Always Make Sure Your New Home isn't a Ghost Town!

Prior to hitting the big time with Stagecoach in 1939, John Wayne appeared in over 100 B-movies and serials, almost all of them Westerns. Though Wayne did not quite have the on-screen presence he would have as an A-lister, he was still effective and personable in what were almost always enjoyable films.

Winds of the Wasteland (1936) is very enjoyable. It has a fun premise--John Blair (Wayne) and Larry Andrews (Lane Chandler) have just lost their jobs when the Pony Express closes up shop. But Blair has a new plan for making money. Their severance pay included a quartet of fast Pony Express horses. So why don't the two men use those horses and the pay they've saved to start a stagecoach line?

Sadly, they get swindled when they buy a stagecoach and the rights to a route from dishonest businessman Cal Drake (Douglas Cosgrove). The stagecoach is a wreck and the town of Crescent City (the hub of the route) is a ghost town with a grand total of two citizens.

But there's no sense in giving up. Soon they have the stagecoach up and running and, surprisingly, Crescent City begins to slowly gain citizens. When Blair manages to arrange a telegraph line to run through the town, things actually begin to look up.

Then an opportunity to win a government mail contract comes up. This involves winning a stagecoach race to Sacramento. But Drake is running one of his stages in the race as well and he's willing to do anything--including arson, having Blair arrested on trumped-up charges and having his henchmen set dynamite booby traps along the road.

I watched this movie specifically because I like the premise of two men starting up a stagecoach line with a broken-down coach. I ended up really liking the execution of that premise. Wayne and the rest of the cast all give enjoyable performances and the plot moves along quickly and economically.

In fact, I wish the run time of the film had been 10 or 12 minutes longer, as the one real fault is the abruptness with which the plot jumps from one plot point to another. But that's a pacing issue rather than a story issue--the plot itself makes perfect sense within the context of a B-movie universe.

The director was Mack V. Wright (who directed a number of Wayne's film during the '30s), who provides us with some nice location photography, making the climatic stagecoach race look particularly nifty.

It's impossible to watch this film without thinking about John Ford's Stagecoach (1939). Though Winds in the Wasteland can be enjoyed for what it is, it's hard not to image what it would have like had a genius like Ford been behind the camera, or if Yakima Canutt (who has an uncredited role as a henchman in Winds) had been creating his magnificent under-the-stagecoach stunt that was the visual highlight of the later film. That's not fair to the Winds. I know. In fact, it would be fun to watch both films as a stagecoach-themed double feature. If I ever get around to writing a sequel to This Week's Double Feature, I'll have to keep that in mind. 

Here's Wind in the Wastelands on YouTube. If you have Amazon Prime, there's a slightly better print available there.

How to Mistreat Your Employees

cover art by John Romita, Jr.
with inks by Bob Layton

I had dropped Marvel superhero books completely by 1986, when a poorly written, multi-title crossover called Mutant Massacre made it clear that (for my sensibilities, at least) reading them simply wasn't going to be fun anymore. Besides, I resented being forced to buy muliple titles to follow along with just one storyline.

But in the half-decade before that, Marvel still had its high points. For instance, writer David Michelinie was always a reliable source for entertaining superhero stories. A few years ago, I reviewed a two-part Avengers tale from 1980, written by Michelinie, that I enjoyed enormously.

Michelinie's strongest run as a writer is arguable his work on Iron Man, fleshing out Tony Stark's character, introducing now-classic supporting characters like James Rhodes, and consistently gave us strong plots with great action sequences.

Iron Man #149 (August 1981) was co-plotted by Michelinie and artist Bob Layton, with Michelinie writing the finished script. John Romita, Jr. did the breakdowns and Layton did the finished art.

It begins with Iron Man rather easily putting down some pirates who were trying to hijack one of Tony Stark's cargo ships. Iron Man showed up because radio communications with the ship were being blocked, so the Avenger is also bringing word that the ship is to turn around without delivering its cargo.

