Spider Man Doesn't Quite Fight Dracula

cover art by John Romita

Some aspects of Giant Size Spider Man #1 (1974) seem hastily or carelessly written, so I wonder if writer Len Wein and artist Ross Andru were told "Spider Man vs. Dracula, guys. Right now!" and given a tight deadline to come up with something.

On the other hand, Andru's art looks typically cool (I always like his work on Spider Man) and the story has its strong points as well.

It actually starts with a weak point, though, as several pages are wasted when Spidey has an inconclusive encounter with a jewel thief who apparently has ice powers. Since he'll soon be borrowing a rocket plane from Johnny Storm, this opening scene exists merely to set up a Human Torch/Iceman team-up in that month's issue of Marvel Team-Up, also written by Wein. I'm a fan of Wein's work, but that's a sneaky little cross-promotion that takes pages away from the story we are supposed to be reading.

The story finally gets started when Peter finds out Aunt May is deathly ill yet again. Only a vaccine being brought over on a cruise ship by a doctor named A.J. Maxfield can save her.  (We'll ignore the fact that vaccines are meant to prevent disease, not cure them. It's a slip that any writer might make.) Maxfield is terrified of flying, which explains the cruise ship travel.

So Peter heads to the Baxter Building to borrow a rocket plane and fetch Maxfield and the vaccine to NYC in time to save May, taking a panel to tell Johnny about the jewel thief before he leaves.

It turns out other people are looking for the good doctor as well. A Maggai crime boss wants to snatch Maxfield and ransom back the vaccine for a pardon for past crimes. He's brought along a small army of thugs disguised as members of the ship's band.

The other person looking for Maxfield is Dracula, Lord of the Vampires. Here we hit another couple of weak spots in the story. Dracula's motivation for killing Maxfield is some vague "That vaccine might interfere with my plans for world conquest" line of reasoning that is spoken and dismissed in one panel. I get the impression that Wein couldn't come up with a truly logical reason to get Dracula on the ship and just tossed in a line of dialogue to get that whole issue out of the way.

Peter resumes his civilian clothes when he gets on the boat. He and Drac then encounter each other for the first and only time in the story. For some reason, Peter's Spidey Sense is on the fritz, as he walks past one of the most dangerous beings in the world without a qualm.

I seem to keep dumping on this story, but--though I do think my criticisms are legitimate--I do enjoy it in the end. Of course, the story upends our expectations by never having Spidey and Dracula directly fight each other. A reader could see this as another weakness. On the other hand, both characters headline their own comics, so a fight between them would have to have been inconclusive. So perhaps the direction in which Wein took the story is the best one.

 Anyway, Dracula soon encounters and easily disposes of some of the Maggai thugs. He also drains a young lady of much of her blood, which causes the captain to summon Maxfield to the ship's clinic to help treat her. A nice twist here is that a man and a woman both arrive, with Peter (and later both Dracula and the Maggai) automatically assuming the man is Maxfield. We don't find out until the last few pages that the good doctor is a lady.

When the Maggai thugs kidnap the wrong guy, Spider Man starts luring them out onto the deck by blocking hatchways with webbing. Thus, they know who is after them and, in a truly funny moment, the thugs mistake a random guy in a Spidey costume as the real thing.

But the real Spidey is close by and begins taking out the thugs. I really do enjoy the sense of motion and action Ross Andru put into fight scenes.

Nearby, Dracula takes out a remaining thug by shattering his mind with hypnosis, which is kind of cool. He then disposes of the Maggai crime boss and tosses the man he assumes to be Maxfield overboard. Convinced he's completed his mission, he changes into a bat and flies off.

Spidey, by this time, had ended up crawling over the outer hull of the ship, looking for "Maxfield" and doubting that he'll just "drop from the clouds." In yet another sincerely funny moment, they guy drops down on top of Spidey.

With all the villains captured, dead or gone, Spidey soon finds out who the real doctor is. Maxfield is willing to overcome her fear of flying to save a life, so she accepts an offer of a rocket plane trip to New York. Aunt May is saved.

So there are a lot of little things wrong with this story--the wasted pages plugging a completely different book; the overuse of a sick Aunt May to drive a Spider Man plot; the vagueness of Dracula's motivation for killing the doctor; the absense of Spider Sense warning while walking past a vampire. But I actually like the subversion of not having the two main characters actually meet even while working at odds to one another; the humorous moments work; Andru's art is fun; and the way the action is structured (with Spidey forced to pretty much keep running around the ship searching for or rescuing fake "Maxfield") keeps the pacing swift.

