Monster Society of Evil--Parts 6 - 10

Mr. Mind might very well hold the record for the Most Evil Plans Instigated in a Short Period of Time. I'll have to check the Guinness Book of World Records, but it must be true. The little worm is an endless fount

of evil plans.

It's been a month since I reviewed Parts 1 through 5, so let's recap. Writer Otto Binder and artist C.C. Beck are creating their masterpiece--a 25-part epic structured as a movie serial, running in Captain Marvel Adventures during the 1940s, starting in issue #22 and ending with #46. The main villain is Mr. Mind, a tiny worm who also happens to be an evil genius. He forms the Monster Society of Evil, consisting of many members of Captain Marvel's rogue's gallery, any number of artificially-created monsters and robots, an occasional alien, the Nazis and the Japanese. Captain Marvel spent the first five parts foiling various evil schemes on Earth before finding and trashing Mr. Mind's base on another planet.





But the occasional set-back does not discourage the villain. Issue #27 (Part 6 of the story) as Mr. Mind returns to Earth and--despite Captain Marvel finally discovering his true form--sets off one plan after another to take over the world. He gains telepathic control over termites and set them to destroying
skyscrapers. When Captain Marvel stops this, Mr. Mind flees to Germany, befriending Hitler and Goering.

Here, he comes up with what might be my favorite Evil Plan of all time--a plan so unashamed of its pure silliness that it inspires deep admiration for Binder
and Beck in that they dared to put it down on paper.

Mr. Mind gets Hitler to point all the guns on the Maginot Line east and fire them off simultaneously. The recoil causes the Earth to stop spinning, giving Nazi Germany eternal daylight while plunging America into perpetual darkness.

This might be the Ur example of why the Golden Age Captain Marvel stories were so wonderfully entertaining. Binder and Beck created a world in which the silliness was an integral part of how that world operated--but balanced so perfectly with good storytelling that it never completely tips over into pure comedy. It's still an exciting superhero story that can be accepted and enjoyed on its own unique level.

The only thing that might spoil it for a modern reader is the extreme racial stereotyping involving Billy Batson's black friend Steamboat and the various Japanese characters--in fact, one reason suggested for why DC Comics cancelled a recent planned reprint of this story as a graphic novel is the racism. I think its possible to accept this as something that was a part of popular culture of the time and still appreciate the actual story.  Someone else might feel differently, though, and find the story has been spoiled for them--and this would be an equally legitimate opinion. This is not a matter of being politically correct or incorrect. It's simply a matter of allowing individuals to make up their own minds about balancing the faults and virtues of stories from the Golden Age.

Well, Captain Marvel eventually gets the world spinning again. Mr. Mind ends up in China, helping the Japanese. He does this by magnetically lifting the entire Great Wall of China and essentially using it as a battering ram against the Chinese army.That, by the way, is my SECOND favorite Evil Plan of all time.

Again, his plans are foiled. The story moves to Australia, where Mr. Mind teams up with a Japanese scientist, a German spy and a crocodile-headed alien from the planet Punkus to help the Japanese take over the continent. Once again, Captain Marvel steps in to stop them, but along the way Mr. Mind manages to trick him into turning back into Billy Batson, capturing him.

Actually, that's at least the fourth time Billy gets captured over the course of parts 6 through 10. The dumb kid has a bad habit of saying "Shazam!" at awkward moments. But this time its really serious. With Billy properly gagged, he's tossed in a rocket and brought to the planet Punkus. Here, Mr. Mind has ordered the crocodile-headed aliens to build a gigantic cannon--one that will destroy America with a single shell!

Can Billy escape, turn into Captain Marvel and save the day? Stay on the edge of your seat--we'll return to the story in a month or so and you can find out.

Or you can just read it for yourself online. It's still available to read at comicbookplus.com.

Cover Cavalcade

Friday's Favorite OTR

Escape: "Affair at Mandrake" 4/15/54

A tale of espionage and mistaken identity in World War II, with a magnificent twist ending.

Click HERE to listen or download.

Giant Spiders from my Childhood

I can't now remember the train of thought or conversation that took me in this particular direction, but I recently began thinking back to some of the monster movies I enjoyed on Creature Feature as a kid that I've never watched again as an adult. There aren't many--I think I might be pretty close to caught up in this department.

