Cover Cavalcade

 

January is Wooden Ships and Iron Men Month!

This 1935 cover is by Sidney Riesenberg

Friday's Favorite OTR

 Gunsmoke: "Line Trouble" 6/26/60

Dillon helps an old Indian friend who is falsely accused of a crime.

Click HERE to listen or download. 

Hok, Part 4

 

cover art by J. Allen St. John

Read/Watch 'em In Order #157

Manly Wade Wellman's fourth Hok story appeared in the March 1941 issue of Amazing Stories. (Making this post the SECOND time I've discussed a story from that issue.) In the previous stories, Hok has brought family units together into primitive tribal structures, started living in huts rather than caves and invented the bow and arrows.

In "Hok and the Gift of Heaven," he has a chance to introduce swords and usher in the Iron Age. This happens via a stroke of dumb luck OR divine intervention, depending on one's interpretation of the story.

I have no idea what Wellman's religious beliefs--if any--were. In the Hok stories--which are Wellman's fictional representations of man's early development--he has presented the worship of God (referred to as the Shining One) has a healthy part of that development. Hok, certainly, considers worship to be a necessary thing.

Here, when an enemy tribe is attacking Hok's village, a meteor land right smack in the middle of the battle. Hok is knocked out and his tribe panicks, running away. When Hok wakes up, he finds that an outcropping of coal has fed a very hot fire started by the meteor. When rain douses the flames, some meteoric iron has been melted into the shape of a sword. Hok figures out how to whet the metal to sharpen it and makes a hilt out of animal skins. He has new weapon. The third-person narration refers to it outright as a sword, but Hok gives it the ultra-cool name of Widow-Maker.

He also assumes the sword is a divine gift. Now as a Christian, I believe in God and believe that He takes an active part in our lives. But this is difficult to portray in fiction without creating an awkward deus ex machina, making it seem like the author is cheating to help his hero along. To be honest, as much as I like the Hok stories, the hero simply finding metal that melted by apparent chance into a sword did seem like a cheat. In the previous tale, Hok had worked hard to figure out bows and arrows. He earned the weapon. Here, he's just given it.

On the other hand, he does continue to stoke the initial meteor fire with coal because this seems to be what the Shining One expects of him. This response to his faith is what makes the fire hot enough to form the sword. So perhaps he DID earn it. 

Anyway, he finds out his wife and son were captured by the enemy tribe. Armed with Widow-Maker, he pursues, killing a cave bear and a leopard along the way. This provides us with cool action and shows both us and Hok just how effective a weapon the sword can be.

He also passes a fire formed by natural gas. When flames seem to reach for the sword, Hok interprets this as the Shining One asking for it back. But Hok needs it for awhile longer before he can do that.

He finds the enemy village at the seashore, fights a shark, finds his family, kills a bunch of people, and then gets captured. But when the enemy chief tries to use Widow-Maker--well, another bit of presumed divine intervention occurs. Hok and his family escape, but the Iron Age will be delayed. Hok does return the sword to the Shining One by dropping it in the natural gas fire. Hok has promised to do this and he always keeps his word.

By the end of the story, the theme of divine intervention has been established effectively enough to make me okay with the "gift" of the sword. Whether this intervention really was divine or whether Hok simply sees it that way is up to the individual reader. In either case, Wellman provides us with another fast-paced adventure tale filled with brutal, exciting action. You can read it yourself  HERE. 

Bank Robbers and Pretty Girls

 

cover art by Jack Kirby

Being a wanted man does indeed make it hard to carry on a stable relationship with a purty young gal. In Rawhide Kid #19 (1960), Stan Lee & Jack Kirby teach the Kid this lesson in no uncertain terms.

The story opens with the Kid ignoring a bully. He's worried that if he draws on the guy, everyone will quickly realize he's the Rawhide Kid. But when that bully moves on to bother a lady--well, that's a different situation.

The Kid takes down the bully with his fists, thereby still hiding his real identity. But trouble is afoot. Because now a woman (named Susan) is involved. And, by golly, wimmen is nothin' but trouble!

Susan and the Kid hit it off, and the Kid soon finds himself wishing that he wasn't a wanted man and had the option of settling down. Because by this point, he and Susan have fallen in love. 

Making the situation even more awkward is the fact that Susan's dad is the local sheriff.

The Kid realizes that there's only one intelligent way to handle his love match--sneak out of town before he meets Susan's dad. But this doesn't work out. The sheriff sees and recognizes him. This leaves the Kid with no choice but to claim Susan means nothing to him. He was playing up to her only to get on the good side of the sheriff.

