Dimension X: "The Outer Limit" 4/8/50
A test pilot takes up a new ship for a quick trip into outer space and back. He only has ten minutes of fuel. But then he and the ship disappear for ten hours, only for the pilot to then return with inside information on how the world will come to an end.
Click HERE to listen or download.
Here's a bonus for today. Test pilots are not the only people who contribute to man's conquest of space. It turns out that Abbott and Costello tested equipment as well:
We continue our journey through the pages of Superman Family #182 (March-April 1977) with a Lois Lane story. "Crime Takes a Fall" is written by Bill Kunkel and drawn by Jose Delbo.
Lois and Clark are checking out the local wrestling arena. It's supposed to be for a fluff piece on the popular sport, but Lois (being Lois) soon begins to dig up some dirt.
A rookie named Jaws Jackson is winning match after match. This is despite the fact that during workouts, he is easily tossed around by the veteran wrestlers. But when they get in the ring with him, their "muscles turn to jelly" and they are easily defeated.
It's doesn't take a brilliant deductive leap to figure out something is going on. Fortunately, Lois then demonstrates that investigating reporting is the easiest job in the world. You just have to accidentally overhear two thugs explaining the entire evil plan.
The premise of this tale is perfectly sound for a short 8-pager. And, as we'll see in a moment, I like the way it ends. But the above panels are a weak point. Even conceeding that the story has to move along quickly and the writer might be forced to use a contrivance to keep up this pace, having Lois almost immediately spot two men she recognizes as criminal and hear them share information that both of them already would have known is pretty lame.
But I do like what happens next. Realizing that Jaws Jackson doesn't know he's being used as a patsy by the mob, she tells him and asks him to follow her to the roof, where a crook with a dart gun is waiting to plug Jaws' next opponent at the right time. (By the way, it's mentioned that the darts are self-dissolving, so the plot makes perfect Comic Book Science sense.)
At first, it seems like Jaws has not followed her and Lois soon finds herself cornered by the bad guy. But Jaws does show up. And he's angry. Angry enough to tackle the bad guy and send them both plummeting off the roof.
Fortunately, Superman is nearby to catch them. No one dies and villainy is foiled.
I complained a few weeks ago about the Jimmy Olsen story ending with Superman saving the day while Jimmy is unconscious. I still think that's a valid criticism. But here, Lois figures everything out and sets up a solution for catching the bad guy. Superman does show up to catch the two men after they fall off the roof, but Lois remains proactive and responsible for solving the case. Despite that painful contrivance in the middle of the story, Lois' adventure works a lot better than did Jimmy's.
Next week, we'll visit with Captain America as he fights a monster that might not be a monster. In two weeks, we'll return to Superman Family and learn something about ancient Krypton.
Suspense: "Drive-in" 1/11/45
A waitress at a drive-in restaurant makes the mistake of accepting the offer of a ride to the bus stop from a customer. In fact, that's probably even more of a mistake on a Suspense episode than it is in real life.
Click HERE to listen or download.
In 1971, during Gunsmoke's 17th season, a three-part episode titled "The Bullet" (written by veteran TV scribe Jim Byrnes) aired. It is a superbly written and acted story arc in many ways, but today I'd like to stress one particular moment.
It comes during the story's second part (which aired on December 6, 1971). The context of the scene I'm sharing below is as follows. Outlaws have taken over a train that is carrying a fortune in gold. But the bad guys don't know that a badly wounded Matt Dillon is also hidden aboard the train. The gang leader is missing a hand and it was Matt's bullet that took that hand off. So if Matt is discovered aboard, he's dead.
A pretty young criminal--a femme fatale in the making--is also aboard. She knows about Matt and is considering ratting him out to the bad guys in exchange for being taken along with them after they've finished loading the gold onto a wagon. But Kitty Russell--who's perpetually undeclared love for Matt has always been obvious to pretty much any fan of the show--isn't going to allow that to happen.
DO NOT threaten Miss Kitty's man if she's in a position to to do anything about it.
