Command

 

James Warner Bellah wrote a number of short stories dealing with the Indian Wars in the Old West, with many of them centered on troopers stationed at the fictional Fort Starke. Bellah created a Fort Starke universe, with the same cast of reoccuring characters. These stories were originally published in The Saturday Evening Post in the late 1940s. 

I had never gotten around to reading any of them, since Bellah's stuff is out-of-print and has yet to appear electronically. Buying used paperbacks isn't necessarily an option. The 1962 anthology Reveille reprinted many of the Fort Starke stories, costs over a hundred bucks on the used book market.

But at least a few of his stories can be found online. For instance, I found his 1946 story "Command" HERE.

I loved the radio adaptation done on Escape in 1949 (listen to that HERE), but was driven to finally find and read the original when it was mentioned prominently on the excellent Six-Gun Justice Podcast. It's a great story. Captain Nathan Brittles is leading a troop of cavalry in search of another missing troop. Also along is a relatively inexperienced officer named Cohill.

The missing troopers are found--all are dead, having run into hostile Indians and come out on the losing end of the ensuing fight. Brittles orders a return to Fort Starke--his orders are simply to find the missing patrol and report back. In fact, standing orders dictate that the troopers can only fight if attacked.

Cohill wants to pursue and attack the Indians regardless. In fact, he's pretty disgusted with Brittles. He doesn't confront the captain directly, but by golly, he thinks about it. He even more than half-convinces himself that if a fight does occur, he might have to take over.

But there is a lot more to Brittles than Cohill believes. Heck, when the movie She Wore a Yellow Ribbon was produced in 1949 (based on two Bellah stories, with a few elements drawn from "Command" as well), Brittles is played by John Wayne. You don't get more on the ball than that.

Both the action and the character development plays out in a satisfying manner, bringing "Command" to a strong conclusion. In fact, it's amazing how much in terms of both plot and characterization Bellah manages to put into the short story.

It's definitely worth reading. I just wish more of his Fort Starke stories were available. I'm tempted to pay $15.00 for a years' subscription to the Saturday Evening Post so I can also gain access to electronic copies of their back issues. I could use that to make my own PDF anthology of the stories.

By the way, I found a nifty chronology of Bellah's Fort Starke stories HERE.

Go Jump Off a Cliff!

 

cover artist unknown

One of the many cool things about Ben Bowie and His Mountain Men was that it did maintain a degree of historical continuity with its stories. For instance, by the time we get to the last few issues of this superb comic book, the French and Indian War had broken out.

"Thundering Waters," drawn by Albert Micale (writer unknown) was published in the 15th issue (May-July 1958) and involves Ben and his crew--along with some redcoats--escorting some supplies to a beleaguered fort. They are ambushed by Ottawas (who allied with their French trading partners during the war) and the brightly-clad British troops are soon picked off.

Ben and his three friends are backed up against a cliff. With no other options, they opt to actually jump off the cliff, landing in the trees below. They play dead until the Ottawas give up on them.

So they survive, but the Ottawas have captured the badly needed supplies. Ben tracks them to their camp, where the Mountain Men set fire to a few tents to cause a distraction and steal back the supplies. But there are too few of them to transport the stuff to the fort, so they hide them and make a break for it. 

This leads to a chase down a river, in which they barely avoid being swept over a waterfall. They then lower their canoes down the cliff beside the waterfall, finally managing to get away from the Ottawas.

The artwork throughout this story has been superb and the script is excellent, showing Ben using intelligent tactics and taking necessary risks in order to get himself and his friends out of danger.

And Ben's intelligence continues to play a part in the story's conclusion, where he uses reinforcements from the fort to lure the Ottawas onto the river and drive them off that waterfall.

As was typical with the Ben Bowie series, "Thundering Waters" includes historical accuracy, great art, sound plot construction and a hero who uses his brains as well as his musket to give us a strong frontier-era adventure.

Next week, we'll visit again with Napoleon Solo.

Cover Cavalcade

 

Yet another dynamic and eye-catching Ace Double cover. 

Edgar Rice Burroughs Podcast: Mini Podcast #31--Tarzan of the Apes--Chapter 23--...

