Captain Scarface

 

Barton MacLane was a great character actor who probably played bad guys more often than good guys. He also probably holds the record for the person most often shot or beaten up by Humphrey Bogart.

In the 1953 film Captain Scarface, he plays the title character and he's definitely the bad guy. A tramp steamer named the S.S. Banos is torpedoed and sunk by a Soviet sub, with survivors machine gunned in the water to keep this act of destruction a secret. Well, everyone but the radioman Clegg (Paul Brinegar), who was paid off to make sure no SOS was sent. 

Captain Tredor (also known as Scarface) then brings a nearly exact duplicate into a South American port, with plans to continue on to the Panama Canal. There, an atomic bomb hidden on the ship will be detonated. It's a suicide mission, but Scarface and his crew are fanatics--willing to die to accomplish their mission.

In port, Scarface takes aboard a  Soviet scientist and his daughter, who think they are being helped to defect. Instead, Scarface is soon forcing the scientist to make sure the bomb will work. 

But there's a fly in Scarfaces's ointment. Sam Wilton (Leif Erickson) is an American who has gotten in trouble and needs to leave South America as quickly as possible. Circumstances land him on the ship, using the identity of another Soviet agent without at first realizing that's who he's impersonating. Fortunately, Scarface is expecting the agent, but has never met him.

Wilton doesn't know what's going on, but (despite his own shady past) soon realizes he'll have to do something to save innocent lives. Outsmarting Scarface won't be easy, though. The ship captain might be a fanatic, but he's smart as a whip.

It's a fun movie, generating suspense as it moves the story along briskly. A sort-of side plot involving two innocent middle-aged passengers plays out in a way that ends up intertwining with the main plot and adding a several moments of sincere heartbreak. 

The ending is a little anti-climactic, but overall this is a movie worth watching.

Run, Gingerbread Man, Run!

 

cover art tentatively credited to Walt Kelly

Fairy Tale Parade #6 (May-July 1943) includes a charming 6-page story drawn and probably written by Walt Kelly. It's a simple, straightforward tale, given life by Kelly's energetic and delightful art.

The premise is simple. An old man, old woman and young boy live in a house, where the woman is cooking a gingerbread man. But the gingerbread man is (understandably) unwilling to just sit back and be eaten. He makes a break for it.

He outruns the man, woman and boy, bragging about how fast and agile a runner he is the whole time. He passes a couple of ditch diggers and taunts them into chasing him, then outruns them as well. 

He does the same with a bear and a wolf. Can no one catch this arrogant braggard of a cookie?

Well, someone can. When the gingerbread man brags to a fox, the fox feigns that he's hard of hearing. The gingerbread man comes closer and closer, annoyed as he repeatedly yells "I can outrun you, too!!!"

Before he knows it, he's close enough for the fox to simply grab and then quickly eat.

Like most fairy tales and fables, it has a simple moral--in this case: don't be overconfident or arrogant. And that's fine. Simple morals are an appropriate part of fairy tales and this one is a good lesson. But, as I mentioned above, what really gives this tale life is Kelly's art. The action is kinetic and fun--the characters are all endowed with personality. It's a fairy tale world all of us enjoy visiting. Well, as long as we don't get too close to the fox.

You can read this one online HERE. 

Next week... well, a jump from fairy tales to knife-wielding assassins seems logical enough to me. We'll be visiting with Shang-Chi, Master of Kung Fu. 

Cover Cavalcade

 SEPTEMBER IS FLINSTONES & JETSONS MONTH!!

A Harvey Eisenberg cover from 1964.

Friday's Favorite OTR

 Suspense: "Dateline: Lisbon" 10/5/44

A photograph that accidentally captures the image of a Nazi war criminal might be enough to get two people killed.

Click HERE to listen or download. 

Old Willie

 

"Old Willie," by William P. McGivern was published in the May 1953 issue of Manhunt, a wonderful magazine that regularly published superb hard-boiled fiction. 

"Old Willie" is indeed superb. I love the way it grabs you in the first paragraph:

This is a story I've heard told by the old-times around the Chicago newpaper offices. They don't insist it's true, of course, since it hands chiefly on the word of a reporter who was far more at home in speakeasies than he ever was at a typewriter. Still, parts of the tale can't be explained away as the splintered dream of a drunk. Maybe that's why the old-timers go on telling the story...

