Comics, old time radio and other cool stuff

Mobsters and Ray Guns.

noreply@blogger.com (Tim DeForest) — Thu, 23 May 2013 13:00:00 +0000

The July 15, 1935 issue of The Shadow magazine was an important one for several reasons.

First, writer Walter Gibson wrote a longer story than usual. This was actually because he had just gotten a new typewriter and didn't realize the font size was fitting more words per page, but this was probably a factor in allowing him to turn out one of his finest efforts. Its difficult to see where the story could have been trimmed without losing something cool.

Second, it was the first of what would be a number of stories in which the Shadow went up against a super-scientific threat. Up until now, he'd usually been dealing with mobsters and spies. Gibson felt the crime-fighter needed a new kind of threat to properly challenge him.

So, in "Atoms of Death," a scientist invents a disintegrator ray. It's not perfected enough to use as a weapon, but it can be used to tunnel through earth and rock very quickly. He teams up with some mobsters and soon they are tunneling into banks and jewelry stores. They dynamite the tunnels afterwards, leaving the police baffled as to how the crooks are actually pulling off their crimes.

Well, they don't fool the Shadow. When the scientist's assistant realizes something untoward is going on, he contacts Harry Vincent--whom he met in a previous story, so he knows Harry is an agent of the Shadow. Mobsters try to whack the guy, but the Shadow and his agents save him.

But the bad guys are smart. When the Shadow investigates their hide-out, he's knocked out by an electrical trap and captured. The Shadow manages to outwit them by convincing them he's just plain old Lamont Cranston and the real Lamont Cranston (who is currently in town) is the Shadow. He has to then prevent the real Cranston from getting kidnapped, but the end result is he gets free and the real Cranston leaves for another overseas hunting trip.

That leaves the Shadow starting from scratch, with no idea where the bad guys have set up their new headquarters. He tries to stop a couple of robberies. The first time, he has to run a gauntlet of gunmen while speeding down the street in a car. The second time, the villains have planted false clues to lure him to the wrong location, where they use machine gunners and a guy tossing grenades to try to finish him off. He fights his way out of this, but makes no progress in finding the hideout.

That's one of the strengths of this story. The head mobsters really are smart, staying one step ahead of the Shadow for most of the novel. In fact, they correctly deduce that mobster Cliff Marsland is really a Shadow undercover agent and kidnap him.

But that gives the Shadow a chance to finally track them down, though he must deliberately allow another of his agents to get captured. The neat part here is that the agent who volunteers for this dangerous job is Rutledge Mann. Mann isn't normally a field agent--he's an investment broker who generally acts as a contact for the field agents. But he gamely steps up to the plate when called upon. I always liked Mann and I was happy to see him get a moment in the limelight.

Anyway, the climax involves the Shadow in disguise sneaking into the hideout, followed by a wild shootout involving both pistols and and disintegrator gun.

And then we get one of Walter Gibson's best-ever twist endings. You thought you knew what was going on with the bad guys? That you understood who was who within their organization? Trust me, you didn't know a thing.

In the recent reprint volume that included this story, pulp historian Will Murray refers to this story as a "must-read." He's right, of course. If you're a fan of the Shadow, you gotta read this one.

I'm not sure he's a "pet."

noreply@blogger.com (Tim DeForest) — Wed, 22 May 2013 13:00:00 +0000

As much as I enjoy the concept of the Super-Pets, I'm not sure they really should have been considered pets. Remember, once they gained superpowers, they also gained super-intelligence. Doesn't this make them sentient beings who should be considered the equals of human beings and other sentient beings?

But they were always considered pets and seemed content with their lot. Which might be understandable for Beppo, Streaky and Krypto. Their basic psychology might have still allowed them to be content with having human owners, just as a well-loved normal dog is content with a human owner.

But Comet--well, I don't think he ever came close to being a "pet." As we saw in our last Superman Universe post, Comet was first seen in Adventure Comics #293, cover dated February 1962. He's next seen in Action Comics #292 (September 1962)--the first part of a trilogy (written by Leo Dorfman) that firmly brings the Super-Horse into DC continuity. The October issue details Comet's origin.

Pay attention, because Comet's origin is the model against which all other origin stories should be measured for pure weirdness.

In ancient Greece, a centaur named Biron falls in love with the sorceress Circe. He saves her from being poisoned by an evil wizard named Maldor. As a reward, Circe promises to turn him into a human so they can marry. Unfortunately, Circe turns out to be an idiot and gives Biron the wrong potion, turning him into a horse.

She can't reverse that spell, so to make up for her error she gives him another potion giving him immortality and super powers. But Maldor later vengefully uses a magic spell to send Biron to a remote asteroid, where he's trapped by a magical aura.

