Friday's Favorite OTR

X Minus One: "And the Moon Be Still As Bright" 9/22/55

An excellent adaptation of one of the best stories from Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles.

Click HERE to listen or download.

Errol Flynn Lies to His Wife and Solves a Murder

We quite properly think of Errol Flynn as a swashbuckler--Robin Hood, Captain Blood and so on. That's the sort of role in which he really shined.

But those roles always included a high level of humor, so it's not surprising that when he did do a straight comedy in 1941's Footsteps in the Dark, he was really good in it. I wish he'd done more.

Edward G. Robinson was initially slated to play the lead in Footsteps, but he was busy with another film, so Flynn got the role of a wealthy investment advisor who has secretly written a successful mystery novel and--of course--ends up solving a real murder.

Neither his wife nor his live-in mother-in-law know about his secret life as a novelist. With the help of his chauffer, he's established a routine to keep that secret, but when he ends up looking into a real killing, events begin to progress at a more hectic pace and keeping secrets becomes more difficult.

When his wife figures out what's going on, though, she figures wrong--assuming that he's having an affair with a burlesque dancer.  Actually, he is pretending to have an affair with the dancer, but only because he suspects her of killing a jewel smuggler. When the dancer is herself murdered, the wife is seen fleeing her apartment, so Flynn has to confess to the crime himself, then dodge the cops until he can trap the real killer into confessing. Fortunately, his chauffer is loyal enough to help him escape from the police. I hope he pays that guy well, as I don't think the duties of a chauffer normally involves committing felonies.

Warner Brothers had hopes of turning this into a series to compete with MGM's Thin Man series. But the box office was just so-so. That's a pity, because Flynn, Brenda Marshall (as his wife) and Allen Jenkins as the chauffer all play nicely off each other. The movie is sincerely funny and the mystery is pretty good. So, I have a bone to pick with you--1941 movie-going audience. You really needed to have gone to see this one. You ruined a good thing.

The rest of the cast adds to the fun. Alan Hale (who seemed to be required by law to appear in every Errol Flynn movie ever made) is the police inspector investigating the murder, with William Frawley getting some hilarious moments as Hale's less-than-brilliant assistant.

I watched this one on TCM, so wasn't able to make a clip of my own. I found the trailer on YouTube, but it presents the movie as more of a straight murder mystery than the comedy-mystery it is.

The Original Ghost Rider

The original Ghost Rider was created in 1967, about five years before the modern-day, flaming skull/motorcycle version showed up. Created (sort of) by writers Gary Friedrich and Roy Thomas along with artist Dick Ayers, his origin was recounted in Ghost Rider #1 (February 1967).

Actually, this Wild West version of Ghost Rider wasn't the original. Dick Ayers had co-created (with writer Ray Krank) a western Ghost Rider in 1949 for the publisher Magazine Enterprises. His stories were horror-themed, so came to an end when the Comics Code was instituted. Magazine Enterprises closed up shop in 1958.

When the trademark on the name lapsed, Marvel rebooted the character. That's the guy who shows up in 1967.

But poor Ghost Rider didn't get to keep his name. When Johnny Blaze debuted in 1972, the Wild West Ghost Rider briefly became Night Rider (until someone remembered that's what Klu Klux Klan terrorists were called in the 19th Century) and then Phantom Rider. In the meantime, when AC Comics reprinted the original 1949 stories in 1980 by AC Comics, he was renamed the Haunted Horseman because Marvel had the trademark for Ghost Rider.

Have you got all that? There'll be a quiz tomorrow that will represent 20% of your final grade.

Anyway, today we are looking at the origin of Marvel's first Ghost Rider. It begins with a guy named Carter Slade riding towards the small Western town at which he's been hired to teach school. But when he sees Indians attacking a small ranch, he tries to play hero.

But he's not very good at playing hero yet. Though he discovers the "Indians" are actually white men in disguise, he fails to stop them. Instead, he's badly wounded and left for dead.

Fortunately, there is one survivor from the burning ranch. Young Jamie Jacobs was hiding in the cellar. Jamie tries to get the dying Carter across twenty miles of empy land to the nearest town, but it doesn't look like either of them will make it. Another bit of fortune strikes when they are seen by Indians.

