COMICS, OLD-TIME RADIO and OTHER COOL STUFF: Random Thoughts about pre-digital Pop Culture, covering subjects such as pulp fiction, B-movies, comic strips, comic books and old-time radio. WRITTEN BY TIM DEFOREST. EDITED BY MELVIN THE VELOCIRAPTOR. New content published every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday & Friday.
The Dead Commando (1975) is the final and definitely the most breathlessly-paced of the
Glasshouse Gang series. The war in North Africa will soon be coming to an end
as the British prepare to attack the Germans at El Alamein. John Offer &
his motley gang of deserters and crooks are once again offered temporary
immunity from arrest if they carry out a dangerous mission behind enemy lines.
They use this immunity to bust a comrade out of a British military prison, but
still plan to carry out the mission. John Offer is a crook, but he's honest in
his own way.
This leads to virtually non-stop action. Circumstances lead to the Gang being beseiged in a fortress they captured from the Italians. There
seems to be no escape, but they escape nonetheless. They are accidentally
strafed by the RAF, then nearly caught by Germans commanded by an officer who
has been pursuing the Gang across the previous two novels. Two of Offer's men
are captured, so naturally a rescue must be attempted. Offer's nemesis knows
this and plans a trap. Offer knows his nemesis knows, but the nemesis knows
that Offer knows he knows. Nonetheless, Offer springs the trap to get to his
men, then must improvise wildly as events play out in unusual ways. This all
leads to an unexpected but very satisfying conclusion to the series.
The action is almost literally non-stop, full of excitement
and tension. Try to find time to read The Dead Commando in one
sitting, because there's no good stopping point.
The Glasshouse Gang series says goodbye with what I consider
to be the best of the four novels.
Green Lantern #128 (May 1980) is a breather issue, taking a pause from the Sinestro/Weaponers story arc before the grand finale next issue. Writer Denny O'Neil and artist Joe Staton give us a flashback to explain why GL's ring occasionally talks to him.
Hal returns from OA and the ring tries to warn him that the boy Fabian is really the Qwardian General Fabrikant. But its message is unclear and Hal, exhausted from having just fought a war, doesn't get it. When Fabian and Carol ask him to explain how the ring can talk, he says it doesn't really, then tells them about an old adventure to clarify this.
Several years earlier, the ring temporarily failed Hal when he was pursuing criminals. He manages to catch the bad guys anyways and asks the ring why its out of order. The ring replies that its been ordered not to tell by someone else.
Hal gets around this by asking the ring to simply point towards whomever is stealing its power. He gets led to Hector Hammond, the villain who once gained psionic powers via a strange meteorite.
Hammond, using the power he's stolen, manages to trap Hal, then flies off into space to find more samples of that meteor. Hal gets loose, recharges his ring, pursues Hammond, then gets the villain into a sort of power-ring arm-wrestling contest until the 24-hour limit on the stolen power runs out. Hammond is captured and the threat is ended.
Ir's a nifty story, with the Space Arm-Wrestling match making a particularly fun visual. But when the story is over, Hal explains that his ring occasionally echoes his own subconscious thoughts. It can't talk on its own.
If I want to nick-pick, I could start wondering why the story Hal told was necessary to explaining how the ring sometimes seems to be able to talk. The story itself doesn't really clarify this one way or another before Hal just says "My subconscious thoughts." But, as I said, its a fun story. So what the heck.
The issue ends with General Fabrikant getting ready to reveal himself and take vengeance on GL for messing up the whole conquest-of-Oa deal.
We'll look at that final issue of the story arc in two weeks. Next week, we'll visit with Iron Man.
Fanzines and fan magazines have been largely replaced by blogs and wikis and that's not a completely bad thing--especially for those of you who seek out the most brilliantly written blogs, such as... well, modesty prevents me.
But fanzines and fan magazines had their own charm and they are missed. That's why The Shadowed Circleis such a wonderful thing. It's been around a couple of years now, describing itself as a "the first pulp-comic-radio journal dedicated to The Shadow in more than two decades." With contributions by Shadow scholars such as Will Murray, Michael Uslan, John Olson and editor Steve Donoso (among others), it has been stuffed full of cool Shadow-related articles from the get-go. If you are a Shadow fan, you need to be reading this.
The Shadowed Circle Compendium has been recently released, collecting both the cream-of-the-crop of articles published in the regular issues and a bunch of new materials. Every single article and essay in it is interesting, delving deeply into the Shadow mythos.
