Shout-Out to my Awesome Wife

 I maintain this blog, my book-review blog and my BookTube channel because I enjoy geeking out about stuff. I don't make any money off them--my numbers aren't high enough to make doing so possible. I do have a "leave a tip" button on this blog, but I don't really expect anyone to give anything.

I am able to do this and do other geeky things (host occasional game nights, give talks at the public library and for civic organizations) primarily because my wife Angela not only tolerates my geekiness, but supports it. Heck, she let me put a velociraptor in our wedding photo:

She used her extraordinary cross-stitch skills to create this, which is now hanging near our front door:

Heck, she once beat me in an argument about the nature of Color Kid's powers:

She knows me well enough to get me to agree to a Book Challenge detailed in this video:

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When I got married, I knew my life would change and some of the stuff I did as a bachelor would get left behind. I was happy to do this, because Angela is smart and wonderful and far too good for me and I love her. But it turns out there's some stuff I didn't have to give up. She actually loves me for who I am and lets me be geeky when I want to be. This blog still exists because my wife is awesome, so a shout-out to her on this blog is appropriate and long overdue.

By the way, undeniable and objective proof that I love her does exist. She recently called to me while I was watching an episode of Star Trek: The Original Series. I actually paused an episode of Star Trek to see what she needed!!!! This is essentially the geek version of laying down one's life. 

If that's not True Love, I don't know what is.

Snow Skates

 

Bonanza's TV run was fairly straightforward--14 seasons on NBC from 1959 through 1973. Its comic book history is a little less straightforward, but not that complicated. Dell Comics dedicated four issues of Four Color to Bonanza. In 1962, they put out two issues of a dedicated Bonanza series. 

Then Dell had a sort-of messy divorce with Western Publishing, the company that licensed shows and movies, then produced the comics. Dell then distributed the comics. When the two entities parted with one another, Western created its own distribution company they called Gold Key.  Under the Gold Key banner, Western put out their own Bonanza series. It ran for 37 issues, from 1962 to 1970.

We'll look at one of the stories from Four Color #1221 (Sept.-Nov. 1961). 

"The Snow Walkers" was written by Gaylord Du Bois and drawn by Tom Gill. Gill's clear and effective art is part of what makes this story great, bringing De Bois' excellent script to life. 

If I may pause from the story review for a moment, let's give a shout out to Dell/Gold Key writers De Bois and Paul S. Newman. Both men were incredibly prolific and both wrote strong script after strong script in numerous genres. That Dell/Gold Key consistently produced great comics is in large part because of those two men.

Anyway, "Snow Walkers" begins when a detachment of soldiers arrive at the Ponderosa, hoping to buy some horses. Ben Cartwright wants to sell those horses, but declines to take a bank draft in lieu of cash. Later on, he explains why to his three sons. There were a number of things that were off about the soldiers--details about their behavior that didn't line up with usual military behavior.

The soldiers stay the night in a nearby bunkhouse. A blizzard kicks up and a man named Rolf Thornsen arrives at the door to the ranch house, looking to also spend the night. He's an old friend who is taking mail from California to nearby Virginia City. He travels on what he calls "Snow Skates," which we would call skis.

This is the sort of detail that helps mark Du Bois as a great writer. He did his research. At the time of the Wild West, the term "skis" had not yet been coined. "Snow Skates" is in fact what they would have been called.

In the morning, they get proof that the "soldiers" were in fact deserters. They've murdered the man guarding the horse pen and stolen the horses. They've got quite the head start, but Rolf has an idea. He can help the Cartwrights quickly make their own snow skates and they can essentially cut the bad guys off at the pass.

They run the deserters down at a remote cabin used by an old Indian and his daughter. The Indian has been murdered, but his daughter Birdsong hid in the snow and escaped. So the Cartwrights and Rolf don't have to worry about a hostage situation, but the deserters are holed up in a defensible position.

What follows is a well-choreographed action scene, which includes rolling a large boulder into the cabin, Hoss briefly being taken hostage before a well-aimed rifle shot from Little Joe gives him a chance to beat down on the bad guys, and the eventual surrender of those bad guys. 

The story ends with Ben giving the recovered horses to Birdsong so that she'll have a good dowry for the future. 