Carter heals up and the medicine man declares him to be an answer to prophesy, destined to be a hero. Carter, who is pretty good at kicking butt despite being trained as a school teacher (Hey, those snot-nosed kids won't be able to take him down!), embraces this role. He steals a little Lone Ranger thunder by befriending a wild white horse no one else had ever been able to catch, but then adapts a more original M.O. using a white costume coated with a dust that glows brightly even in dim light. By covering himself or portions of himself, he now has a way of freaking out the bad guys.

He learns that attacks on the local settlers has been instituted by an evil land baron, who wants to drive everyone else off government land so he can claim it for himself. There's no real proof he's behind it, though, so Carter (now in his Ghost Rider persona) steps in to first frighten off the bad guy's men and then "encourage" the bad guy to pack up and move away.

Dick Ayers' art carries the story along at a brisk pace and the script uses various Old West cliches effectively, with Ghost Rider's creepy vibe adding a nice touch of uniqueness to the tale.

As I said, Ghost Rider would soon be changed to Phantom Rider. Before the name change, Carter would get killed saving his brother Lincoln in Western Gunfighters #6 (1972), though Carter would be used one more time some years later when Johnny Blaze time travels and teams up with him.

After Carter died, his adopted son Jamie (the kid that saved him in the origin story) takes up the identity, but doesn't have the skill to go with it and soon gets killed himself. So Carter's brother Lincoln takes over. Lincoln largely disappeared into Comic Book Limbo for some time, but then popped up again in West Coast Avengers in the 1980s when the Avengers were enduring some time travel shenanigans. Lincoln, unable to handle his powers, has moved into Crazy Town by this point and, after kidnapping Mockingbird and brainwashing her to love him, ends up dead himself. The WCA story as a whole is actually a very good one, but whether Lincoln's descent into madness is a betrayal of the character is something for fans to decide on an individual basis. I'm actually okay with it as long as that version of the character wasn't Carter Slade, but its a close call.

Next week, as long as we are visiting the Marvel Wild West, let's stick around for awhile and look at the origin of the Outlaw Kid. 

Cover Cavalcade

A colorful and exciting Morris Gollub cover from 1964.

Friday's Favorite OTR

The Lone Ranger: "Five Cartridges for Change" 3/1/44

A really strong, well-constructed story involving escaped convicts, a treasure map hidden inside a bullet and lots of double-crosses amongst the bad guys.

Click HERE to listen or download.

The Gracie Allen Murder Case

During the depth of the Depression, the popularity of S.S. Van Dine's Philo Vance novels is credited with keeping the Scribners publishing company afloat. But, ironically, the Vance novels influenced better writers to create better detectives, most notably Ellery Queen. By the late 1930s, their popularity was dwindling.

It's easy to see why this happened. The Vance novels simply don't hold up, with the protagnoist coming as more annoying than smart. The worshipful admiration he receives from police and the D.A. gets tiresome and the mysteries themselves are so-so.

Philo Vance movies had been popping up--made by different studios--since 1929. In 1938, Van Dine was a bit strapped for cash, so he cut a deal to write The Gracie Allen Murder Case, in which Vance would team up with the ditzy comedienne to solve a crime. Gracie's husband and partner George Burns would put in an appearance as well, but the novel would focus primarily on Gracie and Vance. The movie version, with Warren William playing Vance for the third time, was released the next year.

I had to read the Vance novels when I wrote Radio by the Book and I won't subject myself to that torture a second time--not even to revisit the admittedly unique Gracie Allen novel. But Vance has always been more likeable in his movie (and radio) versions than in his novels, so I had no problem watching the movie after searching for years to find a copy. The movie is simply funny, with Gracie bringing her brand of chaos to what is a fairly well-constructed murder mystery.

George isn't in the movie, leaving Gracie free to fall for Bill Brown (Kent Taylor), a perfume maker who is soon accused of murder. Gracie finds Bill's cigarette box near the body and both end up in the slammer. Gracie is released soon after Philo Vance, who believes Bill is innocent, takes up the case.

