Friday's Favorite OTR

 Frontier Town: "Valley of the Varmints" 2/6/53

Someone wants to buy two neighboring ranches and might just be willing to kill to get them.

Click HERE to listen or download. 

Beaver Cleaver Goes Catatonic!

 

Pretty much the first thing that happens in the 1957 film noir Shadows on the Window is a small boy (Jerry Mathers) who witnesses a murder while looking through the window of a house.

The murdered man was employing the boy's mom (Linda Atlas, played by Betty Garrett) as a temp stenographer for the day. So when the boy runs off and then is found by two truckers wandering in a daze down the road, no one knows for sure where he came from. In the meantime, the three killers (who had come to the home to rob the man's safe) are now holding Linda hostage and debating whether they need to kill her as well. The bad guys are in over their heads and simply don't know what their next move should be.

It's a great set-up for a legitimately suspenseful movie. The boy's dad (Tony Atlas, played by Phil Carey) is a cop. When the boy ends up at the police station, another cop recognizes him. But the boy is zoned out, unable to answer any questions, even from his dad. It's soon apparent that Linda is in some sort of trouble. Or dead. Tony knows she was taking temp work, but the two are estranged and he doesn't know where she was going that day.

There's a small glitch in the logic of the movie as the cops investigate. The truckers had taken the boy to their dispatch office, from where the police were called. But as Tony and the other cops investigate, they have to start from scratch, with no idea who originally found the kid. Apparently, no one bothered asking the truckers who they were when they turned him over to the cops? That seems unlikely. 

Despite this, the investigation progresses in a logical and suspenseful fashion. The cops follow leads through the night and into the next morning. 

In the meantime, Linda is doing what she can to play up to the one bad guy who seems reluctant to commit another murder. She even manages to vamp another of the guys and create an opportunity to knock him on the head and make a break for it. But she's caught and it seems more and more likely she'll be killed.

She's also, of course, worried sick about her son. From her point-of-view, he's simply disappeared.

The interconnected story threads involving Tony (trying to find Linda) and Linda (trying to stay alive) intertwine nicely and come together at the end for a strong conclusion. Shadows on the Window is worth 73 minutes of your time.

Willy Schultz -- The Final Chapter

 It took nearly a half-century, but when the Willy Schultz stories were collected into a hardback last year by Dark Horse Books, writer Will Franz was finally able to wrap up the series. Sadly, Sam Glanzman is no longer with us, but Wayne Vansant stepped in and did an excellent job drawing the story.

I normally don't cover recent comics, but this is an obvious exception. Franz does a magnificent job of bringing the saga to a close. He had only 20 pages to do so and when this chapter suffers, it is because Franz has only a couple of panels to cover aspects of Schultz's story that might have taken up multiple chapters had Charlton stuck with the series back in the 1970s. The story is undeniably rushed. But its a case where it would be unfair to criticize a writer for working within the space he'd been given. It's great to have an end to the story and Franz, as I said, does a magnificent job.

The chapter opens with a shocking scene--Elena (the girl who was falling in love with Willy) has been captured and hanged, along with several other partisans. In addition, Willy is forced to acknowledge that the pardon he'd been promised was never going to happen--even if the murder conviction was thrown out, he had literally fought for the Germans while in Africa. He was going to be considered a traitor no matter what.

Soon, Willy is found by the Germans. But he's wearing a German uniform himself so is once again able to pass himself off as a Wermacht officer, claiming his papers were taken when he was captured by partisans. He ends up fighting on the Russian Front.

It's here that I most regret that Franz had only 20 pages to work with. Moral dilemmas facing Willy are mentioned, but glossed over without the indepth dialogue that Franz was so good at giving his characters to express those dilemmas. Willy is forced to fight Russian partisans who are really no different that the Italian partisans he had fought with. Later, he's forced to realize that he (and, in fact, every German) has been fighting to keep the death camps operating--there is simply no turning away from that responsibility. 

All of this deserves more than a passing reference and I have no doubt Franz would have handled these issues brilliantly had he been able to do so in the '70s. It's no fault of his that he has to rush through all this when he did get a chance to bring the saga to an end. But it will always be a regretful "what could have been."

Willy gets a chance to surrender to American troops just before a random artillery shell wounds him and leaves him scarred. While he recovers, Germany surrenders. But Willy has to run when someone recognizes him. He joins the French Foreign Legion and ends up fighting in Vietnam.

After the French are defeated, the story skips ahead to 1969. Willy now owns a plantation in South Vietnam. He's married to Ilse, the German nurse he had met in North Africa. She has her own scars--her family had been executed after the July 1944 atttempt to assassinate Hitler and she had been tortured by the Gestapo. But the two are together and have made peace with the world.

It's a satisfying ending, though I can't help but spoil it a little in my mind by wondering what happened to Willy and Ilsa after South Vietnam fell five years later. 

But I really am complaining too much. It's is cool that "The Lonely War of Capt. Willy Schultz" was finally brought to a strong conclusion by the saga's original writer. 

Next week, Captain Marvel Jr. deal with a conspiracy of shape-shifting aliens.

