Shout-Out to my Awesome Wife

 I maintain this blog, my book-review blog and my BookTube channel because I enjoy geeking out about stuff. I don't make any money off them--my numbers aren't high enough to make doing so possible. I do have a "leave a tip" button on this blog, but I don't really expect anyone to give anything.

I am able to do this and do other geeky things (host occasional game nights, give talks at the public library and for civic organizations) primarily because my wife Angela not only tolerates my geekiness, but supports it. Heck, she let me put a velociraptor in our wedding photo:

She used her extraordinary cross-stitch skills to create this, which is now hanging near our front door:

Heck, she once beat me in an argument about the nature of Color Kid's powers:

She knows me well enough to get me to agree to a Book Challenge detailed in this video:

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When I got married, I knew my life would change and some of the stuff I did as a bachelor would get left behind. I was happy to do this, because Angela is smart and wonderful and far too good for me and I love her. But it turns out there's some stuff I didn't have to give up. She actually loves me for who I am and lets me be geeky when I want to be. This blog still exists because my wife is awesome, so a shout-out to her on this blog is appropriate and long overdue.

By the way, undeniable and objective proof that I love her does exist. She recently called to me while I was watching an episode of Star Trek: The Original Series. I actually paused an episode of Star Trek to see what she needed!!!! This is essentially the geek version of laying down one's life. 

If that's not True Love, I don't know what is.

Snow Skates

 

Bonanza's TV run was fairly straightforward--14 seasons on NBC from 1959 through 1973. Its comic book history is a little less straightforward, but not that complicated. Dell Comics dedicated four issues of Four Color to Bonanza. In 1962, they put out two issues of a dedicated Bonanza series. 

Then Dell had a sort-of messy divorce with Western Publishing, the company that licensed shows and movies, then produced the comics. Dell then distributed the comics. When the two entities parted with one another, Western created its own distribution company they called Gold Key.  Under the Gold Key banner, Western put out their own Bonanza series. It ran for 37 issues, from 1962 to 1970.

We'll look at one of the stories from Four Color #1221 (Sept.-Nov. 1961). 

"The Snow Walkers" was written by Gaylord Du Bois and drawn by Tom Gill. Gill's clear and effective art is part of what makes this story great, bringing De Bois' excellent script to life. 

If I may pause from the story review for a moment, let's give a shout out to Dell/Gold Key writers De Bois and Paul S. Newman. Both men were incredibly prolific and both wrote strong script after strong script in numerous genres. That Dell/Gold Key consistently produced great comics is in large part because of those two men.

Anyway, "Snow Walkers" begins when a detachment of soldiers arrive at the Ponderosa, hoping to buy some horses. Ben Cartwright wants to sell those horses, but declines to take a bank draft in lieu of cash. Later on, he explains why to his three sons. There were a number of things that were off about the soldiers--details about their behavior that didn't line up with usual military behavior.

The soldiers stay the night in a nearby bunkhouse. A blizzard kicks up and a man named Rolf Thornsen arrives at the door to the ranch house, looking to also spend the night. He's an old friend who is taking mail from California to nearby Virginia City. He travels on what he calls "Snow Skates," which we would call skis.

This is the sort of detail that helps mark Du Bois as a great writer. He did his research. At the time of the Wild West, the term "skis" had not yet been coined. "Snow Skates" is in fact what they would have been called.

In the morning, they get proof that the "soldiers" were in fact deserters. They've murdered the man guarding the horse pen and stolen the horses. They've got quite the head start, but Rolf has an idea. He can help the Cartwrights quickly make their own snow skates and they can essentially cut the bad guys off at the pass.

They run the deserters down at a remote cabin used by an old Indian and his daughter. The Indian has been murdered, but his daughter Birdsong hid in the snow and escaped. So the Cartwrights and Rolf don't have to worry about a hostage situation, but the deserters are holed up in a defensible position.

What follows is a well-choreographed action scene, which includes rolling a large boulder into the cabin, Hoss briefly being taken hostage before a well-aimed rifle shot from Little Joe gives him a chance to beat down on the bad guys, and the eventual surrender of those bad guys. 

The story ends with Ben giving the recovered horses to Birdsong so that she'll have a good dowry for the future. 

It is simply a well-told story. If it suffers at all, it's that Adam, Hoss and Little Joe don't have a chance to show off their own unique personalities and are essentially interchangable. Well, Hoss gets to show off his strength, but a live-action episode would have allowed Pernell Roberts, Dan Blocker and Michael Landon to individualize the brothers through their performances. 

