Hok, Part 5

 

cover art by Malcolm Smith

Read/Watch 'em In Order #158

In "Hok Visits the Land of Legends," (Fantastic Adventures, April 1942) Manly Wade Wellman brings the pulp-era adventures of Hok to an end. We will be covering one last Hok story, published posthumously in 1986, but our caveman adventurer is about to take a four-decade break from adventuring.

In this story, Wellman also overtly identifies Hok as the source of the legends of Hercules. In fact, Hok is going to accomplish at least two of Herc's Labors in this story.

The story begins with Hok hunting a mammoth. He invents what is more or less a primitive ballista to injure the beast, then follows it. It is rumored that there is a mammoth graveyard--a place the creatures all go to die. Hok pursues the wounded mammoth through the snow for three exhausting days.

Finally, the mammoth tumbles into a verdant valley where the temperature is warm. Here, Hok finds the mammoth graveyard. He also encounters a tribe of people living in the trees. They live in the trees because there is danger both on the ground and in the air.

On the ground is a creature the locals call a rmanth. In a footnote, Wellman lets us know this is a dinoceras. 

In the air are pterodactyl-like creatures called Stymphs. Hok soon has his hands full in dealing with all this stuff. In addition to the dangerous fauna, he gets on the bad side of the tyrant who rules the tree people. So Hok has to arrange a coup to get rid of this guy while also taking care of the local monsters.

It's a great story, with Wellman expertly weaving together the various plot threads. It's in a footnote admidst all this that he tells us that Hok is indeed the origin of the Hercules myth. (I'm enough of an annoying traditionalist that I wish he had used the name "Heracles," but no one ever does. Sigh.) Between the Rmanth and the Stymphs, Hok gives the world the source of two of Hercules' Labors--the Stymphalian Birds and the Calydonian Boar.

As I said, this ends the pulp-era adventures of Hok and, with the overt parallels Wellman makes to Hercules, this would have been a solid ending for the series. But we will eventually get one more Hok tale. We'll talk about that one soon.

You can read this tale online HERE. 

Hulk, Thing, a Ghost Town and a Bomb

 

cover art by John Romita or Jim Starlin (credit uncertain), with inks by Romita

In 1973, Marvel Team-Up was selling well. So, according to Roy Thomas' introduction to the first Marvel Two-in-One Masterworks, Stan Lee wanted to try out another team-up book, this one featuring Ben Grimm.

The concept was tried out in two successive issues of Marvel Feature and proved to be viable. When written well, Ben might very well rival Peter Parker as the emotional heart of the Marvel Universe and his tendency to banter makes him a strong candidate to team up with other heroes.

Today, we'll look at Marvel Feature #11 (Sept. 1973), written by Len Wein and pencilled by Jim Starlin. Next week, we'll look at the next issue.

One element to this story that immediately makes it fun is bringing back a relatively obscure character who had one appearance a decade earlier. Kurrgo was the despotic ruler of Planet X and had a run in with the FF back in FF #7. He hadn't been seen since.

Now he's making a deal with the Leader. They each pick a champion and have them fight. The winner gets control of both champions and the scientific knowledge of the loser.

Kurrgo picks the Thing while the Leader--not surprisingly--picks the Hulk. Kurrgo claims that the Thing's intelligence and experience will give him an advantage over the stronger Hulk, but hedges his bets by secretly transmitting cosmic radiation to Ben, increasing the hero's strength.

Ben is teleported to an Old West ghost town and the situation is explained to him. To force him to fight, Ben is told he has to get past Hulk in time to deactivate a world-destroying bomb. 

Hulk is teleported in and he fights pretty much because he's annoyed and doesn't know what's going on. He even insults Ben's catch phrase, which I think is pretty low.

What follows is a fun battle, with Starlin's art capturing the power of the superstrength punches being thrown. Ben does try to explain about the bomb, but an angry Hulk is not known for his listening skills.

Ben does get to the bomb, only to find out its a fake. When the villains try to tractor-beam Hulk into their ship, Ben tags along. Leader finds out Kurrgo was cheating. The heroes make quick work of Kurrgo's robot, then jump to the ground before the ship explodes. Hulk jumps away and Ben is stuck alone in the desert. 