It is simply a well-told story. If it suffers at all, it's that Adam, Hoss and Little Joe don't have a chance to show off their own unique personalities and are essentially interchangable. Well, Hoss gets to show off his strength, but a live-action episode would have allowed Pernell Roberts, Dan Blocker and Michael Landon to individualize the brothers through their performances. 

But it does show Ben as a smart guy and a strong leader. And Gill's art shows off the action in a way that allows us to always understand what's going on. And the panel showing a murdered man's hand sticking out of the snow is an effective way of showing violent death without being overly gruesome. 

Bonanza was an excellent TV series (well, except for those episodes where one of the brothers falls in love and reminds us of that annoying Cartwright Curse). That the comic book adaptation showed the same skill in telling good stories is very much appreciated by fans of classic TV. 

Next week, we'll check in with Spider-Man. And it's only as I write this sentence that I wonder if I was subconciously led by the release of the new Spider-Man movie to decide to look a Spidey comic. If so, it really doesn't matter. We'll be jumping back to the Bronze Age, not looking at anything new. 

Cover Cavalcade

 AUGUST IS "THE HEROES OF STREET AND SMITH" MONTH!!!

A 1932 Shadow cover by George Rozen.

Friday's Favorite OTR

 Philip Marlowe: "The Sea Horse Jockey" 5/2/50

Marlowe is initially hired to transport a valuable sea-horse shaped brooch to a buyer. But he ends up having to catch a thief and a killer.

Click HERE to listen or download. 

A Second Time Around for Defending a Town

 

My second favorite John Wayne film is Rio Bravo (1959), directed by Howard Hawks. So for years, I was reluctant to watch El Dorado (made in 1966, released in 1967), the loose remake also directed by Hawks and starring Wayne. I figured it couldn't help but be an inferior rehash of the original, despite a strong cast and the same great director. 

But I finally gave in a few years ago and now curse myself for waiting so long. It's not as good as Rio Bravo, but you really don't need to compare them. The later film does hit many of the same plot beats, but it has a personality of its own.

Leigh Brackett, who wrote the screenplays for both films, started by loosely adapting the 1960 novel The Stars in Their Courses, by Harry Brown. At first, she was really happy with it, calling it "the best script I had ever done in my life." But as things moved along, the story morphed into the Rio Bravo remake, which Brackett disliked "because I hate doing things over again." Hawks, though, ran with it and the end result (with all respect to the brilliant Brackett) is pretty darn nifty. He told Robert Mitchum that the film had "No story, just characters." That isn't entirely true. There is a fun, solid storyline running through the movie. But it is the characters that sell it. 

John Wayne is Cole Thornton, a professional gunfighter, who teams with an old friend named J.P. Harrah. Harrah is the sheriff of El Dorado, but he's also fallen into severe alcoholism after an unhappy affair with a woman.

Mitchum's character parallels Dean Martin's character in Rio Bravo. The difference is that Martin's character arc was subordinate to the main plot of defending the town against an evil, powerful rancher. In El Dorado, the plot is almost incidental to the character moments. So Hawks' comment was true to a large extent.

And the supporting cast is wonderful. James Caan played Mississippi, a protege' of Thornton who carries a sawed-off shotgun because he's a lousy shot. Arthur Hunnicutt is the old-time Bull Harris, another ally to the good guys who announces his arrival in town by blaring away on a bugle. Charlene Holt is Maudie, a lady who has eyes for Thornton. Michele Carey is Josephine "Joey" MacDonald, a fiery young lady who is good with a rifle and, during the movie's extended prologue to the main story, shot Thornton. This causes long-term problems, because Thornton still carries around that bullet inside him and it occasionally causes him bouts of crippling pain that paralyzes his gun arm.

Joey, by the way, thought she had good reason to shoot Thornton, but later ends up as another ally.

The villains are Ed Asner as evil rancher Bart Jason. Christopher George, sporting an ugly facial scar and a fast gun, is Jason's main enforcer Nelse McLeod. Together the two actors generate several mega-watts of quiet menace.

There's a lot of humor in the character interactions among the good guys, but Mitchum's arc of pulling himself out of an alcoholic haze and becoming useful again is handled believably. And the action scenes are great. The good guys in this film can be ruthlessly pragmatic--not worried at all about giving their opponents an even chance. There's a scene in which two men attempt to lure Thornton and Mississippi out the back door of a saloon into an ambush. Realizing their intentions, Thornton forces one of the two men out the door to be shot by his own guys. 

