Cover Cavalcade

A Neal Adams cover from 1971.

Friday's Favorite OTR

Columbia Workshop: "Nine Prisoners" 2/20/39

A powerful story about American troops ordered to execute wounded German prisoners during World War I.

Click HERE to listen or download.

Hey! That Dynamite Doesn't Belong There! Part 1

I know that many Westerns did not strive for historical accuracy and we don't really expect them to. Western stories often deal with the mythical (rather than historical) Wild West and that's just fine. The mythical Wild West is a lot of fun to visit.

But there is one thing that can bug me. When an occasional Western is set prior to the Civil War or during that conflict, I'm a little bothered when obvious anachronisms such as Winchester rifles or dynamite are being used. I realize that anachronistic weapons show up in almost any Western, but I'm often okay with that--if only because I don't have the knowledge to tell a 1892 model Winchester from an 1873 model.

But if its set before the Civil War, such things do get a little on my nerves, since they are so obviously out of place. I wrote about 1953's The Man from the Alamo a few years ago and, despite praising the film, spent a paragraph or two whining about this.

Well, 1953 also brought us Kansas Pacific, staring Sterling Hayden. It's a fun movie, set in the months just before the Civil War, in which both Northern and Southern factions in Blood Kansas were raising havoc.

The government is trying to complete the Kansas Pacific railroad, opening up a steady supply route to western forts in anticipation of the war. Cal Bruce (Barton MacLane) is ramroding the construction, but despite his years of experience, he's stymied by continued sabotage carried out by Southern sympathizers.

The Southerners, by the way, are led by Bill Quantrill, who in real life led a blood guerilla campaign against the North during the war. Movie versions of him often portray him (I would argue accurately) as murderous. Brian Donlevy, for instance, gave us a quite psychotic Quantrill in the 1950 film Kansas Raiders. 

In Kansas Pacific, Quantrill (played by Reed Hadley) is a more generic bad guy who is rationally trying to accomplish his goals, though Hadley does bring across a sense of intelligence that makes him an effective antagonist.

The hero of the film is an army engineer named John Nelson (Sterling Hayden), who is sent by the military in an undercover role to supervise railroad construction and guard against the saboteurs. Cal Bruce is initially resentful of a guy he sees as his replacement, but the two soon come to respect each other, with Bruce eventually deducing Nelson's real identity.

The action in the movie is centered around Quantrill's various attempts to sabotage the railroad and Nelson's countermoves against him. Several times, all this involves large amounts of dynamite, so we get to see lots of stuff blow up. Later in the movie, Quantrill gives up on stopping railroad construction and moves on to using a cannon to blow up ammunition trains. 

The action is done well, with Hayden's performance as Nelson giving the plot a firm backbone. My understanding is that Hayden didn't really care for acting, but did it simply to earn a living and pay for his frequent travels. All the same, he always brought a real authority to his roles. Perhaps this was an outgrowth of his wartime work with the O.S.S., but whether Hayden played a hero or a villain, you always knew he could kick your butt without half trying.

I do like this movie and recommend it, but I do grind my teeth a bit at the dynamite (invented in 1867) and the Winchester rifles (invented in 1866). I know this movie is set in the mythical Wild West and the dynamite is effectively used to generate some fun action scenes. But, gee whiz, there must have been a few single-shot rifles and muskets in the studio's property department!

Oh, well, that's just me. Watching Sterling Hayden kick butt is still worthwhile.

Next week, we'll look at another Civil War-era movie that proves to be really good despite some historically inappropriate use of dynamite. 

Don't Try to Out-Pirate a Pirate

cover art by Wally Wood

 EC's tragically short-lived series titled Piracy wasn't always about traditional pirates and often swerved off into other sorts of sea-going adventures. But that's okay, because (like so many of EC's series from the 1950s) it was packed full of superb stories.

And there were more than enough traditional pirates to satisfy our collective urge to read about them. The first story in the premiere issue (October-November 1954), for instance, is an excellent pirate tale.

The story is titled "The Privateer" and is drawn by the great Reed Crandall. Of course, there is a fine legal distinction between a pirate and a privateer--since the privateer has official permission from a specific government to attack enemy ships and keep a share of any loot captured.

