JUNE IS DC WAR COMICS FIRST ISSUE MONTH!!
This Curt Swan cover is from 1952. It's issue #131 because it was re-titled from Star Spangled Comics but kept the numbering system. After three issues using the old numbering system, the series started fresh with Star-Spangled War Stories #3. So there never was an issue #1 (or #2) for this title.
Mr District Attorney: "The Case of the Murderous Good Samaritans" 4/19/54
Two men in a tow truck stop to help a stranded motorist. But their motives might not be pure.
Click HERE to listen or download.
Rimfire (1949) is a noir Western directed by B. Reeves Easton. Easton is not exactly a famous figure in movie history--he was best known as a second-unit director and action specialist. He does a fine job here as the primary director, though, and his action-specialist background shows through in an exceptionally well-choreographed saloon brawl.
The main plot involves an undercover agent named Tom Harvey (played by James Millican) searching for some stolen government gold. He takes a job as deputy in a small New Mexican town, as he suspects the gold is hidden somewhere nearby.
But other stuff is going on in town. The owner of the local saloon is the secret leader of a band of stagecoach robbers. A gambler (Reed Hadley) is falsely accused of cheating at cards and hanged, though Harvey believed he was innocent. And then someone begins killing off those involved in the hanging--has the gambler come back from the dead? Harvey doesn't think so and also thinks the killings might relate to the stolen gold. But the only clue is that the killer is using rimfire cartridges (bullets in which the primer is along the edge of the cartridge rather than the center). Who else uses such a gun?
Aside from the pretty awesome saloon brawl, another stand-out scene is the gambler's trial, which hits just the right note of grimness and effectively reminds us that a man's life is at stake. The revelation of the killer's identity is honestly surprising and acting is quite good.
I found a quote HERE from an interview with Margie Dean, who plays a saloon girl in the movie:
“James Millican was polite and pleasant, but again I knew Reed Hadley better. It was a good little picture. Some of them I made were corny, but this was pretty well done. These films were done fast with last minute script changes. If you hit your spot and said the dialogue, it was printed. To be pretty good in something like that is more of an achievement than being good in a big picture where you do it over and over.”
I've always championed B-movies on my blog and Margie's quote about being good in a B-movie just makes me appreciate them more.
Here's the movie in its entirety. You know, I have a little over 7,000 subscribers to my YouTube channel (hardly an earth-shaking number, I realize) but I've never been sure why most of them have subscribed--whether its for the clips from movies I've reviewed or the ERB podcast or what have you. The increasing prevalence of old movies in their entirety on YouTube means I'm posting fewer clips--since I can more often post the entire film. I hope my subscribers don't show up as an angry mob outside my home because of this. Torch and pitchfork damage isn't covered by my insurance.
Space Family Robinson #20 (February 1967) is the penultimate chapter in the "medieval" story arc--with writer Gaylord Du Bois and artist Dan Spiegle literally taking the characters back in time to mediveval Earth.
The story begins with the crew using a new gadget installed on the space station to bring them through a wormhole back to their home galaxy. (By the way, the script does not use the term wormhole, but it is so obviously the go-to term that a modern writer would use, I think it's a pretty accurate description.) This works, bringing them to the Milky Way galaxy.
The next step is homing in on Earth. This is the dangerous part, as even a slight miscalculation could plunge them into a star. Craig elects to try a test run in one of the spacemobiles, taking only his son Tim and Sir Thomas with him.
The test flight seems to work great, with a jump to Alpha Centauri followed by a jump to Earth. But when Sir Thomas bumps against the controls, they also travel back in time. You would think the aliens who gave them this tech in the last issue might have casually mentioned "By the way, it's also a time machine." But they didn't. Sometimes, aliens are just jerks.
They figure out the time frame and discover that they are on Earth only four years after Sir Thomas and his fellow kidnappees were taken from Earth by the Iklatalians. Eager to see his wife and young son, he asks to be taken to his castle.
There's a neat bit here when they fly over a medieval village--Spiegle adds a nice touch of realism by showing us a muddy street, chickens, a dog and a few other touches that make the environment look real.
They discover Sir Thomas' castle is besieged by brigands. Sir Thomas charges across the field and gets inside. Craig and Tim are chased by the bad guys, but get back to the spacemobile and scare the brigands off by buzzing them with the craft. They then fly off, leaving a happy Sir Thomas behind, standing next to his wife and holding his young son.
