Kicking an Old Woman Off a Cliff

Jonah Hex is, without question, a brutal guy. But he is one of the good guys. Despite his casual attitude towards gunning down outlaws, he does usually shoot in self-defense after giving his opponents a chance to surrender. And, though he would probably never admit this to himself, he is a protector of the weak and innocent, especially women and children.

So, as violent as Jonah often is, we can trust that he would never do something especially cruel. Such as... oh, I don't know... kick a crippled old woman off a cliff.

Wait a minute. He actually did that once, didn't he?

Weird Western Tales #17 (April-May 1973) begins with a gang of outlaws robbing a bank, then blowing up that bank with dynamite, then killing the sheriff while making their getaway. Jonah is in town, but does not at first pursue the outlaws. When called to task for not interfering, he rudely but fairly wonders why the townspeople didn't take action themselves. After all, its their town.

A possibly violent confrontation is defused by the arrival of Judge Hatchet, a cigar smoking, wheelchair-bound old woman who runs the territory with an iron hand. She owned the bank and hires Jonah to pursue the outlaws.

With his usual combination of fast draw and clever tactics, he soon has the gang leader prisoner while killing remaining two outlaws. He takes his prisoner to Judge Hatchet, who has the villain strung up on a nearby tree within moments.

 Well, the Wild West was a brutal place and the outlaw leader was indeed a mass murderer. So far, so good. But Jonah soon learns that Judge Hatchet runs her territory in a rather dictatorial fashion. This includes having her three sons burn out and kill anyone who refuses to sell their crops or cattle to her at a very low price.

Jonah happens by a burning home and rescues a little girl from the flames. But he's too late to help the girl's father.

 When he learns the dead man's son has gone after Judge Hatchet, he immediately sets out to save the boy.

Take note that Jonah is a bounty hunter and didn't chase down the bank robbers until he was paid to do so. But now, despite his reputation as a cold-blooded and mercenary-minded killer, he is now acting on his own. He risked his life to save the little girl. He tried--however awkwardly--to give her some comfort when she asked about her dead pa. And now, he's rushing to save a boy he had met for only a few minutes.

Jonah Hex is one of the good guys. It would annoy him to no end if you told him this, but he clearly is.

He finds Judge Hatcher about to hang the boy, who had managed to shoot one of her three sons. Jonah objects to this by killing the remaining two sons. And when Judge Hatchet attempts to shoot him, he gives her wheelchair a nice, firm kick.

It's clear from Jonah's reaction that he didn't expect what happens next. When the the wheelchair starts to role back towards the edge of a cliff, he runs after it, trying to save the Judge. She is a totally evil woman and clearly deserves what is about to happen to her.

Heck, if the Judge had been a healthy man, Jonah would have let him fall without a qualm. He does not always object to vigilante justice.

But however evil Judge Hatchet may be, she's an old lady in a wheelchair. Jonah tries to save her, but can't quite get to her in time. Her clothing catches on a branch, snapping her neck.

Written by John Albano and beautifully drawn by Tony DeZuniga, "The Hangin' Woman" is an excellent Jonah Hex tale, full of both the violence and the reluctant compassion that defines that character.

Next week, it's back to Africa as Tarzan teams up with an African Little John and a barely tame lion to rescue his wife and son.

Cover Cavalcade

An amazing Joe Kubert cover from 1969.

Edgar Rice Burroughs mini-podcast

Since Jess Terrell, Scott Stewart and I are only able to produce an Edgar Rice Burroughs podcast every two or three months, we've decided to occasional put out mini-podcasts talking about different aspects of ERB's universe. Here's the first one, about the awesome pets that ERB's heroes tend to acquire:






The audio only version can be found HERE

You can find all our podcasts HERE.

Friday's Favorite OTR

Escape: "A Study in Wax" 2/1/53

This engrossing tale of two men working in an isolated location contains perhaps the best performance of William Conrad's remarkable career on radio.

Click HERE to listen or download.

Those Pesky Asteroid Pirates!

In 1951, Isaac Asimov was asked to write a juvenile science fiction novel that would also be the basis of television show. Asimov wrote the novel, but was concerned with the questionable quality of science fiction on TV of the time. So he used the pen name "Paul French."

The TV show fell through, but Asimov ended up turning out six Juveniles, all starring David "Lucky" Starr, a member of the Council of Science who saves the Solar System on a regular basis. The novels were eventually re-published under Asimov's name.

Much like Doc Savage and Captain Future, Lucky was an orphan raised by scientists who turned out to be brave, smart and able to kick butt when necessary. In the second novel of the series, Lucky Starr and the Pirates of the Asteroids (1953), he needs to kick some pirate butt.

