Edgar Rice Burroughs Podcast: Episode #29: Tarzan's Quest

Edgar Rice Burroughs Podcast: Episode #29: Tarzan's Quest:   Tim, Jess and Scott discuss the novel  Tarzan's Quest , which recounts an adventure featuring everything from a plane crash to a murde...

Cover Cavalcade

 

October is George Wilson month. This cover is from 1973.

Sixgun Justice: WESTERN NOVELS—THE GUNS OF LEGENDE #6: DIRTY DEEDS

Sixgun Justice: WESTERN NOVELS—THE GUNS OF LEGENDE #6: DIRTY DEEDS: WESTERN NOVELS DIRTY DEEDS  THE GUNS OF LEGENDE #6 BRODY WEATHERFORD  REVIEWED BY TIM DEFOREST The Society of Buckhorn and Bison is tasked w...

Friday's Favorite OTR

 Dragnet: "The Big Speech" 4/19/51

Friday and his partner are assigned to catch a young and violent thief who is stealing narcortics from doctor offices.

Click HERE to listen or download. 

The Mob (1951)

 

The Mob is a 1951 Film Noir starring Broderick Crawford. This is just a couple of years after Crawford won an Oscar for All the King's Men --and this was a time when the Oscars actually celebrated what I consider good movies, rather than celebrating movies I've never often never heard of and (for the most part) you couldn't pay me to see.

But I'm not sure that Crawford's performance in The Mob doesn't equal or even succeed All the King's Men. He plays a cop named Johnny Damico. We meet him as the film opens, as he barters with a jewelry store owner over the price of an engagement ring. The store owner knows him and his girl. It's a great scene. Crawford immediately makes us like Johnny and we also learn that he's quick with a clever one-liner. This, in turn, tells us he's smart.

Being smart, though, doesn't always keep you from making a dumb mistake. There's a shooting outside the store. Johnny gets the drop on the shooter, but this guy identifies himself as a cop and the dead man as a cop killer. The shooter flashes a badge, so Johnny believes him. It's only after the shooter gets away that Johnny learns he was a hitman. The dead man was a witness against the mob. The badge had belonged to a cop who had also been murdered.

That puts Johnny in hot water with his boss. Officially, he's suspended for 60 days. Unofficially, he's going to go undercover on the waterfront to smoke out the head of the mob who is forcing the longshoremen to pay kickbacks in exchange for work.

This is where Crawford's performance really shines. He adopts the identity of a low-level thug named Tim Flynn, who has just arrived from New Orleans. Like Johnny, Tim is quick with clever comebacks. But where Johnny is likeable, Tim is quick-tempered and a bit of a jerk. Johnny is pretty much using his Mirror Universe self to fool the mobsters.

He starts to make contacts, trying to find the big boss. That boss is named Blackie, but no one knows who he really is. Johnny/Tim runs into trouble when a lower level boss tries to frame him for murder.  He's able to think his way out of that situation. 

That's another strong element of the film. Despite his goof-up at the beginning of the movie, Johnny is indeed smart. He can indeed think his way out of potentially dangerous situations.

Eventually, Johnny does get a line on Blackie. He also finds out that Blackie wants to hire him (as Tim) to kill a cop named Johnny Damico. All this leads to a satisfying climax.

The supporting cast includes a blink-and-you'll-miss-it appearance by Charles Bronson as a dock worker, Ernest Borgnine as a second-tier mob boss and Neville Brand as a college-educated leg-breaker working for Borgnine's character. Gee whiz, I love movies like this. Filmed in glorious black-and-white, seeded with actors whom classic movie fans come to consider to be old friends, and telling a good story in a logical manner. This is what movies should be. 

The movie can be found on Amazon Prime. Here's a link to it on YouTube::

The Ghost Mine

 

cover art by Till Goodman

Four Color #47 (July 1944--writer and artist unknown) keeps Gene Autry busy right from the first page, when he runs across a stagecoach that was robbed of the gold shipment it was carrying.

In fact, the poor driver is robbed every single time the stage is carrying gold, even though those shipments are supposed to be a secret. Someone has inside information.

It's a situation destined to activate Gene's Chronic Hero Syndrome and he's soon hanging out at a local saloon in Goldtown, looking for information. He doesn't discover anything definite about the robberies, but he does meet a big guy named Bull Riggs, who is good with a whip. Gene and Bull spend a few panels showing off their respective skill.

