What is Small Will Be Big Again!

 

cover art by John Romita

writer: Len Wein

Interior Art: Sal Buscema & Joe Staton

At the end of Hulk #202, The Emerald Giant had been shrunk down to microscopic size and, while visiting the micro-world ruled by Hulk's old flame Jarella, was zapped unconcious by the insectoid villain Psykolp. The is just after Hulk destroyed a giant robot that had been disguised as a giant troll-like human who had supposedly been causing earthquakes. 

Got all that?

As Hulk #203 (Sept. 1976) begins, Psyklop makes a rookie villain mistake. He tells Hulk the bonds that hold him are unbreakable. Naturally, Hulk gets mad and breaks them. Psklop, though, manages to hypnotise the big guy.

Psyklop uses Hulk to move equipment about while gloating to Jarella, explaining that the earthquakes shaking the planet had been caused by Hulk inadvertantly kicking the planet out of orbit last time he was here and was being enlarged for a return to Earth. Psyklop, though, has built a devise to make sure the earthquakes continue, with plans to eventually offer the life forces of those killed to the Dark Gods he worships.

By the way, I've written many, many geeky things in this blog, but several of the above sentences might just be the geekiest things I've ever written. Everything about this issue makes no real life sense, but flows smoothly along according to the logic of Comic Book Science. It's all wonderful.

And it continues to be wonderful. Jarella's people have been magically eavesdropping on Psyklop's monologing. Realizing they were wrong in their attempt last issue to sacrifice their queen to the "mountain god," they now storm the villain's lair. The villain, though, causes Hulk to see the people as an army of Psyklopes. The green guy attacks them.

Jarella's chief magicians counter this by causing Hulk to see the people as an army of Jarellas. This breaks Psyklop's control over Hulk, who once again attacks the villain. The container in which Psyklop has been keeping the life forces of his victims cracks, the Dark Gods get mad at him and zap him away to be punished.

It briefly appears that Hulk actually gets a happy ending. He and Jarella plan to get married and the people now love them. But, well, the Hulk doesn't get happy endings, does he? 

Back on Earth, Doc Samson has removed the atom containing Hulk from Glenn Talbot's brain. This is placed in a "micro-cannon" and Hulk is enlarged. Because he's hugging Jarella, she's enlarged as well. Jarella tells him she has to go back and that they are not meant to be as a couple. But then it's discovered she can't go back, because the slide containing the atom that contains her world has been smashed. 

It's not made clear at this point if Jarella's world is actually destroyed. It later turns out not to have been. How it survived is a question similar to "how did it end up inside Talbot's head."  The physics of subatomic worlds are simply beyond our ken. 

These last two issues really have been wonderful, building one absurd concept atop another without irony or parody and making it all work. 

Next week, though, we'll return to the more realistic world of Capt. Willy Schulz.

Edgar Rice Burroughs Podcast: Episode #35: Return of the Mucker

Edgar Rice Burroughs Podcast: Episode #35: Return of the Mucker:   Jess, Scott and Tim discuss the sequel to "The Mucker." The first book was a Lost Civilization tale. The sequel changes gears to...

Cover Cavalcade

 NOVEMBER IS DINOSAURS IN THE PULPS MONTH!

The artist who painted this 1937 cover is uncredited.

Friday's Favorite OTR

 Escape: "Roulette" 10/13/50

A young man is sowing a few not-so-wild oats before going out to college when he finds himself helping a beautiful woman escape assassins. It's painfully obvious to anyone other than the naive young man that the woman is playing him, but this actually makes the episode even more fun to hear.

Click HERE to listen or download. 

The Secret Adversary

 

Angela and I recently discovered a podcast that had discussed Agatha Christie's books in publication order. Being who we are, we read Dame Agatha's first novel--1920's The Mysterious Affair at Styles--before listening together to the episode discussing it.  Now, we've moved on to her second book, reading it in preparation for listening to THAT episode. I have a wife who enjoys doing stuff like this with me. In other words, I have a perfect wife.

Christie's early novels are not as polished as her later efforts, but The Secret Adversary (1922) is still a blast to read. It introduces Tommy and Tuppence, two childhood friends who meet again right after the Great War ends and, both being broke, decide to start a company called "The Young Adventurers, Ltd." Then, without even meaning to, they stumble into their first adventure. 

It involves a survivor from the sinking of the Luisitania who has been missing for years; secret papers that were important during the war and are suddenly important again; a criminal gang of Socialists who plan to overthrow the British government; an American millionaire who might or might not be an ally; and a mysterious master criminal known only as Mr. Brown.