Edgar Rice Burroughs Podcast: Mini Podcast #31--Tarzan of the Apes--Chapter 23--...:   A look at Chapter 23 of the 1912 novel Tarzan of the Apes, in which Tarzan learns to speak French and English. Click HERE for the audio v...

Friday's Favorite OTR

 Philip Marlowe: "The Fifth Mask"  9/8/50

Marlowe turns down a job to act as bodyguard to a mysterious client, but then ends up hunting for a killer after the would-be client is murdered.

Click HERE to listen or download.

Mysterious Intruder

 

Read/Watch 'em In Order #120

The fifth movie based on the Whistler radio show is the only one that doesn't include the world "Whistler" somewhere in the title. 

This time around, Richard Dix plays a private detective who is a bit ethically-challenged. An elderly shop owner hires him to find a girl who moved out of the neighborhood seven years earlier. He won't say exactly why he needs to find her, only stating that he has something that belongs to the girl that is worth a fortune.

I mentioned  that Don Gale--Dix's character--isn't the most ethical person in the world. The girl would now be grown-up, so Gale hires a woman to impersonate her and find out what the valuable item actually is.

But while she is in the midst of pulling off this con, a thug arrives to murder the shop owner and kidnap her. The movie gets huge points right out of the gate by casting Mike Mazurki--my all-time favorite movie thug--as the killer.

This kick-starts one of the best movies in the series. Don Gale doesn't know what's going on, but he knows there's a very valuable prize out there somewhere. Soon, the cops know that as well. And the woman who Gale hired to impersonate the missing girl (who was soon released by the thug) knows it as well. Everyone has their own agenda and no one can completely trust anyone else.

One of the strengths of the film is that both Gale and the cops investigate the case in an intelligent manner, following up logical clues to their logical end. As a detective movie, it is very well-written.

In addition to a Mike Mazurki appearance, the rest of the movie is well-cast as well. Dix gives a typically strong performance as a smart-mouthed P.I., making us like him even as we recognize that he tends to slide down on the wrong side of the law from time to time.

The head cop is played by Barton Maclane, another of my favorite always-fun-to-watch character actors. His partner is played by Charles Lane, who usually portraits officious or greedy businessmen. Seeing him play a competent detective in a straightfoward manner was another treat the film offers.

As the plot unfolds, there are a couple more murders and Gale ends up in the role of chief suspect. Now he needs to not only find the MacGuffin, but also find the real killer. Both the unusual nature (and eventual fate) of the MacGuffin and the real killer's identity are effective twists. 

There are, in fact, a number of plot twists, but the overall story remains solid and well-constructed, smoothly incorporating the twists into the film. It's the sort of movie that I don't want to write about in too much detail. If you haven't seen it, it's too much fun to watch it unfold to give you too many spoilers.

 Mysterious Intruder is definitely in the running as my favorite Whistler film. 

Edgar Rice Burroughs Podcast: Mini Podcast #30--Tarzan of the Apes--Chapter 22--...

Edgar Rice Burroughs Podcast: Mini Podcast #30--Tarzan of the Apes--Chapter 22--...:   A look at Chapter 22 of the 1912 novel Tarzan of the Apes, in which the French fight a battle and Cecil Clayton puts his foot in his mouth...

Don't Take a Date to a Cursed Oasis!

 

cover art by Gil Kane (with some alterations by John Romita)

In the original Robert E. Howard stories, Conan is recorded as having visited the City of Thieves just once ("The Tower of the Elephant"), but other writers have brought him back to that city a number of times. Any place called the City of Thieves is just too ripe for possible adventures for many writers to ignore the place for long. 

Roy Thomas brought him back there in Marvel's Conan the Barbarian for several consecutive adventures after the Cimmerian had deserted from the Turanian army. One of these is "The Garden of Death and Life," from Conan #41 (August 1974). John Buscema is the artist.

Conan is planning a night of drinking and carousing. Naturally, something comes up to interfere with his plans.

A girl is being pursued by a mob. Partly because of his inate chivalry towards women and partially because he thinks she'll clean up nicely, Conan saves her. He has no real idea what is going on--most of the mob wants to kill her for unspecified reasons, but one guy is obsessed with either possessing her or destroying her.