Lucky's parents had been killed by Asteroid Pirates 25 years earlier. Now there is a resurgence of this and Earth doesn't necessarily have the resources to deal with this, especially with the alien Sirians acting aggressively.

This leads into a great story in which Lucky at first tries to infiltrate the pirates. This doesn't work out as he hoped and he ends up in a duel with a particularly brutal bad guy. He eventually manages to get to an Earth base on Ceres, bringing with him a hermit who had been living on a small asteroid but had been forced to work with the pirates.

A pirate raid on Ceres ends with the hermit getting captured by the pirates, though there is no obvious reason that the pirates should consider him worth that much bother.

Lucky, though, is beginning to put facts together, figuring out various things including:

a. the identity of the leader of the pirates,
b. the existence of an asteroid base equipped with atomic motors with which to change orbits,
c. the economics of space piracy,
d. the identity of his parents' murderer,
e. and the existance of a plot by the Sirians to work with the pirates in an attack on the Solar System.

In the end, Lucky needs to catch a particular pirate ship to prevent a war. That ship, though, has a long head-start. To cut it off, Lucky has to take a short cut that brings him suicidely close to the Sun. But he has a trick up his sleeve that might help him survive this.

Like most Asimov protagonists, Lucky is very intelligent and able to think through problems in a logical manner, whether that involves deducing where an apparently disappearing asteroid has gone or figure out how to survive when tossed into space with a limited supply of oxygen in his space suit. His sidekick Bigman is a fun secondary protagonist and the action sequences are legitimately exciting. Asimov took care to present the Solar System realistically (according to what was known and theorized in the 1950s).

It's interesting to think about how often pirates end up infesting our Asteroid Belt. Buck Rogers (in a 1936 comic strip story line) and Captain Future (in a 1942 novel) both had problems with them and now here they are making Lucky Starr's life difficult. If humanity ever gets out to the asteroids in real life and we don't end up fighting pirates, I'm going to be very disappointed.

Yet ANOTHER Tragic Turok Story

cover art by George Wilson

Last time we looked at a Turok story, we witnessed some poor guy who befriended and helped Turok and Andar get tragically killed. I didn't plan it this way, but we are going to be visiting Lost Valley again and watch yet another one-shot character suffer a violent and tragic death. Lost Valley could be a depressing place.


Turok, Son of Stone #71 (October 1970) begins with Turok and Andar finding moccasin prints. As far as they know, they are the only two people in Lost Valley who use that particular footware (or any footware at all, for that matter). So perhaps there's another visiter from the outside world nearby?

This story, by the way, was written by the ubiquitous Paul Newman and drawn by the great Alberto Giolitti. Those two might have been the best combination in comic book history: Newman's expert story construction was always brought to life by Giolitti's wonderful visuals.

The two friends track the moccosin tracks. This involves an encounter with a stampeding herd of triceratops, but they persist and that night, contact the visitor via fire signals.

Andar, eager to find the mystery guy, runs towards the other fire in the dark and nearly gets chomped by a T-Rex. After that, he agrees with Turok to wait until morning, when it's relatively safe to travel. Andar usually acquits himself well, but there are times that he comes close to justifying the perception that he is a millstone around Turok's neck. This is one of those. When your older, smarter friend tells you that you'll get eaten if you run off into the darkness, Andar, just take his word for it!

Over the course of the next few pages, Turok and Andar find out what's going on. Another member of their tribe--named Crow Plume--had been dragged by a river current into the valley. By the time morning arrives, he's been captured by a cave tribe, who are intrigued by the idea of a land with easy-to-kill prey and no dinosaurs. But they've beaten poor Crow Plume so badly he's having trouble remembering where he washed up after being brought to the valley.

Turok and Andar capture a tribeman with plans to engineer a hostage exchange. In the end, the three Indians and the tribesmen all set out together to find the way out of the valley.

But poor Crow Plume is still a bit dazed and confused. He's having trouble finding the right spot and in fact...

...inadvertently leads everyone to a pterodactyl nest. The annoyed monsters quickly attack. In the meelee, Crow Plume is killed.

The tribesmen, though, don't want to give up their dream of a dinosaur-free lifestyle. They force Turok and Andar to search a nearby river for the exit. This leads to an encounter with a hungry plesiosaur and, soon after that, an attempt by the tribe to simply drown the two Indians. The right panel below is one of the creepiest images that family-friendly Gold Key ever gave us.