I defy anyone to read that paragraph and NOT want to find out what happens next.

The tale told by the old-timers goes back to 1927. There was an "amiable little man" called Willie who worked as a handyman/janitor at a boarding house. A young woman named Inger arrives from Minnesota with hopes of becoming an opera singer. Willie becomes a sort of surrogate father to her.

So he worries when she gets a job at a hotel used as a headquarters by the Capone mob. And when one of Capone's more brutal men--Blackie Cardina--get Inger pregnant and then dumps her.

Well, Willie isn't going to let that stand. He goes to the hotel and confronts Blackie, demanding money for Inger. But what is an amiable and elderly little man going to do against one of Capone's hired guns?

I don't want to give the ending away. Read it yourself HERE. And remember that in 1927 the Wild West wasn't all that long ago.

[The old-timers] don't insist that it's true, of course--but they keep on telling it. As well they should.

How to Outsmart a Pirate

cover art by Fred Ray

It is a truism that you can never have too many stories about either pirates or dinosaurs. Star Spangled War Stories would eventually do their share in providing dinosaur stories with the War That Time Forgot series--the greatest cultural achievement in the history of mankind.

They also helped with pirates. The 10th issue (June 1953) included a story by an unknown writer and artist Fred Ray titled "They Fought Under the Black Flag."

Set in 1803 during our war against the Barbary pirates, the story begins aboard the U.S. Navy ship Concord, where a crew of marines (led by Lt. O'Hara) are disguising themselves as pirates. Their mission is to sneak into a Tripolitan harbor controlled by the brutal pirate Yusseff Karamelli, who is holding American sailors prisoner.

But the plan SEEMS to go awry when Yusseff notices that "pirates" on the ship are wearing the leggings of American marines. He therefore plans to lure them into the harbor and blow them out of the water at close range.

Well, gee whiz. I was impressed with Lt. O'Hara's plan and strong leadership. How could he make such a rookie mistake? 

But fool that I am--I didn't trust the good Lieutenant enough. When the pirates open fire on the ship, the resulting explosion is big enough to wreck the port defences. And then Lt. O'Hara and his men, having sneaked off the boat and left painted dummies behind to fool Yussef, attack what's left of the fort. After a brief, sharp fight, the pirates are defeated and the hostages freed.

It's a fun, well-constructed story with strong artwork. And it sets the plot twist up nicely. That plot twist was meant to fool the children who were the regular readers of comic books in 1953. But I'll confess that for a few panels, it had me fooled as well. But I'm an emotional 8-year-old anyways, so perhaps that's to be expected.

Next week, we'll visit the realm of fairy tales.

Cover Cavalcade

 SEPTEMBER IS FLINSTONES & JETSONS MONTH!!

This 1968 cover is uncredited.

Friday's Favorite OTR

 Philip Marlowe: "The Open Window" 10/8/49

A woman with no memory shows up at Marlowe's home--with his name and address written on a piece of paper. Marlowe has to start with a few vague clues to find out who she is and why she needed him.

Click HERE to listen or download. 

Hey! The Butler Really Did Do It!

 

cover artist uncredited

In "Your Murder, Sir!" by John L. Benton (Thrilling Detective Novel--January 1946), it's no secret who the killer is. The very first sentence tells us:

Williams, the perfect butler, was planning the perfect murder.

Williams is the butler to Eric Hathaway, who inherited a family fortune and spends his life in his home reading detective novels. This is a genre Williams loathed--considering them to be unrealistic tripe.

Anyway, Hathaway trusts Williams completely. If Williams gives him a stack of papers to sign, Hathaway will at the most glance at the top paper before signing all of them. So gradually embezzling Hathaway's fortune wasn't difficult. And, when it comes time to do away with the old boy, it's just as easy to get Hathaway to sign a suicide note without knowing it.

Williams has the whole thing planned out carefully: How to kill his boss; how to set things up to make it look like suicide; how to stash away the money he's stolen in different banks without leaving a trail. It's the perfect murder.

Well, it WOULD be the perfect murder if a police detective didn't pull off a trick that was felt like it was taken right out of a detective novel. 

This is a very short, but very fun novel. You go into it knowing that Williams' plan is going to go awry, so the fun is in finding out exactly how this happens. You can read it yourself HERE, starting on page 89.

