Edgar Rice Burroughs Podcast: Mini-Podcast #65: Journey to the Center of the Ear...

Edgar Rice Burroughs Podcast: Mini-Podcast #65: Journey to the Center of the Ear...:   We conclude our examination of Jules Verne's 1864 novel. Click HERE for the audio version. email us at edgarsmailbag@gmail.com Please...

Friday's Favorite OTR

 Rocky Jordan: "Desert Betrayal" 5/29/49

Rocky finds a man stabbed and dying. Soon, he's knocked out, framed for murder, taken on a ride out into the desert and involved in gun smuggling and political coups.

Click HERE to listen or download.

Bretwalda, Part 5

 

cover art by Marshall Frantz

Read/Watch 'em In Order #138

Well, gee whiz, in the last Bretwalda story, the titular axe finally made it back to England--the nation it was destined to save--for the first time since the first story. But in "Delay at Antioch" (Argosy, June 10, 1939), we jump ahead three decades to 1098 AD and discover the current member of the Wilton family has schelped Bretwalda down to the Holy Land while participating in the First Crusade.

As the story opens, the Crusader army is camped outside Antioch, which needs to be captured to open the road to Jerusalem. This is the main problem, but Philip Ketchum continues to demonstrate his enormous skill as a storyteller by mixing in a number of other problems for Wilton, effectively introducing several plot elements very quickly and making all seem like natural extentions of the same tale.

Wilton makes an enemy of another Christian knight who is acting somewhat less than Christian. He falls in love with a Muslim girl--which might be the ultimate example of bad timing. And finally, he is tasked with sneaking into Antioch to arrange for a gate to be opened so the Crusaders can finally take the city.

I continue to be impressed with how good Ketchum is at so quickly giving his characters three-dimensional personalities and introducing potentially complex plot points, tactical situations and character motivations. For a short novella, there is a lot going on. But we are never in danger of losing track of the story, which progresses in a logical--if often unexpected--manner. 

Antioch is taken, but the Crusaders find the food supply low as they are besieged in turn by a large Muslim army. Wilton is recovering from a wound while being cared for by Shajar, the Muslim gal he's fallen for. But that knight Wilton has made an enemy of wants Shajar for himself.  And then there is that huge and apparently unbeatable Muslim army that needs to be dealt with. Desperate times, Wilton realizes, might just require desperate measures.

Whomever wields Bretwalda is destined to suffer a defeat and win a victory. For Wilton, his defeat will be heartrending and his victory will be unlikely.

"Delay at Antioch" is another winner in the Bretwalda saga. Great characters, a soundly-constructed plot and several epic battle scenes combine to give us yet another extraordinary story. You can find it online HERE. 

Has-Been Superman!

 

cover art by Neal Adams

The first page of World's Finest #178 (September 1968) features Batman speaking directly to the audience, telling us that the stroy we are about to read is "imaginary."

Of course, aren't they all? But that's the term used by DC Comics during the Silver and Bronze Ages to tell us this story does not take place within DC's regular continuity. Later, DC would adopt the term Elseworlds for such stories, while Marvel would call them What If?

It's a good way for Cary Bates (script) and Curt Swan (pencils) to begin the tale. It involves Superman losing his powers and, because the story is imaginary, we don't automatically expect him to regain those powers. When we are told the loss is permanent, we have no reason to disbelieve this.

The story starts in space. Several powerful bomb tests have opened up a portal to another dimension. After several space probes are lost while attempting to explore the portal, Superman is asked to investigate.

He pilots a spacecraft into the portal and discovers a giant cave floating in interdimensional space. Inside the cave, he finds the probes stuck in a white goop. After Superman is himself sprayed with the goop, he feels himself weakening and only just manages to fly back to Earth before losing consciousness.

Superman learns the power loss is permanent. He doesn't take this news well, freaking out for a minute or two before Batman shows up to calm him down. Batman does this by punching Supes in the jaw. 

Clark does calm down and try to deal with his new situation, but when he's unable to help Bruce take out a mugger, he doesn't feel good about it. But later, while watching Green Arrow and Speedy give an archery demonstration, he realizes there's a way to continue to fight crime despite having no powers. All he needs is a gimmick, like G.A.'s trick arrows. 

 His gimmick turns out to be a cape made of fabric that allows him to glide on wind currents--something given to him as a gift by Leonardo Da Vinci when Superman once time traveled back to the 15th Century. Despite a run-in with Batman, who takes him fairly easily in the inevitable fight, Clark feels he can still fight crime. All he needs is a little practice.

But when he does get in a fight with crooks, he's soon in trouble. He's so used to having super powers that his timing is off and he keeps instinctively pulling his punches. He's knocked out and captured, then taken to a crime boss named Mr. Socrates. This guy has a "master plan," but needs to get Batman out of the way before carrying out that plan. So perhaps he can use the Hero Formally Known as Superman to kill the Dark Knight.

The story ends on this cliffhanger. I like "Has-Been Superman" a lot. First, Swan's art is typically excellent. That interdimensional cave was pretty awesome. The design of "Nova"--Superman's new identity--is good. Also, Swan has some fun with unusual panel designs this time out.

And the script is strong. It does have Superman acting a little too impulsively. I think Kal-el would realize he needed time and training to adopt to a gimmick-hero with no inherent powers. But it's also fair to say that being suddenly deprived of his powers--and his usual means of helping people--might very well drive him to acting on impulse rather than with his usual wisdom. It's made perfectly clear from the start that Superman might be biting off more than he can chew, perhaps most notably through a line of dialogue from Robin, who says how difficult it was for him to get the hang of despite being a circus acrobat.