This, of course, foreshadows a later event in the story, but leaves Gene no closer to finding the bad guys. Soon after, though, a young lady named Milly Nolan arrives in town. She has her father's will, which leaves her the local gold mine. But a guy named Bill Drake claims Milly's dad sold HIM the mine before he died.

That mine, by the way, had seemed to be worthless, but Bill claims to have struck a new vein, making it profitable. 

Both Gene and Milly think Bill is lying and forged the new deed. They plan to get a handwriting expert to prove this.

Of course, the deed IS forged. Bill's scheme is to steal gold from the stage, melt it down and claim he's digging it out of the mine. But he also realizes that the jig will be up as soon as an expert examines the forged signatures on the deed. It's time to load up the gold and leave town.

To gain time, he and his minions (which includes whip-expert Bull) kidnap Milly. Bill doesn't want to commit a murder if he doesn't have to, so he locks her in a room inside the mine. When Gene investigates, he's captured as well and locked in another room. 

Gene's tied up, but the bad guys didn't bother tying up Milly. She crawls through a ventilation shaft to free Gene, who then prys open the locked door with a barrell stave. He takes Milly back to town, borrows a pistol and chases the bad guys. During the chase, Bull drops his whip. Gene recovers it and uses it to catch the villains. 

"The Ghost Mine" is a good story. It's well-constructed--for instance, the ventilator shaft Milly uses to free Gene was mentioned previously, preventing it from being a deus ex machina. I suppose the foreshadowing with the whip contest in the bar was a little heavy-handed, but it was a neat scene nonetheless.

And I really like the art. The unknown artist effectively uses establishing shots to set up scenes and shifts his "camera" about in interesting ways. The night time scenes, especially when Molly is being kidnapped, are nicely atmospheric. "The Ghost Mine" is a worthy addition to Gene Autry's canon of adventures.

You can read this issue online HERE.

Next week, we'll visit with Spider Man and decide whether the Spider Mobile was awesome or just plain dumb.

Cover Cavalcade

 

October is George Wilson month. Here's a cover from 1964.

Sixgun Justice: WESTERN NOVELS—SHADOW VALLEY

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Friday's Favorite OTR

 Sherlock Holmes: "The Adventure of Sally Martin" 11/23/46

A man is murdered aboard a yacht and Holmes is asked to investigate. Not surprisingly, everyone else on board has a motive.

Click HERE to listen or download. 

Anniversary Break, Part 2

 

Anniversary Break

As usual, there will be a break in the regular posts for the double whammy of my wedding anniversary/wife's birthday:

cover art by Jay Scott Pike

Cover Cavalcade

 

October is George Wilson month! This cover is from 1966.

Friday's Favorite OTR

 Inner Sanctum: "Man from Yesterday" 12/21/41

A gorilla captured in Africa and brought to a museum in the U.S. turns out to hold an eons-old grudge against humanity--or at least against a particular human.

Click HERE to listen or download. 

Bretwalda, The Final Chapter

 

cover art by Rudolph Belarski

Read/Watch 'em in Order #149

"Farewell, England," by Philip Ketchum, is the last and arguably the best of the Bretwalda stories. It was originally published in the December 23, 1939 issue of Argosy. 

The previous story was set in 1755, during the siege of Quebec. This one jumps ahead to the First World War.

James Wilton is an officer in the British army, serving under Lawrence in the Mid-East. And he has a lot on his plate. General Allenby is about to launch a major offensive against the Turks. Lawrence, who has wielded various Arab tribes into a cohesive fighting force, must launch his own attacks in support of this, destroying railroad tracks and cutting telegraph wires. 

So we have a story set in an era filled with machine guns, bombs and airplanes. So where does the battleaxe Bretwalda fit in? 

The justification for Wilton carrying that family heirloom into battle is simple and perfectly justifable in the context of the setting. Lawrence's Arab soldiers carry rifles and know how to use them, of course. But they still carry swords and other melee weapons as well. Wilton's battleaxe fits right in and gives him an elevated status among the Arabs. Wilton doesn't expect to ever need it, but the image it gives him is important.

