Thing vs Man-Thing

 

cover art by Gil Kane

Marvel Fanfare issues #11 and #12 were try-out issues to see if Ben Grimm could be the anchor of a team-up book. That try-out was successful, and Marvel Two-in-One (January 1974) hit the stands soon afterwards. Written by Steve Gerber and drawn by Gil Kane, it picks up soon after the point where Marvel Fanfare #12 left off. 

Ben had been stuck in the desert. He's made it to a bus depot and bought a ticket home. Why he doesn't call Reed at this point and arrange faster, more comfortable transportation is not discussed in the story. Gerber, I think, simply wanted to inject a little humor into the tale. This scene also shows us Ben's motivation for deciding to head to Florida instead of home to New York. He sees a news story about Man-Thing and objects to his name being taken. So its off to the Everglades to have a fight with the swamp monster.

It's a silly motivation and, even though I understand the purpose was humor, I also didn't care for Ben terrorizing an innocent guy, though once again I concede the humorous intent and that Ben does have a temper. But Ben will get a chance to show where his heart is before the tale ends. Overall, I like this story a lot.

The bad guy is the son of the original Molecule Man, who had ended up on another planet. Time flows faster on that planet, so M.M. dies of old age before he can figure out how to regain his powers and take revenge on the Fantastic Four. His son, though, pledges to carry on and do the job. Powered up and teleported to Earth, he is soon locked in combat with Ben.  Along the way, he discovers that if he loses his power wand, he'll rapidly age and die.

Man-Thing gets into the fight, so the new Molecule Man quickly decides to zap both his adversaries, turning both back into regular human beings.

M.M. finds a town and begins to raise havoc, including killing an innocent man. When Ben and Ted Sallis (the former Man-Thing) show up, Ben is enraged by the killing. M.M. decides he doesn't like Ben's inherent nobility and turns him back into the Thing. Soon afterwards, he turns Ted back into Man-Thing. After all, his power is great enough. Neither of these pathetic beings can be a threat to him.

It seems this is true, until Ben throws a glob of mud at the villain. He's aiming at his face, but instead knocks the wand out of his hand. This causes M.M. to grow old, die and turn to dust within seconds.

Man-Thing doesn't do a lot to add to the fight, but he serves a purpose in that Ben no longer wants to fight the monster. He realizes that there's someone out there even less fortunate than him. Yes, he got made, scared an innocent man and came looking for an unnecessary fight. But in the end, Ben is a good man and that's what will always shine through in any well-written story about him.

Next week, back to the DC Universe to visit Batman and Robin.

Cover Cavalcade

 

May is DRAMATIC WILD WEST ENTRANCES month!

This 1941 cover is uncredited.

Friday's Favorite OTR

 The Six-Shooter: "Crisis at Easter Creek" 4/15/54

Britt is working on a ranch near the small town of Easter Creek when he finds himself roped into raising money for a new church organ. Everone in town has already contributed. Well, everyone but the denizens of a nearby outlaw haven.

Click HERE to listen or download. 

Manhunter (1974)

 

Quinn Martin, the producer responsible for a lot of quality television, had looked back to the 1930s for the classic series The Untouchables beginning in 1959. It wasn't until the 1970s that he returned to the Great Depression for another couple of tries.

Banyon (1971) starred Robert Forster as a P.I. It ran a mere 16 episodes before fading away. I've read the paperback novelization of the pilot and I'm pretty sure I'd love the show. But it never shows up in reruns anywhere or has gotten a DVD release. It's still on my "I hope I get a chance to watch it one day" list.

I did see at least a few episodes of Manhunter when it aired in 1974 and 1975. This one starred Ken Howard as a former marine who supplements the income on his family farm with bounty hunting. I was just a little 'un back then and only barely remembered the show. Being the bloody-minded kid that I was, I mostly remember cool weapons like tommy guns and Colt pistols. 

The pilot and a few other random episodes have shown up on YouTube. So I've now got to see Manhunter as an adult, having just watched the pilot. 

Of course, I still think the tommy guns and Colt .45s are cool. But, as was typical in most Quinn Martin productions, the plot was well-constructed and pilot is populated by talented character actors, including Gary Lockwood and Stephanie Powers as the primary bad guys. 

Ken Howard's haircut looks a little too 1970s, but that's a nitpick and a typical flaw in period television shows from that decade. 

Howard's character is named Dave Barrett. Just home from the Marines, he's working on his parents' farm. When he goes into town to see about a loan to fix the tractor, he witnesses a bank robbery. Actually, he does more than witness it. When an old friend AND his dog are killed in a hail of tommy gun fire, he snatches up a fallen pistol and nails one of the fleeing robbers.