The dead man was murdered with a rare poison, which is soon used to kill someone else. There is, in fact, several items that are poisoned being unwittingly found and carried around by Gracie, including a cigarette and a bottle of perfume.

Vance eventually puts the clues together and confronts the killer, but by then the poisoned cigarette has ended up in Vance's case. Gracie has to convince a motorcycle cop to race her across town in time to save Vance's life just as he's solving the murder.

Gracie is typically wonderful playing her ditzy counterpart, while Warren William drops into the straight man role with aplomb. There is a pretty good mystery hidden inside this movie, but mostly its an excuse to let Gracie be Gracie, which is always hilarious. 

The Gracie Allen Murder Case is indeed unique, but Vance is indeed a strong protagonist in all his movies. As difficult to read as the original novels are, S.S. Van Dine apparently had a worthwhile detective hero hidden in there somewhere. 

The Man of Steel and the Boy Wonder

cover art by Neal Adams

World's Finest usually featured a Superman/Batman team-up, but the 200th issue (February 1971) switched things up a bit by teaming Supes with Batman's sidekick Robin. This was the original Dick Grayson Robin, who by this time was attending college but was still a few years away from changing his hero identity to Nightwing.

Team-up stories with Superman can be tricky, because the guy is so darn powerful that a partner often seems superfluous. But clever writers on World's Finest and (later) DC Comics Presents often came up with clever plot twists that justified Superman's need for an often underpowered partner. Writer Michael Friedrich and artist Dick Dillon manage to do so in this particular issue.

Clark Kent is covering student protests at Hudson University, changing into Superman when someone tosses a firebomb. In a nice touch that demonstrates Friedrich understands Superman's essential character, the Man of Steel deescalates the situation with a minimum of violence.

But not everyone calms down. Two brothers named Marty and Davy have started slugging each other over their political differences. Robin is trying to break up the fight when Superman steps in. Then all four are abruptly transported to another planet.

This is where we meet this issue's bad guys. Two alien brothers named Migg and Kartal have a bad habit of using a teleporter to kidnap super-powered beings, subdue them with mental bolts, then slowly drain the life force of their captives to keep themselves from aging. As long as they have a regular supply of super-beings to drain, they effectively have immortality.  They also maintain a hideout for intergalactic criminals.

Superman has so much raw power that he represents an immortality jackpot. He and his fellow kidnappees are knocked out. Robin and the two brothers are tossed into a near-by jungle, with the brothers charging some of their criminal guests a fee for human-hunting privileges.

The character arc for Marty and Davy is predictable right from the first panel in which they appear. The moment they appear, any alert reader will know that the adventure they're about to have will teach them to respect each others' differing opinions and political viewpoints. But even if we consider this a weakpoint, the story has a number of strong points as well. The M.O. and purpose of the aliens is a unique one, providing a believable way of getting Superman in trouble and giving a non-powered hero the task of saving him. Also, Dick Dillon draws a jungle that has a strong "alien planet" vibe, giving the story a fun setting.

Robin and the brothers find themselves in this jungle, pursued by alien big game hunters who wear headbands that increase their mental powers. But Robin uses his gymnastic skills to get the drop on them. This nets the humans the headbands as they proceed to sneak into the alien fortress.

In another neat twist, Superman appears to break free from the life-draining machine, trashing portions of the base before being subdued again by mental bolts. This later turns out to be an illusion--Superman was allowed to think he was escaping to convince him escape was impossible.

Well, escape might be impossible, but rescue isn't. A batarang throw knocks out a couple of guards, then Robin and the brothers jump Migg and Kartal. Robin frees Supes, who then gets into a "mental bolt match" with the aliens to take them down. After trashing the life-draining device (which means justice will come to the alien brothers via rapid aging and death), the good guys teleport back to Earth.

I do think this is overall a strong story built on several very clever ideas. The predictability of the human brothers' story arc isn't that much of a glitch. But the final confrontation with Migg and Kartal does bother me. Superman has a wide range of powers, but that doesn't normally include mental bolts. I suppose the "I out-thought them!" line that Supes has in the last panel could be interpreted as meaning he simply overwhelmed them with his own will-power. That's fine by itself, but it's not clearly explained and we do seem him shooting mental bolts out of his head. There's nothing to clearly indicate that this is supposed to be symbolic.

