Friday's Favorite OTR

Escape: “The Killer Mine” 2/11/51

A deserter from the British Army is blackmailed into doing the extremely dangerous job of opening a deep mine to the sea (to facilitate smuggling operations). Opening the mine by itself isn’t necessarily difficult—living long enough to get back to the surface afterwards is the hard part.

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Cute Babies and Murder Investigations

Read/Watch 'em in Order #34

I didn't actually time it, but after watching Another Thin Man (1939), I think half the movie at best is devoted to solving the actual murder on which the plot centers. The other half is Nick and Nora bantering with each other, playing with their new baby son (Nicky) or just generally being more clever than everyone else in the movie.

It's a perfectly good murder mystery. Crotchety old Colonel Burr MacFay handles the money matters for Nora Charles' rather large family fortune. He's concerned that an old employee---someone who did ten years in the slammer for financial shenanigans--is going to kill him. He asks Nick to look into it.

Nick does, but MacFay ends up getting killed anyway. The old employee, named Phil Church, seems the obvious suspect. If nothing else, Church is played by Sheldon Leonard. It's always a good idea to suspect Sheldon Leonard. He rarely played a good guy.

But, as with After the Thin Man, there's an absurd number of additional suspects. Several family members, servants, and employees are all possible killers.

The police are baffled and Nick himself has trouble sorting it out at first. In the end, he does manage to figure it out--revealing the killer after gathering all the suspects together in one room and explaining the who, how, when, why and where of it all. It's the "when" part of that which proves to be the key to solving the case.

But a good mystery is almost a bonus feature in this case, because Another Thin Man would get my vote as the funniest entry in the series. Powell and Loy play off each other even more perfectly than they usually do and the script is full of real wit.

Also, there baby is awful cute. And as the movie comes to an end, we get a cute baby bonus. An old friend of Nick (who, like many of Nick's old friends, also happens to be a low-level thug) invites a number of his thuggish friends who also happen to be new fathers to a baby party at Nick's hotel room.  Kudos here have to go to Warner Brothers casting department--never before have a more thuggish-looking group of thugs been brought together in one room. The fact that each of them is holding a baby while they sing makes the scene one of surreal beauty.

A late arrival to the thug/baby party, by the way, is played by Shemp Howard. Until he rejoined the Three Stooges in 1947, he could often be seen in various B-movie character roles.

A movie that gives you both a murder and a roomful of cute babies can't help but be a classic. Some fans think introducing a baby into the dynamic made Nick and Nora a little less fun, but in this film, at least, he was too small to get in the way of the plot and was there just to generate a few laughs and a few "awws." Of the three remaining films, it's only the last one where an argument can be made that the kid gets in the way of the story, but he's never enough of a problem to spoil the fun of watching Nick and Nora banter with each other.

Death of the Haunted Tank

You know, I actually don't know why editor Joe Kubert and/or writer Bob Kanigher decided to destroy the original Haunted Tank after a full decade worth of stories. Perhaps they were looking to add a small amount of realism to the comic. The original tank was an M3 Stuart, which was armed with a tiny 37mm cannon. In real life, this was pretty much useless against the heavy armor of larger German tanks. The new tank had a 76.2mm gun, making it at least a little more believable when Jeb Stuart and his crew blew the turret off a Tiger tank.

Or maybe they wanted something more visually distinctive. The new tank wasn't a standard Allied model, but rather a sort of Frankenstein's monster built from the pieces of vehicles destroyed in combat. And that's a cool idea in of itself. The tank haunted by the spirit of a man killed in the previous century was itself built out of dead tanks.

cover by Joe Kubert

But whatever the reason for it, the story introducing the new tank (G.I Combat #150--November 1971) is a strong one.  The plot is pretty straightfoward. The ghost of General Stuart announces his time with the crew is done and leaves. That leaves Lt. Jeb Stuart at a loss--he depended on the General's cryptic advice to keep his crew alive.

But there's no time to think about that just yet. The Haunted Tank is assigned to help out an infantry unit that's pinned down and under heavy attack.