I do have some favorites from this volume:
"Shadow--and Substance," by Dick Myers, is absolutely wonderful. Myers makes intelligent estimates to exactly how much it would have cost the Shadow to fund his operations, including paying agents, ensuring a supply of .45 automatics and ammunitions, spare cloaks, vehicles, hide-outs, etc. Myers then comes up with a reasonable theory about where Kent Allard gets the literal millions of dollars necessary to run his campaign against crime. (As a sidenote--he also makes a strong argument that there must have been two Burbanks--perhaps brothers--as otherwise the poor guy would have been on constant duty for decades without a break.)
"The Boy Who Loved the Shadow: An Interview with Michael Uslan" is fascinating throughout. But my favorite part is his explanation of how he came to write his first Shadow story for DC comics back in the 1970s. It's a delightful story.
"Doctorow's Challenge: Why the Shadow Couldn't Prevent World War II," by Albert J. Emery, is an intelligent and fascinating discussion of why the Shadow couldn't have just killed Hitler and prevented or ended the war. The article considers both what skills the Shadow has to pull of the job, then looks at what the consequences of his taking action against the Nazi leader would have been by examining real-world history.
"The Shadowed Seven" asks various authors and Shadow fans to pick what seven Shadow stories they would want if they were stranded on a desert island. Choices can include the pulps, comics and/or radio stories. Lists like this are always valuable because they remind readers of cool stories that they themselves need to read or re-read. It can also change opinions. I'm not a huge fan of the Dynamite Comics Shadow from the 2010s, but some of these ended up on lists with good arguments about their quality. Now I'm thinking that perhaps I need to give them another try.
Those are my favorites, but every entry here is a gem. There's a look at a 1954 pilot for a Shadow TV series, a theory about how Walter Gibson came up with Burbank's name, an article by an under-30 Shadow fan about how he came to love the character, a Will Murray article about his set visit to the 1994 film, a defence of the Shadow stories written by Bruce Elliot, and much more.
Once again, if you are a Shadow fan, the Compendium is essential reading.
Pick any issue of Ben Bowie and His Mountain Men at random and you'll find stories worth reading. It was simply a great comic book. Ben Bowie #11 (May-July 1957), for instance, gives us a story titled "The Treacherous Trapper." Sadly, neither the writer or artist are known.
The story opens with Ben and his crew hauling furs back to civilization to sell. They meet up with other trappers--there's a Crow war party looking to take the furs away from them and there is safety in numbers. Already, Ben and Zeke have traded shots with the Crow and have hidden out from them behind a waterfall.
They do band together with a score of other trappers, including a Frenchman who has been hunting up in Canada--something that becomes important later on. They travel home, though one of them makes the unwise decision to backtrack on his own when he loses his tobacco pouch. He's later found dead.
The Crow stay on their trail and one night manage to steal the trappers' horses. The trappers are now forced to haul their furs on foot. Eventually, they decide to cache the furs in a cave, agreeing that they will come back for the furs together.
That doesn't work out well. A trapper named Grimes sneaks off and tells the Crow where they can find the furs, claiming a third of them for himself.
When the trappers return to the cave enmasse, they find the cave empty. They don't suspect a traitor, but in any case, their months of hard work now come to nothing.
Back in the colonies, Ben's young apprentice Jim notices a Crow at the trading post, selling a wolverine pelt. That makes him suspicious, since the Crow don't normally hunt far enough north to bag wolverines. And, by golly, didn't the Frenchman have some wolverine pelts in his haul?
Concerned with Jim's suspicions, Grimes decides to back-shoot the boy. Jim manages to outsmart him and call Nakah for help. Not surprisingly, Nakah easily subdues the villain.
The Crows are confronted, the furs are recovered and Grimes learns that he's now despised by both the Crows and the white men. "No one is lonelier than a traitor!"
It's a great story, moving along briskly and telling the story effectively. Which is typical of Ben Bowie and one of the reasons (aside from the fun setting and historical accuracy) I consider it one of the best comics ever.
I continue to discover that I had remarkable taste when I was young.
In 1976, Roger Moore--in the midst of his run as James Bond--played Sherlock Holmes in the made-for-TV movie Sherlock Holmes in New York. Patrick Macnee is Watson and John Huston is a wonderfully evil Professor Moriarty.