At this point, bank robbers arrive in town, taking Susan hostage. The Kid gets away from the Sheriff and takes on the bank robbers. In a typically fun Jack Kirby fight, he takes them out. But he still needs to convince Susan he could care less about her. So he grabs a bag of gold and makes a getaway.

Later, he confronts Susan's dad outside of town and gives back the gold--on the condition that Susan be told the gold was recovered when the Kid was briefly captured before escaping again. The sheriff realizes that the Kid really loves his daughter, though she can never be told so.

To a large extent, the story is predictable. We know up front that the Kid isn't going to settle down and get married. But it's still a very enjoyable tale. Jack Kirby wasn't able to let his imagination fly as wildly on relatively realistic Westerns as he did with superhero and science fiction tales, but he's always a superb visiual storyteller. And Stan Lee's script provides a nice touch with the sheriff realizing the truth but being obligated to keep it a secret. It provides a bit of real pathos to the story that gives it emotional backbone. 

That's it for the Wild West. Next week, we'll watch the Thing and the Hulk punch each other out.

Cover Cavalcade

 

January is Wooden Ships and Iron Men Month!

This 1957 cover is tentatively credited to Taylor Oughton. 

I featured this cover back in 2011 with a little more background information about the story. You can read about it HERE. 

Friday's Favorite OTR

 The Adventures of the Saint: "The Cowboy" 7/1/51

In this episode from Tom Conway's run as The Saint, Simon is hired to bodyguard a Texas cattleman, but later becomes a target himself.

Click HERE to listen or download. 

The Mummy's Curse (1944)

 

Read/Watch 'em In Order # 156

The Universal Monster movies always played fast and loose with its timeline. The final Mummy movie--1944's The Mummy's Curse--might have the oddest time jump of all. It is set 25 years after the previous film. I suppose that means it's set in the far future year of 1969. Obviously, the producers didn't care about that detail. But, when you watch the film, there's nothing really overt about it that says it's NOT set in 1969 other than the car the protagonist is driving. Perhaps the guy just likes antique cars.

Anyway, remember that Kharis, carrying the reincarnated Princess Ananka, sank into a swamp. A quarter century later, Kharis has been recovered from the swamp by a couple of members of  Ananka's cult, strangling some poor shlub when they acquire it. One of the cultists is posing as the assistant to an archeologist named Dr. James Halsey (Dennis Moore). Halsey is in the swamp specifically to recover Kharis and Ananka for a museum. 

One of the things I like about this movie--in fact, about the entire series--is the casualness in which people accept that an undead mummy occasionally walks around and kills people. It's understandable, because after Kharis is reanimated in the first movie, there's plenty of evidence to show that it's true. In this case, the head of a construction crew draining the swamp is skeptical, but Halsey has no problem with the idea.

Anyway, the cultists use Tana leaves to bring Kharis back to life. In the meantime, in a scene that is remarkably creepy for this low budget film, Ananka climbs out of the swamp. She's young again despite having aged rapidly in the last film. She also has amnesia.

Ananka ends up working for Halsey, proving herself to be very knowledgable in all things ancient Egyptian. Kharis starts stalking her. Several people get strangled. Ananka is finally taken by Kharis and brought to the ruins of a monastery the cultists are using as a hideout. One of the cultists brings Halsey's girlfriend along as well. This sets off a "you-betrayed-your-oath-of-secrecy" conga line involving the cultists and Kharis. One cultist backstabs the other. Halsey shows up and gets into a fight with the still-living cultist. Kharis takes a hand in all this and also decides to kill the cultist. In the end, a big chunk of the monastery collapses on the mummy and the cultist. Since that cultist was the last living person to know the secret of the Tana leaves, there's apparently no danger of Kharis being brought back to life again.

Poor Ananka, lying in a mummy case in the monestary, has once again aged back to her normal 3000 years, so she's a goner as well. But Halsey gets his girlfriend for himself and the mummy for his museum. The end.

The low budget often shows in this entry, but despite that, I like it a lot. It's very atmospheric, with Ananka's resurrection from the swamp being particularly striking. Also, shots of the mummy walking up to the monastary ruins look pretty cool. The 60-minute film moves at a brisk pace and tells its story effectively. The Mummy's Curse is definitely a 2nd-tier entry in the Universal Monster canon, but it's still worth watching.

From Human to Robot

 

cover art by Gil Kane

Comic Book Science & Comic Book Logic do not, of course, depend on any sort of realism. What they require is a degree of self-consistency. During the Silver Age, DC heroes such as Flash and Green Lantern were always using clever tactics to foil villains. Often, even presuming the existance of super-speed or power rings, those tactics made no real-life sense at all. But that doesn't matter. As long as these tactics are reasonably consistent within the established rules of the DC Universe, then they serve a purpose not just to advance the story, but to also highlight the cleverness of the hero and give the stories an extra "Wow, that's cool!" vibe. An extra level to our sense of wonder, so to speak.