This is a great scene from an always excellent TV series.
Fantastic Comics, published by Fox Publications from 1939 to 1943, was a bizarre and entertaining book. It was full of stories that barely made story sense, even when taking Comic Book Logic into account, but were fast-paced and graced with imaginative art.
It was an anthology book, but did include a number of regularly appearing characters--an Arthurian knight, Samson (a descendent of the Biblical Samson and also given superstrength), a spy and several science fiction heroes.
Today, we'll look at an adventure of one of the science fiction guys as recounted in Fantastic Comics #3 (February 1940).
Space Smith and his pretty companion Dianna have spent the first two issues battling the Great Central Brain of Mars, who wants to destroy Earth. In this issue, they are heading back to Mars to finish off the Central Brain. But on the way, they pass near Venus. (Which I think might be possible. What if Mars was currently near the opposite side of the sun from Earth? A route to Mars that goes past the sun might come close to Venus, right? I know I'm giving the story too much credit for thinking this through, but what the hey.)
Anyway, they get jumped by Leopard Women from Venus who are flying atop giant reptiles and blasting away with "comet fire" from their helmets. My wife makes fun of my lack of fashion sense, but even I can see the leapard women are destined to be trendsetters.
The blasts immobilize the Earth ship and the Leopard Women board through... open portholes. Okay, I have no justification for that. But I don't care. Sometimes, realism and logic simply don't matter.
Space and Dianna soon find themselve prisoners on Venus, guarded by robots. When Dianna is taken off to be surgically altered into a Leopard Woman (I'm not sure what that consists of, since the Venusian women appear to be normal humans who simply wear unusual clothes.) This makes Space angry. And apparently, you won't like Space when he's angry. He snaps his chains and goes on a rampage, fighting his way past robots and reptiles to resuce Dianna.
The epic fight continues until a robot is knocked into a tank of Superluner Star Gas, which carpets the area. This allows Space and Dianna, after a swim through an underground river and the judicious use of a flying belt, to reach their ship and get away.
The story was written and drawn by Fletcher Hanks (using the name Hank Christy) and it is the lightning-fast pacing of the story plus his eccentric, colorful art and weird character/creature designs that make it work. As I said, there are times when story logic means very little and, in fact, this particular story probably wouldn't have been half as fun if Hanks had tried to make any real sense of it.
You can find this issue online HERE.
Next week, we return to our look at Superman Family #182 to see what Lois Lane is up to.
A selection of DC covers that remind us approximately 60% of all PT Boat combat operations carried out during the Second World War involved dinosaurs.
Richard Diamond: "The Ivory Statue" 4/5/50
The plot of this episode riffs off of The Maltese Falcon. A dying man stumbles into Diamond's office, carrying an ivory statue that several other men are willing to kill to obtain.
Click HERE to listen or download.
In 1950, producer George Pal was making the film Destination Moon and was generating a lot of publicity in anticipation of its release. So, when the production of that film was delayed, the low-budget Lippert Productions spent $94,000 and took just 18 days to churn out Rocketship X-M. This was released before Pal's movie, capitalizing on its publicity. (Though they miss the Moon and end up on Mars to avoid any possible legal action.)
I have always been a defender of the B-movies from the 1930s, '40s and '50s. I believe that creative directors, clever scripts and good acting often gave us 65 to 90 minutes of great storytelling. After all, the term "B-movie" at that time did not mean Bad Movie. It simply referred to the second half of a double-feature without commenting on the quality.
So it should be no surprise when I say I enjoyed Rocketship X-M. Like the higher-budget film it was piggy-backing off of, it's about the first manned trip to the Moon. In this case, though, things go awry and the rocket ends up heading for Mars.
Once there, they discover that there was once an advanced civilization on Mars, but it had destroyed itself in nuclear war. Soon, caveman survivors of that war are making things dangerous for the visiting humans.
