Edgar Rice Burroughs Podcast: Mini Podcast #51: A Princess of Mars, Chapters 18 ...

Edgar Rice Burroughs Podcast: Mini Podcast #51: A Princess of Mars, Chapters 18 ...:   An analysis of Chapters 18 & 19 of "A Princess of Mars," in which John Carter does time as a gladiator in a Martian arena. C...

Friday's Favorite OTR

 Phil Harris & Alice Faye: "Movie Role" 4/24/49

To lure Alice back into the movies, the studio offers Phil a role as well. Naturally, he assumes he's been offered the lead role. Also naturally, shenanigans ensue.

Click HERE to listen or download. 

Recovering the Stolen Loot, part 1

 

Devil's Butte, by Ray Hogan, was published as an Ace Double (with Brian Wynne's A Badge for a Badman on the flip side) in 1967. 

Wynne was a pen name for Brian Garfield

As is typical of an Ace Double Western, the novel starts out with a bang and continues pretty much non-stop. The Ace Doubles were short, so a good storyteller knew he had no time to waste. There is nothing extraneous, no complex subplots, no verbose prose. Everything is boiled down to telling an entertaining story without waste or gristle.

Ray Hogan does just that. We meet Dave Bonner while he is riding towards the large Pitchfork ranch. He's carrying $3000 in cash to buy cattle for both his small ranch and for some of the other ranches that neighbor his own.

This is important. Not all the money belongs to Dave and people other than himself are trusting him to get back with the cattle he is supposed to buy.

So when four men rob him, then leave him out in the desert without gun, water or a horse, Dave isn't just trying to survive. Beyond figuring out how not to die, he has GOT to get that money back. His friends are depending on him.

So we start out with a trek through the searing desert. Getting to a town, Bonner manages to acquire a horse and a pistol. He begins to track down the outlaws. Soon, he kills one of them, but the dead man isn't carrying any of his money.

The trail takes him to the Pitchfork ranch, were he finds out that three of the outlaws are ranch hands there. The fourth--well, he's the adopted son of the ranch's owner, in whose eyes he can do no wrong. Dave finds himself accused of murder, which in turn leads to a Last Stand situation at a place called Devil's Butte. Though the ranch owner's pretty daughter has allied herself with Dave (she's known her adopted brother had gone bad for some time now), Dave is outnumbered and outgunned.

But he's good with the gun he has and he has a knack for improvising clever plans. The odds are against him, but perhaps he can think and fight his way out of the trap he's in, prove his innocence and recover his money.

Hogan's plot construction is sound and, if the characterizations are basic, the protagonists are likeable and the villains are appropriately vile. And the ending, where the rancher finally confronts his wayward son, has a nice level of emotional impact to it. Devil's Butte is a fun and worthwhile read. 

This novel reminded me of another "recover the stolen loot" Western I once read and, for a specific reason, have a particular attachment to. Sometime within the next few weeks, I'll review that one as well. 

Three Heroes, Two Villains and a Death Ray

 

Cover art by Gil Kane

Last week, when reviewing Marvel Team-Up #16, I mentioned that the randomness of the team-ups was a strength of the series, allowing us to see disparate heroes work together in stories that could be enjoyed on their own without having to worry about ongoing storylines in their own books.

The 17th issue (January 1974)--part 2 of the story being in issue #16--is actually slightly less random. T The previous issue had ended with Captain Marvel and the super-powerful Omega Gem both vanishing. Spider Man decides to check in with the smartest man in the world for help, which is a logical extention of the ongoing tale. 

Spidey does find Reed Richards at home, but Reed is in a bit of a funk. The FF had recently broken up and Sue & Reed are seperated, so its kind of understandable. But Spidey is able to pep-talk him into helping with the Captain Marvel problem. Reed quickly comes up with a way of tracing the power of the Omega Gem, which leads to the two heroes directly to Mole Man's subterranean empire.

They are immediately attacked by hordes of Moloids before being hit with a paralyzing gas. We soon find out that Reed expanded his lungs to ward off the effects of the gas while Peter simply held his breath, but pretending to be helpless gives Mole Man a chance to monologue and explain his evil plan.

