Cover Cavalcade

 

A great Russ Heath cover from 1959.

Edgar Rice Burroughs Podcast: Mini-Podcast #27--Tarzan of the Apes Chapter 19--"...

Edgar Rice Burroughs Podcast: Mini-Podcast #27--Tarzan of the Apes Chapter 19--"...:   A look at the 19th Chapter of the 1912 novel Tarzan of the Apes, in which Tarzan ends up in the jungle with Jane and a French warship arri...

Friday's Favorite OTR

X Minus One: "The Mapmakers" 9/26/56

A freak accident leaves a starship stranded in unknown space without a way of finding Earth. A blind man might provide them with their only hope.

Click HERE to listen or download.

Voice of the Whistler

 

Read/Watch 'em In Order #119

At first, I was a little annoyed with the way director William Castle opens Voice of the Whistler (1945), the fourth of the eight Whistler movies. He shows us the character of Joan Merrick (Lynn Merrick) living alone and embittered in a lonely light house. So right away we know that everyone she's involved with throughout the movie is going to end up dead or in prison. Why start the movie out with such a spoiler? After all, not all the Whistler movies have had tragic endings. 

But, as I watched it, I realized that the scene provides us context. Voice of the Whistler is only barely movie-length, even for a B-movie. It clocks in at an even 60 minutes. And a little over half of that is setting up the characters and getting them into a situation where at least one of them wants to murder at least one of the others. 

Up until that point, it seems like a pleasant drama about a lonely man gradually finding a reason to live. If we didn't know that some sort of shenanigans were coming up soon, we might not know we were watching a Film Noirish crime story.

It all works out, though. The short run and another great performance by Richard Dix keeps our interest and the build up to murder turns out to be quite effective.

Dix plays John Sinclair, a wealthy industrialist whose entire life has been dedicated to make money. He doesn't have any friends and he's also lost his health. His doctors have told him to get away on a restful trip. It's best if he takes someone with him, but... well, who would a man with no friends take with him?

A train trip from New York to Chicago ends when he has another attack of weakness and dizziness. This, though, leads him to make a friend when a compassionate cab driver (Rhys Williams) helps him out. A trip to a local clinic also brings the nurse, Joan Merrick, into his life.

Joan is engaged to a local doctor (James Cardwell), but won't marry him until he's making enough money to provide her with a nice home. That, we gradually realize, is Joan's thing. In many ways, she's a nice person. But her eyes are too rigidly fixed on a financial prize.

Sinclair offers to marry her. He figures he only has a few months to live, so he makes her a deal. He wants her companionship for those months. In return, she inherits her fortune.

She agrees, dumps the doctor and marries him. Along with the cab driver (now Sinclair's best friend), they move into a remote light house in Maine. But Sinclair spoils things by not dying. In fact, he gets better.

Then the doctor comes for a visit. He wants Joan back. She wants to leave Sinclair, but still wants money.  Sinclair knows Joan wants to leave him, but wants to keep her. Soon, Sinclair and the doc are thinking about ways to get and keep the woman they both love. Both begin to think she might be worth killing for.

Of course, things go awry as soon as a murder is committed. But the twists at the end are good ones and, though the tragic ending has been spoiled for us, that ending turns out to be a very satisfying one.

Voice of the Whistler is another strong entry in this entertaining series.

How Many Fake Abraham Lincolns Can One Universe Contain?

 

Gold Key's Star Trek #9 (February 1971) seemed to contain several shout-outs to the original series, though none of these shout-outs are overtly pointed out. The writer was Len Wein, who did occasionally inject some direct continuity to the original series in his comic book stories. Here, though, he was either being subtle or I'm simply imagining things.

The art work, by the way, is by Alberto Giolitti. Giolitti is one of my favorite artists and he (as usual) gives us some great looking images in this story.

It all begins with the Enterprise investigating a planet that had been lifeless a when it was studied a decade earlier, but now contains a thriving civilization. Kirk takes a landing party to the surface, where they soon meet George Washington, who is keeping house with Helen of Troy.

In fact, the entire high-tech city they beam down into is populated by famous historical figures. McCoy briefly wonders if they've found heaven, but the sight of Hitler and Mussolini put the kibosh on that theory.