He collects the reward and that does help out the farm's expenses, but his primary motivation is justice and protecting the innocent. He's good with weapons and he's an experienced hunter. The rest of the pilot follows him as he intelligently tracks the rest of the gang. He catches one of them, avoids an ambush meant to free his prisoner, and kills another. He figures out the gang's pattern for picking banks to rob and lays an ambush of his own. 

It's a pity the show didn't last long, but Quinn Martin never did replicate the success of The Untouchables. And, to be fair, though I enjoyed the pilot for Manhunter, it wasn't as good as The Untouchables. Ken Howard didn't bring the same intensity to his role as Robert Stack did as Eliot Ness. And, perhaps the earlier show being in black-and-white made it more evocative of the '30s.

But taken on its own, Manhunter is worth watching. 

Willy Schulz, Part 4

 

cover art by Rocke Mastroserio 

Fightin' Army #79 (May 1968) brings us the fourth chapter of the "Lonely War of Capt. Willy Schultz," written by Will Franz and drawn by Sam Glanzman.

 And, gee whiz, this saga continues to be astonishingly good. At the end of the last chapter, Willy (in a German uniform) had escaped from an American camp. Wandering in the Sahara Desert, he stumbles across a wrecked jeep with a dying American captain (and an already dead driver) sitting in it.

Willy identifies himself as an American. It doesn't register with the dying man that Willy is in a German uniform until after he tells of a unit of rookie soldiers nearby about to be attacked by Panzers. He dies thinking he's inadvertantly betrayed his men.

Willy swaps uniforms before burying the dead men. He doesn't take the captain's name, still identifying himself as Captain Schultz, but he finds and takes charge of the dead man's company.

There's a vet. sergeant named Striker to help him out, but the situation is grim. German tanks--including Tigers--are approaching. The Americans, aside from being green, are armed with light anti-tank guns and bazookas. They have nothing that can match the German armor.

But Willy is a good officer. He shows confidence and uses intelligent tactics. The lighter German tanks are destroyed. But then a Tiger tank destroys one of the anti-tank guns, runs over some of the infantry and seems in danger of breaking through.

Willy is able to use some oil cans to set the Tiger on fire. That's when things go sour for him. One of the Germans pops out of the hatch and Willy sees its a man he befriended when he was serving with the Germans. He shouts for the men in the tank to surrender, but Striker is simultaneously shouting for them to be shot if they try to leave the burning tank. Striker's not a bad guy--but he's reacting in anger towards the Germans who just killed some of his men.

In the end, the Germans die inside the burning tank. The Americans have won. The soldiers see Schultz as a hero who's leadership saved them. Well, all but Stiker, who hates Willy for trying to save the Germans. Willy wanders away, still alone. He saved the soldiers, but also taught them how to kill and watched a friend die.

The Willy Schultz saga has been superb from the get-go. This chapter, though, is the best so far. The action is well-presented, with the battle unfolding in a logical manner and Willy's tactics seeming reasonable. That Willy's German friend would be in the Tiger tank might have been predictable, but it still carries a remarkable emotional impact. Franz and Glanzman continue to stress that the average soldiers on both sides were just normal guys trying to survive, but not able to see the enemy in the same light. It effectively highlights the inherent tragedy of war.

Next week, we'll visit the Marvel Universe. It's been awhile since we've done so and I miss the place. So in two weeks, we'll review a Silver Age Batman tale, then return to Willy Schultz in three weeks. 

Cover Cavalcade

 

May is DRAMATIC WILD WEST ENTRANCES month!

Gil Kane drew and inked this 1975 cover.

Friday's Favorite OTR

 Mysterious Traveler: "Death Writes a Letter" 5/18/48

A letter from a dead man might have given someone the information he needs to save two lives--including his own.  

Then again, he might not be able to save anyone.

Click HERE to listen or download. 

"The Avenger of an Outraged Law!"

 

[This is a re-run of a post that first appeared 8 years ago. I'm repeating it because I've decided to cover the first 5 Dan Fowler novels as a part of the ongoing "In Order" series. I'll soon be doing the same with a 2014 post covering the first Tom Corbett novel, as I'll cover all eight novels in that series as a part of the "In Order" series as well.]

Read/Watch 'em In Order #163

It was 1935 and the editor-in-chief of the Thrilling Publications was about to start a new pulp magazine. For a likely theme, one only had to look to the movies--where the James Cagney film G-Men was raking in big bucks--and to real life, where the FBI was locked in often mortal combat with gangsters such as Dillinger, Nelson and Machine-Gun Kelly.