How does Sir Roger fare as the Great Detective. Well, he really doesn't look like Holmes at all. And, of course, quantum mechanics teaches us that no actor can ever equal Jeremy Brett and Basil Rathbone in the role. But, all the same, Moore is quite good in the movie. His Holmes has a strong personality and exhibits great intelligence. Holmes makes a number of nifty deductions during this case and Moore brings verisimilitude to his sometimes melodramatic dialogue at these moments. He wears several pretty cool disguises and seems to have fun playing those parts--especially when he pretends to be a pompous Italian vaudevillian. Moore also endows Holmes with a sense of righteous fury when the situation calls for it.
Patrick Macnee is, I believe, deliberately plays homage to Nigel Bruce in his interpretation of Watson. I've never been completely happy with that version of Watson, though both Bruce and Macnee make a bumbling Watson so darn likeable that its hard to really object. (Macnee would get to play a more capable version of the good doctor 15 years later in a pair of films that featured Christopher Lee as Holmes.)
The films starts in London, with a disguised Holmes infiltrating Moriarty's lair to tell the master criminal that his latest scheme has been foiled and his minions tossed in jail. (Look for a fun in-joke here--the Maltese Falcon can be seen on Moriarty's desk. John Huston, of course, wrote and directed that classic film.)
But the minions won't talk, fearing Moriarty too much to rat him out. So, though his organization has been shattered, Moriarty himself is able to walk free. He vows revenge on Holmes first, though.
That revenge soon comes. Holmes and Watson are lured to New York City, where the son of Irene Alder has been kidnapped. (This is one of the few times, by the way, that Irene is portrayed as the actress/singer she was in "A Scandal in Bohemia"--rather than changed into a femme fatale/criminal.)
Soon after, Holmes is asked by the New York police to look into a massive gold robbery. Impossibly, tons of gold have disappeared from a secret underground vault. This has international implications that could lead to a world war.
But Holmes, by now, has been instructed to refuse to help without giving any explanation for his refusal. Otherwise, Irene's son will be killed. This is Moriarty's plot to destroy Holmes' reputation.
So, in order to thwart Moriarty, Holmes must first rescue the boy without Moriarty finding out the boy has been rescued, then dodging henchmen who are watching him, then solving the mysery of the gold robbery.
It's a great plot, with the Holmsian clues making sense and Holmes' multi-layered plan to outsmart his nemesis being legitimately clever. It's a Holmes mystery that feels like a Holmes mystery, with an actor who gives us a portrayal of Holmes that we can get into.
The movie is available on YouTube, so here it is. I've also acquired the novelization. When I've read this, I'll see if its worth commenting on in another post.
Green Lantern #127 (April 1980) amps up the epic feel of this already epic story arc. The Weaponers have taken over Oa and imprisoned the Guardians on the Power Battery. Hal, attempting to teleport from Earth to help the Guardians, ends up trapped inside the Battery. The Weaponers are getting ready to use the Battery's to conquer the universe. This issue continues from there, with Denny O'Neil still writing the script and Joe Staton still doing the pencils.
The Guardians are still able to communicate telepathically, telling Hal to break the link in the circle they form. Hal smacks the hands of two of them apart, which in turn frees them to send a general RED ALERT to the entire Green Lantern Corp.
This doesn't guarentee victory. The first GL who arrives is killed. In the meantime, Sinestro shows up to take command, only to be summarily informed by the Weaponers that he was merely a tool they were using and not to let the door hit him on the way out.
More Green Lanterns arrive. Most are trapped in a yellow vortex which slowly eats away at their force fields and leaves them apparently doomed. A few escape this, but are killed trying to reach Oa's surface. Only one makes it that far, but he dies just as he reaches the Battery.
This is close enough to Hal to link rings with him and use the extra power to escape from the Battery.
Now wielding two rings, Hal starts to go to town on the Weaponers. But they outnumber him and it looks like Hal is going down for the long count when Sinestro, his pride earlier hurt by the Weaponers, joins in on Hal's side.
The two destroy the vortex-creating machine, which allows the trapped GLs in space to join the fight. More GLs die, but in the end the Weaponers are defeated.
During all this, there's another clue that the mysterious General Fabrikant--the Weaponers never-seen commander--is indeed the Earth boy Fabian. In the past few issues, this has been hinted at. This time, it's pretty much given away.
So the Weaponers invasion is stopped, but Sinestro has flown away and this Fabrikant guy still needs to be tracked down.
