Supergirl is STILL Pretty Darn Smart!

cover art by Curt Swan

Two weeks ago, I mentioned that Bob Kanigher was much better suited as a writer to DC's war books than their superhero books, but that he could nonetheless turn out some silly but fun superhero tales. The story I reviewed at that time was, I think, an example of this, with the silly story made stronger by requiring Supergirl to use her brains rather than her powers to figure out what was going on in a supposedly haunted house.

The second part of that story appeared in the next issue--Adventure Comics #395 (August 1970). Kanigher continues to drop Supergirl into a situation that required more brain power than super powers, but in this case, I'm afraid he let the plot get away from him. Even in the context of a Comic Book Universe, things don't quite make sense in the end.

In Part 1, Supergirl had figured out that the supposedly supernatural shenanigans taking place in the haunted house were actually caused by Phantom Zone criminals and had taken care of them. But then the long-missing inventor who owned the house--Ames Ameswell--pops up and threatens her. When she tries to grab him, he confuses the situation by turning into a variety of different forms and animals.

Supergirl continues to refuse to believe that Ames is using magic (despite, as I mentioned last time, being a member of a superhero team that includes an actual witch on its roster!). Ames challenges him to break a series of common superstitions AND he also points out that the date is Friday the 13th.

Supergirl flies off, confident that the superstitions are meaningless. But then everything she does goes wrong and ends in inadvertent destruction. Soon, she's decided that she is indeed bad luck and that she needs to exile herself to the Phantom Zone.

But, just has when she pretended to go nuts in the last issue, this is a trick as she suspects Ames is monitoring her. She's right, of course. Ames convienently explains his evil plans to... well, to no one. He's alone in his house when he tells us readers that he has used a time machine to travel back in time, where he studied with the great magicians of history such as Merlin and Nostrodamus. Once Supergirl is out of the way, he plans to launch a career of supervilliany.

But Kara is on to him, realizing that he coated her with an "anti-mass destruct element" that has been causing all the damage whenever she tried to help someone. She crashes into the mansion, destroys the time machine and hauls Ames off to the cops. The day is saved.

I still appreciate a story where Supergirl is shown to be smart--for the second issue in a row, she pulls off some nice Sherlock Holmes-style deductions. But there are a number of things that don't make sense. Ames is an inventor and apparently built his time machine, so why does he declare it "irreplaceable" when Supergirl destroys it? Does he actually have magical powers and if so, then why his evil plan employed scientific methods? Were his transformations in this issue magic, or (as Supergirl thought) post-hypnotic suggestions? If they were worked via hypnosis, how did he hypnotize a Kryptonian unless he was using magic?

I'm probably being far too nitpicky, since Kurt Schaffenberger's art endows the story with a sense of fun and I did enjoy it overall. But the story simply feels like Kanigher was tossing in plot elements willy-nilly without tying them all together properly. Had this story been from the pen of Edmond Hamilton or Otto Binder, I think it would have flowed much smoother. It still would have been silly, but it would have "made sense" in context to its setting.

Next week, we'll look in on one of the many, many alien monsters that visited Earth during the 1950s and 1960s.

Cover Cavalcade

A great cover from 1951. I couldn't find a credit for the cover artist.

Friday's Favorite OTR

Escape: "The Shanghai Document" 4/21/50

An American reporter trying to through war-torn China to Shanghai becomes unknowingly involved in a plan to smuggle an important document into that same city. As is typical of scripts by John and Gwen Bagni, this story interweaves great characters with a strong story.

Click HERE to listen or download.

If It Includes a Riverboat, Then It MUST Be a Good Movie!

Queen of the Yukon (1940) was made on the cheap by Monogram Studios (which made everything on the cheap), but they somehow managed to include a cool-looking riverboat and some really nice black-and-white location photography. So I am, of course, predisposed to like it.

Loosely based on the work of Jack London (I can't find a reference to a specific London story in the credits), the movie tells the story of Sadie Martin (Irene Rich), who runs the titular riverboat carrying men to and from their claims in the Yukon Territory. She also has a small casino on board, featuring either poker or faro, which represents her main source of income.

Sadie, though, is not a ruthless gambling queen. An important moment at the beginning of the movie shows her banning a passenger from further gambling after he's lost over a thousand dollars. Sadie knows he's taking his money back to his wife and kids, so cuts him off before he blows it all.

Ace Rincon (Charles Bickford) is a gambler that helps her run the boat and it is Ace who tells her that she practices noblesse oblige--her honesty and class have made her de facto Queen of the Yukon herself and, without really thinking about it, she takes her responsibilities seriously.

Ace, by the way, is in love with Sadie, but she was abandoned by a gambler husband in the past, so insists they just stay friends and partners. This doesn't stop Ace from watching out for Sadie pretty much 24/7, though.