I suspect that this is something that will not bother some readers as much as it bothers me. And it doesn't ruin an otherwise good story for me, so I guess I should just stop whining abou it anyways. We still get to see the Boy Wonder doing back flips through a pretty cool alien jungle. That should be enough to satisfy anyone.

Next week, it's back to the Wild West in the Marvel Universe to visit with the original Ghost Rider.

Cover Cavalcade

An effective and atmopheric John Buscema cover from 1977.

Friday's Favorite OTR

Dark Fantasy: "The Sea Phantom" 2/6/42

The captain of an 18th Century ship is determined to do his duty and protect the treasure he is carrying... even if that duty were to last for an eternity.

Click HERE to listen or download.

Venus: The Jungle Planet--Part 2

cover art by Rudolph Belarski

Leigh Brackett's Space Opera version of the Solar System is by far my favorite and she also gave us a Venus covered by tropical jungles and dangerous natives.

It's ironic, though, that the Venus-themed story by her I choose at random involves those jungles in only the most cursury way. Most of the story is set in orbit above the planet's sultry atmosphere.

"Interplanetary Reporter" was published in the May 1941 issue of Startling Stories, edited by future Superman editor Mort Weisinger. The main character is a war correspondent named Chris Barton, who was in the Venusian city of Vhia when war is declared between Venus and Jupiter. 

Vhia is a domed city, protecting the Earth-descended population from the heat and rain of the surrounding jungles. But when a bombardment from space cracks the dome and lets in that heat and rain, it looks like the city is doomed.

Barton himself have been trying to quit his job. Years of covering wars had left him too cynical to believe that what he did had any value other than provide a spectacle for the "boobs." 

Beyond the dome of pearly glass, on the other side of Venus, lay the swamp where he had left his boyish illusions, covering the Leng campaigns. Out beyound the steam canopy of clouds was Mars, where he had stood by a tele-transmitter until it was blown up under him, covering the Martian World War of 2504.

A protagonist who has been lost to cynicism or moral decay only to find himself again during the story is a common theme in Brackett's short stories, but she handles it well pretty much every time.  On this occasion, Barton finds himself with two other people, flying into space in a ship equipped with cameras and transmitters, hoping to get images of the Jovian fleet. One is a daredevil female Venusian/Martian pilot. The other is a terrified fellow reporter. 

But they don't find Jovian ship, but rather a ship painted black to hide it against the background of space while it lobs bombs down on Vhia. The current political situation involving the planets is complicated. Is there another faction involved, intent on seeing that the war between Venus and Jupiter doesn't end in negotiations? Someone who wants the fighting to continue until one side or the other wins?

By the time Barton deduces what is going on, his fellow reporter acts with courage despite his obvious fear and reminds the cynical reporter of the value of idealism. Now all he has to do is survive an orbital dogfight while in an unarmed ship and he can get back to Venus with information that will stop a war.

"Interplanetary Reporter" is a fast-paced and exciting story in which Brackett does some very effective and believable world-building with just a few words. 

Shipwrecks and Rescues

Gaylord Du Bois wrote many Tarzan and Korak stories for Dell and Gold Key. He often lifted a plot element or character from ERB's original novels and re-used them in his own stories.

For instance, in the 1940 story "The Quest of Tarzan" (re-titled Tarzan and the Castaways when collected into a book in 1964), Tarzan is injured and temporarily loses the ability to speak. He's captured and caged aboard a ship by villains who intend to make money displaying him as a "wild man." The ship is eventually wrecked upon a reef during a storm, thrusting Tarzan and other survivors into another adventure.

So the "captured and unable to speak" bit was simply to get Tarzan into the larger story. In Korak Son of Tarzan #35 (May 1970), Du Bois and artist Dan Spiegle take this incident away from Tarzan and give it to Korak, once again using it to introduce the protagonist into a larger adventure.