The Omega Gem, with Marvel still inside it, teleported to the underworld, where it turned out to be just the thing Mole Man needs to power a laser cannon capable of ripping apart the surface world.

This explanation gives us a really cool Gil Kane splash page, though no explanation is ever give for why the gem teleports underground. Is it sentient and this was some sort of plan? Was it random? Writer Len Wein just asks us to accept what happened on face value and, to be fair, there probably wasn't much else he could do within this issue's page count. Besides, wasn't I just saying that randomness was one of the appealing features of team-up books? I shouldn't complain.

Reed and Spidey stop pretending to be helpless and begin to fight. Then, an unexpected "ally" shows up. Basilisk, still wanting the gem for himself, has followed Spider Man to the Baxter Building and then followed both heroes to the Earth's Core.

What follows is great fun. Basilisk and Mole Man fight, giving the heroes time to get to the gem and try to free Marvel. The villains realize what's going on and sort of team-up. Marvel adds to the action by (after hours of being able to only very slowly move his hands) touching his wrist bands together and thus trading places with Rick Jones. (For those who don't remember, the two men were linked together, with one having to be trapped in the negative zone while the other was free to act on Earth.)

Because Rick doesn't have Kree energy to syphon off, the gem shrinks back down to normal size again. In the meantime, Reed has sabotaged the laser, using it to cause nearby pits of magma to erupt. Basilisk is apparently killed. (Though, of course, he's not. He'll show up two years later in Marvel Team-Up #47.) The heroes try to save Mole Man, but he's also apparently killed. (Though, of course, he's not. He'll show up a year or so later in Hulk #189.) Nobody tries to save any of the poor Moloids. The heroes escape to the surface.

It's a fun story and a solid ending for the story begun last issue. Kane's art (especially that splash page) is great. If both issues depend a bit too much on villain monologues to provide exposition--well, that's such an established part of Comic Book Universes that I think we've all come to simply accept it. 

Next week, we'll start a three-part journey through DC's 1972 reprint book Wanted: The World's Most Dangerous Villains. 

Cover Cavalcade

 

From 1949. The FBI really ought to cover this sort of situation when they train their agents. 

Friday's Favorite OTR

 NBC Short Story: "The Oblong Box" (Pre-empted and never aired during the series' 1951-52 run)

An adaptation of Poe's short story, changing the emphasis of the prose story (a satire on detective fiction) to a more straightforward tale of horror and murder.

Click HERE to listen or download.

REH By Someone Else, Part 1

 

I am one of those fans who generally prefers a strong continuity in the fictional universes I enjoy. I like maps, chronologies and hints at unpublished adventures from a hero's past. I like fan theories that attempt to explain plot holes and inconsistencies. 

But there is one attempt to give a stronger continuity to to a fictional hero that fell short of success. Despite being a fan of L.Sprague de Camp's novels and short stories, I was never knocked dead by the Conan stories he and Lin Carter wrote, which attempted to give the Cimmerian a cohesive life-long biography. 

I do believe that de Camp was arguably most responsible for rescuing Robert E. Howard's work from obscurity. But his style of storytelling worked best with the educated and urbane heroes who appeared in his original works. Howard's two-fisted heroes didn't fit him or allow him to exhibit his dry sense of humor. I also don't think he ever fully appreciated Howard's amazing skill as a storyteller. 

Also, though Lin Carter was a superb editor (see his work on the Flashing Swords series of books), I'm afraid I never cared a lot for his own fiction. I know he has his fans and I respect that, but his prose just doesn't work for me.

Finally, de Camp and Carter's attempt to put the Conan stories in chronological order--though it's an idea that obviously appealed to me--was a bit ham-fisted.

Like many REH fans, I discovered him through the Lancer/Ace paperback series (1966-1977)--12 paperbacks that organized the Conan tales into a chronological order and added new stories (or REH non-Conan stories re-written to star Conan) to fill in gaps in Conan's biography. 

