Cover Cavalcade

Here's a fun and dynamic cover from 1947.

Thanks again to Gary Shapiro, host of From the Bookshelf, for sending me this one.

Friday's Favorite OTR

The Green Hornet: “A Question of Time” 3/5/46

Spies commit a murder, steal a secret formula and frame the Green Hornet for the crimes. But the Hornet picks up on a subtle clue pointing to the real killer. As Britt Reid, he uses his position as a newspaperman to set up a trap that forces the villains to give themselves away.

That’s one thing I’ve always liked about Green Hornet episodes. The writers never forgot that Reid owned a newspaper as well as worked as a masked vigilante. He always made good use of all the resources he had in both his identities.

Click HERE to listen or download.

High Gravity, Horrible Disease, Man-Eating Monsters and an Unpleasant Weather Forecast

Science Fiction writer Tom Godwin is best remembered today for his emotional short story “Cold Equation,” in which a young girl stows away on a space ship, causing her extra weight to endanger a rescue mission.

But he turned out a lot of quality stuff during his career. And if I had to pick a best Tom Godwin story, it would probably be his short novel Space Prison (1958).  (It’s also been reprinted under the title Survivors, by the way.)

An expansion of a short story called “Too Soon to Die,” Space Prison begins as a colony ship with 8000 passengers is captured by evil aliens (called Gerns). Half of them are kept as slaves. The other half are marooned with virtually no supplies on a planet called Ragnarok.

Ragnarok is well-named. The place is literally a Hell Planet, with gravity at 1.5 times that of Earth and full of a variety of deadly fauna. A disease called Hell Fever rips through the human community. Semi-intelligent carnivores called Prowlers attack constantly. Soon, they learn that Ragnarok’s erratic orbit means that there are regular periods of either searing heat or Ice Age-level cold.

It’s not at all a nice place and, at one point, the population level shrinks to less than 100. But the survivors fight back, slowly gaining a toe-hold over their environment. And one day, by golly, they are going to wreak vengeance on the Gern for stranding them here.

Despite being short, Space Prison is a multi-generational epic. There’s no one protagonist. In fact, the first few chapters very quickly run through a set of characters you think will be the protagonist, but who keep getting killed.

Often, the lack of a single, strong point-of-view character can weaken a story. But here, it strengthens it. In a very important sense, the society the survivors build on Ragnorak is the main character. The humans work not just to live, but to preserve their history and their technical knowledge, passing this down to each successful generation. This gives them a purpose —to one day regain contact with other planets and bring some major butt-kicking to the Gern.

Godwin really does a great job of making you root for the humans, regardless of who the current point-of-view character might be. He creates an admirable and believable community of humans who find a collective cause to live for; who stick up for each other because they’ll all die if they don’t; who fight not just to live but to eventually win.

A lot of the action centers around a years-long search (something possible only when the weather permits) to find an iron deposit somewhere on the metal-poor planet, so they can make real progress in recreating advanced technology. In the meantime, successive generations (each better adapted to the high gravity than the last) make do with spears and multi-shot crossbows. It’s a neat trick, giving Godwin a viable excuse to have his characters encounter new dangers and native creatures they hadn’t met before.

In a very general sense, Space Prison reminds me of Verne’s Mysterious Island, in that a group is stranded somewhere remote and must rebuild civilization from scratch. There’s also a little bit of “Androcles and the Lion” tossed in when the humans are able to form an alliance with the semi-intelligent Prowlers after generations of killing each other.

But Godwin’s novel has its own individual vibe nonetheless, zipping along from one deadly threat to the next without ever pausing for a breath. Comic book writer Warren Ellis once wrote that Space Prison is “as shamelessly gleeful as a short genre book should be.” I think that describes it perfectly.

Today Ron Ely--Tomorrow THE WORLD!!!!

Here's a new interview with Ron Ely, who played Tarzan in a really fun 1960s TV series. They use a question I submitted (and even mention me by name, by golly) about whether Ely had read the original novels and if that influenced his performance.

He had a very interesting answer in which his familiarity with the original novel makes him think, in retrospect, that they series should have been done as a 1912-period piece rather than modernized. Though I enjoyed the series, I think I would agree with him on this.

History of the Marvel Universe: March 1969

FANTASTIC FOUR #84

First of all, it MUST be noted that the flying vehicle that the FF are flying home in (given to them by Black Bolt) is quite possibly the single coolest thing Jack Kirby ever designed. And that’s saying a lot.

But it’s a short trip. While still over Europe, they are intercepted by Nick Fury and a squadron of SHIELD planes. Nick recruits them for a mission—someone is stockpiling a robot army in a secret location. Find out who, where and why.

Well, the likeliest suspect when evil robots are involved is Dr. Doom. Reed comes up with what will NOT be nominated as his cleverest plan ever: driving into Latveria while flashing their passports.

They’re jumped by robots with specially designed weapons and captured. But when they wake up, they’re in a small, picturesque village, being welcomed by the friendly populace.  They soon discover that there is a force field around the village AND that Doom has hypnotically stripped them of their powers. Doom plans to simply keep them there forever, telling them to “be eternally happy… or else, to die!”