When Korak finds his friend, the ape Akut, a prisoner, he attempts to free him. But he himself is shot by the captors. The bullet grazes his head and leaves him unable to use human speach, though he can still manage ape talk.

As it turns out, Korak's inability to speak is a legacy left over from the Tarzan story, but has no effect on the plot here. It only lasts a few pages until a storm drives the ship onto some rocks. A dunking in the ocean seems to have cured him.

Korak, Akut and a another captive of the slavers named Daniel Moray are the only survivors and manage to salvage a boat. Daniel, it turns out, had fallen into the hands of the slavers while trying to find his son Harry, who had been captured earlier by the same guys.

Well, nobody in the Greystoke family is going to turn down an opportunity to help with a quest like that. When they make it to the coast, they begin to follow a river that should lead them to the guy who bought Harry from the slavers. It's probably a bit of a coincidence that the slaver ship was wrecked near such a convenient spot, but such coincidences are as long a tradition in the Greystoke family as helping those in need.

After some minor adventures, they find the city in which Harry is imprisoned by the local sultan. That panel above, by the way, is a magnificent example of how much fun Spiegle's art could be.

This has been a solid story so far. If I wanted to nit-pick, I could complain that Du Bois waited a little too long before they found Harry. With the page count for the story nearly reached, his rescue from the city goes a little too quickly and smoothly to be as exciting as it could be. But it is still fun to read, with Akut knocking out a guard and Korak knocking out the sultan before they steal the sultan's private plane and make a getaway.

Despite the rushed ending, "The Slave of El-Ghazi" is a solid, straightforward adventure which borrows an element from Tarzan's adventures to use as a jumping-off point for a brand-new tale.

Next week, the Man of Steel teams up with the Boy Wonder.

Cover Cavalcade

A dramatic Joe Kubert cover from 1972

Friday's Favorite OTR

The Stan Freberg Show: "Abominable Snowman Revisited" 9/8/57

The "Washington Crossing the Delaware" skit in this episode is a perfect example of how to set up a really bad joke so effectively that it circles around being bad to become an hilarious joke.

Click HERE to listen or download.

Venus: The Jungle Planet--Part 1

Before the Solar System turned out to be boring in real life, Venus was often portrayed as a jungle planet, on the persumption that its perpetual cloud cover trapped in heat and kept the temperature at tropical levels. Often, dinosaurs or dinosaur-like creatures roamed the Venusian jungle.

"Swamp Girl of Venus" was set on such a planet. Publsihed in the September 1949 issue of Amazing Stories, it was written by Robert Moore Willams under the pen name H. H. Harmon.

It's a fun story, jumping into the action right from the start when human trader Hal McCabe rescues a Venusian native named Juth, who is being tortured for information about the location of Coth, a land inhabited by people who fly large, visious bird creatures. The torturers know that Coth is rumored to be rich in gold, so they want to know how to get there.

 McCabe puts a stop to the torture and also exacts a little bit of ironic justice on the bad guys. But McCabe and his new friend are soon in trouble. The inhabitants of Coth, riding down on their fifel (Venusian for "flying death") attack, knocking them out with gas bombs.

They wake up in a dungeon, stripped naked and knowing that their captors intend to hunt them for sport. But a story set on a Venusian jungle planet can rarely progress far without  a pretty human girl showing up. In this case, the girl is Le-ann. Her father was also an Earth trader, but his space ship had crashed in the nearby swamps when she was just 12 years old. Her dad was killed and she's been living with the people of Coth ever since. She's recently found her dad's ship, but doesn't understand that it will no longer fly.

So when she springs McCabe and Juth from the slammer, they end up in a wrecked ship that is leaking radiation, surrounded by dinosaurs and a variety of other dangerous fauna.

Walking across a Venusian swamp is a quick way to commit suicide, so the only option seems to be for them to steal some fifel and make an escape by air. Whether McCabe can Juth can both manage to fly the foul-tempered beasts or win the inevitable dogfight against a horde of Coth warriors is an open question. But when your only option is your only option, you gotta go for it.