A few thousand years later, the rocket taking Supergirl to Earth from Argo City passes near the asteroid and shatters the magical aura. Comet is freed, follows Supergirl to Earth and eventually makes telepathic contact with her.

By the end of Action Comics #294, Comet has amnesia and thinks he's just a regular horse, but he regains his powers in later issues. It's also eventually established that he turns human whenever there's a comet in the sky, then turns back into a horse when the comet is gone.

I love the convoluted and bizarre feel to the origin. And I love the idea of a Legion of Super-Pets. But I still don't think Comet or Biron or whatever you want to call him should be considered a "pet."

Of course, neither should Proty, an intelligent shape-changer that hangs out with Lightning Lad and joins the Super-Pets whenever they visit the future. He's definitely a member of an intelligent species and is still called a pet!

There's no denying it. The Super-Pets need better legal representation.

Next time we visit the Superman Universe, I think we'll take a look the Legion of Superheroes. We can warn them they might be getting sued by their pets.

Cover Cavalcade

noreply@blogger.com (Tim DeForest) — Mon, 20 May 2013 13:00:00 +0000

The world would be a poorer place if rickety bridges stretched over bottomless chasms had never been invented.

Off to Africa

noreply@blogger.com (Tim DeForest) — Sat, 18 May 2013 13:00:00 +0000

As of today, I'll be travelling to South Sudan on a short-term mission trip. I'll be teaching 1st and 2nd Corinthians to soldiers training to be chaplains in the Southern Sudanese military:

Posts will appear normally on the blog, as I've written them in advance and have them scheduled to go. But please be aware that I won't be able to moderate comments until I get back. (There's no electricity--much less wi-fi, in the camp I'll be at.) Please leave comments, but be aware that I won't be able to review and post them until I get back on June 7. (Perhaps a few days earlier if I'm able to get online during a few days in a Ugandan guest house.)

Friday's Favorite OTR

noreply@blogger.com (Tim DeForest) — Fri, 17 May 2013 13:00:00 +0000

Escape: "John Jock Todd" 5/2/48 John Todd isn't a fighting man. But when assigned to help manage a remote African trading post, he discovers his boss is a sadistic brute. So John Todd might just have to fight whether he wants to or not.

Excellent episode in which both the protagonists and the supporting characters are given real personality by the actors.

Playing Keep Away with a Bag of Jewels

noreply@blogger.com (Tim DeForest) — Thu, 16 May 2013 13:00:00 +0000

I don't listen to many audio books. That's not a criticism of the format. It's just that if I'm listening to a story rather than reading a story, it's likely to be an old-time radio show rather than an audio book.

But it is sometimes nice to be told a story in the most basic sense of the word. And when I am in the mood to have a story read to me, I normally visit Librivox.

It's a site in which volunteers have recorded public domain works, so it's all free. You get classics such as Moby Dick or The Three Musketeers. You also get a very nice selection of pulp fiction that's old enough to have fallen out of copyright.

This includes a number of Edgar Rice Burroughs' early novels. For instance, I just finished listening to Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar and enjoyed it enormously. The guy reading it does a very effective job. And, of course, it's one of my favorite Tarzan novels.

It was the fifth one ERB wrote, first seeing print in All-Story Cavalier Weekly magazine in 1916 (serialized in their November and December issues) and then published in book form in 1918.

It had taken the first two novels for Tarzan and Jane to get together. During this time, he became chief of the Waziri, a tribe of kick-butt warriors.

The third novel (The Beasts of Tarzan) involved an epic quest across Africa in which the Ape Man rescues his wife and baby son from kidnappers. Along the way, Tarzan befriends Mugambi, a big native warrior who is then adopted into the Waziri.

The fourth novel (The Son of Tarzan) involves Tarzan's son getting lost in the jungle himself, learning the same skills his father had and becoming known as Korak the Killer.

Korak was a pretty cool guy, but in the end he wasn't different enough from his dad to really stand out. He has a few important cameos in a couple of the later novels, but he doesn't play a role in most of them.

In fact, poor Korak isn't even mentioned in Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar. Tarzan and Jane are living happily together on his African estate. Maybe Korak is back in England catching up on his education. But for whatever reason, he's not around when his dad gets amnesia and his mom gets kidnapped.

It's a story that jumps between the various characters so quickly and crams so much cool stuff into the plot that its hard to do it justice in a brief summary. There's Tarzan and Jane; there's a murderer and deserter from the Belgian Army named Arnold Werper; there's Mugambi; there's Arab slave-raider Achmet Zek and his band of thugs; there's a band of Abyssinian soldiers who are hunting Zek's band; there's a group of Waziri warriors; there's a couple of apes named Chulk and Taglet; there's La, the priestess from the lost city of Opar; and there's a brief appearance by a Belgian army officer and his squad of soldiers. The story shifts its point-of-view to each of these characters at different times as they all move through the jungle for various purposes and cross-purposes, meeting each other in unlikely coincidences. But they are coincidences so perfectly-timed to move the story along and enhance the tension that it doesn't bother me at all. In terms of entertaining us, it all works out just fine.