One of the people they meet is Abraham Lincoln. This is Shout-Out #1, as Kirk has earlier met Lincoln (or, rather, a convincing facsimile of Lincoln) in the third season episode "The Savage Curtain."

There's a spire in the center of the city that is off-limits to the inhabitants, so Kirk naturally wants to investigate it. He sends Sulu and Spock to check it out, but Sulu is slugged unconscious and Spock disappears.

Spock has been taken prisoner by Alexander Lazarus--mad scientist, extraordinaire. Lazarus has invented a computer that can collect the brain patters of long-dead people. So the historical figures populating the city are androids who have been given these brain patterns. The city itself was built by the androids before they were given their new personalities.

This brings us to Shout Out #2. The first season episode "What Are Little Girls Made Off" involved a scientist who could program an android with someone's brain patterns and thus make both a physical and mental duplicate of that person. Lazarus goes one better with this by collecting the brain patterns of the long-dead, but the simularity is still there. Its fun to speculate that the research of the two scientists ran along similar lines to a degree.

Lazarus has discovered a unique problem with his self-created world. After hearing the same stories (such as Napoleon's account of Waterloo) over and over and OVER again, he's bored silly. He wants to add Vulcan historical figures to the mix. But his computer is calibrated to humans, so he needs to drain Spock's brain to reconfigure it for Vulcans.

That's Shout Out #3. This isn't the first time someone has wanted to make use of Spock's brain. But that episode is so infamously bad, I won't speak of it aloud. I don't want to summon up painful memories.

Kirk and the rest of the landing party find a possible way into Lazarus' base, so the scientist sics his androids on them. Spock, in the meantime, has figured out how to unlock his manacles. In the ensuing struggle, the computer is set on fire by a stray phaser blast and poor Dr. Lazarus gets trapped in his own brain drain machine.

Spock orders Scotty to beam up the rest of the landing party while he remains behind to try to salvage the records of the historical brain patterns. But when the crew of the Enterprise wrecks something, they really wreck it. Spock has to beam back up without the records so the ship can escape before THE WHOLE DARN PLANET EXPLODES!!

I love this story. Giolitti's art often pops off the page and the plot, though silly, is well-constructed and follows its own logic from beginning to end. Whether the shout-outs I've mentioned were intentional or a part of my feverish geeky imagination--well, I don't know. But we do know that the galaxy is literally dripping with Abraham Lincolns. And that can only be a good thing. 

Next week, we finish off our look at Animal Comics #4.

Edgar Rice Burroughs Podcast: Mini Podcast #26--Tarzan of the Apes--Chapter 18--...

Edgar Rice Burroughs Podcast: Mini Podcast #26--Tarzan of the Apes--Chapter 18--...:   A look at Chapter 18 of Tarzan of the Apes, in which Jane begins her tradition of regularly getting kidnapped. Click HERE for the audio ve...

Cover Cavalcade

 

A really cool cover from 1931.

Friday's Favorite OTR

Casey: Crime Photographer: "Chivalrous Gunman" 8/14/47

A criminal allows a pretty girl to getaway even though she witnessed him committing two murders. But all is not what it seems with either the crook or the girl.

Click HERE to listen or download.

I was Meant to Read THIS Book As Well!

 

When I was a kid, one of my favorite novels was the Rat Patrol Tv tie-in novel published by Whitman as a part of a series of such tie-ins written for kids.

I've known there had been a series of six tie-in novels written for adults, but I never ran across them in used book stores or found them at a reasonable price online. So when I discovered that the fourth of these novels, The Two-Faced Enemy (1967), by David King, was available to check out on the Internet Archives... well, I was once again obviously being called to read it. 

And it was worth reading. The premise is that an Allied-held coastal town in North Africa is being attacked by the Germans. The Rat Patrol is ordered to find its way around the attacking force and raise havoc in its rear. 

This is the sort of thing the Patrol was good at. Learning about a little-known trail from Troy's current girlfriend (a half-Arab, half-French native), they do indeed manage to drive their two jeeps around the Germans to their rear. They soon locate and destroy a fuel depot. The Germans are forced to dispatch a convoy of trucks to anaother fuel depot farther to their rear. The Rat Patrol follows the trucks far enough to get an idea of the direction they are going in, then circle ahead of them, find that fuel dump and blow it up.