There's a shootout in an old church, with the bells being rung by bullet hits, that's fantastic. And the final scene, with Jason holding a hostage inside a saloon while McLeod and Thornton (with a paralyzed gun arm) get ready to face off just outside that saloon, is a wonderful finale. 

Sidenote: Is Wayne's character having a paralyzed arm a metaphor for the fact that both the star and the genre were aging and more fragile than they used to be? Something to think about. 

In the 1960s and the early 1970s, Wayne was experienced enough in making Westerns to turn out one solidly entertaining movie after another. 1969 brought us his third best movie with True Grit, but we also got El Dorado, Big Jake, Cahill U.S. Marshall, The War Wagon, The Train Robbers, Chisum, and The Sons of Katie Elder. These movies aren't among the classics, but the world would be a poorer place without them.

Poisoned Waterholes and Desert Heat

 

cover art by Luis Dominguez

A man escapes from prison after poisoning a guard, then poisons waterholes as he escapes across the desert, at one point leaving two people, including a child, to die after taking their canteen. 

So what we have is the typical sort of ruthless killer that Jonah Hex normally tracks down. But two things make Teddy "The Gentleman Killer" Chandler a particularly interesting villain. First, he has a companion who shows compassion and regret towards the victims, but still remains inexplicably loyal to Chandler.

Second, late in the story, we learn Chandler's interesting backstory. He wasn't always an animal. In fact, he was in prison because he killed a man when his companion, a black man named Orion, was about to be lynched. Chandler saved Orion's life. That's why Orion, a God-fearing man, remains loyal to him.

It all gives Chandler a dimensionality that the bad guys in Hex's stories often lack. That, combined with John Albano's tightly-written script and Tony DeZuniga's atmospheric art, make this a particularly notable issue.

The story (from Weird Western Tales #19--September/October 1973) begins with the prison breakout. Orion is waiting nearby with horses, but is shocked to learn that the poison he smuggled to Chandler was used to kill a human being rather than rats. Chandler begins poisoning waterholes while they make a getaway to discourage pursuit. 

 

Jonah finds them by chance, but recognizes the prison uniform that Chandler is wearing. He wounds Chandler, taking him and Orion prisoner. But when they find a wagon that had been attacked by Comanches. The two adults are dead, but a young boy is still alive. Unfortunately for Jonah and the boy, Chandler gets hold of a gun. He gets the drop on Jonah, leaving him (and the boy) with no weapons, horses or water. Orion, though, drops a canteen as he and Chandler ride off.

It's here that we get a reminder of a usually hidden aspect of Jonah Hex's personality. He manages to bring the boy to a ranch, but does so by saving all the water in the canteen for that boy, leaving him nearly dead before the journey is over. Later, when he rides off after Chandler, the lady of the ranch remarks how kind and gentle he is. And she's right, though Jonah would have been angered if he heard her say it. He does have moments where his better nature takes hold. The ruthless bounty hunter does indeed have his kind and gentle moments.

In the meantime, Chandler shoots Orion in order to save on water consumption. When Jonah finds Orion, the black man explains Chandler's backstory and forgives his killer before he dies. 

The story ends with Jonah relentlessly pursuing Chandler, only for the escaped killer to die when he runs out of water and desperately drinks from a waterhole he had earlier poisoned. He dies laughing at the irony of it.

It's a stand-out story from an excellent series. It's not a criticism to say that most of the outlaws that Jonah runs down are ruthless killers. So is Chandler, but his background--possibly a good man stripped of his humanity while in prison--and the counterpoint of Orion's gentle nature, make this tale particularly notable.

Next week, we'll visit with the Cartwright family to see how well Bonanza translates into comic book form. 

Cover Cavalcade

   JULY IS GUNNER & SARGE & POOCH MONTH!!!

Would Gunner have survived the war without Pooch? This 1963 cover is by Jerry Grandenetti. 

Friday's Favorite OTR

 Nick Carter: "The Haunted Rocking Chair" 5/20/45

Nick is asked to investigate a rocking chair that seems to rock by itself. This, of course, soon evolves into a murder case.

Click HERE to listen or download. 

SKIP WEEK

 Preparing an original story for a D&D campaign and planning a variety of encounters for the players to deal with is time-consuming. I'm afraid there'll be no Wednesday and Thursday posts this week.