The cast includes Lloyd Bridges, Noah Berry, Jr. and Hugh O'Brian--talented actors who are able to give personality to their characters despite the sometimes awkward dialogue. And the characters they are playing are the kind I like in most stories--intelligent people who try to logically think their way through problems.
For instance, when their trip to the moon is interrupted by engine failure, the two scientists in the crew spend quite a bit of time calculating new fuel mixtures, then leave it to the pilot and engineer to re-jigger the engines to make this work. That the new fuel mixture didn't work as planned (it sends them on a high-speed trip to Mars) doesn't make the scientists look stupid. The movie plans out in a way that lets us know these are smart people--they just took a gamble with something new that they weren't able to test experimentally first.
The film isn't without its flaws. For instance, those fuel mixture calculations are all done with paper and pencils. Apparently, computers don't exist in this particular universe. Though, to be fair, this helped emphasize that the scientists are constructing brand new ideas from scratch.
Also, the movie tries a little too hard for a strict realism that wasn't really needed to tell the story. We see some small pieces of equipment floating around when the ship reaches space, telling us that they are now in a zero-g environment. But the crew moves around normally, without any effort to themselves simulate zero-gravity. With such a low budget, there probably wasn't much they could have done in this regard, so it probably would have been better to just have ignored it completely.
And, for heaven's sake, Lloyd Bridges--when you are in space, they are called "meteoroids," not "meteorites!"
But these are minor flaws. The cramped interior of the rocket looks good and the scenes on Mars, filmed in sepia-tones in Death Valley, do give an alienesque aura.
The movie has an effective bittersweet ending, containing a strong anti-war message (inserted by Dalton Trumbo when he was brought in as a script doctor) and reminding us that exploration and discovery comes with a cost in human lives.
You know, this is at least the second time I have praised a movie that was once skewered on Mystery Science Theater 3000. And I understand the recent re-boot of that show made fun of 1974's The Land That Time Forgot. I think MST3K is an hilarious show, but perhaps they should start checking with me about what movies are actually bad.
Today, we return to Superman Family #182 (March-April 1977) for a look at the second story in that issue.
"Superbaby's Alien Pet" is a story that can only have been written by E. Nelson Bridwell, who was a font of knowledge about Superman's mythology and a writer arguably the best grasp of Silver Age goofiness. (And please note that I am not knocking Silver Age goofiness, which ranks among mankind's greatest artistic movements.) It is indeed a goofy, but highly entertaining and clever tale from the days when Clark Kent was still a toddler. The art is by John Calnan.
On the very first day, we discover one of the challenges of raising a super-powered child. Clark comes flying home with an alien monster in tow, asking "Can me keep him?"
[By the way, as much as I love the Silver Age, the DC method of portraying baby talk--which mostly consists of overusing the word "me"--can get on my nerves from time to time.]
To the credit of both the Kent parents, they handle the situation with aplomb. Pa Kent quickly directs Clark to build a cage for the alien, which includes walking the toddler through steps of shaping metal into tools.
When the alien is safely contained, Clark makes a quick inter-continental flight to a jungle to bring it some food.
This gives Pa Kent time to wonder where the alien came from. This, in turn, convinces Clark to show Pa the crashed space ship near which he had found the monster. And, when Pa sees the size of the chaire and controls, he learns that it has been inappropriate of me to be calling the alien a monster. He was actually the pilot of the ship.
It's a wonderful little tale, allowing Pa Kent to be smart while still depending on Clark's superpowers to get the heavy lifting done. In real life, a child with super-powers would pretty much always generate an "It's a Good Life" situation. But one of the points of Superman is that he is moral and decent by nature. And, of course, so are the Kents. It's a situation that allows fun stories like this to exist.
Next week, we'll discover that there are Leopard Women on Venus who achieve space flight on the back of giant lizards. As if we all didn't already suspect that was true.
Box 13: "Three to Die" 1/23/49
Dan goes undercover as a sand hog to find out who is sabotaging the construction of a new traffic tunnel.
Click HERE to listen or download.