The detail of his cape being a gift from Leonardo is a minor detail and isn't really essential to the story, but it's an awesome idea that adds to the overall atmosphere.

And, finally, as I noted above, making this an imaginary story was the right decision. Will Superman adapt to his new life? Will he sacrifice himself to save Batman? Because we don't need to worry about continuity, we simply don't know.

The next issue would be an 80-page giant with all reprints, so we'll look at the rest of this tale with a review of World's Finest #180 next week.

Cover Cavalcade

 

April is Frank R. Paul month! This is the first appearance of the original Human Torch from 1939. 

Friday's Favorite OTR

 Weird Circle: "The Knightsbridge Mystery" 10/17/43

A man commits a murder and frames a mentally-handicapped servant for the crime. But the situation soon takes a bizarre twist.

Click HERE to listen or download. 

The Last Escape (1970)

 

Last week, I posted about acquiring and reading the paperback novelization of a movie I watched on TV when I was maybe 11 or 12 years old. In the course of tracking down the paperback, I found the movie on YouTube.

Usually, when revisiting books or movies I haven't seen since I was an angelic little one, I discover I had excellent taste. Whether it be a movie such as The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh or a Young Adult novel set during World War II, I had impeccible taste.

Well, The Last Escape (1970) is yet another discovery from my youth. The novelization I reviewed last week is close enough to the film so that it can largely cover the plot of the movie, though I will say that the book added a much more satisfying death for the S.S. officer who had been pursuing the escaping good guys.

I did enjoy watching The Last Escape again. It's got a good plot and Stuart Whitman is appropriately tough as lead protagonist--a professional soldier who is trying to get a difficult job done. The two scenes that I vividly remembered--having a particular emotional impact on 12-year-old me--were still pretty cool. These were the agent who yelled "Trap!" even though he knew he'd be killed by doing so and the Russian tank commander who gives up trying to stop the escaping scientist rather than fire on women and children. 

But as an adult, I was conscious of the movie's failings, most of which are brought about by the obviously low budget. The use of stock footage is a little too obvious and it stands out that both Allied agents and German soldiers invaribly used MP40 submachine guns (what the Allies inaccurately called a Schmeisser). I suspect that there were a relatively small number of prop guns available and that these were shared between extras depending on who what being filmed at any given moment. Several of the action scenes have a more epic feel in the novelization, because budget restrictions don't exist in prose fiction. 

But all the same, I enjoyed seeing The Last Escape again. It might not have turned out to be as awesome as some of the other stuff I've rediscovered as an adult, but it was worth watching one more time. 

I Wanna Go to Skyland!

 

I wanna go to Skyland! Of course, the place looks like it would be more absurdly dangerous than Jurassic Park and Westworld combined, but I wanna go anyways. It just looks so cool.

Skyland is a theme park that hovers over Gotham City on a platform that is actually a giant blimp. It has areas in it that simulate the conditions on other planets in our Solar System. Workers dress up as aliens native to those planets. There's a museum of space weapons that apparently all ACTUALLY WORK! And robot doubles of various monsters that come from those planets that can apparently be easily programmed to GO ON DEADLY RAMPAGES! You can also ride on "rocket horses" and rent flying belts. 

Who wouldn't want to go there? Bring your kids!

The story isn't clear on whether the various aliens/monsters are completely made up or if they accurately represent the denizens of Venus, Saturn, etc. Since this story is set in a Comic Book Universe during the Silver Age, we can probably assume they are indeed accurate.

Anyway, the story is "Murder in Skyland," written by Bill Finger and drawn by Sheldon Moldoff. Appearing in Detective Comics #303 (May 1962), it is a story dripping with wonderful Silver Age fun.

The owner of Skyland (whose name was Dodd) is murdered when someone tampers with his spacesuit while he's inspected the Pluto area of the park. Because the sub-zero conditions on Pluto are replicated exactly, he freezes to death when his suit fails. 

Batman and Robin are called in to investigate and soon discover that several of Dodd's business partners have motives. Batman also finds out that Dodd was investigating a series of accidents in the park and had hidden a film reel somewhere proving that these "accidents" are really sabotage.

Finding the film leads to an encounter with a bad guy on a Rocket Horse and those rampaging robot monsters I mentioned earlier. But the Dynamic Duo dodge the monsters and capture the bad guy, who proves to be a mob thug who had been trying to convince Dodd to pay protection.

But the thug can't be the murderer, since he's known to be color blind so wouldn't have been able to tamper with Dodd's color-coded suit. The killer is still loose and the Dynamic Duo is soon dodging a Martian Lightning Tank.

Batman tricks the killer into giving himself away, which leads to the killer--disguised in one of the alien costumes worn by the park workers--stealing Batman's Whirly-Bat, but getting caught when the heroes don flying belts and run him down. 

It's a fun story, with a mystery plot that more or less makes sense moving in tandem with the Skyland Park silliness. And, by golly, Skyland Park is cool. I feel about it much the way I do about Jurassic Park. I don't care if I might die. I really, really want to go there!

Next week--well, when I bought this issue of Detective Comics off my Comixology wish list, I first accidently clicked on an issue of World's Finest that was also on the wish list. So we'll stay in DC's Silver Age Universe for one more week as Batman shares another adventure with the Man of Steel. 

Paperback Fantastic

 

Paperback Fantastic Volume 1 includes a quartet of reviews written by me. You can order a copy HERE.

Cover Cavalcade

 

April is Frank R. Paul month! This issue is from 1939.