But Captain Ballard, the main character of the story, veers away from legal piracy. He's licenced by the by the English to attack Spanish ships. He's a tad ruthless about it, but more or less sticks to the rules at first.

But, by golly, there's money to be made, isn't there? The narration in the story begins to refer to Ballard's rapid descent into piracy as his education. This is a nice touch, giving both structure and a dry humor to the tale.

When a few weeks go by without sighting a Spanish ship, Ballard attacks a neutral French ship.

Ballard realizes that, as long as he doesn't leave any witnesses, he's free to attack just about any ships he wishes. So his education continues as he captures ships from many nations, including British, and loots a few ports. His wealth continues to grow as he makes plans to hide most of it and tell the British authorities that he actually captured a much smaller amount. Thus he avoid having to pay his agreed upon percentage of all his loot to the British authorities.

But, as the story points out, Ballard's education is completed when he attacks three apparently unarmed merchant ships, only to discover that the ships are actually heavily armed pirates.

So Ballard learns--a little too late--that it doesn't pay to try to out-pirate other pirates.

Crandall's art turning a pretty good script into great story. It was a strong start to what really was a fantastic comic book. That Piracy only ran seven issues really is tragic.

Next week, it's back to visit with Cave Girl again. 

Cover Cavalcade

From 1946.

Friday's Favorite OTR

Bold Venture: "Russian Roulette" 7/2/1951

A delirious and terrified woman arrives at Shannon's Place waving a pistol and nearly shooting Shannon. This sets off an unusual series of events that lead to Shannon being forced into a game of Russian Roulette.

Click HERE to listen or download.

Let's Visit With the Foreign Legion

J.D. Newsom was an interesting guy. Born in China, raised in France and educated at Cambridge, he served with the British Army during the First World War and the American Navy during World War II. He also wrote a number of novels and short stories about the French Foreign Legion.

"The Medal," for instance, was published in the December 15, 1927 issue of Adventure. Full of dry humor as well as gritty action, it is a story that really draws you into plot and keeps you there.

The protagonist is an American named Alexander Sutton who marries a French girl while serving in the American Army during the Great War. And we learn, from reading about Sutton's woes, that its not a good idea to marry a woman when you don't share enough of a common language to make your situation clear to her. The poor girl thought she was marrying a rich man, not a man who one day hoped to be rich.

Sutton's family disapproves of the wife, who is herself expressing disapproval loudly and often. Eventually, Sutton mugs a guy to get enough money to take her back to France, where she promptly dumps him.

Sutton is nearly penniless and stranded in a French village, wondering what to do next, when a small Frenchman tries to pick his pocket of his few remaining francs. This, oddly, leads to a friendship between the two men and a mutual decision to join the Legion. Soon, Sutton finds himself serving in French-controlled North Africa, where he discovers that he can handle the physical hardships, but his French friend never, ever STOPS TALKING!

Here, Newsom actually manages to sneak in some sharp remarks about both the inherent absurdity of colonialism and the fact that those leading rebellions against European rulers don't necessarily care about the best interests of the local population. This lasts just a few paragraphs, but it both effectively comments on these issues and sets up the background for the action that soon follows. It's an impressive bit of writing.

And plenty of action does follow, with French forces getting ambushed, Sutton's talkative friend disgracing himself and later getting an opportunity to redeem himself, and Sutton himself discovering that--despite the incredible hardships and dangers--he has found a home in the Legion.

And even when the action gets intense, the story never loses its dry sense of humor. Sutton's relationship with his French sometimes-friend is fun and a brief sequence in which this friend gets Sutton stuck with taking an officer's dog for walks is wonderful.

You can read the story online HERE.

Project Pegasus, Part 1

cover art by George Perez

Marvel Two-in-One #42 (Aug. 1978--written by Ralph Macchio & drawn by Sal Buscema) introduces us to Project Pegasus, a top-secret underground government research facility dedicated to finding alternative energy sources and that probably has the worst security record of any government project ever.