The Lancer/Ace series included four original novels by de Camp and Carter. Of these, Conan the Buccaneer is simply dull. Conan the Avenger and Conan of Aquilonia plod along without ever being that exciting as they concentrated far too much on unneccesarily tying up supposed loose ends in Conan's life. 

The 1967 novel Conan of the Isles is the only one I remembered enjoying, so I recently re-read it again. 

In this one, Conan is in his mid-sixties and has been king of Aquilonia for several decades. He's now co-ruling with his young son Conn and he's bored to tears. He has defeated foreign enemies and his kingdom is prospering. He simply doesn't have anything interesting to do. His queen has died in childbirth and most of his old friends have passed on. 

But then strange amorphous "creatures" that come to be called the Red Shadows begin appearing, attacking people seemingly at random, then vanishing along with their victims. When Conan receives a vision from a representative of the gods giving him the job of stopping the Red Shadows (which are minons of a larger threat that threatens the entire world), Conan quietly abdicates and rides away, leaving his son to take over.

Conan heads to the coast, where he re-connects with an old friend from his days as a pirate. Soon, he has a ship and a crew. They sail west, leaving the Hyborian World behind.

What follows doesn't feel at all like a Conan story, but it is a fun and well-constructed fantasy adventure with some unique action scenes. There are several ship-to-ship battles, one of which involves a flame-thrower. Soon after that, Conan finds himself walking along the sea bottom, equipped with a breathing apparatus made from volcanic glass, getting into a fight with a giant octopus and a large shark. Later, he's attacked by a horde of dog-sized rats in an underground maze. He caps all this off by rescuing his crew from being sacrificed to a demon by releasing a horde of carnivorous 50-foot lizards into a proto-Aztec city. 

I really enjoy this last bit. It calls to mind old B-movies in which photographically enlarged lizards stand in for dinosaurs or generic monsters. It's a look that fits this story, which has a fun B-movie feel to it.

 

The book was meant to be the finale of the Conan saga and there is a short and legitimately melancholy chapter in which the barbarian reflects back on his life and his now-gone friends. But, since de Camp's Conan simply doesn't feel like REH's Conan, the novel can instead be looked at as a generic sword-and-sorcery tale or an alternate-universe Conan. 

I still like chronologies, fan theories and so on.  In fact, I would occasionally re-read the Conan stories in what I felt was an appropriate chronological order. But a comment on a Facebook REH group a few years ago convinced me that the best way to expreience the original tales is in the order they were written--as individual legends in the life of Conan without worrying about chronology. (Which doesn't mean I have stopped enjoying discussions about chronologies on their own.) 

So the non-REH stories can then also be taken on their own, to be enjoyed or dismissed on their own individual merits without bleeding over into Conan's "real life." Just like, for instance, we can read a biography of Wyatt Earp, then still enjoy his fictionalized adventures in novels, TV and film without it changing our view of Earp's real life.

In the case of Conan of the Isles, I once again enjoyed it. It does not inhabit that spot in the part of my brain that secretly thinks of Conan as a real person (only the REH stories live there), but I had fun with it. 

Some time in the next few weeks, we'll look at another writer's visit to the REH Universe with Karl Edward Wagner's Legion from the Shadows. 

Peter Parker NEVER Gets to Go to the Movies!

 

cover art by John Romita

The appeal of the team-up books published by Marvel and DC during the 1970s is in part due to their randomness. Two heroes are tossed together completely by chance to battle a villain for an issue or two and then move on with their own lives once more. Usually, these tales are completely seperate from whatever is going on in those heroes' regular titles and can thus be enjoyed on their own.

So when Spider Man and Captain Marvel team up to battle an all-new villain, it's a completely random occurance. Spidey just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and is suddenly involved in helping save the world. It is simply another adventure to be added to Spidey's growing mythology.

This all happens in Marvel Team-Up #16 (December 1973), written by Len Wein and drawn by Gil Kane. It's an adventure that begins long ago, when a Kree space ship that is transporting two powerful gems explodes. The gems end up on Earth.

One of those gems eventually finds its way to a New York Museum. And--wouldn't you know it--Peter Parker is walking by that museum, on his way to the movies--when stuff starts to happen.