There's action scenes aplenty, including several pitched battles between large groups; shoot-outs between individuals; an attack by a pride of enraged lions against a band of soldiers; the threat of human sacrifice; an angry charging elephant; and an earthquake. A lot of the action centers around attempts by various groups to obtain a load of gold taken from the treasure rooms of Opar. There's also a bag of priceless jewels from the same treasure room--an item that provides the primary motivation for several characters and changes hands at least four times during the course of the novel.

Jane spends much of the novel a prisoner of one villain or another, but she still gets several chances to be awesome. When Achmet Zek's men attack her estate, she's right in there fighting with the Waziri, potting bad guys with her rifle. Later on, when she ends up alone in the jungle with her hands and feet bound and a hungry lion nearby, she calmly assesses her situation and plans out the best possible method of escaping alive.

Tarzan spends the bulk of the novel with amnesia, reverting to pure jungle-man mode, but this in no way prevents him from also being awesome. Heck, when he kills a charging lion by shoving a broken rifle through its skull, then he's hit a new level of awesome even by Lord of the Jungle standards.

It's an action-packed, cleverly plotted adventure novel that features Tarzan at his best. If you're looking for something good to listen to, you can download it for free HERE. Or you can dig up the book and read it. Either way, it's worth your time.

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If your name is Robinson, DON'T GO INTO SPACE!

noreply@blogger.com (Tim DeForest) — Wed, 15 May 2013 13:00:00 +0000

There were actually two different families named Robinson that got lost in space during the 1960s.

The story as to why a Lost in Space comic book featured a family named Robinson but NOT the family featured in the concurrent TV series is an interesting one. I covered this as part of the video I made at work covering the history of Dell and Gold Key comics, which I'll put at the bottom of this post for anyone interested.

Gold Key's Space Family Robinson (eventually subtitled Lost in Space) featured scientists Craig and June Robinson and their teenage kids Tim and Tam. They wandered about the galaxy in a pretty cool looking space station, trying to find their way back to Earth after getting caught in a cosmic storm.

S.F.R. #34 (June 1969) is a typical example from the series. Tim and Tam are scouting a planet in the station's spacemobile. They find the remnants of a human civilization, but no living beings. It eventually unfolds that the surviving humans from this planet fled from a war against a neighboring world, with the

survivors hiding in suspended animation in a nearby asteroid. All this happened 8000 years ago.

The aliens from the other planets apparently hold grudges for a really, really long time, because they launch missiles at the spacemobile. Tim and Tam take refuge in the same asteroid as the surviving humans, who wake from their long sleep. When the aliens begin ripping apart the asteroid with anti-matter missiles, everyone (including Tim and Tam) escape in an invisible space ship. But when the ship's pilot is incapacitated, Tim has to pilot the craft to safety.

It's a simple and straightforward story, well-constructed but not particularly memorable. What makes it really work is Dan Spiegle's art. Spiegle had a talent for unique space ship, alien, planet-scape and space-scape designs, infusing the fairly average stories with a real sense of fun. The space station that the Robinsons called home is a great design, while this story also includes a creepy alien species and a pretty impressive looking spacecraft used by the escaping humans.

I don't think this version of the Robinson family ever made it back to Earth, just as the TV version of the family is apparently still wandering around among the stars. There's a lesson to be learned there--if your name is Robinson, just get a job at the local 7/11. DON'T apply to NASA for a job. That won't end well.

Cover Cavalcade

noreply@blogger.com (Tim DeForest) — Mon, 13 May 2013 13:00:00 +0000

Here's a simple concept for a cover illustration that comes out great because the artist executes it so effectively. The rigging nicely frames the sailor and the slightly upward perspective gives the proper sense of height.

Friday's Favorite OTR

noreply@blogger.com (Tim DeForest) — Fri, 10 May 2013 13:00:00 +0000

Green Hornet: “A Pair of Nylons” 3/19/46

A gang of con artists are setting up in small store fronts for one day per store, selling stockings to women and falsely claiming that they are real nylon.

This particular Macguffin isn’t the most exciting hook in the history of mystery fiction, but it leads into a strong story. Daily Sentinel reporter Mike Axeford looks into the racket and ends up getting captured. The police then do some sharp detective work and are soon raiding the gang’s storehouse, capturing several henchmen. But the gang leader and Axeford are nowhere to be found. So it’s up to the Green Hornet to “rescue” one of the henchmen and trick him into revealing the location of the boss’s hideout.

Avarice makes for Credulity

noreply@blogger.com (Tim DeForest) — Thu, 09 May 2013 13:00:00 +0000

We'll look at one last Robert E. Howard story in which the hero and the villain are forced by circumstances to team up with one another.