As it true with all the Bretwalda stories, the pacing of the story is fast and the action is exciting. Great characters are scattered throughout, including not one--but two of Wilton's countrymen who seek redemption. One of them, the brother of the woman Wilton loves, sold the Turks military information to pay off gambling debts. The other had once chickened out in battle, leaving Wilton's brother to die.

But both men may get a chance to fight along Wilton and a small force of Arabs, earning that redemption. When the battle doesn't quite unfold as planned, Wilton digs his men into the ruins of an old Crusader castle, tasked with delaying an entire Turkish army.

The ensuing desperate, last stand at the castle is a superbly written battle sequence. Wilton's tiny force is gradually wittled down, his fellow Englishmen are given their respective chances to redeem themselves and Wilton himself will discover that he might just have a practical use for Bretwalda.

The conclusion brings the Bretwalda saga to a dramatically and emotionally satisfying conclusion. It's tragic and triumphant at the same time. 

You can read this story online HERE. 

I haven't yet acquired the next volume of Sheriff Henry stories, though I will eventually and those tales will return to the Read 'em In Order posts at that time. In the meanime, I torn whether the next Read 'em In Order entries should be a story-by-story look at an issue of Pirate Stories or an issue of Foriegn Legion Adventures. It's a tough choice, but knowing that our very civilization may depend on the right choice, I'll be giving it careful thought.

Sixgun Justice: WESTERN NOVELS—KILLING SPREE

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Bull's-Eye Bridge

 

cover art by Jerry Grandenetti

The cover story from G.I. Combat #70 (March 1959) is yet another example of how Robert Kanigher could take a simple premise for a story and depend on the artist (in this case, Ross Andru) make it look awesome.

The protagonist of "Bull's-Eye Bridge" is a combat engineer named Vic, who is having nightmares about bridges he builds getting destroyed and American troops being slaughtered because of this. Vic, therefore, vows that he'll never allow this to happen--"no matter what it costs me!"

He gets to put this vow to the test when a bridge (crossing the ominously named Bulls-Eye River) captured from the Germans is destroyed by enemy artillery. But the Americans have to attack in the morning whether they have a bridge or not.

So Vic's determination is indeed put to the test. After his unit quickly rebuilds the bridge, he single-handedly takes out an attacking Panzer.

Other German tanks again damage the bridge, so the engineers race to replace it a second time. But when the infantry is crossing that night, a German dive bomber attacks. It's up to Vic and his blazing tommy gun to protect the bridge and the men on it.

What sells the story is the facial expressions Ross Andru gives Vic at the beginning of the story--the determination in his face is palpable. This is complimented by another set of facial expressions, the fear we see in the infantrymen when the face the possibility of crossing the river without a bridge--sitting ducks for enemy fire.

Andru's art thus elevates the story from a simple war story into something with real emotional weight. 

Next week is my annual anniversary break--there will be no Wednesday and Thursday posts as I am forced by tradition to pay attention to my wife. In two weeks, we'll be saddle partners with Gene Autry.

Cover Cavalcade

 

October is George Wilson Month. This one is from 1966.

Friday's Favorite OTR

 Suspense: "Windy City Six" 2/8/51

In this story set in the Roaring 20s, Fred MacMurray plays a drummer in a jazz band whose life takes a violent turn when his band draws the attention of both a gorgeous dame and a violent gangster.

Click HERE to listen or download. 

My Love of Reading

 My Love of Reading comes from:

1. The Silly Book: I had my mom check this out from the local library several times in succession and I thought it was hilarious. The only joke I remember now is that it starts with "Goodbye" on the first page and "Hello" on the last page. In my barely-post-toddler mind, this was comedy gold.

2. Road Race Round the World: A classmate had ordered a copy through the Scholastic Reader program that used to exist in elementary schools. I looked through it and saw a picture of one of the cars that took place in this 1907 NY-to-Paris race--shown with a windmill in the background. In my 7-year-old mind, I saw this as the windmill mounted ON the car and assumed it was powered by wind. I ordered my own copy of the book. I discovered there was no windmill-powered car, but it was an awesome book anyways.