A crook named Basil Elks (called the Basilisk by his fellow crooks) is trying to steal that gem. When a shot from a security guard's revolver shatters the gem, it releases power that transforms Basil into a super-villain. 

He soon discovers that he can shoot eye beams that can do pretty much whatever the writer of the story wants them to do. And, by golly, he has a built-in and appropriate villain name already--The Basilisk.

He senses the presence of the other gem, but Peter sees him bursting out from the museum wall while conveniently monologuing about his plans. The ensuing fight is about to end badly for Spidey when Captain Marvel arrives, having sensed the presence of the gem earlier. The battle ends with Basilisk escaping, but with the webslinger and the Kree taking turns saving each other before pursuing.

Basilisk traces the gem to a construction site, where the heroes catch up to him. Another battle ensues, with a particularly fun moment involving Spider Man getting temporarily flung out of the battle when Basilisk uses his eye beams in a clever way:

Spidey hurries back and keeps Basilisk distracted while Marvel digs up the gem. This, though, ends badly when that second gem suddenly expands, encasing Captain Marvel within it before vanishing. Basilisk gets away, but he's a secondary concern now. The main concern is now finding out what happened to Captain Marvel. For that, Spidey will need to swing into the next issue and seek help. We'll find out who he recruits next week.

It's a enjoyable story with strong art work by Kane. It serves the purpose that team-up books are supposed to have--telling an entertaining story within their comic book universe that allows us to see characters who don't normally work together join forces. It may keep Peter Parker from ever actually being able to go to a movie, but it's always a fun ride for us.

Edgar Rice Burroughs Podcast: Mini-Podcast #50: A Princess of Mars, Chapter 17

Edgar Rice Burroughs Podcast: Mini-Podcast #50: A Princess of Mars, Chapter 17:   An analysis of Chapter 17 of the novel "A Princess of Mars," in which John Carter escapes from one group of Green Martians only ...

Cover Cavalcade

 

From 1954. If I had been around in the 1950s and 1960s, I would have been starving and homeless because I would have been driven to spend every last cent I made on books with covers like this one. How can you NOT want to read it?

Friday's Favorite OTR

 Burns and Allen: "Gracie Asks George to Bake" 4/28/49

Gracie's joke about what went wrong when she tried to make butterscotch is by itself enough to make this episode a classic.

Click HERE to listen or download.

Johnny Ringo--From Bad Guy to Good Guy Via Television!

 

Yesterday, we looked at a Wild Bill Hickok comic. Today, we'll continue to follow the theme of real-life Wild West characters being fictionalized with a look at the 1959-60 television series Johnny Ringo.

In real life, Ringo was an outlaw. Many of the Western gunfighters who were eventually brought back to "life" on television (Wyatt Earp, for example) were morally ambivalent in real life, but were usually closer to being good guys than bad guys. Ringo, though, was bad through and through.

But that didn't stop television from jumping him over to the good guy side. The TV series, which ran for 38 episodes, starred actor/singer Don Durant and was, in fact, created specifically for him. 

Johnny is still portrayed as a gunslinger, but someone who is forced into fast draws by the standard "young punks looking to build a reputation" situation. He dislikes this role and is looking for a way to redeem himself. So, in the pilot episode of the series, he takes a job as sheriff in a town largely controlled by a dishonest saloon owner. 

The show is also made in the era of gimmick guns. Josh Randall has his cut-down rifle. Lucas McCain had his custom-made rifle. Shotgun Slade had special shotgun. Johnny Ringo has a home-made LeMat pistol, with a second barrel attached containing a single shotgun shell.

There were a lot of Westerns on TV at this time and I simply didn't know about this one until I ran across the first episode on YouTube recently. It's not bad at all. I'm not sure Don Durant has the dramatic chops to pull off the part with complete believability, but he's still pretty good. The story itself is strong and the villian, played by James Coburn, is appropriately vile. 

