Cover Cavalcade

 

A fun C.C. Beck cover from 1950.

Edgar Rice Burroughs Podcast: Podcast #15: Tarzan and the Golden Lion (audio and...

Edgar Rice Burroughs Podcast: Podcast #15: Tarzan and the Golden Lion (audio and...:   Tim, Jess and Scott talk about the 1923 novel Tarzan and the Golden Lion, in which the Lord of the Jungle acquires what might very well be...

Friday's Favorite OTR

 The Lives of Harry Lime: "In Pursuit of a Ghost" 11/16/51

Harry tries to run a con on a group of Central American revolutionaires, but ends up getting drafted into performing a mission that he has little or no hope of accomplishing. But if Harry can successfully double-cross everyone who is trying to double-cross him, he might both get out alive and turn a tidy profit. 

Click HERE to listen or download. 

Colorado Sundown

 

Though perhaps not as famous as Roy Rogers and Gene Autry, Rex Allen did okay for himself in the B-Movie west, riding the range with (usually) Slim Pickens and foiling a variety of villainous plots. 

In 1952's Colorado Sundown, adventure arises when Slim inherits part of a ranch in the titular state, with Rex riding along to make sure his not-too-bright sidekick gets a fair deal. There are several other people involved. The young and pretty Jackie Reynolds (Mary Ellen Kay) will get a third of the ranch, as will the siblings Carrie and Daniel Hurley.

The Hurleys, though, don't want to share. They own a lumber mill and want full access to all the trees on the ranch. But aside from ownership problems, there's an agent from the Forestry service who is telling them the trees can't be cut down regardless, as the many ranches in the area would then be subjected to flash flooding when the seasonal rains hit.

The Forestry agent isn't fooled by a scam claiming the trees are infected with bark beetles and he proves too stalwart to bribe. Carrie Hurley solves this problem by putting some poison in his tea, hiding the body, and getting yet another brother to take the agent's place and condemn all the trees in the valley.

And they would have gotten away with it if it weren't for that meddling singing cowboy. Rex is suspicious from the get-go and convinces Jackie and Slim not to sell out to the Hurleys for a low price. The Hurleys respond by framing Rex for murder.

In the end, Rex has to prove his innocence quickly enough to prevent an impending range war between the ranchers and the lumbermen.

Colorado Sundown is a fun movie. Rex is a likeable and capable protagonist, Slim (who would become a noted character actor in both film and television) has enough comedic chops to pull off the funny sidekick role and the villains act intelligently enough to pose a real threat to the good guys. June Vincent's ruthlessly cold-blooded portrayal of Carrie Hurley is particularly noteworthy.

As in any singing cowboy movie, the songs are a bit random, but Rex has a nice voice and these interludes are pleasant enough. 

Also, the fist fights are well-staged and very entertaining. Here's an example:

Better Detective Work Through Pretend Chemistry

 

When Rex Allen began starring in B-movies as a singing cowboy, he did several things to help differentiate him from Roy Rogers and Gene Autry. One of those things was to wear his guns backwards--with the gun butts sticking forward atop the holster. 

It's nice that the artists who drew his inevitable comic book adventures for Dell Comics got this particular detail correct. This includes Mike Arens, who drew the Rex Allen story "The Ghost" for Western Roundup #3 (July-September 1953). The writer of this story is unknown.

The story begins with Rex getting knocked out by stage robbers. When he wakes up, the local sheriff briefly thinks he might be one of the robbers, who had also murdered one of the passengers. Fortunately, Rex is able to prove that he 's a good guy. In fact, he's been deputized by the U.S. Marshall to stop the robbers--a gang headed up someone known only as The Ghost.

Rex meets with the city council, several of whom (including the mayor) don't like the idea of an outsider messing around with their business. Rex, though, explains that he saw one of the crooks at the stage robbery and can soon get a line on the gang.

Soon after, a couple of the gang try to capture Rex to find out what he knows. He manages to capture them. And the kidnapping attempt confirms a suspicion he had--one of the city council members is the Ghost. It's the only way the crooks could have found out so swiftly that he had seen the face of one of the gang. He hadn't really seen any of the crooks--that was a fib, of course. But if you can't fib to bad guys, who can you fib too?

I like this story, but there is a minor flaw in the plot here. Rex is assuming that the Ghost is on the council. That someone connected with the gang is on the council is now certain. Rex's trick was clever enough to establish that. But, for all Rex knew at this point, the mole on the council was in the Ghost's pay rather than the Ghost himself.

This isn't a fatal flaw, of course. Rex could have come to the same conclusion but have simply taken a chance that the mole was indeed the Ghost when he impliments the next part of that plan.

He meets with the council again and tells them that there's new chemical--one that will turn red if placed on the palm of a hand that has recently been blood stained--even if the stains are days old and the person has washed his hands. 

Of course, Rex is now not only assuming the Ghost is a member of the council but also personally took part in the last robbery and personally got blood on his hands. There's no denying it--Rex is definitely playing a long shot.

But long shots sometimes pay off. The chemical turns red in the mayor's hand, who quickly confesses when the council immediately threatens to lynch him. Gee whiz, for politicians, these guys act pretty quickly and decisively!

