Cover Cavalcade

 FEBRUARY IS THE ORIGINAL HAUNTED TANK MONTH!

This 1967 cover is by Russ Heath.

Friday's Favorite OTR

 Challenge of the Yukon: "Underground Ambush" 10/18/48

Sgt. Preston goes undercover in a gold rush boom town to weed out counterfeiters. The climactic fight in a pitch dark cave is awesome.

Click HERE to listen or download. 

The Spanish Tornado

 

cover art by A.L.Ripley

Read/Watch 'em In Order #176

Today, we begin a story-by-story look at a randomly chosen issue of Adventure, a pulp known for publishing high quality tales of... well... adventure. We'll be looking at the January 10, 1926 issue. I've had a PDF copy of this one on my tablet for a few months and now don't remember why I chose it particularly. But any issue of Adventure is worth visiting.

The first story is "The Spanish Tornado," by Norman Springer. Springer was a fairly regular contributor to Adventure in the late 1910s and throughout the 1920s. He was also a novelist and screenwriter.

"The Spanush Tornado" is set in 1877 and introduces us to a young merchant service officer named Charles Peace. Peace doesn't have much experience yet and has trouble getting a berth. That changes when he meets Captain Lamont of the ship Oloron. Peace gets the berth because of this name--the superstitious Lamont hopes Peace will bring peace aboard his ship.

Why is Lamont worried that his ship won't be peaceful. It's because his steward--a black man named Jude--is really, really creepy. Jude is said to wield strange powers and seems to have a hold on Lamont.

There's also a woman on board. Lamont's new wife is a the titular Spanish Tornado--a dancer he only recently married.

Peace poo-poos the idea of a magic-wielding steward. But nonetheless, the ship is hit with bad weather, the crew is unhappy and Jude keeps creeping everyone out. Peace gets on Jude's bad side and the steward is soon vowing vengeance from "Ol' Debbil." When we learn Jude's backstory, we get a surprising revelation as to who exactly "Ol' Debbil" is. 

Springer's prose is excellent--he keeps the tension high throughout the story and his descriptive passages are vivid. There's a high-stakes climax and we're kept guessing right up until the end whether something supernatural is going on. 

The drawback in the story is the constant barrage of racial slurs when characters refer to Jude. Of course, this is the way white sailors in 1877 would have referred to him, so its historically accurate. Also, racial stereotypes are not uncommon in older fiction. Usually, I recognize them as a product of the time and enjoy the story I'm reading anyways.  As C.S. Lewis once wrote when talking about reading old books "...their own errors, being now open and palpable, will not endanger us." 

This time, the slurs come frequently enough to be a little bothersome. To be fair, the story doesn't suggest that all black men are scary and evil. Jude is scary and evil, but that's just him. His race is used as one way to mark him as an outsider to the rest of the crew, but that once again is an historically accurate aspect of the story. In the end, it's up to each individual reader to decide if the racism presented here is enough to spoil enjoyment of a well-written tale of sailors and (maybe) magic. 

You can decide for yourself about the story by reading it HERE. 

The Red Comet

 

cover art tentatively credited to Nick Cardy

Planet Comics (published by Fiction House) began life with an issue cover-dated January 1940 (so probably came out in late 1939). It had a nice run of 73 issues before ending in 1953.

The first 20 issues (and occasional issues after that) featured a superhero called the Red Comet, who had the ability to change his size. He apparently also has the ability to survive unprotected in space or in oxygen-less atmospheres, though that might be more a result of carefree scripts rather than a power deliberately given to him.

It's not until Planet Comics #9 (September 1940) that we learn of Red Comet's origins. (The writer of the story is Thomas Marlin; the imaginative art is by Alex Blum.) 

While in space, he flew through "some outer space force" that gave him his powers. He was outside his ship when this happened and NOT wearing a spacesuit, so let's assume his costume generates a life support field. (To be fair, I haven't read all the Red Comet stories and his ability to survive in space might be explained at some point. I kinda doubt it, but it's possible.) 