"Black Vulmea's Vengeance" was published in the November 1938 issue of Golden Fleece--a couple of years after Howard's death. The main character is an Irish pirate who has had a lot of success looting both British and Spanish ships.

It's the British who finally catch up to him--at a time when his entire crew is drunk from an all-night bender. Black Vulmea manages to take out a few of the Brits with a blast from a swivel gun, but the broadside he receives in return leaves him unconscious and wipes out his drunken crew.

("They'll wake up in Hell without knowing how they got there," eulogizes Vulmea a few pages later.)

The commander of the British ship is the snooty and brutal John Wentyard, who years ago had hanged a ten-year-old Vulmea when he put down a peasant's rebellion in Ireland. Vulmea, being an REH hero, survived the hangman's rope, became a kick-butt pirate, and now brought in chains before the man who killed his friends and family years ago.

Vulmea at first figures he'll leap forward and bash Wentyard's skull in with his manacles--an act of vengeance he figures is worth giving up his life to obtain. But then he gets a chance to run a con on Wentyard, telling him about a treasure hidden in the ruins of an ancient civilization on a nearby island. Looked at objectively, Vulmea's story should have been an obvious and desperate lie. But Vulmea knows that "avarice makes for credulity" and Wentyard indeed falls for it.

They travel to the island and go ashore: Wentyard, Vulmea and 15 marines. They're attacked by natives, which allows Vulmea to make a break for it. Events soon leave the marines dead, while Wentyard and Vulmea end up both hiding in some ruins that the natives are frightened to enter.

Vulmea is good at being sneaky, so he can slip out of the ruins and escape pretty much at will. So his initial plan is to first watch Wentyard starve to death. But then he decides it would be more satisfying to bring Wentyard food and water, then kill him in a fair fight. This plan is spoiled, though, when he abruptly discovers Wentyard has a wife and five-year-old daughter that will be left destitute. In fact, Wentyard was anxious to find treasure mostly to provide for them. "I can't be the cause of a helpless woman and colleen starving," says Vulmea in disgust.

This situation is what makes the character interactions particularly interesting, adding depth to an already cracking-good action tale. In our previous looks at reluctant Howardian team-ups, the goal was always either mutual survival or obtaining a treasure, after which the hero and the villain would go back to killing each other. This time, it's an act of compassion from a normally brutal pirate that brings the two characters together. It's clear that Vulmea still hates Wentyard and doesn't trust the man at all, but he'll save the Englishman (and even share a bit of treasure they stumble across) for the sake of a woman and child whom Vulmea himself will never meet.

But surviving has become more difficult. The natives won't enter the ruins, but a band of former African slaves (whose ship wrecked near the island) has no problem doing to. And these guys have no reason to love any white man--whether Irish or English. Also, there's a reason the natives avoid the ruins---a really, really creepy reason.

It's a great adventure story, with Wentyard's character arc and his changing attitude towards Vulmea giving it an interesting level of emotional subtlety. Robert E. Howard was quite capable of subtlety in his characterizations--something that he did a lot more often than casual critics of his work realize. "Black Vulmea's Vengeance" is perhaps one of the best examples of this.

That's it for our look at REH tales that force the hero to team up with an enemy. There's probably some other examples I'm not thinking of, so I may return to the idea in the future. Next week, though, we'll return to Edgar Rice Burroughs and visit with the Lord of the Jungle.

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Yeah, well, in real life the Supercat WOULD take over the world in a heartbeat.

noreply@blogger.com (Tim DeForest) — Wed, 08 May 2013 13:00:00 +0000

We've looked at Krypto and Beppo, the two super-pets who came from Krypton. These were two of the four super-powered animals that would form the Legion of Super-Pets.

The other two are from Earth. One of them was a cat named Streaky, adopted by Linda Lee (aka Supergirl) when she was still living at the Midville orphanage.

In Actions Comics #261 (February 1960), Supergirl was experimenting on a small chunk of green kryptonite, hoping to find a protection against its radiation. Her experiment failed and the Green K was transformed into an isotope called X-Kryptonite.

Supergirl, in a move that would have really ticked off the Environmental Protection Agency (had the EPA existed in 1960), casually tosses the X-Kryptonite into the nearby woods. Later, Streaky runs across it and its radiation temporarily gives the feline Kryptonian superpowers.

In that first story, he brings milk to homeless cats, drives off a mean dog and saves some baby chickens from an eagle. (Though that last one seems a bit unfair to the eagle. Is interfering with the food chain something superpowered pets are supposed to do?)

Anyway, as even cat owners would readily admit, if a cat got superpowers, he'd take over the world and make everyone else wait on him hand-and-foot. Heck, many cats seem to have that power naturally. But Streaky has an unusually strong moral center. Every once in awhile, he'll expose himself to the X-Kryptonite, gaining superpowers just long enough to help Supergirl out of a jam.

