Friday's Favorite OTR

 Dangerous Assignment: "Missing Civil War Map" 12/16/50

Why would an international spy steal a Civil War-era map that has no monetary value? Steve Mitchell is tasked with finding out.

Click HERE to listen or download. 

Hijacked Spaceships, Asteroids and Secret Bases

 

When Thunderbirds were king--when the original "Supermarionation" show was on TV in 1965 and 1966--there was a slew of paperback novels featuring original Thunderbirds stories. This was, of course, inherently awesome.  A half-dozen of these books were written by John W. Jennison, sometimes under his own name and sometimes using the pen name John Theydon. Jennison was a prolific author during the 1950s and 1960s, turning out over 100 books under various pen names. Because he often did use other names, I had a bit of trouble finding a complete list of his work. He did do a lot of media tie-in work, especially for Gerry Anderson shows such as Thunderbirds, and I think that tie-ins might represent the bulk of his work.

The third Thunderbirds novel, published in 1966, was one of Jennison's best. There's a disaster at a moon base, with a worker buried alive with a limited oxygen supply. Thunderbird 3--the craft capable of space travel--takes off with Alan and Scott Tracy to mount a rescue.

It turns out the trapped guy managed to find his own way out, which is a good thing because the Thunderbirds crew never get around to mounting a rescue. Their arch enemy--a power mad villain called The Hood--uses his hypnotic powers to hijack a space freighter carrying special equipment to the moon to help with the rescue. He also captures another of the Tracy brothers, the scientist "Brains" and superspy Lady Penelope. 

Thunderbird 3 gives chase. The action moves to the asteroid belt. Several of the Tracy brothers end up stranded on the asteroid Ceres while the Hood escapes with three hostages after taking over Thunderbird 3. Back on Earth, Jeff Tracy--the father of the group--gets some time in the air taking over Thunderbird 2 as they search for the Hood.

Eventually, the action moves to a secret base in Tibet, with the Tracy brothers planning a raid to rescue the hostages and stop the Hood from carrying out a plan to take over the world.

It's all great fun. In the show, Jeff Tracy is a strong character (in one episode, giving a speech about the whole point of their operation being to simply save lives that is absolutely wonderful), but its great to see the former astronaut in a pilot's seat. Several of the Thunderbird vehicles play a part in the action. Parker, the reformed burglar who works as a chauffer to Lady Penelope, gets a Crowning Moment of Awesome when he volunteers to parachute into the Tibetan mountains to find the Hood's base.  Lady Penelope herself pulls off a daring escape from that base.

The ending, I think, was a little abrupt, but the novel as a whole is glorious. It accurately captures the personality of the various characters; and it is fast-paced, with the action moving from Earth to deep space and back to Earth in a way that makes sense in context. If you are a fan of Thunderbirds (and if you aren't, there's something wrong with you*), then this is a must-read novel.

*just kidding, of course. differences in personal tastes should always be respected.

Justice League Annual #1 (1983)--Chapter 3

 

cover art by Rick Hoberg

JlA Annual #1 (1983): Plot by Paul Levitz, script by Len Wein, art by Rick Hoberg. 

Today, we get to Chapter 3, in which Aquaman, Black Canary and Green Arrow travel to New York to follow up a possible lead to Dr. Destiny.

That lead involves several missing artists who are noted for the vivid imaginations. There's a chance their disappearance might involve the villain. And, in fact, it does. Dr. Destiny, monitoring the heroes from his secret HQ, strikes out at them for getting too close to a real clue.

He causes creepy-looking creatures to come into existence over equally creepy-looking statues created by the missing artists.

What follows is a short but really fun fight scene. I actually like it a lot better that the abrupt fight scene from the previous chapter. This time, we get to see each of the three heroes involved have a Moment of Awesome.

Aquaman lures his opponent into the harbor, where he then summons up electric eels to "disrupt the creature's unliving substance." I'm not sure that electric eels (which I THINK are exclusively a South American creature) would be living in New York Harbor, but what the hey. It's still a cool tactic and perhaps the eco-system in the DC Universe works a little bit differently than it does here on Earth Prime.

Black Canary takes out her monster with her sonic cry. Green Arrow repeats this tactic against HIS monster with a sonic arrow, then realizes taking out the statues will prevent any more monsters from appearing.

As I said, it's a cool fight. Each hero uses his or her brains as well as individual powers/weapons to deal intelligently with the threat. That's how a battle in a comic book universe SHOULD play out.

