Cover Cavalcade

 

A Frank R. Paul cover from 1927. Paul's covers always fire our imaginations. 

Edgar Rice Burroughs Podcast: Mini-Podcast #55: A Princess of Mars, Chapters 23 ...

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Friday's Favorite OTR

 Whistler: "Married to Murder" 9/25/44

A woman lies to alibi a killer, because she thinks it would be thrilling to marry a murderer. But thrills eventually pale, so she soon needs to up her game.

Click HERE to listen or download. 

An Impossible Rescue

 

Read/Watch 'em In Order #130

Warren Hastings Miller was yet another prolific writer of short stories for the pulps, active throughout the 1920s and 1930s. He had been editor of Field and Stream, was an outdoorsman and a world traveler, writing a number of books about camping, fishing, travel, etc. . More information about him can be found here. 

His contribution to the May 1927 issue of Frontier Stories moved the action to Burma with "Dayong Gets Mislaid."

Dayong is the Malayan assistant to British Secret Service agent Bruce Romney and he does indeed get mislaid. Dayong, you see, has a lead to catching a guy named Bugwan Dass, who is planning on stirring up an armed revolt among Burma's Buddhist population.

To get the evidence he needs, Dayong gains access to a large Buddhist temple and manages to get hold of an incriminating document. But he's found out and taken prisoner. He does manage to toss a message to a contact waiting on the other side of the temple wall and this message eventually gets to Romney.

But the British government has made that temple off-limits to white men. Romney can't storm the place or demand entry. So he needs to come up with a more clever way of rescuing Dayong before the Malay is executed.

Romney's plan is indeed clever and I think it will catch even a fair number of modern readers by surprise. I also like that most of  the story is told from Dayong's point-of-view, so we are kept in the dark regarding the nature of the rescue along with him. Dayong is clever and couragous in his own right, making him a strong protagonist even though he spends most of the tale as a prisoner. 

The author's travels took him to Burma, so I assume his depiction of Buddhist culture in 1920s Burma has some authenticity, but my own knowledge on the subject is zero, so I could be wrong. 

Click HERE to read the story and judge for yourself.

Wrong Sort of Vampire, Blade!

cover art by Gil Kane

Fear #24 (October 1974) was towards the beginning of Morbius, The Living Vampire's 12-issue run as lead character of the horror anthology. It's the only one I happened to read when it first came out--snatched off the 7-11 comic rack because Blade the Vampire Slayer was on the cover.

I knew about Morbius from his appearances in Spider Man. Michael Morbius was meant to be an anti-villain. Shortly after the Comics Code lifted its ban against showing vampires, Morbius was a doctor searching for a cure to the rare blood disease from which he suffered. He ended up turning himself into a "Living Vampire"--not a supernatural creature, but an altered living human being with certain vampire-like powers and an occasional overwhelming urge to drink the blood of the living. He's meant to be an anti-villain, driven by his blood lust to occasionally kill someone and feed on them, but otherwise not intending to be evil. Not that this would be much comfort to those he kills. I've often thought that the effort to make Morbius sympathetic always fell a little short, since the moral thing to do would have been to turn himself in before he killed again. Heck, Larry Talbot knew that much.

Not long after Morbius popped up, "real" vampires (primarily Dracula) also turned up in the Marvel Universe, which led to the appearance of the coolest vampire hunter this side of Peter Cushing's portrayals of Van Helsing. Blade the Vampire Slayer--in his orginal incarnation as a guy using wooden throwing knives to taken down vamps--was awesome. So seeing blade on the cover made this a "must have." My comic book budget was limited, so I wish I could remember what I gave up to get this one. I might simply have not bought a soda or a snack. If I passed on another comic, I don't remember which it might have been. Looking through a list of the other comics that came out that week, I know for certain I bought Kamandi, Tomb of Dracula, Amazing Spider Man and the Giant Size Spider Man. But over the years, I've acquired too many back issues & read too many reprints of stuff from this era to remember for certain what I originally owned.

Anyway, this issue (written by Steve Gerber and drawn by P. Craig Russell) starts with Morbius on another planet, escaping from barbarians and--along with an alien he's befriended--taking off on a rocket ship to return to Earth. When they arrive, they crash in a city street. This is witnessed by Blade, who finds the now-dead alien in the wreckage. Morbius couldn't contain his blood lust during the trip home.