It turns out that Rex was telling yet another fib. He used water to test everyone else and a chemical that turns red when exposed to open air when testing the mayor. 

As a detective story, "The Ghost" is a little weak. In addition to the points I've already mentioned, Rex never clearly explains how he came to suspect the mayor at all. Though, to be fair, the mayor was the most adament in claiming that they didn't need Rex's help to catch the Ghost. 

Still, the art is fun and the story is enjoyable. If we look at the plot as consisting of Rex indeed playing a few long shots instead of making solid deductions, the whole thing works.  In fact, I enjoyed hanging out with Rex Allen sufficiently enought to watch one of his movies and review it in tomorrow's post.

Next week, we'll visit with the stupidest time traveler in history.

Cover Cavalcade

 

George Rozen is most famous for his Shadow covers, but here's a 1951 Rozen cover featuring Hopalong Cassidy.

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Friday's Favorite OTR

 Escape: "The Man Who Would Be King" 8/1/48

This adaptation of Kipling's classic story is a little bit rushed, but still enormously entertaining.

Click HERE to listen or download. 

Steampunk Lone Ranger

 

In a 1943 story arc, the Lone Ranger radio show did dip into vaguely steampunkish territory when the Ranger and Tonto battled a mad scientist who used electricity-based death traps and a drug to turn hostages into zombie-like minions. But, overall, the Ranger's universe did not allow much in the way of Steampunk or science fiction into its stories. This was also true of the TV show and the long-running Dell/Gold Key comic book series.

That changed, though, in 1966, when a production company called Format Films turned out 26 episodes of a Lone Ranger cartoon for CBS' Saturday morning line-up.

I like to think that someone at Format Films fondly remembered that radio story arc, but it was actually the success of Secret Service agents James West and Artemus Gordon on The Wild, Wild West that dictated the premise for this particular version of the Lone Ranger. The Ranger and Tonto are tossed into a Steampunk universe that includes robot dragons, bad guys using scuba gear, a lost valley populated by neanderthals and dinosaurs, and giant wind-up toys. A reoccuring villain, Tiny Tom, was obviously based on West's arch-enemy Dr. Loveless.

Each half-hour had three stories, each running about 6 1/2 minutes, so each story moved at a furious pace. diving right into the action as yet another supervillain or mad scientist spreads chaos across the Old West. One story each episode was often devoted to a Tonto solo adventure, allowing him to have his own Crowning Moments of Awesome. In fact, this cartoon might have been the strongest example of any Lone Ranger venue in showing that the two heroes had an equal partnership. Tonto out-thought a villain and saved the Ranger as often as the Ranger did the same for Tonto.

The animation was obviously low-budget, but was done with imagination and style. To quote the Wikipedia article about the show: The drawings were produced by chinagraph pencil on cell. Colored papers were cut or torn under or against the lines of the background, producing a dramatic and rich textural effect. 

I loved this show as a kid. Though I watched re-runs of the live-action TV series growing up as well, this version of the Lone Ranger may very well have been my introduction to the character.

Fortunately, many of the episodes are showing up on YouTube. Here's one of them:

And, if you have another 7 minutes to spare, here's a Tonto episode in which I like to think he visits the same Lost Valley that was the setting of the comic book Turok, Son of Stone.

A Pet Eagle

 

The last story in Animal Comics #4 (Aug.-Sept. 1943) is the one "realistic" tale in the comic, in which the animal in it is not given dialogue or anthropomorphized in any way. Kyree the eagle is pretty awesome, but he's still an eagle. 

The story (writer unknown, art tentatively credited to Morris Gollub) begins with Kyree, still not quite old enough to fly, falling out of his next. Indian boy Little Otter tries to make him a pet. At first, he's driven off by Kyree's mom, but the boy returns at night to finally claim his new pet.

The eagle grows up and learns to trust his owner. A white trader named Bull Durkin offers ten dollars for Kyree. Little Otter doesn't want to sell, but Otter's dad figures ten bucks is ten bucks. The deal is made. But Little Otter partially cuts through the rope that confines the eagle, allowing Kyree to escape when Bull tries to claim him.

You can probably argue that Little Otter is being less than honest. After all, Bull had paid for the eagle. But it had been mentioned earlier that Bull had traded dishonestly with the Indians in the past. This, combined with Bull's murderous behavior later in the story, is meant to cover over Little Otter's technical dishonesty.

And it is indeed hard to feel sympathy for Bull. When he sees Kyree and Little Otter fishing together later on, he actually tries to strangle the child to get possession of the eagle. But it soon proves to be unwise to threaten a boy whose best friend is a large predatory animal with equally large talons.

With Bull driven off, Kyree and Little Otter are free to continue both to their friendship and their fishing.

That brings us to the end of our look at this issue of Animal Comics. The scripts for the stories were always servicable and often very clever (most especially in the case of the Uncle Wiggly tale). But it is the consistent high quality of the art that brings the book to life. In each case, the art style matches the story being told perfectly and the various characters (both animal and human) are given real personalities. Animal Comics #4 is a wonderful example of a type of comic book that, sadly, has largely disappeared from the comic book racks of today.

Next week, we'll visit with the comic book version of cowboy star Rex Allen.