What follows is an example of how well Michelinie had defined Tony Stark's character. The ship was recalled because it was carrying high-tech equipment bound for Latvaria. At the time, Doctor Doom had been overthrown as that country's ruler, but Tony still had the country on a "no-sell" list because there was no guarentee that it wouldn't be misused. In fact, Doom (who was still living in his Latvarian castle) is the buyer of the equipment. Tony then fires the executive who improperly made the sale. The dialogue, though, makes it clear that Tony isn't just being a jerk boss, but reacting appropriately to someone who messed up big time.

This is nicely counterpointed by a scene with Doctor Doom. Doom's been time traveling to study magic with past masters (for reasons not yet explained). He needs to go farther back in time and needed the circuits he was buying from Stark to do so. When he learns the sale was cancelled, he reacts by threatening the life of his assistant for "allowing this to happen."

Both Doom and Tony can be tough bosses, but Tony is expecting his people to act with reasonable moral responsibility, while Doom acts with almost capricious cruelity. This will have consequences.

By the way, in a nice call back to previous Marvel continuity, Doom's current assistant is the brother of a previous assistant--killed by Doom back in Fantastic Four #87.

Well, if Doom can't get the circuits he needs fairly, he'll gladly use foul means. Tony knows this, of course, but a couple of mercenaries in a Doom-designed death vehicle still manage to get away with the the circuits after a brief fight with Iron Man.

Tony personally travels to Latvaria to get he circuits back. As Iron Man, he fights his way into Doom's castle, eventually confronting the villain. A brief discussion devolves into another fight which...

... ends when the bitter and hate-filled assistant sends both of them back into time, then smashes the controls to ensure that they can never come back.

This really is a strong story. The Romita/Layton art is great, helping to tell the story in a straightforward manner and providing us with a series of well-choreographed, exciting action scenes. The counter-point between Tony and Doom as authority figures in a really nice touch.

But where do the two reluctant time travelers end up? We'll find out next week.

Cover Cavalcade

From 1943, with cover art by Earle Bergey. Why can't giant bug-eyed monsters all just get along?

Friday's Favorite OTR

Suspense: "Commuter's Ticket" 8/1/46

A man depends on the anonymity of a crowded commuter train to help him establish an alibi after committing a murder. No one pays attention to the fellow passengers on those trains. Right?

Click HERE to listen or download.

HONEYMOON BREAK

published in 1949

HONEYMOON BREAK: No regular Thursday post this week. We will return to our regular schedule next week.

HONEYMOON BREAK

from 1958.

HONEYMOON BREAK: No comic book review this week. We'll be back on our regular schedule next week with a trip back to Camelot with Iron Man and Doctor Doom.

Cover Cavalcade

From 1961. I usually preferred Dell's painted covers to the photo covers, but this one makes me yearn to be an Untouchable.

Edgar Rice Burroughs Podcast--new information

Podcast now available on these platforms:

Anchor: https://anchor.fm/timothy-deforest

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/42YmyBePyUsLLCgCXL2v6Z

Google Podcasts: https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy9mNDgxNWMwL3BvZGNhc3QvcnNz

Breaker: https://www.breaker.audio/edgar-rice-burroughs-r-podcast

RadioPublic: https://radiopublic.com/edgar-rice-burroughs-podcast-69raaB

WEDDING DAY

from 1950

I'm getting married today. There will be a one-week break in our Wednesday and Thursday posts and there will likely be a delay in my approving any comments that you all may leave.

I appreciate my small readership and work to maintain a regular schedule to show you all the proper respect for visiting my blog, but this marriage/honeymoon stuff is just so darn time-consuming!

The Monday and Friday posts, as well as one that will post tomorrow about the Edgar Rice Burroughs podcast I produce, are pre-scheduled and will still appear as usual.

Friday's Favorite OTR

Quiet, Please: "A Red and White Guidon" 2/9/48

A calvary trooper finds out its very important to take care of his company flag. Turns out there are rather severe eternal consequences for losing it.

Click HERE to listen or download.

Bearcats!

A few years ago, I wrote a short post about a 1971 TV series titled Bearcats!, about a pair of adventurers tooling around the American Southwest (and sometimes Mexico) in a Stutz Bearcat during the 1910s. They hire out to solve dangerous problems, usually involving crooks, spies or revolutionaries.

When I wrote that post, I hadn't actually seen the show since I was a child and I was wondering if it would be as much fun to watch it as an adult as it had been in 1971. After all, the premise and the cool car would be enough to carry the show for the average 11-year-old boy.