Conan has to kill this last guy. And, even though he could have sworn the guy stabbed the girl before getting killed, she is unhurt. For someone of Conan's experience with supernatural threats, this should have been a clue that something wasn't adding up.

Anyway, he carves a way through the crowd and escapes from the city with the girl. Out in the surrounding desert, the girl--named Zhadorr--tells Conan about an oasis. They make for it, with Conan unsuccessfully trying to score with her during the journey, but she puts him off. He also notices that she goes off to be alone whenever he gives her food. He never sees her eat.

I sounded like I was making fun of Conan for not wondering about her earlier because of weird stuff like this, but Thomas actually builds up the tension nicely. There is something strange going on, but its not yet overt enough to indicate Zhadorr is something other than human. When everything hits the fan in a few pages, the build-up to it adds to the remarkable overall impact of the tale's denoument. 

They reach the oasis, where Conan notices a number of human skeletons spread out on the bottom of the water pool. Before he has a chance to process that, though, a group of bandits arrive to capture them.

One of them takes Zhadorr off into the bushes. Conan uses the old sharp-rock trick to cut his bonds, then rushes after them to rescue her. But she doesn't need rescuing. The bandit has been mysteriously skeletonized.

And soon, the other bandits and their horses are being stripped to the bone as well--by the giant tree in the center of the oasis. This, by the way, is effectively portrayed by one of the best two-page splash panels ever drawn. Buscema outdoes himself here:

The tree tries to eat Conan as well, but he manages to set fire to it. And Zhadorr? Well, she's still there as well. Sort of.

Thomas constructs an effective and legitimately creepy sword-and-sorcery/horror tale, with Buscema's art perfectly visualizing it. That splash panel alone was worth the price of the book.

Next week, we'll stay in the past, but jump forward to the 18th Century to visit with Ben Bowie.

Cover Cavalcade

 

An action-packed Rich Buckler cover from 1974.

Edgar Rice Burroughs Podcast: Mini Podcast #29--Tarzan of the Apes--Chapter 21--...

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Friday's Favorite OTR

 Theater Guild on the Air: "MacBeth" 5/11/47

Maurice Evans and Judith Anderson give great performances as MacBeth and his bloody-minded wife.

Click HERE to listen or download. 

Death Has Five Guesses

 

Robert Bloch wrote a lot of psycho-killer stories, often with an overt or implied supernatural element. He dealt with Jack the Ripper in at least two stories--"Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper" (1943) and "A Toy for Juliette" (1967)--and also had Jack show up on the starship Enterprise in the Star Trek episode "Wolf in the Fold" (1967). On other occassions, such as the novel Psycho (1959), mad killers other than Jack get the spotlight. 

I'm not normally a fan of psycho-killer stories, which can often degenerate into slasher-film territory to tell a story without style or intelligence. But Bloch had both style and intelligence. His tales were legitimately creepy and enthralling.

Heck, when he was a mere lad of 22, he sold the story "Death Has Five Guesses" to Strange Stories. It was published in the April 1939 issue of that magazine. This story is generates just the right amount of tension and creepiness to make it work.

Harry Clinton is an average college student who volunteers for an ESP experiment. It's the same sort of experiment we see Bill Murray using to hit on a pretty girl at the beginning of Ghostbusters. The professor uses a set of cards, each of which has one of five symbols on it: a cross, a circle, a square, a star and a pair of wavy lines. The subject of the experiment is supposed to guess what symbol is on specific cards without looking.

Harry does extraordinarily well--he gets 23 out of 25 correct. So the professor asks him to continue with the experiment. Harry continues to do well, but finds himself often getting headaches and then getting hit by bouts of short-term amnesia, losing track of a half-day at a time. 

Then comes a three-day bout of amnesia, in which he murders a cross-wearing priest with a weapon that represents a cross. Then he kills a movie star with a star-themed weapon.

By the time Harry actually remembers what he's done, he's already added a wavy-line themed murder to his accomplishments. 

Is he somehow cursed or possessed by an alien intelligence? Or is he simply nuts? Harry doesn't know and, though there is nothing overt in the story that points to a supernatural explanations, Bloch creates an atmosphere in which we don't know either.