Next week, we'll stay in the Marvel Universe but travel back in time to take part in the Trojan War.

Cover Cavalcade

Dennis appears to be more helpful than menacing in this uncredited cover from 1969.

Friday's Favorite OTR

Burns and Allen: "Gracie Appears in Traffic Court" 6/1/43

George is in big trouble with the law when Gracie doesn't tell him about a parking ticket she got months ago. Fortunately, Gracie has a brilliant plan for getting George off that can't possibly go wrong.

Click HERE to listen or download.

Ike had Great Taste in Westerns

I've always known that Dwight Eisenhower read Westerns to relax. So, being who I am, when something made me think about that recently, I emailed the Eisenhower library to see if there was a list of the books he read during World War II.

Sadly, a complete list does not exist, but I did find out this: On the day Germany surrendered, Ike read the book Cartridge Carnival, by William Colt MacDonald, to relax. It's quite likely he was reading the Armed Services Edition pictured above.

It was, at the time, a new book, published in 1945. So, whether Ike's copy was an Armed Services Edition, kudos to the guys running that program for selecting and publishing a quality Western for the troops so quickly.

Because Cartridge Carnival is really, really good. It's set in the town of Carnival, where the town's weekly, four-page newspaper--the Banner--has been editorializing against Rafe Harper, the current mayor. And there's good reason for this. Harper runs a crooked gambling house, is involved in cattle rustling, and (we eventually find out) is not above blackmailing people into helping him.

So when the Banner's publisher is killed, suspicion would normally fall on Harper or one of his hired thugs. But the publisher was killed inside a locked building and is holding a gun with one cartridge fired. The death is ruled a suicide.

A wandering cowboy named Stormy Knight thinks it might be murder. Stormy ends up befriending Kate Sanford, the publisher's daughter, and going partners with her on the newspaper. So Stormy has to learn the newspaper business fast while simultaneously investigating the supposed suicide and, incidentally, stay alive long enough to get the next issue out.

Stormy is a great character. At first it seems as if he did just wander into Carnival by chance, but we soon get hints that he might be more than he appears. He's quick with a gun and deadly in a fight, but he also has a strong sense of justice, a growing love for Kate and a dry sense of humor that makes us like him all the more. He and Harper begin clashing almost right away, but Stormy won't back down. With the help of Kate and a shotgun-wielding typesetter named Quad Wrangel, he begins to chip away at Harper's corrupt administration.

The action scenes are great--especially the climatic brutal gun fight-- and the murder mystery element adds a nice Sherlockian touch to the story.  MacDonald also sneaks in information about running a small newspaper in the Old West that I found fascinating, but the prose never slows down during these moments. Getting the paper out is  important part of Stormy's campaign against Harper, so these short "how to publish a paper" tutorials are a natural part of the overall story.

Of course, I still want to read more Westerns recommended by Ike. This article includes a list of some of his favorite authors and some of the specific books he read during key moments of his presidentry. It's a pity no comprehensive list from his years as Supreme Allied Commander exist, but I'll still happily dive into the novels from his presidential years.

Aliens, Body Swapping and Horrible Hallucinations

In 1961, just before Atlas Comics became Marvel Comics and jumped back into the superhero business, yet another of its many science fiction anthologies hit the newsstands. Amazing Adventures #1 (June 1961) featured three stories, the first of which was written by Larry Lieber and drawn by Jack Kirby.

During this time, the Earth was getting invaded a lot by many different aliens. It seems that every other Wednesday was Alien Invasion Day. You could almost set your watch by it.

"Torr" tells the story of one of those invasions, though it starts out as if its a murder mystery, with a man named Paul Ramsey on trial for murdering his friend John Carter.

I don't know, by the way, if using the name "John Carter" was a shout-out to Edgar Rice Burroughs. It would be fun if it is, though, so let's go with that.

Anyway, Paul and John were atronomers who observe a space ship landing on earth. The guy flying that ship is a monsterous alien named Torr, who communicates via telapathy and amkes no bones about his plans to conquer Earth and enslave humanity.

John takes a potshot at Torr with a shotgun, which does no immediate harm to the alien, but makes him realize that there might be more weapons on Earth capable of hurting him. After forcing the two humans into a cave and blocking off the entrance, he then proceeds to switch bodies with John Carter. Once this is done, he is in complete control of Carter's body, but Carter can't quite manage to control Torr's body, which Torr-inside-John can control with thought waves.