But it does show Ben as a smart guy and a strong leader. And Gill's art shows off the action in a way that allows us to always understand what's going on. And the panel showing a murdered man's hand sticking out of the snow is an effective way of showing violent death without being overly gruesome. 

Bonanza was an excellent TV series (well, except for those episodes where one of the brothers falls in love and reminds us of that annoying Cartwright Curse). That the comic book adaptation showed the same skill in telling good stories is very much appreciated by fans of classic TV. 

Next week, we'll check in with Spider-Man. And it's only as I write this sentence that I wonder if I was subconciously led by the release of the new Spider-Man movie to decide to look a Spidey comic. If so, it really doesn't matter. We'll be jumping back to the Bronze Age, not looking at anything new. 

Cover Cavalcade

 AUGUST IS "THE HEROES OF STREET AND SMITH" MONTH!!!

A 1932 Shadow cover by George Rozen.

Friday's Favorite OTR

 Philip Marlowe: "The Sea Horse Jockey" 5/2/50

Marlowe is initially hired to transport a valuable sea-horse shaped brooch to a buyer. But he ends up having to catch a thief and a killer.

Click HERE to listen or download. 

A Second Time Around for Defending a Town

 

My second favorite John Wayne film is Rio Bravo (1959), directed by Howard Hawks. So for years, I was reluctant to watch El Dorado (made in 1966, released in 1967), the loose remake also directed by Hawks and starring Wayne. I figured it couldn't help but be an inferior rehash of the original, despite a strong cast and the same great director. 

But I finally gave in a few years ago and now curse myself for waiting so long. It's not as good as Rio Bravo, but you really don't need to compare them. The later film does hit many of the same plot beats, but it has a personality of its own.

Leigh Brackett, who wrote the screenplays for both films, started by loosely adapting the 1960 novel The Stars in Their Courses, by Harry Brown. At first, she was really happy with it, calling it "the best script I had ever done in my life." But as things moved along, the story morphed into the Rio Bravo remake, which Brackett disliked "because I hate doing things over again." Hawks, though, ran with it and the end result (with all respect to the brilliant Brackett) is pretty darn nifty. He told Robert Mitchum that the film had "No story, just characters." That isn't entirely true. There is a fun, solid storyline running through the movie. But it is the characters that sell it. 

John Wayne is Cole Thornton, a professional gunfighter, who teams with an old friend named J.P. Harrah. Harrah is the sheriff of El Dorado, but he's also fallen into severe alcoholism after an unhappy affair with a woman.

Mitchum's character parallels Dean Martin's character in Rio Bravo. The difference is that Martin's character arc was subordinate to the main plot of defending the town against an evil, powerful rancher. In El Dorado, the plot is almost incidental to the character moments. So Hawks' comment was true to a large extent.

And the supporting cast is wonderful. James Caan played Mississippi, a protege' of Thornton who carries a sawed-off shotgun because he's a lousy shot. Arthur Hunnicutt is the old-time Bull Harris, another ally to the good guys who announces his arrival in town by blaring away on a bugle. Charlene Holt is Maudie, a lady who has eyes for Thornton. Michele Carey is Josephine "Joey" MacDonald, a fiery young lady who is good with a rifle and, during the movie's extended prologue to the main story, shot Thornton. This causes long-term problems, because Thornton still carries around that bullet inside him and it occasionally causes him bouts of crippling pain that paralyzes his gun arm.

Joey, by the way, thought she had good reason to shoot Thornton, but later ends up as another ally.

The villains are Ed Asner as evil rancher Bart Jason. Christopher George, sporting an ugly facial scar and a fast gun, is Jason's main enforcer Nelse McLeod. Together the two actors generate several mega-watts of quiet menace.

There's a lot of humor in the character interactions among the good guys, but Mitchum's arc of pulling himself out of an alcoholic haze and becoming useful again is handled believably. And the action scenes are great. The good guys in this film can be ruthlessly pragmatic--not worried at all about giving their opponents an even chance. There's a scene in which two men attempt to lure Thornton and Mississippi out the back door of a saloon into an ambush. Realizing their intentions, Thornton forces one of the two men out the door to be shot by his own guys. 

There's a shootout in an old church, with the bells being rung by bullet hits, that's fantastic. And the final scene, with Jason holding a hostage inside a saloon while McLeod and Thornton (with a paralyzed gun arm) get ready to face off just outside that saloon, is a wonderful finale. 

