Roy Crane and the first ever adventure comic strip--part 4

Here's part 4 of the video series I'm producing for work:

Friday's Favorite OTR

Inner Sanctum: “The Dead Laugh” 9/23/46

A judge ignores a plea for clemency and a jury recommendation, sentencing a convicted killer to death.

He has no sympathy for killers, regardless of motive or extenuating circumstances. But this is Inner Sanctum, after all---the judge soon discovers that there just might be circumstances that could drive him to murder.

Click HERE to listen or download. 

Roy Crane and the first ever adventure comic strip--part 3

Sorry I keep inundating you all with my limited narration skill, but as I said in a previous post: if I gotta make these things, SOMEONE is going to have to suffer through them.

What? ANOTHER Sargasso in Space?

A few years back, I wrote about Edmond Hamilton's short story "Sargasso of Space," a 1931 story about a location in our solar system where the gravity draws hundreds of derelict space ships together into a giant graveyard. The heroes in that tale end up there after their ship develops a fuel leak. While searching other ships for fuel, they run into trouble in the form of other stranded astronauts who have a violent agenda of their own.


But the idea of a Sargasso Sea in space is too cool an idea and its not surprising that it would be revisited. There's an episode of 1973's Star Trek: The Animated Series that played with the idea, though the Sargasso there was a pocket dimension rather than a gravity node.

But a couple of decades after Hamilton's story and a couple of decades before Star Trek: TAS, writer Milton Lesser (writing under his pen name Stephen Marlowe) also used this idea. His short story--"Graveyard of Space"--appeared in the April 1956 issue of Imagination.

Hamilton used the space Sargasso concept for a straightforward adventure with lots of action. Marlowe, on the other hand, goes for more of a horror story vibe.

A married couple, returning from an unsuccessful venture as asteroid miners, gets lost in the asteroid field and ends up in a space Sargasso. Like the characters in Hamilton's yarn, they have to scavenge for parts on the other ships. But unlike Hamilton's Sargasso, these two seem to be the only living humans. The crews of previously stranded ships have died from lack of food or oxygen.

Or have they?  They discover that there just might be one other survivor. But that's not necessarily a good thing.

Marlowe hits just the right creepy vibe, essentially turning the space Sargasso concept into a Haunted House story.

It's interesting to read Hamliton and Marlowe's stories one after the other. It's a nice little example of just how much mileage different writers can get out of similar ideas.

History of the Marvel Universe: April 1969

FANTASTIC FOUR #85

The FF are still prisoners in the superficially idyllic village, kept powerless and frightened by regular doses of hypnotism. In the meantime, Doom is perfected a dozen powerful robots, at one point allowing a couple of rebels to “escape” and steal a tank in order to test one of the robots against them.

Like the previous issue, this one takes time to look at Dr. Doom, with scenes that emphasize his self-destructive pride and arrogance. When the scientist helping with the robots (a former Nazi) tells him he rivals the Red Skull in brilliance, Doom nearly strangles him the suggestion that the Skull might be smarter.

Doom has also learned to look at his unmasked face without freaking out. He’s having his portrait painted, convinced that soon the whole world will have to look at this image after he has set himself up to rule over them all.

But Doom builds his stuff TOO well. He’s planning on testing the robots again by having them attack and destroy the village in which the FF is imprisoned. But they have been programmed to be so aggressive that they break out of their lab ahead of schedule and march on their target.  The FF see them coming, but seem helpless to do anything about it.

It’s all good stuff. The actual plot moves along only a little bit, but the character moments involving Doom are what make up the backbone of this story arc.

Also, back in the States, Sue is going house shopping in the suburbs. She needs an isolated house, so as not to endanger innocents if a supervillain attacks them. That she has been living atop a crowded skyscraper in the middle of New York City is not mentioned.

The real estate guy shows her an abandoned underground house of unknown origin. Sue considers buying it—which is not her finest moment. When you live in a comic book universe, any oddly designed and abandoned house of unknown origin should automatically be suspect.

Seriously, Sue. You live in a world where magic, monsters and ancient curses abound; where we’re invaded by aliens every other Tuesday; where certain characters seemed fated to run into trouble no matter where they go. If the realtor says “Odd abandoned house of unknown origin,” just automatically say “NO SALE!”

Spider Man #71

Things start to look up for Peter. He finds out Jameson simply had a bad shock—not a heart attack—when Spider Man scared him. Pictures he took of his fight with Kingpin seem to exonerate him. And, with Jameson in the hospital, Robbie pays him a really good fee for those photos.

But he’s Spider Man, so trouble soon comes up. Over in the Avengers, Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch had become involved with Magneto again in a way that made it appear they might have once more become bad guys. Quicksilver decides a way of redeeming them might be to capture a wanted criminal. You know, like Spider Man.

The two have a nifty fight, but Spidey manages to pull out a win and then convince Pietro he’s not a crook.

I like the balance the last few issues have had. Peter has been having a really rotten time lately. And, of course, that’s part of the character’s appeal—that life often deals him a 3 of clubs when he needs an ace. But occasional issues like this one, where he gets a few breaks, are necessary to give the series as a whole some emotional equilibrium and keep the various sub-plots from descending to soap opera level.

Though, actual, if a soap opera ever had some well-choreographed superhero fights as part of their program, I might actually watch it.

THOR #163

New York City’s Atomic Research Center has vanished, with a weird force field now surrounding the spot where it stood. Sif had investigated and was pulled inside. Thor now investigates as well and HE gets pulled inside.