Now I will admit up front that I'm not a cat guy. For me, a superpowered dog is awesome--a superpowered cat is... well, not awesome. Because dogs are more awesome than cats.

But I will also admit that we needed a superpowered cat. Because it was adding yet another animal with superpowers to the DC Universe that allowed for the creation of a truly awesome superhero group.

Streaky meets Krypto in Action Comics #277 (June 1961). At first Streaky is jealous of the dog and the two have a series of contests to decide who's the better pet. But they eventually become friends. This forms the core of the Legion of Super-Pets.

We get our first glimpse at this group in Adventure Comics #293 (February 1962). In this delightlful Superboy-era tale written by Jerry Siegel, the villains are the four disembodied brains called the Brain Globes of Rambat. And, in my opinion, the name "Brain Globes of Rambat" is by itself reason enough to rate

this story as Brilliant.

Rambat has blown up and the last surviving Brain Globes need a new home. So they plan to steal Earth and bring it to orbit around their purple sun. But first, they have to get rid of Superboy, the only being powerful enough to stop them.

When they fail to fully mind-control the Boy of Steel, they instead jump into the future and gain control over three members of the Legion of Super-Heroes. These three then ambush Superboy and infect him with a lethal dose of Green K radiation. The Brain Globes then drop their control of the Legionnaires, knowing their mental powers will keep them safe while they hijack the Earth.

But the Legionnaires notice that the Brain Globes run away from Krypto and deduce that the villains can't control super-animals. So they zip into the future to recruit Beppo, Streaky and Comet the Superhorse. The inaugural battle for the Legion of Super-Pets involve the animals pretty much curb-stomping the Brain

Globes.

It's a great story. All the silliness in it is played straight, with a lot of details added that show Siegel and Mort Weisinger always remained true to the "reality" of this universe. And it works, resulting in a tale that is 100% pure fun. Heck, it involves disembodied brains fighting super-powered animals. It can't help but be fun!

But waitaminute? Did I just mention a superhorse? Yes, this story is the first appearance of Comet, with a caption hinting that his origin will be revealed soon. And it would be a little bit later in 1962. I originally intended to discuss Comet and Streaky together in the same post, but I'll talk about the horse next time. His origin is so bizarre it clearly deserves its own post.

R.I.P Ray Harryhausen

noreply@blogger.com (Tim DeForest) — Tue, 07 May 2013 19:44:00 +0000

Thanks for all the wonder. Several of my fondest childhood memories are of the first time I saw one of his films.

Cover Cavalcade

noreply@blogger.com (Tim DeForest) — Mon, 06 May 2013 13:00:00 +0000

This is a great cover. I'm glad someone out there is protecting us from the threat of giant Communist chickens and bunny rabbits!

Friday's Favorite OTR

noreply@blogger.com (Tim DeForest) — Fri, 03 May 2013 13:00:00 +0000

Favorite Story: “The Three Musketeers” 6/5/48

Favorite Story always does a surprisingly good job of distilling novels (even long ones) down to an entertaining short story. This version of the Three Musketeers has Milady de Winter kidnapping Constance, with a rescue attempt made several months later during the siege of La Rochelle. Howard Duff (Sam Spade!) gives an enthusiastic performance as D’Artagnan. The adaptation suffers slightly from a failure to explain exactly why Constance is kidnapped, but it still manages to generate a properly swashbuckling atmosphere. When they are portrayed properly, it’s pretty much always fun to hang out with Athos, Porthos and Aramis.

An insatiable hate and vengeance.

noreply@blogger.com (Tim DeForest) — Thu, 02 May 2013 13:00:00 +0000

Edgar Rice Burroughs had some pretty evil guys filling the roles of villains in his various novels. In The Beasts of Tarzan (1914), for instance, the evil Nikolas Rokoff takes revenge on the Ape Man by kidnapping Jane Clayton and her baby son, intending to eventually kill Jane and leave the son to be raised by cannibals.

But my vote for most evil ERB villain would be Jules de Vac, a French fencing master who served in the court of England's Henry III in the 13th Century.

We learn about de Vac in The Outlaw of Torn, which was serialized in New Story Magazine in 1914, then published in book form in 1927. We don't know a lot about de Vac's back story before he came to England, but it must have been an odd story indeed. Because this guy hates Englishmen. He really, really hates Englishmen.

And when Henry III--who is kind of a jerk--slaps him one day, de Vac decides its time to take action. His plan involves kidnapping the king's toddler-aged son Richard and sneaking off with him. He'd claim to be the boy's father, teach him to be a master swordsmen, and set him to work killing as many Englishmen as he can before he's eventually caught and hanged. It's a plan that will take a couple of decades to come to fruition, but de Vac is nothing but not patient. It gives him plenty of time to teach Richard swordsmanship.

