Mr. Savage Goes to Washington

It’s interesting to note the difference between Marvel's Western heroes and those who lived in the DC Universe.

Marvel's gunslingers (who, for simplicity's sake, I will refer to as Marvels) were basically superheroes. They didn't have superpowers, but were pretty much all fast draws and nearly unbeatable in a hand-to-hand brawl. Most had code names: Rawhide Kid, Kid Colt, Phantom Rider. Several of them--such as Two Gun Kid--had secret identities.

Also, the Marvels would--through the occasional time travel story--openly interact with present day Marvel superheroes. Both the original and the West Coast Avengers spent time in the Old West, working alongside the Western heroes to foil villains such as Kang the Conqueror.

Even when on their own, the Marvels would sometimes go up against the odd superpowered threat. Rawhide Kid, for instance, once fought an alien invader that looked like a walking totem pole.

Over in DC, the Western heroes they had during the '40s and '50s had largely faded away after the resurgence of superhero comics. But in the 1970s, DC began introducing new characters into their version of the Old West. Scarred bounty hunter Jonah Hex was the best of these, but others (El Diablo, Bat Lash, Scalphunter) were also worth reading about.

DC's Old West was more "realistic" than Marvel, influenced more by Sergio Leone than by superheroes. (In fact, if Jonah Hex had been made into a movie in the 1970s, Clint Eastwood would literally been the only possible actor who could have played him.) They were gritty and violent--with these traits balanced out by three-dimensional characterizations and solid writing.

Neither approach to the Old West--DC or Marvel--is better than the other. Both produced many entertaining stories. But today we'll look a little more closely at one of DC's efforts.

Weird Western Tales 52 & 53 (from 1979) featured Scalphunter. Scalphunter's real name was Brian Savage, a white man raised by the Kiowas and now an outcast from both societies. Written by Gerry Conway and drawn by Dick Ayers, it was typical of the sort of intelligent storytelling being done by DC within the Western genre at the time.

One of the interesting features of the Scalphunter stories was that they were set during the Civil War (rather than after, as most Westerns are). In these issues, Scalphunter is approached by smooth-talking gambler Bat Lash, who tells him they've both been invited to Washington by a beautiful Northern spy.

Once in the capital, though, they find they've become involved in a plot to kill President Lincoln. This sets the stage for a fast-moving conspiracy story in which the following happens: Bat Lash apparently double-crosses Scalphunter; a fun fight scene takes place atop (and then within) a half-finished Washington Monument; a last minute rescue or two is pulled off; and our protagonist and our 16th president engage in an arm-wrestling contest. And it's all done with a firm grasp of history--the leader of the conspiracy to kill Lincoln, for instance, is initially a surprise, but it actually does make historical sense when the motivations are explained. The skillful writing is complemented nicely by Dick Ayers' art, with the action sequences all choreographed effectively.

We never really seem to tire of stories set in the Old West--it seems to be the perfect setting for believably combining the realistic with the mythological. Today, DC has once again given Jonah Hex his own book, while the Marvel gunslingers still pop up from time to time. In one way or another, the cowboy always seems to remain with us.

Cover Cavalcade

This is actually representative of an average day in the life of the Shadow.

Friday's Favorite OTR

Gunsmoke: “Gunshot Wound” 10/14/56

Three good men are caught up in a cycle of violence and revenge. Matt wants to stop anyone from being killed, but circumstances leave him helpless to do anything.

This is the sort of strong, character-driven episode at which Gunsmoke excelled.

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Who's side is he on this time?

Read/Watch ‘em in order #25

In the first Mr. Moto novel, he was an adversary. But in Thank You, Mr. Moto (1936), he’s an ally to the main character.

How did this happen? Well, this time out the protagonist and first-person narrator is Tom Nelson, a former lawyer who grew sick of the American rat race and moved to Peking. Now he just drifts through life, his favorite observation being “It doesn’t really matter, does it?”

But Nelson soon discovers that some things do matter. He becomes a target for assassination when it is believed that he has learned about the plans of a Chinese bandit named Wu Lu Feng to seize control of Peking. Feng is being backed by a militaristic faction of the Japanese government.

Mr. Moto shows up to fight against Feng and by default becomes an ally of Nelson. Moto defends the idea of Japanese imperialism, but he belongs to a faction that wants expansion to be slower and less violent.

Not that Nelson really cares about that. He just wants to avoid being killed and he also wants to look out for Eleanor Joyce—an American woman who also gets caught up in the intrigue. Along the way, Nelson is surprised to discover that Eleanor’s safety is more important to him than his own.