Well, the show finally came out on DVD a few years ago. As an adult, I find myself really annoyed by the obvious 1970s haircuts. There are a few continuity and story construction problems, and (at the risk of sounding brutal) it really needed to be a little more violent than it was, with a higher body count. That would have been dramatically appropriate for the stories being told.

But it's still an entertaining show, with fun protagonists and that totally cool car carrying along the stories nicely.

Today, though, I want to talk not directly about the show, but a tie-in novel based on the show.

But wait! There's no blurb on that cover saying something like "based on the hit TV series." In fact, there's no reference to the series at all and, interestingly, the copyright is in the author's name. The cover illustration, though eye-catching and accurate to the story, gives no hint to its early 20th-Century setting.

There were several posts about this on a Men's Paperback Adventure group on Facebook. Someone came up with a reasonable theory:

The author, John Hunter (a pseudonym for pulp veteran W.T. Ballard), was hired to write a tie-in novel--a common practice for TV shows at that time. He did indeed write the novel, but the show tanked after just 13 episodes and plans to publish the novel were cancelled.

So Hunter submitted the novel to another publisher and it was published under his copyright. It's not impossible that he asked permission of the show's producers before doing this, but it seems unlikely that studio lawyers would have signed off on it. Instead, it is very likely that Hunter simply hoped no one would notice that he was using the characters and premise from the show and call him on it. And, apparently, he was right. No one noticed and Hunter committed the perfect literary crime.

Anyways, if you like the premise of Bearcats! (a Western set late enough to allow for cars and machine guns), then this book is worth tracking down and reading.

The protagonists are asked by an old friend to help save her gold mine, which is on the verge of bankruptcy because of rampant theft and corruption. It's a good premise, starting off as essentially as a detective story. As events play out, the plot smoothly evolves into a pure action tale, with the heroes using their cool car in an innovative way to save men trapped in a mine by a fire, then later pursuing a group of bad guys into Mexico.

So if you run across Hell Hole in a used book store, don't hesitate to snag a copy. Despite its flaws, Bearcats! wasn't with us long enough. So another Bearcats! story is always welcome.

There will, by the way, be no post on Thursday next week due to my honeymoon. We'll be back on our regular schedule in two weeks.

The Importance of Matching Frequencies

cover art by Carmine Infantino

One of the fun things about the Silver Age Flash stories was how the hero could use his super-speed in supposedly scientific ways to accomplish whatever plot-convenient thing he needed to accomplish.

For instance, Flash #168 (March 1967) has him using his speed to find something invisible by spinning at just the right frequency. He also spins his arm to form a cushion of solid air to stop a beam of radiation.

There was always a chance that this occasions could come across as a contrived deus ex machina, but writer John Broome and artist Carmine Infantino were so casual about it that it all just seems like a perfectly natural and logical extension of Flash's speed. Besides, if all Flash could do was run fast, his stories would lose dramatic edge pretty quickly.

This is, after all, the way science in a Comic Book Universe is supposed to work. If the laws of physics followed Real Life rules, then a world with superheros in it would be pretty boring.

The story begins with Barry Allen worried, because Hal Jordan was supposed to be arriving for a visit, but seems to have vanished. When a Guardian of the Universe pops up in Barry's home to tell him even Hal's all-powerful bosses don't know where he is, there is definitely reason to worry.

Adding to Barry's problems is Hjalmar Helms (I love that name), who has been trying to invent time travel, but instead accidentally invents a purple ray that can in turn create futuristic devises. By himself, Helms is harmless. But when crooks find out about the purple ray, then lock Helms in his own closet and become self-described "super crooks."

Flash has a run-in with the gang and nearly defeats them, but a lucky shot with a sleep ray puts him down long enough for the bad guys to escape.

In the meantime, Flash does find an amnesiac Hal Jordan working on a local fishing boat. One clue leads them to the hotel Hal had been staying at before losing his memory. Barry figures that if Hal uses his power battery to recharge his ring, that could fix his amnesia, but the darn battery (and Hal's ring, for that matter) are invisible and intangible until needed.

