Cover Cavalcade

 

 

Artist George Rozen could make stamp collecting look ominous! This cover is from 1933.

Friday's Favorite OTR

 Suspense: "Walls Came Tumbling Down" 6/29/44

Someone is willing to kill to obtain a specific copy of the Bible.

Click HERE to listen or download.

Bretwalda, Part 2

 

Read/Watch 'em In Order #135

When we last encountered the axe Bretwalda (which means "Ruler of Briton"), it was used to save the life of King Alfred, who would one day win a great victory against the Vikings that were ravaging England.

Philip Ketchum's second Bretwalda story is "Vandal," published in the March 18, 1939 issue of Argosy. We've jumped ahead a generation, with Winton--the axe's owner--living in Norway and teaching his son Alfred to be also have the skills necessary to kick butt and take names.

It's a skill that soon comes in handy. Norway has been united under King Harold, who is a friend of England. But Harold's grip on the throne is tenuous, with many powerful jarls (who used to be the top dogs of their own territories) wanting to overthrow him.

In fact, it's not long before things get dangerous. Harold is kidnapped and Winton is back-stabbed. Alfred, who previously could barely lift Bretwalda, now finds it easy to wield. He, along with Harold's son and daughter and a few other allies, launch a rescue mission to save Harold.

But in order to do so, Alfred will have to make a decision very similar to that made by his father in "The Axe Bites Deep." He has to be willing to sacrifice himself to save Harold and, by extension, save England.

"Vandal" is an excellent story, with several great action scenes that also generates an extraordinary level of tension during the unusual boat trip that takes up much of the latter half of the story. Also, Alfred's relationship with Harold's daughter Sigrid grows quickly (necessary in a short story), but also seems natural and not at all contrived.

I'm being sparse in detail because I don't want to spoil the story for anyone. You can read it online HERE.

 

Helpless Target

 

cover art tentatively credited to Dick Giordano

Charlton Comics' Attack ran for seven issue in 1958 and 1959. These issues were numbered 54 through 60, so it probably picked up the numbering sequence of a cancelled title, though I don't know what that previous title was.

Attack specialized in short (usually 5-page) stories that told their tales quickly and economically. "Helpless Target!" for instance, was published in Attack #55 (December 1958). With a script tentatively credited to Joe Gill and art by Bill Molno, it's one of a half-dozen tales crammed into the 36-page book.

A large landing craft (L.S.T.--Landing Ship, Tank) has just dropped off troops on the Philippines during the 1944 invasion. But they are having engine trouble and drop behind their convoy.

This is bad, because there are Japanese ships in the area and an L.S.T. is very lightly armed with only a few anti-aircraft guns. They wouldn't stand a chance against a destroyer or a submarine.

The captain takes cover along shore a small island. While scouting ashore, they run into some army troops.

This is a weapons company, equipped with rocket launchers mounted on halftracks. They were landed here by accident and have been holding off nearby Japanese troops while hoping someone finds them.

The army guys and their rocket launchers are loaded aboard the L.S.T., which has managed some makeshift repairs. But soon after leaving the island, they run smack into a Japanese destroyer.

The short page count of the story has some disadvantages. For instance, we never get a panel giving us a proper shot of the half-tracks in all their rocket-launching glory. Instead, we just get a few sort-of close-ups of the vehicles or the launchers. But the above panel, showing us the L.S.T. from the point-of-view of the enemy ship, framed in that space between the lifeboat and the davit, is really nice.

The L.S.T. would be virtually helpless in normal circumstances. But this isn't a normal circumstance. Those army rocket launchers take their shot, score a hit and sink a ship.

Like most stories in Attack, "Helpless Target!" is a succinct, well-told yarn that jumps into the plot quickly and resolves it just as quickly. This is obviously a neccessity for a 5-page story, but it uses that restriction to good advantage.

You can read this issue online HERE.

Next week, we'll visit again with Turok, Son of Stone.

Cover Cavalcade

 

This 1962 edition of Christie's 1928 novel features a cover by Harry Bennett.

Friday's Favorite OTR

 Escape: "The Island" 7/11/51

A Marine fighting on Okinawa believes he's found an escape from war and will be able to live on a nearby island paradise. He is destined to be disillusioned.

Click HERE to listen or download. 