Two more murders to commit and it's pretty darn hard to avoid squares and circles. For Harry, there's no way this story is going to end well. But Bloch will give those of us reading the tale an appropriately tragic but still satisfying conclusion.

The story can be found online HERE.

Think Things Through Before You Time Travel!

 

cover art by Steve Ditko

"Trapped in Yesterday" (published in Tales of Suspense #2--March 1959) is a very simple story with a climatic twist that the majority of readers will probably see coming from almost the first page. It's not a great story at all, but I like it regardless. I think its very simplicity makes it a sort of "comfort food" tale.

This is one of those cases, by the way, where no one is completely certain who the writer and artist were. The plot is tentatively attributed to Stan Lee and the actual script to Larry Lieber. The art is tentatively credited to Carl Burgos and, to me, it does look like his work. 

Anyway, the story itself is about a bitter janitor, unhappy with his life and his perception that everyone looks down on him, overhearing a scientist proclaim he's invented a time machine.

So the janitor comes up with what he considers a brilliant plan. He'll notices the time machine controls are clearly marked, so it's easy for anyone to use it. He plans to steal the machine and go back to Camelot in the 6th Century, bringing some modern equipment with him. He'll convince King Arthur he's a powerful wizard and live like a king! He'll set dynamite to blow up the lab after he leaves, so no one can come get him and spoil his plans. What can possilbly go wrong?

What can go wrong is that the janitor is a dope. There's no nice way to phrase it. He's an idiot.  He claims to have powerful magic, but there's no outlet in which to plug in the TV he brought. There's no radio stations to for his portable radio to pick up. And there's no place to develop the pictures he takes with his camera.

Yes, he's simply a dope. Unimpressed with his failed magic, the knights give him a beating and then give him a job...  as the castle janitor.

"Trapped in Yesterday" is indeed a simple and very predictable story. It's like eating a bag of potato chips--not as good as a steak-and-lobster dinner, but still something that hits the spot when you are in the mood for chips.

Next week, I believe we'll travel back even further in time and visit with Conan the Barbarian.

Cover Cavalcade

 

A fun C.C. Beck cover from 1950.

Edgar Rice Burroughs Podcast: Podcast #15: Tarzan and the Golden Lion (audio and...

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Friday's Favorite OTR

 The Lives of Harry Lime: "In Pursuit of a Ghost" 11/16/51

Harry tries to run a con on a group of Central American revolutionaires, but ends up getting drafted into performing a mission that he has little or no hope of accomplishing. But if Harry can successfully double-cross everyone who is trying to double-cross him, he might both get out alive and turn a tidy profit. 

Click HERE to listen or download. 

Colorado Sundown

 

Though perhaps not as famous as Roy Rogers and Gene Autry, Rex Allen did okay for himself in the B-Movie west, riding the range with (usually) Slim Pickens and foiling a variety of villainous plots. 

In 1952's Colorado Sundown, adventure arises when Slim inherits part of a ranch in the titular state, with Rex riding along to make sure his not-too-bright sidekick gets a fair deal. There are several other people involved. The young and pretty Jackie Reynolds (Mary Ellen Kay) will get a third of the ranch, as will the siblings Carrie and Daniel Hurley.

The Hurleys, though, don't want to share. They own a lumber mill and want full access to all the trees on the ranch. But aside from ownership problems, there's an agent from the Forestry service who is telling them the trees can't be cut down regardless, as the many ranches in the area would then be subjected to flash flooding when the seasonal rains hit.

The Forestry agent isn't fooled by a scam claiming the trees are infected with bark beetles and he proves too stalwart to bribe. Carrie Hurley solves this problem by putting some poison in his tea, hiding the body, and getting yet another brother to take the agent's place and condemn all the trees in the valley.

And they would have gotten away with it if it weren't for that meddling singing cowboy. Rex is suspicious from the get-go and convinces Jackie and Slim not to sell out to the Hurleys for a low price. The Hurleys respond by framing Rex for murder.

In the end, Rex has to prove his innocence quickly enough to prevent an impending range war between the ranchers and the lumbermen.