Things don't go well. A direct hit from a German anti-tank gun leaves the tank in flames and forces the crew to bail out. At first, they despair. But one of the ground-pounders reminds them that they are specialists and their skills are still needed. So Jeb and his men hightail it back to a tank junkyard and quickly slap together a brand-new armored fighting vehicle.

Taking this into combat, they soon kick some German butt. Then General Stuart reappears, having gone only to teach them the lesson that they shouldn't depend on him or the "luck" he brought them, but on their own fighting hearts.

Actually, the ending is completely predictable, but it's a good story all the same. It is one of my favorite examples of Russ Heath's wonderful art. This particular issue, I think, shows off Heath's skill at composing the scene in each panel, shifting the "camera" angle constantly and giving us battle scenes rich in detail--all while still telling the story in a clear and logical manner.

Over the years, there have been a number of hardcover and trade paperback reprint books that highlight the work of specific comic book artists, such as Neal Adams and John Romita. And this is a good thing--these are artists who deserve recognition and whose work can still entertain readers today.

But so far (unless I missed one) there hasn't been a volume dedicated to Russ Heath. An Archives or Omnibus edition showing off his work at DC--Sgt Rock, the Haunted Tank, the Sea Devils, etc--should be considered a cultural necessity.

The story was reprinted in issue #169 (Feb. 1974) with a new cover

Cover Cavalcade

Obviously, the Apollo astronauts didn't spend enough time looking around the moon to find the really cool stuff.

Friday's Favorite OTR

Cloak and Dagger "Over Ground Railroad" 5/9/48

An OSS agent is smuggled into Occupied France. His mission is to contact a woman who will help him set up an escape network for downed fliers.

But the woman has moved from her last known address. There is a place where he can find out where her new home is located. Of course, that place happens to be Gestapo Headquarters...

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Mobsters and Ray Guns.

The July 15, 1935 issue of The Shadow magazine was an important one for several reasons.

First, writer Walter Gibson wrote a longer story than usual. This was actually because he had just gotten a new typewriter and didn't realize the font size was fitting more words per page, but this was probably a factor in allowing him to turn out one of his finest efforts. Its difficult to see where the story could have been trimmed without losing something cool.

Second, it was the first of what would be a number of stories in which the Shadow went up against a super-scientific threat. Up until now, he'd usually been dealing with mobsters and spies. Gibson felt the crime-fighter needed a new kind of threat to properly challenge him.

So, in "Atoms of Death," a scientist invents a disintegrator ray. It's not perfected enough to use as a  weapon, but it can be used to tunnel through earth and rock very quickly. He teams up with some mobsters and soon they are tunneling into banks and jewelry stores.  They dynamite the tunnels afterwards, leaving the police baffled as to how the crooks are actually pulling off their crimes.

Well, they don't fool the Shadow. When the scientist's assistant realizes something untoward is going on, he contacts Harry Vincent--whom he met in a previous story, so he knows Harry is an agent of the Shadow. Mobsters try to whack the guy, but the Shadow and his agents save him.

But the bad guys are smart. When the Shadow investigates their hide-out, he's knocked out by an electrical trap and captured. The Shadow manages to outwit them by convincing them he's just plain old Lamont Cranston and the real Lamont Cranston (who is currently in town) is the Shadow. He has to then prevent the real Cranston from getting kidnapped, but the end result is he gets free and the real Cranston leaves for another overseas hunting trip.

That leaves the Shadow starting from scratch, with no idea where the bad guys have set up their new headquarters. He tries to stop a couple of robberies. The first time, he has to run a gauntlet of gunmen while speeding down the street in a car. The second time, the villains have planted false clues to lure him to the wrong location, where they use machine gunners and a guy tossing grenades to try to finish him off. He fights his way out of this, but makes no progress in finding the hideout.

That's one of the strengths of this story. The head mobsters really are smart, staying one step ahead of the Shadow for most of the novel. In fact, they correctly deduce that mobster Cliff Marsland is really a Shadow undercover agent and kidnap him.