The situation changes when Sadie's 18-year-old daughter shows up and is enamored by Sadie's rough-and-tumble life-style. She also develops a crush on Ace and decides she wants to learn how to deal faro and join her mother in running the gambling ship.

Sadie doesn't want that for her daughter, so she sells her boat to a mining company with the intention of moving back to the city with her daughter. But the mining company immediately uses their monopoly on river travel to crush the independent miners and soon begins a program of violent claim-jumping.

Sadie's noblesse oblige rears up again and she quickly organizes the miners with a plan to take the company to court, using her money and the miners' claim certificates to make their case. But when a man is murdered and the claim certificates vanish, the situation escalates quickly...

Monogram was a Poverty Row company, but Queen of the Yukon (like much of the studio's output) gets a lot out of its limited budget, with Bickford and Rich bringing class to their roles as the protagonists. Particularly nice is the scene in which the two believe they are finally going their seperate ways, with both of them too reticent to just say how they feel about each other.

And then, of course, there's that nifty riverboat and some nice scenery. Riverboats are like dinosaurs. By default, they make any movie better.

SIDENOTE: It's interesting that the movie's Big Gambling Scene features a faro game rather than the more commonly portrayed poker game. Faro was very common in the real life Old West, but doesn't get shown that much in Western films or TV shows.

Here's the movie from YouTube, though Amazon's print seems to be of a little better quality:

The Outlaw Kid Becomes... an Outlaw? Part 3

As we've seen in the last couple of issues of Outlaw Kid, the Kid is having a rather bad time of it. Wealthy Jack McDaniels has moved into Caliber City and used his money like a club to put the town under his thumb. He's raising railroad rates, which is crushing the farmers financially, and has forced the sheriff to declare the Outlaw Kid to be a real Outlaw.

With Outlaw Kid #12 (October 1972), writer Mike Friedrich and artist Dick Ayers pick up with the Kid on the run, embittered that so many people in a town he's frequently saved now see him as a crook because of McDaniels' influence. But that doesn't stop him from being a hero when called upon to do so. The Red Vest gang (the same gang that blinded his father and set him on the "masked vigelante" path) is making a come-back with an attempt to rob a train. The Kid intervenes and captures two of the bad guys.

The gold he saves, though, belongs to McDaniels. The Kid makes a spot decision to go the "Robin Hood" route. He takes half the gold and leaves it for a farmer who has been driven into poverty by McDaniels' ruthless business practices.

McDaniels, by now, is pretty desperate to catch or kill the kid, so he's brought in a recently created Marvel Western hero named Bounty Hawk (changed from Gun Hawk) to track the Kid down. Bounty Hawk is pretty straightforward in his dislike of McDaniels, but freely admits that he'll catch the Kid and take McDaniels' reward for it. He's in it for the money, though (as we'll see) he's not without his moral standards.

The two meet when the increasingly bitter Outlaw Kid puts in an appearance in town to warn everyone to lay off him. The Kid really can't make up his mind how to react to the events around him. One moment, he's playing Robin Hood. The next, he's threatening to destroy the whole town. I actually like this aspect of the story. Up to now, Outlaw Kid has been able to play the straightforward hero role. Now, he's a wanted man and (though some of the farmers support him) many of the townspeople seem to have turned against him.

All this gives the tale some effective emotional tension. but it is the extended action sequence that begins here that really makes this issue shine. Bounty Hawk and Outlaw Kid go at it in a fist fight that evolves into a gun fight that evolves into a chase out of town on horseback. Dick Ayers is at the top of his game as he provides us with a truly exciting set piece.

Once outside town, the situation changes rapidly when the two men run into the Red Vest Gang, whose leader blows a bridge and sends both the good guys tumbling into the river.

But Marvel Western Heroes rarely let things like gunshot wounds and near-death falls to stop them. Forced to suddenly work together, the two heroes play possum and get the drop on two members of the gang, though the leader gets away.

By now, Bounty Hawk has enough respect for the Kid to let him go.

This will end our look at the Outlaw Kid for now. Original stories will continue to run through issue #16, with Jack McDaniels and the Red Vest Gang being the main villains. The various story arcs will be wrapped up at that point, with low sales changing the book back to reprints of Doug Wildey's original 1950s tales until the book is cancelled after the 20th issue. Outlaw Kid never had the same impact on the Marvel Old West as did Rawhide Kid, Kid Colt and Two-Gun Kid, while Bounty Hawk will fade into even deeper obscurity. But the Kid had a nice run while he lasted.

Next week, we'll return to the 2nd part of the Supergirl story we began last week.

Cover Cavalcade

A George Wilson cover from 1977.