Cover Cavalcade

 DECEMBER IS DETECTIVE COMICS BEFORE BATMAN MONTH!

Another 1938 cover by Creig Flessel. 

Friday's Favorite OTR

 You Are There: "Signing of the Magna Carta" 1/18/48

CBS News is on the scene at Runnymede on the day King John has agreed to sign the Magna Carta. 

Click HERE to listen or download.

CHRISTMAS BREAK

 

No Wednesday or Thursday posts this week. We'll be back to our regular schedule next week.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

Cover Cavalcade

 DECEMBER IS DETECTIVE COMICS BEFORE BATMAN MONTH!

A 1938 cover by Creig Flessel. 

Friday's Favorite OTR

 Inner Sanctum: "Death out of Mind" 12/29/47

A man is convinced his own conscience has taken human form and is trying to kill him.

Click HERE to listen or download. 

Blowhard or Hero? Or Both?

 

Between 1894 and 1903, Arthur Conan Doyle wrote 17 short stories about a Napoleanic soldier with a tendency to brag about his accomplishments. The stories have an older Gerard, long after Waterloo, describing his adventures as a young officer and mentioning multiple times per story how he always conducted himself with courage and cunning. He's a great storyteller, though, so the tales he tells are enthralling.

I see two possible ways to interpret the Gerard stories. Either he was an unexceptional soldier (or perhaps not a soldier at all) who tells tall tales about a fictional version of himself. OR he was an exceptional and brave warrior who had the chops to back up his ego. In this latter case, the stories he tells are true.

I enjoy taking the second option. Gerard's stories are a lot more fun if (in the context of Doyle's fictional world) really happened. He can be a bit of a blowhard, but earned his bragging rights several times over.

"How the Brigadier Came to the Castle of Gloom" was published in the July 1895 issue of The Strand. Gerard tells a story from 1807, when he was a captain serving in Poland. While on a mission to bring fresh horses back to his unit, he meets the young Sub-Lieutenant Duroc, who is looking for the man who murdered his father during the bloody days of the revolution.

Gerard and Durac end up at the castle of Baron Straubenthal, the man who commited the murder. Durac challenges the Baron to a duel, but the villain is without honor and tricks them into walking into a supply cellar. The two soldiers are locked inside while the Baron sends a messenger to a nearby unit of Cossack raiders. 

So an escape needs to happen quickly. I don't want to give away too much, because there's a link below to find the Gerard stories and read them for yourself. But it involves an unhappy stepdaughter smuggling them a key, a gunpowder bomb, a fight with a dog, and a sword duel. 

It's great stuff. Whether Gerard is telling a "true" story or if he's inventing/exaggerating his exploits, he (or rather Conan Doyle) is one of the best storytellers ever. 

The stories were eventually collected into two volumes. You can find the first one HERE and the second HERE.

Time Travel and Hulk Don't Mix

 

cover art by Herb Trimpe

Herb Trimpe returns as the artist in Hulk #204 (October 1976), with Trimpe also providing the plot. Len Wein.

In the last issue, Hulk and his gal Jarella were both taken from her microscopic world. Jarella is in isolation until Doc Samson can make sure Earth's atmosphere won't hurt her. Hulk, though, doesn't get this and throws a generic Hulk temper tantrum.

It's interesting to see General Ross's reaction to this. A few years earlier, he would have been happily trying to take down Hulk. Now he at least partially sympathizes with the Emerald Giant (though he can still shout out an occasional "brute!") and primarily wants to make sure no one gets hurt.

Anyway, Hulk is gassed unconscious. Later, a Doctor Kronus comes up with a plan to cure Banner of being the Hulk. The method? Send Banner back in time and simply avoid being exposed to gamma radiation.

Banner talks this over with Jarella first. After all, she loves him as both Banner and the Hulk, so she has a say in the decision. 

It's clear here that Wein was fitting Trimpe's plot into the ongoing arc about Jarella and he does a fine job with this. It's kind of too bad, though, that the obligation to do this was there. Jarella doesn't effect the Kronus story in any significant way. Saving a few pages to add to Hulk's pretty cool fight scene against Evil Kronus at the climax would have been nice.

Anyway, Banner ends up back where it all started. Rather than personally dragging Rick Jones to a shelter, he merely yells a warning about a bomb. Rick jumps for cover, but doesn't quite make it. Banner is no longer the Hulk, but Rick is dead.

Banner snaps back to the present, where he's married to Betty and no one knows the Hulk. But he's mentally crippled from his guilt over Rick, considering himself a murderer. (According to the Marvel Wiki, Banner didn't really change history, but created an alternate Earth--Earth-20476, to be precise.)

It's then that Dr. Kronus attacks, summoning up the Hulk from an alternate past in order to destroy him. In this reality, Kronus considers Banner/Hulk responsible for destroying his life's work. We're not given the details of this, but we really don't need them. This is a case where a detailed back story simply isn't required and Wein was wise not to try to explain to much. (Though I suppose that decision might have been based fitting the story into 18 pages.)