"Swamp Girl of Venus" is a fun piece of Space Opera. Williams does a nice bit of world-building and the final airborne chase/fight scene is well-choreographed and exciting. McCabe is pretty much an straight-out-of-the-box tough-guy action hero ("No one had ever accused Hal McCabe of having lace on the edge of his underpants."), but he's a likeable hero and gets a nice human moment when he is almost crippled with embarassement when he meet Le-ann right after being stripped of all his clothes.

You can read it online HERE.

Next week, we'll look at another author's version of Venus as a jungle planet.

Rematch with Stilt-Man

Daredevil #27 (April 1967--writer: Stan Lee. artist: Gene Colan) picks up pretty much where the last issue left off and jumps right into the action, avoiding the pacing issues from which the previous issue suffered.

Daredevil is looking for Stilt-Man, pausing to help Spider Man take out some crooks and asking the Webslinger to also keep an eye out for the villain.

It's pretty obvious that Spider Man is in the story to help boost sales for DD's lower selling book. Spidey was the 14th best-seller for that year. DD was a lower--though still respectable--27th. But it's not unreasonable that the two heroes would occasionally run into each other and I do enjoy Spidey's attitude towards Daredevil. He's annoyed that people might think it takes two of them to subdue common thugs. So his appearance doesn't seem forced or contrived.

In the meantime, The Masked Marauder showing off his cool stuff to Stilt-Man. He has a helicoptor equipped with a force field that disintegrates anything touching it. The Marauder knows Daredevil is connected with Murdock and Nelson, so his plan is to kidnap the lawyers and force them to tell what they know.

The villains raid the law office, gassing Matt, Foggy and Karen unconscious and stuffing them in the force-field protected chopper. Threatened with death, Matt reveals that Daredevil is really his twin brother Mike. His supposed cowardice ticks off Karen, but it does send Stilt-Man off on a false trail.

But when Stilt-Man can't find Mike listed in the phone book, he's stumped on what to do next, eventually deciding to rob a jewelry store in hopes of luring Daredevil into the open. But in the Marvel Universe version of New York City, you really can't predict which hero will show up when you commit a crime. Stilt-Man finds himself fighting Spider-Man.

Gene Colan uses the same technique to choreograph this fight as he used in the Daredevil/Stilt-Man fight from the previous issue, shifting perspective from panel to panel to highlight the bad guy's changing height and the hero's agility.

Matt, in the meantime, has managed to knock the Marauder into the force field's Off Button before allowing himself to "fall" out of the chopper. In what might be the most remarkable achievement in his career, he changes into his Daredevil costume while hanging upside-down by his knees from the helicopter.

His ensuing fight with the Marauder is interesting to contrast with the Spidey/Stilt-Man battle. Where Colan used wide shots and shifting perspectives for the earlier fight, here he uses tight shots to highlight the confined space and lack of room to manuever. It's an excellent example of just how skilled an artist he was. Both fights have their own flavor and are exciting in their own ways.

Marauder had re-activated the force field and, to the suprise of pretty much no one, ends up falling out of the chopper and getting disintegrated by his own device. Stilt-Man, in the meantime, has escaped from Spider-Man, but accidentally electricutes himself unconscious by trying to zap Daredevil while standing in water.

This ending is too abrupt. I imagine Stan Lee recognized that a third issue with Stilt-Man probably wasn't a good idea. He's a fun villain, but needs to be presented in small doses or he'll just get too silly. But the story had reached the end of its page count, so poor Stilty had to come to an ignomious end to wrap things up quickly.

But this abruptness doesn't spoil the entertainment that preceded this. The fight scenes are fun and well-choreographed. And it's always worthwhile to see Stilt-Man as long as he doesn't overstay his welcome.

Next week, we'll visit with Tarzan's son Korak.

Cover Cavalcade

A really fun Gil Kane cover from 1961.

Radio by the Book now available for the Kindle

Radio by the Book: Adaptations of Literature and Fiction on the Airwaves is now available as an ebook. You can click HERE to get a copy.

Friday's Favorite OTR

Let George Do It: "42 on a Rope" 10/3/47

George bumps into a lady on the sidewalk, which unwittingly drops him into a case involving smuggled Nazi war loot and a failure to learn how a mouse gets out of a cement mixture.

Click HERE to listen or download.