Richard, of course, doesn't remember he's Richard. As he grows up, he goes by the name of Norman of Torn (Torn being the old castle de Vac takes him to). And he becomes an outlaw, raiding both castles loyal to King Henry and castles loyal to the nobility that is starting to rebel against Henry's dictatorial rule.

But de Vac's plans are partially spoiled when young Norman befriends a priest named Father Claude, who teaches him to read and write and to show chivalry for women and the down-trodden.

This turns the outlaw into a sort-of Robin Hood, robbing from the rich and giving to the poor. Pretty soon, he's got a small army encamped at Torn--with the fractious political situation preventing either the king or the nobility from bringing enough force to bear to beat him in a fight. He and his men kick butt and take names across England.

Norman's chivalry towards women eventually leads him to rescue the beautiful Bertrade de Monfort from a kidnapper. The two fall in love, but she doesn't know he's the so-called "Devil of Torn" and he doesn't see a way out of the life he's living. He doesn't hate the English any more, but Burroughs manages to create quite an interesting moral dilemma. Norman might give up being an outlaw, but his men won't necessarily do so. That would mean they'd be free to rampage across England without his force of will to keep women and the poor safe from their depredations. He seems stuck where he is. Following Norman's character arc (paralleled by Bertrade's arc in her eventually accepting the love of a man she believes to be "low born") makes for a fascinating journey.

It's a great yarn, fast-moving and full of action without sacrificing what are some of the author's best characterizations. And Jules de Vac is a villain you really love to hate. He's a guy who raised Norman as a son with the direct intention of eventually getting Norman killed. And when his plans seem to unravel as the book progresses, he takes ruthless and bloodthirsty steps to get that plan back on track.

The dialogue is fun to read as well. Burroughs has everyone speaking in vaguely Shakespearean English. This isn't quite historically accurate and there are a few instances where the speech is a bit stilted, but for the most part Burroughs skill at picking the right words and sentence structures make it sound "right."

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Painting the Big Apple Red--Asgardian Style

noreply@blogger.com (Tim DeForest) — Wed, 01 May 2013 13:00:00 +0000

Marvel Spotlight #30: featuring the Warriors Three (October 1976)

Anyone who read my reviews of Thor stories will not be surprised when I say that I always liked the Warriors Three--that trio of Asgardian Warriors who popped up to help out the Thunder God from time to time. Fandrall the Dashing, Hogun the Grim and Volstagg the Voluminous had personalities that roughly approximated the Three Musketeers and spouted the sort of faux-Shakespeare dialogue that all the mythological gods in the Marvel Universe inexplicably used. They enjoyed a good fight (well, except for Volstagg, who mostly worried about being late for lunch) and are a nifty if minor part of the Marvel canon.

In this issue of Marvel Spotlight, they were given a lead role in their own adventure. Marvel Spotlight was one of several anthology books that existed in the 1970s and were used to try out different ideas. New characters like Moon Knight and Iron Fist were introduced in such books. Old characters not then headlining their own books, like Nick Fury, were given an occasional solo adventure. And supporting characters like the Warriors Three were allowed to step forward and show off.

The story begins with our heroes hanging out in New York City--they'd been helping out Thor, but the Thunder God was now busy battling Firelord in his own book, leaving the Warriors on their own in the Big Apple.

The Warriors soon find adventure. They prevent a despondent girl from committing suicide. Learning that her boy friend Arnold is being forced by gangsters to help rob the diamond exchange he works at, the Warriors instantly opt to save him as well.

Arnold is being forced by gangsters to help rob the diamond exchange he works at, the Warriors instantly opt to save him as well.

With the help of a cab driver named Myron and a drunken bum named Ragland T. Pepperpot, they waylay the gangsters at the diamond exchange, then later get into a fight at a waterfront bar while looking for Arnold. Finally, Arnold and his girl are reunited and Fandrall hauls them off to a

magistrate to make sure they get married.

It's a fun story, with humor, a plot that actually makes sense in a comic book universe and great art by John Buscema. It's by no means an important milestone in Marvel comics--it's just good fun.

And, of course, it provides us with just another example of how important it is for comics to maintain a viable continuity. This story was possible because writer/editor Len Wein was paying attention to the Marvel Universe as a whole and saw an opportunity created by the ongoing plot in Thor to tell a small but entertaining side story. And he did this without violating established Marvel history or established characterizations. It's something editors and writers today could definitely learn from.

Cover Cavalcade

noreply@blogger.com (Tim DeForest) — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 13:00:00 +0000

I'm not a huge fan of Lin Carter's fiction, but Frank Frazetta gave us a fantastic cover for this particular novel.