A good example of this is Green Lantern #36 (April 1965). Writer Gardner Fox and artist Gil Kane start off by having a toy doll steal secret plans from Carol Ferris' facility. 

Carol, soon joined by Hal, pursue the escaping toy. Eventually, the agile little thing gets away. So Hal sends Carol back to the airfield to get help. This allows him to change into Green Lantern. He'd already zapped the stolen plans with a tracking ray, so he's good to go.

Well, he's not. But to be fair, even people living in Comic Book Universe wouldn't have seen what was coming. Hal tracks the toy to a remote house, where a criminal mastermind and his thugs are already planning more thefts of stuff that can be sold on the international market.

But there's a complication. The room the gang is using is filled with a deadly radiation, with each of the bad guys wearing a neutralizer to protect themselves. The radiation has a yellow base, so GL's ring won't work inside the room. It also won't protect him if he enters the room himself.

This is, of course, silly. But it's a silliness that is completely consistent with how things work in a Comic Book Universe. Because of this, readers can enjoy this tale even in our more jaded modern age for what it is. We don't have to look at it ironically or to make fun of. It's a good, solid superhero story and can be allowed to work on that level. 

This holds true even as the story grows more bizarre. GL can't let the bad guys get away. Well, he admits he COULD wait for them to leave the house and then nab them. But, darn it all, Carol is worried about those plans, so Hal wants to wrap this up quickly.

Hal bursts into the room and begins punching out the bad guys. Fisticuffs are necessary because of the yellow-based radiation, so he can't use his power ring. But why isn't the radiation killing him?

It's because, before entering the room, he uses the power ring to transform himself into a robot. 

And that makes sense. Within the context of GL's reality, it's a clever and effective tactic. And Gil Kane's art makes robot GL look pretty darn cool as well, especially when one of his hands breaks off after he throws a particularly hard punch. 

The criminal scientist uses an electro-magnet to temporarily trap Hal, but the hero thinks his way out of that situation. He pursues the gang outside the house, where his ring now works. So catching them all is now pretty routine.

It's an imaginative tale, with Hal using his ring (something limited only by his willpower and imagination) in very clever and unexpected ways. It's a great example of how a Comic Book Universe is SUPPOSED to work.

Next week, we'll trade in our power rings for six-guns and visit with the Rawhide Kid.

Cover Cavalcade

 

January is Wooden Ships and Iron Men Month!

This 1962 cover is uncredited.

Friday's Favorite OTR

 Rocky Fortune: "The Rodeo Murder Mystery" 1/12/54

Rocky takes a job as assistant to the owner of a rodeo. When the owner is murdered, events play out in a way that drops Rocky into the arena, being chased by an angry bull.

Click HERE to listen or download. 

A Bad-Tempered Lion and a Bad-Tempered Circus Promoter

 

Francis Wallace was a sportswriter and novelist who, in 1936, published a novel titled Kid Galahad. In 1937, it was made into a Edward G. Robinson movie with the same title. Humphrey Bogart has a supporting role as a bad guy.

In 1941, the story's setting was changed from the boxing world to the circus world and became the movie The Wagons Roll at Night. Bogart is now playing the Edward G. Robinson part, though he's a circus promoter rather than a boxing promoter. Sylvia Sidney is Bogart's Gal Friday

I watched the movie recently after recording it off of TCM. I knew nothing about it going in other than it was one of the few Bogie movies I had never seen. I also apparently didn't pay enough attention to the opening credits. So, when a lion escapes from the circus early on in the movie AND a general store clerk bravely corners it to protect a young girl, I didn't at first recognize the actor playing the clerk. Then it dawned on me. It was Eddie Albert, the future owner of Green Acres in the classic '60s sitcom. (He is also a few years away from being a real-life war hero.) 

Albert looked impossibly young in the film. Does that mean I'm getting old? Gee whiz. 

The movie itself drips with melodrama. Matt (Albert's character) joins the circus and learns lion taming, with Nick (Bogie's character) taking him under his wing. Matt eventually meets Nick's sister and they fall in love. Nick violently disapproves and the movie's finale involves Nick convincing Matt to try to do a show with a particulary nasty lion who had already killed one man. By golly, mess with Bogie's sister and he'll literally feed you to an animal.

The ladies of the film try to talk sense into Nick in time to save Matt's life. Will they succeed?

