Cover Cavalcade

  MARCH IS SCIENCE GONE MAD MONTH!!!!

We close out "SCIENCE GONE MAD!" month with the original Mad Scientist. This January 1973 cover is by Mike Ploog. 

Cover Cavalcade

 APRIL IS MARVEL MONSTERS MONTH!!!

A 1973 cover by Mike Ploog. 

Frankenstein Against the Phantom Planet

 

In response to my post from a couple of weeks ago reviewing a Frankenstein-inspired story by Clark Ashton Smith, someone recommended a couple of other stories inspired by Frankenstein. 

One of them was published in 2016--normally far too recent to be considered for mention on my blog. But this delightful story is both a tribute to the Creature Feature TV hosts of from my childhood; an effective horror story in its own right; a reminder that horror, fantasy and SF tales can teach us things about real life; and a reminder of just how COOL it was to watch an old monster movie on TV for the first time when you were a kid. "Frankenstein Against the Phantom Planet," by Orrin Grey, does all that. It's a modern story, but its a callback to an aspect of popular culture I celebrate on this blog.

The point-of-view character is an unnamed kid sitting down on a Saturday afternoon to watch whatever movie will be featured on his local Creature Feature. That he's unnamed is important. He's all of use--every nerdy kid who ever watched the local host introduce Frankenstein, King Kong or Godzilla as we watched it for the first time.

His local host is Baron Von Werewolf, who explains that today's movie was thought to be lost for years. It was made by a nearly forgotten stop motion animator in Mexico and disappeared soon after it was shown in just a few theaters. But Baron Von Werewolf has gotten hold of a copy. In fact, he's made a deal to be able to show it this afternoon.

What follows is a description of the movie Frankenstein Against the Phantom Planet. It's a movie that doesn't exist outside the pages of this short story, but--by golly--I wish it did. An indestructable and gigantic Frankenstein's monster is shot into space as the only way to protect Earth. He crashes on the Phantom Planet. He's lured into a pit by the alien overlords of that planet. He fights creepy subterranean monsters. He frees mushroom people who are enslaved by the overlords. He leads them in a rebellion, fighting a giant robot along the way. It's magnificent. I WANT THIS MOVIE TO EXIST!

The kid's TV watching ends when Baron Von Werewolf has to pay the price of obtaining this movie a little sooner than he thought. "Not in front of the kids!"

My plot summary doesn't really do justice to just how effective a tribute this story is to monster movies and monster movie hosts. If you have an Internet Archive account, you can read it for yourself HERE. 

A plug for a plug

The latest installment of the Mysterious Old-Radio Listening Society discusses an episode of Favorite Story that I recommended to them. The podcast hosts were kind enough to mention my book Radio by the Book several times. So I'm providing a link to this podcast because it's only fair to give them a plug in return for plugging my book.

The podcast is an excellent one and I recommend any episode of it highly to any OTR fan.

Why do Horror and Comedy Mix?

You wouldn't think the two genres would mix together smoothly, would you?

Horror exists to scare us. Yes, there can be deeper thematic meaning in a good horror story, but if it doesn't make us jump out of our skin a few times, then it has failed in its appointed task.

Comedy exists to make us laugh. Once again, deeper meaning can be there beneath the laughs. But we need the laughs to be there or its simply not a comedy.

But anyone reading a blog about old-timey stuff already knows quite how effective horror and comedy mix together if both elements are treated with appropriate respect by the storytellers. How many of you saw Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948) on TV as a kid? How many loved it? How many were scared and made to laugh aloud at the same time?

That's pretty much all of you, isn't it?

This may be my favorite Bud and Lou movie, if only because it is so brilliant in how it mixes in the classic monsters. I first saw it when I was quite young, so I don't remember now how many of the Universal Monster films I had seen prior to that. But then, I literally don't remember a time I didn't know who all the monsters were and their back stories. As far as my childhood memories are concerned, I always knew about them. Much like I always knew about Superman, Kirk & Spock, or Spider Man. The existence of these things are simply built into my DNA.