Their arch-enemy, Captain Hans Dietrich, begins laying traps for them, but Sgt. Troy's sharp tactical mind keeps the Allied team one step ahead of him. In fact, they manage to briefly capture the long-suffering Captain a couple of times. Dietrich is presented here--as he was in the series--as a Worthy Opponent who is difficult to beat, but he quite definitely gets beaten this time around. 

The action stretches over a couple of days, with Troy finding targets while also snitching enough water and gas from the Germans to keep going. They also capture a high-ranking German officer and gather some very useful intelligence to help out an eventual Allied counter attack.

The action here is consistently exciting and the pacing of the novel is very, very fast. In fact, I stayed up far too late to finish reading it simply because there was never a good stopping point. And, within the context of the less-than-realistic Rat Patrol universe, the action plays out in a logical manner that continues to emphasize Troy's skill at planning or (when necessary) improvising sound tactics.

But where does the title The Two-Faced Enemy come from?  Well, while the real Rat Patrol is blowing up stuff behind German lines, Dietrich has dispatched a fake Rat Patrol into the Allied-held town. They are driving jeeps and are dressed just like the real Patrol, right down to the matchstick that Tully Pettigrew is ubiquitously chewing on. 

By wearing goggles and staying on the run so that no one gets a really good look at them, the fake patrol attacks American targets and even manages to incite some rioting among the Arab population. The American commander is soon in a rage, convinced that the Rat Patrol has turned traitor--determined to hunt them down and destroy them.

I actually like the American commander, a colonel named Wilson. At first, he seems like a martinet and he is too quick to believe the Rat Patrol has indeed turned traitor. But we gradually learn that he has personal courage, tactical skill as a commander and a sense of honor that leads him to immediately acknowledge he was wrong when the German plot is finally uncovered. 

The Two-Faced Enemy shows us once again that mounting machine guns on the back of jeeps and sending them out into the desert to fight Nazis is an idea that never gets old. 

Project Pegasus, Part 8

 

 

cover art by George Perez

When we left off last issue, an unconcious Ben Grimm was about to get drilled through the skull by Klaw.

When Marvel Two-in-One #58 (December 1978) picks up at the same moment, Ben is saved by Wundarr.

Except Wundarr isn't Wundarr anymore. After exposure to the Cosmic Cube and a brief time in a coma, he wakes up with adult intelligence and a desire to bring peace to the world, renaming himself Aquarian.

In the meantime, the main villain of the story finally has all his eggs in the same basket. Over the past several issues, the components for making an Nth Projector have been smuggled into the Project, where former supervillain Dr. Lightner is supposed to use this devise to zap the Project into another universe. Instead, he uses the projector on himself to regain his former powers. This works even better than he expected. Now he's Nth Man, with the power to suck all reality into himself.

The script by Mark Gruenwald and Ralph Macchio, is quite good. Pretty much everything that happens in the story needs verbal exposition to clarify the what we are seeing, but both dialogue and narration flow naturally into the story and never slow down the pacing.

And the art, with George Perez layouts and finished art by Gene Day, is excellent, making superb use of several splash pages and non-traditional panel layouts to bring across the bizarreness of the situation while still telling the story smoothly.

Aquarian tries expanding his null-field, which cancels out all energy, to stop Lightner. But this blacks out the entire installation, including the ventilation system.

I do have a small criticism here. The Project is large enough so that everyone shouldn't have been gasping for air the second the ventilators go on the fritz. 

But they do indeed gasp for air, forcing Aquarian to retract his null-field. That plan is out.

Ben has already tried tossing large pieces of debris into Nth Man to plug him up and Quasar tries blasting him with energy beams, but none of these tactics work. Giant-Man, who figures that since he's dying of radiation poisoning anyways, jumps INTO Nth Man with the plan of enlarging himself and perhaps plugging up the villain that way. But this doesn't work either.

To save Giant-Man and stop the villain, the remaining heroes (including Thundra, who joins them after the black out allows her to get out of her cell) hae to form a chain, holding on to Aquarian while he too enters the Nth Man. This allows him to save Foster and use his null-field to destroy Lightner. (Though Quasar mentions the possibility that Lightner was thrown into another universe.)