After a fight against some powerful humanoids called Mutates, he frees Sif from captivity and discovers that the inside of the force field is a time doorway, leading to a far future in which the world has been largely destroyed in a nuclear war. The Mutates are the remnants of mankind.

Thor and Sif soon run into the being behind it all—Pluto, the Greek god of the Underworld. He’s still trying to find a way to escape his Underworld kingdom. (Remember that he once tried to trick Hercules into taking his place way back in Thor #125.)

Pluto plans to use the Mutates from the future to destroy mankind in the 20^th Century. In some way that’s not explained as clearly as it should be, this will allow him to permanently escape from the Underworld.

Thor and Sif vow to fight him, but he’s got power equal to Odin, so that won’t be easy. But inside the Atomic Research Center building (which has also been transported to the future), something kept in a small chamber in the biological research lab starts to awaken…

Thor ranks up there with FF and Spider Man as one of the best Marvel books of the 1960s because it drips with imagination. Thor, fresh off saving the universe from Mangog—who has the combined strength of a billion billion men, immediately zips to another galaxy to fight Galactus—who literally eats planets for breakfast, then comes back home to confront an Olympian god who is using radioactive mutants from the future as an army.

And the really cool thing is that in context with Thor’s established powers and history and by plopping him down in the middle of a comic book universe—this all MAKES SENSE.

I love it.

I hope its okay with everyone, but I’m going to pause again next Wednesday from our usual trip through the Marvel Universe. We’re going to look at a 1942 issue of Superman in which he fights a villain who coincidentally has the same name as a better known villain introduced nearly two decades later. I’ll also be explaining how I’ll be formatting our occasional looks at the Mort Weisinger era of Superman stories.

So we’ll get to May 1969 in two weeks, in which the FF fight a horde of killer robots; Spider Man fights one of his second-tier bad guys; and Thor fights an army from the future.

Roy Crane and the first ever adventure comic strip--part 2

Here's the second part of the video series on Roy Crane that I'm producing at work:

Cover Cavalcade

Despite the important contributions that Black Mask made to detective fiction, it didn't usually have the greatest covers. This one's an exception, though--it's an eye-catching image.

Friday's Favorite OTR

Gunsmoke: “Johnny Red” 8/13/55

A man returns home to his aged mother after 17 years away. But according to Dillon’s information, the wayward son had died at the Battle of Shiloh over a decade earlier.

Gunsmoke never shied away from tragic endings when such an ending seemed appropriate to the story. This one seems pretty obviously pointed towards such an ending, but still manages an interesting twist at the end.

Click HERE to listen or download.

It’s her job to get kidnapped and, by golly, she does it well!

Read/Watch 'em in order #13

The main job of any Edgar Rice Burroughs heroine is to get kidnapped on a regular basis. That’s pretty much a given.

But I think Dian the Beautiful might have broken an ERB getting-kidnapped record in Pellicidar (1915), the second novel in the series about the titular underground world.

Seriously--poor David Innes can’t seem to keep his wife at his side for more than a few minutes before yet another cave man or telepathic pterodactyl snatches her away. Anytime he so much as stops looking directly at her, yet another villain has made off with her.

At the end of At The Earth’s Core, David had used the Iron Mole to return to the surface. As the next novel begins, he returns to Pellucidar, having stuffed the mole full of reference books, weapons and ammo. He strings a telegraph line behind him this time—which is how Burroughs eventually learns of his further adventures.

But when he gets back, he discovers that the nascent empire he had formed to fight the Mahars had collapsed. And, by the way, his wife has been kidnapped.

So David spends the novel in a cycle of rescuing and losing Dian while also working to reform the Empire of Pellucidar. The plot, therefore, meanders a bit from one action set-piece to another, but it’s a fun meandering and the action is exciting, so there’s nothing to complain about.

Besides, Burroughs casually drops some really cool elements into the story at random intervals. David, at one point, saves the life of a savage (and man-eating) hyaenodon and manages to tame it. I’ve always liked dogs myself, but if I were now to ever own a pet, I don’t think I would ever be satisfied with anything less than a hyaenodon.

Actually, Burroughs liked doing this—giving his protagonist a savage beast for an unlikely but loyal companion. Tarzan had Jad-bal-ja, the Golden Lion. John Carter had Woola, his ten-legged Martian “guard dog.”

David also encounters several new tribes, including one that uses dinosaurs (specifically, diplodocus) as beasts of burden. While he’s having his adventures, Abner Perry teaches the natives ship-building, metal-working, sailing and gunsmithing. So, when David is finally able to hold on to his wife for more than a few minutes, he manages to re-establish his empire and lead a fleet of ships equipped with muzzle-loading cannon and rifles against the Mahar forces.

It all turns out to be a satisfying follow-up to the first book and brings the initial plot line to a satisfying conclusion. But Burroughs isn’t done with the world at the Earth’s core quite yet. He’s going to take a 14 year break from David Innes and Abner Perry, but in 1929 he’ll recount an adventure from the perspective of a native Pellucidarian. We won't wait 14 years before we take a look at that story.

Roy Crane and the first ever adventure comic strip.

There's no escaping videos from me this week.

Here's one I made at work. My idea was that staff members at the library could make videos about art-related subjects about which they are knowledgeable, then post them at the library's website so that they are available for students doing research.

Since it was my idea, I got to do the first one. I picked Roy Crane because I've always been insufferably proud of the fact that I'm quoted at length in his Wikipedia entry.

Here's the video: