Cover Cavalcade

The hero and the damsel in distress are getting chased by an animated mammoth skeleton. That just might be the perfect definition of cool.

Friday's Favorite OTR

Philo Vance: “The Curtain Call Murder Case” 3/8/49

An egotistical actor makes an enemy of a younger actor, a former girl friend and the guy producing his current Broadway play. This is one of those cases where everybody has a motive when the actor is killed—so the outcome won’t be a surprise no matter what. But the clues that eventually point to the killer are subtle and placed into the story with skill, making the episode a particularly fun one.

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"...two wild natures, thirsty for each others' life."

Last time we visited with Robert E Howard, we met Kirby O'Donnell, an Irish-American wanderer who found adventure in Afghanistan and the Middle East.

But, by golly, Kirby wasn't the only Irish-American adventure who hung out in that part of the world in the early 20th Century. Howard also wrote about Francis Xavier Gordon, better known as El Borak ("The Swift").  Gordon wasn't quite as boisterous as Kirby. Whereas Kirby traveled alone or with a single companion, Gordon was often leading local tribesmen into battle. But both men were fantastic fighters and both were prone to find trouble wherever they went.

We've been taking a look at instances in which Howard's heroes were obligated by circumstances to team up with deadly enemies. It was always a temporary alliance, with the parties involved certain to return to killing each other at the first opportunity.

It's something that happened to them a lot. Which is just fine by me--it was a plot devise that Howard used very effectively.

We've already seen it happen once to Conan (and we'll have to return to the Barbarian again for another reluctant team-up with an enemy) and once to Kirby. It happened at least twice to El Borak.

"Son of the White Wolf" was published in the December 1936 issue of Thrilling Adventure magazine. This story is set during the First World War, during which Gordon allied himself with the British and helped out Lawrence of Arabia. But this time out, he's not going up against the Germans or the Ottomans. Instead, he runs across a band of Turks who have fallen under the sway of a madman--a man who plans to carve his own kingdom out of the collapsing Ottoman Empire. He rescues a beautiful German spy from their clutches and runs for help. But he finds not the allies he was hoping to find, but a tribe of Arabs who fight for the Ottomans.

To stop the renegades, he must convince the Arabs that the mad would-be emperor is a danger to everyone. Then he has to lead the Arabs into a wild battle while simultaneously remaining wary of one of his erstwhile allies putting a bullet in his back.


But that wasn't the first time Gordon had to team-up with a deadly enemy. It also happened in "Blood of the Gods," which first appeared in the July 1935 issue of Top Notch magazine.

El Borak learns that a ruthless Englishman named Hawkston (along with Hawkston's band of thugs) has discovered where a hermit named Al Wazir is living. This particular hermit is owner of priceless rubies called the Blood of the Gods. Hawkston wants those rubies and he's willing to use murder and torture to get them. (Al Wazir's back story--explaining why he's a hermit and why he owns valuable treasure--is an interesting part of the story.)

Gordon is the hermit's friend, so he rides his camel across a trackless desert to find and protect Al Wazir. But a violent encounter with a band of Arabs (members of a tribe with whom he has a blood feud) leaves him on foot.

He still manages to reach the cliff-side caves in which Al Wazir is currently living. But the poor hermit--someone Gordon once knew as a compassionate and wise man--has degenerated into a homicidal maniac.

Then Hawkston shows up. But he's being pursued by the same Arabs who are also after Gordon. They've already killed Hawkston's followers, so the two men must team up to fight off their mutual enemy. If they survive that, then they can go back to killing each other over Al Wazir and the rubies.

"Son of the White Wolf" is a great story, but--even though it has some flaws--I really love "Blood of the Gods." Howard always does fantastic action scenes, but he outdoes himself in "Blood." There's a particularly intense hand-to-hand struggle at an oasis during Gordon's journey to the hermit's cave. The defense of the caves by Gordon and Hawkston against the attacking Arabs is equally intense and very exciting--involving both gun play and more hand-to-hand combat. And there's a sword fight at the stories climax that is nothing short of awesome.

I also like the way Gordon and Hawkston are portrayed when they are forced into a partnership. Howard makes it clear that Hawkston has no morals at all, but he's otherwise like Gordon in a lot of ways. Both men are brave, clever and experienced fighters. Hawkston is a sort of evil mirror image of Gordon. It's something that adds a lot of tension to an already tense situation.