A Washed-Up Boxer and an Orphan

 

I guess sometimes I'm an easy touch. The Mighty McGurk (1947) is corny, full of melodrama and as predictable as a Hallmark Christmas movie. You know what is going to happen long before it happens.

Wallace Beery plays a former heavyweight champion (named "Slag" McGurk) who now works as a bouncer for a saloon owner (Edward Arnold) in the Bowery at the turn-of-the-century. The saloon owner, named Mike, wants to expand his business, but he needs to clear the Salvation Army out of the building next to his saloon to do so. He wants Slag to start a riot to get the S.A. declared a public nuisance and evicted.

But Slag has other things on his mind. Through mischance and shenanigans, he's ended up caring for an English boy who has just arrived in the country. The boy (Dean Stockwell) is supposed to go to a rich uncle, but he's lost the name and address. Slag bestows the name Nippy on the boy, who enjoys life with his Uncle Slag because he doesn't have to wash or go to school and he gets to hang out in saloons. Nippy also gains a loyal pet when he hides a dog from the dogcatcher.

Slag's plan is to eventually find the uncle, collect a reward and buy into a partnership with Mike.

Other characters include Mike's daughter, who is in love with a guy named Johnny. Johnny had also been a boxer--and a protege of Slag--until he injured a man in the ring and joined the Salvation Army. Mike disapproves of his daugther's choice of boyfriends.

As I said, it's all predictable. You know--without any doubt--Nippy will initially be devestated when he finds out Slag took him in for a reward. You know that Slag is going to do the right thing in the end, stop the planned riot and adopt Nippy. You know that everyone who is in love will end up together.

But I enjoyed the film regardless. Berry brings a gruff likeability to Slag, Edward Arnold is always good and Stockwell was a fine kid actor. (Heck, you can assume he'll grow up to be Al in Quantum Leap and perhaps he learned to smoke cigars from McGurk.) The black-and-white photography is excellent and the setting (both time and place) is inherently fun. 

Perhaps its a case where the predictibility of the plot is a comfort rather than a problem. There are times when a movie or TV show gives you the feeling that you are hanging out with old friends. The Mighty McGurk gives you that feeling. 

Looking for a Lost Child

If you are a member of Prince Valiant's family, then you are going to be frequently placed in danger. In fact, in the case of Valiant's third son (and fifth kid overall), that danger will begin pretty much the instance you are born. 

This is part of a Prince Valiant story arc that ran through late 1983 and early 1984. John Cullen Murphy was the artist by this point, with scripts being provided by his son Cullen Murphy. Hal Foster created the strip in 1937 and, after handing the strip to Murphy in 1971, still continued to provide pencil sketches and scripts throughout the 1970s. Foster is justifiably considered a master (arguably THE MASTER) of the art form, but I'll be darned if I can find a drop in quality in the strip during the Murphy years.

Anyway, it was in 1983 that Val's wife Aleta gives birth to another son, who is promptly stolen in a plot instigated by the Byzantium emperor Justinian, who had become the Valiant family's enemy.

Val's oldest son Arn--by now a young adult--ends up trying to track down the boy. This takes him to what is now Turkey, where he learns that the boy had been given to a family living along the frontier of the Byzantium Empire. Arn soon ends up traveling with a Rabbi named Ezekiel. Because of persecution, there aren't currently many active Rabbis in the Jewish community. So Ezekiel travels from village to village, visiting each one along his route perhaps once a year. He's able to help Arn ask about the missing child in each village they visit.

But things get dangerous--and tragic. Justinian knows Arn is searching for the boy, but his minions don't know exactly where the child ended up either. Troops search for Arn, but he keeps dodging them. So a back-up plan is put into effect. All the young children in the area are to be slaughtered.

The above panel is one of the most heartbreaking ever to appear in a Sunday Comics page. The children in a village that Arn had just left are killed. Thanatops (Justinian's thug-in-chief) pauses here, letting rumor and fear do the job of flushing out the baby they are actually looking for.

Arn soon finds his young brother, who is being raised by a Jewish couple named Matthias and Judith. They've named him Nathan and love him as their own.

Frightened villagers have tracked down the boy as well and Thanatops is close behind them. The troops attack, ruthlessly cutting down any Jews they encounter. Ezekiel is mortally wounded. Arn and his baby brother seemed doomed.