Tommy and Tuppence are not as revered a Poirot or Miss Marple, but I like 'em. They are both clever and their bantering dialogue carries the story along in a fast and entertaining manner.

The Secret Adversary is more of a thriller than a mystery, with both Tommy and Tuppence getting captured at different times along the way and the palpable aura of danger generated by the mostly off-screen Mr. Brown adding quite a bit of tension. There are mystery elements, though. involving the identity of Mr. Brown and the location of the secret papers.

Brown's identity is nicely handled. There's a rather obvious clue partway through the tale that points to one of two men. But which one is a mystery unless you pick up on several more subtle clues dropped in later. This gives Christie an opportunity to pull off what would become her usual technique of dropping in an unlooked-for plot twist at the novel's climax. 

There's also a clue that will tell a super-attentive reader where the papers are, but it's included in such a matter-of-fact manner that most of us poor shlubs reading the book will miss it. Tommy eventually gets it, though. He is clever.

We never find out what the contents of the papers are, by the way. It is a perfect example of what Alfred Hitchcock would later dub a Macguffin--an object that triggers the plot. All we need to know that it's something everyone wants and that's enough to carry the story. A Hitchcockian example would be the micofilm in 1959's North by Northwest. We never even get a hint as to what's on that darn film. All we need to know is that the bad guys have it and the good guys need it back.

One thing that's not a mystery in The Secret Adversary: If you don't know that Tommy and Tuppence are going to be in love and engaged by the end of the novel, then you aren't really trying. It's just as well. This allows them to appear in three more novels and an anthology of short stories.

True Love, Giant Warthogs, and Giant Robots

 

cover art by John Buscema

Before diving into the events of Hulk #202 (August 1976; written by Len Wein; drawn by Sal Buscem and Joe Staton), let's do brief review of Jarella.

We first met her in Hulk #140, when a villain named Psyklop shrunk Hulk down to microscopic size. The microverse Hulk ends up in is populated by green-skinned humanoids and ruled by the benevolent Jarella. When magically/telepathically taught the local language, Banner's mind takes over Hulk's body. He and Jarella develop a thing for each other before Hulk is enlarged back to normal. I reviewed that story HERE. 

Since then, Jarella has taken a trip to our world and Hulk (with Hulk's brain) has paid a return visit to Jarella's world. When you think about it, Hulk gets shrunk down to microscopic size an awful lot.

Hulk #202, for instance, is the third time in three issues Hulk is shrunk. He was sent into Glenn Talbot's brain in #200, visited a microverse in #201 when shrunk even smaller, and now has been shrunk smaller yet to make a return to Jarella's world.

The "geography" of the various microverses must be interesting. Any one microverse seems to be in a different location ever time its visited. This time, Jarella's world seems to be located somewhere in Talbot's brain. There's even a brief pause in Hulk's saga to take us back to Earth, where Talbot is on the way to have microsurgery to get Hulk out of him. Well, Comic Book Science can make sense of anything. Perhaps there are natural "quantum waves" that act to draw people being minaturized to specific locations in the microverse. Yeah, that's it.

In any case, this story arc seems to imply that somewhere in your brain, entire sentient races might exist on individual atoms. CREEPY!

Anyway, the art by Buscema and Staton is a lot of fun. Hulk gets into a wonderful fight with giant warthogs. Once he beats these, he sees Jarella about to be shot by a catapult onto a nearby mountain. He pulls off a mid-air rescue.

Hulk learns that Jarella's people have been hit by earthquakes and were sacrificing her to the "god of the mountain" to put a stop to this. Hulk decides to see about this god himself. Jarella, who cares for her people even though they just tried to kill her AND cares for Hulk, accompanies him. They climb the slope--though why Hulk couldn't have just carried Jarella and jumped to the top is beyond me. Even if he didn't think of it, you'd assume that Jarella would.

That's a small glitch in a visually fun story, though. Atop the mountain, they find a castle. Within the castle, they find a giant. The giant, as we discover when Hulk destroys it, is really a robot.

The Hulk vs. Robot Giant is yet another cool fight. This issue is, from start to finish, a visual delight. 

But Hulk doesn't get to live happily ever after. He's zapped unconscious by the villian Psyklop, who had built the giant and is presumably responsible for the earthquakes.

Why is he doing all this? We'll find out next week as we take a look at Hulk #203.

Cover Cavalcade

 NOVEMBER IS DINOSAURS IN THE PULPS MONTH!