What follows is a chase/fight scene that is just a minor incident in Morbius' overall story arc, but it fun and clever in its own right. Blade sees Morbius gliding from one rooftop to another. Since the vampire didn't sprout bat wings, Blade reaches the conclusion that Morbius is an alien vampire. 

Morbius hears Blade refer to real vampires. Morbius lives in a world in which the supernatural exists, but not everyone realizes this. He assumes real vampires are a myth and that Blade must be visiting from Crazy Town. But Blade's throwing knives are real.

I like the way the action is choreographed, with the point-of-view rapidly switching back and forth between the two characters. Events flow along smoothly and it breaks up the thought/dialogue baloons enough to keep it from being too wordy. 

Finally, Blade manages to tackle Morbius on the roof of a church. He forces the vampire to look up at the cross mounted nearby, figuring this will keep him helpless until the sun rises.

Um, no it doesn't. 

Morbius escapes, leaving a very confused Blade behind as he moves on with his regularly-scheduled story arc.

The mistaken assumptions made by both Morbius and Blade are perfectly reasonable in context to the universe in which they exist. So, along with the action, that makes this issue entertaining and unique.

Next week, it's been too long since we've visited with Turok, Son of Stone. So we'll drop in on him.

 

Cover Cavalcade

 

A Gil Kane cover from 1966. Creepiest death trap ever. 

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Friday's Favorite OTR

 Fred Allen: "Renting a House" 11/18/45

Fred needs to find a new place to live and Boris Karloff is renting out his home. Naturally, this leads to an unusually high concentration of jokes about disembodied heads and walking corpses. And those jokes are all hilarious. 

Click HERE to listen or download. 

The Bowery Boys before the Slapstick

 

When I was growing up, I watched far too much TV. But, by golly, I watched good stuff. In Sarasota, Channel 44 not only showed Creature Feature on Saturday afternoons, but they also had weekend showings of film series such as Charlie Chan, Abbott and Costello and the Bowery Boys.

I had no idea growing up that the slapstick young hooligans in the Bowery Boys movies had begun their film careers playing more serious juvenile delinquint roles. Though Channel 44 also occasionally showed the Warner Brothers gangster films, I missed seeing Dead End and Angels with Dirty Faces until I was a little older. 

Dead End (1937) had been a successful play on Broadway. William Wyler directed the film version, using an elaborate set to recreate a dirty New York City slum. The movie used a number of the same actors that had appeared in the play, including most of the kids.

The movie's actions cover about a day and there's no strong plot thread running through it. Instead, it follows a series of characters through their different arcs. And this works. The acting, dialogue, sets and direction all come together to create a fascinating Day in the Life of a Slum.

The future Bowery Boys (then called the Dead End Kids) are a youthful gang that has nothing constructive to do and usually end up causing trouble. One of those kids is Tommy (Billy Halop), who lives with his older sister Drina (Sylvia Sidney). Drina is desperate to care for Tommy and raise him right, but he continues to drift into trouble. 

Drina, by the way, as a thing for Hank (Joel McCrea), an out-of-work architect who has resisted the temptation to go bad while growing up in the slums, but apparently has nothing to show for it. Hank, though, might have a thing for a rich girl. He's apparently oblivious to Drina's obvious interest in him. Since I've been told that I was dating my now-wife Angela for a year before I myself realized we were dating, I am not in a position to criticize Hank. 

But then a rare "successful" graduate of the slum returns for a visit. Humphrey Bogart was a rising star at the time, but still being cast largely as gangsters. And, though I'm more than pleased he eventually he moved on to Sam Spade, Rick Blaine, Fred C. Dobbs and Captain Queeg, he was really, really good in those gangster roles. His performance as "Baby Face" Martin is arguably his best bad guy work from the 1930s. 

Martin is obviously modeled on the well-known gangsters of that era. He's got money, but he's also wanted by every cop in the country for at least eight murders. He has no home and he can never let down his guard. He's come home to the slums to see his mother and his first girl friend--he misses the stability of home and family (even if that home is in a terrible place) without being able to explain even to himself why he misses it.

But he won't find what he's looking for. His mother has nothing but contempt for him and his first love is now a TB-ridden prostitute. For Martin, you can't go home again.

All these character arcs come together at the end. We are shown that a life of violence never ends well and that it is wiser to make better (if much harder) moral choices. But we're also shown that making those good choices doesn't guarantee anything, since life is notoriously unfair. 