The story breaks no new ground--it's pretty much consists of establishing a reason for Hulk and Thing to fight, then showing us that fight. But it's succeeds in being a fun fight AND it does show us that Ben is a viable character to host a team-up book.

Next week, we'll confirm this conclusion by looking at the next issue of Marvel Feature.

Cover Cavalcade

 

January is Wooden Ships and Iron Men Month!

This 1935 cover is by Sidney Riesenberg

Friday's Favorite OTR

 Gunsmoke: "Line Trouble" 6/26/60

Dillon helps an old Indian friend who is falsely accused of a crime.

Click HERE to listen or download. 

Hok, Part 4

 

cover art by J. Allen St. John

Read/Watch 'em In Order #157

Manly Wade Wellman's fourth Hok story appeared in the March 1941 issue of Amazing Stories. (Making this post the SECOND time I've discussed a story from that issue.) In the previous stories, Hok has brought family units together into primitive tribal structures, started living in huts rather than caves and invented the bow and arrows.

In "Hok and the Gift of Heaven," he has a chance to introduce swords and usher in the Iron Age. This happens via a stroke of dumb luck OR divine intervention, depending on one's interpretation of the story.

I have no idea what Wellman's religious beliefs--if any--were. In the Hok stories--which are Wellman's fictional representations of man's early development--he has presented the worship of God (referred to as the Shining One) has a healthy part of that development. Hok, certainly, considers worship to be a necessary thing.

Here, when an enemy tribe is attacking Hok's village, a meteor land right smack in the middle of the battle. Hok is knocked out and his tribe panicks, running away. When Hok wakes up, he finds that an outcropping of coal has fed a very hot fire started by the meteor. When rain douses the flames, some meteoric iron has been melted into the shape of a sword. Hok figures out how to whet the metal to sharpen it and makes a hilt out of animal skins. He has new weapon. The third-person narration refers to it outright as a sword, but Hok gives it the ultra-cool name of Widow-Maker.

He also assumes the sword is a divine gift. Now as a Christian, I believe in God and believe that He takes an active part in our lives. But this is difficult to portray in fiction without creating an awkward deus ex machina, making it seem like the author is cheating to help his hero along. To be honest, as much as I like the Hok stories, the hero simply finding metal that melted by apparent chance into a sword did seem like a cheat. In the previous tale, Hok had worked hard to figure out bows and arrows. He earned the weapon. Here, he's just given it.

On the other hand, he does continue to stoke the initial meteor fire with coal because this seems to be what the Shining One expects of him. This response to his faith is what makes the fire hot enough to form the sword. So perhaps he DID earn it. 

Anyway, he finds out his wife and son were captured by the enemy tribe. Armed with Widow-Maker, he pursues, killing a cave bear and a leopard along the way. This provides us with cool action and shows both us and Hok just how effective a weapon the sword can be.

He also passes a fire formed by natural gas. When flames seem to reach for the sword, Hok interprets this as the Shining One asking for it back. But Hok needs it for awhile longer before he can do that.

He finds the enemy village at the seashore, fights a shark, finds his family, kills a bunch of people, and then gets captured. But when the enemy chief tries to use Widow-Maker--well, another bit of presumed divine intervention occurs. Hok and his family escape, but the Iron Age will be delayed. Hok does return the sword to the Shining One by dropping it in the natural gas fire. Hok has promised to do this and he always keeps his word.

By the end of the story, the theme of divine intervention has been established effectively enough to make me okay with the "gift" of the sword. Whether this intervention really was divine or whether Hok simply sees it that way is up to the individual reader. In either case, Wellman provides us with another fast-paced adventure tale filled with brutal, exciting action. You can read it yourself  HERE. 

Bank Robbers and Pretty Girls

 

cover art by Jack Kirby

Being a wanted man does indeed make it hard to carry on a stable relationship with a purty young gal. In Rawhide Kid #19 (1960), Stan Lee & Jack Kirby teach the Kid this lesson in no uncertain terms.