3. Our Army at War #221. The first comic book I owned after trading three toy plastic astronauts to another kid on the school bus in order to get my hands on it. Though I had no thought about the name of the artist at that young age, it turned out to be illustrated by Russ Heath, one of the best comic book artists ever. I remember trying to tell my parents and my siblings about how awesome this comic book was and not quite understanding why no one else thought it was as wonderful as I did. (I reviewed it as an adult HERE)

4. Fantastic Four in House of Horrors & Major Matt Mason in Moon Mission. Engaging stories designed to fire a child's imagination, with each page of prose facing a full-page illustration. (reviewed HERE and HERE)

5. G.I. War Stories #1: World War II soldiers fighting dinosaurs? I had no idea the world was capable of containing anything this wonderful! (reviewed HERE.)

6. The American Heritage Illustrated History of the United States. These were on a shelf in our home growing up. Being a bloody-minded boy, I read the volumes on the Revolutionary War, the Civil War and World War II several times before I got around to reading the entire set. Along with a biography of John Paul Jones and and a book about the battle of Iwo Jima (both of which I repeatedly checked out of my Elementary School Library), these books gave me a love of history and a life-long interest in military history.

7. The Iron Monster Raid and Fear Formula: Both based on TV shows from the 1960s--both were exciting World War 2 stories I read a number of times until the books eventually fell apart. (both books reviewed HERE)

8. Hands in the Dark. I saw this on the paperback rack at Winn Dixie. I had recently whined until my mom bought me an LP containing two episodes of the Shadow radio show (the beginning of my love for old-time radio) and I HAD to read this. It was another can't-put-it-down reading experience. (reviewed by both myself and my wife HERE.)

Sixgun Justice: WESTERN NOVELS—THREE CROSS

Sixgun Justice: WESTERN NOVELS—THREE CROSS: WESTERN NOVELS THREE CROSS  RAY HOGAN  REVIEWED BY  TIM DEFOREST  Part of Hogan's Shawn Starbuck series, in which Shawn is searching the...

Buying a Used Car

 

cover art tentatively credited to John Costanza

When the heck did Bugs and Sam become friends?

Well, the comic book version of the Looney Tunes universe was always different in some key ways than the more anarchic cartoon version, as was discussed in this post. In the comics, for instance, Yosemite Sam and Bugs Bunny are often portrayed as... well, as.... I'm having trouble typing it. They are actually... FRIENDS!

For instance, Yosemite Sam #47 (September 1977) includes the story "Jalopy Jive," by an unidentified writer and artist. In the very first panel, Sam is showing up at Bugs' home for a dinner date and Bugs is expressing concern over how exhausted Sam looks.

Sam was chased by alley cats while walking to Bugs' place. In fact, without a car, Sam is often suffering transportation woes. So Bugs talks Sam into buying a car and the two soon find themselves at a used car lot. Sam finds a car he likes, but its a bit pricey.

Sam is discouraged, but Bugs has yet another idea! Get a junk car from the junkyard for a few bucks and use that as a trade-in. Then Sam's remaining cash will be enough to buy the car he wants.

The junk car they find has no motor, but Bugs figures they can push it down a hill and coast it to the used car lot. But this doesn't quite work out. The car instead coasts onto a railroad track and... well, it really doesn't work out. 

Notice, by the way, that Sam mentions he had to jump clear to save his life. That's one of the major differences between the animated universe and the comic book universe. In the comics, physical death is a real possibility. 

Another chance to earn the car money suddenly turns up when Sam is offered 20 bucks to deliver a package. But this ends up getting him involved in a counterfeiting ring.

In the end, Sam decides to work for the used car salesman, earning his new car... one piece at a time.

It's a cute story, though the counterfeiting ring gag is a little too random and doesn't flow as naturally out of the story's premise as do the other gags. And, of course, it can be difficult to adjust to Bugs and Sam being pals. It's possibly the most bizarre occurance ever in the inherantly bizarre Looney Tunes multiverse.

Next week, we'll travel back to World War II and follow the adventures of a combat engineer.

Cover Cavalcade

 

October is George Wilson month. This cover is from 1970.

Edgar Rice Burroughs Podcast: Special Episode: What I Read This Month, September...

Edgar Rice Burroughs Podcast: Special Episode: What I Read This Month, September...:   Tim DeForest gives capsule review of the books he read in September 2022. Click HERE to listen or download  Book list:  The Sherlock of S...

Sixgun Justice: WESTERN NOVELS—CROSS THE RED CREEK

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