So we find out that Flash can see invisible things by spinning around really, really fast. It's stuff like this that make Flash's stories from this era so delightful.

Hal gets his memory back and we learn that a mysterious feedback from the battery is what gave him amnesia in the first place.  But there's no time to try to figure that out as the two must hurriedly team up to take out the super-crooks, with Barry using his superspeed once again in wonderfully weird ways to help win the fight. Along the way, he notices that a ray gun fired by one of the crooks has no effect on a yellow school bus. So, when Barry and Hal track down Hjalmar Helms and set him free, they are able to deduce that Helms purple ray machine matched the frequency of the power battery. This caused the feedback that zapped Hal's memory and gave the purple ray its power.

So the two seemingly seperate storylines tie together neatly. And we learn that just as SCIENCE is done in the Doctor Who universe by reversing polarity, SCIENCE in the DC Universe is done by matching frequencies. I wonder what would happen if you reversed polarity on something and then matched frequencies with it?

Next week, there will be a Honeymoon Break with no posts on Wednesday or Thursday.  I appreciate my small readership and usually work to be regular in my posts to show the proper respect for you all. But, well, it's my honeymoon.

In two weeks, Iron Man and Doctor Doom travel back to the days of King Arthur.

Cover Cavalcade

Really cool Neal Adams cover from 1970.

Friday's Favorite OTR

The Whistler: "Quiet Sunday" 6/10/46

A man's quiet sunday is interrupted when his mistress and then his wife both unexpectedly show up at his home. A death and the need to improvise a plan to hide a body quickly follows.

Click HERE to listen or download.

A Science-Adventure Story!

No matter how I delude myself into thinking I'm something of an expert on Pre-Digital Pop Culture, I find that I often stumble over something really cool that I didn't even know about.

A few months ago, my sister-in-law texted me a picture of some Rick Brant Science-Adventure novels she saw in a used book store in South Carolina. I thought they looked neat and asked her to buy one and send it to me.

I'm glad I did and, in fact, I'm sorry I didn't ask her to pick up several more as well. The Pirates of Shan (1958) is a lot of fun.

The Rick Brant books were written from 1947 until 1968. John Blaine was a pen name. The books were actually written by Harold L. Goodwin. Peter J. Harkins co-authored the first three. In 1990, an unpublished adventure was published, topping off the series at 24 books.

Rick was the son of a scientist who lived on Spindrift Island, off the coast of New Jersey. The island is the home of the Spindrift Foundation, so Rick is growing up among a community of scientists. So it's probably no surprise that he turns out to be pretty smart himself. Rick himself is a teenager, but his partner in adventure is Don "Scotty" Scott, an ex-marine whom I assume must be a few years older. The one book I've read didn't make that clear to me.

I've never read anywhere that the Rick Brant series were an influence on the classic Johnny Quest cartoon, but its hard not to make comparisons. Rick ends up going on dangerous adventures, despite his young age. He has a Hindu friend named Chahda, who is also smart and resourceful. And he has an older combat-trained friend who looks after him. Sounds like Johnny, Hadji and Race Bannon to me.

But then, science-adventure stories with young protagonists (designed to appeal to young readers) were not uncommon, so the simularities to Johnny Quest can easily be coincidental.

The Pirates of Shan starts off when it is learned that two scientists attached to the Spindrift Foundation have gone missing while in the Phillippines. Everyone in the Foundation has long-since thought of the others as family rather than just co-workers, so this is personal. Rick and Scotty accompany one of the adult scientists to the Phillippines to investigate. They are joined there by Chahda.

Chahda is a great character, by the way. Because of the time frame in which these books were written, it would not be surprising to find him portrayed as a stereotype. But he's a fully-fleshed out person who is respected and treated as a equal by the Spindrifters. They depend on him to gather information and trust him completely at the climax when he is improvising wildly to get the others out of danger.

The Pirates of Shah is paced a little too slowly for the first few chapters, but once the Spindrifters get a line on a group of pirates who are likely responsible for kidnapping their friends, the story really takes off. Then the book earns huge points with me when Rick and friends have to take to the sea and end up renting a World War II-era surplus PT Boat. PT Boats are cool!

They get jumped several times by pirates using small sailing craft, but manage to defend themselves successfully. Scotty is quite adept with a rifle, while Rick proves to be handy with a bow and arrow.