The table of contents of the June 1958 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction shows us that one of the novelets is "The Mininum Man" by Robert Sheckley and that one of the short stories is "The Gun Without a Bang" by Finn O'Donnevan. Both stories, though, were indeed written by Sheckley.
During the 1950s, Sheckley was quite prolific. He ended up with two stories in a single magazine quite often, using the Finn O'Donnevan pseudonym for one of the two tales. In the March 1953 issue of Fantasy Magazine, for instance, he had the short story "The Demons" published his own name and the short story "Feeding Time" under the O'Donnevan byline. The June 1957 issue of Galaxy had "The Deaths of Ben Baxter" as Sheckley and "A Wind is Rising" as O'Donnevan.
Back to that 1958 issue of Galaxy: I first read "A Gun Without a Bang" in high school. It was part of an anthology we were given as our textbook for a "Science Fiction as Literature" course. The course itself was a disappoinment--after the teacher asked me why I had read a particular book after seeing the movie, I tuned her out and just read whatever I wanted, while paying little or no attention to the actual class. But, though the teacher was as useless as pretty much every other teacher in that particular high school, I did find some memorable stuff in that anthology.
The trouble was that, though I remembered the story, I didn't remember the author or title. It was some years before I stumbled across it as a grown-up. As is almost inevitably the case when I read something as an adult that I had first read as a kid or teenager, I re-discover that I've always had impeccable taste in good storytelling.
"The Gun Without a Bang" features a hunter who is the first one to land on a jungle planet populated by several species of dangerous animals. This fellow, though, isn't worried. He has a new weapon--a disintegrator gun that is leagues ahead of any other hand-held pistol ever created. Point it and pull the trigger--an attacking animal will literally just vanish. There's no sound and no flash of light. The animal simply disappears.
So the newly arrived human is supremely confident he is in no real danger. Until, that is, he discovers that a gun without a bang has its drawbacks when fighting against non-sentient enemies.
"The Minimum Man," Sheckley's other tale in this issue and the one published under his own name, has an equally clever premise. Anton Perceveral is a not-quite-competent man who can't hold a job. He was prone to illness, minor injuries and a habit of accidentally breaking or losing items. He loses job after job because of this.
But then he gets recruited to be an alien-planet explorer--the first person to land on a new planet and find out if it's fit to be colonized.
Why hire a hopeless klutz for this job? Well, Earth used to send the Best and Brightest. The trouble was that the average colonist wasn't as skilled as these top-flight explorers. Things the Best and Brightest could handle would be deadly to the colonists.
But if you send a klutz to check out the planet and he survives... well, then, a few hundred colonists shouldn't have any trouble at all.
So Perceveral finds himself barely surviving on an alien world. He manages to survive, though. He even manages to become gradually more skillful and less likely to break or lose things.
But if Perceveral become competent, doesn't that negate the point of the experiment? Perceveral's bosses have thought of that, of course. And as Perceveral becomes competent, his robot assistant begins to break things and lose stuff....
Both stories show Sheckley's main strength as a science fiction writer. Both stories are full of humor and irony, but without ever crossing the line into a parody of the genre. Both stories can be accepted as legitimate science fiction while still making us smile.
You can read this issue of Galaxy HERE.
But before he can behead her, Dracula himself shows up. He's been toying with the Marshal, allowing him to take out some minions, but the girl is too valuable to lose on a permanent basis. So he's decided to kill the Marshal personally.
That doesn't prove easy, though. The Marshal is very, very good in a fight. Also, he carries a shotgun loaded with silver buckshot. When it appears he might actually win the fight, Dracula changes tactics, playing on the Marshal's sense of law and order. Does the Marshal have the right to kill Dracula without a trial?
I'm pretty sure the correct answer to that is a resounding YES! But the Marshal seems swayed by the argument. He turns his back to Dracula as he walks back towards the castle entrance.
This is too much of a temptation for Dracula, who attacks again. But the Marshal is quick with the shotgun and he has no problem at all with the concept of self-defense.
