COMICS, OLD-TIME RADIO and OTHER COOL STUFF: Random Thoughts about pre-digital Pop Culture, covering subjects such as pulp fiction, B-movies, comic strips, comic books and old-time radio. WRITTEN BY TIM DEFOREST. EDITED BY MELVIN THE VELOCIRAPTOR. New content published every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday & Friday.
Cave Girl #11 (1953) contained the title character's origin story and three more tales about the distaff Tarzan. A few weeks ago, we looked at the first story in this issue (and also explained why the first issue is #11). This time, we'll take a look at the second story.
I had thought that first story was a little unfocused, featuring a major plot devise that should have been left for a seperate story. But as we turn the page to the next story, we discover that Gardner Fox (writer) and Bob Powell (artist) are much more focused and straightforward.
We pick up right were the first story left off, with jungle guide Luke Hardin now teaming up with Cave Girl. He talks her into returning to the city with him. Powell's art really shines here, giving us several hilarious moments in which Cave Girl reacts violently to automobiles and table fans.
Hardin, in the meantime, identifies Cave Girl as a missing heiress, which worries the family lawyer because he's been embezzling money for years on the theory that the entire family was dead.
The lawyer hires some thugs to do away with Cave Girl. But never bring a mere trio of thugs to a Cave Girl fight. She kills one in her hotel room and lures the other two into the jungle. They don't come back out of the jungle.
There's a bit of a glitch in the story in that Cave Girl clearly kills all three of them, but they are still able to talk and rat out the lawyer. Oh, well--maybe it was a dying confession.
Anyway, strange technology and murderous thugs don't sit well with Cave Girl, who heads back to her jungle. Hardin, though, hasn't given up on her yet, as we'll find out in a couple of weeks.
Fox's script is solid and clever, but it is really Powell's vibrant art that truly brings the essentially silly character of Cave Girl to life.
I know that many Westerns did not strive for historical accuracy and we don't really expect them to. Western stories often deal with the mythical (rather than historical) Wild West and that's just fine. The mythical Wild West is a lot of fun to visit.
But there is one thing that can bug me. When an occasional Western is set prior to the Civil War or during that conflict, I'm a little bothered when obvious anachronisms such as Winchester rifles or dynamite are being used. I realize that anachronistic weapons show up in almost any Western, but I'm often okay with that--if only because I don't have the knowledge to tell a 1892 model Winchester from an 1873 model.
But if its set before the Civil War, such things do get a little on my nerves, since they are so obviously out of place. I wrote about 1953's The Man from the Alamo a few years ago and, despite praising the film, spent a paragraph or two whining about this.
Well, 1953 also brought us Kansas Pacific, staring Sterling Hayden. It's a fun movie, set in the months just before the Civil War, in which both Northern and Southern factions in Blood Kansas were raising havoc.
The government is trying to complete the Kansas Pacific railroad, opening up a steady supply route to western forts in anticipation of the war. Cal Bruce (Barton MacLane) is ramroding the construction, but despite his years of experience, he's stymied by continued sabotage carried out by Southern sympathizers.
The Southerners, by the way, are led by Bill Quantrill, who in real life led a blood guerilla campaign against the North during the war. Movie versions of him often portray him (I would argue accurately) as murderous. Brian Donlevy, for instance, gave us a quite psychotic Quantrill in the 1950 film Kansas Raiders.
In Kansas Pacific, Quantrill (played by Reed Hadley) is a more generic bad guy who is rationally trying to accomplish his goals, though Hadley does bring across a sense of intelligence that makes him an effective antagonist.
The hero of the film is an army engineer named John Nelson (Sterling Hayden), who is sent by the military in an undercover role to supervise railroad construction and guard against the saboteurs. Cal Bruce is initially resentful of a guy he sees as his replacement, but the two soon come to respect each other, with Bruce eventually deducing Nelson's real identity.