This all makes me very forgiving of the story's flaws, which mostly relate to the plot structure. Most of the story is just fine in terms of good storytelling, but Howard relies a little too much on several unlikely contrivances at the denouement to get Gordon out of trouble and wrap up Al Wazir's story arc. And the ironic twist that ends the story is arguably predictable.

But that's okay. Awesome sword fights make everything better.

We still two more REH stories I want to look at--a Conan yarn set early in the barbarian's career and one involving the pirate Black Vulmea. Two more cases in which the protagonist must team up with a man who wants him dead. It's something that seems to be a genetic predisposition in Howard's adventurous heroes.

Let's All Do the Charlton!

The Blue Beetle was originally Dan Garret, first appearing in Mystery Men Comics #1 (August 1939), published by Fox Comics. Dan was a beat cop who, through the ingestion of Vitamin 2X, would gain super-energy. He would then put on a bullet-proof costume and fought crooks as the Blue Beetle.

He was a fairly successful character, getting a comic strip as well as a comic book and appearing in a radio serial in which he was played by Frank Lovejoy.

But superheroes were temporarily on their way out by the 1950s. Fox went out of business and sold its characters to Charlton. Dan's last appearance was as a back-up character in Nature Boy #1 (March 1956). I love Golden Age comic book silliness more than anyone else in the known universe, but a character ending his run in a comic book titled Nature Boy is just sad.

Charlton's best-selling comics during the 1950s and early 1960s contained ghost stories and romance stories, but they stuck their toe back into the superhero genre in March 1960, when Captain Atom appeared in Space Adventures #33: The good captain was an Air Force officer who was caught in an atomic explosion and thus gained incredible powers.

Most of the Captain Atom stories were only five pages long. This didn't allow much in the way of complex plot development or characterizations, but artist Steve Ditko made it look epic nonetheless.

Ditko, of course, left Charlton for Marvel during the early 1960s, where he made Spider Man and Doctor Strange look equally epic. He returned to Charlton in 1966, at which time editor Dick Giordano was looking to expand Charlton's superhero output.

Giordano came up with the term Action Heroes, defined as heroes who would might have gadgets and special skills, but would not have superpowers. As Giordano phrases it in the introduction to one of the Action Heroes Archives: "Although they often prevailed, they were mortal and could be hurt. It was not a given that at the end of a storyline they would be alive and well--something that gave their adventures more dramatic potential."

Well, Captain Atom had superpowers, but he was grandfathered in as an established Charlton hero. He was, though, given an updated costume after an encounter with an overloading reactor reduced his power levels.

Ditko created the Question as well. This is Vic Sage, an investigative reporter who had a mask that made his face appear to be blank. The Question's adventures were hard-boiled mystery-adventures in which the hero often dealt out harsh justice. To quote Giordano again: "[The Question's] actions in an early story allowed a bad guy to drown in a sewer--something that unleashed a flood of mail to Charlton. That just wasn't done in those days!"

Blue Beetle was yet another of the Action Heroes, but Ditko made some major changes to the original continuity. Dan Garrett was given an additional T at the end of his last name. Slightly more importantly, he was now an archaeologist rather than a cop, getting his powers (including super strength and flight) from a strange scarab he'd found during an Egyptian dig.

And even more important than that--Dan Garrett was now dead. His successor was Ted Kord, who didn't have the scarab, but depended instead on his fighting skill and inventive genius to catch crooks.

Ted's origins were handled quite cleverly. During his four appearances as a back-up feature in Captain Atom and for the first issue of his own book, we're only told that something mysterious happened on a place called Pago Island and that Dan Garrett was somehow involved. It wasn't until Blue Beetle #2 (August 1967) that we learn Dan died on the island fighting a mad scientist and an army of killer androids. Dan passed on the task of being Blue Beetle to Ted, but a cave-in prevented Ted from getting the scarab.

Instead, Ted builds the Bug (one of the coolest superhero vehicles ever) and dons a variant of Dan's costume. The costume is equipped with a remote control device so he can operate the Bug even when he's not aboard.

All three of these characters are pretty cool. Heck, the Justice League animated series from the early 2000s made the Question nothing short of awesome. But Ted is my personal favorite of the three, so we'll bring our look at Charlton to a close by highlighting one of his stories.