The stories in Dracula Lives weren't necessarily a part of the continuity of Marvel's color Tomb of Dracula book, which allowed them to run stories in which the Lord of the Vampire gets killed. On the other hand, he got killed a number of times in Tomb of Dracula, but was always getting resurrected. (Which includes one memorable occasion when he's brought back by the vampire hunters who had killed him to battle a disembodied brain that was about to conquer the world.) So that he might have gotten killed a few years before the events of the novel Dracula isn't impossible in a Marvel Universe context. Especially since the Marshal, in his eagerness to make a dramatic exit, seems to have forgotten about the necessity of beheading the corpse. Gee whiz.
But I don't mean to make fun of the story. It's well-written, with the use of flashbacks to gradually build up the Marshal's history and character being particularly impressive. And DeZuniga's art is fantastic. He had a flair for bringing stories of the Old West to gritty life, even if a particular Old West story is set in Transylvania and involves vampires.
That's it for now. Next week, we'll see what it's like to raise a baby who has superpowers.
Nick Carter: "The Corpse in the Cab" 2/5/44
A strangled body is found in the back of a taxi and the driver, who has a record, is afraid the cops will pin the murder on him. Fortunately, his friend Nick Carter agrees to look into the case.
Click HERE to listen or download.
Read/Watch 'em In Order #124
I don't remember what I was searching for on the Internet Archive, but what I found one day a few weeks ago was the May 1927 issue of Frontier Stories, which sounded like fun and which I immediately downloaded to my tablet. I thought it might be fun to look at this issue story by story as part of the "In Order" series. And since I have god-like control over what goes in this blog, that's what we are doing.
I've read a lot of pulp magazines, but never this one. Based on the magazine's title and the illustration on the cover, I at first assumed that it would have stories from the Wild West and perhaps also from earlier in American history. And stories like that are included. But, perhaps for variety and to make Frontier Stories stand out from the many pure Western pulps, they apparently defined "Frontier" as just beyond the outskirts of Western civilization.
The first story, for instance, is a novella titled "Barbary Blood," by George E. Holt. It's set in then-modern day Morocco.
The narrator is an adventurer named Philip Dare who ends up in Tangiers at the request of Brandon Grey, an old partner in adventure with whom Dare had "faced... the assegais of Menelik's warriors in Abyssinia and the muliple dangers of India and Thibet."
In fact, I enjoy the way this story kicks off at high speed. With a few side remarks, we immediately understand that both Grey and Dare are experienced men who can handle themselves in dangerous situations. The story is thus able to jump right into the action within just a few paragraphs.
Grey has moved up in the world. He's now the head of the sultan's Secret Service and he needs Dare's help to deal with a potential usurper. Before he knows it, Dare and Grey (both still in evening clothes from the dinner they had been attending) are galloping through a sandstorm, on the trail of the usurper's main henchman.
The trail soon takes them to the city of Arzila, where the would-be sultan is using the passages that run through the city walls to gather arms and recruits. Grey and Dare find their way into these passages. There are disguises, captures and escapes, an encounter with a beautiful Spanish woman (whose cousin is running guns to the bad guys), a death trap and a couple of shootouts.
Grey and Dale make effective co-heroes, with both men acting intelligently and contributing to eventually foiling the villains. Dale, at one point, rescues Grey from a death trap, while Grey comes up with a clever plan to lure the usurper's forces into a trap.
George Holt, aside from writing fiction, also worked as a journalist in Morocco and eventually served as Consul-General there, so he knew his subject matter and "Barbary Blood" does have a realistic atmosphere to it in its portrayal of that country and its people. (Though it should be noted that I'm far from an expert on 1927 Morocco and a good writer could easily fool me about accuracy.) I know Holt had several reoccuring characters appearing in stories published in Adventure (most notably Mohamed Ali, a sort-of Muslim Robin Hood who battled against colonialism), but I don't know if Grey and Dale popped up anywhere else. They were certainly worthy of a few more adventures.
You can read this issue online HERE.
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