Anyway, Kronus is now a super villain with the ability to manipulate time. I like the ensuing fight scene, which takes us a million years back in time and has Kronus doing stuff like summoning up a glacier from the Ice Age and trapping Hulk inside it.

This is the scene I really wish would have been a page or two longer. Oh, well. It was definitely cool while it lasted.

Hulk gets the best of Kronus, but when he smashes Kronus' helmet, he sees Rick Jones inside. Hulk reverts to Banner, travels back in time and "fixes" the original event so that everything works out the way it did the first time. Rick is saved, but Banner is now the Hulk.

It is a filler issue before getting back to the Jarella story arc, but it's a good filler issue, with a strong story and a great fight scene. And it's always nice to see Herb Trimpe artwork in any issue of the Hulk.

Next week is a Holiday Skip Week. In two weeks, we'll look at the final chapter in "The Lonely War of Capt. Willy Schultz."

Cover Cavalcade

 DECEMBER IS DETECTIVE COMICS BEFORE BATMAN MONTH!

Here's another 1937 cover by Creig Flessel.

Friday's Favorite OTR

 Screen Guild Theater: "The Petrified Forest" 1/7/40

Bogie recreates his role as outlaw Duke Mantee in this condenced adaptation of The Petrified Forest.

Click HERE to listen or download. 

Zorro's Double Danger

 

cover art by Sam Cherry

Johsnon McCulley's short story "Zorro's Double Danger" (West Magazine, February 1946) presents the swashbuckling hero with an interesting problem. He's scheduled to fight a duel in his identity as Don Diego Vega. But Don Diego is supposed to be a foppish weakling. Diego can't throw the fight, because that means getting killed or maimed. But he can't win without making people wonder how the young man suddenly became a skilled swordsman.

It began one morning when Don Diego and his mute servant Bernardo go shopping. While Diego is in the store, a jerk named Rojas begins to beat Bernardo for refusing to talk to him. He didn't realize Bernardo was mute, but doesn't care even when Diego calls him out on this. Servants exist to be beaten, after all.

Diego has no choice but to challenge Rojas to a duel. But that creates the problem discussed earlier. 

The answer? Well, Rojas beat up a peon, a class Zorro is sworn to protect. So Zorro can get a message to Rojas to meet him in a certain field the night before his duel with Diego. If Zorro wins that duel, Rojas won't be in a condition to fight Diego.

What Zorro doesn't count on is that Rojas isn't just a jerk, but a double-dog jerk. Maybe even a triple-dog jerk! When the masked hero arrives at the field to fight the duel, he discovers that Rojas has ratted him out and sent a squad of soldiers to capture him...

It's a great story. I'm afraid I haven't found this one online anywhere, so I can't provide a link to it. But the original Zorro stories have been reprinted. For anyone who enjoys a succinct, exciting adventure tale, these stories are worth tracking down.

Willy Schultz--Chapter 16

 

cover artist unknown

Fightin' Army #92 (July 1970) gave us the last chapter of the saga of Willy Schultz in its original run with magnificent Sam Glanzman art. It's not the very last chapter--when this series was reprinted by Dark Horse last year, writer Will Franz did provide a final chapter. Sam Glanzman is gone, but artist Wayne Vansant provided great art work. We will, in a couple of weeks, break the usual rule about covering anything other than pre-digital media to review that final chapter. But for now, we're looking at the final Charlton Comics chapter.

Willy is still serving with an Italian partisan unit and that unit is not having a good time. There's a trader in their midst and partisans waiting for a supply air-drop are ambushed and killed because the Germans knew they'd be there.

Most of this issue then moves to Willy and OSS agent Jon Daurio drinking together. Jon has just learned that his wife died in childbirth. Willy tries to comfort him as best he can. Jon, after getting more than a little drunk, pontificates on the brutality of war. He still believes that Willy is guilty of the murder of an American officer, but how is he any different from the rest of them, who kill their fellow human beings every day?

Willy also shares a very human moment with Elena. This is one of the strongest chapters in the series. It has only a little action and is very dialogue-heavy--something that can be a weakness in graphic storytelling. But Franz writes great dialogue. Willy, Jon and Elena all have distinctive personalities. It is simply a great scene.

Soon after, Jon and some partisans are gunned down by the traitor in their midst. Jon lives long enough to finger Elena's father as the traitor. The old man is quickly run down and killed, with the partisans promising that Elena need not know about him.

That leaves Willy in command of the partisans. And after this, Charlton pulled the plug on the series (though they did reprint portions of it in later years). Willy doesn't get a satisfying end to his saga for over fifty years. 

But he did get that ending eventually. As I said, we'll take a look at that finale in a few weeks. Next week, we'll check to see how Hulk is doing with his girlfriend Jarella. 

Cover Cavalcade

 DECEMBER IS DETECTIVE COMICS BEFORE  BATMAN MONTH!

This 1937 cover was drawn by Creig Flessel

Friday's Favorite OTR

 The Saint: "Fishes Gotta Eat" 4/29/51

Simon agrees to help a woman find her missing husband. Not surprisingly, this leads him to a murder.

Click HERE to listen or download.