Heck, they can't even keep the good guys from breaking in! The issue begins with Ben Grimm busting in, angry because an alien named Wundarr has been taken to the Project. Wundarr is superpowerful, but has the mentality of a toddler. "Uncle Benjy" has briefly been his guardian and Ben is now upset over the thought that Wundarr was brought to the Project as a prisoner and might be getting experimented on.

Wundarr will be playing a key part in future Project Pegasus stories, but here he's pretty much a plot device to get Ben to the Project and set up this issue's plot. The overall effect of this is a slow pace and a slightly disjointed feel to the issue. Also, the initial fight between Ben and Captain America (who is checking out the security situation) is fun, but really serves no other purpose other than maintaining the tradition that two superheroes should always fight each other before teaming up.

Ben is eventually reassured that Wundarr is all right, though the "boy" is terrified and doesn't understand what's going on. Reluctantly, Ben agrees to allow an experiment to proceed--Wundarr's powers are going to be used probe the Cosmic Cube, which might be used as an energy source. (Though, actually, if you have the Cosmic Cube, couldn't you just ask it for unlimited energy?)

Unfortunately, the Project's lousy security rears its head. The place has been infiltrated by a guy named Victorius, who is leader of the Cult of Entropy, which is dedicated to allowing the entire universe to dissolve away. Victorious sabotages the experiment, putting Wundarr into a coma while he steals the Cube. He then teleports himself to the Cult's meeting place in the Everglades and uses the Cube to resurrect their dead leader.

 Ben and Cap trace the Cube, arriving just in time to appear in a splash panel that sets up the next issue.

I'm reviewing the Project Pegasus stories because I enjoy them--both story and art work. But, looking back at this issue now, I can see that this first appearance of the Project is awkwardly contructed. Buscema's art looks great, but there's a lot of exposition, appearances by relatively obscure characters with only vague explanations as to who they are, and a slow pace.

All the same, Project Pegasus will be used as a source of some fun stories, so perhaps we can forgive a slow beginning.

Next week, we'll go sailing with two back-stabbing pirates. Two weeks from now, we'll visit Cave Girl once again. So it'll be three weeks before we continue with this particular story.

Cover Cavalcade

From 1931. Don't get on the bad side of a gun moll!

Friday's Favorite OTR

Rocky Jordan: "The Nile Runs High" 9/18/49

Rocky finds a murdered man aboard a small boat and soon afterwards finds himself hip-deep in smugglers and fanatical revolutionaries.

Click HERE to listen or download.

The Most Thug-Like Thugs Ever.

Kansas City Confidential (1952) is obectively a great movie, but for me, what really sells it is the three thugs hired by a master criminal to pull of a $1.2 Million bank job.

The master criminal has been observing the bank, noting that a flower delivery truck pulls up to the shop next to the bank every day at the same time--just before an armored car transporting cash shows up at the bank. That truck is driven by Joe Rolfe, a WWII combat veteran who screwed up once and did some time in jail, but is now working a legit job as he studies engineering. 

But when the robbery goes down--using a duplicate of his delivery truck that appears moments after he leaves the scene--Joe is hauled in by the cops. Because of his record, the police are pretty certain he's guilty. So certain, in fact, that they keep working him over to force him to confess. Eventually, they find the duplicate truck and are forced to let him go, but he's lost his job and his face had already been plastered all over the newspapers as a suspect. His life is effectively ruined.

But before we get to this point, we watch the head crook recruit the three men he'll need to pull off the bank job. This is where we see some of the most perfectly cast character actors in the history of cinema. The three thugs are played by Jack Elam, Lee Van Cleef and Neville Brand. They are, collectively, the most thug-like (thugiest?) thugs ever.

Their boss recruits them individually, wearing a mask so that they don't know who he is. They wear masks on the job as well, so they also don't know each other. None of them can rat out the others if caught after the boss gives them enough money to leave the country and live comfortably for awhile until its safe to split the bank money.

I love the recruiting scenes, by the way. As the boss meets each of the thugs, we learn a little about each one. All of them have records and are either currently wanted for something or on the verge of being as three-time loser. Each is obviously a brutal and amoral creep, but each has his own personality. Pete Harris (Elam) is a compulsive gambler and cowardly. Tony Romano (Van Cleef) is a womanizer who probably isn't as attractive to women as he thinks he is. Boyd Kane (Brand) is gum-chewing brute who killed a cop on his last job.