I'm really enjoying this story arc. O'Neil effectively built the threat level over several issues and brought the Weaponers storyline to a satisfying end. A scene in which Hal recites the GL oath while fighting the Weaponers single-handedly is awesome. The last panel, acknowledging the dead GLs that need to be mourned, hits just the right emotional note. And the mystery of General Fabrikant has been built up effectively, leaving a tangling plot thread to be tied up even after the main battle is over.
We'll return to GL in 2 weeks. Next week, we'll visit the mid-18th Century to visit with Ben Bowie and his mountain men.
Lamont and Margo are on a yacht when the vessel is taken over by modern day pirates. But taking Lamont Cranston as a hostage is something that rarely ends well for the bad guys.
Benghazi Breakout (1966) is the third of the four
Glasshouse Gang books. Be wary of the current ebook reprints, which incorrectly
lists it as second.
John Offer and
his Glasshouse Gang, though officially deserters and criminals, are once again
given temporary immunity from arrest in exchange for carrying out a mission. In
this case, that mission would be to enter the German-held city of Benghazi and
rescue two captured British Generals.
History tells us the Gang will not be successful--the
generals are real-life characters and were not rescued before being taken to a
POW camp in Italy. (Brief Pause to Brag: My first published work was an article
on one of those generals: Richard O'Connor. O'Connor eventually escaped on his
own in 1943.)
But the Gang has another reason for going to Benghazi. A
couple of their comrades--captured during the oil depot raid in the last
book--are being held there by the SS. Offer is determined to free them.
This is the premise for another fast-paced and intensely
exciting entry in this unusual series. Offer has developed into a great lead
protagonist. Despite his status as a crook and some sociopathic attitudes, he
is smart; able to improvise bold tactics; and intensely loyal to the men he
leads. The same thematic tension that ran through the previous books remains—is
the series anti-authoritarian or is it simply critical of the abuse of authority?
Anyway, not everything he does goes as planned. Even after
his men are rescued, events leave Offer cut off from the Gang, accompanied only
by a man who wants to kill him and pursued across the desert by a relentless
German officer who also wants to see him dead. This, in turn, leads to an
exciting conclusion to the novel.
Turok, Son of Stone #74 (July 1971) is yet another winner brought to us by the nigh-unbeatable team of writer Paul S. Newman and artist Alberto Giolitti, combining fast-paced, thematically balanced storytelling with wonderful art.
This one starts off with a bang--or rather the thud of a rock against a head. Turok and Andar are spotted by a lake tribe that rides big turtles. The tribesman immediately sling stones at the two Indians, knocking both of them out.
The tribe's medicine man, Laf, declares the two captives have to be sacrificed, so they are tied atop turtles. The turtles are escorted to the Island of Doom, which is surrounded by steep cliffs. The turtles are released, who then drag Turok and Andar through an underwater tunnel to the interior of the island.
That interior consist of winding, confusing paths wrapped around a mountain. The two heroes meet Kag, the former medicine man who was displaced by Laf's "stronger magic." Turok immediately comes up with a plan for getting Kag back on top--using flint provided by Turok to "magically" make sparks. But that leaves the problem of getting off the island.
This problem is exasperated by the presence of an ill-tempered Triceratops. The three men dodge the dinosaur at first, before Turok and Andor take the dangerous option of killing it without the aid of poison arrows.
After this task is completed, they begin to search for a way back down the mountain, taking many wrong turns before finally reaching the water. Kag tames a turtle and the three make their way back out through the tunnel.
They re-join the tribe, where Kag shows his spark-making trick. When a carnivorous dinosaur attacks, Turok and Andar (who have recovered their bows and arrows) take it out, but then hide the arrows to Kag's "magic" gets the credit for killing it. Kag, now firmly back on top of the heap, then allows Turok and Andor to go free.
The thematic linchpin of the story is persistance. Turok and Andor had to be persistant in their pin prick attacks on the triceratops to kill it, then had to be persistant in finding a way off down the mountain despite taking a number of false trails. The usual strength of Turok having to use his brains instead of just his arrows is also at the forefront. All told, this is a great Turok tale, well-told and well-illustrated.
Next week, we'll return to see how Green Lantern is doing.
I've written three books and a number of short ebooks about old-time radio, pulp magazines, classic comic strips, and Christian theology. You can find a link to my Amazon author's page below.
Magazine articles I've written cover subjects on military history and the American West. I teach several Bible studies at my church, assist with the children's ministry and have been on short-term mission trips to South Sudan, Haiti, Guatemala, Nepal and Turkey.
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