The Trio of Terror

It's really not a bad idea. If you own a circus that is struggling financially, then finding a new act to attract crowds is a reasonable goal. If you live in a world where superpowers exist, then getting someone with superpowers to sign with your circus is a good move.

But when a trio of partners who own a circus ask the Marvel family to join up, it's quickly (and a little rudely--the Wisdom of Solomon doesn't include empathy?) explained to them that the Marvels don't do any super-stuff for money.

What sympathy we might have had for the circus guys quickly evaporates, though, when one of them steals a book about sorcery and witchcraft. It's a real magic book--something the Marvels acquired on one of their adventures. Apparently, the Wisdom of Solomon also doesn't include the idea of locking up potentially dangerous items. 

I'm not making fun of the story, by the way. "The Trio of Terror" appeared in Marvel Family #21 (March 1948) and is a typical Otto Binder/C.C. Beck triumph of bizarre plotting, humor and adventure. I actually love the casualness with which the people of this universe react to fantastic occurrences. Maybe it doesn't make sense to lock away your magic books. People are probably stumbling across that sort of thing at used book stores every day anyways. 

The Marvels soon notice the book is missing, but not before the circus owners use it to summon up

three creatures from mythology. I love that one of them is the Argus--a creature with a hundred eyes. He's one you don't see turning up in fantasy adventures very often.

Though the creatures are initially caged, the circus owners don't realize how powerful they are, nor that they will return to the Nether Realms in an hour unless they get three others to take their place.

They break out of the cage and stalk the circus owners. The Marvels arrive to stop them, but initially have trouble figuring out how to deal with the creatures' various abilities.

But the Wisdom of Solomon does apparently kick in from time to time. The Marvels soon figure out how to deal with the creatures. But not long after that, they return to their civilian identities at a bad moment--the Marvels are actually kind of dumb in that regard.

Billy, Freddie and Mary are captured and gagged. The creatures read the spell to send them to the Nether Realms. Are the Marvels doomed?

Find out for yourself. It's available to read online HERE. 

As is typical with Binder/Beck Marvel stories, this one is a delight. As usual, Comic Book Logic is stretched as far as it will go without breaking. The story generates a real sense of danger from the creatures, but retains its goofiness and sense of humor at the same time. It's also a model of concise storytelling--neatly fitting a lot of story into just 9 pages. In fact, I think many readers would be surprised to find that it is so short after reading it. 

Well, next week we'll travel from the circus to the jungle of 'Nam and join a couple of Marines with odd nicknames as they battle the Viet Cong.

Cover Cavalcade

Very effective cover by Walter Baumhaufer.

Friday's Favorite OTR

NBC Short Story: "The Thing in the Tunnel" (produced in 1951--preempted and never aired during original broadcast run)

An effective and atmospheric adaptation of the Charles Dickens short story "The Signalman."

Click HERE to listen or download.

The Return of Lee Chan--Part 1

 In the 1930s, one of the most consistently entertaining movie series featured Chinese-American detective Charlie Chan. With Warner Oland as Chan and Keye Luke as Number One son Lee Chan, the films were good stories featuring one of the most purely likable protagonists to every appear on celluloid.

A highlight of these films was the relationship between Charlie Chan and his hero-worshiping son Lee. Lee might try to hard and sometimes get in the way, but he also acting bravely when the situation called for it, saving his dad's life on a couple of occasions. He was a son who simply loved his dad.

When Oland died in 1938, Keye Luke left the series. Sidney Toler took over as Charlie, making the detective a little more irascible, and Victor Sen Yung took up the sidekick role as Number Two son Jimmy, with Lee now said to be off at college. In a few films, Jimmy wasn't around and Benson Fong stepped in to play Number Three son Tommy.

By the time we get to the late 1940s, Toler was dead and Roland Winters played Chan, starring in six films produced by Monogram Pictures. These had a much smaller budget than the earlier films (which had been 20th Century Fox productions), but still had pretty good stories. Victor Sen Yung remained the usual sidekick.

I will pause here to whine about an annoying continuity glitch in the later Chan films. Yung's character, though still clearly identified as the Number Two son, is inexplicably renamed Tommy in the Winters films. Why? Why? Why? He's clearly still Jimmy. Did he and Tommy trade names? Is Charlie getting a bit forgetful in his old age, with his sons too respectful of him to correct him? Gee whiz.

Anyway, in the last two Chan films before the series came to an end, Keye Luke did return to play Lee. We'll look at 1948's The Feather Serpent this time, then get to 1949's The Sky Dragon in a few weeks.