Skagg's Raiders

 

cover art by Reed Crandall

Poor Skagg. With a name like that, he was probably destined to be a bad guy.

We meet him in Quality Comics' Blackhawk #26 (August 1949). He and the beautiful Dorna lead a group of ruthless outlaws. They have a hideout in thick jungle near the borders of three different countries. So they one of the borders, rob some place, then fade back across the border into the jungle to hide out. "Skagg's Raiders" has an credited writer and some excellent artwork by Wally Wood.

When Andre of the Blackhawks flies over, they decide it would be nice to have a plane--one of his men is a pilot. They lure the Frenchman down with a distress signal, where he's quickly captured. They initially plan to simply kill him, but the outlaw pilot realizes he'll need instruction on the advanced controls of a Blackhawk plane. Andre is locked up until he agrees to cooperate. The plane is hidden in the jungle. 

When he doesn't report in, the other Blackhawks start looking for him. They land in the same clearing, but at first find nothing. It's Chop Chop who discovers a footprint and starts trailing the outlaws into the jungle. 

Later on in the story, Chop Chop will act quickly to save Blackhawk's life. There's no getting around Chop Chop's stereotyped appearance and speech pattern--that's definitely a product of its time. But there's also no getting around that he's presented here as intelligent and brave. Go figure.

The Blackhawks silently capture a sentry and quietly approach the outlaw camp. Knowing that Andre is likely to be killed if a gunfight starts, Blackhawk casually walks into the camp and eggs Skagg into a fist fight. This distracts the other outlaws, allowing the Blackhawks to launch a surprise attack.

But Skagg and Dorna arn't done yet. They flee through an escape tunnel and seal off both ends when the Blackhawks pursue them. Then they and the outlaws proceed to have a party, knowing the Blackhawks are hopelessly trapped.

Not surprisingly, the Blackhawks are not hopelessly trapped. With some gunpowder salvaged from a few bullets, they blow open the tunnel door. Then they attack the outlaws once again.

This time, everything works out well for the good guys. Skagg is killed when Chop Chop saves Blackhawk with a well-thrown rock. Dorna tries to run for it and ends up as crocodile chow. Justice is rather brutally served on them both.

This is a fun tale--a straightforward adventure story that flows along quickly and logically, with Wally Wood's beautiful art bringing it all together. Read it yourself HERE. 

Next week, we'll observe an innovative method for fighting pirates.

Cover Cavalcade

 SEPTEMBER IS FLINSTONES & JETSONS MONTH!!

This 1963 cover was drawn by Harvey Eisenberg.

Friday's Favorite OTR

 Gangbusters: "The Case of the Mound City Safecracker." 3/13/48

The story of a "safecracker who found that a flask of liquer is more dangerous to handle than a vial of nitroglycerin."

Click HERE to listen or download. 

Solving Crimes While Drunk

 

Craig Rice's real name was Georgiana Ann Randolph Walker Craig. When she began publishing prose fiction in 1939 (after working as a writer in radio), she began using the pen name.

Her stuff is wonderful--a witty combination of hard-boiled detective stories and screwball comedy. Her most successful character was alcoholic lawyer John J. Malone, who acting more like a P.I. than a lawyer, only took cases with the upmost reluctance, and solved them without ever bothering to sober up.

To quote his entry on the Thrilling Detective website: Despite being billed as “Chicago’s noisiest and most noted criminal lawyer,” Malone acts more like a private eye than a member of the court. And a particularly hard-drinking and frequent drunk private eye at that. Despite a rep for courtroom pyrotechniques, he’s far more likely to be found carousing around the city looking for clues (or a drink), perstering suspects (or witnesses), or holding court at Joe the Angel’s City Hall Bar than in any court of law.

Rice died all too young in 1957. Three years later, in the first issue of the short-lived digest Ed McBain's Mystery Book (1960), one last John J. Malone story appeared. It was ghost-written by Lawrence Block, but I can't find any indication as to whether Block was finishing an incomplete story or writing an original Malone story on his own. Anyway, Block does a great job of emulating Rice's style. If I hadn't done a modicum of research for this post, I would have assumed "Hard Sell" was a Rice story without questioning this.

Malone is hired by the owner of a company that sends out salesmen to peddle magazine subscriptions. Someone has murdered four of those salemen. The first three could have been accidents, but the last guy got a bullet in the head. Malone is tasked with figuring out whodunit.