The story opens with the Kid ignoring a bully. He's worried that if he draws on the guy, everyone will quickly realize he's the Rawhide Kid. But when that bully moves on to bother a lady--well, that's a different situation.

The Kid takes down the bully with his fists, thereby still hiding his real identity. But trouble is afoot. Because now a woman (named Susan) is involved. And, by golly, wimmen is nothin' but trouble!

Susan and the Kid hit it off, and the Kid soon finds himself wishing that he wasn't a wanted man and had the option of settling down. Because by this point, he and Susan have fallen in love. 

Making the situation even more awkward is the fact that Susan's dad is the local sheriff.

The Kid realizes that there's only one intelligent way to handle his love match--sneak out of town before he meets Susan's dad. But this doesn't work out. The sheriff sees and recognizes him. This leaves the Kid with no choice but to claim Susan means nothing to him. He was playing up to her only to get on the good side of the sheriff.

At this point, bank robbers arrive in town, taking Susan hostage. The Kid gets away from the Sheriff and takes on the bank robbers. In a typically fun Jack Kirby fight, he takes them out. But he still needs to convince Susan he could care less about her. So he grabs a bag of gold and makes a getaway.

Later, he confronts Susan's dad outside of town and gives back the gold--on the condition that Susan be told the gold was recovered when the Kid was briefly captured before escaping again. The sheriff realizes that the Kid really loves his daughter, though she can never be told so.

To a large extent, the story is predictable. We know up front that the Kid isn't going to settle down and get married. But it's still a very enjoyable tale. Jack Kirby wasn't able to let his imagination fly as wildly on relatively realistic Westerns as he did with superhero and science fiction tales, but he's always a superb visiual storyteller. And Stan Lee's script provides a nice touch with the sheriff realizing the truth but being obligated to keep it a secret. It provides a bit of real pathos to the story that gives it emotional backbone. 

That's it for the Wild West. Next week, we'll watch the Thing and the Hulk punch each other out.

Cover Cavalcade

 

January is Wooden Ships and Iron Men Month!

This 1957 cover is tentatively credited to Taylor Oughton. 

I featured this cover back in 2011 with a little more background information about the story. You can read about it HERE. 

Friday's Favorite OTR

 The Adventures of the Saint: "The Cowboy" 7/1/51

In this episode from Tom Conway's run as The Saint, Simon is hired to bodyguard a Texas cattleman, but later becomes a target himself.

Click HERE to listen or download. 

The Mummy's Curse (1944)

 

Read/Watch 'em In Order # 156

The Universal Monster movies always played fast and loose with its timeline. The final Mummy movie--1944's The Mummy's Curse--might have the oddest time jump of all. It is set 25 years after the previous film. I suppose that means it's set in the far future year of 1969. Obviously, the producers didn't care about that detail. But, when you watch the film, there's nothing really overt about it that says it's NOT set in 1969 other than the car the protagonist is driving. Perhaps the guy just likes antique cars.

Anyway, remember that Kharis, carrying the reincarnated Princess Ananka, sank into a swamp. A quarter century later, Kharis has been recovered from the swamp by a couple of members of  Ananka's cult, strangling some poor shlub when they acquire it. One of the cultists is posing as the assistant to an archeologist named Dr. James Halsey (Dennis Moore). Halsey is in the swamp specifically to recover Kharis and Ananka for a museum. 

One of the things I like about this movie--in fact, about the entire series--is the casualness in which people accept that an undead mummy occasionally walks around and kills people. It's understandable, because after Kharis is reanimated in the first movie, there's plenty of evidence to show that it's true. In this case, the head of a construction crew draining the swamp is skeptical, but Halsey has no problem with the idea.

Anyway, the cultists use Tana leaves to bring Kharis back to life. In the meantime, in a scene that is remarkably creepy for this low budget film, Ananka climbs out of the swamp. She's young again despite having aged rapidly in the last film. She also has amnesia.