But that gives the Shadow a chance to finally track them down, though he must deliberately allow another of his agents to get captured. The neat part here is that the agent who volunteers for this dangerous job is Rutledge Mann. Mann isn't normally a field agent--he's an investment broker who generally acts as a contact for the field agents. But he gamely steps up to the plate when called upon. I always liked Mann and I was happy to see him get a moment in the limelight.

Anyway, the climax involves the Shadow in disguise sneaking into the hideout, followed by a wild shootout involving both pistols and and disintegrator gun.

And then we get one of Walter Gibson's best-ever twist endings. You thought you knew what was going on with the bad guys? That you understood who was who within their organization? Trust me, you didn't know a thing.

In the recent reprint volume that included this story, pulp historian Will Murray refers to this story as a "must-read." He's right, of course. If you're a fan of the Shadow, you gotta read this one.

I'm not sure he's a "pet."

As much as I enjoy the concept of the Super-Pets, I'm not sure they really should have been considered pets. Remember, once they gained superpowers, they also gained super-intelligence. Doesn't this make them sentient beings who should be considered the equals of human beings and other sentient beings?

But they were always considered pets and seemed content with their lot. Which might be understandable for Beppo, Streaky and Krypto. Their basic psychology might have still allowed them to be content with having human owners, just as a well-loved normal dog is content with a human owner.

But Comet--well, I don't think he ever came close to being a "pet." As we saw in our last Superman Universe post, Comet was first seen in Adventure Comics #293, cover dated February 1962. He's next seen in Action Comics #292 (September 1962)--the first part of a trilogy (written by Leo Dorfman) that firmly brings the Super-Horse into DC continuity. The October issue details Comet's origin.

Pay attention, because Comet's origin is the model against which all other origin stories should be measured for pure weirdness.

In ancient Greece, a centaur named Biron falls in love with the sorceress Circe. He saves her from being poisoned by an evil wizard named Maldor. As a reward, Circe promises to turn him into a human so they can marry. Unfortunately, Circe turns out to be an idiot and gives Biron the wrong potion, turning him into a horse.

She can't reverse that spell, so to make up for her error she gives him another potion giving him immortality and super powers. But Maldor later vengefully uses a magic spell to send Biron to a remote asteroid, where he's trapped by a magical aura.

A few thousand years later, the rocket taking Supergirl to Earth from Argo City passes near the asteroid and shatters the magical aura. Comet is freed, follows Supergirl to Earth and eventually makes telepathic contact with her.

By the end of Action Comics #294, Comet has amnesia and thinks he's just a regular horse, but he regains his powers in later issues. It's also eventually established that he turns human whenever there's a comet in the sky, then turns back into a horse when the comet is gone.

I love the convoluted and bizarre feel to the origin. And I love the idea of a Legion of Super-Pets. But I still don't think Comet or Biron or whatever you want to call him should be considered a "pet."

Of course, neither should Proty, an intelligent shape-changer that hangs out with Lightning Lad and joins the Super-Pets whenever they visit the future. He's definitely a member of an intelligent species and is still called a pet!

There's no denying it. The Super-Pets need better legal representation.

Next time we visit the Superman Universe, I think we'll take a look the Legion of Superheroes. We can warn them they might be getting sued by their pets.

Cover Cavalcade

The world would be a poorer place if rickety bridges stretched over bottomless chasms had never been invented.

Off to Africa

As of today, I'll be travelling to South Sudan on a short-term mission trip. I'll be teaching 1st and 2nd Corinthians to soldiers training to be chaplains in the Southern Sudanese military:




Posts will appear normally on the blog, as I've written them in advance and have them scheduled to go. But please be aware that I won't be able to moderate comments until I get back. (There's no electricity--much less wi-fi, in the camp I'll be at.) Please leave comments, but be aware that I won't be able to review and post them until I get back on June 7. (Perhaps a few days earlier if I'm able to get online during a few days in a Ugandan guest house.)

Friday's Favorite OTR

Escape: "John Jock Todd" 5/2/48 John Todd isn't a fighting man. But when assigned to help manage a remote African trading post, he discovers his boss is a sadistic brute. So John Todd might just have to fight whether he wants to or not.

Excellent episode in which both the protagonists and the supporting characters are given real personality by the actors.

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