Charlie, Lee and Tommy (darn it, that's Jimmy!) are vacationing in Mexico, with comic relief chauffeur Birmingham Brown also in attendance. But, really, Charlie Chan should know by now that he can't ever really take a vacation. Someone will always get murdered.

This particular murder happens right in the middle of a room filled with Chan clan members, Mexican cops and a quartet of suspects. It's the classic "Turn the lights out and back-stab your victim in the dark" ploy.

The suspects are all members of an expedition looking for two missing archaeologists and an ancient Aztec tomb. The dead guy is actually one of the missing guys, who had been held prisoner at the tomb and was about to reveal its location before being killed. So Charlie and his sons join the expedition as it heads out into the jungle, intending to solve the murder and find the remaining missing man. One more murder and an attempt or two on Charlie's life complicates matters.




Charlie's detective skills and some help from an unexpected source finally allow them to find the Aztec tomb, which villains are in the process of looting. That means its time for Lee and Tommy (it's Jimmy--Jimmy I tell you!) to start throwing punches. Though they can't match their dad's skill as detectives, punching out bad guys is something they are pretty good at. In fact, when Tommy/Jimmy starts repeatedly slamming a thug's skull against the stone steps of the tomb, you begin to wonder if he's a little too good at it. Man, that was a brutal moment!

It's a fun little film, though it lacks the cleverness of the Oland and early Toler films from the previous decade. You can argue that having both Lee and Jimmy (I'm just gonna call him Jimmy, darn it) in the same film--with a running time of only 61 minutes--was a mistake in terms of story construction. There really isn't enough going on in the story to give them both enough to do. But this is the only time Luke and Yung appear together in a Chan film and it was nice to see that happen.

The two actors are getting into middle age by this time as well. Luke was 44 and Yung was 33. Luke does play Lee with a little more maturity, but Yung is still given a lot of the goofy sidekick stuff to do. He does this well, but he's too obviously an adult now for this to be completely believable.

Also, the lower budget at Monogram does show through, perhaps most notably when Lee and Jimmy find some Aztec hieroglyphics that are pretty obviously just random shapes drawn with chalk.

All the same, I still liked the movie. I think it might be impossible for me to dislike a Chan film. The story is serviceable and, even though Toler and then Winters played the detective with an increasingly sarcastic bent, we are also presented with a father who loves his sons and sons who love their dad.

The scene I'm including below highlights this. Lee might be no great shakes at deductive reasoning, but look how quickly and effectively he springs into action when his dad is in danger. And notice his normally irascible dad's concern for him afterwards, calling him "Lee" rather than the less personal "Number One Son." It's a sign that even when the budgets got small and the scripts got more routine, the creators of the Charlie Chan films still got what was important about the characters.

Keye Luke would return for the last Chan film, but Victor Sen Yung would be absent. Maybe he and Benson Fong were in a back alley somewhere, fist-fighting over who gets to be called "Tommy."

Fingertips of Doom!--Shogun Warriors, Part 4

With this post, we're a little over halfway through with our look at Marvel's 1979-80 series Shogun Warriors.

The last couple of issues centered on Richard Carson and his robot Raydeen, fighting a monster of unknown origin along a California beach, with his girlfriend Deena getting drafted as Raydeen's co-pilot.

With Shogun Warriors #9 (October 1979), more mysterious monsters start popping up--each time near one of the Shoguns. Illongo Savage investigates a meteor that landed near his research center in Madagascar, taking along his lovely assistant Judith. The meteor hatches like an egg, spawning a weird monster they dub the Starchild.

Savage summons his robot Dangard Ace. Rremember that each pilot can now request their robots be teleported to them when needed. It's a handy ability to have when you're stuck in traffic. Judith has to distract the monster to give Savage time to reach the robot, but soon he's ready to go.

I'll stop to say right now that I am loving Herb Trimpe's monster designs. Cerberus (the monster Carson fought last issue), Starchild and the Hand of Five creature that will soon pop up are all bizarre and incredibly fun designs. It's as if Trimpe is channeling his inner 10-year-old, bringing to life the sort of creatures an imaginative kid would sketch on notebook paper while not paying attention to his teacher.

Each monster has weird abilities to match their weird appearances and their fights with the robots are all exciting and well-choreographed. A series like this is anchored on just how cool the robots & monsters are, as well as how fun their fights are. Shogun Warriors has been succeeded admirably here. This is the reason Giant Robots and Monsters exist, by golly.


Anyway, poor Dangard Ace has a bad time against Starchild. The fight starts underwater, moves to shore and rolls into a nearby city. Savage and his robot make no headway against the monster and soon spend much of the fight saving innocent bystanders.