 

(It is Kelly, by the way, who is said to have coined the term "G-Men" when he shouted "Don't shoot, G-Men" as he was arrested.)

 

So the new magazine would be called G-Men. The featured hero would be a dedicated agent named Dan Fowler, who would use both Tommy guns and brains to bring the worst public enemies to justice. Or to the morgue. Fowler was pretty okay with either result.

 

Actually, that makes Fowler seem a little bloodthirsty, doesn't it? And there are moments when he's in the middle of a fire fight with villains in which he does revel in the idea that the men he's mowing down are getting their just desserts. But he does take them alive when he can and he does follow the rule of law.

 

Fowler had a good 20-year run in the pulps, becoming one of the mainstay heroes of the industry. Reading the first story--titled "Snatch" and published in the October 1935 issue of G-Men--it's easy to see why. It's a slam-bang and entertaining action tale.

 

It was written by George Fielding Eliot, though the pen name for all the Fowler stories would be C.K.M. Scanlon. Eliot was a pulp veteran who knew how to keep a story moving fast without sacrificing good plot construction.

 

The plot of "Snatch" is inspired by the real-life Purple Gang. Here, it's the Grey Gang, led by the brutal Ray Norshire, who are on a crime spree in the Mid-West. They've robbed a bunch of banks, killing a number of people along the way, and have now moved on to kidnapping.

 

Dan Fowler is assigned to head up the effort to stop the Grey Gang. He grew up in the area and his dad is the sheriff of one of the small towns within the sphere of the gang's operations, so he seems the best man for the job.

 

And he is. He manages to trap and catch several gang members, save a kidnapped baby and then catch most of the rest of the gang, though the wily Norshire keeps getting away. Dan is building up a suspicion that there's a mastermind working behind the scenes. Unfortunately, this mastermind might be one of several local law enforcement figures, which would explain why Norshire managed to be in just the right position at the right time to kill a weak-willed gang member who was about to talk.

 

Fowler suspects Norshire will try to bust one or more of his gang out of jail. So he comes up with a plan that the Feds will use again 14 years later in the Cagney film White Heat. He goes undercover as a prisoner to follow along during the escape.

 

This doesn't work out well, as the bad guys tumble to him not long after the jail break. He manages to get away, only to be arrested by local cops who don't believe he 's a Federal agent. This gives Norshire and his gang time to get away.

 

So it's time for yet another plan--one that will both trap the Grey Gang and get the secret mastermind to give himself away.

 

It's a fun story. There's a number of good action scenes, the best one involving Fowler trying to get away from the Grey Gang after they realize he's a Fed. The story itself is very well-told--Fowler follows up clues logically and pursues intelligent hunches based on the evidence. He definitely exists in a pulp universe rather than the real world, but good storytelling makes him believable all the same.

 

Kind of like Cagney in the movie G-Men. Gee whiz, now I gotta watch that again.

Fake Leopard Woman!

 

cover art by Bernard Bailey

Every other week, we've been looking at stories reprinted in 1974's 100-page Detective Comics #439. So far, we've visited with the Golden-Age Hawkman and the Silver-Age Atom. This week, we're jumping back to the Golden Age to review an early Dr. Fate story that first appeared in More Fun Comics #66 (April 1941). It was written by Gardner Fox and drawn by Howard Sherman.

Fate's lady friend Inza meets an honest-to-goodness leopard woman at a party, learning that the poor girl has leopard-spotted arms, has recently been dumped by her boyfriend because of this and is contemplating suicide.

Inza is staying overnight at the house where the party is held. That night, she's attacked--apparently by the leopard woman. Dr. Fate senses she's in danger and flies to her. He investigates, confirming the spots on her arms and having an unpleasant encounter with the owner of the house. He soon discovers that the house owner is drugging the poor girl, which is what gives her the spots. They guy wants to drive her to suicide so he can inherit her money. Fate banishes the guy "from the world of men," stops the fake-leopard lady from killing herself and, for the first time, takes off his helmet so that Inza can see his face.

Gardner Fox is normally a cracker-jack writer, so perhaps that's one reason I'm disappointed in this story. It is atmospheric and Sherman's art looks good, but the 6-page length leads to a weak plot. Fate walks through the adventure without effort, "deducing" the bad guy's identity and motive simply by reading his mind. Neither the villain's identity nor his motive are properly set up--it's all just dropped abruptly into the next-to-last page of the tale. A disappointment in all but the atmospheric art.

Next week, we return to the Lonely War of Willy Schultz.

Cover Cavalcade

 

May is DRAMATIC WILD WEST ENTRANCES month!

This 1978 cover is by Rich Buckler