I sound like I'm making fun of the story, don't I? And I am a little. But I'm not really bothered by this. The Red Comet exists in Space Opera Universe that plays fast and loose with real science. And, by golly, it's more interesting than real science. I want my own private spaceship and the ability to breath in space. Who doesn't?

Anyway, trouble is afoot. The planet Uranus is dying and the inhabitants plan to move to Earth, wiping out humanity to make room for themselves. They build a miniature planet, shrink themselves down to fit inside it, then launch the mini-planet towards Earth.

Earth scientists have detected the Uranians and somehow figured out their purpose. They dispatch Red Comet to the planet, who lands on it, shrinks himself down, enters the planet, and immediately gets hit by a "negative-growth ray"--which keeps him from changing size again.

 

The Uranians offer Red a chance to join them and he pretends to consider it, but then eventually makes his way to the gravity generators. There's a fight in which a number of Uranians meet a gruesome end, then Red breaks the gravity machines. 

This causes the Uranians to fall "up" to the rim of the mini-planet. Red, in the meantime, has found out that oxygen is deadly to the aliens. After more fights and after the planet has landed in the ocean on Earth, Red manages to crack it open. The Uranians all die. Earth is saved.

So did Red Comet commit genocide? We don't see any women or children Uranians. So... well, lets say that are a race of clones that are produced as grown men, with full moral responsibilities for their actions. So the heck with 'em all. Yeah, that's it.

The art is indeed imaginative and is fun enough to carry the story along. The story itself has unclear plot points and wonky science. I wouldn't be surprised if the script was written in almost stream-of-consciousness without thought about internal logic. Perhaps this was to meet a tight deadline. Perhaps the writer didn't care. Perhaps he realized he didn't have to care. There are times when story logic should simply step aside and let illogic have fun. This is one of those times. 

You can revel in the illogic HERE.

Next week, the Fantastic Four battles the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

Cover Cavalcade

  JANUARY IS SINGING COWBOYS MONTH!!

A Tex Ritter cover from 1954.

Friday's Favorite OTR

 Weird Circle: "Murders in the Rue Morgue" 1/2/44

Weird Circle's adaptations of classic stories often take bizarre liberties with those stories. In comparison, this adaptation of Poe's murder mystery is relatively straightforward.

Click HERE to listen or download. 

It Belongs In "Memoirs!" Not "Last Bow!"

 

My wife got me an awesome Sherlock Holmes desk calender for Christmas. (I got her a Chicago Cubs desk calendar, thus proving myself to be a husband of impeccable taste matching Angela's impeccable taste. Gee whiz, we're made for each other.)

When I arrived at work on January 14, my calendar told me it was the 132nd anniversary of the publication of "The Adventure of the Cardboard Box." So I immediately felt obligated to read it, which I did during my lunch break. 

This one has an interesting publication history. In England, it was originally published in the January 1893 issue of The Strand Magazine. In the U.S., it appeared in the January 14, 1992 issue of Harper's Weekly, which gives us the anniversary date.

This and 11 other stories published in 1892 and 1993 were collected as The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. (1894) Well, except that "Cardboard Box" was left out of the British edition. It was initially included in the American edition, but quickly dropped in later reprints. The beginning of the story, in which Holmes deduces what Watson is thinking, was moved to the beginning of "The Adventure of the Resident Patient."

An annotated version of the story I have on my Kindle tells me that Doyle once said he left it out because it was "rather more sensational than I care for." (quoted from Daniel Stashower's superb biography of Doyle Teller of Tales) Sherlockian scholar Leslie Klinger quotes Doyle as writing "There was a certain sex element in the Cardboard Box story and for this reason I discarded it." The story was eventually reprinted in The Last Bow in 1917.

So what was the big deal? Well, the case involves a harmless spinster who receives a package in the mail. This package is the titular cardboard box, which contained two severed human ears.

The police think its probably a joke perpetrated by some rowdy medical students that the spinster once had to evict from her home. But Lestrade calls in Holmes anyways. Holmes examines the box, the twine that had been tied around it, the handwriting on the address and--after asking the spinster a few seemingly innocuous questions--is well on his way to uncovering a double murder.