Sidenote: Is Wayne's character having a paralyzed arm a metaphor for the fact that both the star and the genre were aging and more fragile than they used to be? Something to think about. 

In the 1960s and the early 1970s, Wayne was experienced enough in making Westerns to turn out one solidly entertaining movie after another. 1969 brought us his third best movie with True Grit, but we also got El Dorado, Big Jake, Cahill U.S. Marshall, The War Wagon, The Train Robbers, Chisum, and The Sons of Katie Elder. These movies aren't among the classics, but the world would be a poorer place without them.

Poisoned Waterholes and Desert Heat

 

cover art by Luis Dominguez

A man escapes from prison after poisoning a guard, then poisons waterholes as he escapes across the desert, at one point leaving two people, including a child, to die after taking their canteen. 

So what we have is the typical sort of ruthless killer that Jonah Hex normally tracks down. But two things make Teddy "The Gentleman Killer" Chandler a particularly interesting villain. First, he has a companion who shows compassion and regret towards the victims, but still remains inexplicably loyal to Chandler.

Second, late in the story, we learn Chandler's interesting backstory. He wasn't always an animal. In fact, he was in prison because he killed a man when his companion, a black man named Orion, was about to be lynched. Chandler saved Orion's life. That's why Orion, a God-fearing man, remains loyal to him.

It all gives Chandler a dimensionality that the bad guys in Hex's stories often lack. That, combined with John Albano's tightly-written script and Tony DeZuniga's atmospheric art, make this a particularly notable issue.

The story (from Weird Western Tales #19--September/October 1973) begins with the prison breakout. Orion is waiting nearby with horses, but is shocked to learn that the poison he smuggled to Chandler was used to kill a human being rather than rats. Chandler begins poisoning waterholes while they make a getaway to discourage pursuit. 

 

Jonah finds them by chance, but recognizes the prison uniform that Chandler is wearing. He wounds Chandler, taking him and Orion prisoner. But when they find a wagon that had been attacked by Comanches. The two adults are dead, but a young boy is still alive. Unfortunately for Jonah and the boy, Chandler gets hold of a gun. He gets the drop on Jonah, leaving him (and the boy) with no weapons, horses or water. Orion, though, drops a canteen as he and Chandler ride off.

It's here that we get a reminder of a usually hidden aspect of Jonah Hex's personality. He manages to bring the boy to a ranch, but does so by saving all the water in the canteen for that boy, leaving him nearly dead before the journey is over. Later, when he rides off after Chandler, the lady of the ranch remarks how kind and gentle he is. And she's right, though Jonah would have been angered if he heard her say it. He does have moments where his better nature takes hold. The ruthless bounty hunter does indeed have his kind and gentle moments.

In the meantime, Chandler shoots Orion in order to save on water consumption. When Jonah finds Orion, the black man explains Chandler's backstory and forgives his killer before he dies. 

The story ends with Jonah relentlessly pursuing Chandler, only for the escaped killer to die when he runs out of water and desperately drinks from a waterhole he had earlier poisoned. He dies laughing at the irony of it.

It's a stand-out story from an excellent series. It's not a criticism to say that most of the outlaws that Jonah runs down are ruthless killers. So is Chandler, but his background--possibly a good man stripped of his humanity while in prison--and the counterpoint of Orion's gentle nature, make this tale particularly notable.

Next week, we'll visit with the Cartwright family to see how well Bonanza translates into comic book form. 

Cover Cavalcade

   JULY IS GUNNER & SARGE & POOCH MONTH!!!

Would Gunner have survived the war without Pooch? This 1963 cover is by Jerry Grandenetti. 

Friday's Favorite OTR

 Nick Carter: "The Haunted Rocking Chair" 5/20/45

Nick is asked to investigate a rocking chair that seems to rock by itself. This, of course, soon evolves into a murder case.

Click HERE to listen or download. 

SKIP WEEK

 Preparing an original story for a D&D campaign and planning a variety of encounters for the players to deal with is time-consuming. I'm afraid there'll be no Wednesday and Thursday posts this week.

With my Books Worth Reading blog and Booktube channel running, I might have Skip Weeks a little more often than I used to, but I'll try to keep that to a minimum.

Cover Cavalcade

 JULY IS GUNNER & SARGE & POOCH MONTH!!!

A 1963 cover by Jerry Grandenetti.