The action in the movie is centered around Quantrill's various attempts to sabotage the railroad and Nelson's countermoves against him. Several times, all this involves large amounts of dynamite, so we get to see lots of stuff blow up. Later in the movie, Quantrill gives up on stopping railroad construction and moves on to using a cannon to blow up ammunition trains.
The action is done well, with Hayden's performance as Nelson giving the plot a firm backbone. My understanding is that Hayden didn't really care for acting, but did it simply to earn a living and pay for his frequent travels. All the same, he always brought a real authority to his roles. Perhaps this was an outgrowth of his wartime work with the O.S.S., but whether Hayden played a hero or a villain, you always knew he could kick your butt without half trying.
I do like this movie and recommend it, but I do grind my teeth a bit at the dynamite (invented in 1867) and the Winchester rifles (invented in 1866). I know this movie is set in the mythical Wild West and the dynamite is effectively used to generate some fun action scenes. But, gee whiz, there must have been a few single-shot rifles and muskets in the studio's property department!
Oh, well, that's just me. Watching Sterling Hayden kick butt is still worthwhile.
Next week, we'll look at another Civil War-era movie that proves to be really good despite some historically inappropriate use of dynamite.
EC's tragically short-lived series titled Piracy wasn't always about traditional pirates and often swerved off into other sorts of sea-going adventures. But that's okay, because (like so many of EC's series from the 1950s) it was packed full of superb stories.
And there were more than enough traditional pirates to satisfy our collective urge to read about them. The first story in the premiere issue (October-November 1954), for instance, is an excellent pirate tale.
The story is titled "The Privateer" and is drawn by the great Reed Crandall. Of course, there is a fine legal distinction between a pirate and a privateer--since the privateer has official permission from a specific government to attack enemy ships and keep a share of any loot captured.
But Captain Ballard, the main character of the story, veers away from legal piracy. He's licenced by the by the English to attack Spanish ships. He's a tad ruthless about it, but more or less sticks to the rules at first.
But, by golly, there's money to be made, isn't there? The narration in the story begins to refer to Ballard's rapid descent into piracy as his education. This is a nice touch, giving both structure and a dry humor to the tale.
When a few weeks go by without sighting a Spanish ship, Ballard attacks a neutral French ship.
Ballard realizes that, as long as he doesn't leave any witnesses, he's free to attack just about any ships he wishes. So his education continues as he captures ships from many nations, including British, and loots a few ports. His wealth continues to grow as he makes plans to hide most of it and tell the British authorities that he actually captured a much smaller amount. Thus he avoid having to pay his agreed upon percentage of all his loot to the British authorities.
But, as the story points out, Ballard's education is completed when he attacks three apparently unarmed merchant ships, only to discover that the ships are actually heavily armed pirates.
So Ballard learns--a little too late--that it doesn't pay to try to out-pirate other pirates.
Crandall's art turning a pretty good script into great story. It was a strong start to what really was a fantastic comic book. That Piracy only ran seven issues really is tragic.
Next week, it's back to visit with Cave Girl again.
A delirious and terrified woman arrives at Shannon's Place waving a pistol and nearly shooting Shannon. This sets off an unusual series of events that lead to Shannon being forced into a game of Russian Roulette.
J.D. Newsom was an interesting guy. Born in China, raised in France and educated at Cambridge, he served with the British Army during the First World War and the American Navy during World War II. He also wrote a number of novels and short stories about the French Foreign Legion.
"The Medal," for instance, was published in the December 15, 1927 issue of Adventure. Full of dry humor as well as gritty action, it is a story that really draws you into plot and keeps you there.
The protagonist is an American named Alexander Sutton who marries a French girl while serving in the American Army during the Great War. And we learn, from reading about Sutton's woes, that its not a good idea to marry a woman when you don't share enough of a common language to make your situation clear to her. The poor girl thought she was marrying a rich man, not a man who one day hoped to be rich.
Sutton's family disapproves of the wife, who is herself expressing disapproval loudly and often. Eventually, Sutton mugs a guy to get enough money to take her back to France, where she promptly dumps him.
Sutton is nearly penniless and stranded in a French village, wondering what to do next, when a small Frenchman tries to pick his pocket of his few remaining francs. This, oddly, leads to a friendship between the two men and a mutual decision to join the Legion. Soon, Sutton finds himself serving in French-controlled North Africa, where he discovers that he can handle the physical hardships, but his French friend never, ever STOPS TALKING!
Here, Newsom actually manages to sneak in some sharp remarks about both the inherent absurdity of colonialism and the fact that those leading rebellions against European rulers don't necessarily care about the best interests of the local population. This lasts just a few paragraphs, but it both effectively comments on these issues and sets up the background for the action that soon follows. It's an impressive bit of writing.
And plenty of action does follow, with French forces getting ambushed, Sutton's talkative friend disgracing himself and later getting an opportunity to redeem himself, and Sutton himself discovering that--despite the incredible hardships and dangers--he has found a home in the Legion.
And even when the action gets intense, the story never loses its dry sense of humor. Sutton's relationship with his French sometimes-friend is fun and a brief sequence in which this friend gets Sutton stuck with taking an officer's dog for walks is wonderful.
Marvel Two-in-One #42 (Aug. 1978--written by Ralph Macchio & drawn by Sal Buscema) introduces us to Project Pegasus, a top-secret underground government research facility dedicated to finding alternative energy sources and that probably has the worst security record of any government project ever.
Heck, they can't even keep the good guys from breaking in! The issue begins with Ben Grimm busting in, angry because an alien named Wundarr has been taken to the Project. Wundarr is superpowerful, but has the mentality of a toddler. "Uncle Benjy" has briefly been his guardian and Ben is now upset over the thought that Wundarr was brought to the Project as a prisoner and might be getting experimented on.
Wundarr will be playing a key part in future Project Pegasus stories, but here he's pretty much a plot device to get Ben to the Project and set up this issue's plot. The overall effect of this is a slow pace and a slightly disjointed feel to the issue. Also, the initial fight between Ben and Captain America (who is checking out the security situation) is fun, but really serves no other purpose other than maintaining the tradition that two superheroes should always fight each other before teaming up.
Ben is eventually reassured that Wundarr is all right, though the "boy" is terrified and doesn't understand what's going on. Reluctantly, Ben agrees to allow an experiment to proceed--Wundarr's powers are going to be used probe the Cosmic Cube, which might be used as an energy source. (Though, actually, if you have the Cosmic Cube, couldn't you just ask it for unlimited energy?)
Unfortunately, the Project's lousy security rears its head. The place has been infiltrated by a guy named Victorius, who is leader of the Cult of Entropy, which is dedicated to allowing the entire universe to dissolve away. Victorious sabotages the experiment, putting Wundarr into a coma while he steals the Cube. He then teleports himself to the Cult's meeting place in the Everglades and uses the Cube to resurrect their dead leader.
Ben and Cap trace the Cube, arriving just in time to appear in a splash panel that sets up the next issue.
I'm reviewing the Project Pegasus stories because I enjoy them--both story and art work. But, looking back at this issue now, I can see that this first appearance of the Project is awkwardly contructed. Buscema's art looks great, but there's a lot of exposition, appearances by relatively obscure characters with only vague explanations as to who they are, and a slow pace.
All the same, Project Pegasus will be used as a source of some fun stories, so perhaps we can forgive a slow beginning.
Next week, we'll go sailing with two back-stabbing pirates. Two weeks from now, we'll visit Cave Girl once again. So it'll be three weeks before we continue with this particular story.
I've written three books and a number of short ebooks about old-time radio, pulp magazines, classic comic strips, and Christian theology. You can find a link to my Amazon author's page below.
Magazine articles I've written cover subjects on military history and the American West. I teach several Bible studies at my church, assist with the children's ministry and have been on short-term mission trips to South Sudan, Haiti, Guatemala, Nepal and Turkey.
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