But it occurred to me that I had missed at least one: Tarantula, the 1955 film about a giant... well, tarantula.  The advantage of working at the library of a school that includes a Digital Film program means we have a pretty well-stocked collection of feature film DVDs. And my presence on the staff

has ensured a representation of B-movies from all genres.

So I snatched up our copy of Tarantula and brought it home to watch.

It's a good film. It's directed by Jack Arnold, who helmed a number of genre classics during the 1950s, including The Creature From the Black Lagoon, The Incredible Shrinking Man and It Came From Outer Space. Tarantula isn't quite as good as those, but it's still a pretty nifty film.

Like many other movies from the 1950s, it involves a creature mutated to gigantic size via radiation. But the interesting twist here is that the radiation isn't a result of atomic testing. Instead, a trio of scientists, working in a remote lab in the Arizona desert, are trying to develop an artificial nutrient and get rid of world hunger. They use a radioactive isotope as a binding agent to hold the nutrient's atoms together. I'm pretty sure this makes no sense at all, but Leo G. Carroll, (playing the only scientist who isn't dead soon after the movie begins) sounds appropriately authoritative when he explains it.

Whether or not the nutrient will eliminate hunger, it is good at getting test animals to grow really, really big. This includes a tarantula, which is presumed to have burned up in a lab accident, but actually escapes into the desert and keeps growing. A young growing spider needs plenty to eat, so its diet soon includes cows, horses and the occasional human being.

Arnold keeps the story moving along. Even though the spider doesn't go into its full-on rampage until pretty late into the film, the plot unfolds in a suspenseful manner. There's an effective sub-plot involving Carroll's character. He's slowly dying (with his face gradually becoming deformed) after himself being infected by the nutrient. This also helps keep us interested until the spider antics begin.

When the spider does start rampaging and getting closer and closer to town, it's time to call in the big guns. Pay close attention to the finale if you watch this film. Killing a giant spider doesn't just require jet fighters and modern ordinance. It requires jet fighters, modern ordinance and Clint Eastwood. "Have I fired six napalm rockets or only five? In all this confusion, I've lost count."

The special effects--mostly involving a real spider and matte effects--are really very good. One particular scene, with Leo G. Carroll examining the various over-sized animals in his lab, is quite

remarkable.

John Agar plays the lead--a small town doctor who is the first to figure out what's going on. Agar was an actor who was never in danger of having to write an Academy Award acceptance speech and in many movies, he was incredibly stiff (The Mole People).  He was usually more effective as a supporting character in films such as Fort Apache and The Sands of Iwo Jima.

But he occasionally did quite well as the lead character. His most notable performance is the under-appreciated 1950 war movie Breaththrough. He's pretty good in Tarantula as well, coming across as intelligent and likable.

Well, mostly intelligent. Here's a safety tip: Don't leave a dying elderly scientist and an attractive graduate student alone in a remote desert lab if you even suspect there might be a giant spider running around. And when you find a pool of liquid near some human bones (a pool of venom, it turns out), for gosh sakes don't taste it while trying to figure out what it is. Gee whiz, John Agar, its no wonder Shirley Temple left you in real life!

Mara Corday is the female lead, playing a graduate student working for Carroll. She would be encountering giant arachnids again a few years later in The Black Scorpion.  Some women need to stay away from the desert.

I've been trying to think if there are any other films from my childhood I haven't re-watched. There are undoubtebly a few that I don't remember at all--just because a movie is old doesn't automatically mean its good enough to remember. But in these days of DVDs and streaming movies, it's getting easier and easier to get caught up on the ones I do remember. In fact, next week I think I'll jump from monsters to cowboys and talk about a Western I was as a kid and recently watched for the first time as an adult.

Giant Fish Invade New York!

Quite awhile back, I did posts a week apart respectively titled After the Apocalypse--According to DC (about Kamandi) and After the Apocalypse--According to Marvel (Killraven). Well, I've just realized that I should have had a third part--"After the Apocalypse--According to Gold Key."

Because, by golly, Gold Key beat Marvel to the punch in showing us what life would be like after a disaster destroys civilization. They actually didn't beat DC, who gave us the post-apocalyptic series "The Atomic Knights" a few years before Gold Key wiped out most of mankind.

But when Gold Key destroyed civilization, they did it with style. Mighty Samson, created by Otto Binder
and artist Frank Thorne, began publication in 1964, running intermittently for 20 issues until coming to an end in 1969. Another 11 issues appeared between 1972 and 1976, with one final original story appearing in Gold Key Champion #2 in 1978.