Beyond the Black River--a video review

noreply@blogger.com (Tim DeForest) — Sat, 27 Apr 2013 13:00:00 +0000

Here's a new video for my YouTube channel--it's a look at "Beyond the Black River," one of Robert E. Howard's original Conan the Barbarian stories.

Friday's Favorite OTR

noreply@blogger.com (Tim DeForest) — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 13:00:00 +0000

Police Woman 6/29/47 “Scheming Bridegroom”

This was a short-lived 15 minute show that ran for about a year in 1946 & 1947. In this episode, female police woman Mary Sullivan lays a trap for a man who lures women to their deaths with promises of marriage.

An absurd number of suspects

noreply@blogger.com (Tim DeForest) — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 13:00:00 +0000

Read/Watch 'em In Order #33

After the Thin Man (1936) was made two years after the original, but picks up the action just three days after Nick has solved the Thin Man murders in New York.

He and Nora arrive home in San Francisco, where the movie immediately has some fun counterpointing the crooks, newsboys, boxers and assorted riff-raff that Nick knows with Nora's wealthy and somewhat snotty relatives. It's something that sets the tone of this movie and the rest of the series; though Dashiell Hammett provided the story outline for the sequel, any hint of a hard-boiled atmosphere has evaporated completely. The Thin Man movies are going to be silly fun build around a murder mystery and the chemistry of its two stars.

The Charles' are exhausted from their train trip and just wants to relax, but there's no rest of the weary. Aside from a home full of people determined to give them a surprise party, another case pops up. It seems that Nora's Aunt Katherine, though she doesn't think much of Nick, needs a detective for a problem she prefers to keep in the family to avoid scandal. One of Nora's cousins has a wayward husband who hasn't been home for days. Nick is asked to find him.

That doesn't take long--the drunken jerk is hanging out at a nightclub, making time with the club's singer. But the singer is in a plot with the club's owner to swindle the husband out of money. The singer's brother has issues with the husband as well. Then there's his wife's previous fiance, who is still in love with her. And--don't you know it--nobody involved as an alibi when the husband is gunned down on a foggy Frisco street.

That makes for a large pool of suspects. Neither Nick nor the local homicide cop make any head-way in the case, though the likeliest suspect seems to be Nora's cousin. But soon, more bodies turn up--one strangled and another also shot. Nick keeps digging up possible clues (and, in fact, has a clue literally thrown to him through his kitchen window), but new facts just seem to keep adding to the general confusion.

In the end, Nick gets all the suspects together in one room, where he spots the clue that allows him to finger the killer.

And we all have fun watching Nick get there. The comedy is turned up to High, but it's sincerely funny stuff in the form of screwball comedy and sincerely witty word play. As I stated in our look at the first film, William Powell and Myrna Loy were perfect together--their comedic timing as Nick and Nora is flawless.

But though the movie is sillier than the original, it still works as a murder mystery. The case is interesting in its own right and director W.S. Van Dyke stages the action with his usual expertise. The fog-enshrouded streets of San Francisco are effectively used to generate a sense of danger at the right moments. A scene in which Nick trails a suspect down staircases to a basement--and then stumbles across a corpse (stiff with rigor mortis) locked in a large hamper--is genuinely tense.

That's Sam Levene on the right.

As was typical of films made during the Studio Era, the actors in the supporting roles are great. Most notable is Sam Levene, one of my favorite character actors of the 1930s and 1940s, playing police Lt. Abrams. A very young Jimmy Stewart is there as well, playing one of the many suspects in the sort of role you're really not used to seeing him play.

There's four more films to go and they will continue to get sillier. But every one of them will be worthwhile. I'm probably going to run out of ways of saying that Powell and Loy are always perfect together, so you'll all will just have to get used to it. I'm going to have to say it at least four more times.

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There Should Always be Room for a Little Whimsey

noreply@blogger.com (Tim DeForest) — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 13:00:00 +0000

Superman had a lot of silly, low-threat villains. While Braniac and Luthor were always trying to conquer/destroy worlds or kill the Man of Steel, guys like Toyman and the Prankster were played largely for laughs, pulling off less extreme crimes while playing practical jokes or employing high-tech toy soldiers as minions.

Mr. Mxyzptlk is another such villain, though his seemingly all-powerful magic could often be very dangerous. A version of Mxyzptlk first appeared in the Golden Age, with the Silver Age version introduced in Action Comics #208 (September 1955). He'd pop in from the Fifth Dimension and use his magic in annoying ways to make Superman's life miserable. Eventually, Superman would trick him into saying his name backwards, sending him back to the Fifth Dimension for 90 days and undoing all his magic tricks.

Then there's Bizarro. In Superboy #58 (Nov. 1958), a scientist invents a duplicating ray that works imperfectly and creates a bizarre clone of Superboy. This first Bizarro is soon destroyed, but in Action Comics #254 (July 1959), Lex Luthor uses the ray to make (he hopes) an evil clone of Superman. But this Bizarro turns out to be more silly than evil.