Though I usually enjoy rambling on with my own opinions about stuff like this (as I secretly believe that mankind's only hope is to embrace my opinions and cultural tastes on a global basis), I believe I will pause here to share an informative and insightful documentary on Abbott and Costello's monster films. This comes from the Blu-Ray release of A & C Meet Frankenstein and it is well-worth a half-hour of your time.

Werewolves, Frankenstein's Monster and a Big Crybaby.

Perhaps the best thing about comic book universes is the variety of characters and genres that can be liberally mixed together without shattering the suspension of disbelief. You can, for instance, throw a superhero into a horror/mad scientist story, then mix in some spy story elements--and it all makes perfect sense within the context of that universe.

This is what happens in Marvel Team-Up #36 (August 1975), written by Gerry Conway and drawn by Sal Buscema. Spider Man is having an average day stopping a pair of armed robbers when he is mysteriously zapped with a teleportation beam. Before he know it, he's not in New York anymore. He's in a remote castle in the Balkans, strapped to a table next the Frankenstein Monster.

I've always liked the Marvel version of Frankie. His visual design is reminiscent of the Universal movies monster (though, of course, different enough to avoid copyright problems), but he has the articulate and intelligent personality of the creature from Shelly's novel.

The hero and the monster are prisoners of the obviously loopy Baron Ludwig Von Shtupf, who wants to experiment on the pair, with the intention of creating his own monsters and conquering the world.

But keeping two guys who both have super-strength strapped down isn't easy. They make a break for it and soon meet up with a lady SHIELD agent named Klemmer, who recruits Spidey to help her sneak back into Von Shtupf's castle and put an end to his plans. Since Frankie isn't any good at sneaking around, he's asked to stay behind.

But Frankie opts to follow them anyways. Good thing, as well, because when he fights is way into the castle, he finds Spidey and Klemmer facing off against the Man-Wolf--J. Jonah Jameson's werewolf son.

This leads us into Marvel Team-Up #37, which starts us off with a really cool Man-Wolf vs. Spidey & Frankie fight.

In the ensuing confusion, Man-Wolf escapes with SHIELD lady, while Spidey & Frankie are captured again. But they use their respective abilities in clever ways to escape once more and confront Von Shtupf, who breaks down in tears when he discovers his evil plans have been foiled.

I like that--it's obvious that Gerry Conway was having some fun with the mad scientist cliche, first by giving him a silly name and then by making him a big crybaby.



But there's still the problem of Man-Wolf having kidnapped someone. Though I enjoy these two issues enormously, I will say that the abrupt shift in focus into what is essentially a brand-new plot AND Frankie being left out of the main action from this point on does weaken the story.

Still, Buscema's art remains strong as we see Man-Wolf protecting Klemmer from hungry wolves and Spider Man showing up to save the day in the nick of time. The tale ends with most everyone heading back to the States while the Monster wanders off on his own.

Even conceding that the climax is a little weak, it's still an enormously entertaining story. And my main point holds true. Only in an internal coherent comic book universe can you mix elements like this together so smoothly and so casually.


If, for instance, you put a werewolf aboard the starship Enterprise, you'd have to come up with a "scientific" reason to justify it. You may very well create a good story combining SF and horror tropes, but you'd have to work at it. In the Marvel or DC universes, you could toss a werewolf into a story pretty much whenever you have a good dramatic reason for doing so. You don't have to justify it, because supernatural stuff coexists alongside of science fiction stuff.

In this case, the werewolf in question has a SF--not horror--origin. But Conway might have chosen to drop Jack Russell (Marvel's supernatural Werewolf character) without creating any problem with suspending disbelief. The possibilities and various combinations of characters are endless.

Frankenstein's Monster vs. Nazis

The website tvtropes.com has a page labeled "Cool vs. Awesome," listing various movies, books, comics, etc in which unlikely opponents are tossed together into the same story. So we get cowboys vs. dinosaurs (or aliens) and King Kong vs. Godzilla and flying saucers vs. Spitfires and Abraham Lincoln vs. a Klingon and pirates vs. zombies and so on and so on.