Then it turns out that Starchild was only in its larvae stage. When it grows bigger and sprouts wings, it looks as if Savage is doomed. But the monster seems to lose interest and simply flies away. Was Dangard Ace being tested?

That brings us to the next issue, in which Genji (who is back in Tokyo) is being grilled on where the prototype airplane she was flying back in the first issue has gone to. She assures them the plane is safe, but refuses to explain further.

I'm still not sure this makes sense. This series is set firmly in the Marvel universe, even if the usual stable of Marvel characters hasn't yet appeared. Genji's story (getting drafted by ancient aliens to pilot a giant robot and fight monsters) really isn't all that unusual in the world in which she lives.

But the point becomes moot when one of Trimpe's most bizarre creations--the Hand of Five--attacks. This guy is a hand-shaped monster with five heads on its fingertips, which are able to detach and fight independently.

Gee whiz, I wish this book and Marvel's Godzilla had been published simultaneously and crossed over with one another. The Big G vs. the Hand of Five is a fight I would really like to see.

But Genji, flying Combatra, does pretty well for herself. The fight is a doozy and perhaps the best of the series so far, with the Hand and Combatra both separating into their individual components, rejoining, then separating again as the fight rages across Tokyo and the tactical situation becomes fluid. It is a superb example of imaginative fight choreography.

The battle spills over into Shogun Warriors #11 (December 1979). Genji does better against the Hand than Savage did against the Starchild, using several clever tactics to eventually damage the monster.

But then the Hand of Five--like Starchild--suddenly breaks off the fight and flies away. The issue ends with the Followers (the guys who built the robots) detecting another meteor approaching Earth and theorizing that this might hold the answers to the presumably connected monster appearances. Genji, meanwhile, takes her robot and runs for it, knowing that she's still suspected of treason and likely to be blamed for the carnage.

While all this is going on, Richard Carson has attracted the attention of a Men in Black-type organization.

In addition to the cool fights, I like the way writer Doug Moench handles the human characters. This is always a danger in stories like this--I guess we do need a few human characters to identify with, but we don't want them to distract us from the cool stuff. When this happens, we end up with a Michael Bay Transformers film. And no one wants that.

Though Moench (as was common in his writing) can be a little too dialogue-heavy, the humans are an integral part of the story. In my last post, I mentioned that I thought the pause to give Richard Carson some character development was perhaps a page or so too long, but now the action is flowing smoothly.  Each of Shogun pilots is given a close friend who now knows about their robots. Each is given more personality, with information about them seeded throughout the story arc without ever interfering with the overall plot and the action. It's very skillfully done.

I recently re-read Moench and Trimpe's run on Godzilla, which had been published a few years before Shogun Warriors. Both series involved bizarre monsters whose presence is explained by convoluted but clever science fiction plots. Both had great fight scenes strongly illustrated by Trimpe. Both had likable human characters (though Godzilla had a really annoying kid hanging around who was the poster child for the need to spank children).. When I finish reading through Shogun Warriors, it will be interesting to finish up the reviews with a comparison of the two monster-oriented series and see which one seemed the better of the two. Unless Shogun Warriors takes a sudden downturn, it's going to be a close call.

Next week, we visit with the Marvel Family as they are asked to join a circus.

Cover Cavalcade

A superbly composed cover by John Severin.

Friday's Favorite OTR

21st Precinct: "The Collar" 4/7/1954

21st Precinct was obviously inspired by Dragnet in its goal to realistically portray police work, but it had its own personality and was a solid show in its own right. In this episode, one cop gives his partner credit for an arrest. This seems harmless enough, but the situation evolves into something where this small deception might mean a criminal gets set free.

Click HERE to listen or download.

Hauling Freight Down a Narrow Mountain Trail

I reviewed the novel Ambush, by Luke Short, a few months ago. Short has a great reputation as a writer of Westerns. That’s a genre I enjoy,  but  I just never happened to get around to reading his stuff. But I enjoyed Ambush so much that it wasn’t long before I dug up a copy of another of Short's novels.

Dead Freight for Piute was serialized in Western Story Magazine in November & December of 1939. It has a nifty premise. Rather than dealing with cattle drives, outlaws or Indians, it deals with freighting companies.

Hauling freight was, of course, an important part of building the West, but it doesn’t quite have the romantic flair of driving cattle over the Chisum trail, forming a posse to chase outlaws, or a last stand against Apache warriors. But Short demonstrates in this novel that the freight business is a rich source of drama and adventure when placed in the hands of a good writer.

Cole Armin shows up in the mining boom town of Piute, looking for a job with his Uncle Craig’s freight business. His trip to Piute was not without incident, though. The stage he rode in on was robbed and a pretty lady passenger named Celia Wallace is robbed of the $10,000 in cash she was carrying. She was bringing this money to her brother Ted, who is running his own freight company in competition with the Monarch—Craig Armin’s company.