The best example of this is how the movie ends, so I'm going to have to include some spoilers here. At one point, the kids beat up a rich boy who lives in a nearby hotel, stealing his watch and his jacket. There's no real reason for doing this--the thefts are an afterthought. This random act of violence is just something they did for fun.

When the boy's father grabs Tommy. Tommy panics, scratches the man's hand with a pen knife and runs. The father turns out to be the brother of an important judge and demands Tommy be caught.

Later, Tommy turns himself in. Drina pleads with the father not to press charges. We had gotten the impression earlier that the father was acting out of pure anger and perhaps even snobbery, but now discover that he believes that Tommy needs to go to reform school to protect any future potential victims from getting hurt. He acknowledges that if Tommy is locked up, he might come out worse than before (though I like a line of dialogue where he points out that this is Tommy's choice). But his concern for justice for his son and protecting others is sincere. The movie, I think, comes down on Drina's side--to give Tommy a break--but it is not unsympathetic to the father's equally legitimate viewpoint. 

The movie has a social point to make in that those born poor are often in an apparently inescapable trap. But it also stresses the importance of individual responsibilities and individual choice. It quite properly recognizes that both these things are true at the same time. 

The full movie is available on Amazon Prime or (if you don't mind a few commercials) on YouTube.

Aside from the overall value of the movie, Dead End gives us a chance to see that Huntz Hall, Leo Gorcey and the other future Bowery Boys playing straight dramatic roles. The movie also has a great supporting cast, including Marjorie Main, Claire Trevor and Ward Bond. It's worth seeing.

Why Did It Have to Be Yellow?

 

Green Lantern cover by Gil Kane

Wanted cover by Murphy Anderson

The last story in Wanted: The World's Most Dangerous Villains! #1 (July-August 1972) is a reprint from Green Lantern #1 (July-August 1960). 

Written by John Broome and drawn by Gil Kane, this story also introduces a minor-league supervillain into the DC Universe. At first called the Puppet-Master, his name was later changed to the Puppeteer, perhaps because Marvel Comics' Puppet-Master (who appeared in 1962) was a little better known (and who at least reappeared with more frequency). 

Green Lantern's home town is experiencing a wave of bank robberies. The odd thing is that the robbers are all known crooks, but none of them were normally did bank jobs. They all describe being somehow manipulated like a puppet.

This story is taking place in a Comic Book Universe, so the idea of a master criminal somehow controlling other crooks is taken quite seriously. In fact, the Puppet Master soon tries to do away with Green Lantern, using a giant puppet that is part of a parade to do the deed.

We then switch to the point-of-view of the villain, who has invented a hypnotism ray. He opts to use this for Evil instead of Good because Evil pays better. But he can't force people to do things against the own nature, so he's been forcing crooks to be... well, crooks.

He's figured out a way to amp up the ray and control Green Lantern, forcing the hero to come to his lair. But G.L.'s thing, after all, is strong willpower. He only allows himself to be taken there so that he, in turn, can catch the bad guy.

Unfortunately, the bad guy is dressed in yellow, so G.L.'s ring can't do anything to him. Actually, he could have made a boxing glove and punched the villain in his face. But, to be fair, the strategy G.L. uses does deliver a nice dose of irony. 

He uses his ring to manipulate some cables, which in turn manipulate the Puppet Master. So the story ends with G.L. marching the Puppet Master into the police station like a puppet.

Gil Kane's art work is always fun to look at. It seems to me that the Puppet Master had the potential to be a greater threat in a longer story, but that fun bit of irony at the end makes up for this.

That's it for now. Next week, a Living Vampire meets a Vampire Slayer. 

Cover Cavalcade

The Little Lulu covers were always a lot of fun. This one, by an unidentified artist, is from 1976.
 

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Friday's Favorite OTR

 Man Called X: "No One Wins on Zero" 10/2/47

An important atomic scientist dies and his even-more-important papers vanish. Ken Thurston is quickly on the trail of those papers, but soon discovers he's not the only one hoping to find them. 

Click HERE to listen or download. 

A Prospector and Five Spunky Orphans

 

Read/Watch 'em In Order #129

We continue our journey through the May 1927 issue of Frontier Stories with yet another visit to the gold fields.

Last time, we looked at a story that had a couple of pages missing from the online copy I'm using. That story was set in gold country without ever identifying the specific area. This week's story--"King of the Thundering Bar, by Robert V. Carr--uses the same technique. We don't know exactly where this takes place. References to hydraulic machinery place it in the late 19th/early 20th Century, but the Wild West feel is still very strong. 