The movie's plot is predictable and even Bogart can't keep the final scene from descending into painful corniness. But I still like the movie. The cast is good, with Bogart expertly treading a moral line in the sand with his character and Albert bringing charm and believability to his aww-shucks character. 

Also, it's set in a circus back in the travel-by-train and perform-under-the-big-top days. Such movies are always inherently interesting. 

Sixgun Justice: WESTERN NOVELS—GUNS OF LEGEND #7 IN SATAN'S CIRCUS

Sixgun Justice: WESTERN NOVELS—GUNS OF LEGEND #7 IN SATAN'S CIRCUS: WESTERN NOVELS GUNS OF LEGEND #7 IN SATAN'S CIRCUS BRODY WEATHERFORD REVIEWED BY TIM DEFOREST   Tomcat Meyer, the lawman who was introdu...

Betray the Earth and Marry an Alien

 

cover art by Steve Ditko

The cover story in Amazing Adult Fantasy #8 (January 1962) is pretty basic, with a twist at the end that even the younger readers this was targeted towards probably saw coming from miles away. But it's still fun to read. To start out, Steve Ditko's art fits the tale perfectly. Second, Stan Lee writes one of the best narration insets ever on the first page:

"They offered him the world on a silver platter! So why did he end up... screaming?" That is a wonderfully creepy way to start off the story.

Aliens--advance scouts for an invasion fleet--use the cover of a storm to land on Earth, then seize control of a remote radar post. If they can prevent the radar from being used, they can launch a suprise attack on the planet.

They could simply kill the two radarmen. I suppose wrecking the facility would be an option as well and would seem to be the best one, but no one ever mentions that possibility. One of the humans figures out that the aliens simply don't know how to turn off the radar themselves, but that shouldn't stop them from just breaking things. Oh, well. The unknown depths of alien psychology are beyond the understanding of us mere humans.

The aliens pick a third option--offer the humans wealth, power and the most beautiful women in the universe to turn off the radar. 

One guy stoically refuses and gets hit by an immobilizing ray when he lunges for an alarm button. The other guy, though, is a snivelling coward. He gladly agrees to double-cross Earth in exchange for wealth, power, and--HUBBA-HUBBA--a hot girl.

The predictable Twilight Zone-esque twist quickly follows. What's considered beautiful on one planet isn't necessarily all that good-lookin' on Earth. The traitor is unhappy with his reward. That's why he's screaming. 

A final panel wraps things up by telling us the other guy does manage to reach the alarm button and the alien invasion is foiled. As for the traitor: "Well, who really cares what happens to a traitor?"

There's no denying that the surprise ending isn't terribly surprising. But Ditko's art--especially the creepy design of the aliens--and that wonderful opening sentence sell the story regardless.

Next week, Green Lantern turns himself into a robot. It makes sense in context.

Cover Cavalcade

 

January is Wooden Ships and Iron Men Month!

The artist of this 1975 cover is uncredited.

Friday's Favorite OTR

 "The Log" 9/20/53

Years after the war ends, a submarine is ordered to be scrapped. But the sub's captain might have other ideas.

Click HERE to listen or download. 

The Mummy's Ghost (1944)

 

                                             

Read/Watch 'em In Order #155

What I love about The Mummy's Ghost (1944) is the casualness with which everyone in a small New England town accepts the idea of undead mummies and Egyptian curses. It's understandable, of course, since they had just had a mummy rampaging through their town not long ago. Now, we get a recap of the first two films via a lecturing college professor. And when Kharis reappears and people start getting strangled to death again, the cops accept that the mummy is back. 

One of those cops is played by Barton Maclane, playing a tough cop in the same hard-boiled manner that he always played tough cops, logically planning a way of trapping a "criminal" who is immune to bullets. I love it. 

As in the previous film, the movie also benefits from the actor playing Kharis' Egyptian "keeper." This time, it's John Carradine, an unfailing professional as an actor who always gave his all in any movie, regardless of that movie's overall quality.

The quality of movie, this time, actually isn't bad. There's a bit of a continuity glitch as the Egyptian cult now seems dedicated to bringing Kharis and Princess Anaka together. This is quite a change in attitude. Remember, after all, that Kharis was cursed to guard Anaka's tomb because his love for her was forbidden. But it does allow this film to go in an unusual direction. Oh, well. The villains in the previous films kept getting distracted from their mission by falling for a pretty girl. Perhaps the cult simply decided that there's no beating True Love. 

After Kharis kills an Egyptologist to get some Tana leaves (the stuff he needs to stay alive), his next mission is to recover Anaka's mummy from a local musuem. But when Carradine's character uses the juice of the Tana leaves to resurrect her, her mummy crumbles into dust. This means, he realizes, that she's been reincarnated into someone else.