The day is saved. Thundra is granted her freedom and vows to help find whomever hired her. Aquarian tells his "Uncle Ben" that he loves him and then goes out into the world--a scene that really does manage to be touching. 

Aquarian did pop up in other stories from time to time in later years, but never made much of a splash in the Marvel Universe. 

Now that the villain has finally been disposed of, Ben leaves the Project, though he will come back from time to time. The Project Pegasus saga ends with the revelation that the organization behind Lightner is Roxxon Oil, Marvel's go-to corporate bad guys. Ben will be tangling with them again soon in a story arc involving the Serpent Crown and the Nth Command division of Roxxon will be destroyed by Ben and Thundra in Marvel Two-in-One #67, which will also see Thundra say goodbye to Earth 616 and zap herself off to another dimension.

As for the Project Pegasus story arc: Though it started slowly with an issue that had little action and far too much exposition, it quickly found its feet and became a prime example of the sort of entertaining superhero storytelling that Marvel Comics would often excel at during the 1960s and 1970s. 

That's it for now. I think its been awhile since we've visited with the Gold Key Star Trek universe, so next week, we'll jump forward in time to hitch a ride on the Enterprise. 

Cover Cavalcade

 

A wonderful Frederick Blakeslee cover from 1937.

Edgar Rice Burroughs Podcast: Mini Podcast #25--Tarzan of the Apes Chapter 17--"...

Edgar Rice Burroughs Podcast: Mini Podcast #25--Tarzan of the Apes Chapter 17--"...:   An analysis of Chapter 17 of Tarzan of the Apes, in which a treasure is buried, dug up and buried again. The audio version can be found HE...

Friday's Favorite OTR

Dangerous Assignment: "The Millionaire Murder Conspiracy" 8/6/49

Steve Mitchell is assigned to stop an assassin, but the case becomes more complex when the assassin is himself assassinated.

Click HERE to listen or download. 

I was MEANT to Read This Book!

 

I only recently started watching old episodes of Danger Man (titled Secret Agent when broadcast in the United States) on a streaming service. I like Patrick McGoohan a lot as an actor in his roles in Ice Station Zebra and various times he played the murderer in episodes of Columbo. But Danger Man wasn't rerun when I was growing up and I had just never gotten around to watching it.

I've enjoyed the few episodes I've seen so far and like McGoohan's portrayal of an intelligent spy who outthinks his opponents and only resorts to violence when he absolutely has to. He's a sort-of anti-James Bond, rarely using lethal force and rarely trying to seduce the Girl-of-the-Week. In fact, I did a little bit of research into the show and discovered that there's apparently only one episode in which he shoots someone, though he did kill in other ways on a couple of occasions. 

So when I stumbled across this tie-in novel in a used book store, I pretty much felt obligated to buy and read it. The Exterminator, written by W.A. Ballinger, was published in 1966 and now here it was, with Patrick McGoohan on the cover just staring at me!

I mean--seriously. I JUST start watching the series and then I JUST happen to see a 54 year-old tie-in novel in a book store? The Gods of Used Books were obviously telling me something.

So I bought it and read it.

The author portrays John Drake (McGoohan's character) well, capturing the sense that he's smart, alert and always thinking. He accepts that this is a job where he is obligated to kill the villain, but his distaste for this is made obvious. 

The story--an original one not directly based on any of the TV episodes--is a good one. Drake is tasked with finding and killing a Communist assassin called the Exterminator. The action takes place in Sicily, where Drake's effort to figure out which of two suspects is the Exterminiator is interrupted by such events as a fight with an octopus and a Mafia-planned kidnapping.

All this is great stuff. The author, though, depends on ending paragraphs with overly-dramatic sentences a little too often. For instance, we are reminded countless times that a new bit of evidence can be interpreted to mean either suspect is the Exterminator; or that a double-agent who is probably the Exterminator's next target is in great peril. Most of the time, the prose is straightforward and readable, but there are moments where it gets too over-the-top. Variations of sentences such as "It was a moment of truth--and a moment of death!" are repeated a bit too often.