Colorado Sundown is a fun movie. Rex is a likeable and capable protagonist, Slim (who would become a noted character actor in both film and television) has enough comedic chops to pull off the funny sidekick role and the villains act intelligently enough to pose a real threat to the good guys. June Vincent's ruthlessly cold-blooded portrayal of Carrie Hurley is particularly noteworthy.

As in any singing cowboy movie, the songs are a bit random, but Rex has a nice voice and these interludes are pleasant enough. 

Also, the fist fights are well-staged and very entertaining. Here's an example:

Better Detective Work Through Pretend Chemistry

 

When Rex Allen began starring in B-movies as a singing cowboy, he did several things to help differentiate him from Roy Rogers and Gene Autry. One of those things was to wear his guns backwards--with the gun butts sticking forward atop the holster. 

It's nice that the artists who drew his inevitable comic book adventures for Dell Comics got this particular detail correct. This includes Mike Arens, who drew the Rex Allen story "The Ghost" for Western Roundup #3 (July-September 1953). The writer of this story is unknown.

The story begins with Rex getting knocked out by stage robbers. When he wakes up, the local sheriff briefly thinks he might be one of the robbers, who had also murdered one of the passengers. Fortunately, Rex is able to prove that he 's a good guy. In fact, he's been deputized by the U.S. Marshall to stop the robbers--a gang headed up someone known only as The Ghost.

Rex meets with the city council, several of whom (including the mayor) don't like the idea of an outsider messing around with their business. Rex, though, explains that he saw one of the crooks at the stage robbery and can soon get a line on the gang.

Soon after, a couple of the gang try to capture Rex to find out what he knows. He manages to capture them. And the kidnapping attempt confirms a suspicion he had--one of the city council members is the Ghost. It's the only way the crooks could have found out so swiftly that he had seen the face of one of the gang. He hadn't really seen any of the crooks--that was a fib, of course. But if you can't fib to bad guys, who can you fib too?

I like this story, but there is a minor flaw in the plot here. Rex is assuming that the Ghost is on the council. That someone connected with the gang is on the council is now certain. Rex's trick was clever enough to establish that. But, for all Rex knew at this point, the mole on the council was in the Ghost's pay rather than the Ghost himself.

This isn't a fatal flaw, of course. Rex could have come to the same conclusion but have simply taken a chance that the mole was indeed the Ghost when he impliments the next part of that plan.

He meets with the council again and tells them that there's new chemical--one that will turn red if placed on the palm of a hand that has recently been blood stained--even if the stains are days old and the person has washed his hands. 

Of course, Rex is now not only assuming the Ghost is a member of the council but also personally took part in the last robbery and personally got blood on his hands. There's no denying it--Rex is definitely playing a long shot.

But long shots sometimes pay off. The chemical turns red in the mayor's hand, who quickly confesses when the council immediately threatens to lynch him. Gee whiz, for politicians, these guys act pretty quickly and decisively!

It turns out that Rex was telling yet another fib. He used water to test everyone else and a chemical that turns red when exposed to open air when testing the mayor. 

As a detective story, "The Ghost" is a little weak. In addition to the points I've already mentioned, Rex never clearly explains how he came to suspect the mayor at all. Though, to be fair, the mayor was the most adament in claiming that they didn't need Rex's help to catch the Ghost. 

Still, the art is fun and the story is enjoyable. If we look at the plot as consisting of Rex indeed playing a few long shots instead of making solid deductions, the whole thing works.  In fact, I enjoyed hanging out with Rex Allen sufficiently enought to watch one of his movies and review it in tomorrow's post.

Next week, we'll visit with the stupidest time traveler in history.

Cover Cavalcade

 

George Rozen is most famous for his Shadow covers, but here's a 1951 Rozen cover featuring Hopalong Cassidy.

Edgar Rice Burroughs Podcast: Mini-Podcast #28--Tarzan of the Apes--Chapter 20--...

Edgar Rice Burroughs Podcast: Mini-Podcast #28--Tarzan of the Apes--Chapter 20--...:   An analyst of the 20th chapter of Tarzan of the Apes, in which we learn that a lack of a common language can't stop true love! Click H...

Friday's Favorite OTR

 Escape: "The Man Who Would Be King" 8/1/48

This adaptation of Kipling's classic story is a little bit rushed, but still enormously entertaining.