With my Books Worth Reading blog and Booktube channel running, I might have Skip Weeks a little more often than I used to, but I'll try to keep that to a minimum.

Cover Cavalcade

 JULY IS GUNNER & SARGE & POOCH MONTH!!!

A 1963 cover by Jerry Grandenetti. 

Friday's Favorite OTR

 X Minus One: "At the Post" 3/27/57

The fate of humanity might be in the hands of a man who handicaps horses for a living.

Click HERE to listen or download. 

Short Story Genre Survey, Part 9

 

cover art by J. Allen St. John

We finish up our Short Story Genre Survey with a horror story:

Sports

Adventure

Mystery

Crime

Horror

Science Fiction

Fantasy

Western

War

Sometimes, to enjoy a story to its fullest, you have to fully put yourself in the mind-set of the protagonist. "Vampire Village" (Weird Tales, November 1932), by Edmund Hamilton, is such a story.

Hamilton, by the way, wrote this one under the pseudonym Hugh Davidson. It's a name he used sometimes for his gothic horror tales, to separate those tales from the cosmic-level science fiction he was known for under his own name.

Anyway, "Vampire Village" is narrated by one of two Americans backpacking across Europe. They are warned about vampires in one village and the narrator is given a cross. The Americans, naturally, discount the possibility of vampires. So, when the next village they find is indeed inhabited by the undead, only that cross - still in the narrator's pocket - gives them a chance of living through the night.

It's a fun and atmospheric story, hitting the right level of gothic horror to make it work. But a reader might be a little bothered by just how darn DENSE the two Americans seem to be. It is mind-numbingly obvious that the villagers are vampires. How do these two idiots not see it sooner?

Well, the answer is simple. We live in a world where vampires are fictional. We are reading about a world where vampires might very well be real. We know this, so we wonder why the Americans don't catch on sooner.

The thing to remember is that the Americans don't themselves know they are living in a world where vampires might exist. As far as they know, vampires are always fictional. If we ran clues that a village was inhabited by vampires, we would simply discount those clues. We would KNOW that it can't be true.

So that the Americans don't realize they are in danger at first isn't unreasonable. They simply aren't going to shift their thinking into "Hey, vampires DO exist" until it's nearly far too late.

You can find the story online HERE. It's worth reading, but don't be too hard on the protagonists. They think they are living in our world, after all. They KNOW vampires don't exist.

Basil the Royal... Hobo?

 

cover art by Tony DeAngelo

The third and final Basil story found in the first issue of Basil the Royal Cat (January 1953) continues to show the same mix of charm and slapstick humor that made the first two stories so entertaining. Tom DeAngelo continues to provide the solid artwork and I would presume the same unidentified writer provided the script. 

Basil is still stuck in the United States with no money, no food and no one who believes he's a king. He hooks up with a couple of hoboes and ALMOST manages to bum a meal off them before they pull him aboard a passing train. They are racing fans and this train is on its way to Indianapolis ("Indian-Apples?" asks Basil. "Where is that?")

They get kicked from the train and Basil knocks on the door of a home in hopes of trading some work for a meal. That house happens to be the home of a car designer named Jet-Cat, who has build a car so fast that no driver wants to risk driving it. But without the prize money from the race, Jet-Cat and his pretty daughter will lose their home!

So when Basil knocks on the door, he's assumed to be a race car driver. Before he knows it, he's racing in the Indy 500. 

The car, predictable, goes out of control, crashing out of the race track, through a barn and literally across half the country. Basil, who has been desperately trying to find the brakes, accidentally extends a pair of wings that turn the car into an airplane.

You would think that Basil would have been briefed on all this by Jet-Cat before the race, but there you have it.

By chance, he ends up back over the race track just as he's running out of gas. He lands on the track, crosses the finish line and is declared the winner.

I'm not a race car expert, but I'm not sure leaving the track and FLYING back into the race would be considered legal. On the other hand, he did travel at least 500 miles around the country--probably more--before getting to the finish line. And no one seems to have a problem with him being the winner. So there you have it.

I guess I sound like I'm making fun of the story, but these absurdities are a part of its humor and its charm. They are strengths, not plot holes.

Basil is about to take part in a victory dinner, but the two hoboes from earlier spot a cop and pull Basil along as they run for it. The poor king still doesn't get a meal.