They finally backtrack the pirates to a volcanic island, where the two kidnapped scientists are being held. So the next thing to do is sneak onto the island and smuggle a radio to the captives. Then an actual rescue attempt needs to be planned.

All through the adventure, the emphasis is on the good guys thinking through the situation, considering facts, discussing theories, taking their resources into account and then making intelligent plans. Though this particular novel emphasizes adventure over science, the idea of the protagonists using their intelligence to deal with situations is a prime theme.

And the final rescue is truly exciting, involving an escape across the island while carrying an injuried man, a wild shoot-out at a cove filled with pirate vessels and Chahdra essentially weaponizing the pure speed of the PT Boat to pull everyone out of the frying pan.

Fortunately, most of the Rick Brant novels are available electronically for a very cheap price, so I'll be able to visit him again. I'm looking forward to it.

A Pilot Who Belongs on the Ground (World War I Biplanes--Part 3)

cover art by Russ Heath

Lt. Blake is, frankly, in the wrong business. He flies a fighter plane during the First World War. Or, rather, he flies a number of planes--he keeps losing his planes to enemy action or random mishaps. All without ever actually shooting down an enemy plane.

This is the premise of "Ace In Reserve," written by Hank Chapman and drawn by Jack Abel. Appearing in All-American Men at War #100 (November-December 1963), the story is exciting, fun and (like last week's Man from U.N.C.L.E.'s story) full of both humor and cool-looking biplanes.

 When Blake's squadron commander saves him from losing another plane (even though that means losing a chance to shoot down a German ace), the poor guy can at least take comfort in the fact that he didn't actually lose another plane.

Seconds later, his plane is hit by lightning and he literally crashes into the headquarters of the enemy squadron. Adding insult to embarrassment, the German commander recognizes him as the guy who keeps losing planes and, after locking him, begins to make fun of him on a daily basis.

Finally, Blake snaps and makes a break for it. Chaos ensues. The Germans shoot at him, but accidentally set fires to some barrels of fuel. So Blake rolls the burning barrels into some of the enemy planes. Then he steals a plane for himself and manages to destroy several more aircraft before he takes off. 

THEN he gets shot down by his own squadron commander because he's flying an enemy plane. But the commander picks him up, pointing out that Blake is essentially a secret weapon--as long as he stays on the ground.

This brings our World War I biplane series to an end. Next week, we'll see what happens when Green Lantern gets amnesia.

Cover Cavalcade

A fantastic Joe Kubert cover from 1971.

Edgar Rice Burroughs Podcast Episode #9

Here's the latest episode of the Edgar Rice Burroughs podcast. Jess, Scott and I talk about ERB's 1927 novel "The Master Mind of Mars," which combines adventure with a Frankenstein-like horror vibe involving brain transplants and resurrecting the dead. 

The audio only version can be found HERE. 

Friday's Favorite OTR

Lux Radio Theater: "The African Queen" 12/15/52

Greer Garson fills in for Katharine Heburn (and does an excellent job as Rosie) in this adaptation of The African Queen.

Click HERE to listen or download.

"You killed him, girlie. But you didn't kill him dead enough!"

A few weeks ago, I was playing the game Ace Detective, a card game in which the players create a hard-boiled mystery set in the early 1940s. One of the components are cards you can play that include quotes from various hard-boiled stories.

One of those quotes was "You killed him, girlie. But you didn't kill him dead enough!"

Well, obviously I had to look up the story from which that quote is taken and read it.

The story is "Heir in the Air," published in the September 1945 issue of Black Mask. It was written by Dale Clark, one of several pen names used by a writer named Ronal Kayser. Clark wrote something over two hundred stories for the pulps, including twenty-nine stories for Black Mask featuring hotel detective Mike O'Hanna.

Clark is one of those writers that it is a delight to discover as more and more pulp magazines become available digitally. "Heir in the Air" is the first story by Clark I've read, so its my introduction to O'Hanna.

I like him. The hotel for which he works is a swanky Southern California place called San Alpa. He's tough and, if a crime is committed, quite willing to direct that toughness at the wealthy, paying customers.