The idea here is that Torr can now look over Earth and start his conquest without anyone knowing he's there. He forces Paul to drive him into the city, giving Paul a wristwatch-like device that can't come off. If Paul tells anyone about Torr, the device will send a signal to Torr's people, telling them where Earth is.

Torr also helpfully explains how he'll conquer Earth on his own--by releasing a hypnotic vapor that will cause everyone to hallucinate horrible, nightmarish events until they surrender.

Though Torr keeps hiting the stereotype of the Evil Villain who explains his plans for no reason, the plan itself is a pretty scary and dramatically effective threat, while the device Paul wears that keeps him from telling anyone about Torr is a unique plot twist.

Anyway, Paul realizes the only thing that can stop Torr is to kill him, even though it means killing his friend's body. And that's how Paul ends up on trial for murder while refusing to explain why he did it.

Up to now, clever ploting and typically wonderful Jack Kirby art have moved the story along nicely--especially Jack's images of a world engulfed in nightmare hallucinations. I'm not sure I care for the final plot twist, though, in which John Carter comes back to life because Paul had actually shot Torr.

I don't think this quite makes sense even in context of this story. It is John's body that still has bullet holes in it, regardless of whose life force was inhabiting it at the moment he was shot. Also, the story might have arguably been more effective if it ended with John being executed for the murder, performing what was essentially an act of self-sacrifice to save humanity.

This is arguable, though, and the story is overall a very good one.

Next week, Spider Man meets Dracula... almost.

Cover Cavalcade

A really fun cover by Bud Sagendorf from 1962.

Friday's Favorite OTR

Suspense: "My Own Murderer" 5/24/45

Herbert Marshall plays a less-than-honest lawyer who hides a client (played by Norman Lloyd) who has just committed a murder. The two men loathe each other, but the fact that they can also blackmail each other should generate mutual trust. Neither of them can afford to betray the other. There's nothing wrong with that line of reasoning, is there?

Click HERE to listen or download.

Live Action Disney Movies Don't Get Enough Credit

It's true. Live-action Disney films from the 1950s through the 1970s don't get enough credit. Everyone remembers their animated films--and they should. The Disney animated canon is stuffed with classics. And a few live-action films, most notably Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, are well-remembered. But there's a lot of films that have fallen through the cracks and aren't well-remembered by more than a few brilliant bloggers and other smarter-than-average people.

Candleshoe (1977) is, for instance, an incredibly fun movie. Staring a 15-year-old Jodie Foster, it's about a kid who makes her living as a thief until she's found by British con artist Harry Bundage (Leo McKern). The kid, named Casey, is the right age and happens to have the right scar on her shoulder to pass as the long-lost granddaugther of Lady Gwendolyn St. Edmond (Helen Hayes). Lady Gwendolyn lives at the estate of Candleshoe, where a pirate ancestor has supposedly buried a treasure and left behind the first of a series of cryptic clues that would lead people to that treasure.

So the idea is for Casey to pass herself off as the granddaughter while searching for the treasure. Then she and Harry run for it with the pirate gold.

Casey's subsequent story arc is predictable, but good acting, good script and some beautiful location photography means it all comes together in a funny story that also hits some effective emotional beats

Aside from Lady Gwendolyn, Candleshoe is inhabited by Priory the butler  (David Niven) and four orphans Lady Gwendolyn took in and came to think of as family.

At first, Casey and the other kids dislike each other and Casey isn't planing on being around long anyways. But she soon discovers Lady Gwendolyn is out of money, but that Priory and the kids are keeping this a secret from her while they do what they can to scrape together enough money to pay the taxes and keep the estate from going up for auction. Priory, in fact, is using disguises to keep Lady Gwen from finding out the rest of the staff has long since been let go. (Though we later learn that Lady Gwen might be a little more on the ball than her makeshift family suspects.)

Casey's growth into a true member of the family is indeed predictable, but it extremely well-done, shown through sometimes subtle moments such as when we see her washing dishes after earlier having refused to help with chores. Eventually, after Harry steals the money that had been saved to pay the taxes, she tells the family everything and they get together to solve the remaining clues, find the treasure and save the estate. This will include chasing a train across the countryside to find a particular clue and later engaging in some hilarious slapstick combat against Harry and a gang of hired thugs.

So Candleshoe is enjoyable, funny and emotionally engaging--a live-action gem that should be better remembered than it is.

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.