Mighty Samson was a mutant with super strength, living in the post-nuclear war city of N'Yark, where his girl friend Sharmaine and her father Mindor are trying to reconstruct the scientific advances lost in the war. Samson helps out by fighting the many savage and primitive mutant creatures that threaten N'Yark's small community.

Mighty Samson #20--the last before the book's three-year hiatus--was written by Binder, though Jack Sparling was now doing the art work. It's a typical example of how fun and clever the book was.

The streets of N'Yark have been flooded and the human population is soon threatened by fish men, led by the rather violent and power-hungry King Nephtoon. The sea king has his regular troops, but also has control over a variety of monsters.

From this simple premise we get a straightforward and well-constructed action-adventure story, with Samson using his strength (and his related ability to hold his breath for a long time) to fight against the invaders. Mindor helps as well, first by suggesting the use of old office equipment to bombard the fish-men from skyscraper buildings, then by digging up some old scuba gear to give Samson greater freedom to take the fight underwater.

Eventually, Samson is able to capture Nephtoon and force him to call off the invasion.

Otto Binder didn't seem to have the same opportunities to indulge in the quirky humor and bizarre plot twists he used so often in Captain Marvel, but his storytelling skills are still top-notch, with this particular tale allowing Jack Sparling to toss several cool-looking sea beasties at the poor humans of N'Yark.

Post-Apocalyptic settings in science fiction have become pretty common--it's a genre that was birthed during the Cold War under the real-life threat of nuclear annihilation. Most of these setting are--understandably--rather bleak. Killraven never won a final victory against the Martians; Kamandi never found a home or a safe haven; those darned, dirty apes blew up the world themselves with just a little help from Charlton Heston; and those incredibly annoying zombies keep showing up over and over long after everyone SHOULD have been sick of seeing them. I mean, seriously--stop with the zombie plagues already!

But Mighty Samson doesn't just pre-date many of these, it also brings a sense of optimism  that other stories in the genre often don't achieve or even try for. Samson is a superhero, still defending the innocent even in a world gone made. Sharmaine and Mindor are trying to rebuild the good that was lost when everything blew up, while the people of N'Yark have formed a viable and healthy community. Unlike those apes and Martians and zombies, Mighty Samson leaves us with an element of hope. Well, hope AND really awesome-looking monsters.

Cover Cavalcade

A great cover from one of the best Shadow novels.

Frank R Paul

Here's a video I just made for the Ringling Library's YouTube channel:

Friday's Favorite OTR

Escape: "Treasure Incorporated" 1/24/50

A great script by John and Gwen Bagley combines with a great performance by Frank Lovejoy, turning what might have been a contrived story about how greed destroys people into a fascinating and suspenseful character study.

Click HERE to listen or download.

The Green Arrow.. No, Darn it! I mean the Green ARCHER!

I've discovered that--if you're a comic book geek--it's impossible to tell people about Edgar Wallace's 1923 novel The Green Archer or either of the subsequent movie serials based on that novel without accidentally saying The Green ARROW at least 50% of the time. I have a lifetime of referring to an heroic archer who dresses in green as Green Arrow, darn it. I can't be expected to change now.

But the Green Archer is a different character from DC Comics' superhero. You could probably consider him an early superhero--he wore a costume and mask, keeping his identity a secret while taking vengence on villains.

Edgar Wallace wrote fun mysteries, full of bizarre twists and turns. The Green Archer is justly considered one of his best. It definitely has its share of twists and turns, as well as a superbly suspenseful climax involving many of the main characters being tossed into a clever death trap.

It's difficult to summarize the novel without giving too much away. The villain is Abel Bellamy, a rich American who has emigrated to England and now lives in the impregnable Garre Castle. He made his fortune in various ruthless and illegal ways and also has a nasty habit of taking vengeance on his enemies by threatening their children. We soon learn that he has been keeping woman prisoner in the castle for the last eight years.

Bellamy is villainous enough to require multiple protagonists, including a Scotland Yard detective, a young lady who may be related to the woman prisoner, an American reporter and--surprisingly--a husband-and-wife criminal team who at first work for Bellamy but discover that there are some things they simply won't do for money.

The most mysterious protagonist, though, is the Green Archer. Suspected by some to be a ghost haunting the castle, he seems to have full access to that castle no matter how well-guarded it is. He helps foil several of Bellamy's schemes and isn't above putting arrows through the hearts of Bellamy's minions. But his identity and his ultimate motivation is a mystery throughout the novel.