In fact, when Jake Ender hits a rich vein on his claim, the villains are worried about simply being shot outright if they try to claim-jump him. So they come up with a two-layered plan. First, they hire a couple of the local riff-raff to post new claim notices over Jake's. This riff-raff will then leave town, after selling their new "claim" to the main villain. With an extra layer of protection from the actual dirty work, the villain figures he can get the local sherriff involved to back him up when he forces Jake off the property.

Jake, by the way, is a thiry-year veteran of the gold fields. He's essentially a kind-hearted and generous man who will pause in his work to go into town for a drunken bender every so often, then return to work. Aside from those benders, though, he's hard-working and organized. He's using the gold that he's dug up to stock up on supplies and he spends his downtime on the claim reading.

So when he discovers five hungry orphans in his cabin when he gets back from his latest bender, he's well-equipped to take care of them.

Everyone in this story has a name that drips with symbolism or otherwise identifies characters for who they are. Jake is soon being called Daddy Jake by the kids. The kids are all named after jewels--Diamond, Ruby, etc--because they are soon priceless jewels in the eyes of Jake. The villains get the best names--Bird T. Whippet, Tricky Trimmer, Harelip Pike and Scratchy Brown. Two stalwart friends of Jake are David Strong and Bill Oak. It's like an Old West version of Pilgrim's Progress in this regard. 

It must be said that the various characters are pretty much one-dimensional, with each of them serving a specific purpose in terms of plot and theme. But, within context of this story, the characters still mesh together in a satisfying way. Jake takes to fatherhood right away and soon discovers that his desire to go on drunken benders has evaporated. But "there is a recompense that more than pays for the loss of his old freedom." Jake discovers that he loves the responsibilities of being having a family. It's corny, but the story makes it work.

Also, the dialogue is fun to read, especially the lines delivered by chief villain Bird T. Whippet. And the ending is very satisfying. Loathsome villians all get an apporpriate comupannce and there's a nice twist when we learn exactly why Whippet's legal manueverings are doomed to failure. 

Finally, if you ever meet one of Jake's kids--DON'T HIT HIM. It won't end well for you.

You can read this story online HERE.

Clock King's Debut

 

World's Finest cover by Curt Swan

Wanted cover by Murphy Anderson

Our journey through DC's Wanted: The World's Most Dangerous Villains! #1 (July-August 1972) continues with a reprint from World's Finest #111 (August 1960), in a story starring Green Arrow. It's our introduction to the minor-league villain Clock King.

Written by Ed Herron and drawn by Lee Elias, "The Crimes of the Clock King" is pretty straightforward. The new villain arranges for the lights to go out at a swanky costume party, allowing him to snatch up expensive jewelry before making a getaway. It's a nice touch, by the way, that he can simply hang out at the party until the right moment without anyone taking notice of him. 

This story was written at a time when Green Arrow hadn't yet been given a distinctive personality and was pretty much treated as a Batman clone. He's summoned to the scene of the crime by the "Arrow Signal" and rushes there in the Arrow Car. But Clock King is one step ahead of them, putting his costume on a life-sized figure that comes out of a large clock at midnight. Arrow and Speedy waste their rope arrows on that while Clock King makes a getaway.

Clock King goes on a time-themed crime wave (for instance, robbing the Minute Man Bank), but the heroes soon get a line on him. He lures them into an hour glass death trap, but a suction cup arrow provide a way out.

The story looks cool, especially the vertical panel showing us the death trap in all its goofy glory. Clock King's costume is also a fun visual. But G.A. doesn't really get a chance to use any really unusual arrows and he himself was a pretty bland hero at that time. 

On the other hand, we live in a world so infused with geekiness and nerdery that when we can see the hero use a suction cup arrow and think "well, we've seen that a hundred times before, haven't we? Yawn."  In its own way, that's kind of awesome.

Next week, we jump from Green Arrow to Green Lantern. 

Cover Cavalcade

 

A superb Joe Kubert cover from 1965.

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Friday's Favorite OTR

 Columbia Workshop: "R.U.R." 4/18/37

An adaptation of the 1920 play that coined the word "robot." It's an early work of science fiction on radio and a key SF work in its own right, with its commentary on robots and what we would now call artificial intelligence.

Click HERE to listen or download. 

Accidents Happen

 

The recent death of director Richard Donner got me thinking about his career. He was quite a prolific televison director before eventually moving on to films such as The Goonies, Superman and Lethal Weapon. 