The investigation proceeds along logical lines, but the story is dripping with humor. Malone does indeed solve the crime, but there's an interesting twist at the end in what he does with that solution. Read it yourself HERE. 

I found out while writing this that Rice teamed up with Stuart Palmer (creater of mystery-solving schoolteacher Hildegard Withers) to write an anthology worth of stories in which Hildegard and Malone team up. I have GOT to read those!

Dirigible of Doom!

 

cover art by Bob Kane

Detective Comics #33 (November 1939) is significant in that it includes a two-page origin for Batman, written by Bill Finger. We, though, are going to jump ahead to the entertaining (if clumsily titled) story "The Batman Wars Against the Dirigible of Doom," written by Gardner Fox. The art is credited to Bob Kane, with Sheldon Moldoff drawing the backgrounds.

Gotham City has always seemed like a dangerous place to live, but it becomes a particularly unpleasant locale when a scarlet dirigible flies overhead, hitting the city with a death ray that crumbles buildings and kills thousands.

Batman checks his files and discovers a mad scientist named Kruger was recently released from an asylum. He heads for Kruger's home and overhears the madman making plans to conquer the world with his three lieutenants. They plan another attack on Gotham, in which they'll loot banks to get the funds to build more dirigibles.

It's a nice touch to have Kruger--a man with a Napoleon Complex--resemble Napoleon.

Batman steps in, but gets knocked out. He escapes just before Kruger blows up the house. Having overheard the names of Krugar's lieutenants, he finds and confronts one of them, panicking the guy into heading to Kruger's secret airbase.

Hiding the Batplane in an artificially generated cloud, Batman sneaks into the base. With gas bombs and a pistol (Golden Age Batman had no problem with packing a gat), he knocks out a lot of the bad guys and destroys all but one of the death rays. But then he's apparently shot and killed by Kruger, who plans to disintegrate the body with his death ray.

But Batman was wearing a bullet-proof vest and is faking death. He knocks out a guard and switches places with him. So Kruger disintegrates the guard thinking he's Batman. (Golden Age Batman not only packed a gat--he could be pretty ruthless when necessary.)

Batman heads home and whips up a chemical that will protect the Batplane from the death ray. When Kruger attacks Gotham, he's ready for a dogfight. He eventually rams the dirigible with his plane, bailing out in the nick of time. 

Kruger tries to get away in small plane, but Batman hits him with a gas pellet. The plane crashes and Kruger is killed. 

It's a fun story--loosely plotted but flowing along at a pace that overlooks its lack of storytelling logic. Over the past three weeks, I think we've found that Golden Age, Silver Age and Bronze Age Batman were all skilled detectives, unfazed when bizarre dangers (death rays, robot monsters or sudden teleportation to another planet) hits, and able to plan or improvise as needed. G.A. Batman was willing to use deadly force; S.A. Batman is the most easy-going;  and B.A. Batman is arguably the most well-rounded in terms of characterization, but all of them justify their existence by starring in entertaining SF/Detective stories.

Next week, Blackhawk tangles with a band of brutal outlaws.

Cover Cavalcade

 August is Trains and Railroads Month!!!

A 1965 cover by Jack Kirby.

Friday's Favorite OTR

 Our Miss Brooks: "The Burglar" 3/12/50

Miss Brooks discovers she may have misjudged the honesty of the man she recommended for the job of school custodian.

Click HERE to listen or download. 

Grenades for the Colonel

 

cover art by Paul Stahr

This might be my favorite J.D. Newsom Foreign Legion story.

"Grenades for the Colonel" was published in the February 16, 1935 issue of Argosy. In French-controlled Moracco, a chiefton named Mulay is rebelling. Colonel Dubosquet is given the job of crushing the rebellion. The battle sequence that follows includes this evocative paragraph:

"The Colonel was on top of him all the way. Not the colonel in person, naturally, but his men. There is a slight difference. He carried out his orders to the letter: regardless of cost, he hammered Mulay, and in his wake wooden crosses made from ammunition boxes and packing crates bloomed by the wayside. Crosses surmounted by the sweaty, blood-smeared caps of the dead of half-a-dozen regiments. Crosses sacred to the memory of Jean-Baptiste Durand of the Signal Corps; sacred to the memory of Fritz Sturmer of the Foreign Legion; sacred to the eternal memory of some poor devil, slumped down among the boulders on a nameless hillside, coughing up his life blood through a hole in his throat; sacred to the everlasting memory of all those whom the jackels will disinter when silence comes again, and the stars shine, and the battle has rolled on to the next ridge. Crosses lopsided in the windblown sand: firewood for the next migratory tribe drifting down the valley..."

