Booktube video: My First Encounter with the Great Korak Time Paradox!

 

Friday's Favorite OTR

 Night Beat: "Bomb on the Denver Plane" 9/4/52

Someone calls Randy with a tip that someone has planted a bomb aboard a passenger plane. The plane is evacuated before it blows up--leaving a piece of leather as the only clue to the bomber's identity. 

Click HERE to listen or download. 

Thanksgiving break

 

cover art by Irving Tripp

No Wednesday or Thursday posts this week, since blog hits traditionally drop during a big holiday. We'll be back next week. 

Cover Cavalcade

 NOVEMBER IS HUCKLEBERRY HOUND MONTH!!

Huckleberry Hound covers were a lonely business--this one is also uncredited. It's from 1968.

My Small, but still Cool, Sherlock Holmes collection

 

Friday's Favorite OTR

 The Lone Ranger: "Train Wreck" 4/30/43

Sabotaging a train turns out to be the first step in a villain swindling another man out of a gold mine. But he doesn't count on the Lone Ranger looking into the matter.

Click HERE to listen or download. 

A Fencing Master who Isn't Quite a Fencing Master

 

cover at by Charles E Chambers

cover art by Sid Rosenbaum

"The Open Door," says the Castillian proverb, "will tempt a saint," which is only the Spanish way of saying that opportunity makes the thief."

Rafael Sabatini nearly always wrote great opening sentences. This one is from the short story "The Open Door," first published in the July 1935 issue of Redbook (which has the least swashbuckler-looking cover in the history of magazines, but what the hey). It was later republished in the December 1951 issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. This was about a year after Sabatini's death, reprinted as a tribute to him.

The main character--a mediocre fencing master named Florimond--has set up a fencing school, claiming to be the student of the famous fencing master Guillaume Danet. But he loses most of his student quickly, as most of them quickly realize that Florimond is neither a good fencer nor a good teacher of fencing.

Florimond's Open Door to temptation comes when he ends up ticking off a traveler staying at the local inn. A duel is arranged for the next morning. But when the traveler learns the Florimond is supposedly a fencing master, he visits Florimond in the middle of the night and offers a bribe to be let out of the duel.

Florimond realizes he has stumbled upon a method to bring in a regular income, as long as he's not greedy and carefully picks his targets for luring into duels the victim will then pay money to get out of. For a time, his racket goes smoothly.

But of course he eventually gets greedy and challenges the wrong person to a duel. This leads to a plot twist that many readers will THINK they see coming, only for a second plot twist to turn this on its head. It's a great ending that highlights Sabatini's cynical take on artificial "Code of Honor" social mores.

It is a great story. You can read it yourself HERE. 

It Makes Perfect Sense to Me!!!!

 

cover art by Curt Swan

Action Comics #389 (June 1970), written by Leo Dorfman and Curt Swan, is a product of the then-fading Silver Age of Comics, taking a silly premise and treating that premise seriously.

And I, by golly, am fine with that. I think you can argue that Superman's plan to prevent an alien invasion in this story makes perfect sense in a Comic Book Universe.

What is that plan? Well, Superman announces that he's tired of the superhero business and is going to try his hands at sports. He tries out for baseball, hitting a ball into orbit and otherwise easily showing up the pro players. But a kid manages to strike him out and Superman peevishly throws the ball into orbit as well. He then says that baseball isn't for him and flies away.

He keeps trying other sports, each time knocking a ball or bag into orbit before he apparently gets bored with the sport or is told it is too dangerous to let him participate.

What's going on here? Well, it turns out there's an alien ship in orbit around Earth, getting ready to take atmosphere samples. If the air proves good for the aliens, then they are going to invade.

Superman had secretly filled every item he knocked into orbit with a mutation gas, designed only to affect life from the alien homeworld. All the sports items are now stuck on the end of the ship's probes, so it collects the gas rather than atmosphere samples.

That baseball with which the kid strikes out Superman was full of gas, but has a small rip. Not wanting to take a chance on the gas being harmful to Earth, he tossed that ball away as well.

So the ship flies to the alien homeworld and, when the aliens test the samples, they find out Earth's "atmosphere" would mutate them into horrible monsters. They call off the invasion.

I love Superman's plan. Yes, it is an example of Silver Age goofiness (which I consider a strength to the story), but it really does make sense. I've made a list:

1. Superman would use violence only as a last resort. This is a non-violent solution.

2. He could have threatened the aliens. ("I'm Superman and this is the Justice League. You don't stand a chance.") But the aliens might have a powerful armada and try anyway. Even if they are defeated, people could get hurt.

3. Why didn't he just fill bladders full of the mutation gas and attach them to the ship's probes? Thus saving him from having gone through the whole trying-out-for-sports rigamarole? Well, because... because... SHUT UP! The plan makes perfect sense, I tell you! So just shut up!

Well, maybe it doesn't make complete sense. But the goofy charm of the Silver Age (quickly dying away by the 1970s and probably finished off when Gwen Stacy died in 1973) cannot be denied. This is simply a fun story.

Next week, we'll pay a visit to Ben Bowie and His Mountain Men. 

Recommended World War 2 Novels

 

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My impeccable taste in books really is the only hope for Western Civilization.