Author John Marquand weaves a complex but logical plot and his prose really invokes a vivid sense of atmosphere. Remember that these novels were written before Chinese culture had been much influenced by the West. To Marquand’s readers, the Far East was pretty close to being an alien world far beyond their understanding.  Marquand plays on these cultural differences to help generate danger and suspense. But he does so without resorting to stereotypes. The characters in the books are often enigmas to one another—sometimes completely baffled by actions or attitudes of each other—but they are all believable and three-dimensional characters.

Here’s an example of how Marquand’s evocative prose could really set the proper mood:

There is no place in the world as strange as Peking at night, when the darkness covers the city like a veil, and when incongruous and startling sights and sounds come to one out of that black. The gilded carved facades of shops, the swinging candle lanterns, the figures by the tables in the smoky yellow light of teahouses, the sound of song, the twanging of stringed instruments, the warm strange smell of soybean oil, all come out of nowhere to touch one elusively and are gone.

It’s a great setting for an adventure story, one in which Nelson, Moto, Eleanor and another character are eventually captured by the bandits. Nelson, by now, has pretty firmly found his backbone and takes the lead in an escape attempt—though his lack of familiarity with firearms nearly gets everyone killed at one point. With Moto politely pointing out the wisest course of action, though, they just might manage to get away. And when the dust settles, we might just be provided with yet another example of just how ruthless the supremely polite Mr. Moto can be when the situation requires it.

History of the Marvel Universe: November 1970

FANTASTIC FOUR #104

Well, at least Stan and John Romita remembered to put enclosed helmets on the Atlantians while they’re out of the water this time---though there is still a scene where Sue and Dorma are tied up side-by-side without Dorma having a helmet (though a few panels later, she suddenly does).

But I’m done nitpicking about when and where Atlantians can  breath. This is the last issue of the FF we’ll look at in original order. So, though we are bound to look at individual story arcs in the future, we’ll bring this era to an end by saying good things.

And it is a good story. The action moves along briskly, with the level of tension kept high. Magneto, using Atlantian technology to amp up his powers, keeps the army at bay and manages to occupy New York City. Reed, Ben and Johnny retreat to the Baxter Building, where they are joined by Crystal (left behind last issue to handle communications). They fight off some Atlantian soldiers while Reed frantically builds a new device.

Namor, in the meantime, is pretending to consider rejoining Magneto in order to keep the villain busy. And Sue, despite being a hostage for most of the issue, gets some good moments as well when she makes an escape attempt. She’s forced to surrender only when Magneto threatens to kill Dorma.

Crystal gets some shots in as well—another example of how Stan Lee grew to use female characters much more proactively over the last decade.

Anyway, the device Reed builds is something that captures Magneto’s magnetic energy and funnels it back at him, trapping him inside a force field. This brings the threat (and the story arc) to an end. It actually seems a bit abrupt, though it’s all perfectly logical within the tenets of a comic book universe.

SPIDER MAN #90

Gil Kane continues to do fantastic work while filling in for Romita on pencils. He really manages to give each of Doctor Octopus’ tentacles a life of their own. As I said last time, he weaves them in and out of individual panels in such a way as to really heighten the aura of danger and power they carry with them.

So both Spidey’s cliffhanger escape from Ock at the beginning of the issue and their rematch at the end are fantastic fight scenes—arguable the best we’ve seen even when compared to what both Ditko and Romita have accomplished with these two combatants in the past.

The rematch comes after a scene involving Peter, Gwen and Captain Stacy, in which some things Stacy says makes Peter think the policeman suspects his secret identity. But Peter can’t follow up on that now—he’s too busy whipping up a special web fluid for his rematch with Ock.

That web fluid, when shot onto a tentacle, blocks Ock’s mental control and causes that tentacle to attack its “brothers.” So Spidey soon has a tentacle civil war going on.

But Ock’s struggles smash a chimney and the proverbial ton of bricks plummet towards some kid. Captain Stacy is nearby, knocking the kid to safety, but getting crushed himself.

This leads to a scene that really does carry an extraordinary emotional impact. Before he dies, Stacy reveals to Peter that he knows he’s Spider Man, asking him to look after Gwen.

This is great stuff. It’s not just that the fight scenes are done so well. The plot is well-constructed; Ock comes across as scarier and more powerful than he ever has before; we get a reminder that Peter is a brilliant scientist in his own right when he creates his special web fluid; and the death of Captain Stacy is handled with just the right amount of honest emotion while providing a twist ending. This is justifiably considered to be one of the classic Spider Man issues.

And that’s it for our “History of the Marvel Universe.” As we continue with Spider Man, I’ll simply come up with mind-numbingly witty titles for individual reviews. And the next issue involves Peter having to deal with the fact that the woman he loves blames Spider Man for her dad’s death. So I’ll call it… um…

Oh, don’t worry. I’ll think of something.

Cover Cavalcade

Why would you even WANT to free him in the first place?