Eventually, a story emerges of adultery, alcoholism and senseless violence. These are probably the elements of the story that convinced Doyle to remove it from Memoirs. It is, though, a great story in which Holmes makes some solid and clever deductions to get to the truth. You can read it yourself HERE.

For years, depending on the edition, reprints of Memoirs would sometimes have "Cardboard Box" put back in it (where it belongs, by golly). Other editions still had it in Last Bow, with the beginning of "Box" still moved to the beginning of "Resident Patient" in Memoirs. So if you have an older collection of the stories on your bookshelf, check it to see. If "Cardboard Box" is in the wrong place, you must now live with the horrible knowledge that your Holmes collection is flawed. I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but there you go. 

Justice League Annual #1 (1983)--The Final Chapter

 

cover art by Rick Hoberg

JLA Annual #1 (1983): Plot by Paul Levitz, script by Len Wein, art by Rick Hoberg

The last chapter ended with Zatanna summoning the entire League (or, at least the members working on the current case) to the Dream Dimension. Now they are assaulting Dr. Destiny's base.

Once inside, they battle some random nightmares and also discover that Destiny is holding the current Sandman a prisoner.

This version of Sandman is a little obscure, because he only had a few appearances in the 1970s and 1980s. Originally created by Jack Kirby and Joe Simon in 1974, I believe his identity was retconned by Roy Thomas in a later appearance in Wonder Woman. Anyway, by this time, he's a professor who has gotten trapped in the Dream Dimension (able to visit Earth only an hour a day) and who now operates as a protector of that realm.

But for the moment, he's not doing anyone any good. In a tactical blunder, the various heroes try to charge Dr. Destiny one at a time, allowing him to use Sandman's sleep-inducing sand to knock them out. I suppose it can be argued that the nightmares they are fighting stopped them from making a coordinated attack on the master villain. But this isn't explicitly stated and the heroes come across looking a little silly.

But before going down, Elongated Man presses a button ejecting Sandman from the tube in which he's trapped, sending him back to Earth. Dr. Destiny doesn't care, though. He has captured the Justice League and now plans to force them to sleep without dreaming until they deteriorate the way he has.

Because he wasn't conscious, Sandman has no idea how he got to Earth. But from observing dreams, he knows that Superman is nearby, taking a nap as Clark Kent.

Sandman enters the apartment and gets attacked by nightmares. This wakes up Superman, who disposes of the nightmares. Sandman then brings them both to the Dream Dimension.

They fight Destiny, who at first appears to be getting the best of them. But (as we learn in the Epilogue), Ralph come up with a plan that allows the League to break out of their tubes while Destiny is distracted by Sandman and Supes. Confronted by a dozen superheroes, he faints. 

A brief epilogue explains how Ralph planned the escape and has Sandman turn down membership in the League. (Being able to visit Earth for just an hour at a time puts a limit on his usefulness.) 

I do think the heroes getting captured one at a time does make them look bad, but other than that, Hoberg's art looks great and the bizarre fight scenes are fun to look at. Ralph regaining his confidence in the previous chapter is highlighted nicely here by his saving the day twice. And its nice to see a character falling into obscurity--the Sandman--get another day in the limelight before he disappears into Comic Book Limbo. 

As for the book as a whole, it tells a strong story that follows Comic Book Logic and thus makes internal sense, it looks good and it uses a large cast of characters effectively. It come out near the end of the Bronze Age, demonstrating that this era of comics was still capable of telling fresh, fun stories.

Next week, we'll jump back to the Golden Age and visit with yet another obscure hero.

Cover Cavalcade

  JANUARY IS SINGING COWBOYS MONTH!!

A Rex Allen cover from 1957.

Friday's Favorite OTR

 Suspense: "The Man Who Cried Wolf" 2/9/53

 William Powell plays a Russian desperately trying to defect, only to discover no one believes he's sincere because he had been a part of a deceptive Russian operation in the past.

Click HERE to listen or download. 

Storm Fear (1955)

 

A friend of mine recently pointed out a cool YouTube channel to me called Full Moon Matinee. The guy who runs the channel posts Film Noir movies, adding an introduction and an intermission where he--as "the Detective"--makes intelligent observations about the movie and gives us background on the actors. It's a great channel--great selection of films and intelligent commentary.