This 1934 cover is by Frank R. Paul

A review of the story "One Prehistoric Night" can be found HERE. 

Friday's Favorite OTR

 Burns and Allen: "George Late for Show" 8/19/40

George is running late for the show--and the reason for his tardiness just might be a source of jealousy for Gracie.

Click HERE to download or listen. 

What Could Have Been

 The last episode of the TV Western The Rebel aired on June 12, 1960. Titled "The Earl of Durango," it presents us with a murder mystery and two wonderfully realized characters helping Johnny Yuma investigate that murder. It's obvious that this episode was meant to be a backdoor pilot for a new series. It's a tragedy that the pilot wasn't picked up. Provided the writing remained sharp, it would have made a great mystery show. The Wild West setting would have made it all the more interesting.

Johnny Yuma arrives in a Western town to take a job as bodyguard. But the guy he's supposed to guard is murdered before Johnny can begin that job. Johnny wants to find out who did it, but everyone in town is happy the guy is dead.

But Johnny soon has a couple of allies in his investigation. C. Spencer Scott is an Englishman who gave up writing philosophy texts to make lots of money writing dime novels. He's become known as the Earl of Durango. Now, with the help of an ex-Texas Ranger named Otis Rumph, he solves murders. 

Scott is played with a suave wittiness by John Sutton and Otis is played by the great character actor L.Q. Jones. The mystery is a good one, with both Scott and Johnny Yuma contributing ideas to solving the murder. The guest cast playing the citizens of the town include more always-entertaining actors such as George Tobias and Victor Buono.

I love some of the dialogue, especially Otis' brief summary of why he partnered up with the Earl:

"Well, Reb, I'll tell yer. I misspent my youth getting saddle sores on somebody else's cattle drive. I spent two years on $20 a month as a Texas Ranger. And two years shooting people I wasn't mad at during the war. Now you put it all together and I figure I don't have such a bad break with the Earl. Besides that, I admire him. Besdies that, he saved my hide once."

It really is too bad this didn't become a series. Otis and the Earl were a unique crime-solving duo. 

Here's the entire episode on YouTube:

Willy Schulz, Part 14

 

cover art by Sam Glanzman

The next chapter of "The Lonely War of Capt. Willy Schultz" appears in Fightin' Army #90 (March 1970). Will Franz is still the writer and Sam Glanzman continues to provide the excellent artwork.

Willy is still fighting alongside Italian partisans and he's definitely not having an easy time of it. The story opens with Willy and some partisans trapped in a house, with a German tank outside about to blow them into oblivion.

While several wounded men provide covering fire, Willy and the others make a break for it, reaching a ditch with the hope of taking out the tank with grenades and molotov cocktails. This is a desperation tactic and it doesn't look like it will work.

Several men are killed when a molotov cocktail detonates in the trench. Others panic and run only to be machine gunned. In the meantime, the tank has destroyed the house and killed the wounded men there.

Willy's the only one left. He manages to blow a tread off the tank in the nick of time, then hit the tank with another molotov. But when a German crawls from the burning tank, Willy can't make himself shoot the man. He's saved by the arrival of Major Dario, the OSS man in charge of the partisans. Dario shoots the German just before the German shoots Willy.

So far, we've been given an intense battle scene. The story winds down with Willy and Dario discussing the situation. Dario reveals that he doesn't really believe Willy is innocent of the murder he was charged with so long ago. He also wonders why Willy would regret having to kill the Germans who just slaughtered the wounded men in the house. Willy counters this by saying the dead Germans had friends as well. 

And that's it. This chapter is one incident during Willy's time with the partisans. But, aside from the fantastic battle scene, it once again explores the moral uncertainty of war and does so intelligently. 

All the same, as I write these reviews, I do wish the saga had spent more time dealing with why it was necessary to fight the Nazis. We do get some of this in the last chapter of the saga and its obvious that both Will Franz and Sam Glanzman understood the evils of fascism. I think this superb series could have been a little better if that aspect of the war had been in the forefront more often.

On the other hand, the saga has been making the legitimate point that many individual German soldiers were not evil men. And no one work of fiction is obligated to examine every single moral aspect of the story being told. If Franz and Glanzman choose to concentrate on one aspect of war and do so with dramatic power and intelligence, then perhaps there's no reason to complain. This is something that must be left up to each individual reader. 

Also, the last chapter was written years after the original series was cancelled. Perhaps if Franz and Glanzman had been able to continue the series in the early 1970s, they would have spent more time on the evils of fascism. Who knows?