This is the first of four-parts in what will be a fairly strong Dr. Doom story. There are parts of Doom’s plans for conquest and for dealing with the Fantastic Four that don’t really make complete sense, even in a comic book world. But the art and the characterizations more than make up for this. Most notable is an interesting glimpse at Doom’s character—his conviction that the people of Latveria owe him total obedience because he keeps them fed and healthy. Without excusing Doom’s evil, Stan and Jack manage to show us that Doom doesn’t think of himself as evil. For all his stubborn pettiness in regards to Reed and his dangerous pride, in his mind—HE’S the good guy.

SPIDER MAN #70

Having handled the issue of the protesters so well over the last few issues, Stan actually wraps it up a little too neatly to be completely satisfying.

By now, Randy and the others have been cleared of involvement with the Kingpin. They meet with the Dean of the college, who tells them they will get their low-rent dorm. He also admits his mistake in not giving the students a real voice in such issues.

Actually, it’s not a bad ending. It shows that if people on different sides of an issue talk about it calmly, they can often work things out. It just seems a little too pat after several issues of real debate on the ethics of protesting.

But, from a purely dramatic point-of-view, I suppose this had to be wrapped up to allow the readers to focus on Peter, who is being put through an emotional wringer. He’s wanted by the cops; he’s wondering why he bothers being Spider Man when everyone seems to distrust or hate him; he finds out Gwen suspects him of being a coward; and he has no idea what to do with the stolen tablet.

Then Kingpin breaks out of prison. He and Spidey meet up in a fight, but when the webslinger gets Kingpin on the robes, he’s interrupted by the arrival of J.J. Jameson and Ned Leeds. This allows Kingpin to get away.

Peter finally loses his temper and grabs Jameson, apparently giving the publisher a heart attack. The issue ends with Spider Man swinging away, wondering if he’s now become a murderer.

It’s yet another great story that generates real emotion. Stan Lee was sometimes a little over the top in his dialogue. Actually, he was OFTEN over the top in his dialogue. But when he was at his best—with characters that I think he probably loved—he could provide consistently strong character moments.

THOR #162

Thor returns to Asgard in a story that exists to set up the next story arc.  Odin shows Thor some of the history of Galactus—how eons ago an alien war fleet had discovered a huge “incuba-cell” floating in space. The aliens tried to destroy it, but only succeeded in releasing Galactus, who has his first meal by eating their world. Odin wants to learn more, knowing that Galactus is still a threat.

It’s a bit of an awkward jump when the Galactus story line is then abruptly set aside when Thor learns that Sif has gone to Earth to investigate an unknown danger. She hasn’t been heard from since, so Thor leaves Asgard to find her.

Though this issue has a few plot construction issues, it does give Jack Kirby an excuse to draw still more awesome looking stuff. So we’ll be forgiving.

That’s it for March. Next week, we’ll take a look at an EC comics Western and compare it to a Marvel Western with a similar plot. In two weeks, we’ll hit April 1969, in which the Fantastic Four continues its enforced vacation; Spider Man fights an Avenger;  and Thor does a bit of time traveling.

Cover Cavalcade

I'm pretty sure if you look up the word "dynamic" in the dictionary, you just see a picture of one of Joe Kubert's covers for the definition.

Friday's Favorite OTR

Frontier Gentleman: “The Cat Man” 8/10/58

An urge to help an outnumbered man in a saloon brawl leads to J.B. Kendall travelling with an Irishman whose mouth is full of blarney and whose wagon is full of… cats?

Click HERE to listen or download.

Be ready to keep reading.

A cliched method of describing how great book is "you can't put it down." That cliche quite possibly fits C.S. Forester's The Good Shepherd (1955) more perfectly than any other book.

Seriously. You literally can't put the thing down simply because there's no good place to pause before you get to the end.

The Good Shepherd is told entirely from the point-of-view of Commander George Krause, captain of the American destroyer Keeling during the Second World War. Krause is also in command of a convoy consisting of 37 merchant ships and three additional escort vessels crossing the Atlantic during the height of the U-boat menace. The story begins on a Wednesday morning, when Krause is called to the bridge when one of the escorts gets a sonar contact.

It ends almost exactly two days later. During that time, Krause (except for a few trips to the head and to conduct a quick burial-at-sea ceremony) never leaves the bridge. The convoy sails into a wolf pack. The Keeling charges forward after a radar contact--probably a sub on the surface. It comes back to the convoy to join with another destroyer in stalking another U-boat. It zips to the rear of the convoy to cover the designated rescue vessel while the crew of a torpedoed ship is taken aboard. It stalks yet another sub. It dogfights a damaged sub that has been forced to surface. The depth charge supply is low. One of the escorts is critically low on fuel. It's all non-stop. There is literally no significant break in the action as the reader follows along with Krause's thought processes as he makes one on-the-go tactical decision after another.

The tension is incredibly high from start to finish, punctuated by moments of high excitement, such as the destroyer vs. sub surface fight or the moments when Keeling is chasing a sub through the convoy in the pitch dark.