It's through this channel that I discovered 1955's Storm Fear. Dan Duryea plays Fred,  a failed author who has brought his wife and kid to a remote mountain cabin because of his health. He has a lung disease and the mountain air is supposedly good for him.

But when his brother Charlie (Cornel Wilde) shows up, things get dangerous. Charlie and his friends--another man and a woman--have just robbed a bank. Charlie's been shot in the leg and they need a place to hide out. Tensions rise, mostly because Charlie's fellow robber Benjie (Stephen Hill) is obviously nuts and Charlie can only barely keep him under control.

The evolving situation involves a lot of melodrama--Charlie once had a thing for Fred's wife. Fred is angsting over his failure as a writer and feels like a failure as a husband & father. Fred's son David starts to think that Charlie is pretty cool and wants to run off with him. Charlie and Fred's wife--it turns out--once had a thing for each other. And there's soon doubt over who David's real father is. The "moll" of the gang (played beautifully by Lee Grant) is a bit of an obnoxious drunk. 

In a weaker movie, this could have descended into cliched Soap Opera territory. But a good script and a strong cast allow the melodrama to add to the overall tension.

When Charlie learns from a radio report that the police will be searching the area, the gang forces David to lead them over the mountain to the highway, though the deep snow makes this a dangerous endeavour.  Also, Benji is working up the courage to back-shoot Charlie and take the bank loot for himself. Pursing them is Hank (Dennis Weaver), a handyman who also has a thing for Fred's wife.

Cornel Wilde was always good in a Noir film and its a treat to see Duryea in a Noir film in which he does not play a bad guy. Stephen Hill goes on to play the lead in Mission: Impossible's first season and later the grumpy DA on Law and Order, so its fun to watch him play a bad guy who is probably a few marbles short of a full bucket. And it really is impressive for a movie to toss in as much melodrama as does this one and still make it work effectively as a crime film. 

I generally provide a clip from movies I review, but in this case, I'll just share the entire movie from the Full Moon Matinee channel. Don't skip past "the Detective's" commentaries--he's worth listening too.

Justice League Annual #1 (1983)--Chapter 5

 

cover art by Rick Hoberg

JLA Annual #1 (1983): Plot by Paul Levitz, script by Len Wein, art by Rick Hoberg

Chapter 5 is pretty short, existing to first-- let Ralph Dibney overcome the self-doubt he was having at the beginning of the story; and second -- to set up the big battle coming in Chapter 6.

Back on the JLA satellite, Zatanna has magically traced Dr. Destiny to the dream dimension. She transports there, bringing Red Tornado and Ralph along.

They are attack by giant, nightmare versions of Dr. Destiny. Ralph briefly thinks this is the sort of situation he dreaded, where his skills as a detective are meaningless. But he realizes he's got to do something and uses his powers in a clever way to take out one of the nightmares. The other heroes dispose of their opponents as well.

After spending several pages setting up Ralph's self-doubt in Chapter 1, the resolution of this does come across as a little abrupt, but it does make sense. Ralph is tossed into a "the chips are down" situation where he's got to either act or give up. It is a little abrupt for storytelling purposes, but it makes complete character sense. And, to be fair, Ralph will get a Moment of Awesome in the final chapter.

Anyway, this confirms that Dr. Destiny is in the dream dimension, so Zatanna ends this brief chapter by summoning the rest of the League.

It is another well-written chapter. The brevity makes me a little embarassed to dedicate an entire post to it, but it does logically advance the story and resolve Ralph's character arc, leaving the comic book free to use the last chapter for a epic final battle with a fun plot twist. We'll look at that final chapter next week.

Cover Cavalcade

  JANUARY IS SINGING COWBOYS MONTH!!

Here's a Gene Autry cover from 1955.

Friday's Favorite OTR

 Gunsmoke: "Sutler" 9/5/53

Dillon goes up against a man selling rifles to the Indians.

Click HERE to listen or download. 

Tryst in Time

 

cover art by Howard V. Brown

The December 1936 issue of Astounding Stories features an atmospheric and bizarre time travel tale written by the great C. L. (Catherine Lucille) Moore. 