Though each of these actors is talented and each played a variety of roles during their long careers--good guys as well as bad guys. Elam, in particular, was often hilarious in comedic roles. But when any of them played bad guys, they would literally reek of evil. Put the three of them together and you really do have the "thuggiest" thugs ever.

The bulk of the movie followed Joe Rolfe as he tries to find the bank robbers and clear his own name. A friend whose life he saved on Iwo Jima knows a guy who knows a guy and puts him on the trail of Pete Harris, who is hiding out in Tijuana. I love that he's told that Harris has "weird eyes" and likes to play craps as his starting clues. When discussing a character played by Jack Elam, "weird eyes" is pretty much all the information you need.

Harris ends up dead and Rolfe ends up in a small Mexican fishing village with the other two thugs, having taken on Harris' identify with hopes of catching the head crook. But things go wry and he ends up playing a cat-and-mouse game in which he very well might get eaten.

In the meantime, we learn that the head crook has a background and an endgame that will change the situation drastically. If you haven't seen the film, I won't give away this very effective plot twist, but allow you the fun of discovering it for yourself.

Kansas City Confidential is classic Film Noir, with a strong plot full of suspense, great characters and atmospheric black-and-white photography. And the presense of Elam, Brand and Van Cleef in roles they each play to perfection makes it even better.

A channel called Film Detective has a high-quality print available on YouTube:

Cave Girl--Story #1

The popularity of Tarzan spawned a lot of imitators, several of whom (such as Ki-Gor) became strong, individual characters in their own right.

A number of the Tarzan clones were women--an obvious route to take, particularly in comic books, where an attractive lady could be made to look pretty Hubba Hubba in a leopard skin outfit.

Cave Girl, written by Gardner Fox and drawn by Bob Powell  (both covers and interior art), had a four issue run published by Magazine Enterprises in 1953-54. Her adventures were continued in a comic titled Africa beginning in 1955.

Fox's scripts were clever and fast-paced, with Powell's vivid art bringing each story to life.

It begins in Cave Girl #11 (1953). At first, I assumed that it was #11 because it replaced another title on Magazine Enterprises publishing schedule and kept the same numbering. But I learned from a helpful member of a comic book group on Facebook that, in this case, #11 was chosen to give the impression that the book had been around for awhile and was already popular. I'm not sure how many readers the fake numbering system would have attracted, but in a decade when the comic racks were stuffed with hundreds of issues from dozens of publishers, I guess every little edge you can get would be worth it.

The first story in the issue is "The Pool of Life," which recounts Cave Girl's origins. We start off by learning that its a bad idea to take your young daughter on a safari, especially if that safari is about to be wiped out by angry natives.  Fortunately, young Carol is carried off by a giant eagle before she too is killed.

Since the eagle is planning on eating her, perhaps its not so fortunate. But a wolf manages to kill the eagle and Carol is raised by wolves. (Which makes me think that perhaps Fox and Powell were thinking of Mowgli as much as Tarzan when they created the character).

The eagle has carried her beyond a nigh-unclimable mountain range called the Barriers of the Moon into a remote area called Dawnworld, presumably because it is populated by Neanderthal-like tribes. This is where Cave Girl grows up, becoming a friend of all animals and learning to use spears, knives and bows effectively.

She also grows up to be pretty darn cute, so it's probably inevitably that one of the Beast Men wants to have her as his mate. She objects quite violently to his advances and, using her knife, then her spear, then her bow, soon leaves a trail of Beast Men corpses strewn around the jungle. Eventually, though, she is knocked out and taken captive.

The story veers away here to show us two men making the dangerous climb over the mountains, in search of a literal fountain of youth--the titular Pool of Life. One of these guys in Luke Hardin, who will be a regular in the series. For now, though, he's the guide for Alfred Manderson, who desperately wants to be young again.