In this brief summary, I'm not really doing justice to how awesome a character is Ezekiel. Learned, wise, compassionate and faithful to God, the story arc brings him quickly to life, makes us like him and leaves us devastated when he's killed. I hadn't read this particular story arc prior to it's recent reprinting, but he instantly became one of my favorite fictional characters ever. 

If I have one criticism here, it's that Arn and Nathan's rescue is something of a deus ex machina. Persian invaders show up (without any foreshadowing) to kill Thanatops and scatter his troops. 

After that, though, the story gets back on track. It's mentioned that the Jewish community in the area is better treated by their new rulers and Arn is able to deliver Ezekiel's Talmud to Babylon. It turns out that the rabbi is one of the chief scholars behind compiling the Babylonian Talmud, which would a key component in Jewish religious thought for centuries to come. 

Arn then takes Nathan back to his parents in Camelot. But what about Matthias and Judith? They've raised Nathan and consider him their son. 

What follows is another favorite fictional moments. The Jewish couple accompanies Arn and Nathan to Camelot. Judith and Aleta stare daggers at each other at first and Aleta insists on calling the baby Egil--his original intended name. But "Egil" is just a meaningless sound to the child and he cries whenever Aleta holds him. It's not until she starts calling him Nathan that he begins to bond with her.

The sequence literally drips with a sense of real humanity and emotion. Aleta and Judith bond as well, with the Jewish couple becoming a part of the Valiant household. Aleta has her son back and the heartbreak of Judith is lessoned when she can still be a part of Nathan's life. This part of the story unfolds naturally and seems real, without a hint of deus ex machina. It's really a wonderful bit of storytelling. It's a great example of how good Prince Valiant remained even after it's creator retired. 

Next week, we'll board an LST off the coast of the Philippians in 1944. 

Cover Cavalcade

 

Great use of perspective in this cover from 1975. The artist is Luis Dominguez.

Friday's Favorite OTR

 The Adventures of the Saint: "Monkey" 12/10/51

Simon ends up in possession of a small monkey that belonged to a murdered man. For reasons unknown, people are willing to kill to take that monkey away from him.

Click HERE to listen or download. 

Tugboat Annie

 

Recently, I recorded the 1940 movie Tugboat Annie Sails Again off of TCM. (And, yes, Angela, I KNOW that half our DVR is filled with movies I've recorded off of TCM. I'll get around to watching them soon. I will. Really.)

Anyway, it sounded like a sequel or part of a series to me, so I looked it up. There are, in fact, three Tugboat Annie movies (made in 1933, 1940 and 1945 respectively). There was later a Canadian-produced TV series made in 1957, several of which are on YouTube. I'll include one of them at the bottom of this post.

The character of Tugboat Annie, though, originated in a series of stories published in the Saturday Evening Post beginning in 1931. A little bit of diving into the Internet Rabbit Hole turned up a long-out-of-print anthology on the Internet Archive. Published in 1977, the book is lacking specific copyright information for each individual story, but I believe the first one, simply titled "Tugboat Annie," is the very first one published.

The author, Norman Reilly Raine, dives right in and gives us a near perfect picture of Annie's formidable personality in just a few pages. Annie is loud, boisterious, unafraid to say what she thinks and--well, she's pretty much a force of nature. To know Annie is to be terrified of her.

Annie runs the small tugboat fleet for the Deep-Sea Towing and Salvage Company. She personally captains the tug "Narcissus." A new partner is buying his way into the company, but he doesn't care for having a woman in charge of anything. He doesn't care for the forward way she conducts herself and even objects to her naming the various tugs after flowers.

We learn that Annie took over as captain from her husband after his death. We're also told he was an alcoholic. As much as we come to quickly like Annie, being married to her could very well have been a factor in his drinking.

Anyway, a ship goes aground and Annie races a few other tugboats there to make offers for towing the damaged vessel to port. The captain of that ship, though, drives a hard bargain. Annie gets the job and the story does a great job of vividly describe the difficult task of towing a large vessel through rough seas on a dark night.

But to get that job, Annie had to make a very low offer and even leave the ship's skipper with a loophole that allows him to pay even less. At first it seems as if Annie has fouled up and that she's bound to lose her job now. But Annie isn't just a great sailor. She's also smart as a whip and she had noticed several things about the salvaged ship that everyone else missed. Things that will allow her to use maritime law to make a boat-load of money on the job.

Needless to say, Annie keeps her job. 