That someone else is Amina (Ramsey Ames), who is of Egyptian descent. She's also the girlfriend of the film's bland protagonist, played by Robert Lowery. Eventually, Kharis kidnaps Amina. But when Carradine is about to inject her with Tana juice, he starts to fall for her as well. Seriously, the cult's Human Resources department really needs to put out some guidelines about this sort of thing. Anyway, this situation isn't going to make Kharis happy.

There's a lot of nice touches. The shots of Kharis (played again by Lon Chaney, Jr.) walking up and down elevated railroad tracks to a hideout in an abandoned warehouse look just plain cool. The variation of the usual plot is interesting and the way Amina's hair gradually turns from brunette to grey over the course of the movie is pretty nifty. She is indeed Anaka and she is now rapidly aging. She is, after all, 3000 years old. 

The movie has a bit of a tragic end, with Kharis and Amina/Anaka sinking into a swamp. But this sets up the creepiest scene in the series, which we'll examine when we look at The Mummy's Curse in a few weeks. 

Adam, Eve and a Vampire Planet

 

cover art tentatively credited to Cresto

  

Last week, we looked at the first two stories included in Strange Adventures #6 (March 1951). This week, we'll look at the final two stories. (I'm leaving out some short non-story features and a humor page.) 

We start with "The Last Man and Woman," written by Gardner Fox and drawn by Jack Lehti. It's a story that one could be tempted to mock. First, the main characters are Adam Numan and his wife Evelyn. Adam and Eve--in a story titled "The Last Man and Woman." Right away, we know (in general terms) how this is going to end. 

Also, when Adam invents a suspended animation technique that will essentially allow him to visit the future and talk to the important people of that era, Eve decides to go along to make sure he doesn't run off with a futuristic glamor girl and worries that her clothes might be out of fashion.

But I'm not going to mock the story. Well, I'm not going to mock beyond pointing out the initial temptation to mock it. Because the story's execution, especially in terms of Lahti's imaginative art, is superb.

Adam arranges for an underground chamber in an area safe from earthquakes.Other factors mentioned tell us he's intelligently planning his venture, adding verisimilitude to the tale. 

But a lightning stike damages the clock that was supposed to wake them up every 100 years. They sleep for three million years, missing out on a nuclear war and mankind's descent into barbarism. When a now mutated humanity begins to again progress, they realize the planet is dying. They leave for the stars, hoping to colonize another planet. They've found Adam and Eve, but there's no room on their ship. So the two sleepy heads are given their own small ship and the ability to go back into suspended animation during the thousands of years it takes to travel between stars.

Eve more than makes up for her earlier silliness by encouraging her despairing husband. They begin to search for the rest of humanity, visiting planet after planet over the course of thousands of years. At one point, Eve uses a ray gun to save Adam from an alien monster. 

Finally, they give up trying to find the rest of humankind. Instead, they find a pleasant planet and settle down. And so we get to the ending that was so obviously telegraphed throughout the tale--Adam and Eve settle on what we realize is Earth.

But this effectively told story, so attentive to details and given backbone by the great artwork, makes us forgive this predictability. The story has earned its ending.

"The Vampire World," written by Mann Rubin and drawn by Cresto, starts off with the discovery of a planetoid that has apparently been trying to sneak up on Earth. What's even more worrisome is the giant tentacles that are springing from the alien world. Mankind mobilizes its armies, but what can they do when the planet finally attacks us?

The first tentacle makes contact in Africa and sprouts more tentacles. It starts sucking up diamonds. It also proves impervious to attack. Later, other tentacles land in Iran and Pennsylvania and start syphoning off oil and coal.

Mankind seems doomed. But a scientist has a plan. A huge supply of uranium is gathered together in one spot, then sprayed with a deadly poison. The tentacle falls for the trap, sucking up the poisoned uranium and dying. Other tentacles also die and the Vampire World retreates into space.

It's another pretty good story. I have been able to find out absolutely nothing about the artist Cresto, other than he drew this story, tentatively drew a couple of covers, then disappeared from comic book history. But his art here is pretty good. The lack of a final shot of the Vampire World running away (or lurking nearby to one day renew its attack) would have been a benefit. In graphic storytelling, its always better to show rather than merely tell. But that's a nitpick. The art we are given is effective and often powerful.

That's it for Strange Adventures. Next week, we'll jump ahead a decade or so to look at a Marvel Comics science fiction tale. Then, in two weeks, we'll visit with Green Lantern.

Cover Cavalcade

 

January is Wooden Ships and Iron Men Month!

This 1911 cover is by P.E. Cowen