When Drake discovers the identity of the Exterminator in the book's climax, I suspect that many readers will already have guessed it--not by picking up on clues as much as just following the logic of dramatic storytelling. 

But, even with its flaws, the novel does its job. It allows us to follow along with a character we like as that character has yet another adventure. 

The Don Quixote of the Insect World

 

Don Bugaboo and his sidekick Fatcho are obviously parodies of Don Quixote and Pancho, though I wonder how many of the kids Animal Comics #4 (Aug.-Sept. 1943) was marketed towards got the reference. Don Bugaboo's career was a short one, appearing in just this issue and the next, before riding off into Comic Book Limbo. Both stories were illustrated by Frank Thomas (not the Disney animator with the same name), signed with a sort-of Pig Latin version of his name--Rakfay Homastay. It's Homastay's... err, Thomas' art that really brings this story to life.

I actually say that a lot about the stories we've been looking at in Animal Comics, don't I? It is true, though. The scripts are often quite clever, so the usually unidentified writers certainly deserve their share of credit. But it is the vibrant and lively art that really infuses these tales with so much fun. 

We meet Don Bugaboo as he is having Fatcho drive him about their anthropomorphic insect world, looking for adventure. Like Don Quixote, he won't find any actual adventures. But, also like Quixote, he is quite able to delude himself into thinking he's found adventure.

First, he mistakes an old glove (being used as a home for an insect couple) as a castle. When they barge in on the place, Fatcho parallels Pancho with the practical matter of getting something to eat, while Bugaboo looks for something to fight.

He mistakes the lady of the house as a dragon and causes her to spill the mushroom soup she was serving. Except it turns out not to be mushroom soup. The husband had accidentally picked some toadstools and the spilled soup would have poisoned them all if it had been served.

So Bugaboo has, however accidentally, saved a couple of innocent lives.

Then he helps out a woman who was beating a second-hand mattress to clean it. Bugaboo mistakes her for beating a servant and, when he tries to cut the "servant" loose from his bonds, accidentally cuts open the mattress. A hidden fortune spills out and the woman is now rich.

By golly, Quixote hardly ever actually accomplished anything, but Bugaboo, acting according to his Quixotic delusions, actually manages to be a hero. 

It's a clever and funny tale and I'm kind of sorry that Bugaboo's career wasn't longer. 

You can read the story online HERE. 

Next week, we'll pay one final visit to Project Pegasus.

She/He MADE Me!: TIM MADE ANGELA WATCH: Father Goose (1964)

She/He MADE Me!: TIM MADE ANGELA WATCH: Father Goose (1964):   ANGELA SAYS: This one didn't live up to my expectations. I found the first part of the movie very funny as Commander Houghton manipula...

Cover Cavalcade

 

A Joe Kubert cover from 1979.

Edgar Rice Burroughs Podcast: Mini-Podcast #24--Tarzan of the Apes Chapter 16--"...

Edgar Rice Burroughs Podcast: Mini-Podcast #24--Tarzan of the Apes Chapter 16--"...:   An analysis of Chapter 16 of the novel Tarzan of the Apes, in which we take time out from constant danger for a dab of comic relief.  Clic...

Friday's Favorite OTR

Escape: "Port Royal" 3/10/50

One of my favorite character actors, Charles McGraw, plays the lead in a story about sunken treasure, tommy guns and inevitable betrayal.

Click HERE to listen or download. 

Power of the Whistler

 

Read/Watch 'em In Order #118

Richard Dix played a more or less good guy in the first two Whistler films--men who definitely made moral mistakes, but were essentially decent human beings.

Well, in 1945's The Power of the Whistler, this changes. Here, Dix plays a man with amnesia who seems to be decent and friendly, but who long ago moved to one of the more violent neighborhoods of Crazy Town. 

I suppose that's a spoiler, but anyone who doesn't realize this very early in the film simply isn't paying attention. 

And that, I think, is a flaw in this otherwise entertaining movie. After getting sideswiped by a car, Dix's character doesn't remember who he is. He's soon befriended by Jean Lang (Janis Carter), who tries to help him figure out his identity.