Annie's a great character--there's several subtle hints to a hidden compassionate nature buried below her gruff interior--and I look forward to reading the rest of the anthology. And I'll watch the movie soon. Well, I'm pretty obsessive about watching movies in order, so I'll probably wait until I have a chance to watch the 1933 film first. After all, the DVR is only half-full. One could say it's half-empty and has plenty of room on it for recording more stuff. 

Heck, Even Wonder Dog is Useful!

 

cover art by Ernie Chan

In the first issue of Super Friends, it appeared that the heroes had foiled the villains' plan to steal components for building a super robot.

But Super Friends #2 (December 1976) shows us that the villains aren't giving up that easily. E. Nelson Bridwell's script and Ric Estrada's fun art continue to bring this silly but entertaining story to life. 

Two of the villain kid sidekicks had been captured, but one of them (Penquin's sidekick Chick) has a radio hidden in his umbrella. Why a sidekick to the Penguin is even allowed to keep an umbrella is not brought up.

Wonder Dog spots the radio, but by the time the frustrated canine is finally able to alert Wendy and Marvin to the situation (eventually using Charades to do so), the villains have arrived. Wendy and Marvin are captured, but Wonder Dog makes a break for it, cleverly ducking into a dog show to foil Cheetah's attempt to catch him.

Wonder Dog sneaks back into the Hall of Justice (using a secret door that opens to the sound of his barks) and uses a teleporter to beam up to the JLA satellite. Flash is on duty there and he summons the Super Friends. Superman brings Krypto, who uses Dog Language to find out what's going on from Wonder Dog, then communicates this to Superman via a barking code they'd developed. Because this is so much easier than Superman taking a second to scan the Hall of Justice with his X-Ray vision.

It sounds like I'm making fun of the story and I suppose I am. But I hope it doesn't sound mean-spirited. The silly progression of the story is just right for the Super Friends and this issue (like the last one) is a lot of fun. The idea of Krypto interpreting for Wonder Dog via a barking code is absurd in just the right way to make it delightful. The universe would be a poorer place without such things.

Wendy and Marvin are rescued, but the villains have used this distraction to steal the robot components they couldn't get hold of in the last issue. BUT the Super Friends have attached tracking devices to those components. BUT Toyman's toys are causing disasters in different locations, forcing most of the heroes to deal with that. BUT Batman and Robin are still available to track the robot parts. BUT, though the Dynamic Duo is easily taking out the main villains, it turns out they are no match for junior sidekicks! They are, in fact, knocked out with embarrassing ease. 

Penguin wants the juniors to have the honor of killing Batman and Robin, but the youngsters shy away from the idea of murder. Wendy and Marvin jump in at this point--they had stowed away in the Batmobile. This convinces the juniors to switch sides and knock out the villains.

Penguin manages to activate the robot. It's supposed to be more powerful than even Superman, but the Man of Steel arrives to take it out without too much trouble. It was, after all, an untested prototype.

So that's it. Nobody with superpowers uses those powers effectively and the non-powered but highly trained characters are beaten up by barely trained teenagers. And, in the Super Friends universe, this is exactly as things should be. 

Next week, we'll look in on Prince Valiant. 

Cover Cavalcade

 

A cover from 1956 with art by Dick Dillin

Friday's Favorite OTR

 Bold Venture: "Six Crates of Apple Juice" 4/9/51

An envelope slipped into Slate's coat pocket leads to a ship planning on off-loading six crates of apple juice. But the apple juice might not be apple juice.

Click HERE to listen or download. 

Stagecoach Kid

 

To quote myself from this 2015 post, about Tim Holt's B-movies: "Holt technically played a different character in each movie. At least his name is different, though he dressed very similarly and nearly always has a Mexican/Irish sidekick named Chito Rafferty (played by Richard Martin.)"

So, essentially, Tim Holt plays the same guy in each movie, but with a different name and often a different occupation. Apparently, every alternate universe has a Chito Rafferty, but Tim Holt has a different (though very similar) identity in each of those universes. 

Chito Rafferty is apparently the keystone that holds the multiverse together. But I digress, don't I?

In Stagecoach Kid (1949), Tim is Dave Collins. He and Chito own a stage line. When they stop a robbery, they unknowingly become involved in a complex plot.

Aboard the stage is a wealthy local rancher, who is bringing his daughter Jessie home from San Francisco to get her to forget the man she thinks she loves. Jessie, though, is a spoiled brat who intends to ditch her dad and go back to Frisco on her own.