It's a lively and enjoyable book. Bellamy is loathsome in just the right way to make him an effective villain. The various good guys are all interesting characters, especially Julius Savini and his wife Faye. This is the husband-and-wife team I mentioned earlier--they begin the book as villains themselves, but to the surprise of everyone including themselves, they develop a tendency to act heroically (though they never do overcome a habit of pocketing any spare cash that might be lying around).










The Green Archer was made into a silent movie serial in 1925, which I haven't seen and I'm not certain if it exists in its entirety. It was made into a serial again in 1940, with the action moved to America. It is an excellent serial, with Victor Jory playing Spike Holland--the American reporter from the novel who is promoted to lead protagonist here. James Craven does a wonderful job as the villainous Bellamy. The story departs from the novel and is largely an original story, but its a good one. There are some great cliffhangers, often involving insidious death traps. In the serial, anyone who doesn't figure out the Green Archer's identity early on isn't really trying, but there are some fun twists involving the motivations of other characters in the last chapter.

But the original novel is still the best version of the story. It hasn't been in print for years, but The Green Arro.. no, darn it! The Green ARCHER is available online HERE.

Incompetent Alien Invaders and a Mom who Needs to be Put in a Home.

The above image is the first page of a Superboy story titled "The Stolen Identities," first published in Adventure Comics #270 (March 1960). I'm tempted to say that the story subtly represents any teenager who feels disconnected from his parents or feels they are ruining his life. You could also look at how the aliens do their jobs so poorly and call the story a condemnation of inefficient government bureaucracies.

But I'm not going to go there. It's not impossible that writer Jerry Siegel was consciously dealing with teenage angst, but I would guess that he was primarily just trying to have fun. And in that, he succeeds. This story is quirky, silly fun from start to finish.

By the way, I own this story as a reprint in a 1976 book titled Four Star Spectacular. The story there is credited to Otto Binder. This is apparently a mistake, as every other source I check--including the DC wiki and the Grand Comics Database, credit it to Siegel. I can understand the error, though. The quirkiness of the story does give it an Otto Binder feel.

It all begins with Ma and Pa Kent being teleported to an alien world. The assumption at first is that they are now in another solar system. But actually, they are on a sub-atomic world located somewhere on Earth.

A couple of aliens disguise themselves as the Kents and return to Earth. Their mission is to locate the atom on which their world exists and take it some place safe. It's a reasonable mission, but they don't trust us Earth people enough to ask us for help.

The aliens soon prove to be rather ineffectual. Despite having observed the Kents long enough to be able to create perfect disguises, including voices and mannerisms, they completely missed the fact that the Kents' son is the most powerful being in the world. Also, their teleporter breaks down, so they can't ask for reinforcements.

They finally give themselves away when "Pa Kent" mistakes the toaster for his breakfast and tries to eat it.





Sadly, us Earth people aren't looking that good either. Ma Kent blurts out of nowhere that Superboy is vulnerable to Kryptonite. Yes, Clark, it's time. Sad as it is, it's time to start looking into an assisted living home for your parents.

The aliens find some Red Kryptonite without knowing this isn't the deadly kind and load it into a ray gun. They repeatedly zap Superboy in hopes that they'll destroy him, but instead the Red K just does a series of bizarre things to the Boy of Steel. First he's turned fat, which costs him a date with Lana. (Gee whiz, Lana, a bit shallow there, aren't you?) Then he's turned tiny. Then he's turned into a giant.

I actually think there's a continuity error here concerning Superboy's mythology. A particular piece of Red K is only supposed to affect him once. But maybe the alien ray gun altered the radiation somehow, so what the heck.


While all this is happening, Superboy learns about the atomic world. Using his Super Vision, he locates the appropriate atom at the top of the Empire State Building and gives it a safe resting place at the bottom of the ocean. The aliens are grateful and, after finally repairing their teleporter, send the Kents back home.

I love this story. Yes, it's silly, but it unashamedly embraces its silliness and jumps wildly from one plot point to another--but does so without ever seriously violating its own internal logic.

Stories like "The Stolen Identities" are models for why I love comic books from this era. These are stories that knew a superhero universe could never truly be realistic and that it was wrong to even try to make it so. These are stories that will walk down whatever path Comic Book Logic leads them, holding their heads high, feeling neither shame nor embarrassment as Superboy gets turned into a fat kid by aliens pretending to be his parents.