Ananka ends up working for Halsey, proving herself to be very knowledgable in all things ancient Egyptian. Kharis starts stalking her. Several people get strangled. Ananka is finally taken by Kharis and brought to the ruins of a monastery the cultists are using as a hideout. One of the cultists brings Halsey's girlfriend along as well. This sets off a "you-betrayed-your-oath-of-secrecy" conga line involving the cultists and Kharis. One cultist backstabs the other. Halsey shows up and gets into a fight with the still-living cultist. Kharis takes a hand in all this and also decides to kill the cultist. In the end, a big chunk of the monastery collapses on the mummy and the cultist. Since that cultist was the last living person to know the secret of the Tana leaves, there's apparently no danger of Kharis being brought back to life again.

Poor Ananka, lying in a mummy case in the monestary, has once again aged back to her normal 3000 years, so she's a goner as well. But Halsey gets his girlfriend for himself and the mummy for his museum. The end.

The low budget often shows in this entry, but despite that, I like it a lot. It's very atmospheric, with Ananka's resurrection from the swamp being particularly striking. Also, shots of the mummy walking up to the monastary ruins look pretty cool. The 60-minute film moves at a brisk pace and tells its story effectively. The Mummy's Curse is definitely a 2nd-tier entry in the Universal Monster canon, but it's still worth watching.

From Human to Robot

 

cover art by Gil Kane

Comic Book Science & Comic Book Logic do not, of course, depend on any sort of realism. What they require is a degree of self-consistency. During the Silver Age, DC heroes such as Flash and Green Lantern were always using clever tactics to foil villains. Often, even presuming the existance of super-speed or power rings, those tactics made no real-life sense at all. But that doesn't matter. As long as these tactics are reasonably consistent within the established rules of the DC Universe, then they serve a purpose not just to advance the story, but to also highlight the cleverness of the hero and give the stories an extra "Wow, that's cool!" vibe. An extra level to our sense of wonder, so to speak.

A good example of this is Green Lantern #36 (April 1965). Writer Gardner Fox and artist Gil Kane start off by having a toy doll steal secret plans from Carol Ferris' facility. 

Carol, soon joined by Hal, pursue the escaping toy. Eventually, the agile little thing gets away. So Hal sends Carol back to the airfield to get help. This allows him to change into Green Lantern. He'd already zapped the stolen plans with a tracking ray, so he's good to go.

Well, he's not. But to be fair, even people living in Comic Book Universe wouldn't have seen what was coming. Hal tracks the toy to a remote house, where a criminal mastermind and his thugs are already planning more thefts of stuff that can be sold on the international market.

But there's a complication. The room the gang is using is filled with a deadly radiation, with each of the bad guys wearing a neutralizer to protect themselves. The radiation has a yellow base, so GL's ring won't work inside the room. It also won't protect him if he enters the room himself.

This is, of course, silly. But it's a silliness that is completely consistent with how things work in a Comic Book Universe. Because of this, readers can enjoy this tale even in our more jaded modern age for what it is. We don't have to look at it ironically or to make fun of. It's a good, solid superhero story and can be allowed to work on that level. 

This holds true even as the story grows more bizarre. GL can't let the bad guys get away. Well, he admits he COULD wait for them to leave the house and then nab them. But, darn it all, Carol is worried about those plans, so Hal wants to wrap this up quickly.

Hal bursts into the room and begins punching out the bad guys. Fisticuffs are necessary because of the yellow-based radiation, so he can't use his power ring. But why isn't the radiation killing him?

It's because, before entering the room, he uses the power ring to transform himself into a robot. 

And that makes sense. Within the context of GL's reality, it's a clever and effective tactic. And Gil Kane's art makes robot GL look pretty darn cool as well, especially when one of his hands breaks off after he throws a particularly hard punch. 

The criminal scientist uses an electro-magnet to temporarily trap Hal, but the hero thinks his way out of that situation. He pursues the gang outside the house, where his ring now works. So catching them all is now pretty routine.

It's an imaginative tale, with Hal using his ring (something limited only by his willpower and imagination) in very clever and unexpected ways. It's a great example of how a Comic Book Universe is SUPPOSED to work.

Next week, we'll trade in our power rings for six-guns and visit with the Rawhide Kid.