This part is fine, though reasons given for not going to the police are weak. "George" (Jean's temporary name for him) and Jean take a look at the items in his pockets. There is no solid identification, but there are a pile of clues: A prescription, an order for a cake from a bakery, another orders for flowers to be delivered to a singer, a lighter with initials monogramed on it, and a few other intriguing items. The process of following up these clues is done logically and allows the story to gradually uncover "George's" real idenity. And also uncover the fact that he's a maniac.

But Jean is simply far too trusting, even after disturbing indications that "George" might be dangerous keep popping up. I get that the 1940s were a more trusting time, but that attitude is taken to an absurd degree. This, plus occasional dumb decisions by other characters, definitely weaken the story.

In particular, a reason given for why an escape from an insane asylum was not reported to the cop is criminally stupid, though it is treated as reasonable by the police officer who is listening to it.

All the same, the story--most notably the finale--generates a fair amount of suspense and Dix's performance as the maniac, in which he only gradually reveals his dark side, is wonderful. I don't know why Richard Dix isn't better remembered today. He was an excellent actor.

So The Power of the Whistler, though a weaker entry in the series, is still worthwhile and worth watching.

Three Flashes and a Most Dangerous Game

 

Flash #173 (September 1967) was written by John Broome and drawn by Carmine Infantino and is more fun than a barrel of super-speed monkeys. It takes Comic Book Logic, then twists that logic around into a pretzel without actually breaking it, creating a story that drips with entertainment value.

It begins with Jay Garrick, the Earth-2 Flash, visiting Earth-1 along with his wife. This is because Jay's wife is a busy-body and wants to convince Barry that he needs to tell his wife Iris that he's a superhero. 

Heck, as of when I'm writing this, Angela and I have been married nearly 11 months and I haven't said a thing about any superhero activities I may or may not be involved in. So there, Jay's wife!

Anyway, that's just an excuse for getting Jay to Earth-1. Once there, he finds out that Flash was hit by a myserious ray and disappeared. 

When Jay and Kid Flash begin searching for him, Kid Flash disappears as well. It turns out they've been transported to another planet, where an alien called the Golden Man wants to hunt them.

What makes this an interesting variation of the Most Dangerous Game trope is his reasoning. He's really not worried about catching them. The Golden Man is a mutant, a super smart person on a planet otherwise inhabited by ape-men. He wants the two Flashes' to use their super-speed as much as possible. He'll gather up their expended energy and use it to mutate the rest of the planet's population into men like him. He essentially just wants someone to talk to.

A big chunk of the story involves Barry and Wally using their speed and vibration powers to avoid a number of booby traps. Infantino's art here is magnificent--full of energy, a sense of movement and imaginative imagry. 

Things take a tragic turn when Barry apparently sacrifices his life to save Wally.

So the Golden Man decides he needs another Flash and brings Jay to his world. But remember that Jay doesn't wear a mask. He habitually vibrates his face so no one can ever get a good look at him. Because of this, he's still conscious when he arrives on the planet. Because that's how SCIENCE works!

I'm not mocking the story, by the way. Within the context of the story and a Comic Book Universe, this is a perfectly legitimate and fun plot twist. 

But the Golden Man manages to subdue Jay. He's given up on the hunting idea and now dumps Jay and Wally into a chamber with the temperature set to Absolute Zero. The two are forced to vibrate as fast as they can to stay alive, with the alien absorbing the energy they produce.

But Barry turns out to still be alive, having simply vibrated through the entire planet to escape the quick sand he was in. Because that's how science works!

Gee whiz, I love this stuff. It is completely unashamed of its Comic Book Logic and embraces it whole-heartedly.

The Flashes all rescue one another, but Golden Man still activates his evolution machine. Sadly for him, it works in reserve of what it was supposed to do and de-evolves Golden Man into a cave man. Well, it sort of works, since he can now talk to his fellow aliens on a equal level. 

The Flashes head back to Earth, where Barry promises to tell Iris he's a superhero on their anniversary. Everyone lives happily ever after. Well, except for Barry, who is likely to spend his anniversary sleeping on the couch.

That's it for now. Next week, we'll return to Animal Comics. 

Cover Cavalcade

 

An atmospheric cover by Mike Roy from 1978.