Celia knows who Cole is and assumes he’s in on the robbery, which was engineered by Craig to wipe

out the competition. But Cole finds out his uncle is a crook, wins a fight against a teamster he recognized as the stage robber, then blackmails Craig into returning the cash. Soon, Cole is working for Ted and Celia with the Western Freight company.

Craig is determined to be the one-and-only freight company, though. What follows is a convoluted but well-told story in which Craig, his top thug Wade Billings and dishonest sheriff Ed Linton plot to destroy the Western company while also plotting and counter-plotting to double-cross each other

Cole is a great protagonist. He’s unfamiliar with the freighting business (something that’s used as an effective plot point several times), but he’s smart and intensely loyal to anyone he befriends. He has a temper, though, which is directed at the bad guys but can sometimes rise to a frightening level. That’s also an effective plot point on a few occasions.

So Short writes a Western that—like many Westerns—mirrors the hard-boiled fiction that the Western genre helped spawn.  And he keeps the action moving with some superbly written action set pieces. Cole’s fist fight with Wade Billings, involving a bull whip (which is why one edition of the book was titled Bull-Whip) is truly exciting. A sequence in which the Cole, still inexperienced as a teamster as he navigates a large wagon full of ore down a mountain trail, turns equally exciting when he discovers someone sawed through the brake lever.

The final gunfight, with Cole carrying an injured Ted Wallace over his shoulders while Ted shoots at the bad guys and fumbles in Cole’s belt for more bullets, is one of the best I’ve ever read.

Dead Freight for Piute was made into a movie in 1948 and re-titled Albuquerque.  Starring Randolph Scott as Cole, it’s a pretty good Western, though the plot was streamlined and more straightforward, making it less interesting that Short’s more complex novel. Still, it’s got Lon Chaney , Jr. as one of the bad guys and Gabby Hayes as Scott’s sidekick, so it’s still fun to watch.

"Ya kin not hit a ghosk, 'cause they is jus' air!"

There have been a number of skilled writers and artists who have given us great Popeye stories over the years, but the one person who comes closest to matching E.C. Segar (Popeye's creator) in giving us Segar's unique synthesis of slapstick and grand adventure is Bud Sagendorf, who wrote and drew Popeye comics for Dell.

Popeye #3 (August-October 1948) is a prime example of this. The cover story is a 32-pager titled "Ghost Island," which actually starts out with Popeye refusing to go on an adventure.

That's because this particular adventure involves delivering ghost traps to the appropriately-named Ghost Island, where the island's sole inhabitant is simply tired of being haunted.

Popeye doesn't want to tangle with ghosts. You can't fight something intangible and throwing a punch is pretty much Popeye's sole tactic for dealing with dangerous situations. But though Popeye wants to leave the ghosts alone, the ghosts don't want to leave him alone.

But when Swee'Pea is snatched by a ghost, Popeye pretty much has to get involved.      

I love how Sagendorf draws the ghosts--everything about them exudes a casual matter-of-factness that just makes the situation that much more hilarious.

What follows is both exciting and funny. Popeye sails with the cargo of ghost traps for ghost island. Olive Oil stows away on board disguised as one of the ghost--only to walk into one of the traps. The ghosts sabotage the compass, sending the boat wildly off course. When they finally arrive on the island, their client is livid when he sees a dozen ghosts (along with their luggage) disembarking.

In the end, it turns out the ghosts are just guys wearing sheets, hired by the ghost trap salesman to drum up business. And Swee'Pea? He turns out to be working for the "ghosts" as well--the little brat took a bribe to help out.

The salesman, by the way, turns out to be someone who is always in need of money--otherwise, he would have to pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today. When Popeye finally finds out what's going on--he indulges himself by beating up a lot of "ghosts" and then having words with Wimpy.

The trouble with reviewing a story like this is that it brings to mind the old saying about analyzing humor: It's like dissecting a frog--you can do it, but the frog dies in the process. A brief summary of the story simply does not do it justice and the humor has a delightful sort of bizarre-ness to it that makes it difficult to describe at all. Like E.C. Segar's original comic strip, Bud Sagendorf's Popeye stories have to be read to be truly appreciated. 

Next week, we return to giant robots fighting giant monsters--the obvious fallback position when you don't have Popeye available to simply punch out the monsters.

Cover Cavalcade

The cover story in this issue has never been reprinted. I'm irresponsibly thinking of dropping 20 to 30 bucks on Ebay to get a copy so I can read it. These covers really were effective marketing tools.