The chapter ends with Dr. Destiny remarking that he's found something "drifting in the dreams of Wonder Woman" that will destroy the Justice League. We'll find out more about that when Wednesday posts resume after the holidays.

Cover Cavalcade

 DECEMBER IS DICK TRACY MONTH!!!

This very cool cover from 1957 is by Joe Simon, ghosting for Chester Gould. 

Friday's Favorite OTR

 Escape: "The Footprint" 8/18/50

A group of men search for a fortune in rubies, supposedly guarded by a fanatical Chinese cult living in the Mexican desert. 

Click HERE to listen or download. 

It's the Little Things

 

The Man From U.N.C.L.E. had quite an expanded universe (though, of course, that term didn't exist in the 1960s and there was a lot less worry about continuity between different media). Aside from the TV show, there was a very successful series of paperbacks and an U.N.C.L.E. magazine that ran for 22 issues. Gold Key Comics published an U.N.C.L.E. comic book.  

Today, we are taking a peek at one of the many often excellent crime and spy stories that ran in the magazine in addition to U.N.C.L.E. novellas. "How the Cookie Crumbled..." by Ed Lacy, appeared in the May 1966 issue.

It's a fun story, written in the form of a letter a man named Lenny is writing to his wife. Lenny, currently on the lam, is explaining to his wife that he's always been a part-time criminal. She didn't know it--but every so often, Lenny and his two friends (Tom and Charlie) would pull a low-key burglary for extra spending cash. They never stole anything but cash--no merchandise that could be traced. And since their crimes were always minor, the cops never expended a lot of energy trying to identify and catch them.

But that's all gone to pot. Tom hit it big at the race track and took a cruise from New York to Nassau. During the trip, he came up with a clever plan for robbing the purser's office. And the plan really is pretty clever. In fact, most of the story consists of Tom explaining the plan.

Which is what makes the story itself clever. We know from what Lenny tells his wife that something goes badly wrong with the robbery. But the plan seems airtight and, initially, the execution of it seems to go without a hitch.

So we are reading the entire story knowing that something will go awry, but we don't know what.  The story is constructed expertly enough to generate a lot of suspense with the reader. Something goes wrong--but what? 

I don't want to hint at what it is, but it's a fair play story with the seeds of the thieves' downfall hidden within the tale. "When the Cookie Crumbles..." is a lot of fun. You can read it yourself HERE. 

Justice League Annual #1 (1983)--chapter 2

 

cover art by Rick Hoberg

Chapter two of JLA Annual #1(plot by Paul Levitz, script by Len Wein, art by Rick Hoberg) picks up with the JLA's efforts to track down Doctor Destiny. The first team we follow is Hawkman, Hawkgirl, Adam and Firestorm, with Firestorm carrying the others in a "nuclear air-bubble." Gee whiz, I love Comic Book Science!

Hawkgirl has rigged up a sensor to detect Delta Waves, brain waves that are generated when we sleep. So there are moments when Comic Book Science sort-of, kind-of matches up with real-life science. Of course, in this case, we have an alien with a delta wave detector being carried in a bubble made of nuclear energy--proving that in the end Comic Book Science beats the snot out of real life. 

The detector brings them to a sleep research facility at Ivy University. It's not Dr. Destiny's HQ, but he is still monitoring the League. So he brings the dreams of the sleeping subjects to life and has those now solid dreams attack the heroes.

The heroes fight back against the dreams until Firestorm puts a stop to it by freezing up the mind-machines to which the sleepers are attached, waking them up in the process. This causes the dreams to fade away. The heroes are victorious and have confirmed that Dr. Destiny is definitely out to get them.

It's a good chapter, which includes some fun banter between the Hawks while they are in the air bubble. A longer fight scene would have been nice, giving a greater sense of a real threat to the heroes, but what we have looks cool and I do appreciate that the story as a whole had to fit into a certain page count.

Next week, we travel to New York City to see what Aquaman, Green Arrow and Black Canary are doing. 

Cover Cavalcade

 DECEMBER IS DICK TRACY MONTH!!!

This high-impact cover from 1948 is uncredited.

Friday's Favorite OTR

 Lone Ranger: "Prunella's Chickens" 1/21/48

A henpecked husband, a nagging wife, some wayward chickens and a pair of murderous outlaws all lead up to a tense hostage situation.

Click HERE to listen or download.

Cute Girls and Corpses

 

Read/Watch 'em In Order #175

Rare book dealer Joel Sloan and his wife Garda have one last mystery to solve. And for the third time in three movies, there are different actors bringing the Sloans to life. This time around, it's Franchot Tone and Ann Sothern.