This is where I have a small criticism of the story. The addition of the Pool of Life storyline does seem to be abruptly tagged onto Cave Girl's origin tale. Since the book contains three Cave Girl stories, it might have been better to hint at the Fountain's existance in this story, then have it be the main focus of the next story.

In the end, though, the story remains great fun, so my criticism does turn out to be a nitpick.

While Hardin and Manderson make their way into Dawnworld, Cave Girl is calling on her jungle friends for help. A leopard, a lion, a gorilla and an elephant all show up to help, leaving yet another trail of Beast Man corpses strewn around the jungle.

In the meantime, Hardin and Manderson find the Pool of Life. Manderson shows his appreciation by shooting Hardin, then drinking from the Pool. It does make him younger. In fact, it makes him a bit too young, eventually causing him to de-age out of existence.

Cave Girl finds the wounded Hardin, who wants to take her back to civilization. That leads into the next story, which we'll look at in three weeks.

As I mentioned earlier, I think the origin tale and the Pool of Life should have been two different stories, but Powell's lively art still makes Cave Girl's premiere appearance worthwhile reading.

Next week, we'll begin another occasional Wednesday series as we look at Ben Grimm's involvement with a goverment program called Project Pegasus. I will mix up other comic book reviews amongst the Cave Girl and Project Pegasus reviews. Leave a comment if there are any specific issues, series or genres you'd like to see me cover.

Cover Cavalcade

An action-packed John Romita cover from 1977.

Friday's Favorite OTR

Gunsmoke: "Stage Holdup" 1/2/54

A complete lack of honor among thieves is a key part of Dillon's plan to catch a gang that robbed a stage and killed a passenger.

Click HERE to listen or download.

COMBAT: World War II-Themed Fiction

If I can get enough interested people to join, I'll be running an online book club titled COMBAT: World War II-Themed Fiction. 


This club will be discussing specific works of fiction written about the Second World War. Most of them will be combat-oriented, featuring soldiers, sailors, airmen, spies and so on. Books about the Home Front will also be considered.

Some of the books we'll be reading will include The Beardless Warriors, by Richard Matheson; Where Eagles Dare, by Alistair MacLean and The Good Shepherd, by C. S. Forrester.

The idea is for everyone to read the selected book, then we all meet via Zoom to discuss it.

If you think you might be interested, click HERE.

The Second Solution

cover art by A. von Munchhausen

NOTE: SCHEDULING ERROR. This was supposed to post on Thursday, June 4, but was mistakenly posted a day early.

 Read/Watch 'em In Order #112

Okay, so I was definitely wrong. When I decided to review the six stories that make up A.E. Van Vogt's fix-up novel The War Against the Rull in their original pulp magazine form, I somehow got the impression that they were not re-written in any significant way when collected into one novel; that they were given an internal chronological order and linked together with a couple of new interstitial chapters.

But I found out I was wrong when I got to the second installment, which was not originally a part of the Rull Universe but was heavily re-written to make it fit. The main character, I learned, was also changed to Professor Jamieson, who would be the protagonist in all the stories when they were changed to fit into the novel.

Well, the third story is "The Second Solution," which appeared in the October 1942 issue of Astounding. It takes place at pretty much the same time as "Co-Operate... or Else," the first story in the Rull cycle. It seems that while Jamieson was stranded on an alien planet, trying to convince a male ezwal to cooperate with him, a pregnant female was being shipped back to Earth. Along the way, the female gave birth to a lion-sized baby.

In his adventure, Jamieson has discovered that the ezwal are intelligent and communicate via telepathy, but the rest of mankind doesn't know that yet. They see the ezwal as incredibly dangerous beasts who have killed many people on their indigeneous planet, which had been colonized by humans. Humanity, though, needed the planet as a base against the Rull, so could not simply give up and go home. The ezwal, in the meantime, are determined not to allow the humans to find out they are intelligent, as they (the ezwal) believe that this would bring on an even more determined effort to wipe them out.