It's human elements like this that add a lot to the story. The way the Robinsons worry about each other when they are seperated is another aspect of this. We are presented with people who care about each other and, thus, make us care about them.
But the heck with human touches. There is still cool science fiction stuff that has to happen.
+
The space station had landed on a planet to wait for the return of the spacemobile. They are forced to take off when the weather turns violent. The spacemobile finds its way back to that planet, but has to perform several time jumps and a tense search before finally finding its way home.
BUT, the space-phasing device has broken down. A key element has gone kla-blooie, which prevents them from easily locating Earth again. The Robinson family (and the 13 remaining refugees from the 12th Century) are still lost in space.
Once again, I'm very impressed with Spiegle's dynamic art, but perhaps even more impressed with Du Bois' skilled plot contruction. As I said last week, if this had been a prose story, I can easily imagine it as the cover story in an old issue of Amazing Stories. It is intelligent, imaginative Space Opera.
Next week, we'll look at the final chapter in this saga.
Night Beat: "The Man Who Claimed to Be Dead" 3/20/50
Randy meets a man who claims to be dead, though he is still walking and talking. A doctor says he has no heartbeat and an undertaker claims to have buried him. Is Randy going nuts or is there a logical explanation hidden away somewhere?
Click HERE to listen or download.
For various reasons, the Edgar Rice Burroughs podcast I co-host will be on a bit of a hiatus. Of course, we usually only manage an episode once every two or three months, but it might be a bit longer this time before we get back to it.
To keep a steady stream of content on my ERB Podcast playlist on my YouTube channel, I've decided to produce "What I Read This Month" videos at the end of each month. In the future, I'll probably post them here on what is normally an off-day (probably Saturday), but for the premiere video, I'm giving it the Thursday spot.
So here's "WHAT I READ IN MAY":
Space Family Robinson #19 (December 1966) picks up right where the previous issue left off, with Gaylord Du Bois' intelligent script still highlighted by Dan Spiegle's dynamic art. But before we dive into this issue, I have a confession to make, by golly. I left off an important plot point in my review last week! I shall report to the closest Agony Booth for punishment.
Kor, the alien, had explained that there are "holes" (a modern story would probably say "wormhole") in space and the Robinson family's space station had travelled through one of these and is in a different galaxy. But before he can give any concrete navigation advice, he keels over with a high fever.
So this issue picks up with the Robinson family and their 14 guests from medieval Earth believing that Kor is probably doomed. Kor believes it as well, asking the humans not to revive the other Iklatalians and expose them to the same disease.
Knowing they might be stuck on this planet, the humans decide to explore. They divide into two teams and take the two spacemobiles, with Craig flying one of them and Tim flying the other.
One of the many smart elements of the script is that Du Bois never forgets that all this technology is brand new to the medieval guys and gals. They adapt quickly, but are continually surprised or intrigued by each knew thing.
One of those things is a shower. This leads to a very human touch when one of the men going with Tim is delayed because he's enjoying taking a shower for the first time in his life. I love it.
An impish young lady named Elaine puts on the guy's armor and thus tricks her way onto Tim's spacemobile.
She soon has reason to regret her impishness. When investigating yet another set of ruins, Tim's crew encounter some ancient and ill-tempered robots. Tim's laser pistol helps even the odds, though he temporarily loses the pistol in the struggle and has to use a sword to deactivate one of the robots.
Soon after, Tim's spacemobile gets targeted by a missile:
There's no radio contact with Tim after this happens, which understandably worries Craig and June. In the meantime, though, Kor recovers. He uses antibodies from his blood to give the other Iklatalians immunity to the disease, then the lot of them form a telepathic ring to contact Tim. He and his crew were okay, but the blast knocked out radio and radar, so he was trying to fly home by dead reckoning. The aliens guide him home telepathically.
Both the alien ship and the space station are repaired. Kor is able to give directions to a wormhole that will take the Robinsons and their friends back to the Milky Way, but he can't direct them to their specific sun. Still, it's a start. The four Robinsons and the 14 medieval people take off for (hopefully) home.
Like the previous issue, this chapter in the 4-issue story arc is solid science fiction in the Space Opera vein. Had this been a prose story written in the '30s or '40s, I could easily see it being the cover story in an issue of Amazing Stories.
We'll check back in next week to see how they're doing.
Posts
All Comments