Friday's Favorite OTR

Frontier Gentleman: “The Cowboy” 8/25/58

The tense climax of this strong episode is a great example of how radio professionals could effectively create complex and exciting action scenes without visuals, using just dialogue, narration and sound effects.

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.

Boy--True Love is a lot of work!

Okay, I realize that in real life, a good husband puts a lot of honest and hard work into a marriage. He’s got to treat his wife with unfailing respect and kindness and faithfulness and make awesome efforts to keep the marriage relationship healthy. That does indeed take work. I know I’m a life-long bachelor, but I get that. I really do.

But by golly, fictional heroes really have it tough. Because they don’t just have to remember anniversaries and make googily eyes at his wife from time to time. He’s got to rescue her from horrible death on a regular basis.

And THAT takes work. And determination.

Take Prince Valiant, for example. It was in 1945—about nine years into the strip—that writer/artist Hal Foster finally got around to telling us how Valiant met Aleta, Queen of the Misty Isles and fell in love with her.

It was an interesting process. Valiant actually spends quite a long time convinced Aleta is a evil sorceress and murderess, holding her prisoner while he traveled across a nearly lifeless desert. But a blow to the head and a bout with malaria does wonders, allowing Val to realize he loves Aleta. They seemed destined to live happily ever after.

Until a local despot named Donardo has his men attack Val, take his famous “Singing Sword,” and toss him over a cliff. Donardo then takes Aleta as a captive back to his city.

So Val—unarmed except for a makeshift spear—must pursue Donardo on foot.  This amuses the evil king, so he sends one of his men back to kill Val with his own sword.

This doesn’t work out.

Well, Donardo’s not worried. He’ll just send two men this time. There’s no way Val can survive that.

This doesn’t work out.

Okay, Donardo really means business now. He’ll send four men back to take out Val. There’s no possible way in heaven or on earth that Prince Valiant can possibly live through the day now.

This doesn’t work out.

Donardo, now a bit unhappy, reaches his city. At least he now has his pretty prisoner safe behind heavily guarded walls. Valiant may be hard to kill, but there’s nothing he can do to rescue Aleta.

Nothing, that is, except raise an army, besiege the city, breach the walls, kill Donardo in single combat and reunite himself with his one true love.

So I know that in real life relationships are hard. But, for gosh sakes, at least all you real life husbands don’t have to fight duels to the death and raze entire cities to the ground.

So all you married guys should consider yourselves very lucky.

Yes, He IS Annoying!

When Otto Binder created Beppo the Super Monkey in Superboy #76 (October 1959), I think he might have done too good a job in making the mischievous little primate annoying.

Beppo was a test animal that Jor-el kept in his lab on Krypton. (Which begs the question—why did Jor-el claim to have no more test animals when he launched his baby’s beloved puppy into space? Gee whiz, Jor-el really was a mean daddy!)

Beppo stows away in the rocket that brings Kal-el to Earth. He slips away unseen and spends some time tossing elephants around in the African jungle. But he eventually returns to Samllville and, after dressing in little Clark’s super-play suit, causes a lot of mischief that the Kents then blame on poor Clark.

But then Beppo is chased into deep space by a comet (not realizing that the comet can’t hurt him).

He’ll be back eventually, but unlike Krypto, we never do see very much of him. Pretty much all his appearances are as a member of the Legion of Super Pets. Krypto gets his share of solo stories, but I think Otto Binder was so successful in portraying Beppo as a pest, that he was simply “retired” from his solo career before his one-joke theme got old. Binder’s sense of humor makes this story work, but it doesn’t leave much room for effective sequels.

Oh, well, I still kinda like the little guy (though none of the Super Pets ever had the appeal that Krypto does), so I’m still glad he came into being.

We’ll examine the other Super Pets eventually, but the rest of them actually aren’t Kryptonian natives. So the next few entries will finish up our look at Kryptonian survivors before moving on to Streaky and Comet.

So far, our look at Superman’s expanding mythology during the Weisinger era has covered Supergirl, Dev-em, Krypto and Beppo. Gee whiz, we’re just getting started, aren’t we? We’ve still got Kandor, the Phantom Zone, the remaining Super Pets, the Legion of Superheroes, Superman’s time travel jaunts to Krypton, the various forms of Kryptonite, the Daily Planet staff, the Fortress of Solitude and several important villains to look at.

We’ll get to them eventually. Many superheroes have rich mythologies built around them, but Superman arguably has the richest.

Wonderful book about forgiveness and redemption

I was able to read this book before it was published because Jim asked me to proof-read it. The man couldn't use a comma properly if his life depended on it, but he's a great writer regardless. This autobiography is about a boy who was horribly abused for years but learns about God and personal forgiveness as pulls his life together. He now helps catch child predators. It really will touch your heart.