Eventually, Mulay and his bodyguard of 500 warriors appear to be cornered. They make a run for it, galloping past a Foreign Legion company. That company has lost all its officers and was commanded by an American sergeant named Kilburn. They kill half of Mulay's men, but their flank is open because a troop of Senegalese soldiers hadn't moved up to their assigned position. Mulay escapes.

Colonel Dubosquet lays the blame on the Legionnaires. Kilburn is busted to private and the entire unit spends a year as prisoners in all but name, building a road through rough terrain. They are guarded by the Senegalese, which produces a lot of anomosity between the two units. This evenually leads to a riot, which gets the Legionnaires imprisoned--once again guarded by the Senegalese.

In the meantime, an Intelligence officer is trying to convince the colonel that Mulay is back and is talking the Senegalese troops into mutiny. But Colonel Dubosquet won't listen. He's rebuilt Mulay's home town and is having a party--with officials from Morocco and France--to show off his accomplishments. He has complete faith that none of his troops will cause trouble.

Not surprisingly, his troops cause trouble. But Kilburn and his men have staged a jailbreak and... well, that might be a good thing for the French.

The climatic battle scene is a match in intensity to the beginning. Strong characters, a great plot, an authority figure just BEGGING for a comuppance, and an occasional dollop of humor make this story a winner. Newsom's Foreign Legion tales are all great, but this one might indeed be my favorite.

Click HERE to read it for yourself. 

A Movie-Sabotaging Monster

 

cover art by Sheldon Moldoff

Detective Comics #252 (February 1958) gives us the story "The Creature from the Green Lagoon"--a prime example of Silver Age fun. Written by Dave Wood and drawn by Sheldon Moldoff, it's a tale that remembers Batman is a skilled detective while still throwing him into a wild science-fiction adventure. 

Though the story is actually a little less science-fictiony than many Batman tales from this era. There's no aliens, space travel or inter-dimensional travel. Just a giant monster that turns out to be a robot.

We begin with Batman and Robin travelling to Skull Island. (Despite the title, the story keys off of King Kong more than The Creature from the Black Lagoon.) A friend of Batman is producing a monster movie there, but his production keeps getting interrupted by what is apparently a real monster.

I do wonder how someone who is friends with Batman (as opposed to Bruce Wayne) is able to contact him. But that's a side issue. The story itself flows along nicely. The Dynamic Duo sees footage of the monster. When the monster attacks again, Batman nearly captures it, but one of the film's technical advisors ruins this because he wants to preserve the monster for SCIENCE!

Batman lays an trap in the form of an electric net, but the monster turns out to have non-conducting sea sponges attached to its feet. Also, the movie's other technical advisor gets in the way. Of course, this means both advisors are definite suspects when we find out a human being is behind it all. They are red herrings and arguably a little too obvious as red herrings, but the set-up for solving the mystery behind it all is still fun.

By now, Batman realizes the monster is acting with human intelligence and is probably a robot being controlled by someone. When it attacks again, Batman is able to temporarily discombobulate it with electricity.

It ducks under the water. Batman puts on diving gear and follows. This leads to a deadly game of hide-and-seek around a sunken pirate ship until Robin identifies the bad guy, knocks him out and uses the control devise he finds to shut down the monster.

Batman had noticed a valuable bed of pearls under the water, so its no surprise that the bad guy is the producer's assistant, who had scouted the island before the film crew arrived. He wanted to scare them off and keep the pearls for himself. 

It's actually a fair-play mystery, in that it was mentioned earlier in the story that the guy had scouted the island, thus was the only one who could have known about the pearls. 

So we get a fun SF adventure with a giant robot, Batman getting to show his detective skills and Robin taking initiative to save the day.  

So last week we looked at a Bronze Age Batman story. This week was the Silver Age. Next week, we'll jump still further back in time to examine a Golden Age Batman story.