The Liberal Use of Dynamite During the Chase Scene

A recent podcast found on the excellent Sixgun Justice site metioned the low budget Westerns starring John Wayne that were churned out almost non-stop during the 1930s. I've seen quite a few of them and they are inevitably entertaining, but the podcast highlighted one particular film that I hadn't seen. So, naturally, I needed to watch it as soon as possible.

In Blue Steel (1934), John Wayne plays a U.S. Marshall looking into trouble hitting a remote town. The town is essentially besieged by an organized band of outlaws who have cut off supply shipments, leaving the local ranchers low on both food and ammunition.

Wayne's character--named John Carruthers--teams up with the local sherrif, played by George Hayes before Hayes he developed his "Gabby" character and the two to look into things. He soon has reason to suspect a local businessman named Malgrove (Edward Peil) is the leader of the outlaws. Malgrove wants to force the townspeople to sell out to him cheaply because he's discovered gold in the area.

One of the victims of the outlaw gang is the father of Betty Mason (Eleanor Hunt), who was killed while trying to bring a mule train full of supplies into town. Even aside from abruptly becoming an orphan, she's soon up to her hips in trouble, including getting held prisoner by the bad guys. So its up to the Duke and his sidekick to rescue her, recover the stolen supplies and, of course, stay alive.

Blue Steel isn't perfect. It's biggest flaw is that the bad guys never really seem that impressive. In fact, Malgrove gives away his entire plot early on because he doesn't know that Betty (whom he had just invited to his ranch) is standing nearby listening. John and Betty somehow manage to fall in love despite not sharing more than a dozen lines of dialogue together throughout the movie.

But despite this, the movie is a lot of fun. The plot moves along quickly along a reasonably logical path. Typical of B-movie Westerns, the location photography is wonderful. And the action sequences are particularly good, especially the climactic chase scene. The good guys are racing to town with a wagon-full of supplies while the outlaws pursue them. A liberal use of dynamite allows them to escape and eventually wipe out the bad guys. In the meantime, famed stuntman Yakima Canutt doubles for Wayne to long enough to pull off a magnificent stunt that looks ahead to what he would accomplish on Stagecoach a few years later.  Blue Steel is 50 minutes well spent.

Cloud of Hate

cover art by Howard Chaykin

In 1973, the short-lived title Sword of Sorcery began to treat us to entertaining adaptations of Fritz Leiber's wonderful "Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser" tales, with a few completely original stories featuring the two heroes mixed in with the adaptations.

Sword of Sorcery was a DC title and I'm sure it was a response to the success of Conan the Barbarian over at Marvel. That's a good thing, though, since Fafhrd and the Mouser are also great characters. That they didn't have the commercial success as comic book characters that Conan did is a shame, but Sword of Sorcery was a valiant try.

Denny O'Neil wrote all but one of the stories in the series and Howard Chaykin was the usual artist. Today, we'll be looking the title story from the fourth issue (September-October 1973), written by O'Neil, with Chaykin splitting the pencils with Walt Simonson.

"Cloud of Hate" is one of my favorites of the prose stories and it is interesting to see the changes O'Neil made when adapting it to a comic book. In the prose version, Fafhrd and the Mouser are broke, with the Mouser bemoaning this situation and Fafhrd joyfully taking a more philosophical attitude, claiming they should enjoy life as they find it. But after an encounter with four killers controlled by a literal Cloud of Hate and then dealing with the Cloud itself (via teamwork and the Mouser's agility), Fafhrd just wants to take money looted from the bodies of their opponents and use it to fund a proper good time.

Like most of Leiber's stories from the series, "Cloud of Hate" is clever, imaginative and full of dry humor.

But is also very dialogue-heavy. This, I think, is probably the main reason O'Neil rearranged the events of the story so drastically. Comics are, after all, a primarily visual medium. A story in which the two characters debate life with most of the action coming only at the end would not work as a comic book story.

So the story begins with Fafhrd already bemoaning their poverty and they get jumped by villains who simply want to rob them. The ensuing fight takes its cue from the parallel fight in the prose version, but it serves to set up the plot rather than bring it to a finale.