He directed episdes of shows as varied as Gilligan's Island, The Twilight Zone and--my favorite TV series--Combat!

His Combat! episode was the last one of the show's first season, airing on May 14, 1963. "No Trumpets, No Drums" opens with Lt. Hanley's platoon fighting for possession of a bombed out French town. During the battle, Caje (Pierre Jalbert)--arguably the best soldier in the squad after Sgt. Saunders--is taking down several Germans. Then he sees a silhoutte behind a window of a building and immediately tosses a grenade into that building.

Unfortunately, the person in that building is a French civilian.

That opening action scene is superb, especially in the way it clearly establishes that Caje was not being bloodthirsty or irresponsible. He was reacting appropriately as a soldier to the situation as he saw it. But war is war and an innocent man dies.

Caje has a hard time dealing with this. It's a situation made even harder when he learns the man had a young daughter named Micheline (played by then-11-year-old Andrea Darvi, who does an excellent job in the role.) Caje becomes attached to Micheline, at one point ignoring his duties as a soldier in what is essentially a despertate attempt to replace her father.

Saunders tries to be sympathetic--he's had men die while following his orders, so he can to a degree understand what Caje is going through, but when the Germans counter attack, he has to come down hard on Caje. There's a time to mourn, but also a time to man up and do your duty. 

It's an excellent episode. Edward J. Lasko's script is full of great dialogue, while Jalbert, Darvi and Vic Morrow are at the top of their game giving life to that dialogue. "No Trumpets, No Drums" is well-worth 50 minutes of your time.

Signalling Your Crimes

 

Batman cover art by Sheldon Moldoff

Wanted cover art by Murphy Anderson

In 1972, DC began publishing a reprint book titled Wanted, highlighting stories usually featuring lesser-known villains (though Joker and Penguin show up at least once. It ran for a total of nine issues. For the next three weeks, we'll be taking a look at the stories reprinted in the first issue (cover-dated July/August 1972).

 "The Signalman of Crime" originallly appeared in Batman #112 (December 1957). Written by Bill Finger and drawn by Sheldon Moldoff, actually gives us a reason why so many crooks in Gotham  City take on bizarre secret identies.

A new crook arrives in Gotham, intending to form his own gang. But no one knows who he is, so without a reputation, no one wants to work for him. So, like a Wild West gunslinger calling out Wild Bill Hickock, the crook decides to call out Batman and Robin. If he beats them, he'll have the rep he needs.

Gee whiz, Gotham City actually makes sense now!

Well, it makes sense within the confines of Comic Book Logic. Adopting the identity of the Signalman, the crook sends a broom labeled with the symbol of an atom to police headquarters. Commissioner Gordon immediately calls Batman, since a broom apparently frightens him into thinking a major crime wave is afoot. 

I learned something else from reading this story. It turns out that new submarines hoist a broom after completing their first voyage, signalling a "clean sweep." I didn't know that. Fortunately, Batman does know that and he is able to foil Signalman's attempt to steal a solid jade model of the submarine Nautilus. 

(The Nautilus--the first nuclear sub--had been commissioned two years before this story was published and would make the first trip under the North Pole a year afterwards. I did know that. Take that, Batman!)

The Signalman escapes, though, happy with having scored some headlines if not the loot. He next tries to rob jewelry being worn by rich people at a planetarium show.

But Batman has again figured out the clues he left. Signalman once again escapes without the loot, but makes the front pages of the Gotham newspapers. 

His next plan is made in expectation of Batman figuring out his clue, which allows him to lure the Dynamic Duo into a trap aboard a booby-trapped boat, while he himself steals the Bat-Boat. But Batman escapes from the trap (by ironically using a signal flag). While attempting to escape, Signalman ignores a danger signal and runs the Bat-Boat aground. Irony abounds.

This is a fun story, with the intial two encounters with the villain featuring those oversized props that were so common in Gotham City at that time. The villain isn't particularly memorable and never does become more than a minor player in Batman's Rogue's Gallery. But he's a credible threat here, giving us a story in which Batman exhibits not just fighting skill, but detective skill and escape artistry. 

Also, after reading a Batman story from this era, does anyone else wish oversized props had become a thing in real life? That would be cool. 

Next week, we'll see how Green Arrow does against a another second-tier villain. 

Cover Cavalcade

 

A wonderful Murphy Anderson cover from 1962.