Captain Atom #85 (March 1967) includes Ted's third appearance. The story is only seven pages long, but it's packed with cool stuff.



Ted hears a radio report that an airliner has been hijacked by a spy and is being flown out to sea. Using the Bug, he intercepts the plane just as the panicky spy is about to make it crash into the sea.

Ted uses the Bug to save the plane, but the spy bails out and is picked up by a Soviet sub. So, once the airline pilots regain control of the plane, Ted takes the Bug underwater. Donning scuba tanks, he then uses a bazooka to damage the sub's screws.

But he'll still have to fight a couple of enemy frogmen and tangle with a giant squid before this particular adventure comes to an end.

It's a tight, fun story. The action progresses with a logic that's appropriate for a comic book universe and it's all designed to highlight Steve Ditko's impeccable talent for fight choreography. In the end, the Charlton Action Heroes never had the same level of character development that the Marvel heroes of the 1960s often had, but they still formed a viable and entertaining reality of their own.

Charlton Comics went out of business in 1985. Two years prior to that, DC Comics bought the Charlton heroes. Alan Moore was originally going to use them for his game-changing miniseries The Watchmen, but this was vetoed by Dick Giordino, who by then was also working for DC. Instead, Moore and artist Dave Gibbons used variations of the Action Heroes--Dr. Manhattan, Night Owl and Rorschach. The Charlton heroes lived on as part of the DC Universe.

In that capacity, they were used in some fun ways. Blue Beetle's partnership with Booster Gold was a stroke of genius. And, while I loath the idea of Ted Kord being killed off, what little exposure I've had to his successor Jaime Reyes has made me like the newest Blue Beetle quite a lot. (I don't always hate modern comics. I just usually hate them.)

But I've never been completely convinced DC was correct in combining heroes bought from other companies with the rest of DC's heroes. The Action Heroes, like the Marvel Family and Plastic Man and the Blackhawks, had their own unique flavor that was at least partially lost when they were all merged together.

Then again, the Question in the Justice League cartoon was indeed filled with awesome sauce, so some good came out of it all.

A new article by me.

I've had another article on Old-Time Radio published at otrcat.com.

Peter Lorre in Mystery in the Air--a series based on the idea that it's entertaining to hear Peter Lorre go insane each week.

Cover Cavalcade

This is a wonderful cover design, with the narrow panel effectively emphasizing Easy Company's precarious position.

Friday's Favorite OTR

Philip Marlowe: “Indian Giver” 8/13/49

The owner of an antique shop gets hold of a piece of Indian pottery that several other people are desperate—even murderously desperate—to get their hands on.

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"Now, indeed, the essence of pure nightmare was upon me."

H.P. Lovecraft once wrote: "The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown."

Lovecraft played on that idea in his wonderful horror stories. He didn't depend on splashing blood and disembowelment and gore--he built a sense of fear on the idea that there are unknown things in the world that we are better off not knowing about. Because when someone finds out about them, death or insanity (or something even worse) is that person's likely fate. Someone (and I can't find the quote to credit it) once remarked that the central theme of the Lovecraftian universe is that we only remain sane because we don't fully understand its real nature.

And he backed up his themes and ideas with a fantastic prose style that (like Poe) begs to be read aloud--full of perfect word choices and sentence structures that keep you riveted to the story until your done reading it. Don't start one of Lovecraft's longer stories if it's close to your bedtime. You aren't going to be setting it aside until you finish it.

In Lovecraft's version of the universe, human beings aren't the only intelligent beings on the planet. There are other--well, things. Impossibly old things that came here in the distant past from other parts of the universe. Our physical laws and our understanding of logic and reason don't apply to them. They're still out there, you know. Sometimes, they interact with us. When that happens...

His 1936 novella "The Shadow Out of Time" is one of Lovecraft's finest tales. (Author Ramsey Campbell considers it "awe-inspiring.") First published in the June 1936 issue of Astounding Stories, it's narrated by an economics professor named Nathaniel Wingate Peaslee.

Peaslee was teaching at Miskatonic University (located in Arkham, MA) in 1908.

 By the way, if you ever get a chance to teach or attend Miskatonic University--FOR THE LOVE OF HEAVEN, DON'T! It won't end well for you.