Friday's Favorite OTR

Whitehall 1212: "The Murder of Little Phillip Avery" 1/27/52

This story about a murdered child is inherently sad, but the police procedural aspect of it is excellent. This episode is a fine example of how to use radio to tell a story well.

Click HERE to listen or download.

Crooks in Space, Part 2

cover art by Edward Valigursky 

Anson Drake's career as a criminal has taken him to many planets, making many enemies along the way. In fact, when he returns to the planet Thizar, he is apparently walking into danger. He once had a run-in with the wealthy and outwardly respectable Viron Belgezed, robbing him of fifty thousand credits in illicit funds. 

That's the situation we find as the story "Heist Job on Thizar," by Randall Garrett, begins. Published in the October 1956 issue of Amazing Stories, it is the second consecutive issue of Amazing that contains a Garrett story featuring a crook as the main protagonist.

But though we hated the guy from "The Man Who Hated Mars" and looked forward to seeing him get what was coming to him, we find ourselves liking Anson Drake. He fits the template for the sort of suave and capable jewel thief that would often by played by Cary Grant or Clark Gable in a movie. He's not on orginal character at all, but some character types are reused over and over again because a good writer can always make them entertaining.

But, despite having a ready-made enemy on the planet, Drake has reason to return. Belgezed has just bought a valuable piece of jewelry known as the Necklace of Algol. Belgezed is planning on wearing it to a big coronation to-do, but Drake has his own plans for it.

Drake dodges an assassination attempt and is soon contacted by Nancy Knight, another jewel thief with designs of her own on the Necklace. But her partner has run out on her, so she needs Drake's help.

Drake agrees to go partner with Norma, but there are layers under layers here in what is actually going on. Drake is going to have to run a multi-level con in order to get off the planet with the necklace. 

As I said, Drake is the standard Suave Jewel Thief/Con Artist character we've seen in a zillion stories, but demonstrates that this is a character type that will always entertain us when dropped into a well-told story. Garrett's straightforward prose, humor and clever plotting makes Drake an effective protagonist without seeming to be a mere cliche.

You can read it online HERE.

Supergirl is Pretty Darn Smart!

cover art by Curt Swan

 As a writer, I think Bob Kanigher's best work was on DC's war-themed books rather than superhero books. But he did manage to tell some fun superhero stories as well.

Adventure Comics #395 (July 1970--with art by Kurt Schaffenberger) is an example of this. It is a silly tale in many ways, but it portrays Supergirl in a way I really enjoy--showing her using her intelligence rather than her superpowers to solve a conundrum.

The conundrum in question is a supposedly haunted house, once owned by an inventor named Amos Ameswell until his mysterious disappearance 10 years earlier. There's a one million dollar prize for anyone who can say the night in the place without being forced to flee in pure terror. Recently, a horror movie actor named Vincent Sale (get it?) tried it, but was rendered grey-haired and insane before the night was over.

Before going on, I'm going to get a nitpick out of the way.  Notice in one of the above panels in which Linda Danvers (aka Supergirl) adamently states that she doesn't believe in ghosts. But she exists in a world in which magicians, supernatural threats and such things are acknowledged to exist. In fact, Supergirl regularly travels into the future to work with the Legion of Super Heroes--WHO HAVE AN ACTUALLY MAGIC-USING WITCH ON THEIR TEAM!  I'm sorry, Linda, but you aren't in a position to summarily dismiss the possibility that something supernatural is going on in that house.

To be fair, I do get that she has to explore the theory that the supernatural events in the house are being faked. But then she encounters the ghost of Superman's dad Jor-El.

Soon after, she encounters an apparently solid Kryptonian Thought-Beast, which (while under a yellow sun) should be more powerful than she is. But, inexplicably, it melts away when she hits it with heat vision.

It all seems to be too much for the Maid of Might. Soon, she is acting nuttier than a Kryptonian Fruit Cake. But that, of course, is a trick.

Supergirl has picked up on several subtle clues and used deductive reasoning to realize that a custom-made TV in the house is linking the place to the Phantom Zone, making some of the Zone criminals visible and allowing them to mess with people via telepathy. She smashes the TV to re-banish them to the Zone, but is then confronted by Amos Ameswell, the supposedly missing inventor. It was Amos who built the TV and who now seems completely unconcerned with her superpowers.

As I said, I like this story specifically because Supergirl's powers are of limited use and it's her intelligence--complete with her own Sherlock Holmes-like deductions--that really make this one stand out.

The story continues into the next issue. Next week, we'll finish up with the Outlaw Kid story arc we've been following, then finish up with Supergirl in two weeks.

Cover Cavalcade

A fun Murphy Anderson cover from 1966.