This soon involves her dressing as a boy, in a disguises that fools more people than it really should. 

Jessie, by the way, is played by Jeff Donnell, who took Jeff as her stage name because she was a fan of the "Mutt and Jeff" cartoons. Despite the boy's name, she was cute as a button. Before I was married, I often noted that some actresses were very pretty in a way that no woman after about 1950 ever achieved. Of course, now that I'm regularly exposed to Angela's goddess-like beauty, I don't notice such things any more beyond an academic level. Donnell was also a pretty good character actress, with an active career in movies and TV right up until her death in 1988.

Anyway, the stage robbers were actually trying to kill the rancher. They are working for the ranch's foreman (played by Joe Sawyer, who was always good in bad guy roles), who has been embezzling funds. The murder of the rancher was supposed to cover this up.

The henchmen actually make another try at the stage. The rancher isn't riding on it by this point, so they steal a shipment of bank money to cover their real purpose. Jessie, who is on the stage in her disguise, sees one of them without his mask on. This pretty much puts a target on her back. Dave (that's Tim Holt this time, remember) spends a big chunk of the movie protecting her. The going gets rough for Jessie, which is a predictable but still entertaining chance for her to lose her sense of spoiled entitlement. 

In the meantime, dissension amongst the bad guys adds to the overall tension in the story.

It is, as is typical of Tim Holt's Westerns, a strong story with great location photography, solid characters and a straightforward, well-constructed plot. 

I stumbled across a very informative and entertaining article about Holt's Westerns HERE. 

Great Darkness Saga--Part 5

 

Legion of Super-Heroes #294 (December 1982) brings the epic Great Darkness Saga to an appropriately epic conclusion. It really is one of the best written and dramatically satisfying endings to a comic book story arc ever produced. Both Paul Levitz' script and Keith Giffen's art mesh perfectly, bringing together the various elements of the story into perfect dramatic harmony.

It's actually difficult to do justice to this issue with a straightforward summary, since there are so many individual "Wow, that's cool!" moments within the story. Basically, the mysterious baby turns out to be the Highfather re-born, who quickly reaches adulthood this issue. Though without the same level of power he had back in the 20th Century, he is able to give Darkseid a hard time, with his best move being turning the Servant clone of Orion into a "real" Orion, who promptly battles the villain. 

 Superboy and Supergirl, protected from red sun radiation by Brainiac 5-built devices, also pummel Darkseid. None of this is enough to take him down and, in fact, he regains the upper hand in the fight. But it distracts him enough to lose control of the billions of Daxamites he's been using. Knowing he can't win, Darkseid takes his planet and goes home--disappearing with Apokolips from the cosmos.

As I said, within this basic story, there are many, many individual cool moments, even beyond the appearance of a restored Orion or the Kryptonians' surprise attack. For instance, to prevent the Daxamites from rampaging across the galaxy, the Legion calls in other superpowered beings. This gives us cameos from characters such as the Wanderers, the Heroes of Lallor, the Legion of Substitute Heroes and a survivor of Krypton named Dev-em. 

These cameos are presented in a series of vertical panels that effectively highlight the action, allow us to follow the complicated story without problem, and simply look cool. It's mentioned that the Daxamites, because they are being mind controlled and not used to superpowers, are fighting ineffectively. That allows those heroes on a lower power level (everyone except Dev-em and Lallor's Duplicate Boy) to be able to at least temporarily hold back the horde. It is, within the context of the rules of the DC Universe, reasonable. Though I will forever wonder what good Color Kid is doing shooting a beam of rainbow light at someone with Superboy-level powers. 

Other cool moments include Chameleon Boy, without access to his shape-changing power, outsmarting a Daxamite who is out to get him; Light Lass and Shadow Lass desperately trying to defend Baby Highfather against Darkseid; and Darkseid's takedown of most of the Legion with one brutal burst of nigh-omnipotent power.

But, as I said, the good guys win in the end.

The Great Darkness Saga is a high point in the stories of the Pre-Crisis Legion--a title that was already filled with awesome moments. It seamlessly melds the Superhero and Space Opera genres into one of the best stories ever. 

Next week, we return again to visit the Super Friends. 

Cover Cavalcade

 

From 1930, with the cover art by H.W. Wessolowski.