In the middle of a lecture, Peaslee is struck with a strange sort of amnesia in which a secondary personality seems to take over. This by itself is strange, but by itself would be easily explained by assuming that Peaslee has simply taken a trip to Crazy Town. But that doesn't explain the strange knowledge of many languages and obscure facts this other personality seems to have.

In 1913, Peaslee's original personality returns and he manages to pick up the pieces of his life. But he's troubled by vivid dreams and fragmentary memories of living in an ancient city (about 150,000,000 years ancient) inhabited by strange creatures.

He discovers that there are rare other cases of this sort of temporary amnesia, where the victims afterwards have eerily similar dreams. Could there be some sort of strange reality behind the dreams?

Well, this is a Lovecraft story, so of course there can be. It all involves the Great Race--originally from the planet Yith--that has the ability to swap bodies with other intelligent beings. What makes this ability really scary is that they can traverse space AND time to do this. They swap with someone like Peaslee in the distant future and gather information. They have thus compiled a very extensive library of all history and all things that will happen--both on Earth and elsewhere in the universe.

This ability gives them a sort of immortality. They came to Earth originally when their home planet was about to die, swapping enmass into a strange pre-human race that lived eons ago. When that race eventually dies out (as the Great Race already knows it will), they'll be swapping into an intelligent race that will exist on Earth after mankind dies out.

It's a handy ability--though it's a bit hard on the creatures they permanently swapped into, since those poor slobs are transferred without warning into the bodies of a completely alien species that's about to go extinct.

Poor Peaslee has a hard time dealing with this, but eventually convinces himself that his dreams and visions can't possibly be real. But an archaeological dig in Australia might convince him otherwise. And what about the Elder Things--the subterranean creatures that eventually destroyed the bodies the Great Race were using millions of years ago? It's not possible that they're still around, is it?

Gee whiz, this is a creepy story. I love the little details Lovecraft puts in to the story--the descriptions and hints of other humans and various alien beings Peaslee meets while he's trapped in the distant past are particularly effective in establishing atmosphere. (By the way, one of these characters is a shout-out to Conan the Barbarian, created by Lovecraft's friend Robert E. Howard.) All the elements of the story, in fact, work together to gradually build up a palpable feeling of increasing dread.

Whether the strongest emotion known to man is fear is probably open to debate in calmer moments. But after you've read "The Shadow Out of Time," you'll be convinced of it.

Looking into the eyes of the man you just killed

Cover by Joe Kubert

I know it's only been a few weeks since I've reviewed a Russ Heath-drawn war comic, but I want to do another one. So you'll all just have to live with it. 

A year or two ago, I talked about a Sgt Rock comic that dealt with the theme of cowardice--with how anyone, including experienced soldiers, might break and run under the right circumstances.

Just two months prior to that issue, writer Bob Kanigher touched on a similar subject. Our Army At War #246 involves a rookie soldier who runs the first time he find himself under fire.

The rookie and Rock are both captured. The Germans strip them of their uniforms, making escape across the snow-covered countryside impractical. But, despite the young soldier being too scared to help, Rock manages to take out their guards. The brief but brutal fight scene Russ Heath provides for us at this point is nothing short of magnificent.

The two Americans don the German uniforms to stave off the cold. But it's not long before the young soldier panics and runs AGAIN when a German machine gun opens fire on them.

Rock rather graphically expresses his displeasure with the soldier when they both make it back to their own lines, but he still keeps the guy in Easy Company. Rock knows anyone can run under the proper circumstances.

It's an idea that is raised in several Sgt. Rock stories during the early 1970s. Natural fear was not condemned and--though a man was expected to eventually find courage and do his duty--the stories were sympathetic to those who were sometimes overpowered by fear.

But that's actually not the best part of this particular story. The best part is a scene that comes right after Rock and the young soldier are separated. Rock is found by a lone German soldier and uses a bandage on his throat as an excuse for not talking. The German is kind to him, but a moment later spots a couple of Easy Company soldiers. He's about to open fire when Rock yells a warning.

The German is shot. His shocked and confused expression as he looks into the eyes of the man he had just helped and who had apparently betrayed him is one of Heath's finest moments. The imagery has a palpable emotional impact.

I'd be hard pressed to pick the best issue of Our Army at War from this time period, but this one would definitely be in the running.

Cover Cavalcade

I see no reason at all why this plan shouldn't work.