Turok generally thinks his way out of dangerous situations, but this time he and Andar are saved through simple dumb luck. Turok had killed the plesiosaur by stabbing it with a poison arrow. When the corpse of the monster comes to the surface, the tribesmen think they are about to be attacked and run off. Turok and Andar live to continue their search for a way home.

Gee whiz, there are some brutal moments in this one. I don't mean that as a criticism--everything that happens carries the story along in a logical manner. But it is indeed brutal. Crow Plume is a walking tragedy (lost in a monster-strewn valley, beaten into a daze, threatened with death and then pecked to death by pterodactyls) while the image of Turok being forced under the water by a caveman is pure Nightmare Fuel.

But, once again, all this fits this extremely well-told and visually beautiful story. The tale is exciting and dramatically satisfying, as well as teaching us an important lesson that is also emphasized in the last Turok story we reviewed: DON'T EVERY MAKE FRIENDS WITH TUROK AND ANDAR!

Next week, we'll visit with DC's Western hero Jonah Hex as he... pushes a wheelchair-bound old lady off a cliff?

Cover Cavalcade

Evocative Neal Adams cover from 1969.

ERB Podcast--video version of episode #8

Friday's Favorite OTR

The Lone Ranger: "A Conference with General Lee" 2/9/53

The Civil War on Old-Time Radio (Part 17 of 17)

The Ranger recruits the help of a rather well-known former Confederate general to help convince a group of Texans to halt their plans to re-ignite the Civil War.

Click HERE to listen or download.

This is the last of 17 episodes from various series that has taken us through the Civil War and its immediate post-war legacy.

The Pusadian Tales, Part 1

cover art by Robert Gibson Jones

Read/Watch 'em In Order #104

Last year, I reviewed an L. Sprague de Camp novel titled The Tritonian Ring: a story set in a mythical, magic-drenched Bronze Age on the continent of Pusad--what we would call Atlantis. It was a fun novel, but is only one part of the Pusadian Cycle. There were eight short stories, most of them written in the 1950s and one in 1973, set a few generations after the events of the novel. These enormously entertaining stories--or at least the five or six I can get access to--will be the subject of our next Read/Watch 'em In Order series.

"The Eye of Tandyla" appeared in the May 1951 issue of Fantastic Adventures. In this tale, we meet Derezong Taash, a sorcerer who works for King Vuar the Capricious, who rules the kingdom of Lorsk.

All the names are like that, by the way. de Camp's stories remind me of Clark Ashton Smith's Weird Fiction, set in a misty past before recorded history began, with names that twist the tongue, obscure word choices (why say the king is bald when you can say he's "glabrous"?) that make sentences sound cool and a dry and often laugh-out-loud sense of humor. This last is present in only some of Smith's stories, but it is there.

But when I posted a question about this on a Facebook group about L. Sprague de Camp, a guy who knew him was kind enough to answer. de Camp liked Smith's work and, in fact, wrote an essay about him. He did not, though, ever cite him as an influence.

I still see a similarity here, but I guess its more of a coincidence than a direct influence. But wherever the seeds for the Pusadian tales sprang from, they are wonderful stories.

Derezong Taash likes his job. He has a set of beautiful concubines, access to rare books and... well, no real job security. He has to worry about political infighting, which in this context means an assassin's knife or poison in his cup.

And he has to worry about King Vuar, who really is capricious. When the king's #1 concubine wants a particular jewel, reputed to have significant magical powers, Vuar sends his minister of commerce to buy it from the temple at which its kept. When the minister fails, Vuar beheads him. So when Darazong is ordered to simply steal the jewel, he realizes its a job at which he dare not fail.

Darazong and his perpetually grouchy apprentice Zhamel Seh set out to get the jewel, which leads them into a series of dangerous and rather annoying adventures. They come up with a plan that lets them steal the jewel, then realize they were allowed to steal it because it is somehow going to be used against King Vuar.

So they come up with a plan to put it back where they found it, though this means they would go home empty-handed. Knowing Vuar might violently object to this, they come up with yet another plan to steal a near-identical jewel and then just lie to the king about what it it. This, in turn, leads to a situation involving the summoning of a powerful demon and a wild sword fight. Darazong, pudgy and an indifferent swordsman, is out of his element here, but still manages to pull off a clever ploy and--perhaps--save the day.

The story is fast-paced, full of great characters and carried along by clever prose and dialogue. The next story will introduce a regular protagonists to the Pusadian tales, so we don't get to meet Darazong again. That's too bad. He might not have been the most competent sorcerer on Pusad, but I kinda liked him nonetheless.

You can read the story online HERE.