I don't have a lot to say about this one, because after two fast-paced and entertaining comedy/mysteries, Fast and Furious (1939) is a bit of a dud. 

I don't blame Tone and Southern for this. They play against each other nicely. But their dialogue fails to sparkle the way it did in the first two films. One major problem is Garda's almost obsessive jealousy. In the earlier movies, this was an occasional running gag. Here, it pretty much defines every interaction they have.

Also, the movie takes a half-hour (nearly half of its 73-minute run) to set things up and actually get to the murder. And that murder does not involve stolen or missing rare books, meaning that Joel's special skillsets are not used and he becomes a more generic amateur detective. Joel is asked to help judge a beauty contest, allowing this Busby Berkely-directed movie to fill itself up with pretty girls in bathing suits.

There's also a sequence in which several trained lions end up in the Sloans' hotel room. It's a funny scene, but seems a little too slapstick to fit into a comedy that depends on sharp dialogue for its humor.

The mystery itself (involving missing money and the murder of the guy who originally embezzled it) is pretty good and the resolution is satisfying. But we simply don't have as much fun getting there as we did in the first two movies. Though, to be fair, there is a pretty nifty scene in which the Sloans have to escape a death trap.

This wraps up our examination about how being a rare book dealer inevitably leads to investigating murders. We also finished up the Tom Corbett novels a few weeks ago. At this moment, I have no idea what the next Read/Watch 'em In Order subject will be, but I'll think of something.

Justice League Annual #1 (1983)

 

cover art by Rick Hoberg

Two weeks ago, we finished a detailed look at an Avengers Annual from 1967. Justice League of America Annual #1, which we will look at beginning today, is from 1983. The 16-year gap means we aren't comparing and contrasting what Marvel and DC were doing at the same time. Instead, we've just looked at a fun book set in the Marvel Universe. Now we're looking at a fun book set in the DC Universe. Like most of my choices of what comics to review, it's pretty much just a whim.

Anyway, this JLA story was plotted by Paul Levitz, written by Len Wein and drawn by Rick Hoberg. It begins in the JLA satellite, which is being attacked by super-powerful robots. One of the JLA members in the fight is Elongated Man, who realizes he's outclassed in a fight where the bad guys can go toe-to-toe with Superman and Flash. And when Ralph is unable to stop one particular robot, the satellite is torn open and the JLA is blown into space.

Well, this turns out to be a dream. Ralph is having a nightmare--a manifestation of his fears that he's not able to contribute anything significant to the League.

Unknown to Ralph, someone else is observing his dream. The villainous Dr. Destiny has watched the dream in a monitor. When the scene jumps to his point-of-view, we also learn that he's operating a research clinic somewhere, giving himself the illusion of a normal appearance when interacting with the nurses. His research is studying dreams, with one of the nurses mentioning that patients who are kept from dreaming are "becoming pale and taunt, their faces almost skeletal."

Well, by golly, Destiny has a skeleton face because he's no longer able to dream! And he blames the JLA for his condition. He was only observing Ralph's dream, but he's now planning on using the dreams of the heroes against them.

The scene changes to the JLA satellite--not in a dream, but in reality. The JLA is meeting with Commissioner Gordon, who has a problem and can't get hold of Batman. (A line of dialogue and a footnote tells us the Caped Crusader is busy with a mission in Batman and the Outsiders.) Gordon brings them evidence that Dr. Destiny has recently escaped from Arkham Asylum, leaving an animated illusion behind to prevent his escape from being quickly noticed. Finding him is clearly a job for the Justice League. 

This brings us to the end of the first chapter. It's a strong opening for the story. It starts with the action in full swing--that the initial battle turns out to be a dream doesn't distract from it. It's still exciting with Hoberg's art bringing it all vivid life. Finding out its a dream leads us to Dr. Destiny, introducing us to the villain. If a reader doesn't know the details of Dr. D's backstory, that's okay. We know he's an enemy of the JLA, that he can access their dreams and that he holds them responsible for his skeletal appearance because he now lacks the ability to dream. That's sufficient for telling this particular tale.

Giving us a Commissioner Gordon cameo is fun and a logical way to bring the JLA up to speed on Dr. Destiny's escape. All of this together is a prime example of strong story construction. 

Next week, we'll look at Chapter 2 and find out if the story continues to be fun.

Cover Cavalcade

 DECEMBER IS DICK TRACY MONTH!

This 1950 cover was drawn by Joe Simon, who was ghosting for Chester Gould.