Whether or not it's well-executed, the basic idea is nearly always appealing. It's something that's especially easy to do in a comic book universe, where time travel, lost worlds and mad scientists can result in countless unusual match-ups. Want Wolverine to fight a velociraptor? Well, toss him back in time or have him visit the Savage Land. No problem.

The Invaders #31(August 1978) is a great example of trope. The series was set during World War II and usually written by Roy Thomas. This issue, though, was written by Donald Glut.

Glut is a writer who clearly understands the appeal of Cool vs. Awesome. He wrote a series of books set in present day, but starring Frankenstein's Monster--the creature is found frozen in Arctic ice in the first novel and revived by the human protagonist. Over the course of the first novel, the human guy is dodging Eskimo assassins who are ticked off at him for taking the Monster, while the Monster is placed under the sway of an evil hypnotist who is clearly a shout-out to Dr. Caligari.

The second novel involves a James Bondish evil organization who want to use the monster for their own nefarious purposes. Later books in the series feature Dracula, the Wolfman and dinosaurs.

In this issue of The Invaders, Glut also calls upon the services of the Monster. Well, actually, he doesn't quite do this. A new monster, built by an ancestor of Victor Frankenstein, fills in for the original.

This might be bad enough, but Basil Frankenstein is also working for the Nazis. He manages to capture the Human Torch (this is the original android Torch) and Toro, with a plan to siphon off the Torch's "android energies" to give his creature increased size and power. He'll then build an army of monsters to serve as Nazi stormtroopers.

All this is taking place in Castle Frankenstein, which is located in the Swiss Alps. Captain America and Bucky show up looking for the Torch and Toro, but they get captured to. Then Namor shows up with a bunch of the local villagers. The locals decide they really don't like Nazis and start fighting the soldiers guarding the castle. Namor, in the meantime, frees the other Invaders. But the Monster has already received his power-up, so defeating him is no easy task.

The issue is just-plain-fun. It has a well-constructed plot and a contextually logical reason for tossing Frankenstein's Monster into the same story as World War II-era superheroes. It's got several other nice touches that give it more atmosphere. Basil, for instance, has had a lab accident and is confined to a wheelchair with hands to damaged to allow him to perform any more surgery. But a beautiful Japanese surgeon is doing the operations for him and plans on transferring Basil's brain into Captain America's body.

That also explains why Cap is kept alive after he's captured. (Though no reason for keeping Bucky and Toro alive is given--though I suppose they might be potential hostages if Cap or the Torch got loose.)

Another good touch: The Human Torch shows a natural empathy for the Monster. After all, they are both artificially created beings.

The issue ends when Namor lands a solid punch on the Monster. This doesn't hurt the creature, but it does damage a mind control implant--it turns out that Basil was using this to keep the Monster under his control. Now free of this, the Monster grabs Basil and the Japanese surgeon and leaps off a cliff to his apparent doom.

I don't think this Basil-created version of the Monster ever reappeared. But his one appearance was pretty darn cool. This is a story that really does understand the concept of Cool vs. Awesome.



Facebook Group: DC and Marvel World War II-Themed Comic Books

The Creation of Life 101

In Mary Shelley's original novel, the description of how Frankenstein created his monster was very vague.

Which is just as well. It left filmmakers the freedom to pretty much do whatever they wanted in showing how Victor (or Henry--as he was called in the 1931 film version) made himself a monster.

Not, of course, that most film versions follow the original novel that closely anyways.

Here's the creation scenes from the 1910 silent movie and the classic 1931 Universal film. They are completely different from each other, but each is cool in its own way.

If I remember correctly, the Edison film burned a model of a human figure, then played the film backwards. (If this is incorrect, please feel free to post a comment and correct me.) The smoke pouring back into the big pot actually adds to the creepiness of the whole process.

But it was director James Whale in the 1931 film that really managed to create the iconic creation scene. Even taken out of context with the rest of the film, it's still a riveting sequence.

Prehistory of Geekdom, Part 2

19th Century literature was the real gestation period for modern nerdiness, contributing stories and themes in a number of important genres. The century’s most important contribution to geekdom, though, is perhaps the development of gothic horror.