And that LeMat pistol is pretty awesome. Predictably, that extra seventh shot comes in handy during the final shootout. Johnny Ringo didn't leave the same impression on the pop culture landscape as did Lucas McCain or Matt Dillon, but he didn't do badly at all. 

Here's the episode in its entirety:

The Shield of White Eagle

 

cover art by Everett Raymond Kinstler

If you made a name for yourself in the Old West, then your real-life adventures would eventually pale before your fictional ones. 

Wild Bill Hickok is a prime example of this. After making a name for himself as a lawman, he did briefly appear on stage with Buffalo Bill Cody, but disliked this. He would hide behind scenery and once shot out a stagelight that was shining on him. But his real-life adventures were still exagerated over the decades by dime novels, movies, a radio show and a televisions show. 

And, of course, there were comic books. Avon Publications' Wild Bill Hickok comic ran for 28 issues from 1949 to 1956. Today, we'll be looking at a story from the 7th issue, cover-dated May 1951. "The Shield of White Eagle" was drawn by Howard Larsen. The writer is unknown.

And, gee whiz, that writer certainly liked to write. Captions and large word balloons take up large portions of every panel. It's well-written narration and dialogue, moving the story along in a logical manner. But this is a comic book, not an illustrated short story. Since I liked this story and the word balloon placement never obscures the art, I suppose I'm being a little nit-picky. But I can't help thinking the story would have flowed better if the word count had been toned down a bit.

Anyway, a Nez Perce Indian named White Eagle is meditating and fasting in hopes of having a vision to identify his spirit animal. Nearby, two outlaws are murdering a man so they can jump his gold claim. They try to get White Eagle as well, since he's a witness to their crime.

Wild Bill shows up and wounds both the outlaws, though they escape. The two then fight off an attack by some Crow Indians. 

By now, both men are wounded. But they get to the Nez Perce camp and take time to heal up.

This, though, gives the outlaws time to heal up as well. When they learn their murder victim's sister has arrived in town, they contrive to lure her out into the wilderness and kill her as well.

It's not a surprise to any reader that Wild Bill and White Eagle happen by in time to save her. 

So far, this has been a strong story, despite the reliance on too much dialogue. Here, we come to a bit of poor plotting. We've seen no evidence that the outlaws have a gang. So far, they've been working entirely on their own. But suddenly, they DO have a gang, lurking near enough to come to their aid in killing the woman and her two rescuers.

So we get Wild Bill's second Last Stand in this seven-page story, as he and White Eagle desperately try to fight off the outlaws. Ironically, it's General Custer, who has not yet ridden off to his own rather famous Last Stand, who arrives with some army troops to stop the fight.

Well, after committing murder and kidnapping, it's not surprising that the outlaws are willing to tell a fib. They try to claim that Hickok is a "dirty renegade" who tried to steal a white woman along with his Indian friend. Fortunately, White Eagle has painted the scene of the outlaws commiting their original murder on his shield. Custer immediately accepts this as proof that the outlaws are guilty because.... well, just because.

The story does have a few weak spots in it, but it's largely enjoyable and is certainly action-packed. Wild Bill, like Billy the Kid, Buffalo Bill, Kit Carson, Davy Crockett and Wyatt Earp (to name just a few) had very busy fictional career. 

You can read this issue online HERE. 

Next Week, Spider Man will team up with Captain Marvel. The original Captain Marvel, I mean. Well, not the original original Captain Marvel, but Marvel Comics' original Captain Marvel. At what point did that become so hard to explain?

Edgar Rice Burroughs Podcast: Episode #21: Interview with Al Bohl

Edgar Rice Burroughs Podcast: Episode #21: Interview with Al Bohl:   Jess, Scott and Tim have an enormously entertaining conversation with Al Bohl, writer and director of the 2012 documentary "Tarzan: L...

Cover Cavalcade

 

An effective cover from 1951.

Friday's Favorite OTR

 Inner Sanctum: "The Amazing Death of Mrs. Putman" 1/7/41

A woman calls the police to claim someone is about to murder her. But then the police learn that she had apparently died two hours before the call was placed.

Click HERE to listen or download.

Gold Rush Con Artists

 

Read/Watch 'em In Order #128

Well, darn it. I hadn't noticed that the online copy of Frontier Stories (May 1927) I've been using is missing a couple of pages from the story "Three Wise Men of the North." And it's a good story, too!

Written by Aaron Eberhardt, the tale is about three propectors heading north to the gold fields, part of the many thousands that rushed to the region after the first strike. 

These three, though, have a plan. And that plan consists of--other than staking out a claim along Squaw Creek and building a cabin--doing absolutely nothing.

They have enough food to last for eight months. Their leader, Slippery Wilson, figures that if there is a "paystreak" (vein of gold) running under their claim,then the men working the claims above and below them would find evidence of it. They would track it to where it enters Slippery's claim, saving the three partners a lot of time and effort. 

If there is no gold in the area, then they have a claim that hasn't been dug at all and could undoubtably sell it to one of the next wave of prospectors.

And this plan seems to work. No gold is found. The surrounding claims are gradually abandoned. And a naive new prospector shows up to be conned out of his money for the partners' claim. 

Of course, we know the three lazy bums are going to get their cumuppance. Sadly, it's at this point--while they are plying the newcomer with their sales pitch--that two pages of the story goes missing. We rejoin the three partners now back in town, low on funds and discovering that their plan has backfired. There's enough of the story left to get this gist of it and understand exactly HOW they were themselves conned out of a potential fortune. So despite the missing pages, it's still worth reading. Eberhardt's prose is breezy and full of humor. 

I'm actually glad that I didn't notice at first that those two pages are missing. I might have decided to skip the story entirely. I would have missed something fun.

Click HERE to access this issue online.

How Did He Survive BEFORE He Had The Dog?????

 

cover art by Jerry Grandenetti 

Gunner and Sarge had only been around for a few issues when Our Fighting Forces #49 (September 1959), but they had already racked up quite a score of Japanese Red Shirts. But "Blind Gunner" (written by Bob Kanigher and drawn by Jerry Grandenetti) makes you wonder how they had survived that long without a dog to back them up.

Because in this story, Gunner is assigned a K-9 Corps "soldier" named Billy (who would become known as Pooch as the series progressed). Gunner isn't happy with this. He assumes the dog will be useless while he's on patrol and would rather go alone. Besides, other Marines are mocking him about his new partner.

But, by golly, Pooch is continually saving him. He saves him from hidden machine gun nests and mortor fire. Once, he knocks Gunner into the water to save him from being spotted by a Japanese patrol boat.

As I mentioned above--how the heck did Gunner survive his previous combat missions without that dog?

Gunner is reluctant to admit that Pooch is useful. So, when the dog gets a thorn in his paw and it looks like he'll miss a patrol, Gunner professes to be relieved. He's joined this time by Sarge.

Things quickly go awry when a tank shell temporarily blinds Gunner. Sarge bandages him up and wants to get him back to the medic, but first tries to lead the tank away. Gunner can tell from the sounds that the tank soon corners Sarge.

But what can he do to help when he can't see? That problem is solved when Pooch arrives. The dog had refused to be left behind. Pooch leads Gunner right up to the tank. The Marine then fumbles around until he finds an eye slot, then fires his Tommy Gun into this until he sets the tank ammo off. 

Though I'm not sure this would have ever worked in real life, it is a time-honored tank destroying technique in the DC Universe. In Europe, Sgt. Rock and Easy Company did it all the time.

This is a pretty basic story, but Grandenetti's art is always solid and... well, a story with an heroic dog is always appealing. 

Though I'm not sure I'd trust my dog to lead me into combat against an enemy tank. I keep urging him to do something heroic, but he continues to just lie there:

Next week, based on a recommendation I heard on the excellent Six Gun Justice podcast, we will look at an issue of Wild Bill Hickock published by Avon in the early 1950s. 

Edgar Rice Burroughs Podcast: Mini-Podcast #49: A Princess of Mars Chapter 16

Edgar Rice Burroughs Podcast: Mini-Podcast #49: A Princess of Mars Chapter 16:   John Carter, Dejah Thoris and Sola meticulously plan an escape in which nothing can possibly go wrong. Naturally, something goes wrong. Cl...