We immediately meet Eric Rosner and get his backstory--by the time he's 30, his life as an adventurer has left him feeling as if he's done everything. And Moore establishes this effectively in the first few paragraphs, giving enough examples of Eric's accomplishments to make us feel that maybe he has done everything:

At thirty there was not a continent nor a capital that had not known him, not a jungle nor a desert nor a mountain range that had not left scars upon his Viking body. 

Then he meets a scientist who has invented a sort of time machine. You were it as a back pack and everytime you activate it, it unanchors from inertia and essentially tosses you at random into another time and place.

Well, Eric wants to give this a try, with full understanding that he will be lost in the time stream without being able to navigate back to his home time.

But perhaps it's not so random. Eric jumps back and forth along the time stream, but he keeps meeting the same beautiful woman with "smoke blue eyes" and a confident, aristocratic manner. Or perhaps he's meeting different incarnations of her.  Twice, he arrives at a time and place just as she's being killed.

On another occassion, he saves her from being sacrificed by barbarians, but--though they feel an instant connection towards one another--she's promised to another and will not dishonor that promise. 

Once, he finds her while she's still a child. But each time they meet, she recognizes him a little quicker than the last time--even though he's not meeting her in historically chronological order.

In the end--well, its one of those endings that is open to interpretation and that only a author with Moore's skill can pull off and leave the reader feeling satisfied. 

"Tryst in Time" is a great example of Moore's ability to endow a story with an otherworldly atmosphere and great characters in just a few words. You can read it yourself HERE. 

I've been reviewing a lot of short stories recently. This wasn't on purpose--my Thursday posts are randomly chosen other than when I'm doing a Read/Watch 'em In Order post. So it's just been random chance up until now. But I'm thinking of going through an issue of Adventure from the 1920s as my next Read/Watch project, so more short story reviews will be forthcoming.

Justice League Annual #1 (1983)--Chapter 4

 

cover art by Rick Hoberg

JLA Annual #1 (1983): Plot by Paul Levitz, script by Len Wein, art by Rick Hoberg. 

Chapter 4 takes us to Gotham City, where Wonder Woman and Flash are joined by the John Stewart Green Lantern to continue the search for Dr. Destiny.

John isn't a League member at the time, was suddenly found himself in costume with his ring filling him in on the case. Apparently, the Guardians have sent him to lend a hand.

I don't think we get an explanation for what brought the heroes specifically to Gotham, but John is soon using his ring to home in on some delta wave activity. This gives us a wonderful panel in which John manifests a giant green bloodhound sniffing out the delta waves. It's probably not a necessary thing for John to do, but it's awesome all the same and using a GL ring to call up cool images to represent whatever practical thing you are doing should be standard practice among all members of the Lantern Corps.

Soon, they find the missing artists mentioned in the previous chapter. When John tries to free them from the equipment to which they are attached, this manifests villains from Wonder Woman's subconscious. The three heroes are fighting dream versions of the Tornado Tyrant, Amazo and Dr. Light.

What follows is a short fight scene--each hero only gets a few panels for his/her part of the fight. But in each case, the hero uses his/her powers intelligently to defeat one of the dream villains. I especially like the swift and practical method Wonder Woman uses--wrapping the Amazo manifestation in her Lasso of Truth, forcing it to realize its just an illusion, which in turn forces it to vanish.

The heroes find Dr. Destiny in a back room, but this is just a hologram. The real Destiny has become "one with his dream machine," though Wonder Woman wonders how he can do this when he can no longer dream.

That's it for Chapter 3. Next week, we'll pay a visit to the Dream Dimension,

Cover Cavalcade

 JANUARY IS SINGING COWBOYS MONTH!!

A Roy Rogers cover from 1957.

Friday's Favorite OTR

 Tarzan: "All Presumed Dead" 10/11/51

Tarzan is asked to investigate a plane crash in the jungle. All who were on board are presumed to be dead, but this might not be the case.

Click HERE to listen or download.

Happy New Year

 

cover art by Whitney Ellsworth

Happy New Year. Wednesday and Thursday posts will return next week.