Mary Shelley, for instance, gave us Frankenstein. The origin of the novel is a classic tale in of itself—one dark and stormy night in 1816, Mary, along with Percy Shelley, Lord Byron and John Polidori, challenged one another to write a ghost story. Percy never really got started. Polidori turned out something that has been lost to the ages (which Mary later remembered as terrible), while Byron started a story but never finished it.


Mary, on the other hand, literally dreamed up her tale of a scientist who creates new life out of sewn-together corpses. Boy, did she start something! Full of themes and characters that strike to the heart of human nature (despite the novel’s often awkward plot construction), Frankenstein has become a part of our cultural consciousness.

In 1897, Bram Stoker gave us Dracula—the vampire who stands shoulder to shoulder with Frankenstein’s creation as one of the horror genre’s greatest creation.


Dracula is a great novel. A few of the heroes are marred by wooden characterizations, but Abraham Van Helsing is one of the coolest guys ever. And Stoker  literally creates the modern view of vampires (a view later cemented in our culture by a gazillion or so movies), coming up with a villain who is ever so slightly sympathetic, but still obviously evil.

And in between Shelley and Stoker we had Edgar Allan Poe. Gee whiz, Poe was a master of the English language, writing short stories in vivid, feverish prose that begs to be read aloud.


Try it. Grab a copy of “The Tell-Tale Heart” or “The Cask of Amontillado” and read it aloud. Even if you don’t have a real talent for reading aloud, it’s going to sound great.


A large part of the identity of us nerds come from the horror genre, which (when done right) tells a great story AND comments on the identifiable difference between good and evil. It’s a genre that has been nearly ruined over the last few decades by gross-out imagery and the absence of moral direction. But Shelley, Stoker and Poe knew how to do horror right. They knew how to scare you rather than just nauseate you.



Oh, yeah, Poe also pretty much invented the detective story—more on that in a later chapter.


Other writers—Hawthorne, Sheridan LeFanu, Guy De Mauppassant and others—also made important contributions to gothic horror. But without Shelley, Stoker and Poe, it’s quite possible that the modern comic book/SF nerd wouldn’t exist.


A world without me in it? Unthinkable.

Happy Birthday, Boris Karloff

Yesterday--November 23--would have been the 120th birthday of the wonderful actor Boris Karloff.

Of course, he's best known for the part that gave him fame--Frankenstein's Monster. He played the Monster in three films, Frankenstein (1931), Bride of Frankenstein (1935), and Son of Frankenstein (1939). He was excellent all three times, making us sympathize with the Monster while still bringing across a sense of real menance.

But Karloff was great in all his films. I think his best performance is in a 1946 film titled Bedlam, in which he played the corrupt master of an 18th Century London insane asylum. He's the best part of one of the best movies ever--a story that manages to be spooky and intelligent at the same time. Like all the best horror movies of the 1930s and 1940s, it reminds us that it's possible to tell a scary story without grossing us out.

Karloff was also wonderful on dramatic radio. He guest-starred many times on the horror show The Inner Sanctum, where he was especially good in the episodes titled "Birdsong for a Murderer" and "The Wailing Wall." He was magnificent playing the villianous Uriah Heep in a Theater Guild on the Air adaptation of David Copperfield.

November 23 would also be the birthday of John Dehner. He's one of those character actors who would pop up in a zillion different TV shows and movies during the '50s & '60s, one of those guys you always recognize but can never name, but he really shined on old-time radio.

He was in the radio version of Gunsmoke nearly every week, always playing a different role. He might be anything from a uneducated mountain man to a rich cattle baron, but he would always be believable.

He played the lead in two old-time radio shows. He was Paladin in the radio version of Have Gun, Will Travel (which was a rare case of a show starting on television, then going to radio: it was usually the other way around), but his best show was Frontier Gentleman. In this, he played a reporter from the London Times who traveled the American West in the 1880s, looking for human interest stories. It was a classy, intelligent show with good scripts and good production values.

Karloff and Dehner. Two completely different actors who both contributed much of what is worthwhile to our popular culture. Karloff has been gone for four decades now and Dehner passed on 15 years ago, but the great stories they were a part of are still here for us to enjoy. Happy birthday to them both.