Cover Cavalcade

 

By golly, I have no doubt he WOULD kill me next! From 1954.

Friday's Favorite OTR

 Sherlock Holmes: "The Darlington Substitution" 1/4/47

Holmes takes a job as a bodyguard, which evolves into invetigating a blackmail plot, which in turn evolves into investigating a murder. A trick borrowed from King Solomon is used to resolve the situation. 

Click HERE to listen or download. 

Big Little Books Part 2

 

Aside from Moon Mission, the other Big Little Book I owned as a kid was The House of Horrors (1968), in which the Fantastic Four battles a shape-changing magician named Dr. Weird.

William Johnstone wr0te the story, which (like Moon Mission) is silly but fun. And the book is blessed with wonderful art work by Herbe Trimpe, who was emulating Jack Kirby's style for this assignment. (I am told that 2 or 3 panels may be Kirby--images taken directly from the comic book.)

I have reaquired this book as an adult and the illustrations are in black-and-white. I swear I remember them being in color when I read this as a kid. My current copy is softcover and I have learned from an old-school Marvel Comics group on Facebook that the original printing was in hardcover and were indeed in color. I'll have to keep an eye out for an inexpensive copy of that one.

Anyway, Dr. Weird wants to conquer the world and decides getting the F.F. out of the way is a good place to start. He lures them into his house at "the edge of town," where the heroes unwisely seperate to search different corridors.

Dr. Weird has set a trap for each of them. He appears as a fire breathing dragon when attacking Johnny, blasting him with flames hot enough to even potentially harm the Human Torch. But Johnny feeds his own flames with books from the surrounding shelves and forces the dragon to retreat. Before doing so, Dr. Weird transforms himself into a deluge of water, leaving Johnny unable to flame on and break out of the now-locked room.

Why Dr. Weird didn't start the battle as a deluge of water isn't discussed. In fact, Dr. Weird's main weakness as a villain is probably his distinct lack of tactical awareness. But I imagine the book's target audience of 8-year-olds probably didn't analyze his tactics in too much detail. The illustrations are simply too awesome.

Reed, soon after, is attacked by a hoarde of pythons, most of which turn out to be illusions and one of which is actually Dr. Weird. Like Johnny, Reed wins a pyrrhic victory, strangling most of the snakes while Dr. Weird gets away. Reed finds himself tangled in what the prose refers to as "one hundred knots," though Trimpe didn't take this literally in his accompanying illustration. 

Poor Ben Grimm has the most embarassing outing. He finds a basement full of old furniture. Assuming that one of the objects is Dr. Weird, he starts smashing everything. Dr. Weird finally appears in an avalanche of boulders pouring out of a closet door. When Ben starts clobbering the boulders, he breaks open a canister of sleep gas.

Why Dr. Weird didn't use poison gas is not discussed. The guy really was a lousy tactician.

Sue has the best outing, defeating Dr. Weird's attempt to shred her to pieces with her force field and foiling his attempt to use his magic wand to simply "disappear" her by disappearing first via her invisibility power.

Dr. Weird retreats yet again and Sue releases the others from the rooms they were trapped in. (I like the nice touch of Reed stretching his limbs down corridors to get the cramps out after the others help untangle him.) 

What follows is a fun chase scene through the house, with Dr. Weird constantly changing shape to either attack the F.F. or avoid their counter-attacks. Finally, the villain lures the heroes into a pit, but Reed soon has a plan for smashing out again:

They finally run Dr. Weird to ground in the house's garage, which has been turned into a maze of mirrors. Dr. Weird makes another tactical error--this time, a fatal one. A "disappearing" spell bounces off one of the mirrors and reflects back on the magician, bringing him to an ironic end.

Like Moon Mission, it's the illustrations that made The House of Horrors memorable enough for me to track down again as an adult. But in both cases, the writers put together a fun story designed to give the illustrators a lot of great images to draw. 

By the way, there's an excellent post about this book on THIS BLOG.