And Krause is a great character--a devoutly spiritual man for whom duty is everything. Despite having spent twenty years in the Navy, this is Krause's combat baptism, but it's a role he's born for. He's a lot like Forester's more famous hero, Horatio Hornblower, in that he's very unemotional and logical in dangerous situations and very critical in self-analysis.

We can't help but admire and respect Krause. We get to know him intimately in a very short period of time, with the prose efficiently detailing his thoughts as he quickly weighs the pros and cons of each decision he makes. And, driven by his high sense of duty, he usually makes the correct decisions.

The clear prose also gives all us landlubbers a firm grasp of the always-fluid tactical situation--we understand what's happening at any given moment and therefore we have all that much more sympathy for Krause while he's making spot decisions that could get his ship killed if he's wrong.

Forester even uses small human details to make the story work. Krause's constant lack-of-time to leave the bridge for a few moments to use the head or his hunger after he realizes he hasn't eaten for hours are all things that give the story an additional sense of realism.

So if you read The Good Shepherd, give yourself the time to finish quickly. There's literally no good stopping point anywhere before the end.

History of the Marvel Universe: February 1969

FANTASTIC FOUR #83

The wrap-up of the Inhuman story line is so simple that it can be summed up in a few sentences:

The Inhuman royals and the Fantastic Four are being held in separate cages, but each group manages to escape on its own. The FF takes down the robot that beat them last issue (Reed has figured out it contained a hypno-ray that had been slowing them down), while the royals smash Maximus’ big hypno-gun in the nick of time. Maximus and a few cronies escape—fleeing Earth in a space ship. The good guys win again.

But that summary doesn’t do justice to Kirby’s layouts. As he does in Thor this month, he continues to use the science fiction background of this story to play on his strengths as an artist—filling each panel with cool-looking weaponry, robots and cityscapes. Especially notable are several successive panels drawn without dialogue or sound effects at the Inhumans fight a horde of Alpha primitives.

The one other thing that’s worth noting is the role of Ben, Johnny and Reed in this story. They do perfectly well in a difficult situation—busting out of their jail and whooping butt on the big robot. But when you think about it, they really weren’t needed. Black Bolt and his family manage to break out of their prison on their own and they deal with Maximus and save the world before the FF has a chance to join up with them.

That’s not a criticism—it’s still a strong story. But it’s kind of fun that the usual heroes of the book are merely a sideshow, while the (admittedly awesome) guest-stars do all the really important work.

SPIDER MAN #69

The main action in this issue is a wonderfully choreographed fight between Spidey and Kingpin, but Stan Lee also continues to follow up on the issues he dealt with last time.

It’s only a few panels, but Robbie is talking to Randy (who, with other protesters, is being held on suspicion of helping the Kingpin) about the protest. The dialogue brings up a point about fighting for racial equality. Do you do this through protest, or do you do it by becoming a working and useful part of the establishment? There’s only time for Stan to touch on the point here, but it would be a jumping off point for intelligent discussion of what was perhaps the most important social issue of that decade.

There’re also a few moments where we find Gwen wondering if Peter isn’t a bit of a coward for not taking part in the protest. Secret identities do cause interesting problems sometimes, don’t they?

But, as I said, the meat of this issue is a fantastic fight scene as Spidey first takes out Kingpin’s thugs, then goes one-on-one against the big guy himself. (If Peter knew that Thor was taking on Galactus at the same time, he’d probably count his blessings.)

As is true of all good Spider Man action scenes, the webslinger uses his head as well as his fists and manages to put the Kingpin down. But when Kingpin is arrested by the cops, he “confesses” that Spider Man was his partner.

So when Spidey tries to give the stolen tablet back to the cops, they shoot at him. Enraged, Peter yells out:

Well, that attitude won’t last, but Peter will soon be discovering that losing his temper can have consequences.

THOR #161

Thor and the Recorder are rescued by the Wanderers, a ship full of survivors from worlds destroyed by Galactus.

But that ship also gets caught in the crossfire between Galactus and Ego. Thor joins and and actually manages to cause Galactus pain (something not even the Fantastic Four had ever managed to do). The Thunder God still gets swatted away just as well.

Thor, the Recorder and the Wanderers are on Ego’s surface and the battle seems lost. But Thor comes up with a way of unleashing all his power and all the power of his hammer in one massive burst. This causes Galactus actual agony and forces him to retreat.

In gratitude, Ego offers his surface as a home for the Wanderers.

The above summery is yet another case where describing the plot simply doesn’t do it justice. Kirby’s art continues to sell the story—his ability to endow his imagery with a real sense of power means we believe it all. We believe two cosmically-powered beings are slugging it out in a battle that spans across light years. We believe the burst of power let loose by Thor is enough to hurt Galactus. We believe every little detail Jack Kirby puts into the tale.

That’s it for February. In March 1969, the Fantastic Four face off against their bitterest enemy once again; Spider Man discovers he’s not done dealing with Kingpin; and Thor discovers he’s not done dealing with Galactus.

Cover Cavalcade

This was a Big Little Book from 1941.  Other than what can be deduced from the title and cover, I really don't know anything about it, but that cover is enough to make me want to read it one day. Finding an affordable copy probably isn't feasible, though.