I've said "charm and humor" twice already, but it really is the best way of describing the Basil stories. They are sweet and funny examples of the sweet and funny animal stories that were common in the 1940s and 1950s, but have sadly faded from the cultural landscape.

You can read this story HERE.

Basil the Royal Cat ran for a total of four issues. We are leaving Basil here, but the other issues are also worth reading. The first story in the second issue still has Basil in the U.S., but he's somehow acquired a bag of money and a bag of food in between stories. (Finally contacted his embassy, perhaps?) After that, he's back in his own kingdom, dealing with warmongers, counterfeiters and other villains. 

For us, we will be moving on to the Wild West and seeing what Jonah Hex is up to.

Cover Cavalcade

  JULY IS GUNNER & SARGE & POOCH MONTH!!!

From 1962, with art by Jerry Grandenetti.

Friday's Favorite OTR

 Crime Classics:"John Hayes: His Head and How They Were Parted" 10/28/53

In the early 18th Century, a British soldier pays a bounty to end his enlistment early. He goes home to his lovely wife. This does not end well.

Click HERE to listen or download. 

Short Story Genre Survey, Part 8

 

cover art by A. Leslie Ross

Sports

Adventure

Mystery

Crime

Horror

Science Fiction

Fantasy

Western

War

Adventure Novels and Short Stories was a pulp magazine that could not make up its mind. It started as Smashing Novels Magazine in 1936, but changed to Adventiure Novels Magazine for one issue in 1937, then finished up with a couple of issues titled Adventure Novels and Short Stories before closing up shop with the January 1938 issue.

But despite its inability to settle on a name (probably in an attempt to boost sales of the relatively short-lived publication), it published some pretty nifty stuff. And we will turn to that last issue to mark "Adventure" off our genre list.

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"The Smart One" was written by Samuel Taylor, a frequent contributor to pulps during the 1930s and 1940s. This story is a short but well-written tale about a guy who thought he was smarter than anyone else. To get the girl he wants, he has to commit a murder and frame someone else for that murder. His scheme is a little complicated, but that should be no problem. Fox Phillips is confident that he's the smartest man in the Yukon.

Taylor shows himself to be an expert storyteller. He sets up the situation and introduces Fox is just a few quick paragraphs, but his prose flows along in a natural manner and doesn't seem rushed at all. We learn that Fox, who owns the local trading post, is--well, he's less than honest. There's a girl he wants to marry, but the girl's father doesn't like Fox and won't give permission.

But then someone else steps into the picture and Fox--who is, remember, convinced he's smarter than everyone else--quickly conceives his murder/frame-someone-else plan. He puts that plan into effect, convinced that nothing can go wrong.

Well, something can go wrong. Will Fox outsmart everyone when things go wrong? Well, the story can be found HERE, so learn for yourself. It's a skillfully written adventure tale and well worth reading. 

One more genre to go and our Short Story Genre Survey comes to an end. Next week, we'll tackle a horror story. 

Basil The Royal Cat Returns!

 

cover art by Tom DeAngelo

The second Basil story from Basil the Royal Cat #1 (January 1953) starts off rather innocently. When the royal kitchen is out of fish, Basil decides it would be fun if he goes fishing himself. Soon, he's at sea in a small boat, but he's not getting a bite.

The unknown writer and artist Tony DeAngelo use this to jump-start another charming and funny adventure. Basil decides to head home, but his outboard motor is out of gas. Fortunately, a plane flies by and Basil signals it by writing SOS in whipped cream on the surface of the sea.

The plane is heading for America. Basil is thrilled by this--he's always wanted to visit America.

But Basil isn't good at planning ahead. Once in the USA, he discovers he can't get food without paying for it. And, by golly, no one takes him seriously when he tells them he's a king!

He gets a job at Coney Island, but is soon mortified to discover the job requires him to regularly get dunked in a tub of water as part of an arcade game. 

But Basil isn't completely hapless. He rigs the trap door he drops through so that it won't open. Unfortunately, that gets him fired. The story ends with a nice bit of symmetry--Basil is again fishing and again not catching anything.

Like the Basil story we looked at last week, this tale has charm and humor brought to life by DeAngelo's pleasant pencil work. Funny animal stories were once an important and perpetually entertaining part of the medium of comic books. It's really a shame they have disappeared from that medium. 

Will Basil ever get a meal? We'll look at the last story from this issue next week and perhaps we'll find out.