Nearby cultists are summoning up the Cloud, which sends tentacles across the city of Lankhmar to snatch up weapons. Fafhrd and the Mouser follow, reasoning that the cloud might be gathering up valuables as well and they might be able to claim some riches for themselves.

As they trail the Cloud, they see it murder an innocent girl, thus giving the partners an overtly heroic motive for dealing with it above their desire for loot. This element, not present in the prose story, might have been added to satisfy the Comics Code, but it fits nicely into O'Neil's version of the tale, so there's no harm done.

They trail the Cloud to a cave full of cultists, where, much like in the original, they defeat it with a combination of teamwork and the Mouser's agility.

"Cloud of Hate" is among my favorites of Leiber's original story, so I can't help feel a little disappointed that O'Neil turned it into something with a completely different feel to it and with most of the humor absent. But, as I mentioned above, drastic changes were probably necessary to make the story work in a comic book. And the story we are given in this issue is a good one, enchanced by Chaykin's and Simonson's excellent art.

That's it for now. Next week, we'll visit again with our favorite agents from U.N.C.L.E.

Cover Cavalcade

This 1936 cover reminds us that the Foreign Legion exists primarily to make such covers look awesome. I believe they actually teach this in Foreign Legion boot camp.

Edgar Rice Burroughs Podcast #11--Video Version

Also, here's the video version of the latest mini-podcast. The audio version can be found HERE.

Friday's Favorite OTR

Phillip Marlowe: "Nether Nether Land" 9/1/51

A woman claiming to be followed shows up at Marlowe's apartment in the early hours of the morning, then vanishes a few minutes later. Marlowe has few clues available with which to find her.

Click HERE to listen or download.

"... meet your fate with the dignity becoming a scientist."

cover art by Hubert Rogers

Read/Watch 'em in Order #109

Between 1940 and 1950, A.E. Van Vogt published six stories in Astounding Science Fiction featuring a scientist named Jamieson who is involved in a war against an alien race called the Rull. Mankind has spread out across the galaxy and even visits other galaxies, contacting and befriending many intelligent races. But the Rull don't make very pleasant friends.

They are man-sized centipede creatures that can't or simply refuse to communicate with any other intelligent species and--in fact--make constant war in their efforts to wipe out any species that is indeed intelligent.

The stories were eventually collected and linked together into a 1959 fix-up novel titled The War Against the Rull. I'll be reviewing each story as it first appeared in Astounding, but we'll look at them in the order they are placed in that book (which is different from the original publication order). The novel adds two short chapters of extra material to link the tales together more coherently, but I don't believe the stories themselves were re-written at all from their original pulp appearance. Please note that I'm not 100% sure of that. (EDIT: In fact, when I got around to reading the second story, I discovered I was wrong about how much re-writing was done.)

Anyway, Professor Jamieson's first appearance chronologically is from "Co-operate.. or else" (Astounding, April 1942), an intense adventure tale that throws Jamieson into trouble starting with very first sentence.

The professor was aboard a spaceship transporting a large, six-legged animal called an ezwal back to Earth. But as the story begins, Jamieson is floating down to the surface of a jungle-thick Death World, hanging from an anti-gravity raft and with the ezwal sitting on top of that raft.

art by Charles Schneeman

We soon find out that the ezwal is intelligent and communicates telepathically. They are a species that has pretty much rejected mechanics and manufacturing--they are essentially the neo-Luddites of the galaxy. But they have been happy in their low-tech lives until humans showed up and spoiled things.

Because didn't realize ezwal were intelligent and have killed and even occasionally eaten them. So the ezwal want humans off their home world and this particular ezwal wants to make sure Jamieson doesn't let anyone know that the ezwals are smart. They know that they can't stand up against a concerted human effort to destroy them and being thought of as mere animals is their best defense until they are ready to launch a counter strike. That counter strike involves cutting a deal with the Rull.