When the ship bringing the ezwal to Earth is about to crash in a remote area, the female tells her son that, above all else, the humans must not learn they can think. She's soon dead, but the baby--who is already able to think and plan, manages to escape from the wreck of the ship.

art by William Kolliker

What makes the story fun is that, except for a few brief paragraphs at the beginning and end of the story, it's told entirely from the point-of-view of the young ezwal. Even though we realize the humans believe that he is just a mindless beast, we can see that he can think and feel. He's uncertain at time and downright frightened at other times, but still determined to carry out his mother's last wish. No one can be allowed to find out he's intelligent.

The title refers to an idea suggested by someone in the story that any important discovery will always be made. If Edison hadn't invented the light bulb or Einstein developed the theory of Relativity, then someone else would have.

In this story, we have someone on Earth who, like Professor Jamieson, has figured out the ezwal are intelligent and telepathic. This guy doesn't want to kill the young alien. Like Jamieson, he sees them as valuable allies against the Rull. But to convince the ezwal to trust him, when the poor "little" guy wants to follow Mom's last desperate wish, the human will have to pretty much make himself a target.

Remember that I haven't read the novel yet, but a summary I've found indicates that the book version of this story features Professor Jamieson as the protagonist. So, once again, some re-writing happened and the story would have been pushed a little further back in the Rull Universe timeline.

But the original version is another fine tale in its own right. You can read it online HERE.

Strictly for the Birds

One of the reasons the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon appealed to adults as well as kids was the topical and cultural humor that was mixed in with the slapstick and absurdist humor. For its Gold Key comic book adaptation, which began three years after the cartoon hit the airwaves, the satire was dropped, concentrating on just the slapstick and absurdities.

And that's okay. At the time, comic books were read almost entirely by kids. so a subtle jab at the Cold War wasn't likely to be notice. As long as the stories were funny and the characterizations correct, then there was no reason Bullwinkle couldn't be really, really funny.


Moose and Squirrel  had a few appearances in Four Color. The first issue of their own comic (November 1962) contained two Bullwinkle stories, along with one each featuring Dudley Do-Right, Mr. Peabody and the Fractured Fairy Tales. All the stories were possibly written and drawn by Al Kilgore. Kilgore definitly drew the cover, but there seems to be some doubt among comic book historians if he drew the interior art.

The first story, "Strictly for the Birds," shows that the writer (whomever he was) had a great sense of humor and understood the characters, though you can argue he has Bullwinkle figuring stuff out a little more quickly than the dimwitted moose normally was normally capable of.

Someone is stealing birds from the zoo. That someone is Boris Badenov, who cross-breeds the bird to make a super-bird who could then pull off all sorts of spy missions.

This might seem like a silly plan, but by golly, it works. There's no arguing with success.

Bullwinkle, who is a self-professed bird lover, is out looking for the missing birds when the super-bird steals some military secrets. Why the military keeps its secrets in a store-front operation in Frostbite Falls isn't discussed.

 Bullwinkle succeeds in annoying the bird, who grabs him and takes him back to Boris and Natasha.

 Boris is delighted to have "Moose" in his power and orders the bird to finish off Bullwinkle. But the moose quickly points out that if the bird is part eagle, then he ought to be working for AMERICA!

Naturally, that argument works. The bird switches sides, capturing the spies and tossing them in jail. The missing birds are all returned to the zoo--except for a woodpecker that Boris is now using to peck a hole in his jail cell.

The panels I'm sharing here don't do the story complete justice, as it is full of truly funny single panel gags throughout, with a few laugh-out-loud moments on each page, while the silly plot effectively drives us from one joke to another. It's too bad this particular story regulates Rocky to the side-lines and the absense of adult-aimed satire does need to be noted. But, despite being aimed at children, Bullwinkle gave us a story that grown-ups can easily enjoy as well.

Next week, we'll visit the African jungle to learn the origin of Cave Girl.

ERB Podcast reviews

Some reviews from iTunes for the Edgar Rice Burroughs podcast I produce:

FANTASTIC AND FUN!

this is a wonderfully entertaining and informative podcast on one of the world's greatest storytellers - Edgar Rice Burroughs!

A FITTING LOVE LETTER TO ONE OF MY FAVORITE AUTHORS

A great podcast!

Cover Cavalcade

An effective cover from 1962, tentatively credited to Jack Abel.