I'd have to do an entire multi-part series to cover the evolution of Bizarro's story arc, but in a nutshell that duplicating ray turns out to be the most abused item of super-science in the history of the DC Universe. Soon, there's a Bizarro world (a square version of Earth) populated by many, many Bizarro Supermen married to many, many Bizarro Lois Lanes and having Bizarro babies. There are also Bizarro versions of Jimmy Olson, Perry White, many of the Justice League Members, Krypto, Lex Luthor and I'm not sure who else.

Anyway, Bizarro's do everything backwards. They have Ugly Contests instead of Beauty Contests. They eat cold dogs instead of hot dogs. Bizarro dogs are chased by Bizarro mailmen and it takes an hour for a Bizarro Lois to make instant coffee. The original Bizarro (who wore a sign reading Bizarro #1) would also occasionally return to Earth and get into mischief.

Bizarro World got it's own back up feature in Adventure Comics for a time, written purely for laughs by Jerry Siegel. It was in Adventure Comics #286 (July 1961), that Bizarro meets Mr. Mxyzptkl. Or at least he meets a Bizarro version of the imp called Bizarro-Lktpzyxm. But that's close enough for me. I refuse to do another post that requires me to make sure I'm spelling Mxyzptkl correctly, so I'm just going to cover both characters together.

Bizarro #1 is broke, so he decides to go into business as a private detective. And there is indeed a crime spree on Bizarro World. Someone turned the mayor's broken-down mansion into a beautiful building and filled it with priceless art. From a Bizarro perspective, this is a horrible crime, since all that beauty is just plain ugly.

Bizarro checks out several suspects, including the mayor whom Bizarro figures is guilty because he had no motive. But the culprit turns out to be Bizarro-Kltpzyzm, who's idea of mischief is fixing broken stuff the other Bizarros don't consider broken.

Bizarro #1 tries several plans to de-power the imp or trick him into saying his name backwards, but these all fail. It turns out, though, that he simply had to ask Kltpzyzm to surrender, because this is a plan that would NOT work for the original Mr. Mxyzptkl.

And that's pretty much that. The humor in the Bizarro stories is never laugh-out-loud funny and occasionally the jokes fail completely. But there's a sense of whimsy and a sort-of cuteness to the stories that still make them fun to read.

The existence of characters such as Bizarro and Mr. Mxyzptkl in the Silver Age DC Universe was, in the end, one of its strengths. It was, after all, a multi-faceted universe with countless diverse elements. It's nice to know that Mort Weisinger and his writers remembered that there was room for some occasional whimsey along

with the constant barrage of Earth-threatening evil plots.

That finishes our look at Superman's Rogue's Gallery. Our next visit to Weisinger's Superman universe, I think, will finish off the Legion of Super Pets with a look at Streaky and Comet.

The Six Shooter: A Review and Episode Guide

noreply@blogger.com (Tim DeForest) — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 13:00:00 +0000

I've written a review and episode guide for The Six Shooter, a Western that ran on NBC radio for 39 episodes in 1953-54. The series starred James Stewar as Britt Ponset, a "Texas plainsman who wandered through the western territories, leaving behind a trail of still-remembered legends."

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Stewart played Britt in a laid-back, folksy manner that made him old-time radio's most purely likable hero. The premise of the show allowed anything from straightforward action to character drama to comedy. One week might find Britt stalking a killer through a dark canyon. The next week might find him judging a preserves-tasting contest. This show is one of the treasures of Old-Time Radio.

The link above is for the Kindle. It should be available for the Nook very soon--Barnes and Noble seems to have a much longer processing time for newly-published ebooks before they show up on their website.

Cover Cavalcade

noreply@blogger.com (Tim DeForest) — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 13:00:00 +0000

Here's a wonderfully exciting Neil Adams cover.

The History of B-Movies

noreply@blogger.com (Tim DeForest) — Sat, 20 Apr 2013 13:00:00 +0000

I've made another video for my work at the Ringling College of Art Library. This one is about B-movies from Hollywood's Golden Age--the lower budget but often excellent films made to be the second half of a double feature.

Also available on this YouTube channel are videos I've made on the history of Dell and Gold Key comics, J. Allen St. John and Roy Crane.

Friday's Favorite OTR

noreply@blogger.com (Tim DeForest) — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 13:00:00 +0000

Casey, Crime Photographer “King of the Apes” 5/1/47

An animal trainer performing with a circus is killed by one of his trained orangutans during his act. But it’s possible the ape had been trained to commit the murder.

To catch the killer, it’s not just a matter of figuring out who did it—or rather who got the orangutan to do it. It’s also a matter of luring him or her into a trap in order to prove it. And that might just get someone else strangled by a trained ape.