored, edited, promoted and published. A short list would include not only [Stanley] Crouch, but writer-editor H.L. Sorrell, graphic artist Bob Smith, the late music writer Walter Burrell, writer Everett Hoagland, photographer James Jeffrey and the expatriate diarist Ollie Stewart.”
Nazel did what he could for any young artist he came across, but never got much from those who hired him or put out his pulp fiction books.
He’s almost unknown today. And that sucks big time, man.
So, head on out to your local secondhand bookstore and grab a Joe Nazel book if you can. Post about it on the socials.
Keep his name alive.
Because Joe Nazel definitely deserves it.
From Heroes to Zeroes, Discover ALL of Pulp Fiction…
And that’s the tale of the little-known Joe Nazel.
I highly suggest that you check out the brilliant appreciation by Emory Holmes II, if you can.
Join me next week where I look into the career of the biggest hack pulp fiction writer that ever put words to page, because not every writer can be a hero.