So the ezwal has killed everyone aboard the spaceship except Jamieson, who tried and didn't quite succeed in getting away from the large beast.

art by Charles Schneeman

But Jamieson knows something the ezwal doesn't. The planet they are both about to be stranded on truly is  a death world, thick with a variety of large, hungry animals and a species of intelligent and carnivirous plants. To survive, the human and the ezwal have to work together. On another level, Jamieson has to convince the ezwal that an alliance with the Rull won't work. The Rull would simply kill and eat all the ezwals. It's what they do.

art by Charles Schneeman

Van Vogt describes the action vividly and generates a strong sense of danger. He also creates a pretty awesome alien species in the ezwal and the dialogue between it and Jamieson is a highlight of the story. The ezwal might look like an elephant-sized killing machine, but it is very erudite. Here's an example:

"Man and his thoughts constitute a disease. As proof, during the past few minutes, you have been offering specious arguments, apparently unbiased, actually designed to lead once more to an appeal for my assistance, an intolerable form of dishonesty."

Jamieson and the ezwal debate the issue of co-operation, eventually realize they must co-operate, begin to fight their way through the jungle, and then find their situation takes a turn for the worse when the Rull show up looking for them.

"Co-operate... or else" is a great start to the Rull story, generating conflict on several levels and eventually resolving those conflicts satisfactorily.

You download this issue of Astounding HERE. Remember its the April 1942 issue.

Ghost Ship

cover art by Neal Adams

An anthology book--especially a horror-themed book that obligates the writer to come up with a twist or shock ending every darn time--can be a mixed bag. But when the creators of a particular story hit their mark, the end result is can be an atmospheric tale and a visual treasure.

Writer Jack Oleck and artist Jack Sparling came up with "Ghost Ship," the lead story for House of Mystery #197 (December 1971) and I think the two Jacks definitely hit their mark here. It's set in 1858, aboard a sailing ship with a brutal and tyranical captain named Jonah Frame. He is cruel, uncaring of the lives of his men and apt to punish them harshly for the slightest infractions. After several deaths, the crew begin to grow mutinous. 

It is when a young cabin boy named Jamie spills coffee on Captain Frame that matters are brought to a head. The crew won't stand for a boy being flogged and soon a deadly brawl breaks out between the crew and the officers.

A fire breaks out during the fight, detonating the gunpowder the ship is carrying. The only survivors are Captain Frame, the story narrator (John Dodson) and young Jamie, adrift together while clutching to a broken spar.

So far, the story is a pretty good one, elevated by Sparling's art. I especially like his panel design in the one of the pages above, using slanted, vertical panels to highlight the the danger of working atop the mast during a storm.

Well, this is a House of Mystery tale, so its not surprising when something supernatural happens. They soon find themselves aboard a literal ghost ship, crewed by the spirits of sailors who can't seem to see or hear them. Frame refuses to acknowledge that this ship is indeed the Flying Dutchman or that there is anything supernatural going on. Dodson and Jamie believe what they see, though, and jump off the ship before it vanishes. Frame is trapped aboard the ship for all eternity.

The twist comes in the final panel. When Dodson and Jamie are picked up by a non-ghost ship, we don't see them directly as they tell their story and are dismissed as having gone mad while drifting on the sea. But are they mad? Was it all an hallucination? If so, why--as we finally see in that last panel--have forty years passed and why are Dodson and Jamie both four decades older?

It's not the world's greatest twist and might have been made stronger by a little foreshadowing about the passage of time while on the Flying Dutchman. But it's a pretty good twist and it is strong enough to sell the story. And Starling's art remains strong throughout. "Ghost Ship" is well-worth reading.

Next week, a look at the comic book adaptation of one of my favorite Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories.

Edgar Rice Burroughs Podcast: Episode #11

Tim, Jess and Scott listen to an episode of the 1950-51 Tarzan radio series and comment on it. This episode--"Tarzan and the Arena of Death"--borrows elements from ERB's 1932 novel Tarzan and the City of Gold, incorporating those elements into a self-contained story.

You can listen or download the episode HERE.

Cover Cavalcade

A superb Robert McGinnis cover from 1965.

Edgar Rice Burroughs Mini-Podcast #4: Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar.

I geek out over ERB's 1916 novel Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar.

Click HERE to listen or download the audio version. Or watch the video version: