Edgar Rice Burroughs Podcast: Episode #17: The Battle for Pellucidar, Part 2

Edgar Rice Burroughs Podcast: Episode #17: The Battle for Pellucidar, Part 2:   Tim, Jess and Scott finish their discussion of Tarzan: The Battle for Pellucidar, the 2020 novel written by Win Scott Eckert. Click HERE ...

Friday's Favorite OTR

 Halls of Ivy: "Lost Dog" 4/14/50

The Halls are on the way to a formal dinner in which they hope the host will write a large endowment check to the college. But on the way there, they find a lost dog. There's a lot of money to be lost if they miss the party, but they can hardly leave the poor animal on its own, can they?

Click HERE to listen or download.

When Bogart isn't Bogart

 

Written in 1977, The Man With Bogart's Face, by Andrew J. Fenaday, is a fun and loving tribute to Bogart and to classic detective and noir movies. A man with a past that is only hinted at (he was somehow wounded at one point in the past and probably worked in the movie industry) has plastic surgery to make himself a double of Humphrey Bogart, then changes his name to Sam Marlowe. He opens a private detective office and has a habit of "casting" people he meets as Golden Age Hollywood actors.

At first, we think he might just be nuts, but when he gets several clients that all turn out to want the same pair of priceless sapphires, he proves to be a good detective and more than able to handle himself in either a fist fight or gun fight. He follows up clues intelligently and the ability to "read" the people he meets and deduce their motives. He might think someone should be played by Peter Lorre if life were an old movie, but he'll be correct in his understanding of that person's character.

There is a level of parody here, with a plot and characters that key off The Maltese Falcon. Other classic crime films (both Bogie and non-Bogie films) get shout-outs. For instance, there's a The Lady From Shanghai shoot-out with a hitman in a Hall of Mirrrors. And, like all good parodies, it obviously loves the subject it is making fun of while still being sincerely funny. 

But it is also well-written enough to work as a straight detective story and get us to invest in characters we come to care about. The plot is convoluted, but ties up its various loose ends at the climax in a satisfying way. 

It begins with a lady named Elsa hires Marlowe because someone seems to be stalking her father. That leads to a shoot-out in the Hollywood Bowl. Then several different parties show up to hire him to find two priceless sapphires known as the Eyes of Alexander. A beautiful woman (whom Marlowe immediately casts as Gene Tierney) is soon involved--both in the case and with Marlowe personally. Not surprisingly, the sapphires prove to be linked to Elsa's father. Fists and bullets both fly as Marlowe works to get to the bottom of it all. 

So we have a strong detective story and a loving parody mixed together to form a tribute to a time when studios such as Warner Brothers and R.K.O. The novel is no longer in print, but it's worth tracking down.

Invader Fights Invader!

 

cover art by Jack Kirby

Prince Namor, the Sub-Mariner, doesn't think much of us surface people. How deep-seated this hatred is pretty much depends on the writer of any particular comic book, but in general he just doesn't like us.

But during World War II, after the Nazis attacked Altantis, he quick understandably and quite appropriately decided that he really, really hated the Nazis and he would be willing to work with the Allied nations to defeat Hitler.

All the same, Namor still has a quick temper and will occasionally strike out on his own. 

That's the premise of The Invaders #3 (November 1975), written by Roy Thomas and drawn by Frank Robbins. The team is returning to the U.S. after a mission in Europe when they spot a ship being torpedoed by a U-boat. The U-boat crew soon discovers that it's a bad idea to attack Allied shipping when a team of superheroes is nearby.

The U-boat commander is captured alive and the good guys discover he's carrying a coded message. So it's off to Washington to get it de-coded.

This doesn't take long and the Invaders learn that a super-powered being called U-Man, who is apparently an Atlantian with enchanced size and strength, has been assigned to kill Winston Churchill. The Prime Minister has been in the U.S. meeting with Roosevelt. The Nazis plan to tag him during his trip home. And he's already left.

The idea that one of his people might have turned traitor ticks off Namor and he immediately decides that he needs to deal with the U-Man on his own. Sadly, Namor isn't good at reasonably explaining his intentions, so the situation soon deteriorates into a brawl over the streets of Washington. At least it's not New York this time. Even as early as 1942, New Yorkers must have been getting tired of super-hero battles taking so frequently over their city.

Roy Thomas tosses in an interesting twist here. Captain America's sidekick Bucky sympathizes with Namor and takes his side in the ensuing fight, spraying Toro with a fire extinguisher before punching out his fellow sidekick. This nearly results in Captain America and a stunned Human Torch falling to their deaths, but Bucky sticks to his guns regardless. He's able to join Namor on the Atlantian plane/sub the Invaders have been using for transport. The two fly off alone to battle the Nazi supervillain.

The remaining Invaders get ready to follow, ready to battle both Nazis and Namor.

It's a strong story, coming up with a situation that, combined with Namor's temper, believably pits the heroes against one another. (Though the situation did devolve into a brawl too quickly--probably because Thomas only had so many pages in which to tell the story.) The other Invaders are shown as being sympathetic to Namor, but (except for Bucky) they realize they can't let personal feelings put their mission at risk. And for Bucky--well, the first page of this issue shows him bonding with Namor as the Atlantian instructs him how to fly the plane, providing a proper motivation for his decision to side with Namor. 

All this leads into the next issue, which we'll look at next week.

Edgar Rice Burroughs Podcast: Podcast #16: Tarzan: The Battle for Pellucidar, Pa...

Edgar Rice Burroughs Podcast: Podcast #16: Tarzan: The Battle for Pellucidar, Pa...:   Jess, Scott and Tim discuss the 2019 novel Tarzan: The Battle for Pellucidar, by Win Scott Eckert. This novel is part of the New ERB Unive...

Cover Cavalcade

 

A Bill Ely cover from 1956. If you live in a Comic Book universe, this is probably a really, really bad plan.

She/He MADE Me!: TIM MAKES ANGELA READ: Hands in the Dark (1932)

She/He MADE Me!: TIM MAKES ANGELA READ: Hands in the Dark (1932):   Hands in the Dark,"  by Walter Gibson (using the house name Maxwell Grant). First published in the May 1932 issue of The Shadow Magaz...

Friday's Favorite OTR

 Jack Benny: "The Maxwell is Stolen" 10/1/50

Jack's car is ancient, unreliable and ready to fall apart if you were to breathe on it to hard. But someone decides to steal it anyways.

Click HERE to listen or download. 

Two Great Westerns

 

Angela and I are in a really fun online book club in which, each month, we read one of Louis L'Amour's Sackett novels and another unrelated Western, then discuss them. But a visiting relative will mean we'll be missing an upcoming meeting. Though we're happy to have that visitor here, I'm bummed about missing the meeting. The books this time around are two of the best Westerns I've ever read. 

These were L'Amour's Sackett (1961) and Wild Times (1979), by Brian Garfield. And, by golly, if I can't talk about them at the book club, I'm gonna talk about 'em here.

{Update: My brother hadn't yet adjusted to the time change on Book Club Night and fell asleep early. So I got to attend the meeting anyways. But since I'd already written this post, I'm leaving it up.}

In terms of plot, the novels are very different. Sackett is about Tell Sackett, who is working to improve himself by teaching himself to read properly while working a hidden mine for gold, helping to establish a new town and facing off against the vengeful Bigelow brothers. The action takes place over the course of a few months.

Wild Times is the life story of an expert sharpshooter named Hugh Cardiff. Hugh is a crack shot--perhaps the best in the American West--who becomes the hero of a series of dime novels and the star of a less-than-realistic play about his adventures. He eventually opens his own Wild West show. But along the way, he has a number of real adventures, suffering loss and romantic heartache while also making a number of life-long friends. The action takes place over six decades, starting with the Civil War and ending in the 1920s.

Both books, though, have similar themes running through them. In each case, these themes give strength to the plots and additional life to the characters. In both stories, the importance of being educated is stressed. Themes of honesty and loyalty to one's friends are there, along with the benefits of having these traits. Also, the protagonists in both novels work for what they have and clearly earn their eventual success. 

Also, by coincidence, the best scenes in both novels parallel each other. In Wild Times, Hugh makes an epic journey through a desert, nearly dying along the way, in order to carry an injured friend to safety.  In Sackett, Tell makes an epic journey over a snow-covered mountain, nearly dying along the way, in order to carry an injured man (in this case, an enemy) to safety. 

So I've just read two books that stress the importance of family and friends. But then, because of visiting family, I thought I would miss hanging out with Book Club Friends. But then I was able to attend the book club anyways because my brother fell asleep early after a trip across four time zones. It's complicated, but it's probably easier than hauling a wounded man across a heat-seared desert or a snow-covered mountain. So I suppose I can't complain.

Dinosaurs Committing Suicide

 

As I've said in previous War That Time Forgot reviews, these stories existed entirely as an excuse to show World War II soldiers fighting dinosaurs. And that, by itself, more than justifies its existence. I don't want to live in a world in which WWII soldiers didn't fight dinosaurs. No sane person would want that.

The story in Star Spangled War Stories #106 (Dec. 1962-Jan. 1963), written by Bob Kanigher and drawn by Ross Andru (who also did the cover) is typical of the appeal of the series. The human characters are pretty much just ciphers--the human soldiers who are used as a gateway to bring us into their dinosaur-filled world. 

The humans have two gimmicks attached to them. One is that they are the crew of a 155mm cannon. The other is that all three keep having the exact same dream of being chased by dinosaurs.

At first, they laugh this off as coincidence. But then, while being transported by a glider, they fly through a strange cloud and end up on an island inhabited by dinosaurs.

This was early in the series and Kanigher never really made an attempt to link the tales together with a strong continuity. Usually, the dinosaurs are on an island (or islands) in the modern-day Pacific Ocean, which unfortunate soldiers, sailors and Marines continually stumble across. A few stories are set in the Arctic, with frozen dinosaurs getting thawed out. In this case, there is actual time travel involved, with the strange cloud being some sort of warp gate.  

Anyway, the soldiers make liberal use of both their cannon and their hand grenades to fight off dinosaurs. They lose their cannon, though, when a large pachycephlosaurus picks it up and inadvertantly commits suicide with it. Of all the dinosaur deaths we see in this series, this one is the most heart-breaking.

click on the above image to enlarge it.

All the while, the three soldiers are looking back up at the cloud, hoping to figure out a way to get up to it and hopefully get home. 

Well, it's rarely a good thing to be scooped up by a pterodactyl. But when it happens to the soldier and the creature flies them over the cloud, this proves to be serendipitous. A burst of tommy gun fire convinces the ptero to let them go and they fall back through the warp gate, splashing into the Pacific near a navy destroyer.

The story ends with the three men once again dreaming of dinosaurs and wondering if that meant they would be having another prehistoric adventure. But though the War That Time Forgot sometimes repeated human characters, I don't think our artillerymen put in another appearance.

That's it for now. Next week, we'll tag along with the Invaders as they fight among themselves when they should be rescuing Winston Churchill.