Click HERE to listen or download. 

Steampunk Lone Ranger

 

In a 1943 story arc, the Lone Ranger radio show did dip into vaguely steampunkish territory when the Ranger and Tonto battled a mad scientist who used electricity-based death traps and a drug to turn hostages into zombie-like minions. But, overall, the Ranger's universe did not allow much in the way of Steampunk or science fiction into its stories. This was also true of the TV show and the long-running Dell/Gold Key comic book series.

That changed, though, in 1966, when a production company called Format Films turned out 26 episodes of a Lone Ranger cartoon for CBS' Saturday morning line-up.

I like to think that someone at Format Films fondly remembered that radio story arc, but it was actually the success of Secret Service agents James West and Artemus Gordon on The Wild, Wild West that dictated the premise for this particular version of the Lone Ranger. The Ranger and Tonto are tossed into a Steampunk universe that includes robot dragons, bad guys using scuba gear, a lost valley populated by neanderthals and dinosaurs, and giant wind-up toys. A reoccuring villain, Tiny Tom, was obviously based on West's arch-enemy Dr. Loveless.

Each half-hour had three stories, each running about 6 1/2 minutes, so each story moved at a furious pace. diving right into the action as yet another supervillain or mad scientist spreads chaos across the Old West. One story each episode was often devoted to a Tonto solo adventure, allowing him to have his own Crowning Moments of Awesome. In fact, this cartoon might have been the strongest example of any Lone Ranger venue in showing that the two heroes had an equal partnership. Tonto out-thought a villain and saved the Ranger as often as the Ranger did the same for Tonto.

The animation was obviously low-budget, but was done with imagination and style. To quote the Wikipedia article about the show: The drawings were produced by chinagraph pencil on cell. Colored papers were cut or torn under or against the lines of the background, producing a dramatic and rich textural effect. 

I loved this show as a kid. Though I watched re-runs of the live-action TV series growing up as well, this version of the Lone Ranger may very well have been my introduction to the character.

Fortunately, many of the episodes are showing up on YouTube. Here's one of them:

And, if you have another 7 minutes to spare, here's a Tonto episode in which I like to think he visits the same Lost Valley that was the setting of the comic book Turok, Son of Stone.

A Pet Eagle

 

The last story in Animal Comics #4 (Aug.-Sept. 1943) is the one "realistic" tale in the comic, in which the animal in it is not given dialogue or anthropomorphized in any way. Kyree the eagle is pretty awesome, but he's still an eagle. 

The story (writer unknown, art tentatively credited to Morris Gollub) begins with Kyree, still not quite old enough to fly, falling out of his next. Indian boy Little Otter tries to make him a pet. At first, he's driven off by Kyree's mom, but the boy returns at night to finally claim his new pet.

The eagle grows up and learns to trust his owner. A white trader named Bull Durkin offers ten dollars for Kyree. Little Otter doesn't want to sell, but Otter's dad figures ten bucks is ten bucks. The deal is made. But Little Otter partially cuts through the rope that confines the eagle, allowing Kyree to escape when Bull tries to claim him.

You can probably argue that Little Otter is being less than honest. After all, Bull had paid for the eagle. But it had been mentioned earlier that Bull had traded dishonestly with the Indians in the past. This, combined with Bull's murderous behavior later in the story, is meant to cover over Little Otter's technical dishonesty.

And it is indeed hard to feel sympathy for Bull. When he sees Kyree and Little Otter fishing together later on, he actually tries to strangle the child to get possession of the eagle. But it soon proves to be unwise to threaten a boy whose best friend is a large predatory animal with equally large talons.

With Bull driven off, Kyree and Little Otter are free to continue both to their friendship and their fishing.

That brings us to the end of our look at this issue of Animal Comics. The scripts for the stories were always servicable and often very clever (most especially in the case of the Uncle Wiggly tale). But it is the consistent high quality of the art that brings the book to life. In each case, the art style matches the story being told perfectly and the various characters (both animal and human) are given real personalities. Animal Comics #4 is a wonderful example of a type of comic book that, sadly, has largely disappeared from the comic book racks of today.

Next week, we'll visit with the comic book version of cowboy star Rex Allen.