That's quite necessary in this case. The attractive Eva Taine has come running out of her room, screaming that the ghost of her grandfather had just tried to strangle her.

An investigation leads to another nearby room, where the guy staying there actually took a shot at the supposed ghost. Soon after that, though, a fresh corpse with a bullet in him is found.

O'Hanna soon discovers that several other members of the Taine family are in the hotel, all of whom have issues. This pretty quickly starts to aggravate him: "I'm tired of bumping into a brad-new Taine family skeleton every time I open a door!"

The murder, the supposed ghost and various other shenanigans turn out to revolve around a copy of the first draft of the Gettysburg Address. An old attempt to kill the Taine grandfather with a car bomb several years earlier is also a factor.  (He had since died of natural causes.) The fact that the grandfather had left a chunk of money to his cat is also thrown into the mix.

Despite all this, O'Hanna proves himself to be smart as well as tough. He manages to sort all these facts together and arrive at the truth.

A few years ago, I wrote about an Erle Stanley Gardner character whose adventures have never been collected into a single volume. The same is true of Clark's Mike O'Hanna tales. I love stumbling across pulp characters whose adventures I haven't read before, but once I find them, I want ALL the stories. I want them NOW!!!

Well, at least "Heir in the Air" is there to read. You can find it online HERE.

The Spirit of St. Louis Returns! (World War I Biplanes, Part 2)

Last week, we looked at a Batman story in which the Caped Crusader ends up fighting a mid-air duel with World War I vintage biplanes. Well, it seems that when battling evil, heroes often end up in adventures that involve biplanes.

It happened to Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin, U.N.C.LE.'s top agents, during "The Spirit of St. Louis Affair," as recounted by an unknown writer and artist Mike Sekowsky in Gold Key's Man from U.N.C.L.E. #9 (November 1966). It should be noted that the two agents didn't actually fly a biplane during this adventure, but they flew amidst a gaggle of such planes, so I'm counting it.

The adventure begins when a THRUSH double agent manages to steal microfilm containing important information about U.N.C.L.E. secret bases. A pursuit of the traitor leads to the Smithsonian Institute. The bad guy manages to conceal the microfilm aboard The Spirit of St. Louis. He's shot and wounded while making a getaway, but manages to tell THRUSH where he hid the film before he dies.

So THRUSH steals The Spirit, but then can't find the microfilm aboard. That's because it was actually hidden aboard a duplicate of The Spirit, which was being stored at the Smithsonian until it was time for it to serve as referee plane in a Paris-to-Rome air race featuring vintage aircraft.

By the time both U.N.C.L.E and THRUSH figure this out, the duplicate plane is already in Paris and the race is about to begin. Both bad guys and good guys rush to Paris. Events shake out in such a way that Solo and Illya are forced to take off with the duplicate plane before being able to search for the microfilm. THRUSH pursues them in the real Spirit, with both planes weaving in and out of the vintage biplanes taking part in the race. The bad guys have no problem shooting at the duplicate plane, but the U.N.C.L.E. agents can't return fire without possibly destroying a national treasure.

What follows is one of the most entertaining chase scenes I've ever run across. Eventually, Solo and Illya find the microfilm and land the duplicate plane in a field. But the THRUSH agents in the real plane are still pursuing them and shooting at them. They commandeer a passing car, driving by a pretty French girl named Denise, but the THRUSH agents remain persistent.

Further shenangians ensue, in which the U.N.C.L.E. agents eventually steal back the real Spirit (bringing the microfilm with them), while the enemy agents steal the duplicate. Then both planes are back in the air again, once more dog-fighting amidst the planes taking part in the race. When the real Spirit is damaged, Solo and Illya come up with the idea of lowering Denise (to whom they give the microfilm) into one of the race planes.

With both the girl and the film safe, they can now concentrate on fighting the THRUSH agents. The two Spirits go up against each other in a final showdown, with THRUSH ending up the loser.

This issue is more fun than a barrel of Lewis machine guns. The bulk of the issue is the unusual chase scene involving the two Spirits, which is exciting, visual engaging and full of humor. And panels stuffed full of World War I planes can't help but be fun to look at.

Next week, we will conclude our World War I biplanes series with a look at a story that is actually set during World War I.